It’s always nice to have the authorless Associated Press remind us we are going down for the count. But they are another story for another day.

After five years of economic misery for those of us on the workforce front lines, it still seems to be lost to the many players that, assuming you are lucky enough to even have a job any more, people who languish at meritless, minimum wage, part-time, benefitless jobs, have no stake in buying products like new Harleys, new Chevys, or anything else other than Chinese junk.

I wish Harley luck where ever they end up, but there is no place to run in this massive recession unlike past recessions where one could relocate to other parts of the U.S. and flee to pockets of better chances.  Better brush up on the Chinese and/or Hindi languages then you blue-collar Harley worker humps, if you are going to follow your company to the new promised lands. Better get used to curry and rice and a Buck-fifty per hour wage just in case.  If you are lucky, they will only move "Down South" and you will only need to polish up on Mississippi Red Neck dialect. Just listen to the many recordings of Brett Favre telling us he is retiring.  His good ol' Southern drawl should help you get off on the right foot.

We here in America live in a national “new norm” now of perpetual economic misery that will apparently stay with us for the foreseeable future. Once a generation of kids emerge that has never lived in a better time, and never known a weekend off from their McJobs, the transition is complete. This is the same generation of kids Harley is already losing to other cheaper sport motorcycle genres.

Harley reminds me of the Viet Nam Veterans of America group, who do not have the means to attract more members; and, the Shaker religion – the Shakers believed in celibacy. When the members are dead and gone, the genre ends too.

In the interest of disclosure, I am a Viet Nam Era veteran, I do own a Harley, and I actually like Brett Favre and his quest to play football forever. I am not a Shaker however.

None-the-less, like it or not, much of the Harley culture still embraces an older age group.  Harley charity events are replete with old gray-haired bastards like myself and their aging biker chicks.

This economic-hell train left the station long ago and left us rabble behind. All that is left on the platform is us guys pointing fingers and blaming specters that have long since taken the money and ran. Harley is threatening to take the last train out...still leaving us on platform.

I am not sure what Harley will accomplish by continuing to threaten to leave us fair Cheddar Heads, other than help perpetuate a race by the many states to slump down to a culture of workforce bottom feeding – a culture that is already well on its way to fruition.

Bob Keith
- using my real name in the quirky world of collective comment-posting schizophrenia -

                      Wisconsin Military Service Person Special Mention of the Week
    (each week Cooldadiomedia mentions a Wisconsin service person killed in Iraq or Afghanistan)

    Sergeant First Class Merideth Leigh Howard, 52, of Waukesha, Wisconsin, died in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Friday, September 8, 2006, when a suicide car bomber detonated a vehicle near the Humvee she was in. SFC Howard was assigned to the Army Reserve's 405th Civil Affairs Battalion, out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina. She was one of two soldiers killed in the incident. Fourteen Afghanis were also killed in the incident. At the time of her death she was listed as the oldest American Servicewoman killed in combat in either Iraq or Afghanistan. Like so many American service members in this modern era, Howard is claimed as a native of several states. And, being a bit older than her military colleagues and also a female from a transitional era, she traveled through life attaining many firsts. According to jarrarsupariver.blogspot.com (Iraq Bloggers Central) Howard was all of 5-foot and 4-inches tall and had to stand on a box to see over the turret to man the .50 caliber machine gun on the Humvee she rode shotgun on in Afghanistan. They were on the infamous Jalalabad Road, known as Kabul's suicide-bomb alley. Iraq Bloggers Central also noted Howard was a native of Corpus Christi, Texas. While at Texas A& M University, she was a member of the first women's tennis team there, and became the second woman to graduate from the University's Brayton Fire School. She went on to become the first woman to join the Bryan, Texas Fire Department in 1978; she then moved on and became a fire-risk-management specialist with insurance companies, eventually helping set up a consulting company in Alameda, California. 

    Merideth Howard joined the military in 1988 at the age of 34 as a medical equipment repairer for the Army Reserve. She was called for active duty in December 2005 and sent to Afghanistan in the spring of 2006. She married long time partner Hugh Hvolboll prior to deployment. They had met in 1991 in California. The couple owned a home in Alameda, California and also had an apartment in Waukesha, Wisconsin. In Afghanistan, Howard was part of a provincial-reconstruction team, assigned to a Civil Affairs unit at the the Mehtarlam base in eastern Laghman province. Their task was to help rebuild roads, schools, and other infrastructure needed in the war torn country. 

    The Website landstuhlhospitalcareproject.org via information gleaned from the Chicago Tribune also notes Howard was a resident of Waukesha, Wisconsin. They also mention Howard's vehicle was making a supply run to a Bagram Air Base near the Afghan capital when she was killed. They also noted this was Howard's first deployment since joining the Reserves in 1988. In late April of 2006, nine members of SFC Howard's civil affairs team arrived at the Mehtarlam Base.

    The Texas A&M University Association of Former Students, notes Howard was assigned to the 364th Civil Affairs Brigade in support of the 10th Mountain Division at the time of her death. The Association goes on to mention Howard graduated from Corpus Christi’s King High School in 1973 and earned both a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology from Texas A&M University. 

    The Seattle Times states Merideth's long time partner Hugh Hvolboll, made fireworks for a living. In 2004, the couple moved to Waukesha for his job. The Los Angeles Times notes that her husband would honor her request and celebrate her life by blasting her ashes skyward in two fireworks displays more than a thousand miles apart. Her husband was quoted as saying, "She loved fireworks and being near the water." She was known to have an infectious smile. Her husband went on to note he would set off the fireworks displays with his wife's ashes off Corpus Christi, Texas, and San Francisco. The L. A. Times goes on to note Merideth was born in Corpus Christi in 1954, was an only child, and spent some of her childhood crabbing and fishing at Laguna Madre, a channel along the Texas coast. She also liked water skiing and duck hunting. At the time of her death, Merideth Howard was survived by her cousin Lorraine Stevenson of Corpus Christi, Texas; and, her husband, Hugh Hvolboll, of Waukesha, Wisconsin. Her parents preceded her in death. Sergeant First Class Merideth Howard was the ninth Wisconsin military service person to be killed in Afghanistan since October 2001. 

         As of this blog entry's posting date:

    97,172 Iraqi civilians have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
    
    9,587 Iraqi Security Forces have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.

    4,417 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003. 

    1216 Americans have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.

    318 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.

    767 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001. 

    31,902 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring, 2003. 

    7,285 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Afghanistan since October, 2001. 

    102 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.

    19 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.

    142 journalists (several nationalities) have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.

    21 journalists (various nationalities) have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.

Wisconsin military service person special mention of the week, military casualty, and journalist casualty information sources: Committee to Protect Journalists; cnn.com; Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; washingtonpost.com; thehighground.org; Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs; iraqbodycount.org; and, icasualties.org.