The Winter of Our Discontent

In the wake of Obama's announcement of the escalation of the "war" in Afghanistan, and the subsequent hulabaloo over his Nobel Peace Prize, I'm reposting a piece that I wrote shortly before Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the U.S. My question now is, "is this the 'hope' part or the 'change' we voted for last year"?

For another great King speech, go here.

I read somewhere a few years ago that Martin Luther King Junior’s legacy had been homogenized in the name of political expediency. The nadir of that process came about in 2001 when Alcatel used images from King’s 1963 “I have a Dream” speech to peddle communication systems.

But the piece to which I refer pointed to a speech Dr. King gave in front of a gathering of labor leaders in 1967. I revisited that speech when I heard that Pastor Rick Warren was ordained to speak at Barack Obama’s inauguration and it struck me that one of the most important voices of the civil rights movement may not have been chosen to speak at the inauguration of the first black president in our nation’s history.

I also found that King’s rhetoric was much closer to that of Reverend Jeremiah Wright than to the plump, somewhat moderate white Pastor from Saddleback Church. I will refrain from pointing out the similarities of that church’s name to a popular film about gay cowboy love.

Reading the text of King’s speech, it amazes me to see the similarities of the Vietnam era to our current Iraq era. King decried a Vietnam War that he believed “produced a shameful order of priorities in which the decay, squalor and pollution of the cities are neglected.

“It has made the Great Society a myth and replaced it with a troubled and confused society. The war has strengthened domestic reaction. It has given the extreme right, the anti-labor, anti-Negro, and anti-humanistic forces a weapon of spurious patriotism to galvanize its supporters into reaching for power, right up to the White House. It hopes to use national frustration to take control and restore the America of social insecurity and power for the privileged,” he said.

In that speech, King criticized politicians who condemned the violent turmoil enveloping urban black populations, saying that, “the users of naval guns, millions of tons of bombs, and revolting napalm cannot speak to Negroes about violence. Only those who are fighting for peace have the moral authority to lecture on non-violence.”

He said that urban blacks “are infinitely less dangerous and immoral than the deliberate acts of escalation of the war in Vietnam,” and that “even in the grip of rage the vast majority have vented their anger on inanimate things, not people. If destruction of property is deplorable, what is the word for the use of napalm on people? What would happen to Negroes if they not only set fires but killed people in the vicinity and explained blandly that some known combatants had to die as a matter of course? Negroes would be called savages if we were so callous. But for generals it is military tactics.”

When King made his speech in November 1967, unemployment had increased by approximately 15 percent in the previous few months, and tens of thousands of people were abruptly thrown out of jobs and training programs in a lousy job market. The corollaries to the first decade of the 21st century are chilling, particularly when King calls national political leaders to task for their warped spending priorities.

“It is disgraceful that a Congress that can vote upwards of $35 billion a year for a senseless immoral war in Vietnam cannot vote a weak $2 billion dollars to carry on our all too feeble efforts to bind up the wound of our nations 35 million poor,” he said. “This is nothing short of a Congress engaging in political guerilla warfare against the defenseless poor of our nation.”

King was accusing the government of terrorist acts against its own people in much the same way that Wright criticized the government in his now-famous sermons.

During his final days, King took a lot of heat for his criticism of war in Vietnam. He was subjected to “the most bitter criticism, by the press, by individuals, and even by some fellow civil rights leaders,” and told to stay in his place.

“I had only one answer for that and it was simply the fact that I have struggled too long and too hard now to get rid of segregation in public accommodations to end up at this point in my life segregating my moral concerns,” he said.

He was assassinated five months after he made that speech.

I find it ironic that on the day after MLK day, when the first-ever black president of the United States of America is set to take the oath of office, the convocation will be given by a man who supports a fiscally and morally debilitating series of wars and “separate but equal” status for a group of Americans.

It’s kinda funny in a sadly disturbing way. Obama keeps reaching out to the right political wing, but people on the left — the dreaded Lib’ruls — seem to continue to wait for representation in this budding administration.

I should probably wait until he gets into office to be thoroughly disappointed.

Published in Sonoma West Times & News, January 14, 2009

Don't be such a Dick

I spent the weekend preparing to write my usual fly-by-night analysis of what I’ve come to affectionately think of as Great Depression II, wherein I was set to take the Obama Administration to task once more for its unapologetic use of the former Bushies and Clintonites who orchestrated this entire mess and their methods of printing and shoveling trillions of dollars into the collapsing financial markets, ostensibly so that we can continue to borrow and consume beyond our means, allowing the stock market to enjoy a few teensy upward ticks so a small number of investors can make off with a few more dollars, while the geniuses who stole everything in the first place walked away with “retention bonuses” and other multi-million dollar stipends with names that were euphemisms for “bonus” so the American public might not think that we’re paying them bonuses for crashing the industry that’s “too big to fail.”

I was going to castigate Obama for keeping guys like Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, whose answer for our financial travails is to recycle Bush policy and purchase “toxic assets,” creating phony market values for them and hoping that some rube would come along in the future and buy them up like they were precious rocks of grade A Columbian blow.

And further, that we really don’t know what the plan is, and that we should be really upset that our tax dollars are going to pay off AIG debts to foreign banks and other financial institutions that have already received big glittery piles of bailout money from you and me, the American taxpayer. AIG posted the largest quarterly loss in American corporate history — about $61.7 billion — in the last quarter of 2008, by the way for those interested in the track record of the clowns who are getting those fat bonuses.

But my focus changed after Obama made his appearance on the teevee game show “60 minutes,” and answered Former Vice President “Dick” Cheney’s charge that his policies are making us “less safe.”

Cheney went on a national interview show on March 15 and was allowed to blather on about the effectiveness of torture and preemptive military attacks at keeping us safe from the “terr’sts.”

CNN interviewer/hack John King encouraged Cheney to continue the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) meme and trash Obama for his stated intention to close the American-sponsored torture camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

“I think those programs were absolutely essential to the success we enjoyed of being able to collect the intelligence that let us defeat all further attempts to launch attacks against the United States since 9-11. I think that's a great success story,” said the Dark Lord, about his obsession with torture. “President Obama campaigned against it all across the country. And now he is making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack.”

Let’s put aside the fact that had anyone criticized the Bush Administration is such stark terms, the national media would have been in an uproar and eventually the offender would have bowed his/her head in public shame over their perceived act of treason.

But a wonderful thing happened. Obama went on the teevee and actually shot down the urban legend that Bush policy was effective, and rather than making us “safer,” torture policies likely created more terrorism and enemies to the west in the Muslim world.

"The vice president is eager to defend a legacy that was unsustainable," said Obama, adding that the policies have “done incredible damage to our image and position in the world.

“You know, I think that Vice President Cheney has been at the head of a movement whose notion is somehow that we can't reconcile our core values, our constitution, our belief that we don't torture, with our national security interests. I think he's drawing the wrong lesson from history. The facts don't bear him out,” Obama said.

And then he went to the heart of what we “conspiracy theorists” have been saying for years:

"I mean, the fact of the matter is, after all these years, how many convictions actually came out of Guantanamo? How many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney? It hasn't made us safer.”

It was doubly refreshing that Obama didn’t rush to bow down and kiss Cheney’s pasty white butt on Monday like any national Republican or many Democrats such as Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi might.

It reminded me why I voted for Obama. He’s articulate and usually the smartest guy in the room.

After more than 20 years of Kennebunkport/Hope Arkansas hillbillies and a decade of Reagan’s simplistic populism, it’s refreshing to have a hip, articulate urbanite in charge, who has his feet firmly in the “reality-based” community.

It was one of those brief moments where I gave up my bitter cynicism, and for a few moments believed that maybe things in my lifetime will be alright.

Ah, the joys of free choice

It’s kinda cool being human sometimes. Not only do we have opposable thumbs, but we also have what some people consider the god-given gift of free choice.

Oh sure, we have to wear clothes most of the time and create controlled climates in order to survive comfortably in a harsh, uncaring world, but we have other advantages not shared by the rest of the animal kingdom, not the least of which is the ability to record and learn from history.

For instance, in the art of war, military planners can look at battles that have gone before and learn tactics that can give them advantages on the battlefield in order to ensure a greater chance for success.

Unless of course, said military has far superior weaponry — thanks to centuries of scientific research and collective memory — and simply “shocks” and “awes” a technologically inferior enemy into temporary submission to declare “mission accomplished.”

The devil is in the details though, so in the aftermath of that sort of military action our commanders have the ability to turn to another playbook when the subsequent occupation turns into a quagmire, and our brilliant military leadership can then show us charts and graphs demonstrating how well the invasion is going. They can also orchestrate sham elections and talk about the occupied country “taking responsibility” for its own destiny.

Think “Vietnam-ization” here, and the Kabuki Theater of such geniuses as Robert McNamara, who later took his abilities to the Ford Motor Company.

It seems as if failing upwards is another quaint advantage afforded Homo Sapiens.

But free choice, personal responsibility and historical memory can extend to the areas of finance and economics as well.

For instance, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the financial industries of the U.S. became so large and incestuous that the entire world financial system collapsed, leading to a worldwide depression.

In an attempt to stanch the bleeding, our 32nd President Franklin Roosevelt enacted the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and created major banking reforms, some of which were designed to control speculation. It also prohibited banks from owning other financial businesses such as insurance companies (think Citigroup).

Roosevelt and many other observers of human nature thought free enterprise was fine, but when greed is allowed to go on unfettered, regulation helps to preserve a fair distribution of wealth. It’s also a matter of economic survival.

In more recent history, we can observe the “boom and bust” cycles of the economic bubbles that coincided with the final destruction of financial regulation thanks to 42nd President Bill Clinton, who was impeached for the wrong reason.

In 1999, Clinton repealed Glass-Steagall, after deregulating the communications industry in 1996.

The subsequent speculation exploded the tech market and led to a series of fiscal bombs, which became larger and more destructive as the financial industry gorged on empty profits and the agencies that remained to regulate them looked the other way.

A lot of people who should have known better claim that no one could have seen our fiscal collapse coming, but I don’t believe that. Those who predicted this collapse for years were marginalized, while the people who said we couldn’t have predicted it ignored history.

But like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, people in the “reality-based community” who warned of the folly of our fiscal irresponsibility were shouted down and called un-American or Chicken Littles by Pollyannas who insisted that the stock market would always go up, even if there were little burps.

But there is historical evidence to justify the nay-sayers, and now we have reality to match. It’s much like Intelligent Design butting up against the theory of evolution. Evolution has historical records in the form of fossils. End of discussion.

So maybe if we survive this economic meltdown we can learn from the past this time. Maybe we can learn that no entity should get “too big to fail”; maybe we can learn that it’s not a good idea for major financial industries to be deregulated to the point that we have no idea what’s really going on; maybe we can learn that personal responsibility is a two-way street and we cannot count on the good faith of greedy people to police themselves in the name of the common good.

I think history’s against me on that one, though.

Fuck Wall St.

I say, let the motherfucker crash....

The refreshing sound of the English language

President Obama held his first press conference on Monday. It was the first presidential press conference in nearly a decade that didn’t feature slouching, sneering, and leaving me with a vague feeling that I was a 3 year old who’d just listened to a drunken father explain why mommy is such a tramp, and then forcing me to give gramps a sponge bath.

It was a pithy conference as well, with big properly used and annunciated words that seemed extemporaneous and not written back at the home office of the National Committee. Or in the bunker of an undisclosed location.

The part that really brought me out of my chair though, was when Ed Henry of CNN asked the president about his plans for Afghanistan.

Henry asked the usual questions about escalation and eventual withdrawal, but then amazed me by asking the very question I’ve been waiting to hear but never dreamed that someone would ask.

“There's a Pentagon policy that bans media coverage of the flag-draped coffins from coming in to Dover Air Force Base,” Henry began. “In 2004, then-Senator Joe Biden said that it was shameful for dead soldiers to be, quote, ‘snuck back into the country under the cover of night.’

“You've promised unprecedented transparency, openness in your government,” he continued. “Will you overturn that policy so the American people can see the full human cost of war?”

When I heard that, I jumped up off of the couch and began to pound on the table. Finally, someone was asking the president to pull back the veil of obscurity and propaganda and let Americans begin to see the true costs of the wars in the Middle East.

The policy against showing coffins returning was designed to cover a big Neo-con mistake made during the Vietnam War, and for months I’ve hoped that the first thing Obama would do on the war front would be to start showing coffins.

From there, maybe we could progress to actually attaching war costs to a real budget, and in my little dream world it could be the first step in losing the costly Bush-era “war on terr’” meme.

Public opinion of Vietnam, turned on the nightly news, when Americans were able to witness the carnage we inflicted on the peasants of that country and our (mostly) boys in uniform.

Back then we had real news reporters such as David Halberstam, who were not “embedded,” and dragged through the mud with the troops. News anchors back then weren’t beholden to the corporations that co-owned the medium and the weapons manufacturers, or stockholders who demand 18 to 23 percent return on investments.

In some corners, Afghanistan is being called “Obama’s Vietnam,” and there are thousands of pages in print and on the Internets (I do miss some things about W.) devoted to explaining why that region of the world is where empire goes to die.

Unfortunately, Obama equivocated and did a fairly cleaver soft shoe around the issue, putting out the usual platitudes about how “thoughts and prayers go out to the families.”

He did it without the cheesy arrogance of his predecessor though, so I guess he gets some credit on that front.

“People have asked me, when did it hit you that you are now president?” he said. “And what I told them was the most sobering moment is signing letters to the families of our fallen heroes. It reminds you of the responsibilities that you carry in this office and — and the consequences of the decisions that you make.”

Wow. A president talking about consequences of his decisions. I could almost forget that in the next part of his answer, and in a subsequent answer to Helen Thomas, he picked up right where the Bush regime left off.

There was the usual blather about how we’ve brought “democracy” to the region and the 9/11, “terr’ist” talking points, as well as Soviet-style references to “der Homeland.”

The majority of his news conference though, was devoted to the very real threat of an imminent economic meltdown, which is a far more real threat than some shadowy gang of oil-rich heathens waiting in the shadows to attack our way of life.

And the truly sad, and dare I say, ironic part of the whole thing is that we are chasing shadowy threats to our own doom with the very funding that could save our economy.

Obama has been accused of cutting “defense” spending, when he’s actually raising it by about $14 billion, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are still off the books. The 2010 “defense” budget weighs in at a whopping $527 billion. Most of that will go to useless Cold War-era technology, designed to fight our previous ideological enemy.

Just imagine what even a fraction of that spending could do get our economy running again.

Happy Holidays Bill-O

Well, another year has come and almost gone, so it’s time to fire up the traditions that begin with Thanksgiving Day football and end in a puddle of sick on New Year’s Day.

Next week those if us who are still employed and have not lost our homes, get to sit around and enjoy our thankfultude until the end of December, when we get to think about how fattening being thankful is and vow to change our ways until the big block of pseudo-religious holidays returns next year.

I’m not much of a religious person and my holiday celebrations tend toward the secular, sans the Disney-fied, shop-o-rama that has come to mark the American celebration of the birth of the baby Jesus.

There was a day when they were downright hedonistic, but now that I am a college graduate and respectable journalist, I’ve traded in my toga and sandals for an occasional pair of pants and shoes, with a lifestyle to match.

So in the hopeful spirit of the season, I offer a partial list of the things for which I am thankful, in one handy place for ease of ridicule.

First, I’m thankful to live in a country that values education, even though now that I have a degree I’m making less than when I was a truck driver. I managed to get out of SSU just in time for the system of higher education to become a hollow shell of what it once was, thanks to several decades of Reaganomics and trickle-down economic policy.

Looking at it from the outside, one might think that we really don’t value education, what with all the talk about Liberal elites thinking they’re smarter than Joe Sixpack, but we live in America, where innovation and individual effort will pull us out of our impending economic doom. Just as soon as the next season of “American Idol” is over.

I’m also thankful for media bozo Bill O’Reilly who exposed the Liberal “War on X-mas” and gave me a place to focus my righteous secular anger every year.

O’Reilly’s right. We are trying to destroy Christmas. Who really needs time off to hang around with family anyway? Most of them end up getting too drunk and puking on the carpet anyway.

Personally, I’d like to see the holidays turn into a time when we all wear the gray uniforms of the state and celebrate by yelling hateful anti-everything slogans in front of the teevee on X-mas Eve.

Next, I’m thankful to John McCain for choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate, thus proving that the citizens of this great land of ours are not as stupid as the past few decades have led me to believe. Their loss showed me there is still hope that one day we might find our way out of this fog that we’ve allowed ourselves to descend into.

Ms. Palin may prove to be the final nail in the coffin of a wing of Republican Party that has risen to power through a 30-year campaign based on divisive social issues and name calling. Sure we still live in a one-party state, but soon I may no longer have to listen to nasty fundamentalists like Pat Robertson tell me I’m going to hell for not hating the gays enough.

In that vein, I’m also thankful to the Second Bush Administration. Sure, we may be teetering on the brink of financial collapse, and our reputation and moral authority has been shattered the world over. Oh, and environmental policy, scientific research, education and most other measures of civilization may be in tatters, but were it not for Bush II, John Kerry might be president and it would be the Democratic Party on the verge of extinction rather than the Republicans.

I am also thankful for Barack Obama. Despite the fact that I would have much rather voted for Cynthia McKinney or Ralph Nader, Obama has allowed me a brief respite from the bitter political cynicism that has practically smothered me since the long-gone days of the Dean Campaign.

I know there’s been a lot of talk about how he’s a Socialist and a Muslim — mostly by people who understand neither concept — but to me Barack Obama represents what it means to be an American.

He rose up from his humble beginnings and succeeded despite the odds against him. He was able to do that by working his way through an Ivy League school to become one of the brightest minds on the U.S. Senate.

Finally, I think we can all be thankful that it’s not next year when things are likely to be much worse despite all the change we can believe in.
Black Friday — the real traditional American holiday — has not looked so black in many years.

Fun Facts

Osama hearts McCain (prob'ly wants to shtoop Palin like a goat too).

Finally

Just a little bit of justice...
Sad clown doesn't even realize it's all over...
Now if only they could tie the 'ho from Wasilla to the craven old bastard...

McCarthyisms last dance?

Maybe we're not fully fascist yet...

Hey Obama fans...

Here's our new hero!

Viva Vietnam...

Palling around

McCain is a terrorist lovin' freak.

When will this end?

The Republican Party has become a cancer on this country and should be eliminated.

Here's the video.

Drill Baby, Drill...

Why do we need to drill again?

Maybe OPEC is happy with the thought of a A-rab president...

From the Minneapolis Star-Trib...

Get a lawn sign? Anti-McCain view expressed with dog poop
PAUL WALSH, Star Tribune

Just when you thought partisan politics couldn't smell any worse.

A 45-year-old Minnesotan who admits to hating Republican presidential candidate John McCain said he left small bags of dog feces in the back of a pickup truck sporting McCain-Sarah Palin stickers, police said today.

David Vanderlinden told police that he left his political contributions in his neighbor's the truck because "he hates McCain," police said.

He was caught after the truck owner's mother called police after seeing Vanderlinden placing the bags in the truck.

Vanderlinden's next contribution will be to the public coffers in the form of a $183 fine for littering/unlawful dumping.

The debates are over

I hope we all feel better about things now.

While we've all been watching Palin and McCain flinging shit, the Bush Administration continues to duck responsibility for anything.

... and a quick nod to Joe the Plumber.

But sometimes it doesn't...

... hope, that is

'New' ... 'Improved'

Here we go again...

The big silent relaunch of the Raging Monkee.

Hope springs eternal.

The War on the Economy...

I don’t claim to know much about the national economy, but I have been watching the Bush Administration for the past eight years and the financial crises of the “free market” for more than 20, and it looks to me like another theft of American treasure is underway.

From the S&L bailout in the 1980s, to the spectacular crashes of the Enrons and WorldComs, the pattern has been the same. First, regulation gets neutered and then the enforcement agencies are packed with insiders who come from the industries being “regulated.”

The resulting “free market” is then sold as the greatest thing since sliced bread and a handful of people make vast fortunes that exist largely on paper. Then one day, somebody realizes that a huge con game is being perpetrated and suddenly there is panic, then fear of collapse, followed by infusions of taxpayer dollars that end up in the coffers of the very people who created the “crisis.”

It’s a beautiful ponzi scheme and, willingly or not, we keep getting drawn in and then left holding the bag.

The Bush Administration, represented by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, has been pushing Congress to quickly pass a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry.

They were last seen warning the American public that letting the problems persist would have dire consequences for the national economy, and if they don’t act now the resulting meltdown could be catastrophic.

Additionally, they tell us, Paulson is the only one who can save us from the terrorists — oops, financial collapse — at the gate.

Under the proposed bailout, Paulson will be given dictatorial powers and none of his decisions will be subject to oversight.

Section 8 of the legislation states that, “Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”

The White House wants its Secretary to have total power over $700 billion that will have to be borrowed and then paid back by generations of American taxpayers. This legislation will take the power of the purse away from Congress and keep it in the executive branch.

Doesn’t this sound familiar? How is it any different from the other power grabs the administration has accomplished? This is the Patriot Act and the authorization for the use of force in Iraq applied to the economy and they’re using the same scare tactics and “no one else can save you” rhetoric they’ve been using since 9/11 to cow the American public and Congress into complicity.

It’s easy to watch George Bush speak and think we’re being led by a bunch of really stupid people, but I think he’s just a sad distraction from the people doing the real work of a corrupt cabal of thieves who have managed to insinuate themselves into our government, and pseudo-free-marketize our financial institutions.

The problem with their brand of free market is that the profits are the only part of it that’s free, while the risk has been fully socialized with our hard-earned tax dollars.
In a real free market, the immoral people who have instigated this mess would have the decency to jump out of the windows of their plush offices, ala 1929.

Instead, the former leaders of Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, et al. get to drift away with hundreds of millions of dollars in golden parachutes that we get to pay for, and then they are rehired as “consultants.”

Welcome to another expensive war we have no chance of winning.

Maybe we should consolidate the two parties into one glorious party and call it the National Socialists in order to reflect the true government agenda.

I don’t have any useful answers to our leadership crisis that won’t get me tossed in a cell at Gitmo. I’m just mad as hell.

Some holiday joy for the New Year...

On the eve of the announcement of record holiday payouts to Wall Street investment firms, Governor Schwarzenegger announced a fiscal emergency and a 10 percent overall budget cut that he hopes will take place immediately. The slashing is the result of the faux-free market anti-tax political ideology that has firmly taken root in the American consciousness since the advent of Reaganomics along with the spinelessness and avarice of the so-called leaders of our once-great nation.

It is the job of the Legislative Analysis Office (LAO) to go over the governor’s budget proposal after its release in preparation for the “May revise.” When Schwarzenegger rolled out his budget plan for 2007, the LAO criticized it for rosy projections that depended on revenues which never materialized due to decades of tax cuts and a precipitous economic plunge.

For anyone surprised by this, it would be instructive to remember the days of Enron and the “Dot-Bomb” era, where wildly positive fiscal predictions gave way to crisis and collapse. Millions of people lost retirement funds while the perpetrators of the crimes escaped unscathed with hundreds of million dollars in ill-gotten booty.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is not some kind of benevolent moderate, and anyone who believes that needs to drop the rose-colored bipartisan glasses. The Guvornator is pure free-market Conservative, even if he slips up and shows glimpses of a social conscience from time to time.

On May 24, 2001 as he was revving up for the recall election, Schwarzenegger met with the late former Enron Chairman Kenny-boy Lay, über-free-marketeer Richard Riordan, and corporate raider Michael “Greed is Good” Milken, who was touting a deregulation plan that purported to solve the state’s energy crisis, but was actually massive theft. From the beginning, he’s been surrounded by former governor Pete Wilson and his minions.

Schwarzenegger has been trying to privatize the public school system of California since he took office, via the Compact for Higher Education and budget cuts that have forced the K-12 system to survive on a program of bake sales and overworked teachers who spend good portions of their incomes buying school supplies.

It seems as if tax cuts for the upper levels of earners have not created the free market utopia that we’ve been promised, and our infrastructure is eroding.

This is the real agenda for “free markets”: the transfer of wealth from the public into the private sector for the enrichment of a select few, including the politicians who enable the transactions. We’re going trillions of dollars in debt to fund tax cuts and war profiteers, yet we can’t — or won’t — spend the money necessary to fund our once-great system of public education.

We keep hearing the myth about the American Dream and upward mobility, but the facts on the ground belie that faded ideal. The wealth of our nation is being stolen by a handful of über-rich, modern day robber barons, even as our schools, health care, and infrastructure crumble around our ears.

On the upside, an ill-informed and uneducated populace is a lot easier to control.

Christ on Crutches

Has everyone noticed that it’s the most splendiferous time of the year, or that we are a nation of Christmas-lovin’ Americans? For those who have neglected to watch the annual Fox “News” “War on Christmas” extravaganza, our elected representatives have taken the time to remind the nonbelievers amongst us that yes, we are a nation of Christ, praise be.

Last week, just in time for the height of shopping season and in anticipation of the home stretch of a depressingly long election season, the people who make our laws busied themselves with House Resolution (HR) 847: Recognizing the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith.

HR 874 passed by a 372 to 9 vote, with 50 members of our esteemed representatives voting “present,” or not voting. On the “aye” side there were, 195 Democrats, and 177 Republicans, while all nine “nay” votes came from the few rational national Democrats. Kudos to Lynne Woolsey for being among the sane.

Many readers may think I’m just making this up. But seriously, on Dec. 10 the House of Representatives of the United States of America passed a resolution that states in part that, “on Dec. 25 of each calendar year, American Christians observe Christmas, the holiday celebrating the birth of their savior, Jesus Christ,” and that “Christmas is celebrated as a recognition of God's redemption, mercy, and Grace.”

The bill resolved that, “the Christian faith (is) one of the great religions of the world, acknowledges the international religious and historical importance of Christmas and the Christian faith,” and “acknowledges and supports the role played by Christians and Christianity in the founding of the United States and in the formation of western civilization.”

Excuse me while I swallow the bile that just rose in my throat.

We are not a “Christian nation.” We are a nation of Christians. And Muslims, and Deists, and Agnostics, and Atheists, with a few Wiccans thrown in for good measure. We even have room in the boat for Tom Cruise and the Scientologists.

I put this resolution up there with the investigation into steroid use in baseball. The people who wasted my tax dollars with this silly, yet dangerous bill are a bunch of wealthy mostly white people playing to the basest constituency, jerking each other while the rest of the world burns because of disastrous foreign and domestic policy.

We are facing crises of unprecedented scale on the home front and in the world. There’s a health care crisis, a financial crisis brought about by greed and hubris, and a multi-front war punctuated by waste, massive fraud, and the rise of private mercenary armies who will need something else to do once they desert the troops trapped in an unwinnable war. On top of this, the Justice Department has been turned into a political arm of the most crooked administration in the history of our nation.

The First Amendment to the Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” and Thomas Jefferson was in favor of “building a wall of separation between church and state.” The founders knew that religious fanaticism leads to slaughter and slavery, and engaged in a war of independence from the religious zealot King George in order to create a secular nation where people were free to worship as they saw fit, so long as they didn’t push their views onto others.

We have had Christianity pushed down our throats over the course of the past three decades, and HB 847 is continuing this dangerous trend.

I can’t help but remember the warning from philosopher George Santayana, that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. The dog and pony show of our political process has turned into a nauseating race for the bottom, while high crimes and misdemeanors continue to go unpunished.

We’ve lost the war on Christmas, my fellow secular humanists. Go out and shop as if your life and liberty depended on it.