But they’d had a second child recently, so I visited their tiny apartment to offer congratulations. It was the polite thing to do. (That, and Mom threatened to cut me from the will if I didn’t.)

Dolton sat on a rent-a-sofa in his cramped front room, cradling his newborn daughter.

“I’m so happy for you two,” I lied. Dolton toiled at three part-time jobs; none provided benefits. My sister is disabled and can’t work. They’ve had everything from appliances to vehicles repossessed. Sooo… what to do?

Have another kid! Sigh.

“Dolton, Jr., just loves his new baby sister,” my brother-in-law said, gesturing to his ten-year-old nearby. “Don’t you, little Dolt?”

My nephew winced. The kid was no dummy. Someday I’d have to ask Apolitica who the real father was.

“So,” I ventured, “what’s the new one’s name?”

“Dimina.”

“You mean,” I said, gasping, “she’s going to be… a little Dim?”

“You got it!” Dolt said, beaming.

And some people never will, I thought, glancing towards Apolitica. She dashed into the kitchen. Coward.

From the rent-a-tube in the corner, Bill O’Liely railed against healthcare reform.

“Obama and his damn socialism!” Dolton fumed. “He and that commie Congress’ll bleed America dry.”

It took me a moment to roll my tongue back into my mouth. Finally, I managed: “It’s especially tragic given how well our economy had, thus far, survived two needless wars, tax cuts for the mega-rich and trillions shoveled to criminals who sabotaged the economy.”

“Spew actual facts if you want,” Dolt growled, “but if Obamacare passes, mark my word: soon there’ll be a hammer-and-pickle on every flag.”

The only pickle I could visualize was the one my sister and her husband were in. They’d just received the bill from the county hospital for Dimina’s birth and, without healthcare, bankruptcy was imminent.

“Dolt,” I said, “you slave away and yet you’re still destitute, and now your medical bills will break you. How could you possibly be against affordable healthcare for you, your family and 47 million other uncovered Americans?”

“Because,” he spat, “socialized medicine is un-American!”

Dimina wailed. I could relate.

“Don’t buy the lie,” I pleaded. “Polls show a huge majority of Americans want healthcare for all, and most also know that single-payer is the only real solution. Which, incidentally, is not socialized medicine, but socialized insurance.”

“I’m against socializing. Period.”

Well, so was I — at least with my brother-in-law. Inexplicably, I pressed forward. Why did lemmings come to mind?

“Don’t get hung up on pejoratives,” I urged, thinking of all the ways the extreme right has sullied once-perfectly respectable terms in recent years.

“Then how’re we supposed to buy food that doesn’t rot?”

“Excuse me?”

“Without pejoratives, food spoils. Everybody knows that,” Dolton declared triumphantly.

“I believe,” I said slowly as I wondered what I’d ever had against disinheritance, “you may be thinking of preservatives, which is what they’ll be dipping my brain in in a few hours after I donate my body to science immediately after leaving your place.”

“Ha!” he snorted. “There won’t be any donating needed once you liberals get your death panels in place.”

“They already exist.”

“Huh?”

“Death panels. They already exist. Except they’re usually called ‘insurance companies.’”

“Whaddya mean?” Dolt asked, seemingly genuinely perplexed. (Well, OK, so he always seemed genuinely perplexed.)

“C’mon, Dolt,” I said, “surely even you can see those vultures spare no effort denying as many claims as possible which, once they’re done inventing exclusions and ‘pre-exiting conditions,’ translates into untold real suffering and, not infrequently, death.”

“Hnh,” Dolt snorted. “Why do you lefties hate the free market so much?”

“You mean the ‘free market’ that the insurance companies rig with millions of dollars in bribes, sorry, campaign contributions, and industry-written legislation that best serve, hmm, let’s see, the insurance companies?”

“There you go again with your precious details,” Dolt sneered. “Listen, Mark, government-run healthcare will put an industry out of business, and that’s about as hippo-pinkie as it gets.”

“Then you should love the bogus Baucus bill. Mandatory insurance for everyone, and fines for non-conformers? How delightful — for the insurance companies.”

My brother-in-law was silent. He’d either died, or was thinking. (Barring precedent, it had to be the former.) Cautiously, I continued:

“Dolt, let me ask you something: Are you more interested in the well-being of insurance companies, or tens of millions of your fellow citizens? Because here’s the deal: the sole function of the former is to further line the pockets of shareholders and CEOs by skimming up to thirty percent of a money pool that, were it to populate a single-payer system, could nearly all be applied toward providing excellent health coverage for every American.”

“I don’t want the government choosing my doctor!” he cried.

I wondered how I could’ve missed the moment I crossed into the parallel universe.

“Dolton,” I said quietly, “you don’t have a doctor.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

I simply had to find out where the next Masochists Anonymous meeting was. Solidly cementing my qualifications for membership, I ventured on:

“Listen, Dolt, under single-payer, government simply handles the billing. Period. Current private investors are bought out, then hospitals become non-profit and receive annual payments for expansion and operational expenses. The government owns nothing, thereby debunking that ‘socialized medicine’ hooey. And, you choose your own physician.”

“I’m sure,” Dolton snarled, “doctors and nurses will love working for peanuts, which is all that’ll be left once the government starts handling all the dough in your fallopian world.”

Being in a fallopian world sounded pretty utopian at the moment.

“Hardly. Having the paperwork done by just one not-for-profit entity with low overhead — Medicare only spends about three percent on administration — instead of by numerous profit-sucking, bottom line corporations, not only frees up enough money to provide affordable, quality universal healthcare but also ensures doctors and nurses are well-compensated. It’s a no-brainer [thus making it right up your alley, I didn’t say].”

Dimina squalled. My sister came in swiftly and whisked her up. “She’s been running a fever,” Apolitica explained worriedly as she hurried to the bathroom.

“Yeah, she’s been feeling pretty crummy lately,” Dolt said, looking a little far off. (I mean, more than usual.) He was obviously concerned. I had to admit: for all his faults, Dolton was a loving father.

From the TV, xenophobia burbled: beware medical services-stealing immigrants, warned Glen Blecch.

“Handouts to illegals goes a long way toward making this country sick!” Dolt parroted.

I had to admit this, too: my brother-in-law was a bonehead.

“No,” I sighed, “what really makes this country sick is its sickness, in every way. We Americans pay by far the most for healthcare, yet rank miserably down the list in every major healthiness indicator. And as far as the expediency of denying medical services to undocumented aliens, you might want to think twice about that the next time you read about a tuberculosis outbreak in a farm labor camp or a meat-packing plant.”

“I don’t read.”

Imagine my shock.

“I don’t need the liberal media telling me how lucky we are to have a Marxist president making America more communist everyday,” he ranted. “What happened to good old American self-sufficiency? Why do people think the government owes them handouts? How come — ”

“Dolt!” It was Apolitica, entering from the hallway, carrying her bawling daughter. “Dimina’s temperature has shot up to 106. I told you we should have taken her in yesterday. We have to go the emergency room NOW!”

“But…baby — we can’t even pay the other bill we have.”

“NOW!” Apolitica repeated, already out the door with her ailing infant.

Dolton snatched his keys from the rent-a-table. “How did this happen?” he moaned.

Was there a rent-a-mirror around?

Maybe that’s what it’s all about. … Maybe all that happens is, you get older and you know less.

– Frank Sinatra

Children:

In Amerika today we have two parties … the Fascist Union (also known as the F.U. party) and the Phony Cooperative Baloney party (also known as the P.C.B.).

The F.U. party stands for wholesome, Amerikan values–what we used to call “rugged individualism.” We don’t use this term anymore because today we understand the dangers of “individualism”–especially among the lower classes. We know that smart and crafty people always get together to form cartels, meshing economic, political and social lives to pursue their own best interests—and to hell with everyone else! This is a law of Nature known as “survival of the fittest.” It’s also known as the “invisible hand” of the market. Even the great slave-holder, Thomas Jefferson, understood this when he wrote about “liberty” and the “pursuit of happiness.” Notice that he did not write about “justice” and the “pursuit of truth.” Today we know that “justice” and “truth” are in the eyes of the beholder. Each person has his or her own idea of what those words mean and you can’t run the New World Order with a lot of loose threads hanging out, can you?

The P.C.B.’ers pretend they serve the interests of the “common people.” You can tell how much contempt they have for us right there—we are “common,” but they are not. Well, children, there is nothing “common” about me! And, I hope, nothing “common” about you! I am proud to be part of the crew that powers the ship. Let the captains decide where the ships are going. They have all the information and we couldn’t begin to understand it even if we tried. They tell us what to do and think through the mass media—including education–, and life is certainly a lot easier when you know what to do and think. Don’t be confused by idiots like Michael Moore. There are always some crackpots who believe they’re too good to be conditioned like everyone else. In one of the renegade Moore’s classic movies, Capitalism: A Love Story—a classic example of mis-alignment, one might say—he tries to make a distinction between capitalism and democracy! Yes, you are right to snicker! There really is no distinction. Democracy is rule by the people and the people obviously want capitalism or they wouldn’t keep this system in place year after year, decade after decade—as far back as any of us can remember, even back to the glorious Roman Empire of the sanctioned history books.

To prove that we are a capitalistic democracy we have to put up with the PCB crowd. They like to parade the old platitudes like “fairness,” and “government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” and all that Martin Luther King blather about “all God’s children,” blah, blah, blah … but everyone knows they are “in on the take.” They have to raise huge amounts of money to run their silly campaigns. A lot of them are “filthy rich” themselves and they get into politics as a hobby because they’re not clever enough to make more money and create jobs for the “working poor” they’re always crying over like spilt milk. If, perhaps, they don’t have their own money, they go hat-in-hand to the corporate bosses, cut deals—wink! wink!–, promise “the people” this, that and the other while all the time knowing they can’t or won’t deliver. Sometimes, a PCB’er breaks through. Remember President Obama? Yes, you can “boo”—it’s all right. Some people say now that he actually believed his own rhetoric. “Change we can believe in!” (Yes, you can hiss!) Would someone tell me what the hell that means?

Today we know that the people cannot change anything; only the elite, the elect, the select and the carefully groomed Guardians of the New World Order have the Intelligence necessary to ensure success. They gather Intelligence from everywhere—from every corner of the globe, from every nook and cranny. No one can escape. Resistance is futile. That is why we have these cameras and microphones in the classroom, in the cafeteria, in the halls, in the library, in the lockers, in the gym, etc. … so what we say, what we do, what we think, can be constantly observed, monitored, heard, vetted, discussed, dissected, appraised, and, if need be, corrected. If need be, deleted. Remember the saying: “Our predator drones are ever watchful, vigilant, never sleeping.” (A word to the wise is sufficient!) That is why there are cameras and microphones in your homes, in your computers, in your phones, in the watches you wear, the products you buy … in the streets, in your vehicles … in fact, everywhere. It is all designed to make us better citizens of the glorious New World Order—better soldiers in the armies, better, uncomplaining workers, better consumers of so-called “junk food,” so-called “junk information.” Today we know that the Guardians are watching—and, if they want us to die sooner, well, we should all be prepared to “win one for the Gipper,” stiffen our backbones and do what’s necessary because they see the bigger picture, they know our best interests. It’s because they are watching us—and watching out for us! It’s because they know our hearts and minds and very souls—and what is good and proper for all of us—better than we do.

Now, let us stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Needless to say, if our current “Pretender in Chief” and his socialist allies in Congress succeed in forcing through a government takeover of the military in this country, there is bound to come a day in the not-too-distant future when our grandchildren ask us in a plaintive voice, “Grampa, what was it like when you were young and legal questions were settled through manly tests of mortal combat unencumbered by meddlesome government interference?” I, for one, will not have the heart to answer that question. What about you?

And what about the so-called “public military option”? According to the independent research group ITTTTI (In The Tank Think Tank Inc), this is nothing less than the first step toward driving honest contractors like Xe/Blackwater and Wackenhut right out of business. And this at a time when an overwhelming majority of Iraqis and Afghanis say they are satisfied with the occupation forces they currently have and don’t wish to add another layer of wasteful and expensive armed bureaucrats on top of it.

But it’s not just the army that President Obama wants to nationalize. He also has plans to create a government-run navy. That’s right folks, he wants to undo three centuries of Profitable Privateering on the High Seas by innovative small business entrepreneurs like venture capitalist Henry Morgan of J.P. Morgan Chase and currency trader William Kidd of the investment firm Kidd “R” Us , in favor of a centralized fleet on the British model. And just in case you think that’s a good idea, I refer you to Sean Hannity’s exclusive on-air phone interview with a caller who identified himself only as 245-year-old mutineer Fletcher Christian of Pitcairn Island. He has precious little good to say about the Royal Navy, I can tell you.

Now we can take all this lying down, of course, or we can all rise up together and be miscounted! Join us in Boston at noon on September 31, 2009 for the Million Man Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, followed by the Million Man Boston Massacre. All you have to do is download any of the prefabricated slogans from our FOX News website, customize the spelling till your heart’s content, and paint it on your T-shirt with a ketchup-dipped freedom fry while standing in front of a mirror so you’re sure to get it right. Then drive to Boston with your car windows down yelling, “The Red States are coming! The Red States are coming!”

The other 1.7 million of us will be waiting for you inside the Old North Church.

And remember, the folks back home is a’ counting on ya…

Ex-President Bush is also working on a ghostwritten book to be called Of Course The Bastard Did It, But I Didn’t Know.

And so there appears to be some discord between the former partners in crime. Cheney was apparently livid at the former boss’ refusal to grant a pardon to convicted and commuted aide Scooter Libby, but with his recent veiled threats and verbose criticism of the naming of a special prosecutor to investigate CIA torture, it’s possible he’s less worried about Ol’ Scooter than Ol’ Shooter.

And he may have reason. While after the Abu Ghraib scandal people seemed content to go after a few truly worthy bottom of the barrel rotten apples, many people believed the furious Administration spin that the rot stopped ‘way down there. They addressed the issue by banning digital cameras from torture sites.

Now we know that torture was meticulously planned and ordained right out of the White House by Cheney, Ashcroft (who at one point asked why they were even discussing such things) Rumsfeld, Rice, the DOJ torture lawyers Yoo and Bybee, and others. Including Bush. So how can you prosecute Lyndie while giving a nod and a wink to Condi? Aren’t those who issue criminal orders as culpable (if not more so) than those who blindly carry them out?

The ‘just following orders’ defense so soundly rejected at Nuremburg (at the cost of some lives) has now made a comeback amongst CIA, military and mercenary torture underlings with a strange new corollary for the perps at the top: ‘We were just giving orders’. How far can credulity stretch before the concept of justice in the USA stands on its head and dies once and for all?

The financial scandal that emanated from Wall Street and which continues to embroil the whole world received, for better or worse, genuine if panicked attempts to intervene and prevent complete economic degeneration and catastrophe, something which could still happen, and may even be likely. One could argue whether some of the same predatory crocodiles who caused the problem should have been put in charge of ‘fixing’ it, but that’s recent history now. The point is that the self-inflicted threat to the world economy was at least taken semi-seriously.

More abstract and less conspicuous than the financial abyss into which America may still be heading, is an even worse danger, worse because it is what inspired and allowed the former: America’s political and moral degeneracy. It is the greatest evil, because it permits and enables all that follows. And on this front there seems to be no equivalent of the financial fixers, panicked as they may have been, or the equivalent of the trillions of dollars dumped into the system to try to avert disaster. Obama fiddles as America burns.

America is experiencing an unprecedented moral disaster that is by far Mr. Obama’s greatest challenge, of which he seems oblivious. Money is important, but so is the rule of law, and that is based on ethics. Ignore that, and governance eventually becomes impossible. Chaos ensues. Violent anarchy prevails. And not only empires crumble, but nations fracture also. At huge cost in human suffering.

America smugly calls itself a (mostly) Christian nation even as it wages imperialistic invasions that are illegal by all human standards, international or domestic. It tortures people, even innocent people, even children, even to death and upwards of sixty percent of its citizens find no fault. The ex-Vice President, whose Administration destroyed evidence and then moved mountains to block and then strangle a proper investigation of 9/11, points to the latter as a justification for more torture, more illegal kidnapping, more murder. More military. More war. More madness. No apologies, just that permanent self-satisfied sneer. Contempt.

With more than a million dead in Iraq and millions more maimed and displaced, Americans, to the limited extent they think about it at all, wrap themselves in the red, white and blue illusion that they are spreading freedom and democracy, not terrorism and random death on a massive scale. Torture. Murder. Madness. Not a dream. American nightmare.

In Afghanistan the same myth may be comforting, but is as dishonest. America is supporting some of the most sickeningly savage warlords, druglords and is turning a blind eye to an ever burgeoning opium and heroin trade, from which the CIA always ends up with a healthy cut.

And in Pakistan it has been made clear many times that the US has no more regard for innocent civilian life than it does in the other two hopeless countries, made so in the name of citizens who are as amorally indifferent as their leadership. America loves to hate, but mostly it just doesn’t give a damn.

If this American ethical meltdown is allowed to continue it will simply not survive long as a nation, let alone an empire.

And when there is nothing left to ‘look forward’ to, maybe then Mr. Obama will look back in nostalgia for what might easily have been, and with regret that his actions could never speak louder than his grand but illusory, empty words. If the Obama Administration continues down the muddy low road navigated by the previous one, it will be as worthy of the contempt of history that the former one made inevitable. Perhaps even more so, because it began with such promise, and promises.

2. Right-wing protesters whose unfurled American flags are in the position to look like swastikas.

3. A rich mom is dragging her child away from staring at a poor person. The mom is also tipping the valet some coin change for bringing their car around. The mom says, “charity begins at home.”

4. A little touchy (maybe over a line): or white guy w/ a crew cut is pointing at the TV where Sotomayor is being confirmed and he’s screaming, “I knew that N____ would hire a racist!”

5. Homeless guy sleeping under newspaper w/ the headline, “Goldman-Sachs Executives to Receive 11 Billion in Bonuses” He murmurs, “Knowing they’re safe helps me sleep at night.”

6. On the same theme: kid sleeping in a cardboard box is enviously looking through a fence at a shaggy dog sleeping in a doghouse.

7. Very cartoonish: a fat guy is floating in a dingy in the shape of the USA, around him are others floating in the water and they and the waves they make are in the relative shapes and positions of you know, South America, Africa and Asia and so on. He’s got mounds of supplies all around him. He says, “If there was only more room i could let some of you ride along.”

8. An Arab is fallen in barbed wire in the shape of a crucifixion, that’s the scene on TV. The scroll says, “Afghan Civilian Death Toll up 25%.” The viewers say to each other, “Those people are so godless.”

9. Middle class guy is standing in front of his foreclosed home between two streets. On one side a limousine is coming towards the front of the picture. On the other nondescript dark figures are walking off carrying all their worldly possessions. He yells at the poor people, “Look at the mess you made.”

10. Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and Glen Beck in a radio studio: on the wall it says “RADIO RWANDA.” On a calendar it shows April 1994.

First: It’s not really federal. Nor are there reserves. (Not many, anyway.) It is a system, however. (Well, a scam, actually, but those behind the 1913 Federal Reserve Act that birthed the Fed bypassed that identifier, for some reason.)

And, prey (that’s you), who backed the act?

Oh, just everyday folks with names like Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan and Rothschild who, a century ago, joined forces to saddle the U.S. with a central bank that, naturally, they’d control, in turn giving them control over the country’s money supply.

Alas! If only our nation’s framers had been smart enough to anticipate a ploy like this and thus guard against it in the Constitution.

Um, turns out they were. Fresh off the colonies’ disastrous experiences with non-stop printing presses churning out worthless currency both before and during the revolution, the founding fathers made sure to constitutionally preclude both Congress and the states from issuing “bills of credit.” In other words, paper money. Silver and/or gold-backed coinage was to be the name of the game.

Creating the Fed, which comprises twelve private banks spread regionally throughout the U.S., was an end run around that, with the sleight-of-hand working this way: Congress authorizes interest-bearing IOUs (bonds and notes) to be sold to the Fed, which in turn gives Congress oodles of paper money created from thin air and backed by nothing, an amazing alchemical process authorized by, well, Congress.

Though a dozen banks are involved in the con, er, system, the head bank is and always has been the Fed’s New York branch. (Isn’t it a remarkable coincidence it was mainly the obscenely wealthy Big Apple banking interests that pushed the Fed’s creation in the first place?)

It’s obvious what’s in it for the bankers, but how about Congress? Well, our “representatives” get money whenever they want for whatever they want. This comes in handy for buying votes back home, uh, I mean, for serving their constituents, like agribusiness, Big Pharma, weapons manufacturers, etc. Oh, and also those in the banking industry who, if they screw up the economy by being greedy little pigheads, can be duly punished by being given trillions more faux dough scot-free by, who else?, Congress.

Let’s hope this never happens.

Interest off bonds isn’t the only perk for the Fed (or bankers in general). But don’t even get me started on fractional-reserve banking. Otherwise I’d have to tell you how a few folks with a soft spot for things like usury will get a charter, start a bank, take deposits and then start loaning “money” at a nine-to-one ratio based on the total of those deposits (now redefined as “reserves,” ninety percent of which are dubbed “excess” and thus, abracadabra, available for lending). That’s right: they’re now loaning dollars that don’t exist. A few strokes on the ol’ keyboard and, voila, instant money!

It gets better. Once those loans are repaid and come back to the bank as deposits in other accounts, then that money is used as the basis to issue more nine-to-one loans. And so on. Can you say “pyramid scheme,” boys and girls? This is why what bankers fear most are bank runs, when lots of customers at one time are audacious enough to actually demand their account balances in cash, money that is nowhere to be found because the vast majority of it exists only in electronic ledgers. This is the very moment the magic of making money from nothing disappears — shazam! — and the locks and chains on bank doors materialize — sa-lam! — overnight.

Of course, those who created the Fed devised an ingenious way to guard against runs. It’s called the “lender of last resort.” Know who that is? It’s you!

This brainstorm was one of the main reasons for establishing the Fed in the first place. The rich and powerful bankers, tired of pesky competition from other banks and the distasteful specter of having to pay for good avarice gone bad, decided it would be much better to institutionalize an ironclad way to protect their profits. It took a few years and some political chicanery, but with a complicit president and a duped Congress (oh why does this sound so familiar?), they finally hit the jackpot by legislatively securing the mechanism by which they could place the taxpayer squarely on the hook, I’m sorry, more strongly underpin the economy.

Aren’t you thrilled to know you’re the one lending fabulously wealthy individuals even more money to tank the economy and put you out of a job? Just asking.

But how, exactly, during these times when things are a little tight and you’re considering the pragmatism of fattening up Fido, do you lend any money at all, let alone trillions? Why, through the insidious tax called inflation, of course. See, once the government, hand-in-hand with the Fed, goes nuts and sells bonds by the trainloads thereby resulting in untold un-backed dollars being pumped into the economy, inflation kicks in and the less those dollars are worth. If this is not apparent now, perhaps it will come to mind the next time you hook the oxen up to your cash-laden trailer to go buy a loaf of bread.

So, if the dollar has nothing to support it (and it doesn’t), just what keeps this fiat money afloat? Two things: a) our unshakeable, bedrock confidence in it (uh-huh) and b) because we have to. “Legal tender” laws ensure, under threat of imprisonment, that we’ll use dollars whether we like it or not.

When the government does something like this (puts money into circulation without backing), it’s called “monetary policy.” If we do it, it’s called “counterfeiting.”

OK, that’s enough misery for now. Who needs more gloom and doom anyway, especially these dire days? There is one possible silver lining, however, to the disaster that is our current economy: If enough pain manifests, perhaps a clamor will arise to throw the Fed and its worthless, debt-based system out on its money-changing ear, thereby precipitating a return to real money, backed by gold and silver, as codified by this country’s founders. A long shot, true, but stranger things have happened. For instance, who ever thought the Bush administration would actually leave the White House? (Now if we could just get Dick Cheney to go back to his home planet…)

Here’s what we can expect:

Surely habeas corpus will be restored in an unashamed expression of support for that centuries old protection of civil liberties.

No doubt, we’ll see a repeal of the Patriot Act. That step back to some degree of civilization is sure to come.

There will be a long overdue recognition that the first people in line for help from the government are the citizens of this great country who work overtime to just keep their heads above water.

That will happen at the same time that trillions in Wall Street welfare are stopped and replaced by actions that allow people to stay in their homes, pay for their health care, and send their children to college. No doubt about it.

We won’t be forced into mindless wars that obligate us to more deaths and the inevitable blowback from overseas adventures. Let the word go forth from Washington. The troops are coming home.

The Glass-Steagall Act will be restored and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 will be repealed ending the enabling acts for an era of greed.

No more talk about having too many “big picture” items on the agenda to allow working men and women to organize and fight for their rights in unions.

We’ll surely mount a massive program to save us all from the looming eco catastrophes due to climate change and pollution.

Elections will be transparent, open to all, and subject to public review and verification.

We will no longer countenance wire tapping, Internet snooping, and other forms of illegal surveillance by the government.

Don Siegelman’s conviction will be overturned while Susan Lindauer and all the other victims of Bush fascism will receive apologies for the vicious government harassment visited on them.

All it takes is Arlen on board and Al ready to hop the freedom train to the promised land of a government that serves the people and public servants that know the meaning of the word servant.

There can be no doubt that those who have erred and sinned against the people will be reborn into a new life as representatives of the nation that they serve. They will cast away their Money Party sympathies and hop on board.

Senators Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Mark Pryor (D-AR) will start voting for the working people that they represent. The 21 FISA supporting Democratic senators will take the time to read the Constitution and change their ways. The Senate Committee on Finance headed by Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) will actually investigate that $140 billion gift to banks allowed by the likely illegal Bush White House authored tax code changes. The Nelsons, Ben and Bill, along with 16 other Democratic senators will repent for their vote on that horrid bankruptcy bill.

And all of them will join in unison and say no more funding for illegal wars.

Happy days are here again. Pop the cork!

But the problem is this time Old Larry got the goods, the real deal, the Baghdad Bunker Buster of addictive substances, the stuff you’ve been waiting for. The stuff your mom said to not even look upon. Absolute poison, if you ingest it you will die. You know I’m talking Twitter. It’s the new crack — one hit, you’re done for, addict for life, and here’s comes old Larry with a straw to suck up the cerebellum slurpy.

Translation: As I type this I am getting the impression Mainstream Media, er, at least CNN, is consciously trying to Twitter-fy my brain, trying to get me and mine hooked on the latest marketed fad, fully well knowing, as I do because I saw it on their channel, that Twitter destroys all it touches.

Or so says the fine folks at the National Academy of Sciences. Straightforwardly, in an advanced publication, in a summary that runs quite a bit longer that 140 characters, concerned scientists are now warning America, and the rest of the world for that matter, that Twitter desensitizes you, demagnetizes your moral compass, destroys your ability to feel empathy, in addition to creating several other zombie-like moral effects that make a person all the more easy to control and to tolerate outrageous violence.

Luckily CNN was on the scene with a modem and a TV camera before the entire nation fell into drooling zombie-dom. In fact, you’d think they were our heroes. Once more, just to clarify, on April 14th , both on that evening’s scroll and in the expanded headlines, and still available on their website, CNN quite clearly reported, with scientists they presented as credible, that Twitter can be more dangerous to our country than a whole host of Osamas.

Then — as can generally be expected in a comedy — they turn right around and market the crap out of the very product they bashed with a whopping 129 different articles about Twitter in their online archive, including some artificially manufactured “funny” business masquerading a supposedly interesting supposed human interest series of clips and digressions involving Larry King as a comically rendered full-blown Twitter-holic trying to tweet up or out tweet all comers.

CNN loves Twitter the way Fox loves its Tea Parties. These days, catching Larry King pitching Twitter on his show has become as common as catching Wilford Brimley hawking adult home health care and just about as phony. After all, what is the message behind posting a news article condemning a product, then providing it with free ad time, as Larry King’s shows have recently become?

Twitter: it’s bad for your brain, why don’t cha try it kiddies?

Sunday April 19th King sank to his new low regarding this naked marketeering of the magic Tweetie- Tweet- Tweet, bringing on as guests a studiously post-Punked Ashton Kutcher, Sean Piddly-Puff Coombs, Queen Oprah herself, a remote of Jimmy J-Dawg Fallon failing to seem sincere and the ever ubiquitous, ever artificial Ryan Seacrest literally phoning it in. What could bring so much stellar “talent” together on a Sunday night? Well, guess what? All of them were shilling for Twitter.

That many celebrities pushing a drug and it becomes a new cocaine. Like gangster rap, like chat rooms, Goth fashion, punk, hippies, like rock in roll itself, like TV, like whatever the next new drug is that we’re always not supposed to like even as we’re being taught to. Mainstream media has always made itself a fat dollar selling us stuff they tell us we should be ashamed of ourselves for enjoying. Even AlterNet is in on the game, following the fad with well over 120 articles of their own on the subject. This is just the latest step in our culture-makers’ ongoing efforts to keep us lazy and stupid, at least dumb enough to be their adherents. They are hoping we will stay stupid long enough so they can get the next war set-up.

Word on the street is they’re resuming casting for the next Hussein.

Right about now, Barack Obama could sure use some Hussein. And no, I’m not talking about his middle name. The purpose of this column is not to make lame jokes about our president’s middle name. (Besides that one I mean.) No, the purpose of this column is to ponder who will get the part of the New Hussein. You remember Hussein, right? Saddam Hussein?

I ask if you remember because we Americans aren’t so good at remembering history; which is why we spend so much of the time having to repeating it. To prepare this article and see what I remembered about Hussein I went looking for my earliest reference to fabled Iraqi Strongman and I found one in a piece from back in January of 1991 called “I Go to War”:

“The real reason we’re at war with Hussein isn’t that he didn’t buy American when we gave him money for guns, that’s for sure. The real reason is that we TV generations are stupid. We can’t remember any of the lessons that sneak out through the networks unless they’re talking about cool new ways to consume or not consume whichever is the current fashion. We don’t even know how to think and don’t have the patience to learn. The war is breaking us into three camps — those who find war wrong, those who find war right and those who find war boring.

“Once the majority of a population finds mass murder and systematic destruction of a culture too boring to consider and just wish they could find another channel to watch, and then we can wage continuous war with one stooge or another for the rest of all time. Of course, even if somebody figures out scam, we can always just stop the current war and start a new one. Long as our economy is so based on military issues, it doesn’t matter what the people might think, the national budget is going to require wars on a regular basis to keep itself afloat. People are so pissed off with current conditions it isn’t hard to make them want to fight somebody.”

And so on, same as it ever was. Same as it ever was. Just change out a name or two and that same passage could’ve been written about either Bush or, more and more lately it seems, Obama. If we’re unlucky, it could be written next year. If the dogs on the right and those blue dogs that trail them for scraps actually start to catch a little skin one these days while nipping at his heels the new Hussein could be debuting as early as next month.

Is there a Saddam in your future? For longer than I’d like to remember Saddam Hussein served as America ’s favorite bad-guy love/hate relationship. He was so easy to hate, yet for 25 years it was like we dated the guy. For the first ten years for sure he was a bastard. But doggone it, he was our bastard in the Middle East, so everything was all right. When he did bad things, like passing gas, we forgave him Despite the fact that during our 21st Century Iraq Occupation we would help make sure he was put to death for that very act, back-in-the-day successive US governments forgave Hussein for gassing his own people. Turns out it was our gas in the first place and Saddam only knew how to use it because we taught him how.

Then when Bush the First needed an enemy in the way that any floundering president needs a good enemy, to hide son Neil’s S&L scandal, Saddam became our favorite Boogey Man. They sold more pictures of Saddam than Satan for a while there. It got to the point Trey Parker and Matt Stone could poke fun of Saddam’s absolute demonization in South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut. Four years later Bush Jr. would recycle that hatred to sell us his phony war. Junior managed to get himself another five years of kicking around Saddam before we accidentally let the Iraqis kill him. Good ol’ Saddam, the kind of guy you’d love to hate. His legend really comes to life now that he’s not around to enjoy it.

But with Saddam so dead, Obama is in the market for a new international whipping boy. As luck would have it, the recent news cycle brought two applicants for that coveted support role: “Guy we hate so much we don’t mind spending billions and spilling millions to go to war with him because he so very much sucks.”

Ladies and gentlemen it looks like Obama is celebrating Earth Day by recycling, recycling Bush-era Boogeymen, I mean. Among the top contenders for the role of “guy who gets his ass kicked, but has a lot of close-ups” are: another South Park alumnus Kim Jong-Il, of late returning to his old ways of tossing around war threats and then there’s the ever detestable Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, perhaps the one person in the world who could make Israel look sympathetic.

One thing’s for sure, if things begin to get rough for the current admin, as they once did for Bush, as they did for Clinton, as they did for Bush I, and on and on, you can bet Barack Obama will find his very own Hussein soon enough.

And if we don’t stop Larry King now, by then America will be too Twitter-fied to care. But I promise dear reader that Larry King is not going to slurp up my brains. I’ll fight, I’ll resist, I paint protest signs, “I have no time for Twitter!’

Thank you for your time America. Excuse me now, while I go check my Facebook . . .

Look at your hands. That is the number 10. It takes but an instant to visualize the sight of them, just as it takes an instant to apprehend the concept of ten. Of course, in concept, it only takes seconds, fractions of seconds, to apprehend any number — seven point seven, four hundred and ten, eight thousand five hundred and seventy, a million, a billion, $10,997,999,164,142.97 (as of 17 Mar 2009 at 06:03:57 PM GMT ). See? They’re all just numbers.

Now if you are still looking at your ten digits (which means I suppose, you’re not reading these instructions, but anyway), imagine, briefly, that you have a terrible accident, an axe-related accident, Jerry Garcia-style, an errant swing, a simple instant, you look down and it’s gone. Your life is changed forever. Immediate agony, the spray of blood, the mad dash to find the finger, hopefully with access to modern medical facilities, the continuing sight of its absence, the ever expanding amount of blood; and if it can’t be reaffixed, your life and your entire conception of mathematics screwed for good. In your imagination, which digit did you choose to lose?

That is the power of one.

Now, let’s talk about scale. Scale is why little kids fall down and go boom all day long without so much as a scrape when we full size adults would break a hip. Scale is why a flea can jump 100 times his height; but it is also why we can still kick his ass with our mere fingernails. Remember the power of one? Now ten times that, all the fingers you have, both of your hands. OMG. That is ten; and it just gets bigger from there.

But for now let’s start back with one. If you took one second to count to one and kept counting at that pace, it would take, obviously, ten seconds to count to ten. That is about how long it takes to know if your car is going to start as you’re driving yourself to the ER with your severed appendage sloshing in a Ziploc baggie w/ ice cubes. It would take you just under two minutes to count to one hundred. In that length of time you could have called 911 and gotten the directions. That’s if you didn’t get the phone too bloody. That’s if you had a phone. One hundred seconds can be an incredibly long time indeed.

It will take about 17 minutes to count to one thousand. If it takes much longer than that to get to the hospital you are liable to lose quite a bit of pinkie mobility. It will take you just over eleven and a half days to count to one million and by that time you should be able to know if you will ever have use of that one finger again. It would take an entire generation, almost thirty-two years, to add up to a billion seconds. But even at that length of time, it might still be hard to reconcile one’s self if there had not had access to the best of modern medical care.

And a trillion? Well that number is so large as to dwarf our very conception of time — to consider a trillion seconds. It is a measure longer than history itself. A trillion seconds ago, some caveman was leaving his nine fingered paw print on a wall somewhere and wishing someone would invent fire so he could cauterize the wound. A Trillion? That’s thirty-one thousand years. A trillion seconds ago it would still be another 300 generations till humans would even invent agriculture, much less sutures. And another 595 or so generations after that before anyone would even have a chance of saving a lost digit. The loss of which, of course, could happen in a simple second.

A trillion, a billion, a million, one — that is what we mean when we talk about scale. Scale is, when you look at it, such a major consideration that entire academic disciplines have sprung up to explain the concept and importance of scale to generations of cavemen, who still continue to swing their axes far too casually for safety sake. And still occasionally, the nine-fingered among us come to understand the power of one all too well.

Media, on the other hand, gain no benefit from conveying distinctions in scale. From their mediated distance numbers are forever mere concepts and not the fingers of the audience — unless of course you are the one doing the bleeding. It’s the media’s stock and trade to slosh around numbers like “billion” and “million” and ever more often lately, “trillion,” as if they would all fit somehow into the same Ziploc baggie along with a couple of ice cubes.

That in mind, thank god, or if not him then somebody, the media has stopped yapping about earmarks. In the absence of a Republican outrage, mainstream media recently acting as if pundits, pummeled Obama for not quashing the omnibus spending bill due to the wealth of pet projects. More than 8,000, count ‘em earmarks. Wow. Almost eight billion dollars. Double Wow!

Seriously that is a great big number: that’s all sorts of projects in all sorts of places for all sorts of people everywhere. No wonder Repubs hate it. Besides it’s also a whole lot of fingers in a whole lot of pies. Imagine how many hands that number must tie to. That is the power of jobs, which ultimately are the currency of earmarks: somebody hired to do something. And earmarks are not some secretive private thing. It is a public project being started, a company put to work, a goal set and a landscape or a society, hopefully, being improved through judicious government spending.

An earmark is also your congressman doing precisely what he was elected for, which is to represent his part of the country and do his best to promote tranquility and prosperity for his constituents.

Republicans in general have traditionally railed against earmarks, all the while racking them up with the best of the Dems. Of course I live in a state where my iconic congressman is so proudly anti-earmark, he refuses to do a darn thing for the homefolk at all. Thanks again, John McCain.

Obama speaks the language of earmark, being a former master of them while in the Senate. Let the media chaff about earmarks all they want. Obama’s touch on the Omnibus Spending Bill buys hands full of good will. Further, unlike his vengeful predecessor, Obama allowed both sides of the aisle to stud the bill with earmarks. Repubs, besides McCain, aren’t whining this go-round because they too scored big time.

The Whitehouse has been careful to frame the argument on this one as “last year’s business” as Obama calls for the new standards he hopes to set. Perhaps, since Obama claims he wants to improve the education of the cavemen who still try to rule this country he could hire some teachers to remind them of the power of scale.

As in that even if eight thousand five hundred and seventy is a great big number (as in the number of earmarks in the bill), seven, as in seven point seven billion dollars of the total four hundred and ten billion for the Omnibus Spending Bill overall. It’s about two percent.

Yes, a billion is a very big number, but to spend a billion or even seven point seven of them spent for the good will and PR these 8,000+ jobs projects around the country will generate is not a bad way to spend two percent of the overall budget on a government bill. Bush used to spend more than that on rendition.

[Crowd murmurs “howdy” and “welcome.”]

Sure nice of you folks to have a support meeting like this here group, Fakers Unanimous. I just never knew that there were enough folks in America willing to face up to their own falseness to where we could even have such a support group. I never would have guessed this many Americans were finally ready to acknowledge our economy, our country’s sense of self, in fact our very existence has been a-swirl in a Chomsky-esque wash of necessary illusions and the truths that were always mounting behind the masks are now massing to destroy us. The threads are at last unraveling; and the emperor’s new suit has arrived worn and wrinkled, shoddy and soiled.

And we ourselves are to blame.

Yipes! I am duly impressed by the pitiless self-awareness of the members of the F.U. group; but I am not sure I am ready to join just yet. There’s all that stuff about admitting we are powerless to our weakness, acknowledging our mistakes, making amends. Twelve steps may be a little bit further than I am currently willing to walk to change the channel. I am an American after all.

I want my MTV. I want all that and a bag of chips. I want to feel wanted and safe and plush and adorned and forever young and forever oblivious and I am willing to spend like crazy to get that feeling. I want it my way or the highway.

Look, I’ve already spent all of your money and all of mine. Talk about generational theft, I’ve already spent your kid’s future and my parents’ past. Yes, like most Americans I want more than my share and want you to leave me alone about it, OK? I mean it’s a free country, isn’t it? I can believe what I want to believe. I’ve got the right to do what I want, even the right to be wrong.

So that’s why I don’t want to make the effort to fix our health care and education systems. We know both continue to slide in comparison to the rest of the civilized world. In health care you have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than of affording health care that can save your life and at least with the lightning the charges would make more sense. In education, American urban high school students rank in achievement somewhere between Romanian meth-baby dropouts and moldy sweat socks.

It’s easier to pretend it’s not broken than to try to seriously fix education, so that’s what we do. We say schools are about the joy of learning then budget-cut all the fun out of it. We say there is so much they need to know then only teach them how to pass one test. We teach our kids to glory in stupidity then wonder why they’re not bright. We create every convenience item we can imagine then wonder they’re so lazy. We make money off of the punks and twerps and criminals we sell to them as idols and then wonder how it happened we’ve raised all these punks and twerps and criminals. We teach them sluts are cool, and then wonder why abstinence-only education isn’t the only thing around here that sucks.

We also tell our children how important learning is then invent every other way for them to fill up and thus empty their time. We say we love entertainment because it relaxes our mind when in fact we know it destroys it. The visual mediums, whether TV or the Internet, are meant to limit our interests not expand them. Megabyte by megabyte we get trained to learn nothing quite so much our impatience for the next thing to the point we understand no thing as seriously as our urgency for the new.

I would Twitter you about it, but if I tried to actually discuss substantial ideas then this paragraph is too long and I haven’t even said–

Economy’s a fake, entirely. The people on top won’t stop selling us the idea that we could spend all the money in the world because they make all the money in the world peddling the idea to us like dope. Since they won’t stop selling it, we don’t stop buying it and over-spending on it, even though for years folks have been telling us we should know better. We did know, but we did not care.

Small wonder this whole hopped-up fantasy economy had to crash. Every few years a new speculative bubble built up to bursting — now our very homes. Too many houses sold, some say; but from where I stand I see too many houses foreclosed. ARMs made to strangle the homeowner, the banker’s handshake that turned into a clenched fist.

Pundits like to rag on the buyers they claim should have known better. But buying a house is the American dream. It is what we were told to do. We looked to the experts, our realtors and our banks, who told us they were out for our trust when in fact they were just after a piece of our ass. The deals seemed too good to be true, but the banks and the realtors said it would work. We wanted to believe it would work, so we did. We signed on the dotted line, just like they did; but the difference is they knew it would all have to collapse one day. They simply had already planned their way to make their pile of dough first off of our dimes. Become too big to fail, so the poor have to feed the rich.

And it wasn’t just banks. If you really want to see where to start fixing the problem, look in the mirror. Everyone knew that that same house we sat in for five years while the paint rotted did not legitimately gain 100K in value. But somebody told us it did and some other idiot offered us the crazy money for it. We knew we’d get ahead so we went along.

Everyone took a hit. It was the drug of choice. Government officials swam in seas of lobbyist lucre and bent the rules for their newfound friends. Big business and big banks bent the rules for each other. Everyone was the richer. No one was the wiser.

It wasn’t like we’d learn anything from the news. News is a fake. Once upon a time news worried about its myth of impartiality. Now no news is safe from the TV newsreader’s opinion of it. Press can purport a new doggedness claiming they regret the slack attention they paid to Bush. So they pretend to be aggressive in their examination of every potential Obama flaw on the horizon. But this isn’t a case of new dogs up to old tricks. They are mostly aping the Elephant line. After eight years of cheerleading for Bush they don’t know where else to go. So nowadays CNN starts every story with a hostility they’d never have dared with Bush. Perhaps they’ve become “fair and balanced.”

Maybe so, but I think they’re fakes. I think Holden’s right, they’re all fakes, phonies. That’s why I’m here, with all of you at F.U. because I’m a fake too. And it takes one to know one. So, so are you too.

[Crowds grumbles]

War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.

[Crowd murmurs in ascent.]

And Eric Holder is also right: we are a nation of cowards, merely faking it when it comes to race relations and many other taboo topics as well, and not in that ultra-qualified and mitigated way Holder used when he spoke commemorating Black History Month. Still right wing pundits from Rush Limbaugh to Anderson Cooper umbrage at his remarks, offering us yet another opportunity to watch rich white guys scold a black man because he doesn’t understand race relations.

But if America now attempts to claim to be a post-racial society, it is not because we no longer act based on the built-in biases 400 years of subservience cannot help but inbreed, it’s not because we no longer see in black and white. It’s because we’re all just wearing masks.

Happy Black History Month, Mr. Holder, no faking.

This year our most famous groundhog, Pennsylvania’s Punxsutawney Phil did indeed see his shadow which mean he’ll have 6 more weeks of looking over his shoulder to see whether we seriously intend to blame him for the next six weeks of messy weather we’ll have to endure whether we believe in him or not–ultimately powerless against the weather under most conditions, much like any other groundhog.

Take presidents for example, as likely a deity as an oversized rodent any day. Also as when dealing with rodentia, how can one know if they’ve selected the correct icon to worship and not wound up with a nutria in their ignorance? Like our own personal groundhog, Americans look to Obama to guide them through the stormy weather through his actions in one symbolic moment as if he had the power to change where even one raindrop fell.

To be sure Obama has a heftier hand at the tiller than most North American fur bearing mammals, but with all sectors of the population expecting Obama to solve their personal problems, with our numerous cross purposes, not everyone can get what they want.

Republicans, for example, currently want to still play by rules and with the same moves that they just lost with as if their former game still functioned. They’re once again resorting to the same copy-cat stale strategies that brought you an ersatz war hero they’d kept on a shelf for eight years and in ’08 were finally getting around to selling to you as if the contents of the war-hero box were still either fresh or new. More than anything else, McCain’s recent lame delivery of the cliché classic, “that’s typical liberal spending,” reminded everybody why we didn’t vote for him.

Stalling the nomination hearings in a fit of pathetically partisan passion, John Cornyn from Texas reached back even farther into the stereotype bin when he was caught holding Holder’s nomination up in fear Holder would seek to prosecute torture, because the Southern White Man didn’t want a Black Man to seek justice. In yet another variation on this theme, the new Aunt Jemima’s face of the newly repackaged pachyderm party is (oh all things where did they find one) a Black Man, Michael Steele, thus recreating a GOP stereotype going all the way back to Harriet Beecher Stowe.

The decrepit GOP brand is running so desperately old school these days, the Arizona branch office of this cabal of Republicans has vowed to go all the way and taken to beating up on school kids to make themselves look like heroes. Despite protests on the state capitol lawn of 2000 educators from around the state; with the help of her statehouse henchmen, newly installed Republican governor Jan Brewer has pulling 275 million out of the state education budgets and taken her first steps to tax cutting her state back into the Stone Age.

Meanwhile the Dems want us to stop listening to the GOP and begin to think of the Dems as the tax experts, but it turns out that even the best possible Dems Obama could possibly find to be his hand picked advisors — Tim Geithner and Tom Daschle — don’t even know enough about taxes to pay them.

Millionaire congressmen want to condemn socialism except for their millionaire farmer friends and their buddies in banking and they want you to pay for it with your kids. Rich CEOs want to buy their 50 million dollar jets and get drunk on bailout dough too. You know that sort of “have-their-cake-and-eat-ours-too” attitude also known as the Bush Doctrine?

And Obama, bless his heart, with some social equality coming through, wants salary caps for CEOs to be equal to his, about 400K a year and a bunch of killer perks. Once upon a time Babe Ruth could laughingly crow that he deserved a bigger paycheck than then President Herbert Hoover because Ruth had had a better year than Hoover. In 2009, Wall Street could not try the same crap with Obama, it’s just not so. Imagine that, a black man seeking social justice. Surely some Republican will figure out a way to get in the way of this in the weeks to come.

Meanwhile millions of Americans want the latest near trillion dollar stimulus package to save their butts or at least keep them in out of the cold. With the money being given to banks, they could pay off hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of loans of the people caught in the ARMs of evil. It would seem this sort of thing could be the win-win; but that’s not going to happen. The banks and credit industry don’t just want you to have your house and them to have your money; they also want to keep your interest.

It’s not about win-win, it’s about profit and growth. It’s unfortunate that the American economic system and cancer are the only organisms that pursue unlimited growth since that pursuit will inevitably lead to killing the host.

When the climate of our country has elected officials turning the sick from their hospital beds, firing your children’s teachers, feeding the rich with the bread of the poor, and muzzling justice, and then claim themselves heroes, the power of prognostication by a groundhog or a president must be limited at best. That’s a whole lot of rain on a parade.

So, which groundhog will you worship? I would rather not worship one, but looking at Obama’s uphill battle, if I had to pick, Punxsutawney Phil would be just fine. He’s only predicting six weeks more of stormy weather, which is a lot brighter picture than my forecasts for Obama.

The first decade of this new century has been a period of disaster, a time set for killing.

Tonight, with a smug shirk, I have asked for a final opportunity to share some indignities on the journey I have traveled as imperial president and the bleak future of our nation.

Five days from now, the world will witness the vitality of my departure. In a tradition dating back to our founding, the presidency will pass to a successor chosen by the rigged two-party system, the Corporate duopoly. Standing on the steps of the Capitol will be a man whose history reflects the depressing promise of Capitalism and my failed legacy.

This is a moment of declining employment and home evictions for our whole nation. And I join all neo-cons and neo-liberals in offering best wishes to President-elect Obama, his wife, Michelle, and their two beautiful girls. They will surely need it.

Tonight, I am filled with sadistic allegiance to Dick Cheney who stole the vice presidency and to members of the junta; to Laura, who brought joy to this house and love to my life; to our wonderful daughters, Barbara and Jenna; to my parents, whose examples have made me what I am over my lifetime.

And above all, I thank the U.S. sucker voters for the deluded trust you have given me. I thank you for the pretzels and shoes that have altered my spirits. And I thank you for the countless acts of sacrificing your loved ones, pensions, jobs and health care that I have witnessed these past eight years.

This evening, my thoughts return to the first night I addressed you from this house, September 11, 2001. That morning, terrorists which my incompetence allowed, took nearly 3,000 lives in the worst attack on U.S. soil since fellow citizen and well-trained veteran Timothy McVeigh blew up the Omaha federal building.

I remember standing in the rubble of the World Trade Center three days later, surrounded by rescuers who had been working around the clock. I remember talking to brave souls who charged through smoke-filled corridors at the Pentagon and to husbands and wives whose loved ones became heroes aboard Flight 93. These actions took the attention, responsibility and culpability away from me and my failed administration.

I remember Valerie Lucznikowska, the executive director of the Congress of International Modern Architects, whose nephew died in the Twin Towers collapse. Valerie said, “I believe that NORAD [North American Aerospace Defense Command] knew that the South Tower was going to be attacked before it went down…There were lots and lots of clues about the fact that the government had prior knowledge.” Oh, Valerie.

As the years passed, most propagandized U.S. television consuming addicts were able to return to their shopping life much as it had been before 9/11. But I never did. Every morning, I received a briefing on how to take away Constitutional rights, pass the PATRIOT Act, end the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, do away with civil liberties, and spy on you. And I vowed to do everything in my God-given authoritarian powers to undermine the Bill of Rights.

Over the past seven years, a new Department of Homeland Security has been created to protect the Father Land. The military, the intelligence community and the FBI have been transformed into agencies that the people fear. Our nation is equipped with new tools to monitor everybody’s movements, monitor your bathroom breaks, break up peace group meetings and their pesky demonstrations.

And with strong warmongers at our side, we have taken war to foreign lands where our natural resources reside under their grounds. Afghanistan has gone from a nation, where the Taliban whom we armed and supported threw out the Soviets, to being a young Capitalism that is the world’s largest opium producing nation.

Iraq has gone from a brutal dictatorship that we supported and supplied military weapons to, with a dictator we supported, to a crony democracy at the heart of oil country and a friend of me and my friends, the oil magnates.

There is legitimate debate about many of these decisions, but there can be little debate about the lies, deceit, death and destruction.

The United States has gone more than seven years without a false-flag attack on our soil. This is a tribute to those who toil day and night to stop me — people who watch me closely, law enforcement advocates who say I am not above the law, intelligence analysts I have exposed, Bill of Rights advocates and opposition personnel, and the men and women of the United States Veterans For Peace.

Our nation is blessed to have citizens who volunteer to defend the United States Constitution in this time of danger. I have cherished fighting these selfless patriots and their families. And the substantially diminished United States Constitution owes you a debt of gratitude.

And to all our men and women in uniform listening tonight, there has been no higher honor than not attending any funeral for your fallen comrades.

The battles waged by our troops are part of a broader struggle of two dramatically, but necessary, different systems. Under one, an empire spurred on by a rich and powerful band of fanatics demands total world hegemony, condemns women and children to be collateral damage and marks non-hegemonists for murder.

The other system is based on the conviction that United States’ exceptionalism is the universal gift of Almighty God and that free markets and Capitalism light the path to wealth accumulation.

This is the belief that gave birth to our nation. And in the long run, advancing this belief is the only practical way to make the rich richer and the powerful more powerful.

When people live in neo-liberalism, they do not willingly choose leaders who pursue wars. The Supreme Court does. When people have less citizen power, they will cede their lives to the non-compassion of the market place.

So around the world, the United States is promoting free markets, worker exploitation, structural adjustment, greed Capitalism and the indignity of stolen natural resources. We are standing with lackeys and young Capitalistocracies, providing aid and medicine to bring dying neo-liberal societies back to life, and sparing the owning class from further wealth deterioration and loss of profits. And this great republic, born alone in wiping out an indigenous population, embracing slavery and denying women the rights of citizenship, is leading the world toward a Nuage where the free market belongs to all nations.

For eight years, we have also strived to expand unemployment and home foreclosures here at home. Across our country, students are rising to meet corporate imposed testing standards in public schools and are being left behind. A new Medicare prescription drug benefit is bringing less peace of mind to seniors and the disabled. Every taxpayer pays lower income taxes as we print more paper money that is worth less and less.

The addicted and suffering are finding new hope through cults and other faith-based programs. Vulnerable human life is better bombed. Funding for our veterans has nearly doubled as the number of veterans has increased ten times. The country’s air, water and lands are being measurably drilled and exploited. And the federal bench includes crony neo-con members, like Justice Sam Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts.

When challenges to our prosperity emerged, we rose to reject free market principles. Facing the prospect of a financial collapse, we took socialism and socialist measures to safeguard our economy. These are very tough times for hardworking families, but the toll would be far worse if we had not acted. Unfortunately, socialism saves Capitalism.

All of us are in this together. And together, with sadness and much of your pain, we will attempt to reinstate our free market economy at all costs. We will show the world once again that the inherent self-contradictions of the “free enterprise” system that Karl Marx wrote about will always lead to its collapse. We have proved that.

Like all who have held this office before me, I have experienced setbacks and there are things I would do differently, if given the chance. But to hell with that.

Yet, I’ve always acted with the best interests of Capitalism in mind. I have followed my Savior and done what I thought He told me. You may not agree with some tough decisions Jesus and I have made, but I hope you can agree that I was willing to do what He told me.

The decades ahead will bring more hard choices for our country, and there are many guiding authoritarian neo-liberal principles that should shape our course.

While our nation is not safer than it was before I stole the presidency, the gravest threat to our people remains in not having another illegitimate and war mongering administration. Our enemies are our inability to resolve conflicts without projecting power and we will be patient and determined to strike again, anywhere, anytime.

America did nothing to seek to prevent this conflict. But we have conjured up solemn responsibilities, and we must meet them. We must resist peace-making. We must keep our resolve. And we must never let down on our war making.

At the same time, we just continue to engage the world with failing confidence and a Geneva Convention-ignoring purpose. In the face of threats from our citizens, it can be tempting to seek comfort by turning to the Bill of Rights. But we must reject criticism and its companion, dissent.

Retreating behind our Constitution would only invite danger. In the 21st century, security and prosperity at home depend on further eroding Constitutional rights. If the United States does not lead the cause of Capitalism, that cause will not be led.

As we address these challenges, and others we cannot foresee tonight, the United States must maintain its torture making capabilities and practice.

I have often spoken to you about good and evil, and this has made some uncomfortable. But good and evil are present in this world and between the two, there can be no compromise. Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere, except when we do it.

Freeing people from oppression and despair by bombing them away is eternally right. This nation must continue to speak out for Capitalism and the free market. We must always be willing to act in their defense and to advance the cause of neo-liberalism.

President Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.” As I leave the house he occupied two centuries ago, I share that optimism. I want you to forget about the crimes I have committed.

America is a young continent, actually two continents, full of vitality, constantly growing and renewing itself. And even in these tough times, much of its eyes move away from the United States to a broader horizon ahead.

I have confidence in the promise of America because I know the character of all its dozens of nations. And, they have black people there also. This is a continent that inspires immigrants to risk everything for the dream of escaping the grip of the North.

Ours is a nation where citizens show calm in times of my oppression and compassion in the face of the suffering I have caused. We see examples of the United States character all around us, and Laura and I have ignored protestors never allowing them to join us in the White House, not for a single evening.

We see the U.S. character in Bernard Madoff, a ponzi scheme principle, who opened a new charter program to wealth from the ruins of Hurricane Recession. We see it in Richard Wagoner, CEO of General Motors, a former profit-making company, as he made $14,415,914 in total compensation in 2007 according to the SEC. This is possible only in God’s country. We see it in the 1.8 million veterans and 50-million people who have no health care.

We see the U.S. character in our elderly who have to chose between paying for medicine and paying for heat. Their children delivered some surprising news. They cannot afford college, nor can they find a job. These brave souls now live with their parents.

These good old people are 60 years old, 18 years above the age limit for military service. But their petition for a waiver was granted because they had no other way to make ends meet. They enlisted in God’s army. Their children enlisted also. God bless them.

These people could not be here tonight, because they will soon deploy to Iraq, where they will help save Capitalism and uphold the legacy of my failed policies.

In citizens like these, we see the best of our country, resilient and hopeful, caring and strong. Semper fi! Boo-yah!. These virtues give me an unshakable faith in blind patriotism. You have faced my disasters and trials, and there is more ahead.

But with the courage of our people and confidence in our Constitution, defense of my diminishing this great document will never tire, never falter and never fail. You will never arrest and prosecute me and Dick Cheney as the Constitution demands.

It has been the privilege of a lifetime to serve as misguided and un-elected president. There have been good jogging days and tough jogging days. But there have always been jogging (and chain saw brush-clearing) days. But every day, I have been inspired by my own greatness and been uplifted by the inaction of our people against me.

I have been installed to represent this nation we love. And I will always be honored to carry a title that means more to me than it ever will to any of you — CEO of the United States of America, Inc.

And so, my fellow citizens, for the final time, good night. May God continue His blessings on this house and our next president. He is going to need it following in my footsteps. And may the ultimate Poohbah In The Sky bless you and our wonderful country.

*G.W. Bush’s actual speech can be found here.

Once again I have been stiffed out of my Xmas wish list. What gives?

Did you not get my list? Should I show you anew?

I know last year, I said I wished for a Democratic president and I didn’t care who it was so long as they could beat the legacy of Bush. OK, technically you’ve come through. Thanks again for the Obama puppet. No matter how much I complain, don’t think I don’t appreciate the horror show the McCain-Palin puppets would have been. You can indeed milk that particular piece of gratitude all the way till the cows come home.

But, you know, a Xmas wish list doesn’t have to be a strict guideline or anything. Remember, with my last year’s Christmas wish when I asked the Dem president, I had actually specified the “Kucinich” model? Missed a little detail there I guess.

Anyway, Dear Santa, Janus, whoever, here’s what I am after this year. Even though you didn’t get me any of this stuff for Xmas, it’s not too late. You could make it a New Year’s Resolution to try a little harder.

New Year’s is as good a holiday as Xmas to represent hope, and it lasts all year long. I know this wish list is reads a little extreme, but if you’re all out of “world peace,” I’ll settle for that cheesy sweater you keep re-gifting me.

1. Dump Israel. I know I’m going straight for the jugular of the AIPAC consortium that Obama and Emanuel are beholden to. But, just like America finally admitted it had to disassociate itself from the Suharto-like conduct of Bush to regain our international credibility, we are going to have to reject the Nazi-like behavior of our ally that occupies Palestine as if it were Birkenau if we are going to maintain a reputation for giving a shekel for the sanctity of human life. I know Revelationists and Neocons have been wet-dreaming about a confrontation like this for decades. It’s ironic how the same crowd who claim to love the sanctity of human life are always so willing to kill for it. But even Olmert admits it’s a “Pogrom” and Bush loves to defend a tough Israel, so come on Obama, you want to be thought of in that group? Take a clue.

2. Somebody clue those kiddies high on the last 8 years of Jesus Juice to learn some Christian-like humility because here in America, the supposed land of religious freedom, the big JC is no longer in charge. Desperate ditto heads are now turning the flames up on the old fire and brimstone routine in the hopes of shouting down the wardrobe malfunction of the Religious Right getting caught with their pants down backing the wrong guys in the last election.

To make matters worse for the theocrats, just a couple of days after the Solstice, New York Times Charles Blow’s “Heaven for the Godless” revealed that the vast majority of Americans are ready not only to equally respect non-Christian belief systems, but even essentially godless ones. As far as most Americans are concerned, being a good person is now more important than which god you have to bow through to get there.

3. Hey Santa, despite the Illinois government officials concerted best efforts, I know you have plenty of these items left over, so I say “indictments all around.” Just on the charge of treason we could fill a whole GEO Group regional operation. Sure, I’m talking the Bush in-crowd, the Bush out-crowd, and Pelosi and her co-conspirators who reduced Congress to ditherers and the propagandists who put that crap in our face 24/7 while the Bush crimes against humanity continued. But why stop there?

Before it spreads any farther we have to address the criminality of the whole Bail-out Bubble and the bubble-makers in general. And, not just the folks who dismantled Glass-Steagall, but the many who have profited knowing the plunders they were committing: all the big Greenspans and Paulsons and especially all the little Bernie Madoffs in banking and real estate in general, who knowingly made their money out of air and then expect real people to pay the real bills.

And while we’re at it, let’s include businesses who’ve denied their workers healthcare or outsourced their workers’ incomes while selling their products wrapped in Red-White-Blue. And not just the car companies execs who have willingly screwed not just America’s, but whole world’s economy and environment. For sure we need to roll in the oil execs who colluded with them against our country’s best interests. Bare minimum, only give bailout money to companies that replace their executives.

4. Fire anyone who has gotten their job by saying they want to reform education, for just like Reagan they aim to fix what ails government by starving it to death. The same people who have been in charge since the days when the 3Rs of education meant “Reading, ’Ritin’, and Repetition” are the same people who have risen to their power by promising “Reform.” Education has been in the process of reform for the last 40 years and gotten worse every year. It wouldn’t stay broke if you didn’t keep fixing it. Like George Washington and James Garfield the doctors in charge are killing the patient. Education will not be reformed until those in power actually address the needs of teachers and students and not the needs of each other.

But hey, times like these I hate to create unemployment, so let all educational administrators be rehired as janitors in the schools they’ve destroyed through inadequate funding and excess legislation. It’s going to take a lot of new staff to clean up the mess they’ve made. In fact, talking about firing people, downsize all the people (politicians, commentators and bean counters alike) who have been talking to you about saving taxes by cutting services. Government services are not supposed to be about saving our tax money, they are supposed to be about spending. It’s an old truism, but it certainly applies in this time of a changing of the guard: if the government can print funny money to buy wars and bailout businesses, then there is no excuse to not spend much, much more on the services our governments claim to be providing.

5. Let’s get some saucy goose for all those saucy ganders who voted in anti-gay legislation across the country. Allow civil unions for LGBT and demote all straight marriages to the same, thus equal, civil status. Separate religion from state … as it says somewhere.

6. Install an automatic “no confidence vote” mechanism in the presidential approval rating polls, you know, like a democracy would have? It should kick in automatically when Obama fails to act on his numerous dormant campaign promises to liberals, like corporate and plutocratic tax adjustments, or some truth and reconciliation for the crimes of the scoundrels of the last eight years.

7. How to pay for it? Simple. Raise Taxes. In specific, raise the tax on a certain vegetable both homegrown and domestic and by regulating the citizen spending on this certain vegetable through taxation, we can reduce government spending on incarceration of our fellow Americans.

8. And, Cut foreign aid spending. Americans recently were in an uproar over our government’s choice to tolerate the Pentagon’s efforts to introduce a military presence in the homeland to police us from ourselves. In response we were told having an army trained to attack our own citizens was good for us. Reduced to this—policing a democratic people with an armed military—is clearly not good, and basically wrong. And if it is wrong to do it to our own citizenry, then we shouldn’t be forcing our military on the citizens in others countries occupied by our thousand or so military bases and installations. Don’t merely imagine the savings, imagine the redirected spending. For the truth of the matter is the best way to aid our friends in foreign countries is to stop spending so much money on threatening them with our military.

I know it’s just a Xmas wish list, but it would make a great set of New Year’s Resolutions. What do you think, Mr. Santa? If not, please still send the cheesy sweater. I can give it to the next homeless guy I see. Happy Season of Hope,

–signed me.

I believe all of this because — after all — I once believed in Santa Claus and the Chanukah Bunny. It’s the holiday season.

Elliot Spitzer, the tough minded investigator who gave Wall Street and fraudsters fits, was driven off the hunt and out of the picture by a timely investigation of his bank records. At least he paid for services he received. Getting rid of Spitzer before the Bank bailout and the Madoff disclosure was just one big coincidence. It’s the holiday season.

And all of those sharp Upper Eastsiders who were ready to crow over those idiots from Alaska who could see Russia from some places, but worked and dined with thieves, sociopaths and corporate welfare kings? Was it too close to home for them to read the handwriting on the wall while Alaska was just far enough away for them to understand? Caroline Kennedy answers questions like Sarah Palin in the early days, but she is One of Them so Fit to Run.( By the way, I actually did see Russia from Alaska . After freaking out several nests of Puffins who retaliated by dive bombing me, I reached the top of a bluff over the Siberian Yupik Eskimo village of Gambell on the St. Lawrence Island. I found a gun emplacement, old sandbags and barbed wire. There it was. The first line of Defense in the Cold War, manned, no doubt, by a member of the Eskimo National Guard).So Sarah Palin was right.

Second Prediction: The Message of Change, which has already given way to Smaller Change in the face of catastrophe, will morph by Inauguration Day into a truly Kennedy-esqe message. “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country’s money transfer machine.” If you are too big to fail, step to the front of the line. If you’re union, prepare to crawl. The second Obama excuse- “It was Bush’s fault”. Repeat after me, “It was Bush’s fault”. Bill Clinton? Deregulation in the Clinton era? Who, he? By the way, so-called Conservatives and Moderate Democrats who used deregulation to cripple government protection were not Conservatives or Moderate Democrats at all. They were Anarchists set to destroy a working government. When they made enforcement of laws impossible with niggardly appropriations (just an expression, like Washington “Redskins”), their aim was to make government a hated burden on taxpayers. When they gave their money away to those who helped them get into office with their donations, they communicated to the rest of us that tax collection was extortion of the less powerful for the powerful. Why throw bombs when you can destroy from within while keeping yours hands clean? They rewrote the Anarchists’ Cookbook.

Third Prediction: The Obama Brand is the hottest commercial label in the public domain. You’ve seen the painted coins on cable TV. Sure, Spellcheck still can’t get it right. Their programmer still has the flu. It still comes up, “Osama.” His face will appear everywhere, on clothing lines, on underwear, on wallpaper, on the sides of cars, on umbrellas, even on shoes. Watch for this on Inauguration Day. It will look like Carnival in Rio or Accra on Independence Day, all in High Definition.

Fourth Prediction: Arnold Schwarzenegger is coming. The Terminator has the perfect bio for higher office, a combination of fantasy, a Kennedy connection, political visibility and flexibility as California ’s governor. I thought he would run for Vice President this last time around. That’s Constitutionally allowable for foreign-born right now. But he was smarter than that. Watch for a move to amend the Constitution to allow a citizen in this nation of immigrants to run for President before 2012. In four years, America will want the Terminator.

Fifth prediction: The Alaskan fixation will continue. Palin haters and admirers abound.

Anonymous bloggers to the Anchorage Daily News drive those of us who are interested in an exchange of ideas on the state and its people absolutely batty. There is a way for non-Alaskans to learn about Alaska before 2012. The Alaska Public Radio Network, the best statewide public radio in the nation, is available on the web. APRN has been a farm system for NPR for years. Peter Kenyan, Elizabeth Arnold, Corey Flintoff and others did their time in Alaska . Listen to APRN, especially back programs of the eclectic AK, with a map at your side to locate communities. Then drive Alaskans nuts with astute advice. And, remember. Sarah Palin said a lot of stupid things on the campaign trail, but did not steal a dime of your money. Remind the next New Yorker you meet to say hello to Bernie. Happy New Year.

While there has been quite a bit of speculation as to which holiday hits fist dap the top of the charts with the First Family-elect, there is building evidence that current White House occupants intend to bah-humbug the whole season. After all, Bush isn’t expecting much from Santa this year (there’s that whole “naughty or nice” thing), but at least a member of the Iraqi press made him a present of a nice pair of shoes.

Meanwhile the rest of the regrouping Republicans are gathering around the yule log of American Democracy as their Teutonic forebears once did, trying to reignite it with these festive lines:

Auto Industry, Au-to Industry
How fast we see you fading
You wanna pass for wasting all that gas
What made you keep on waiting?
Global war-ming’s
Way past proof
Gore inconven-i-enced us with that truth
Ignore rich whores
Who run the show
Fox News’ll still
Blame the workers though
Auto Industry, Auto Industry
We used to say buy USA
Till you pissed all that goodwill away
Auto Industry, Auto Industry
Ya make hybrid Hondas looks better everyday

As for Obama, however, the consensus seems to be that his choice for holiday hit is a tie between the holiday chestnut “It’s Beginning to Look A Lot like Clinton ” or that old evergreen “Chicago Pols Are Coming to Town.”

While the Dem mainstream seems to prefer the old-time rhymes of the former –

It’s beginning to look a lot like Clinton
In every cabinet post
Got Richardson back again
And that Summers that won’t end
And Geithner to keep the economy burnt as toast

– as for that song and dance, I just have to sing right back:

On the twenty- seventh day of the Transition Obama sent to me
A woman I’d rejected in the name of Hil-lar-y

The case for or against “Chicago Pols Are Coming To Town” is a bit more complicated, like trying to explain anyway Obama’s not-very-lifelike denial of a connection with the Illinois governor’s attempt to market Obama’s vacant senate on EBay as if it were used tinsel. Appointing the head of Chicago public schools, Arne Duncan, Secretary of the Dept. of Education is like appointing Mrs. O’Leary’s cow chief fire safety inspector. Bush did the same thing with Rod Paige, from the soon-to-be discredited Houston school district and look what that brought us: 7 years of “No Child Left with Mind.” Oh come on, with fellow Chicago pol, Rahm Emmanuel already ransomed and captive to Israel, one wonders whose silver bells Obama will be answering to?

Chicago politicians have long held a reputation for jingling all the way to the bank. It is no coincidence that Chicago ’s city hall was once the inspiration for the perennial season favorite “God Arrest You, City Councilmen.” As David Moberg writes in his article “State of Disgrace” for The New Republic: “Since 1971, according to University of Chicago political scientist Dick Simpson, at least 1,000 state and local politicians or businessmen have been convicted of political corruption charges, including 30 Chicago aldermen, as have two of the last four governors (with Blagojevich poised to make it three out of five).”

Speaking of which, one thing’s for sure, despite his Windy City roots, Obama won’t be caught dead humming along to any tune involving a certain governor currently roasting over an open fire. Right now he is a lot more likely to be favoring “All I want for Xmas is to knock out Blagojevich’s two front teeth” over the more traditional “Gov. Blagojevich Song.”

Blagojevich arrives just in time as an almost too perfect spoiler, plopping into this auspicious news cycle to remind Americans of the long established Democratic reputation as cheats and scammers. It is a tradition that goes back to the party’s roots in Andrew Jackson. Blagojevich may be dreaming of a black and white prison jumpsuit colored Christmas, meanwhile Obama must grit his teeth at the strains of his very first and sure to be least favorite gift this season: a brand new scandal:

Gov. Blagojevich looked down
On a prized seat in the Senate
While Chicago pols bumbled all about
Like cops choreographed by Mack Sennett.
Asking for a cool one mil
and a cushy job for his honey
who knows how far this mess might spread
if Fitzgerald chases the money?

And, well, here I am, visiting the grand city of Buenos Aires, and just in time, too, to catch on Argentine TV the long, sad faces of investment banker after investment banker insisting a $700 billion giveaway to America’s richest was what must be done, had to be done, to save the U.S. economy. And here I also am just in time to see Congress members predictably scream there’d be a bailout over their dead bodies (hmm…) before they just as predictably rubber stamped that puppy.

Speaking of dogs, they love them here in Buenos Aires, a huge plus from where I stand although I do have to be careful where I step since the city’s residents aren’t keen on picking up their beloved pets’ end products which, for some reason, reminds me all over again of the bailout, a ghastly amount of steaming hot Fed fiat money steam shoveled to, and benefiting only, the avaricious jackals who gleefully stacked the deck of America’s house-of-cards economy as high as possible before even the lackiest of lackeys could no longer deny the flimsiness of the laughably-named “free market.”

They’re utterly shameless, these animals, still lecturing us on the marvelous benefits of unregulated capitalism ’cause, you know, it’s so good for us. Here’s World Trade Organization chief Pascal Lamy (per Reuters): “The current hurricane that has hit the financial markets must not distract the international community from pursuing greater economic integration and openness…”

Why mustn’t it? Well, because, as he so thankfully informs us, “[i]n a financial crisis and at a time of economic distress, in particular at a time of soaring food prices, what impoverished consumers desperately need is to see their purchasing power enhanced and not reduced.”

Touching, eh? His true concern lies with impoverished consumers.

And if you believe that, I’ve got some lovely mortgage-backed securities I’d like to show you.

At least history buffs are in luck these dismal days, since we’ve just witnessed the most balls-out, audacious looting of a society’s resources ever. In broad daylight, too, with hideous, rammed-through, in-the-bag legislation passed by a Congress so contemptuous of their in-name-only constituents that there they were, splashed all over the front page of the Buenos Aires Herald, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank and a knot of others from their bipartisan den of thieves, laughing and grinning so wildly after having passed this monumental pile of dog shit (it’s one of today’s themes) that it looked like they’d all just taken a huge hit of nitrous oxide.

Well, we’ve all just taken something huge, too, but none of us are laughing and it really hurts to sit down.

I find it interesting being in Argentina during our collective buggering since Argentines know a thing or several billion about battered asse(t)s. Their country suffered a total economic meltdown at the beginning of this decade that kicked their formerly relatively well-off large middle class flush in its breadwinning breadbasket. However, a silver lining emerged: The crisis led to the country defaulting on, and then getting out from under, its crushing debt “owed” to both the (D.C.-based) World Bank and International Monetary Fund, a couple of truly fine organizations for those who think neo-feudalism has a lot going for it.

In 2006, Argentina paid off all loans to the predatory entities. A sizeable part of the assistance came from Hugo Chávez, who bought Argentina bonds. (Just a hunch, but something tells me that’s not going to happen in our case.)

Though the catalysts are different, we’re in for the same ride. Don’t even think it’ll end with the $700 billion. Free market leeches don’t stop. They won’t stop. They can’t stop. It’s in their (cold) blood; they are addicts, they got a (Dow) jones goin’ on. And like addicts, they will steal every dollar they can to feed their habits, and then come back for more.

And also like addicts, they (gasp) lie, too! Here’s Fannie Mae’s former CEO, Daniel Mudd (per Charles Duhigg of the International Herald Tribune):

“Almost no one expected what was coming. It’s not fair to blame us for not predicting the unthinkable.”

And no one thought planes might be flown into buildings, either. Jesus! Is this guy kidding? Anyone smarter than broccoli knew the bloodbath was imminent. Admittedly, this would leave out brilliant sorts like, say, George W. Bush, but he’s never really been in charge anyway (just act Dick Cheney, if you can find him), so he doesn’t count.

Who does count (our looted dough) are the vultures that have ripped us off blind for years via their puppet boy president with dandy little revenue-generating items like two senseless wars, insane tax cuts, the Medicare/Big Pharma drug ripoff, no-bid contracts…

But that’s kid stuff compared to this grand gambit, a deliberately manufactured crisis that starts the kill for keeps. The scheme to starve the government beast to feed the fascist monster stands naked now in all its power-grabbing, future-stealing glory. Say goodbye to Social Security. Say goodbye to Medicare. Say goodbye to infrastructure repair. Say goodbye to public education, whatever shreds of it remain. With their incessant mantra about the wonders of privatization, the moneychangers have done their unlevel best for years now to condition the populace for the biggest wealth-transferring heist of all-time, and every ilk to follow.

I will say that except for a few broccoli-brained Americans (my apologies for twice now disparaging a fine vegetable), it does seem most of our fellow citizens are hip to, and mightily pissed about, the reaming just administered. But — no matter. Too bad. Tough luck. Oh well. The parasites in charge couldn’t care less about our pathetic moral victory. With secret scorn, they lecture us with the best damn fake concern you’ll ever see that if we don’t assume the no-time-for-lubrication position right this instant and take what’s good for us, the “system will fail.”

Well, guess what? It’s failing now. Since March alone, we’ve been strong-armed for over a trillion bucks of funny money (the $700 billion theft, $85 billion to AIG, $200 billion to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and $29 billion worth of “help” to J. P. Morgan & Co. to buy Bear Stearns) and its only effect and that of other certain larceny to come (other than further enriching produce-nothing vipers) will be to delay the inevitable, thus ensuring our pain cuts even deeper. More banks will fail, more savings will be stolen, more companies will go bust, more pensions will disappear, and unemployment, inflation and homelessness will skyrocket.

The only questions are: How profusely will we bleed, and how long will the hemorrhaging last?

Does Argentina’s experience offer guidance? Since its 2002 default, its annual growth rate has averaged over eight percent, and a visitor to the center of bustling Buenos Aires would see few hints of the nation’s recent horrors. Nonetheless, most Argentines would tell you their country is not the same, having taken a gigantic hit from which it may never fully recover. On the positive side, as a whole, South America’s collective social services-suffocating IMF debt, per YES! magazine, has nosedived from $42.9 billion in 2004 to $108 million in 2007.

Can any of this help us better survive our own country’s current palm-greased slide into hell, or assist in predicting what may rise from the ashes? Who knows? What is known, however, is that the reversal of fortunes hasn’t gone unnoticed.

Meeting with Argentina President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner the other day here in Buenos Aires, Chile President Michelle Bachelet, per the Buenos Aires Herald, noted:

“I find it ironic that countries that used to tell us what to do (on the economic front) should now be facing a crisis (of such proportions). Anyway, our countries (Latin America) are strong enough to (stand up for themselves) and fight the crisis off.”

Bully for you, señoras presidentes, and a hard-earned touch of touché, too. With our current meltdown fomented by the same species of wealth-sucking vampires who happily bled most of your continent to within an inch of its life, the U.S.A.’s payback bitch has, indeed, arrived. (I knew I could squeeze in another dog reference.)

Just one question, por favor: Might either of you have a hankie handy?

So far be it from me, at a time like this, to ignorantly chime in with unhelpful negativity about the $700 billion plan by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson to fund the government purchase of oodles of “toxic debt” from companies that shoulda known better, even if its cost, when added to previous bailouts of $29 billion (Bear Stearns), $200 billion (Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae) and $85 billion (AIG), shoves the total tab for the American taxpayer past a trillion dollars for 2008 alone. (The silver lining: there are only three months left!)

I take solace in knowing it’s for the good of the country, and am comforted by Bush’s assurance that our government is “responding with unprecedented measures,” although my more pessimistic friends (like, I think, all of them) say that’s exactly what worries them.

I’m also encouraged by the honesty Paulson displayed the other day when he told the Senate Banking Committee: “When you ask about taxpayers being on the hook: Guess what, they’re already on the hook. They got put on the hook by the system we have…”

Well, even I know we’re on the hook. We’ve always been on the hook.

The “system” to which Paulson refers could only be the Federal Reserve System, birthed in 1913 by the Federal Reserve Act, legislation driven by a few fabulously wealthy banking families/interests seeking to monopolize riches and power (who can blame them, really?) but not enamored with the yucky mess that sometimes occurs with good bets gone bad. (Personally, I’m enamored with Good Girls Gone Wild, but I regress, whenever possible.) Thus, the act’s backers made sure the American taxpayer was designated as what is known as the “lender of last resort,” which is financial-speak for “hook-ee,” which I suppose, then, would make those responsible for our current mess “hookers.” (Which sounds about right, if you know what I mean.)

In other words, for 95 years now, all taxpayer fleecings, I’m sorry, government bailouts, have been legal.

I know that makes me feel better.

Now, another concern I’ve heard voiced, in addition to the familiar ones about saving the private sector’s bacon at public expense, is that loading the economy with a trillion-plus bucks made from thin air (a really neat Fed trick) will help goose inflation and push the dollar lower n’ the IQ of Bush/John McCain/Sarah Palin. (Pick one, or even all three; it won’t affect the cumulative much.) But, really, who cares? If that dough comes a cropper, the Fed can always print more!

Because, here’s the deal: Our country is in deep trouble and we must act now; we can’t afford to waste time on silly things like discussing facts. (Or on establishing oversight either, as Paulson demands his proposed bailout be free of review “by any court of law or any administrative agency.”)

Again, I don’t understand how any of the above squares with the long-avowed GOP belief in free market principles, nor do I purport to comprehend the benefits that such massive bailouts will provide all, er, some, uh, a handful of Americans. I only know that people like Paulson and the rest of the folks privy to how our economy truly works are doing all they can to make sure tons of our money ends up right where they want it to.

Hmm. So maybe I really do get it in the end.

As do we all.

“How so?” I asked my longtime friend. “There’s tons of stuff to riff on. What about those photos of Bush appearing blotto drunk at the Olympics?”

“Hmph. That’d be like sending up Hitler’s breezy side.”

“Wow,” I said. “That’s severe.”

“So are Bush and his murderous cohorts. They savage the world and burn the Constitution, yet what do we get? Sanctimonious editorials about John Edwards’ peccadillo. Please!”

“Well,” I said, playing devil’s advocate, “the media did condemn Larry Craig for his airport restroom follies.”

“Yeah, but most of that outrage missed the boat by focusing on how Craig floats his. Who cares how rocks are gotten off? No, his and ilk’s real transgression is the hypocritical vote-getting anti-gay agenda they cynically press, until, you know, one of them gets caught with his pants down.”

“Ha! At least you can still turn a phrase,” I chuckled.

“Yeah, well, that and signing a loyalty oath’ll get me a cup of swill at a Halliburton-built detention facility. One thing’s for sure: I’ll end up in one sooner rather than later if I write what I’m really thinking.”

“What’s that?”

He furtively scanned the café and then whispered: “I want us to lose. Big-time.”

“Huh?”

“Whatever next all-forsaken place the American imperialist war machine decides to pulverize into a fine radioactive dust — whether Iran or the oil-rich plains of the planet Gruptar — I want the U.S to get its ass kicked.”

I gasped. “You realize what you’re saying, right?”

“That more U.S. soldiers would have to die for that to happen?” he said, sadly. “Yeah, I get it. But their fates, and those of untold others, were sealed by the jingoistic bloodlust of millions of American yahoos who mindlessly exhorted Bushco’s slaughter in Iraq from the trumped-up beginning. Sure, the public’s hinky now but that’s mainly because gas prices rocket ever skyward. No, not until America suffers an undisputed, all-out, thoroughly humiliating military defeat is there a chance its global rampage will finally be abated. ‘Course, there might not be a human left alive after such a confrontation but that’s another matter.”

“Wow, that’s not very funny,” I said.

“Nor are a million dead innocents or the transformation of the cradle of civilization into a toxic waste dump. Or that such madness hardly dents the myopic American collective psyche, the same appalling apathy that now allows Vietnam to be retroactively recast as a righteous cause that should have been doggedly pursued until the freedom-bestowing U.S. military could ultimately produce an honorable victory that, in truth, could only exist in the reptilian brains of Bush and his neocon masters, an Orwellian reworking of history that first gained traction during the 2004 faux presidential campaign and steamrolls today with the glorification of the GOP’s standard-bearing buffoon, John ‘Drop ‘Em If Ya Got ‘Em’ McCain, as some untouchable hero.”

“I get all that. But what about the grieving families of U.S. military dead?”

“I feel bad for them, sure. But,” said Kram as he carefully looked around again, “here’s the bloody bottom line: anyone stupid and savage enough to join the military now to willingly participate in one mammoth war crime deserves everything he gets.”

“Man, I hate to see you like this,” I replied. “Plus, that sort of talk could result in your property being confiscated, as per Bush’s July 17, 2007, executive order, for ‘threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq, or undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people.’”

“Why do you think I’m wearing this fake beard?”

“I was wondering about that,” I replied. “But isn’t the wig a bit much?”

“All in preparation, my friend.”

“For what?”

“Undercover research on my new book, inspired, interestingly enough, by the aforementioned Craig: As America Goes Down the Toilet, a Between-the-Stalls Peek at Gay-Bashing Fascists Who Do the Same in Same.”

I laughed. “A bit unwieldy, perhaps, but it’s great to see you’ve not left the funny business altogether.”

Kram smiled. “No, I guess not. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to Google the floor plan for the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota.”

“Whatever for?”

“That’s where the GOP holds its convention next week. The men’s room there should be a gold mine.”

Dolton was seated opposite me at my parents’ golden wedding anniversary celebration. Why, oh why, hadn’t they gotten divorced at some point?

Teeth gritted, I plunged. “What makes you think there’ll be one?”

“Told ya!” he cackled to my sister Apolitica as he jabbed her, hard, in the ribs. As much as I loved her, she’d forfeited all potential sympathy years back with two words: “I do.”

Her beloved was just warming up.

“I suppose now, Mark, you’re gonna lecture us about rigged voting. Hey, little Dolt,” he snorted to my unfortunate ten-year-old nephew sitting beside him, “seen yer uncle’s tinfoil hat lyin’ around anywhere?”

“Though America’s fixed elections are certainly a worthy topic,” I replied evenly, “I’m not talking about that. I’m referring to all the executive orders and legislation your heroes in the White House have put in place that make it a cinch, if they so choose, to declare martial law, lock up dissenters and thus dispense with even faux balloting.”

He looked puzzled. “Who’d wanna vote for their enemies?”

“What?”

“‘Foe balloting.’ That makes no sense.”

He had me there. I flashed my sister a quick look but she was already slinking away, dragging a bewildered Dolton, Jr., behind her while I calculated the odds of successfully performing hari-kari with a cocktail weenie pick.

“Besides just being plain crazy,” Dolt pressed, “there’s an obvious problem with your hallucination: There’s nowhere to house thousands of traitors. Oh, excuse me: ‘dissenters,’” he snickered.

“Try again,” I replied. “In January 2006, Halliburton’s then-subsidiary KBR was handed a $385 million government contract to, per a crowing press release, build ‘temporary detention and processing’ facilities… ‘in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs.’”

“Good!” he exclaimed. “That’ll make those terrorists think twice about rushing the border.”

“You mean the hordes of Canadians breathlessly poised to overrun America with their deadly hockey sticks?”

“Hockey sticks??” he gasped, horrified. “They really will stop at nothing!”

Or, perhaps I could choke myself with a dinner roll.

“Look, Dolt, don’t you get it?” I asked pointlessly. “Forget the ‘emergency influx of immigrants’ ruse. What’s this ‘rapid development of new programs’? The swift incarceration of thousands of Americans protesting the imposition of martial law, perhaps?”

“Man!” he guffawed. “You’re even more paranoid than I thought.”

“I wish I were imagining things. Unfortunately, horrors like domestic detention facilities are but one verifiable piece of an all-encompassing, all-intrusive system Bushco has methodically installed to take unchallenged control of America instantly.”

“Name another.”

“OK. You like your co-worker Ahmed, right?”

“He’s not bad, I guess — you know, for an Iraqi. I even loaned him five bucks the other day,” Dolt beamed, proud of his hefty contribution toward cultural tolerance.

“Then you’d better hope his views of what the Bushies are doing to his country are in line with theirs. Otherwise, under Dubya’s executive order of July 17, 2007, your and Apolitica’s property is ripe for confiscating if those five dollars are construed in any way as ‘financial… support for’… ‘an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq, or undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people.’”

“Damn,” he mumbled. “I knew he looked shifty.”

“That’s your concern? Ahmed’s suddenly suspect appearance, rather than an insanely vague executive order?”

Dolt glared. “Your anti-Americanism, Mark, blinds you to seeing that anyone could be a terrorist. You just never know and, unfortunately, there’s no machine that can look into people’s hearts.”

“How ’bout under their clothes?”

“Huh?”

“In June, the Transportation Security Administration installed body scanner devices in ten major U.S. airports that produce, essentially, naked photographs of travelers.”

He brightened. “Maybe I should call and apply as a scanner operator, heh-heh.”

“Knock yourself out. Just pray TSA hasn’t out-sourced its call center to, say, India, because under the new FISA bill, any message you send to, or receive from, overseas is fair game for the government, warrant or probable cause be damned. I’ll bet Apolitica would love to hear that tape played in court.”

He looked around quickly. “Well, um, they, uh — so what?” he stammered. “No one can be arrested for what they’re thinking.”

“If the pending Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act becomes law, banish that thought from your mind, as well as many others.” I refrained from noting he had a clear leg up on the process. “This bill is thought-crime codified, establishing a national commission to provide ‘legislative recommendations’ for stopping those peskily ubiquitous homegrown terrorists from, among other things, ‘developing and spreading within the United States’… ‘the use, planned use, or threatened use of force or violence by a group or individual to promote the group or individual’s political, religious, or social beliefs.’”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Not much, I guess, other than it’s so broadly and absurdly written that anyone at a demonstration, for example, could be deemed a terrorist.”

“You mean,” he said, smiling slowly, “like all those ones you’ve attended? I think I’ll call my senator tomorrow to push that bill. Unlike certain America haters I know, I believe in doing everything possible to defeat evildoers.”

“Why wait? Why not instead ask your boss if he’s one of the 23,000 FBI-deputized private industry members of ‘InfraGard’ who, according to Matthew Rothschild of The Progressive, preferentially ‘receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does…’ If so, then maybe you, too, could attend InfraGard meetings like that at which one participant reported he and others were told by Homeland Security and the FBI that ‘when — not if — martial law is declared, it was our responsibility to protect our portion of the infrastructure, and if we had to use deadly force to protect it, we couldn’t be prosecuted.’ Does that not get your attention?”

“Absolutely! It sounds like an even better gig than eyeballing nudie shots of airline passengers, uh, I mean, performing confidential inspections in the name of national security. OK, you two, let’s go!” he said to my sister and nephew returning to the table.

“You’re leaving?” Apparently, there was a God.

“Sorry to ruin your day, but I gotta help my boss install a new grill over at The Sloppy Burger.”

Hmm. “Hey, Dolt, do you think after you two hook that thing up, you’ll eventually end up cooking burgers on it?”

“Boy, you are nutty,” he smirked. “Of course! Why would anyone go to all the trouble to put something in place and then not use it?”

Indeed.

“FREEDOM HAS A TASTE THOSE WHO HAVEN’T FOUGHT FOR IT WILL NEVER KNOW.”

I had to guess:

Butterscotch? Chocolate? Banana? (My favorite! Gimme two scoops of freedom, please, with liberal — sorry — lots of sprinkles.)

OK, so maybe the guy knows better, considering his he-man vehicle also sported military insignia and here I was, a lowly peace lover who, really, should have been thankful just to occupy the same world he and his military kin have helped make safe for, you know, virulent anti-Americanism.

Don’t misread me. While I’m not keen on the military, I am on the Constitution, and one thing it says (or said, before it was cut into iddy widdy pieces) is that it was, in part, “ordain[ed] and establish[ed]” to “provide for the common defense…”

Anymore, however, with neo-imperialism all the rape, er, rage, America’s $1.4 trillion military outlay (for fiscal year 2009, per War Resisters League) isn’t about common defense; rather, it’s uncommonly offensive.

Ditto the bumper sticker, with its smug implication that only soldier types truly understand what liberty means, thereby leaving us oblivious civilians to wonder what the fightin’s really all about. The least we can do, then, I suppose, in our wimpy naiveté, is — all together now! — “support the troops.”

Here’s an idea: How about supporting them by not senselessly sending them a-warring to begin with? One couldn’t have found a larger group pleading that very case than we millions who desperately protested the Iraq disaster before it commenced. Every assertion of ours has long been proven true. Yet we’re the ones who don’t get it?

Contrast this up-front awareness with the eighty-five percent of U.S. troops in Iraq who, when polled in February 2006 (Zogby International), still believed Saddam Hussein was connected to 9/11, and tell me who knows what. Funny how the so-in-tune military, possessing the unique skinny on the flavor of freedom, makes no effort to dissuade its very own from “fighting for it” under utterly false pretenses.

Then again, if I were the self-aggrandizing collective goon for the Halliburtons, Lockheed Martins and Exxons of the world, why would I? What’s prosecuting one gigantic war crime when it means continued bazillions for your own never-ending expansion, especially when all that’s required to placate your corporate masters is to gleefully blow shit up (and murder myriad innocents, too, but: so?) just so they can rebuild it? (Or better yet, get no-bid contracts to not rebuild it?)

And if you can perpetuate the whole lethal deal by belaboring the surefire glorious warrior shtick, well, carry on, pilgrim. Only commies (yawn) would dare denigrate the sacred U.S. military.

Still, for argument’s sake, let’s say the bumper sticker owner and his uniformed buddies are solely qualified to know the taste of freedom. Even so, in light of a mega-bloated military slavishly servile to a coterie of neocon whackjobs obsessed with cementing ever-greater global corporate profits and implementing more anti-constitutional horrors like the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (goodbye, habeas corpus!)¹ and the still-pending Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act (hello, thought-crime!), I can certainly tell you how the lack of freedom is flavored.

It’s bitter — and extremely hard to swallow.

1. In a sign that miracles really do exist, the Supreme Court restored the writ of habeas corpus on June 12, 2008, after this article was written.