Rolling, keeps me rolling on down the line

Thursday October 8, 2009

. . . . .I know that there is the odd person who reads this who, doesn't believe it of me, and never will; but I believe something that Ernest Hemingway wrote once, that this is a fine country and well worth fighting for.

. . . .The playlist is updated and has some great, great tunes in it. Yes, it does hang together thematically. For you Dan Brown fans, see if you can figure out the "Da Vinci code" in it. Two of my favorite all-time tunes today, about halfway through. Give Me a Ride to Heaven Boy by Terry Allan, and Jesus Built My Hotrod by Ministry.

. . . .If you're reading this in the Facebook notes, click the link here to get to the external site, The Desolation Angel, to get the tunage, the music and my dulcet tones.

. . . .Yes, I need to keep writing about the economy and about Afghanistan/Iran/Iraq; two closely intertwined issues that are the most important ones facing us, but I still want to circle back to the conservative movement's rewrite of the Bible, the most important document in Christianity, again, this isn't a joke, the Conservative Bible Project is very real, and to me, is the smoking gun, the prima facie evidence of the conservative's, of the extreme Right's, smug arrogance. Don't like the guidebook for the religion that serves as the foundation for your faith-based policy? Re-write it. It's that simple. From Mike Lux, author and blogger:

But every once in a while, folks in the conservative movement surprise me and come up with something new. And this one is a doozy. Apparently the folks at Conservapedia are re-translating the Bible to make it fit better with conservative ideology.

According to Conservapedia, there is no "fully conservative translation" which properly meets their guidelines, so the project is much needed. Among other things, they want to:

• Better explain how certain parables actually promote free market ideology, because apparently the actual language of the Bible doesn't do a very good job of that.
• Exclude certain, "later-inserted liberal passages." Given that there is a great deal of dispute among Bible scholars over what was original language in the ancient texts and what wasn't, it will be fascinating to see what passages make their list as "later inserted." I have some guesses.
• Identify pro-liberal terms in existing translations such as "government" and just get rid of them. It's great how you can solve these inconvenient problems so easily.
• Conversely, of course, identify conservative words and phrases that have been mysteriously omitted from existing translations, and figure out cool ways to stick them into the Bible stories.

Some of their examples are fun, too. When Jesus says, "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing," they are quite suspicious. That quote only appears once in the Bible, they say, plus it sounds way too liberal - it must be wrong. I guess they'll just define that as "later-inserted." And then there are certain words that just appear way too often, like laborer and labored - apparently, they will just get rid of/re-translate stuff like that, too.

Now there are no suggestions about what this new translation might do with all those inconvenient references to the poor - feeding them, housing them, justice for them, etc. There are several hundred of those, so you would have a lot of editing to do to get rid of all that, or make it more "free market oriented." And if you just got rid of it entirely by ascribing it all to "later insertions," you would have a noticeably thinner Bible. And all those references to peace-making, the rich having trouble getting into heaven, etc.- all that would have to go, too.

I find this kind of thing really fun, actually. I really do admire their creativity and pure chutzpah (oh wait, is that too Jewish a word?). And it's a great principle: you find something inconvenient or tricky in a beloved text, just get rid of it. Next up: The Declaration of Independence and Gettysburg Address.

My belief system is more complicated than just being a Bible-believing Christian in the traditional sense, but one of my grandpas was a minister, my dad was the lay leader of the Nebraska Conference of the Methodist church, my brother is a minister, and I was raised with, and still have, the values of the social gospel. Conservative Christians have always had a lot of trouble explaining a great many passages of the Bible, so I guess this is their way of getting rid of them. But let me just share a few they will find especially troublesome to translate:

Ecclesiasties 1-10

My child, do not refuse the poor a livelihood, do not tantalize the needy. Do not add to the sufferings of the hungry, do not bait anyone in distress. Do not aggravate a heart already angry, nor keep the destitute waiting for your alms.

Do not repulse a hard-pressed beggar, nor turn your face from the poor. Do not avert your eyes from the needy, give no one occasion to curse you; for if someone curses you in distress, his Maker will give ear to the imprecation. Gain the love of the community in the presence of the great bow your head. To the poor lend an ear, and courteously return the greeting. Save the oppressed from the hand of the oppressor, and do not be mean-spirited in your judgments. Be like a father to the fatherless and as good as a husband to their mothers. And you will be like a child to the Most High, who will love you more than your mother does.

Psalm 22: 24-26

I shall proclaim your name to my brothers,
Praise you in full assembly:
'You who fear Yahweh, praise him!
All the race of Jacob, honour him!
Revere him, all the race of Israel!'

For he has not despised
Nor disregarded the poverty of the poor,
Has not turned away his face,
But has listened to the cry for help.

Isaiah 2:4

Then he will judge between the nations
And arbitrate between many peoples.
They will hammer their swords into ploughshares
And their spears into sickles.
Nation will not lift sword against nation,
No longer will they learn how to make war.

Isaiah 10: 1-4

Woe to those who enact unjust decrees,
who compose oppressive legislation
to deny justice to the weak
and to cheat the humblest of my people of fair judgment,
to make widows their prey
and to rob the orphan.
What will you do on the day of punishment,
when disaster comes from far away?
To whom will you run for help
And where will you leave your riches.

Amos 8: 4-7

Listen to this, you who crush the needy
And reduce the oppressed to nothing,
You who say, 'When will New Moon be over'
So that we can sell our corn,
And Sabbath, so that we can market our wheat?
Then we can make the bushel-measure smaller
And the shekel-weight bigger
By fraudulently tampering with the scales.
We can buy up the weak for silver
And the poor for a pair of sandals,
And even get a price for the sweepings of the wheat.'
Yahweh has sworn by the pride of Jacob,
'Never will I forget anything they have done.'
Will not the Earth tremble for this.

Matthew 6:24

No one can be the slaves of two masters: he will either hate the first and love the second, or be attached to the first and despise the second. You cannot be the slave of both God and money.

Matthew 7: 1-5

Do not judge, and you will not be judged;' because the judgments you give are judgments you will get, and the standard you use will be the standard used for you. Why do you observe the splinter in your brother's eye and never notice the great log in your own? And how dare you say to your brother, "Let me take that splinter out of your eye," when, look, there is a great log in your own? Hypocrite! Take the log out of your own eye first, and then you will see clearly enough to splinter your brother's eye.

Matthew 25: 31-46

When the Son of man comes in his glory, escorted by all the angels, then he will take his seat on his throne of glory. All nations will be assembled before him, and he will separate out people from one another as the shepherd separates sheep from oats. He will place the sheep on his right hand and the goats on his left. Then the King will say to those on his right hand, "Come, you whom my Father has blessed, take as your heritage the kingdom prepared for you since the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you have me drink, I was a stranger and you gave me welcome, lacking cloths and you clothed me, sick and you visited me, in prison and you came to see me." Then the upright will say to him in reply, "Lord, when did you see the hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you a drink? When did we see you a stranger and make you welcome, lacking cloths and clothe you? When did we find you sick or in prison and go to see you?" And the King will answer, "In truth I tell you, in so for as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it tome." Then he will say to those on his left hand, go away from me, with your curse upon you, and to the eternal fire prepared for those for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you never gave me food, I was thirsty and you never gave me anything to drink, I was a stranger and you never made me welcome, lacking cloths and you never clothed me, sick and in prison and you never visited me." Then it will answer, "In truth I tell you, in so far as you neglected to do this to one of the least of these, you neglected to it to me." And they will go away to eternal punishment, and the upright to eternal life.

Luke 1: 46-55

And Mary said:

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord
And my spirit rejoices in God my saviour;
Because he has looked upon the humiliation of his servant.
Yes, from now onwards all generations will call me blessed,
For the Almighty has done great things for me.
Holy is his name,
And his faithful love extends age after age to those who fear him.
He has used the power of his arm,
He has routed the arrogant of heart.
He has pulled down princes from their thrones and raised high the lowly.
He has filled the starving with good things, sent the right away empty.
He has come to the help of Israel his servant, mindful of his faithful love
according to the promise he made to our ancestors
Of his mercy to Abraham and his descendents for ever.

Luke 4: 18-19

The spirit of the Lord is on me
For he has anointed me
To bring the good news to the afflicted.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives,
Sight to the blind,
To let the oppressed go free,
To proclaim a year of favour from the Lord.

James 2: 1-9

From James, servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ. Greetings 'to the twelve tribes of the Dispersion.'

My brothers, consider it a great joy when trials of many kinds come upon you, for you well know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance, and perseverance must complete its work so that you will become fully developed, complete, not deficient in any way.

Any of you who lacks wisdom must ask God, who gives to all generously and without scolding; it will be given. But the prayer must be made with faith, and no trace of doubt, because a person who has doubts is like the waves thrown up in the sea by the buffeting of the wind. That sort of person, in two minds, inconsistent in every activity, must not expect to receive anything from the Lord.

. . . .Now, I do have a lot of conservative and Republican friends, a lot of Christian friends, and, because they're my friends and people I know of course, are fascinating, fine people with great hearts, deep souls and sharp minds, so it's not a blanket indictment. But, in this case, all I can do is point to the above and tell them to get your lunatic cousins and 12-year old brats under control, because these wingnuts, like Beck, like Limbaugh, like the Birthers, and now, like these Biblical re-writers, are what's emerging as the face of your movement and your philosophy.

. . . .County Fair over at Media Matters has an interesting take on all of it, and is making the same observation that many others have made on the brewing civil war within the Republican Party and the conservative movement. Since no elected official, other than John McCain, is attempting to take the party and the movement back from it's de facto leaders, Limbaugh and Beck, there are others stepping up to do it:

As Eric Boehlert pointed out earlier today, a significant fissure is opening up on the Right. The increasing influence of extremists like Fox News' Glenn Beck and radio host Rush Limbaugh has shaken more mainstream conservatives who are searching for a new set of leaders -- and the conservative establishment is lashing out. Consider some of the recent comments from prominent conservative media personalities and elected officials:

• Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks describing Beck, Limbaugh, and radio talker Mark Levin as "loons" who are "harmful for America."
• Former Bush and McCain adviser Mark McKinnon denouncing Levin's "jaw-dropping hate language about the president."
• MSNBC commentator and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough blasting Limbaugh's cheers after Chicago lost its Olympic bid: "Republicans have gone off the deep end"

These are just a few examples of a serious trend. Right-wing media figures are now routinely attacking each other's tactics and relevancy. On Friday, Brooks (nonsensically) dedicated an entire column to explaining why conservative media leaders like Beck and Limbaugh are not worthy of attention. He argued that we are once again witnessing "the story of media mavens who claim to represent a hidden majority but who in fact represent a mere niche -- even of the Republican Party." It's a point he made several weeks earlier, when he said that "[i]f the Republican Party is sane, they will say no to these people." Beck, in turn, responded by reading Brooks' editorial on the air and mocking the idea that he was the overlord of thoughtless, right-wing radio audiences who will "kill people because we tell you to." Feeling defensive, Glenn?

Numerous other conservatives are speaking out as well, with Beck taking a good deal of the heat. On Sunday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said to Fox News' Bret Baier that Beck "doesn't represent the Republican Party," adding, "You can listen to him if you like. I choose not to, because quite frankly, I don't want to go down the road of thinking our best days are behind us."

On September 22, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough went after Beck specifically. "You need to call out this type of hatred, because it always blows up in your face," he said. "You cannot preach hatred. You cannot say the president's a racist. You cannot stir up things that could have very deadly consequences."

Peter Wehner, a former Bush speechwriter and a regular blogger for Commentary, wrote in September that the content of Beck's broadcasts "should worry the conservative movement," and that some of his attacks "are quite unfair and not good for the country." Another former Bush speechwriter, David Frum, has employed even harsher language:

Glenn Beck is not the first to make a pleasant living for himself by reckless defamation. We have seen his kind before in American journalism and American politics, and the good news is that their careers never last long. But the bad news is that while their careers do last, such people do terrible damage.

The View's Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Charles Johnson of the popular conservative blog Little Green Footballs, and Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC) have all offered similar assessments. Even Mark Levin himself seems to dislike Beck and has called him "mindless," "incoherent," "pandering," and "pathetic."

It will be very interesting to watch the growing disharmony on the Right play out. But for now, it wouldn't be too surprising if the ego-driven, media-led conservative movement continued forming its firing squad into a circle.

. . . .And if you're still listening to, watching Beck, remember that before he became a political "expert", his entire experience and background was as a Morning Zoo-style show FM jock, and his most illustrious and exemplary stunt there was to call a crosstown rival's wife at home on air, the morning she was released from the hospital after a miscarriage to ask her what was wrong with she and her rival DJ husband that they couldn't make a "good baby that lived".

. . . .That sick bastard really does need to be taken out and shot in the head.

. . . . .And while I'm muckraking today, for the idiots over on the Left. . .A child rapist is not a political prisoner, cannot be excused because he was "following his difficult muse", and is not being persecuted. Enough of you dingbats out of Hollywood, you're as disconnected, due to lifestyle and money, as the political elite is, from the rest of us. Roman Polanski raped and sodomized a 13-year-old girl, he's guilty. Let him get his ass to prison with a short eyes jacket and his life will be what it is from there, and whatever happens from there is his karma, and justice, period.

. . . . . .Now, onto the most important thing facing everyone, the financial mess we live in. And no, experts, there is no such thing as a "jobless recovery". All that this administration has done is continue the financial, monetary system and credit system policies of every administration since Reagan, that of a corporatist system, which is not capitalism or a free market economy in any way. When the market is headed up, and corporate profits are up, but household income is down, consumer spending is bottomed out and there are 17 million unemployed and rising, there really is something fundamentally fucking wrong!!

. . . . .ATTN: WARNING - Kip is about to write like he really talks, if you're easily offended, please stick your fingers in your ears, shake your head from side to side, and start saying really, really loudly "la-la-la-la, I can't hear you"

. . . . .I actually "gentle up" in my writing often, I ease up. Now, I'm not a whole-hearted believer in this President and this Administration, I've not drunk the Kool-Aid. There's a lot not to like, first and foremost for me, most importantly, this Administration is just a continuation of every Administration back to Reagan, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the CFR, the Trilateral Commission, Goldman-Sachs and JP Morgan Chase. I happen to dislike this Administration's policies in a lot of areas, it's just that I completely despised the last Administration's policies. However, I'm an American and that always takes precedence. This President was elected under due Constitutional process in an, what it passes for these days, overwhelming majority and it was duly ratified by the Electoral College. He is the President, period, of the United States of America. Only 44 men in history have sat in that seat, and I, nor you, nor anyone else, can even begin to imagine what that must feel like, and what it must entail. Now, on the good side, he is forcing the Congress to do their fucking jobs and legislate, unlike his predecessor who tried to consolidate every branch of government into the Oval Office, a complete and total Consitutional usurpation. Now, if I was to write everything I've researched and found, you'd completely turbofrag my ass as a conspiratorial, tin-foil hat wearing unmedicated lunatic, so I put it out in little pieces. Up until now, I've been asked to do a longer essay that will be published, but more on that later. Suffice to say, despite the little bit of vomit that comes up in my mouth whenever I think of how the White House has been owned since Reagan by the folks over at the Trilat, at least it ain't "C" Street and The Family, not yet at least, and their desire to install a Christian Taliban here in the good ol' U.S. of A. I took you, last week, through that little bit on true, old-line classical Libertarian thought on personal and social liberty, and economic policy, based on a real reading of Smith and The Wealth of Nations, for a reason (Bless you Professor Moots, for spending all that time after class so long ago to walk me through all of it). What we need to see is the fundamental difference between true free-market capitalism, where the consumer, that'd be you and me, is the primary beneficiary and what's happened in corporatist America in the last 30 years, where through, especially Reagan's and both Bush's policies, the producer is not only the prime beneficiary, but came to be the economic slaves of the traders, the mercantilists, and no longer worked for the consumer, nor in the end, due to some deregulated, artificial, criminal creation of imagined currency and wealth, completely drove not just this country's, but the world's, ship right onto the reefs.

. . . . I gave a reading list a while back, and I know that some of you went out and bought some of them. I'm going to give another one here, it's a little pricey, since it's really a textbook, but it's a complete eye-opener, and basic to understanding where it all came from. Without knowing where it came from, it's impossible to have a roadmap as to where we are now, and how we get outta this damn place. It's called American Economic History and is probably the most comprehensive book I've ever read on where it all came from, and why.

. . . .Now onto today, no less than the Financial Times has written an op-ed on what the most glaring problem that is now evidencing itself is:

The financial crisis spurred many policymakers around the world to meet challenges with bold, creative, non-partisan solutions. As the crisis and recession recede, policymakers must refocus on persistent structural challenges. Top of the list in the US – and elsewhere – is income inequality.

US data remain sobering. Recent figures from the Internal Revenue Service show that in 2007 the top-percentile income share reached 23.5 per cent, continuing a 30-year increase. And, in some ways even more troubling, US inequality is widening largely because of falling real incomes for all but the most-skilled highest earners. Between 2000 and 2008, only workers with a professional postgraduate degree – 2 per cent of the labour force – enjoyed increases in mean real money income. All other educational cohorts, including college graduates and those with PhDs, suffered falls. The recession is putting further pressure on many workers : year-to-date, average weekly earnings for production and non-supervisory workers have fallen 1.5 per cent.

These income trends are worrisome for many reasons. One is the contribution of poor real and relative income performance to the protectionist drift in US economic policy seen, for example, in the 2009 Employ American Workers Act. Public support for globalisation is strongly linked to labour-market performance, which for many has long been poor.

So, what to do? Policymakers have long quibbled over the facts. They have also invoked vague and distant remedies. A better educated US workforce? Upgrading skills is terrific – but it takes generations. It took more than 60 years for the US to boost the college-graduate share of the labour force from 6 per cent in 1945 to 29.8 per cent today – and that entailed government programmes and profound socio-economic changes.

For a more immediate effect, policymakers need to redirect their bold, creative, non-partisan energies from the financial crisis to income inequality.

. . . .Read the entire article here.

. . . .I'm glad for the next one. It's Dylan Ratigan, with another take, and a well-written one about exactly what I've been talking about. Instead of "corporatist", a phrase I use, he uses the phrase "corporate communism" with some very good reasons. Ratigan -

Lately I have been using the phrase "Corporate Communism" on my television show. I think it is an especially fitting term when discussing the current landscape in both our banking and health care systems.

As Americans, I believe we reject communism because it historically has allowed a tiny group of people to consolidate complete control over national resources (including people), in the process stifling competition, freedom and choice. It leaves its citizens stagnating under the perpetual broken systems with no natural motivation to innovate, improve services or reduce costs.

Lack of choice, lazy, unresponsive customer service, a culture of exploitation and a small powerbase formed by cronyism and nepotism are the hallmarks of a communist system that steals from its citizenry and a major reason why America spent half a century fighting a Cold War with the U.S.S.R.

And yet today we find ourselves as a country in two distinctly different categories: those who are forced to compete tooth and nail each day to provide value to society in return for income for ourselves and our families and those who would instead use our lawmaking apparatus to help themselves to our tax money and/or to protect themselves from true competition.

If you allow weak, outdated players to take control of the government and change the rules so they are protected from the natural competition and reward systems that have created so many innovations in our country, you not only steal from the citizens on behalf of the least worthy but you also doom them by trapping the capital that would be used to generate new innovation and, most tangibly in our current situation, jobs.

We are losing the opportunity cost of all the great ideas that should be coming from the proper deployment of that 23.7 trillion in capital. Everything from innovation in medical delivery systems to accessible space travel, free energy to the driverless car; all of these things may never come to bear because those powerful individuals who have failed, been passed over by technological advancements, innovation and flat-out smarts, have commandeered our government to unfairly sustain their wealth and power.

Unfortunately, they use our wealth and laws not only to benefit their outdated, failed companies, but also spend a small pittance of their ill-gotten gains lobbying and favor-trading with politicians so the government will continue to protect them from competition and their well-deserved failure.

The massive spike in unemployment, the utter destruction of retirement wealth, the collapse in the value of our homes, the worst recession since the Great Depression have all resulted directly from the abdication of proper government.

Even with all that -- the only changes that have been made, have been made to prop up and hide the massive flaws on behalf of those who perpetuated them. Still utterly nothing has been done to disclose the flaws in this system, improve it or rebuild it. Only true rules-based capitalism ensures constant adaptation and implementation of the latest and best practices for a given business, as those businesses that don't adapt fail, and those who deploy the latest innovations to their customers benefit, prosper.

The concept of communism is rightly reviled in this country for the simple reason that it is blind to human nature, allowing a small group of individuals near-total control, while sticking everyone else with the same crappy systems -- and the bill. America spent countless lives and half a century fighting against this system of government. So why are we standing for it now?

. . . .And speaking to what I mentioned above, that of a "jobless recovery", where the markets are going well, while the rest of us get worse off, from Bloomberg, one of my Quintet-Of-Economists-Who-Are-The-Only-People-With-A-Clue (Krugman, Roubini, Taleb, and Zandi being the other 4), Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz:

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said U.S. unemployment will keep rising and should be the focus for policy makers, and gains in the stock market show investors have been “irrationally exuberant” about a recovery.

“There’s a lot of risk going ahead of some big bumps,” he said yesterday in a Bloomberg Television interview from Istanbul, citing housing, commercial real estate and consumers’ inability to pay off credit cards because of job losses. “There’s a very big risk that markets have been irrationally exuberant.”

His comments echo New York University Professor Nouriel Roubini’s view that “markets have gone up too much, too soon, too fast,” and billionaire George Soros, who warned yesterday that America’s economic recovery will be “very slow.”

The U.S. has lost 7.2 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007, and the unemployment rate reached a 26- year high in September, a Labor Department report last week showed. Joblessness is likely to reach 10 percent by the end of the year, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg News last month.

It’s “pretty clear that the situation will continue to get worse,” Stiglitz said, citing elements of the jobs report such as the number of people who can’t find a full-time job and the pace at which Americans are dropping out of the labor force.

. . . .In a recent interview, the TARP watchdog, (who must be a very toothless watchdog), echoed basically the same sentiments, that something is fundamentally wrong with the flow of money and credit in this country, and more so now during the supposed "recovery". Elizabeth Warren, in an interview with The Washington Post's Lois Romano:

WARREN: Well, I believe that the middle class is under terrific assault. And I don't want to play this as a capitalism issue.

When we compare middle-class families today with their parents a generation ago ¿ we have basically flat earnings-a fully employed male today earns on average about $800 less, adjusted for inflation- than a fully employed male earned a generation ago. The only way that houses could increase or families could increase their household income was to put a second earner into the workforce, and, of course that's now flattened out because there aren't any more people to put into the workforce. So you've got, effectively, flat income in this time period ¿ with rising core expenses; housing; health insurance; child care; transportation, now that it takes two cars to get everywhere, two jobs to support; and taxes, because you've got two people in the workforce and we have a somewhat progressive taxation system. So that families are spending a lot more on what you describe as the basic nut.

The third leg to the triangle, and that is families, to deal with this, stopped saving and started going into debt.

And the debt side of where families both spend more money and are made much more vulnerable on mortgages, on credit cards, on check overdraft fees, all this side of it, the credit side of it really means that we have a middle class that a generation ago we would have described as solid, secure, dependable. If you could just get into the middle class, you could pretty much count on a fairly comfortable life and all the way through to a comfortable retirement.

That's been hollowed out. Sure, there are people who are going to make it through just fine, but the vulnerability of families in the middle class has just ¿ it has gone up enormously.

. . . . .One of my favorite writers/bloggers, Bob Cesca, in a pointed essay that's right on the mark, uses the issue of the day, as it has been since August, health care, to make points on every subject I've touched on today, and asks the same question I've been asking. What's it going to take for you to wake up, smell the coffee, see the truth and start to get angry? What's it going to take?

Over the weekend, I took a rainy walk down Wall Street and through the financial district in lower Manhattan. As I navigated my way across the busy intersections and between the arrays of decorative sidewalk bollards, I noticed something really strange.

No protesters.

None, despite the fact that within that very space, the near destruction of the world economy was detonated, igniting one of the deepest recessions in American history and accompanied by 500,000 job losses every month.

Not only was the district free of protesters, but I spotted a gaggle of grinning tourists merrily gathered on and around the famous "Charging Bull" statue. One woman was having her picture taken while crouched down and cupping the bull's gigantic watermelon-sized brass testicles. Actually, you could say that there was at least one tea bagger downtown. But, you know, the wrong kind.

As I marveled at the incongruous serenity of the financial district, I couldn't help but to wonder if all of this talk about massive job losses and a near-meltdown was an elaborate hoax, or whether Americans by-in-large simply don't give a rip, choosing instead to continue on their merry way, acquiescing to a failed system rather than lashing out against the horrors of deregulatory Reaganomics, and, consequently, taking action against the real killers. In other words, while political participation appears to be cresting a wave, there's still a considerable level of apathy about demanding accountability from the crooks who nearly screwed us all.

This apathy is especially evident in the health care crisis.

The president likes to say, "If you like the health insurance you have now..." The problem is that much like your utter lack of financial security in a system that's been gamed by corporate criminals, the health insurance you have now... sucks.

From the early 1980s, when Reagan began the systematic deregulation of corporate America and declared war on the middle class, and lasting through and including the 2008 economic meltdown, the American economy has always been a ticking time bomb held together mostly by trickery and gambling. We were always meant to pick up the filthy mess when the meltdown occurred. And we did. Not just through the bailouts, but also through the loss of our jobs and the loss of our personal financial security, both of which helped to keep the culprits in business -- bonuses and golden parachutes included.

Likewise, the health care system is in the process of melting down, and for too many Americans it already has. And as for the rest of us who think our health insurance policies are excellent and secure are, in reality, in serious denial. Even now, we're paying more and more of our own money towards keeping this broken system afloat, and when the health care crisis kicks into high gear soon, who do you think will be obligated to pay for the greed and corruption responsible for the crisis?

Meanwhile, your premiums are being systematically jacked up until, one day, they'll extend beyond your financial means. It's only a matter of time before an injury or illness isn't covered due to, perhaps, a mistake on your application or the whim of a corporate bureaucrat. It's only a matter of time before your policy is suddenly rescinded in lieu of your insurance provider's profit margins which, by the way, have increased by upwards of 350 percent in the last decade. Your premiums, meanwhile, have more than doubled over that same ten years while middle class wages have remained flat. Reaganomics illustrated. Health care costs are destined to finish off what remains of the American middle class. Around 60 percent of all bankruptcies are due to health care debt with 78 percent of those bankruptcies filed by people with health insurance. Again, the insurance you have sucks and it's only the beginning of the bailout. We're nowhere near the high water mark.

At the very least, and at this very moment, we're all paying a 30 percent private tax to our insurance companies. This tax isn't being spent on our family's medical care and general wellness, but instead on corporate bureaucracy and profit. For the average family contributing to around half of an annual $13,000 employer-based premium, this private tax amounts to more than a thousand dollars a year (and rising) for nothing. No guarantees against rescinding our policies. No guarantees of coverage in the event of a serious illness. No guarantees that we'll be covered for a pre-existing condition. No guarantees that our rates won't be randomly jacked up for no reason. Nothing.

Even if you work for a health insurance company, your health care sucks. WellPoint is in the process of entirely stripping a "small number" of employees of their health insurance via pink slips, and the remaining employees will have to kick in more of their paycheck towards their monthly premiums (along with the obligatory 30 percent private tax, of course). It's worth mentioning that WellPoint is under investigation for coercing their employees into lobbying Congress against health care reform. Oh, and the CEO of WellPoint earned $10 million last year. Good people.

I sometimes wonder how bad things have to get in order for us to demand real change in this country. It didn't take long after 9/11 for shark attacks and celebrity scandals to dominate the very serious establishment press again. And judging by the empty sidewalks (and the festive molestation of that bull statue) in lower Manhattan, a near economic meltdown wasn't quite enough to rally us into the streets with pitchforks and torches, demanding accountability from the banks and financial institutions responsible for it. (ACORN and the "czars," on the other hand, must be destroyed!)

Likewise, the list of very obvious grievances against the health insurance cartels apparently isn't lengthy and awful enough to spark much more than tepid popular support for reform even though 3,750 Americans die every month from a lack of health care. That's more casualties than 9/11 every 30 days. Maybe if we nicknamed the health insurance companies "evildoers" who need to be "smoked out" we'd make a little more progress. We'd certainly get a reform bill a lot more quickly, based upon the PATRIOT Act express lane turnaround time.

But Republicans don't want to do a damn thing if it means a victory for the president, while too many congressional Democrats would be happy to pass a shoddy bill put forth by a mostly unknown senator from Montana who is proudly attempting to legally require us to buy insurance from the criminal cartels responsible for this mess and without any public insurance option as an escape hatch. Naturally, this is the result of the fact that the health care industry is contributing millions to key senators including Mr. Baucus from Montana. Oh, and the Supreme Court is poised to allow corporations unlimited financial access to political campaigns -- a move that will surely exacerbate the health care crisis, among other things.

This is about as serious as it gets. The health insurance you have now sucks. And it's only going to get suckier as time wears on unless serious change happens now.

. . . .And that's the way it is:

. . . . .. . . .We can salvage this shipwreck of a Nation. It will take all of us working together. It will take all of us understanding the concepts of the Great American Experiment, the political process of the Republic. It's amazing, I don't see eye-to-eye on every issue with my friends, but we respect one another's opinion, share information, share facts, and we don't talk over one another or at one another, we talk with one another. It's amazing what happens when a group of people who share the common goal of leaving a better country for their children and grandchildren can do when they sit down with one another as human beings, and realize that we each have power, and together, we are unstoppable.

. . . .I'm going to ask this of you for the next 30 days. Turn your TV off, turn your radio off. Start to use that beautiful mind that your Creator gave you, that your underpaid, underappreciated High School teachers tried to develop. If you hear something, if you read something, if someone sends you an e-mail that says "this bill will do this", or "this politician says this", I'm asking you to check it out. Check it out this way, use some of the following fact-based sites, who exist solely for the purpose of data and fact-checking.
- If whatever you've heard or read concerns a bill in Congress, use the following -
- Open Congress, it's non-partisan and devoted to a complete tracking of every bill in Congress, both houses. How a bill is developed, who is sponsoring it, what the riders are, what the discussion around it is.
- GovTrack, again non-partisan, non-commercial and open source; devoted to the same things, tracking Congress.
- Open Secrets, one of the most important ones, it tracks the lobbying money and campaign contributions flowing to your congressperson, and most of the time is a pretty good predictor of how they'll vote.
- Political Party Time, non-partisan, devoted to solely tracking political fundraisers, and letting you know exactly what parties your Representative and Senators are throwing for fundraisers and who is attending and how much money they're throwing at them to gain influence.

. . . .If someone sends something to you saying "this is so" or "that is so" or "the President/Senator/Representative said this" use the following:
- Fact Check, non-partisan, designed to separate fact from bullshit and fiction
- Snopes, devoted to the same thing.
- Politifact, devoted to getting to the truth, and separating out the lies that are spread.


. . . .I keep doing this not because I don't have faith, but because I do have faith. I have faith in the ultimate triumph of the spirit, intellect and heart of the American people. I have faith that the people I know want to leave something better for future generations, and know that something is terribly wrong, and want to do something about it. I do it because Paine and Jefferson were brilliant, unique singularities and were right.

. . . .I keep doing this because I don't believe in big imaginary friends for adults, I don't believe in alien conspiracies running the Government, I don't believe the Roswell bodies are at Wright-Patterson, I don't believe that a big portal will open up on Dec. 21, 2012, I don't believe that the spaceships will show up.

. . . I do believe that the people who have fucked everything up are greedy, avaricious human beings who have been able to steal from the American people, to harm them, who have run unchecked because no one calls it out for what it is. I believe that if we shine the light of day on it, if the people of this country have had enough, we can change it, and change it for the better.

. . . . I keep doing this because I do believe that people, human beings, unchecked will continue to do what they've done throughout history, and throughout the history of this country. Together, they will find the solutions and provide better for their children and grandchildren.

. . . .I believe in us, I believe in people. I believe in the beauty, power and grace of the individual.

. . . .I do this for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of knowing what they do, what they believe, what they know is right. I do it for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of faith, hope, love, hate, justice, war and peace.

. . . .I do it because I believe in justice, in all it's forms.

. . . .I do this everyday for the people and kids who are tattoed, pierced and inked and keep getting told to get "into the mainstream". I do this everyday for those guys who wear black that you don't understand, you just know there's something about them, and that when the chips are down, when you have to walk down a dark alley somewhere, and you know what's waiting for you at the end of it, and you can only take one person with you, that's who you want walking with you, because you know you'll come back out alive, and that guy doesn't care what it costs him.

. . . .I do this everyday for the outcasts, the misfits, the ones who don't fit and who will turn their back on you and walk away when you try to make them fit into a mold. I do it everyday for everyone who does it their way, knows that they're paying a high price for it, but the freedom is worth the cost.

. . . . I do this everyday for outlaws, cowboys, renegades, pirates and fallen angels. I do it everyday for the people who understand that rock and roll can save their soul, that redemption can be found in a 3-chord lick from a vintage Les Paul. I do it for the men and women who aren't afraid to turn it all the way up, who keep looking for an 11 setting on a volume knob that only goes to 10, who know that rock and roll's got nothing to do with age.


. . . .If right now, you're doing something you don't want to do, stop it. If you've surrounded yourself with people who want you to do or be something other than who you are, walk away. If you've got people around you who actually let it slip out that they think you "should be doing (fill in the blank here)" and it involves your life, your future, your existence as an individual, walk away, right now, and don't look back. You don't owe anyone anything. Live fearlessly. If the people around you can't accept it, can't accept you as you are, really are, they aren't and weren't friends anyhow.

. . . .Don't march to anyone else's drumbeat, don't drink the Kool-Aid, anyone's. Right, Left, conservative, liberal, Democrat, Republican, Christian, Buddhist, Pagan. Use your own mind, that's why you were given one. Examine, question, do what's right for you first, everything else will fall in place from there, quit looking for the path, you're already on it.

. . . .Come out of the gate each morning with both barrels blazing, pedal-to-metal, full-tilt boogie, all-in and balls-out, what's stopping you? Do you want to live forever? That'd be boring.

. . . .Got your back. somewhere out there in the night

. . . .Kiss your kids, tell the ones you love out loud that you do. Seize the precious moments before they're ripped away from you. This rodeo is a one-way ticket and no one, absolutely no one gets out alive. There aren't a lot of second chances, and we don't get to dictate terms and circumstances of how the ticket gets punched. This ain't no dress rehearsal, and the curtain's gone up, it's real and right now. It's not about yesterday or tomorrow. It's about right fucking here, right fucking now. This, what you're reading, what you're hearing, is the proof, the words, the sounds and the sights of someone changing his own life and his own world and not being afraid to put it out there. What have you done for yourself lately and why are you waiting? Do it now.

The Desolation Angel
from somewhere halfway to Heaven, and just a mile out of Hell

You know someone like me, there's still a few of us left. If we have to, we'll stand at the gates of Hell and hold the last train home for you.. . . . . .