Give me 15 minutes with W and I`d feel a whole lot better.

[democrank]

"I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family." Sure you do, George, you and the Orange Golfer.

What a disgusting mess that Junior Bush left us in and what a pile of preposterous excuses we`ve heard since his exit. It`s the damn teachers. It`s the BMW-driving welfare queens. It`s the born-in-the-USA Mexican babies. It`s the unions. It`s the freeloaders at the food pantries. It`s all those lazy donothings collecting unemployment checks and their lazy kids with $100,000 student loan debts. It`s probably even those money-grubbing cashiers at the grocery store demanding a livable minimum wage. It`s all those "other" people, the ones Dick Cheney never rubbed elbows with when he visited those private game preserves with the 600+ Raised-Just-For-You quail targets. Living cannon fodder, just like the soldiers Rumsfeld helped lie to their deaths or wheelchairs.

You`ll notice there are whole groups of people that not so much as a speck of formal blame landed on for any of the mess we`re in. Not any of the 59 gazillion corporations that share the same post office box in the Caymen Islands. None of those responsible for charging $63.42 for that $1.50 bottle of drugs. None of the marauding, lawless mercenaries we hired to police Iraq and Afghanistan. None of the torturers who started with naked pyramids and raced onward to drills and ice baths. Don`t you dare blame the bankers or their bought-and-paid-for-politicians because it`s clearly the tree huggers and the whale savers....and those who want to learn French and watch Frontline on Public Television.

We`ve heard a lot about chasms, like the difference between what this country takes in and what it spends. One chasm we don`t hear much about is the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots. The haves have a lot of representation in Washington. They have a lot of fans there, lot of little political worker ants. The family of four living in their station wagon in Hoboken? The unemployed carpenter with three kids and a brain tumor? The drug-addicted 16 year old homeless prostitute? Not so much. What the hell kind of governing body gives tax breaks to companies that send our jobs overseas while it goes on a national campaign against teachers and collective bargaining? Who in their right mind would allow a system where people have to spend hundreds of dollars a month for health insurance? Too bad we couldn`t request the help of about 50 Egyptians. They`d show us a thing or two about principle-driven actions.

Right now we have a televised Charlie Sheen-athon. Think about it. Soldiers on their fourth tour, factories boarded up, over 2,000,000 people in prison, and an old man in my neighborhood trying to keep his big, worn out house warm by filling up a five-gallon can with fuel as he can afford it. It brings tears to my eyes.

[Newest Reality]

1. Excellent! Right on the spot! - NT

[catnhatnh]

2. Well Said. K&R N/T