Everybody knows at least one. A friend or family member who forwards you ridiculous emails, generally about one world government or Obama taking your guns away- he’s not, btw- or posts equally stupid crap on Facebook that makes you, by association in public, appear to be in solidarity with whatever nonsense their fevered brains cook up between World Nut Daily and Fox “News”. You can delete the emails or turn off their wall in Facebook, but still it leaks through. You can attempt to reply, but the true believers will never be convinced by mere facts, not when “FREEDOM!” or “LIBERTY!” is at stake- and they eventually make every argument boil down to that. For example, Michelle Obama wants to take away your breadsticks, don’t ya know? Probably the first step in the Obama plan of having us eat Soylent Green. You can go on and on, but I have to keep my blood pressure low, so I won’t.

But one of the most infuriating biases you run up against is the conservative manta that global warming or climate change is all a big hoax meant not to save the planet from its most meddlesome inhabitants, but rather a cunningly devised scheme to ban capitalism. Not that capitalism doesn’t deserve it, in a way- eat any shrimp from the Gulf recently? But any mention of cap and trade, or increasing car mileage standards gets the Hannity’s and the Cato Institute in a uproar, and they go on for hours about “evil liberals” and their “environmental activism” that is ruining life here in “…the greatest, best country God has ever given man on the face of the earth.” Now, I recycle and drive a hybrid, so apparently I too want to ban capitalism, by their fractured logic. Funny, I thought I did it to actually reduce my impact on the world. Gosh, I’ve been duped by those evil treehuggers!

Earlier in the week a friend posted this:

with “The picture says it all…” atop it. Now, the gist of the picture is that anytime large amounts of “liberals” get together, they trash the place. You heard the same charge after protesters filled the Wisconsin capital, and it was equally erroneous. The picture above, near as I can tell, is the aftermath of Occupy Oakland, after the police fired upon non-violent protesters with rubber bullets and tear gas. When you’re running for your life, you don’t have time to take down your tent. The police did that for you, after the park was cleared, by flattening the protesters personal property in a “search for contraband”. So much for the “picture says it all”- as long as the image can be used for propaganda, it will.

Well here’s an image that Sean Hannity won’t like:

That’s Miami. See, to some Floridians, climate change isn’t a myth, its actually happening in their front yards:

“Kipness says he never saw such flooding until a decade ago, but now sees it up to twice a day during the fall, when tides are especially high. He says he’s watched the undersides of $100,000 cars get rusted away by salt water.

This happens, many experts say, because of rising sea levels attributed to the melting of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. We can expect to see more of the same across South Florida in the coming years, as a warming climate accelerates the faraway melting. Researchers are just now beginning to grapple with what this will mean for the inner workings of the city.”

Cable news was all over the “climategate” myth, all smug and self-righteous that they had vindication of a hoax. But when Richard Muller, a former “skeptic” on climate change published “The Case Against Global-Warming Skepticism” in the Wall Street Journal, the Daily Show found that the 24 hours a day cable news organizations could only devote 27 seconds to the piece. Doesn’t matter the damage they did trumpeting disinformation, just so long as their rhetoric continued. Who cares about the facts? In an age where human beings are undoubtedly the most educated they have ever been, we still have to suffer from religious extremists “debating” evolution, or quoting fairy tales from a book of mythology to deny gay rights. Facts are open to bidding- and the Murdoch’s of the world, they have deep pockets. Maybe when the underside of their Mercedes gets rusted from saltwater in South Beach, they’ll come around.

Of course, then it’s most likely too late.

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
Delivered 4 April 1967, Riverside Church, New York City

King made that remark in a speech entitled Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence. And now, 44 years later, we have arrived at a point in our history where we have finally been forced to confront that edifice. The month-long Occupy Wall Street movement has already achieved more than we could hope, simply by raising the point. The point that government has failed us, big business has abandoned us, and that for the majority of people in this world, life is a narrow straightjacket of economic slavery. King was right, of course; we don’t need coins flung at us. Rather, the system where 400 people in the United States have wealth equal to the bottom 150,000,000 needs to change. Change because it is grotesquely unfair. Change because it is unsustainable.

The dynamic of capitalism is relentless growth, an ever-expanding pool of consumers. For a finite resource such as our planet, this is obviously impossible. We have long past reached the point of diminishing returns. No matter how cheaply you can make them, once everyone has a cell phone or a TV, you can’t sell anymore. The robber barons of Wall Street knew this long before the man in the street, that’s why they came up with default credit swaps and derivatives. They cost nothing but fictional money to produce, deliver vast returns when they work- and even more when they fail. Of course, only the 1% get anything from them. They are the ones who reap the rewards, adding more and more fictional money to their coffers, without producing a thing. The only time the entire arrangement is brought to the attention of the rest of us is when their irresponsible gambling has gone woefully sour and we have to bail them out. At this moment instead of watching Bank of America fail and their management team in jail, we’re about to pay up another 75 trillion because their 3 Card Monte scheme in Europe went belly up. No one but the 1% got anything out of this. Not one job (other than hedge fund managers) got created, not one factory was made, no bridges got repaired.

We have no idea how the OWS movement will end up- I suspect it won’t be pretty- but its a beginning. When people take their money out of the behemoth “too big to fail” banks- at the point of getting arrested- and put their savings in a local credit union, its a beginning. When people who can’t occupy Wall Street instead beginning addressed their concerns via Occupy the Boardroom and cause panic among the plutocracy, its a beginning. When the grotesque imbalance in the pay of CEOs versus the workers in this county results in the public shaming of these leeches instead of flattering reach-arounds on CNBC and Fox, its a beginning.

This is a discussion I never thought I would see in our country. When people are awaken to the truth they can do one of two things. They can ignore it and live their days in a comforting fog of unreality, or they become energized to make a change. I believe we are witnessing the dawn of some sort of evolution in our way of thinking, one that looks past short term gains for long term results. One that values school teachers more than the Chairman of the Board. Where people are not just wage slaves and consumers, but equals. I don’t expect this discussion to be done in my lifetime. And I suspect it will get messy- as Gandhi said First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you,… and we’ve seen the inklings of that already, with the fraudulent “We Are the 53%” movement- but remember how the quote ends:

Then you win.

It’s taken 44 years for America to “see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring”. How long will it take to find the answer? Who knows. But finally, we’re having the discussion.

If you’re a GOP voter you’ll probably not look back in fondness at the first week of October. Everywhere you turn that demon reality smacks you yet again. First, Chris Christie says, for the 1000 time, that he’s not running for president. Not that he was a viable candidate; for all his “let them eat cake” attitude toward his citizens he shows a little too much sense when it comes to say gun control, immigration and climate change. The GOP, the party that believes science is a debating society certainly isn’t going to flock to a guy who says humans can affect the weather, surely you jest.

Then the hammer fell down on the legions of Facebook/Fox News devotees as Sarah Palin made it official, that she’s not running for president. As one wag said, now she can quit jobs she can’t even get. Not that she could have been elected; she polls in the single digits and outside of a green screen at Fox, she doesn’t exist. But I’m sure we’ve not see the last of her. Five minutes after Obama takes the oath again, she be back on Facebook spewing her own particular insipid vision and hawking whatever TV show or infomercial she has running.

Yes, I said Obama takes the oath again. The eventual GOP candidate is Mitt Romney, and he’s just a pale caricature of Obama himself. The biggest thing against Obama, to the minds of a GOP voter is the Affordable Heath Care act, and it was the brainchild of Mitt when he was Governor of Massachusetts. And I imagine that quip “Corporations are people too” will come back to bite him, as it should. The rest of the woeful crew- Cain, Perry, et al, well, they’re just too insignificant to matter. The only candidate polling better against Obama is “Unknown Republican”, meaning that any of the ones that are actually running are wasting their time. The guy who killed Bin Laden and quotes Ronald Reagan is going to be hard to beat down the stretch, and while the average GOP voter will hold their nose and cast a ballot for Romney, so will the Democratic base-whipped puppy that they are- vote for Obama.

The world has gone into mourning over the death of Apple visionary Steve Jobs, and you know, no matter how much they like their iphones, the attention given to such a liberal giant must be madding to the true believers of the GOP. He made his fortune not by government bailout or derivatives, but by making a product someone wants to buy. Take that, auto industry. The man hand-picked by Jobs to run Apple, Tim Cook? Gay. Take that, hate groups such as American Family and Pat Robertson.

And finally, Occupy Wall Street is growing, with labor unions, nurses and even veterans joining the cause. And don’t think it has nothing to do with you, loyal GOP voter. Sure, Herman Cain can call the protestors “anti-American“, but that’s because he, like his party, are beholden to greed. There is nothing more American than protest, and while I think in the end this drama will end poorly- Major Bloomberg is just itching for the chance to really call out the goon squads and protect his base-hell, you don’t think JP Morgan just gave them 4.5 million for nothing, do ya? No, this probably will not be our Arab Spring- but its a start. As any ’60s hippie can tell you, getting Maced in the face doesn’t make you go home- it makes you angry. And the last thing any GOP voter wants is a bunch of 20-somethings getting riled up- and going to the polls. Nope, the first week in October hasn’t been kind to the GOP, for as much has they try to run from it, reality eventually wins. What did Stephen Colbert say? Oh yeah.

“Reality has a well-known liberal bias.”

Heh heh.

R.E.M. had been a part of my musical world since I graduated high school in 1980, yet their demise was clearly a non-event in my life. I hadn’t listened to any new music by them in years; while I still enjoy Chronic Town and Murmur, after that they seemed to be more obvious, less mysterious. But their breakup made me realize something about myself, and the world around me.

They came along when I, and most of my generation were shrugging off the ways of adolescence and the enforced conformity of high school and going out in the world. No longer would we be riding in the same cars to the same parties with the same friends listening to either Pink Floyd’s The Wall or the vapid Hotel California by The Eagles. For us, facing life on our own via college or work, meant discovery and the shock of something new. To some this was a heady sensation. I remember discovering a new band every week, from punk to blues to country. I recall hearing Texas Flood by Stevie Ray Vaughan and early Jason and the Nashville Scorchers during one month in the early ’80s- and remember, at the time, no one played the blues and certainly didn’t combine Hank Williams and AC/DC the way the Scorchers did. It was grand. About the same time I drove my roommates crazy with a pair of singles- “Too Drunk To Fuck” by the Dead Kennedys and “Love Will Tear Us Apart” by Joy Division. To most of them music was a mindless supplement to whatever else you were doing, and it certainly wasn’t supposed to be as grating and angry as punk.

For those people, R.E.M. was perfect. While they didn’t sound like what you had just spend five years in high school listening to, you could still dance to them, and since Michael Stipe’s lyrics were impossible to fathom, you could safely ignore them. Couldn’t do that listening to Johnny Rotten’s acerbic “Anarchy in the UK”- I am an anti-Christ- or Black Flag. But for 20-somethings in a brave new world- even if that meant the community college down the road- R.E.M. was the soundtrack. And by the reaction that their breakup garnered in the online community, you’d think the last 25 years didn’t happen and “Don’t Go Back To Rockville” had just been released.

When I read “R.E.M.: America’s Greatest Band” in The Atlantic, it gave me pause. To me, R.E.M. had long since faded into the past, kept on a shelf along with Led Zeppelin or Aerosmith; i.e., music that once meant something to me at one time, but that time was past. I wasn’t the same person, and I had no desire to be that person again. But for some, R.E.M. reminds them of a charmed time in their lives when they were young, with the world in front of them. And not the world of mindless work and foreclosed houses, but rather a perhaps the last time you thought of yourself as able to do anything, the skies the limit. After a few margaritas and a spin of “Stand!” these people are able to escape back to a more hopeful time, free of the challenges of adulthood. Some people on Facebook remarked that the breakup meant “The 80s just died“- and for them, it probably has. To spend your life looking backwards at what used to be seems to me a life just waiting out the years, with no joy left to anticipate. And to me, that is inexcusable. I relish the thought of a lifetime yet to come, with new books to read, new musical journeys to follow. It’s what makes life worth doing. I don’t chide my friends for their nostalgia, but I don’t look at life that way. To each his own, I suppose.

And anyway, R.E.M. as America’s greatest band? Good grief, that’s silly. That would be Pere Ubu.

As Williams tried to continue asking his question, the crowd broke into applause, prompting Williams to pause.

“I’ve never struggled with that at all,” he said. “The state of Texas has a very thoughtful, a very clear process in place of which — when someone commits the most heinous of crimes against our citizens, they get a fair hearing, they go through an appellate process, they go up to the Supreme Court of the United States, if that’s required.”

For the state to commit murder against itself is barbaric, which is why most civilized countries don’t do it. American stands fast with other champions of “justice” such as Iran, North Korea, and Singapore in allowing the state to feed on itself. Our country’s inhumane tendencies can hardly be seen in a more compelling example than the death penalty, and it’s to our shame that it continues. As Helen Prejean said, “The profound moral question is not, “Do they deserve to die?” but “Do we deserve to kill them?”

It’s one thing to allow the state to kill it’s citizens, but it is a truly monstrous lack of humanity to cheer for it. Unfortunately it comes as no surprise that the crowd at the the Reagan Library- a library dedicated to legacy of yet another American tyrant- would stand in applause when Rick Perry’s murderous toll was brought into question. From the Reagan era at least, the GOP has garnered voters by being the “strong” party- of course, its strength comes from attacking the most vulnerable among us. Blacks, gays, women, Muslims- anyone that a typical GOP voter can rise above by squashing their humanity, they’ll do it, and cheer as they do so, apparently. In fact, you could say it’s their only real draw as a party- that someone, somewhere, isn’t worth as much as you. It is both terrifying and sad. Terrifying because of the damage they inflict from it, and sad because it reveals their utter lack of compassion.

Fox “News” Chris Wallace apparently thinks that Brian Williams’ question reveals yet another example of “liberal bias”. Of course there is no such thing in our Murdoch-controlled media universe- it there was, there would be no wars in the Middle East- or against unions, for that matter. Or the death penalty. Liberal bias is a fiction spouted by Fox, Rush et al to allow their Orwellian disinformation to prattle on 24/7. But beyond that, Wallace’s question reveals so clearly the “conservative” mindset:

Chris Wallace appeared on Friday’s Fox and Friends and assailed NBC’s Brian Williams over his question to Rick Perry about whether he ever struggled to sleep at night over the potential innocence of one of his many executed inmates, calling it an example of a “liberal bias.”

Any sane person would “struggle to sleep at night” over the killing of another. At least, you hope they would. The case Williams was referring to was Rick Perry’s apparent murdering of an innocent man. We can expect no humility from Perry- he’s a politician, and a Texas one at that. Forgiveness and big thinking aren’t in his makeup, whereas lying and vengeance is. But apparently just asking the question- do you struggle to sleep at night over potentially killing a innocent man- is liberal. To be troubled by the awesome power of the state to kill it’s own, that’s liberal. To have doubts about the innocence of one you condemned to die, that’s liberal.

If evidence of humanity therefore is liberal…sign me up.

Since I’ve been at home for the last month, I’ve wasted way too much time on the net. Do this too long and you get overloaded with information, so that you wouldn’t know a good idea if it bit you on the ankle. But one thing I can tell you without any fear of being contradicted- there are a lot of foolish, foolish people out there, who, in our age of “If I say it, it must be so!”, distrust of reality, 24/7 vomit of opinion think that whatever they have to say is, um…relevant. Before the internet and cable news these people were confined to the fringes of society- a sort of Hazel Motes you might say. No more.

To change the beliefs of an entire community, only 10 percent of the population needs to become convinced of a new or different opinion, suggests a new study. At that tipping point, the idea can spread through social networks and alter behaviors on a large scale.

That’s scary stuff. Combine that with the never-ending barrage of propaganda from cable news being pumped everywhere, you can see how the most idiotic of notions gets a foothold in our national discourse- particularly if there’s money to be made. Now, I could devote a full, thoughtful piece to each of the following, but really, I think I’ll cut to the chase.

If you’re attempting to teach “creationism”, deny climate change, or think that homosexuals “choose” who they’re attracted to (but some how you didn’t pick yours, imagine that), oh, shut up. There’s a nifty fact about science- it has a self-correcting aspect build in it. It’s called testing. If one scientist decides to make the claim that huffing Marlboro’s doesn’t cause cancer, then a score of other scientists will test it, find that in fact, smoking kills you, and move on. No matter how great your faith is (which must again be noted, is defined as “believe in things not seen”), no matter how many episodes of PTL club you preach it on, science will always “win”. The Dali Lama once said “If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change.” Buddhism gets it, wonder when the rest of the world will accept it? Until then, please shut up.

One of the greatest things about how our country was setup is the notion of “one man, one vote”. A great amount of bloodshed and struggle led to it, and it’s a cornerstone of our democracy. Everyone gets to do it, even blacks. Or women. Or poor people. So Matthew Vadum, “Registering them to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals,” , please shut up. Go find a island and you can be a king and let anyone vote or not, but here in America, your idea is repugnant. Then again, look at what network let him say it.

The only people who want you to be concerned- and give up your rights and tax dollars for “national security” about Muslims and “Sharia” are people who stand to profit from your misconceptions. If we haven’t made this a Christian nation in 222 years or so, despite the majority of people who proclaim themselves as such, how would you think that Muslims, who only account for 2% of our population, would do it? So Frank Gaffney, Alan West and all the other “Sharia scaremongers”, please shut up. Your continued employment may well rest on feeding disinformation to the fearful rabble, but it doesn’t make it accurate- or any less vile.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. You could fill a dozen columns like this, but frankly, who’s has the time- or the stomach? There are far more pressing things in the world that we could be doing instead of this- go find them. Turn off the internet, read a book. Take a walk. Volunteer. But if you want to fill the world with disinformation, bigotry and hatred, please shut up. We’ve certainly had enough.

That the United States will no longer function as an empire is plainly evident to anyone who cares to look. Our government is, to put it nicely, “dysfunctional” – the actual word is criminal. It exists solely, at this late hour, to funnel money to the wealthiest 1%. There is no free market – not that we had any at any time in our history anyway. The rich make the rules, and they always get theirs first. The only sops given to “the people” is just enough to keep them off the streets. The powerful care not a whit about whatever your pet issue is- and if they seem to care, just follow the money. Drug legalization? It only exists to create a criminal class and those that get rich off it. And don’t forget the medical community, who of course don’t want marijuana legit- a weed that grows in a ditch, has never resulted in one death? Who would need big pharma, and their willing pill-pushers in the AMA?

Or, perhaps this:

“Almost $43 million from seven charitable groups went toward financing anti-Muslim campaigns, the report said, including proposed state laws to ban judges from considering Islamic laws in U.S. courts, opposition to the Islamic center near Ground Zero, and a general encouragement of anti-Muslim rhetoric in politics and elsewhere.“

Dig down deep enough, and you’ll find, I bet, money to made. As long as our population has someone to blame, they will keep the war machine going, cable news will have good ratings, and moron politicians will get elected spouting gibberish like “Sharia law”, no matter how insane it appears to normal people. And while we bicker about it, the relentless, always hungry for more, damn the little people orgy of greed continues. Unstopping, unregulated, oblivious to everything but itself greed. People on every “side” can prattle on about “entitlements” and austerity in some Randian circle jerk, or on the other, wanting a Prius and a solar panel installed by the government. But as long as our country things of itself as the world’s policeman, nothing will ever change.

And because the United States has the world’s largest economy, its share of world military spending is outsized, accounting for 43 percent of all the military spending on Earth — six times as much as China, which has the world’s second largest military budget and accounts for 7.3 percent of world military spending. Russia accounts for just 3.6 percent.

This is going to require serious rethinking of what we perceive to be our strategic threats and whether the United States can continue to afford to be the world’s peacekeeper.

Of course it can’t- not to mention it shouldn’t. But every rational person knows this, so there isn’t a lot to debate. At some point the money will run out- what do we do then? Will we go the USSR route, with rebellions and food shortages, or will we just fade in prominence ala the British?

For the U.S., declining economic growth and rising military commitments won’t necessarily signal the decline of Pax America unless others become disproportionately richer and stronger. That is why the rise of China and the resurgence of Russia are such threats to American power. And while it is difficult to imagine the U.S. accepting a diminishing status gracefully, it will have to find a destiny in that seam where finance and commerce meet politics and strategy. Post-imperial Britain shows a possible path.

As for me, I cannot wait. All empires fail, and Fox News notwithstanding, ours is not “the greatest glory God ever placed on the earth”. We will fail, one only wonders if it will be graceful or brutal. In any event, it’s past the point of if, but when. So, what do you do? Well, for starters, assume that its already happened, and that we’re five or fifteen years down the road. Do you live off the grid? Do you make most if not all your money in an underground economy or with barter? Do you grow food? There are a thousand things that can be done- investigate. But in a “post-American” world, things will be changed, some rapidly, some incremental. This will require you to adapt and evolve- or face a world unfamiliar.

One man spoke to this. He was Gandhi, and he spoke multitudes when he said:

You must be the change you want to see in the world.

Until you understand this – really understand this, deep in your soul, until it is second nature, like breathing, you will be forever out of step. You don’t want war? Then be a beacon of peace, not hostility. You want freedom for all? Then approach everyone as free. Quite simple. Except for actually doing it. It might take you a lifetime to achieve.

If you’re lucky.

Cobb Rep. Bobby Franklin found dead in home

EAST COBB — State Rep. Bobby Franklin (R-east Cobb), who was found dead at his home just before noon on Tuesday at the age of 56, had complained about chest pains on Friday.

I am ashamed to say that my first reaction to reading about the death of Georgia Representative Bobby Franklin wasn’t exactly admirable. Clarence Darrow said it best: “I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.” I’ve written about Franklin before here. I wasn’t kind to the man back in January, because he didn’t merit any. As I wrote then, legislators such as Franklin- or Michelle Bachmann- are completely useless when judged solely on the amount of actual work they produce, but as cheerleaders for “the cause” they are stellar. Bachmann mounts a presidential bid based on nothing more than being photogenic and quotable. (Much like our current President…). Only a nation as opulent as ours can afford, as I said then, “The luxury of nonsense”.

Franklin was a theocrat, who stated on his website the following: Representative Franklin has been called “the conscience of the Republican Caucus” because he believes that civil government should return to its biblically and constitutionally defined role. . For that alone he shows himself to be unworthy of holding elected office; there is no “biblically defined role” for government- in fact, its one of the tenets this nation was founded upon. If Bobby Franklin wore a turban and spoke Farsi, then the likes of Herman Cain would run him out of town on a rail, because evidently Franklin believed that there should be no separation of church and state.

But this is not meant to belittle the dead, but rather to share what struck me once I got past my initial reaction to this man’s death. This devoted Christian died alone, with no family near him. He had been divorced for quite a while, and his children were grown. It was only when he didn’t show up for church (after complaining of chest pains) that people began to wonder, and eventually police had to enter the house, finding him dead in bed.

That is sad. Sad for a man who clearly thought his life’s calling was to be an advocate for God via the legislative process. A man who believed us to be a Christian nation, despite all evidence to the contrary- and the law. How a man chooses to spend his life is his business, and if he wants to be a legislative Don Quixote, “forever tilting at windmills” so to speak, unable to achieve anything of note in his chosen profession, well, that was between Franklin and the voters of his district. A district that I lived in briefly and thankfully escaped, feeling trapped by pious pricks lauding their wealth and looking down their noses at anything marginally different than the habits of the swim/tennis communities that sprawl across this part of metro Atlanta. They kept electing this guy, year after year since 1996, and got little to nothing for it. He passed no real legislation, instead spending his time with attaching anti-abortion riders to other unrelated bills, attempting to return Georgia to the gold standard, and introducing legislation to change the language of rape cases from “victim” to “accuser”. Rather unchristian behavior, it seems to me, but since I’m not one, I can’t really judge his faith except in comparison to others. Folks such as Hosea Williams, legislator and minister who fed thousands each year at a massive Thanksgiving buffet, or Jimmy Carter, who builds shelter for the homeless.

Franklin, as far as I can determine, did nothing such as this. He devoted his life to being, essentially, an easily dismissed buffoon known more for idiotic- and unconstitutional, don’t forget- attempts at lawmaking, instead of using his faith and public office to actually do something, anything for those in need. No, Bobby Franklin was more comfortable with the judgmental aspect of faith, not the charitable. He was much like the former co-worker who I watched for three days during the horror of Katrina attempt to get a semi full of Gideon bibles to New Orleans. When I finally could take no more and asked why didn’t he try to get a truck full of say, WATER to those poor people, he was deeply offended and replied “People need bibles too!”. Not as much as they need food and clean clothes, you self-serving shithead. I imagine Franklin would have sided with my Gideon co-worker, unfortunately.

The Catholics say “Faith without works is dead.” And it died alone in an empty house, after achieving what, exactly? Now that is sad.

So sayth Bill O’Reilly…who then goes on to prove it.

“Look, once the public school system embraced secularism, Moses and his crew with the Ten Commandments were banished.”

For the record- something you’ll never rely upon Fox News to provide, but just so we’re clear, the event to which Captain Morality is referring to is the Atlanta school cheating scandal, in which 178 educators were found to have changed students answers on standardized tests in order, in part, to qualify for federal cash via programs such as No Child Left Behind. No students have been cited as participating- a fact that O’Reilly and his minions undoubtedly knew. But never one to let mere facts get in the way of his culture warring, O’ Reilly lays the blame for the scandal on, you guessed it, not enough Jeebus. Not the drive to compete in the score-oriented, students be damned world of “teaching the test”, not the immense ego of Superintendent Beverly Hall and those under her who wanted to shine in the academic world for higher salaries, none of that. Nope, it was because we didn’t teach kids about Moses.

The funniest part of this is, of course, that O’ Reilly blathers this nonsense as his employer, Rupert Murdoch, stands poised to watch his media empire crumble- because he cheated and lied. The entire reason for the existence of Fox News and the rest of the Murdoch empire is to funnel cash into Rupert’s pockets. If he has to gin up a few wars for the United States, paint Obama as a “jobs killing Marxist” or delete the voicemails of a dead girl, if it made Murdoch- and those contemptible enough to work for him money, well, that was all the morality necessary.

But it really gets good when the contractually required airhead blonde starts to babble:

“I think it’s getting worse,” Crowley remarked. “I think with the proliferation of media, too, you get an echo chamber where kids out there, okay, see people in authority, whether it’s the president, whether it’s members of Congress, Anthony Weiner or Barack Obama saying I’m going to cut the deficit my first term and blows it out of control. Or if they see O.J Simpson walking away committing a double homicide, getting away with it, Casey Anthony. They are learning the lesson of what they see out there in the culture. They are constantly thinking, ‘Hey, I could get away with it too.’”

Let’s take a glance at this unremarkable for Fox statement:

“I think with the proliferation of media…” The Murdoch media empire is the largest on Earth, so the “echo chamber” was by design. A carefully crafted house of falsehoods, slander and criminal activity- to sell newspapers and TV ads.

“Anthony Weiner or Barack Obama…O.J. Simpson…Casey Anthony” Lets link in the viewers minds Democrats and murderers, just in case you hadn’t been watching the previous 23.5 hours of the day. Of course, no mention of the lies of George “WMD” Bush, John “Hush money for mistresses” Ensign, or the score of other GOP lying sacks of crap.

“They are learning the lesson of what they see out there in the culture.” To wit, it’s ok to lie a nation into war, torture isn’t really torture, and if you raise taxes on the top 1% of the population, the world will end, but teachers, cops, and infrastructure, they’re expendable, and if you happen to bring this up, you’re engaging in “class warfare”.

“They are constantly thinking, ‘Hey, I could get away with it too.’” O’Reilly, how about you ask Dr. George Tiller about that one. Oh right, you can’t- in part because you ramped up the rhetoric about “Nazi stuff” and how Tiller was a “murderer on the loose”…until he wasn’t anymore, right Bill? Or perhaps Glenn Beck’s obsessions that in part drove Byron Williams to try and start a revolution by traveling to San Francisco and killing people of importance at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU. “I would have never started watching Fox News if it wasn’t for the fact that Beck was on there. And it was the things that he did, it was the things he exposed that blew my mind.”

Indeed, we have a trend of lying and cheating in this country. You can see it in every waiting room, on every wall of televisions in every Wal Mart. It’s called Rupert Murdoch and Fox News. O’ Reilly, heal thyself…or step off the edge of a building. Either would be a good start to eradicating this “trend of cheating and lying.”

I was fascinated to read Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine and its gripping saga of “disaster capitalism”, which can be quickly summed up as “making money out of misery”. Born from the ideas of legendary economist and poster boy for selfishness, Milton Friedman, you basically create a situation wherein a large amount of money is needed for basic survival, and offer it- with strings. The strings include privatization of natural resources, suspension of regulations relating to business, and usurious interest rates. From the 1971 coupe in Chile to the fall of the Soviet Union, the first guys on the scene (because they generally stage-managed the event to begin with) are carrying calculators, keeping a running total of just how much is available, and how cheaply can they get it. Of course, you needn’t create the disaster- your basic Katrina or tsunami will work just fine to give the money men an in, it only matters that the society you’re attempting to rob blind be on its knees- or at least, they think they are.

Welcome to America, the firesale, 2011.

If you were to only listen to our national media, you would think this country consists of nothing but unemployed losers getting tossed out of their house. We apparently don’t have the money to fund police in Texas, or women’s healthcare in New Hampshire, heck, the entire state of Minnesota is seemingly too broke to even stay open.

Its all bullshit, of course.

Our country is grotesquely wealthy- or at least some parts of it are. Defense contractors are doing swell, and nobody running a hedge fund seems to be using WIC vouchers to get their pate’. House Republicans- who raised the debt ceiling seven times under George Bush – suddenly don’t want to pay out the money they themselves voted to spend- which sounds mighty close to dereliction of duty to me. They are abetted by Goldman Sach’s boy at the top, Barry O, who is hectoring irate Democrats to shut their yaps about chipping away at Social Security, despite the fact that Social Security has absolutely nothing to do with the debt limit, and is fully funded until at least 2036.

When I read Klein’s book, I found it fascinating to watch how countries reacted to getting raped and robbed, and wondered what America would do. Apparently, we haven’t noticed yet, since a white girl killed her baby or something. Of course, we didn’t say anything when families from the Lower Ninth Ward were loaded into buses during Katrina and scattered across country, so that developers could walk off with their property for pennies. We didn’t say much when that pasty white fuck governor in Wisconsin, with a Koch brother’s hand on the back of his head, stripped the public unions of what little power they had, and forced the state into economic turmoil simply to give tax dollars to his rich backers. By the time the recall process up there finally works, he and his buddies will be sitting pretty on the wealth of his citizens, and we’ll have yet another failed state on the flag. Doubt that will matter much to the likes of Eric Cantor, who will actually make money if the US defaults on its debt- which, to my way of looking at it, is enough to force him to step down immediately. Then again, we have a court system stocked with theocratic jackwads from Liberty U and big business buttsuckers like “Who Me, Corrupt?” Clarence Thomas, so our recourse ain’t gonna be via the courts.

There’s always voting, right? Funny how the very people most likely to be effected by this faux crisis are the very ones most at risk for losing their right to vote, funny that is, until you realize that people actually sit down and write laws to keep the elderly, the poor and minorities from exercising their most basic right in this nation. Despicable. And even if you manage to vote, what will it get ya?

Barack Obama.

Oh, it was change all right. Instead of getting fucked by the right, you get sodomized by the left. He’s not a Marxist, he’s worse- he’s a Friedman. When our nation faced a economic crisis brought about in large part by uncontrolled defense spending and lax regulations of Wall Street, what did he do? Started more wars, and tossed bags of cash at bankers. Instead of actually doing something progressive about health care, he gave us mandates- and hints at raising the benefit age for Medicare.

I drive around metro Atlanta and see cars already sporting “OBAMA 2012″ stickers, and I just have to wonder…does the man actually have to come into your home and hold you up at gunpoint before you get it? The Shock Doctrine leads, apparently, to the Stockholm Syndrome.