Janis Joplin once sang someone else’s song very poignantly – “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose…” – and that’s semi-true in my experience. We all make choices about what’s important in our lives, and usually become enslaved to that which we choose. At the low end of the scale there’s never enough, just paying the bills is a constant struggle. At the high end of the scale there is also never enough. The thirst for more and more and more rules lives and ruins them too.

As Wall Street melts down we’re suddenly informed we must Spend, Spend, Spend!!! They can never make up their minds. Either we’re not saving enough or we’re not spending enough, it’s always our fault. I call bullshit. Slave wages have not even kept up with the cost of living, they can’t have it both ways.

I read about a 50-something day care worker yesterday who a coworker noticed sitting in the corner crying. When asked what’s wrong, she finally said she couldn’t feel her face. The coworker was alarmed, saw one side of her face drooping as they were talking, speech slurring. She drove her friend to the hospital, but the woman just cried harder and wouldn’t get out of the car. Said yes, she must be having a stroke, but if she walked in the door she’d lose everything – house, car, meager income (job)… she was terrified. Her friend finally talked her into going, she is still in the hospital and her coworkers are trying very hard to raise the tens of thousands she’ll need to pay for the care. There is no insurance at that end of the scale.

Some people on that discussion board from Europe and Australia were horrified. Simply trying to imagine what it must be like to face utter ruin just because you need to see a doctor – when you might be dying. Where dying is the “reasonable” choice, just so your children aren’t left bankrupt. Every other civilized country in the world provides basic health care for their citizens. Only in America…

This is wrong. We all work, much harder than the greed-head capitalists who skim the wealth we create for themselves. There are only so many hours in a day, and humans need sleep. If two full-time minimum wage jobs or three part-time minimum wage jobs – 16 hours a day, the kids are home alone – can’t provide a decent income, it’s NOT because these people are “lazy” or “shiftless” or anything. That’s wrong too. Now that Wall Street has cashed-out, millions who are very much willing to work won’t have jobs – there won’t be any. Great Depression v2.0. This is what unfettered ‘free market capitalism’ has wrought. It’s not pretty, and I sincerely doubt Jesus would approve.

So the haters are busy whipping up more hate. Buzzwords like “socialism,” taxing the rich, scary black people, gays and terrorists around every corner… “God’s Voter Guide.” That’s f***ing obscene! Dogs and cats living together, total chaos!!! Booga Booga, blah, blah, blah, Osama bin Laden, blah, blah, blah, Barack HUSSEIN Obama, blah, blah, blah. Disgusting.

We need change, not hate. Hate’s not going to help anyone, it’s just going to cause more pain. Maybe if the so-called Christians spewing hate 24-7 and worshipping golden bulls on Wall Street were exposed as the liars, posers and hypocrites they truly are, we could finally all work together to improve our nation and everyone’s lives. As if this were the United States of America, sans secessionists and domestic terrorists in the White House.

There’s a difference between “socialism” that has the government working for the people, and “socialism” that has government working for the corporate greed-heads. One is how the rest of the free world functions these days. The other is fascism. Things can’t go on like this, so when the dust clears which choice will we make? Valueless money is just mammon. Belongs to Caesar, not to God (who is pennyless). Our nation is drowning in it. If We the People ever come to our senses, we’d realize there are way more of “us” than “them.” So I hope. Right now that’s pretty much all there is, and a great many others are hoping too…

Happy Halloween – Booga Booga!!!

This Years’ Osama bin Laden

When it was announced last week that bin Laden had sent another of his annual video greeting cards to America, I didn’t even bother to view any out-takes or try to guess if this year’s bin Laden is the real McCoy or just another bad actor too fat or too black to pull it off. I figure if George Bush isn’t concerned enough about him to care, why should I?

Again counter-terrorism expert Larry Johnson agrees with my take, though he beat me to the analysis this time. On his blog he calls it The Bin Laden Video Nonsense and complains about this bin Laden’s dyed beard – Grecian Formula for facial hair.

Some Other Years’ Osama bin Laden

Though to be honest, I’m not convinced there actually is such a person as Osama bin Laden. Oh, there might once have been one. A disgruntled fundamentalist from a too-rich Saudi family who had enough contacts in Islamic terrorist circles to make him useful to our interests in Afghanistan back when the world’s poorest nation and primary opium supplier was the Soviets’ problem.

Why bin Laden hates the U.S. has been analyzed to death in the last six years, so I won’t repeat it. I don’t think it matters because I think he died years ago. His money may still be buying guns and IEDs and recruiting gun-ho suicidal maniacs to the cause, so in a way he does live on in the offspring of his ideas and ideals.

Osama bin Laden entered my consciousness from the overwhelmed CNN message board launched within minutes of the coordinated al Quaeda attacks on the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998. Having kin in the foreign service who had only the month before left an embassy in Africa for new assignment, the bombings came way too close to home. Went to CNN’s board because information was coming in fast and furious from the scenes – much faster than news reports or articles could be written and aired.

At any rate, after just a few hours of watching the action, I came away from the analysis with the impression that this Saudi mercenary and Mujahadeen legend was the spiritual inspiration and endowment angel of al Quaeda. As opposed to being a physical presence within it and personally guiding all its operations.

Which explains a lot, both about the propaganda machine the current Bush administration built up around bin Laden (including the annual video greeting cards that always seem to star someone who doesn’t look much like bin Laden), and the complete lack of actual concern in that administration about bin Laden or where he might be hiding. If the man’s dead, why waste the effort to ‘find’ him?

Bin Laden was once a useful hired gun for the U.S. to use against the Soviets and has proved a quarter of a century later to be an even more useful bogey-man to use against America. His visage feeds the fearful hype Bush-Cheney manipulated so masterfully to get us into the current (and never-ending) Oil Wars, and to keep the citizenry scared enough to tolerate the gutting of our Constitution and reorganization of the government toward a police state in the wake of 9-11.

So despite sad remembrances on the 6th anniversary of the attacks, the cartoon bin Laden video greeting card didn’t interest me, scare me or anger me. It’s just more hype. One of these days perhaps a majority of Americans will stop being afraid of a dead man and ask the cyborg who was actually running the show from a bunker in an ‘undisclosed location’ why he allowed the entire bin Laden family to fly back to Arabia without questioning following 9-11.

Or why we didn’t just separate Osama’s portion of the family fortune from the al Quaeda death machine right then and there. As ‘Deep Throat’ told Bob Woodward in the basement of a parking garage outside D.C. about the skullduggery of a previous war-mongering administration, “Follow the Money.”

None of us were flying in those fearful days. Remember how strange the sky looked without contrails? So blue, and so quiet. We were still mourning nearly 3,000 deaths in the most horrendous attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. Now the U.S. death toll in Iraq – which had nothing to do with 9-11 – is approaching 4,000. Estimates for Iraqi civilians dead due to our invasion and occupation hit more than 100,000 last year (not that we’re actually counting).

Death and destruction breeds death and destruction. We all know this, yet we play that game anyway. On Monday General Patreus testified to Congress about how he needs another 6 months to gage whether the surge is working in Iraq. While more U.S. soldiers continue to pay the ultimate price, and many more are maimed for life.

Maybe it’s time to start the lottery on who gets to be the last brave American soldier to die for George Bush’s mistake, and when. Or we could just have a Photoshop contest for the star of the next Osama bin Laden video greeting card. I don’t know about any of you, but I know I could probably ’shop up a Max Headroom CG version that would be more believable than the last few that have been used as a poor excuse for American politicians to sacrifice more of our rights on the altar of Forever-War.

Unhappy Anniversary, America.