In the article, which lambasts “the government’s” (code for the Obama administration) $787billion stimulus plan for providing “few or no incentives for private-sector job growth,” Gingrich relies on a favored technique of the conservative right: convoluted statistical analysis that links the plan to increases in the national debt and unemployment. “Since the first authorization of these four stimulus packages, the national debt has increased by $2.9 trillion while the unemployment rate rose to a 26-year high before backing off slightly to 10%.”

Yeah, right. And since the first authorization in February 2008 I’ve lost 10 pounds and gotten more gray hair.

But the GOP’s new math doesn’t stop there. Additional stimulus, according to Gringrich and Varroney, would not create jobs but instead “lead to even higher budget deficits.” Real job creation, they contend, should start “with the goal of a balanced budget” — and (though not mentioning him by name) a return to the fiscal discipline not seen in government since the Democratic administration of President Bill Clinton! “From 1995 to 1998 federal spending rose by an average of 2.9% per year, the lowest increase since the 1920s. We can apply the same principles that worked at that time to create jobs and balanced budgets.” In a delicious bit of irony, their call for financial sobriety amounts to a repudiation of Republicans’ Reagan-era spendthrift policies, which were trumpeted in 2002 by then-Vice President Dick Cheney: “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter.”

Predictably, Newt’s plan for rebuilding American jobs and business calls for smaller government, less taxes and more domestic oil drilling. Just what you would expect from a revolving-door Washington insider who “pulled in an impressive $8.1 million in the first half of 2009, a cash haul that enabled the former speaker of the House to finance a robust political operation that includes at least 17 employees,” according to Politico.com. Major contributors include oil interests and anti-labor groups such as the Workforce Fairness Institute, a business-backed group opposed to the Employee Free Choice Act.

When you know who’s bankrolling his operation, Newt’s ideas and opinions are revealed for what they really are: more of the same fake populism that sparked the recent Tea Party demonstrations against health-care reform and that Republicans will intensify in the run up to the 2010 elections.

Whether they will be able to recapture one or both houses of Congress depends on how vulnerable the public is to the non-stop propaganda coming from the right-wing media echo chamber, which now reverberates throughout the mainstream communications network with equal decibels.

Richard, Alias, Cosanostradamus, and Sara -- you've done great work!

Peace, love and joy to everyone!

Sadly, the party of Abraham Lincoln has today become the know-nothing, do-nothing, feel-nothing party of Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin — a multi-millionaire talk radio blowhard and a quarter-wit ex-governor/VP candidate turned best-selling author, respectively.

But despite the folly of the GOP's political agenda — built on a subprime foundation of tax cuts and unlimited military spending — it still rings true for a large segment of the public due to the failure of invertebrate Democrats to offer real solutions to today's complex problems. And because it enriches the few at the expense of the many, the stage has been set for greater economic and social turmoil in an era of celebrity worship and gossip as news.

As The New York Times op-ed columnist Paul Krugman writes of last Friday's House of Representatives vote on financial reform, "every single Republican...voted against a quite modest effort to rein in Wall Street excesses." Krugman goes on to describe a conservative narrative that "reflects the extent to which the modern Republican Party is committed to a bankrupt ideology, one that won’t let it face up to the reality of what happened to the U.S. economy."

"Talk to conservatives about the financial crisis and you enter an alternative, bizarro universe in which government bureaucrats, not greedy bankers, caused the meltdown. It’s a universe in which government-sponsored lending agencies triggered the crisis, even though private lenders actually made the vast majority of subprime loans. It’s a universe in which regulators coerced bankers into making loans to unqualified borrowers, even though only one of the top 25 subprime lenders was subject to the regulations in question.

"Oh, and conservatives simply ignore the catastrophe in commercial real estate: in their universe the only bad loans were those made to poor people and members of minority groups, because bad loans to developers of shopping malls and office towers don’t fit the narrative."

Krugman traces the roots of the current crisis to a pattern of financial deregulation that removed the safeguards to the system put in place after the Great Depression, which had worked effectively for nearly four decades since World War II.

"The first big wave of deregulation took place under Ronald Reagan — and quickly led to disaster, in the form of the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s. Taxpayers ended up paying more than 2 percent of G.D.P., the equivalent of around $300 billion today, to clean up the mess."

While Krugman concludes that GOP's obsolete belief system could lead to another economic meltdown, Chris Hedges warns that our obsession with the "trivial and the absurd" in "a world of make-believe" make it nearly impossible to face reality and address society's ills.

"Many have lost hope. Fear and instability have plunged the working class into profound personal and economic despair, and, not surprisingly, into the arms of demagogues and charlatans... Unless we rapidly re-enfranchise these dispossessed workers, insert them back into the economy, unless we give them hope, these demagogues will rise up to take power. Time is running out. The poor can dine out only so long on illusions. Once they grasp that they have been betrayed, once they match the bleak reality of their future with the fantasies they are fed, once their homes are foreclosed and they realize that the jobs they lost are never coming back, they will react with a fury and vengeance that will snuff out the remains of our anemic democracy and usher in a new dark age."

In other words, contrary to the Obama administration's military build-up in Afghanistan, it is time to withdraw from the American empire and rebuild the republic...Holding those responsible for the worst financial crisis in our lifetimes accountable for their incompetence and greed is a good place to start.

If the declaration is seen as a rehash of old platitudes the food summit (like next month's Copenhagen summit on global warming) could end up as a farce, yet another cruel joke on the 1 billion people, or one-sixth of the world's population, suffering from poverty and hunger. "The summit was prompted by a surge in the prices of staples such as rice and wheat which last year sparked food riots from Bangladesh to Haiti," the FT story said.

Non-government organizations said the food summit, the first since 2002, would be a waste of time unless last-minute changes were made in the declaration, according to the story. Rich countries rejected the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's initial proposal to "achieve in five years the target level of 17% reached in 1980" by increasing agriculture's share of official development aid, which by 2006 had plunged to 3.8% of the total, the story said.

The rich countries are spending trillions on bank bailouts that line the pockets of Wall Street hucksters responsible for spreading economic chaos throughout the world. Poor and undernourished people, whose plight has been aggravated by the global financial crisis, receive a few crumbs.

As a result, every 3.6 seconds someone in the world dies of starvation – and 20,000 children a day die of poverty

For a shocking account of the devastating impact the industrialized countries' social-economic-political agenda has had, not only on the poor but the rest of us as well, check out the exceptional new documentary Collapse. "A chilling monologue of imminent catastrophe," The New York Times review said of author Michael C. Ruppert's one-man crusade to connect "the dots between population, economics and energy."

After seeing the film don't be surprised if you are moved to a) increase your charitable giving this holiday season and b) make a New Year's resolution to become active in restoring government of the people, by the people, for the people.

Either that or you might find yourself taking Ruppert's advice to stock up on gold and organic seeds.

Repair California, the umbrella group for the coalition of citizens, reformers and advocates, submitted the measures that would reform four areas of the state constitution: the budget process; the election and initiative process; restoring the balance of power between the state and local governments; and creating new systems to improve government effectiveness.

In endorsing the idea of a constitutional convention as a way to solve California's nagging political and fiscal problems, the Los Angeles Times editorialized: "A convention can work. It can give the constantly evolving state an updated government that better serves its restless people."

The ballot language filing came within days of a favorable Time magazine cover story on California, which concluded that despite being "stuck in an awful recession," the Golden State is "not imploding, which ought to be heartening to Americans regardless of ideology or geography."

The story advised readers to "ignore the California whinery. It's still a dream state"...on "the cutting edge of the American future - economically, demographically, culturally and maybe politically."

With 38 million residents and a $1.8 trillion economy (which would put it in the G-8 if it were a country), California is "the greenest and most diverse state, the most globalized in general and most Asia-oriented in particular at a time when the world is heading in all those directions," the article stated. In addition to leading "the nation in agricultural production," Time said California is "also an unparalleled engine of innovation, the mecca of high tech, biotech and now clean tech."

While highlighting California's "immense resources," its "incredibly dynamic economy" and its "enviably young and productive workforce," the article also called attention to the state's problems including a "dysfunctional" budget process and notorious "lobbyist-produced ballot initiatives," such as Proposition 13, which since 1978 has severly limited property-tax increases and choked off funding for schools and local governments.

Fortunately, the constitutional convention would directly address these issues as well as the state's two-thirds rule for increasing revenues. (For more information on the ballot measures, including the routes to become a delegate to the constitutional convention, click on the Repair California link above.)

We owe it to ourselves, and future generations, to seize this historic opportunity to restore the California - indeed, the American - Dream by supporting the effort to get the constitutional convention measures on next year's ballot.

Butler, who was twice awarded the Medal of Honor, was America’s most decorated soldier at the time of his death in 1940. Despite his antiwar views, Butler was a hero to rank-and-file military men for his bravery and support of the 1932 Bonus March on Washington by out-of-work veterans petitioning the government for stepped-up payment of their promised WWI bonus. He went on to gain national attention by testifying before a Congressional Committee investigating a conspiracy against President Franklin D. Roosevelt by right-wing business interests, described in the History Channel documentary “The Plot to Overthrow FDR.”

Written with piss-and-vinegar during the Great Depression, War Is a Racket was a work of conscience, as Butler explained: "Now that I see the international war clouds again gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out." Butler pulled no punches. The experiences that informed his tragi-comic condemnation of the profit motive behind war were summarized in the following passage from a 1935 issue of Common Sense magazine:

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his in three
districts. I operated on three continents."

Within the pages of War Is a Racket, Butler exposes the military-industrial complex as a tool of capitalist greed. The "speeches about patriotism, love of country" notwithstanding, only a very few enjoy war's "fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people - who do not profit," Butler warned more than 70 years ago.

In the chapter Who Pays the Bills?, Butler describes how the financial sector benefits in times of crisis. "We paid the bankers their profits when we bought Liberty Bonds at $100 and sold them back at $84 or $86 to the banker. These bankers collected $100 plus. It was simple manipulation. The bankers control the security marts. It was easy for them to depress the price of these bonds. Then all of us - the people - got frightened and sold the bonds at $84 or $86. The bankers bought them. Then these same bankers stimulated a boom and government bonds went to par - and above. Then the bankers collected their profits."

He also discusses how the state-reliant information apparatus beats the drum for military intervention. Recalling the lead-up to World War I, Butler writes: "We used propaganda to make the boys accept conscription. They were made to feel ashamed if they didn't join the army.

"So vicious was this war propaganda that even God was brought into it. With few exceptions our clergymen joined in the clamor to kill, kill, kill. To kill the Germans. God is on our side...it is His will that the Germans be killed...

"Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the 'war to end all wars.' This was the 'war to make the world safe for democracy.' No one told them that dollars and cents were the real reason."

When it comes to picking up the tab for war, Butler reminds us that "the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.

"If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veterans' hospitals in the United States...In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men - men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago...

"Yes, the soldier pays the greater part of the bill. His family pays it too. They pay it in the same heart-break that he does. As he suffers, they suffer. At nights, as he lay in the trenches and watched shrapnel burst about him, they lay home in their beds and tossed sleeplessly - his father, his mother, his wife, his sisters, his brothers, his sons, and his daughters."

Having first-hand experience as a racketeer in uniform, Butler knows precisely how to put an end to war. "You can't end it by disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate it by peace parlays at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions," he says in offering up a three-step plan to "smash the war racket."

"We must take the profit out of War.

"We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war.

"We must limit our forces to home defense purposes."

At barely over 40 pages, War Is a Racket would be a quick read for the president. He owes it to himself, and the millions of Americans who elected him overwhelmingly to serve as their commander-in-chief, to consider the wise counsel of a true American hero (if only as a counterweight to the adroit lobbying of the swivel-chair generals in Washington) in deciding whether to continue to conduct a war that benefits the very few, at the expense of the very many.

"It was a time of growth and abundance," Starr writes in his preface, recalling a time when California was not only a part of America but also something more. Or as Joel Kotkin reminds in his book review on Truthdig.com, "To millions in America and around the world, California grew to mean opportunity, sunshine and innovation."

How the state went from being a symbol of in Starr's words "a better American life" to the butt of late-night talk show jokes is rooted in Californians' "conflicting visions," according to Kotkin: "In 1964, the first year after the era chronicled in 'Golden Dreams,' Watts blew up, shattering the comfortable assumptions of a progressive, post-racial state.

"The business elite and the middle class were financing the ever-expanding California state. They saw their money go to the poor, to minorities and state employees. Particularly annoying were the university students, many of whom were in open revolt against the state, in the mind of much of the public that had nurtured them.

"By the early 1960s many of these latter Californians also were angry, but their rage would express itself not in riots, but at the ballot box, ushering in the age of Ronald Reagan. The period that follows 'Golden Dreams' emerges as one of conflicting visions, between greens, students and minorities, on the one hand, and largely suburban middle-class workers and business owners on the other."

What lies ahead for the state, and by extension the country, given California's status as a bellwether of national trends? Kotkin concludes the jury is still out. "The question now is whether California, down on its luck, will find a way to rebound, much as imperial Rome did after the demise of the Julian dynasty, or fall, like Athens, into ever more squalid decline. Does the state have a bright 'destiny' ahead or only more ruin?"

Despite California's much-heralded budget crisis and legislative gridlock, there is plenty of reason for optimism. The state is rich in natural resources; it is blessed with agricultural abundance; it remains a magnet for the businesses of the future including high-tech, entertainment and green industries and, perhaps most important of all, its diverse population and flexible labor force overflowing with knowledge-based-, service- and manufacturing workers are valuable assets in this era of globalization.

To be sure, we Californians have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to set the state on a course of sustainable prosperity for all based on good government, responsible revenue and spending policies and cultural harmony.

The movement for a constitutional convention is an important first step in putting our political and fiscal houses in order.

Yet our most significant challenges are cultural. For once we overcome what novelist and sometime California resident Thomas Pynchon calls the "invisible class force fields in the way of communication" between progressives, students, minorities, middle-class workers and business owners, California's Golden Age will return for good.

As part of its ongoing series on the Future of Investing, the FT recently ran an editorial package that focused on regulatory reform of the financial industry.

Various FT writers covered all angles of this important story - from bank capital requirements, risk management practices and investor protection to government bailouts and "moral hazard," how to wind down institutions deemed to big to fail and the inherent conflict in housing commercial and investment banking under one roof.

Unlike their counterparts across the pond the international writers were not preoccupied with the secondary issue of bankers' pay, which seems to dominate media coverage here.

FT contributors delve head-on into a topic that up until now has pretty much been taboo in the US press - namely Wall Street's magisterial influence on Capitol Hill, which is rivaled only by that of the military-industrial complex.

Other than RollingStone - which painted a not very flattering picture of the revolving door between Goldman Sachs, the US Treasury and Federal Reserve - domestic coverage of financial industry reform has predominately focused on solons' concern over bankers' outsized pay packages. What is missing is insight into Wall Street's monopoly on the legislative agenda in Washington.

For that we have to turn to the FT.

John Plender, in a piece on regulatory reform titled "How to tame the animal spirits," warns: "As the shock of the Lehman Brothers collapse a year ago retreats further from public consciousness, some experts fear that a once-in-a-lifetime chance to put to rights the system of controls and strengthen investor protection is slipping away."

The problem, as Plender and others such as FT columnist John Kay point out, is that any reforms "focused on the needs of consumers" at the expense of "the promotion of products and remuneration of producers" will be "violently opposed by the big banks, whose lobbying clout is legendary." Continuing, Plender recalls that Simon Johnson, former chief economist at the International Monetary fund, "said in recent testimony on Capitol Hill that the culture of deference towards the financial sector in a Washington heavily infiltrated by former investment bankers is similar to the emergence of financial oligarchies in emerging markets."

Plender cuts to the chase in a sidebar to the main article.

One congresssman, five finance lobbyists

Efforts by governments and regulators to improve investor protection by curbing what big banks and the like can do will run into resistance from a financial sector whose lobbying clout is strong.

Notably in the US, that power derives primarily from its deep pockets.

Between 1998 and 2008, Wall Street investment banks, commercial banks, hedge funds, real estate companies and insurance conglomerates paid an estimated $1.7bn in political contributions and spent a further $3.4bn on lobbyists. The figure comes from a report by Essential Information and The Consumer Education Foundation, two non-profit organisations. Their research shows that in 2007 the financial sector employed nearly 3,000 lobbyists, or five for each member of Congress, to influence policymaking.

Such purchasing of political influence is widely believed to have helped secure for Wall Street the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which prohibited the merger of commercial and investment banks, and the blocking by Bill Clinton’s administration of a Commodity Futures Trading Commission initiative to regulate financial derivatives.

“Over the past 30 years, this sector has benefited from a process of ‘cultural capture’, through which regulators, politicians and independent analysts became convinced this sector had great and stabilising technical expertise,” says Simon Johnson, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. “Big banks are, amazingly, still presumed by officials to have the expertise necessary to manage their own risks, to prevent systematic failure and to guide public policy.”

In a separate commentary elsewhere in the paper, Plender returns to the "culture of deference" theme: "Even today, many policymakers in the (Anglo-Saxon) countries continue to hold bankers in awe, in spite of the damage wrought by the financial crisis."

Finally, FT associate editor and chief economics commentator Martin Wolf said he doubts "the financial system now emerging from the crisis is safer, or better at servicing the public's needs."

As for "how to remedy this dire situation," Wolf concludes: "The most important point is that where we are now is intolerable. Today’s concentrations of state-insured private wealth and power must surely go. At present, the official sector believes tighter regulation, particularly higher capital requirements, can contain these risks. But this is likely to fail...the financial system is so inherently fragile that radical reform cannot be pronounced dead."

If you thought health-care reform was an uphill battle, try crossing swords with these guys. Big banks and their well-healed lobbyists will fight tooth and nail to restore "business as usual" and sky-high profits.

What, then, can progessives do to neutralize the "culture of deference in Washington" and give "radical reform" a fighting chance? Here is a three-point plan that combines advocacy and fun.

1) Run, don't walk, to see Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story," which opens nationwide tomorrow
2) Jam congressional in-boxes with email letters in support of a financial-transaction tax (see following post)
3) Organize anti-bailout tailgate parties across the country demanding citizen "death panels" for too-big-to-fail banks

If you have any more ideas, we'd love to hear them. And if you think economic justice is something worth fighting for, feel free to join us in spreading the word throughout the blogosphere.

If there is one thing that unites those on the right and the left who are speaking out against the direction the country is headed, it is their mutual disgust at the government’s hugely expensive bailout of the financial industry. Nothing provokes anger and distrust among people of both political persuasions than seeing the culprits behind the biggest economic catastrophe since the Great Depression become even more powerful compliments of "we the taxpayer" – especially when bonus payments on Wall Street now go hand in glove with massive layoffs on Main Street.

Despite the crisis, the remaining financial market participants have benefitted greatly from government bailouts. Thanks to capital injections, guarantees, treasury lending and asset purchases, liquidity provision and other central bank support the financial sector is cleaning up – and with fewer competitors.

Two years after the start of the crisis, some $18 trillion of taxpayer money has gone mostly to prop up banks while ordinary Americans are facing record home foreclosures, job losses and credit card delinquencies. This as industry lobbyists are working overtime in Washington to thwart even the limited, piecemeal reforms that Congress and the administration are developing in a half-hearted attempt to level the playing field.

It is clear that the financial industry’s blackmail has taken a toll across ideological lines. Indeed, conservative columnist David Brooks in an op-ed piece in The New York Times argues that “Red and Blue America” must move beyond “the obsolete culture war” and unite in “a movement to restore economic values.”

The goal of the movement, according to Brooks, “will be to make the U.S. again a producer economy, not a consumer economy. It will champion a return to financial self-restraint, large and small.”

Brooks frames the issue in terms of personal responsibility, calling on both sides to join together to reverse the “slide in economic morality.” In doing so, he emphasizes the movement “will have to take on what you might call the lobbyist ethos — the righteous conviction held by (special interests) that their groups are entitled to every possible appropriation, regardless of the larger public cost.” Furthermore, he says all options should be on the table. "A crusade for economic self-restraint would have to rearrange the current alliances and embrace policies like energy taxes and spending cuts that are now deemed politically impossible."

We agree that K-Street should be ground zero in the effort to restore fairness to our economic system. We also concur there should be no sacred cows. Towards this end, the movement’s first order of business should be to demand that the financial sector pull their weight in the crisis. The best mechanism to ensure their compliance would be a financial-transaction tax.

Such a fee on all trades of financial products, also known as a "Tobin Tax," is gaining advocates in world financial markets, most notably the UK and Germany. One proposal calls for a .05 percent tax to be levied across the G20 countries, which could yield $690 billion a year to finance the costs of the crisis.

The Wall Street bailout was an indirect assault on US taxpayers to cover the cost of the financial-sector's malfeasance. Citizens across the political spectrum are outraged, rightly so, that the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve acted as middlemen in a brazen scheme to transfer wealth from the working class to the rich.

The time has come for progressives and Tea Party demonstrators alike to put aide their differences over so-called "wedge issues" and unite behind a mutually beneficial campaign of economic justice. For without new forms of fiscal burden-sharing, those responsible for the crisis will continue not to pay their share - and the dispossessed will lose their faith in the democratic process.

But as Chris Hedges, writing on Truthdig, points out: their run has ended.

Our global economy, like our political system, has been hijacked by a tiny oligarchy, composed mostly of wealthy white men who serve corporations. They have pledged or raised a staggering $18 trillion, looted largely from state treasuries, to prop up banks and other financial institutions that engaged in suicidal acts of speculation and ruined the world economy. They have formulated trade deals so corporations can speculate across borders with currency, food and natural resources even as, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, 1.02 billion people on the planet struggle with hunger...

The power elite grasps, even if we do not, the massive fraud and theft being undertaken to save the criminal class on Wall Street and the international speculators of the kind who were executed in other periods of human history. They know the awful cost this plundering of state treasuries will impose on workers, who will become a permanent underclass. And they also know that once this is clear to the rest of us, rebellion will no longer be a foreign concept.

Benedicto Martinez Orozco, co-president of the Mexican Frente Autentico del Trabajo (FAT), who is among the protesters from around the world in Pittsburgh, told Hedges the leaders of the G-20 (the managerial representatives of the power elite) are scrambling to protect "their power and money after everything that has gone wrong."

"The draconian security measures," including the deployment of "a National Guard combat battalion, recently returned from Iraq" that have been "put in place to silence dissent in Pittsburgh" are a response to "the fear gripping the centers of power," says Hedges of the steps being taken to subvert the protests.

The battalion will shut down the area around the city center, man checkpoints and patrol the streets in combat gear. Pittsburgh has augmented the city’s police force of 1,000 with an additional 3,000 officers. Helicopters have begun to buzz gatherings in city parks, buses driven to Pittsburgh to provide food to protesters have been impounded, activists have been detained, and permits to camp in the city parks have been denied. Web sites belonging to resistance groups have been hacked and trashed, and many groups suspect that they have been infiltrated and that their phones and e-mail accounts are being monitored.

Despite such obstacles, Hedges implores the left to "move quickly" for "no one will save us now but ourselves."

Every day counts. Every deferral of protest hurts. We should, if we have the time and the ability, make our way to Pittsburgh for the meeting of the G-20 this week rather than do what the power elite is hoping we will do—stay home. Complacency comes at a horrible price.

Ralph Nader, the tireless consumer advocate/corporate critic/author and presidential candidate suggests another way to break the grip of the power elite. In his first work of fiction, "only the super-rich can save us!", he envisions a group of enlightened "megamillionaires and billionaires" answering the call of Warren Buffet, the world's richest man, to use their influence and resources to rescue the planet and its inhabitants from the plunder of the plutocracy.

Nader's utopian fantasy opens in a luxurious mountain resort overlooking "the lush green island of Maui and the far Pacific Ocean." It is the year 2006 and we see Buffett addressing his guests—who include such real-life personages as Ted Turner (the "Mouth of the South"), media mogul Barry Diller, Yoko Ono, hedge fund guru George Soros, Paul Newman, Bill Cosby and others—for the first time.

My friends, what brings us here is a common foreboding—a closing circle of doom. The world is not doing very well. It is spinning out of control...Many solutions have been proposed, yet even at the basic level of abolishing massive poverty and advancing public health, they are applied too slowly and haphazardly to achieve any real human betterment...For my own part, I must tell you that I am not the person I was a year ago. I've been thinking hard about what I want to do with my remaining years, with my capital, credibility and hopes for coming generations...I want to go out with having advanced and implemented a grand design, and I want to do it now with the best talent available. I suspect that similar feelings are stirring in your minds and souls as well, and that's why I put out the call to you.

Nader, speaking about his new book the other day on DemocracyNow!, said: "Our imaginations have been stifled by the grim reality of concentrated corporate power.

"And that's why I really wrote this book of fiction, because we are not imagining...what is necessary by way of money, organizers in the field, strategy, smarts, determination to break this massive corporate-state gridlock that's put our country into paralysis.

"So we have to break through, and the only way we can break through is the majesty of our mind generating a higher level of imaginative 'what if.' What if we have this kind of resource or these kinds of film(s)...or these kinds of mass media?"

With the promise of globalization exposed as a sham and a farce, Hedges and Nader definitely are on to something. One calls for direct action before it is too late against a rogue ideology that is fracturing the country, the other challenges us to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery in order to develop creative solutions to the seemingly insurmountable problems facing mankind in the 21st century.

Good ideas, both...But if all else fails, there's always the Mick Jagger method.

Senator Smerd: I wanna file a complaint.

CSO: Very well, sir. May I have your name.

SS: Senator Smerd!

CSO: Thank you, senator. I'll be glad to help. I see from our records you've called before.

SS: Yes. I called last week about a defective product. The penis enlargement splint you guys sold me didn't fit. It was too big.

CSO: I'm very sorry about that, senator. It was the smallest size we make. However, we did issue you a full refund - along with a voucher for 15% off your next purchase because you're such a good customer.

SS: Right. I appreciate the discount. But I still have a complaint to make.

CSO: Of course, senator. That's what I'm here for. Please describe the nature of your complaint.

SS: It's about my latest purchase. You sent it to the wrong address.

CS0: I'm terribly sorry, senator. Please accept our apology. I hope it didn't inconvenience you too much.

SS: As a matter of fact it did. You see, I ordered one of your Naughty Nighties for my mistress - she's a pretty little blonde who works in Congressman Blather's office - and you sent in to my home in Alabama, instead of the apartment in D.C. that I share with three other Christian conservative senators.

Well, my wife opened the package and she went ballistic! She threatened to divorce me - problem is, this isn't the first time something like this has happened; last summer it was that cute colored girl who was interning for Senator Thom - unless I go on Glenn Beck's show and make a public apology.

I'm up for re-election next year and this kind of thing could get out of hand if it's not handled just right.

CSO: I understand, senator. Again, please accept our sincere apology. Of course we'll credit your account for the full purchase price of the item, plus handling and shipping. And this time we'll throw in a 20% discount towards your next purchase.

Is there anything else I can do?

SS: No, unfortunately the damage is done. Just make sure your shipping department doesn't screw up again!

CSO: It won't happen again, senator. You have my word.

SS: We'll, that's good enough for me. You sound like a real nice young lady...are you married?

CSO: Yes I am, senator. My husband is a forklift operator but he got laid off last year and can't find work. I've been pullin' double shifts to try an' make ends meet.

SS: I'm sorry to hear that, little lady. I know things are tough, and I assure you we Republicans are doing everything we can to turn this economy around. It's the Democrats and their friends in Big Labor who are the problem.

They just don't get that the only way to prosperity is tax cuts and deregulation. They're nothing but a bunch of Socialists.

CSO: To be honest, senator, I don't follow politics. But I do watch Glenn Beck, and I look forward to seeing you on his show. I only wish it was under different circumstances.

SS: Now, don't you go and worry your pretty little head none. In fact, this might turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

You see, that Beck fella has it in for my probable opponent in next year's election. Don't ask me why, but I hear he's been trying hard to dig up some dirt.

So I'll go on his show all contrite and all, apologize to my wife and the good people of Alabama, ask for their forgiveness and swear with God as my witness that I'm a better person for all I've been through.

Then I'll change the subject and ask Glenn Beck if he's heard the rumor that my opponent has been receiving kickbacks from a company that does business with the Chinese. Not only that, he's pro-choice, he favors gun control, he's soft on defense, he coddles illegal aliens, he's against the Patriot Act and he doesn't support school prayer.

By the time I get done, people from one end of the state to the other will be down on their knees prayin' that Senator Smerd gets re-elected in a landslide!

CSO: God bless you, senator.

SS: Same to you, little lady. Bye now.

For a close-up of the opinions and tactics of the Tea Party movement let's turn to two websites whose purpose is to energize right-leaning volunteers: TeaPartyExpress and FreedomWorks.

With its homespun graphics and folksy tone, the former site offers a fascinating self-portrait of the modern day freedom riders who joined The Tea Party Express national bus tour, which hosted a series of nationwide rallies beginning in California and culminating in the Sept. 12 "Taxpayer March on D.C.” The latter is the Internet headquarters of the Washington, D.C.-based Freedom Works Foundation, headed by former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey.

There is nothing down home about this sucker. It is all business: a robust, attractively designed, easy-to-navigate online destination for a powerful GOP lobbying outfit disguised as "a nonprofit, nonpartisan education and advocacy organization" under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. "FreedomWorks fights for lower taxes, less government and more economic freedom for all Americans," with a straight face. Immediately visitors are introduced to the two arch enemies of Freedom: Cap and Trade and - surprise! - Obamacare.

.

In addition to a rally-the-troops letter from Armey ("Dear Friend of Freedom"), there is a Legislative Feedback Form with Three Big Questions Politicians Must Answer before They Vote on Obama's Proposed Government Takeover of Health Care. There also is a Sample Letter to the Editor that includes the following "Pointers":
•Follow the KISS Rule: Keep It Short, Simple
•Send them to multiple newspapers in your area or state
•Only one subject at a time
•Urge friends to send in letters along with you

The kit comes with a petition form so constituents can let their lawmakers know that "We the undersigned oppose socialized medicine and ask you to vote against it, and the higher taxes necessary to fund it." And then there is our personal favorite: Obamacare Translator: Interpreting the Spin, a downloadable tool to “better understand all the catch-phrases used in the debate.”

Finally, who said conservatives don't have a sense of humor? An especially clever gimmick is a two-sided facsimile of the ObamaCare insurance card issued to one Nancy P. Pelosi. Lest the faithful confuse the gag ID for the real thing, there's a handwritten note in the margin of the printout that reads "Print this and the following page back-to-back for a fun handout to distribute to friends."

The card - which shows an American eagle with a bandage on one wing and what appears to be a thermometer in its mouth - spells out the terms and conditions of "A collective plan administered by the politicians and bureaucrats of the U.S. government": HOSPITAL ADMISSIONS REQUIRE PRIOR APPROVAL, FORM 11G SCHEDULE 44 IN TRIPLICATE, A PHOTO ID, TWO OTHER FORMS OF ID, PAY STUB, AND COPY OF CURRENT TAX RETURN.

The reverse side of the card carries a warning sticker on the evils of health-care reform.
THIS CARD ENTITLES THE BEARER TO THE FOLLOWING:
•Rationed healthcare •Higher taxes
•Long waits •Growing debt
•Less choice and control•Zero innovation
•Poorer Care•Rising costs
•Fewer doctors and drugs•Waste, fraud and abuse
•Massive government•Anxiety, pain, risk of death

Getting back to the Tea Party Movement, its National Sponsor is asking the Capitol Hill freedom riders to share their experiences because "to help document this monumental event, over the next few weeks, FreedomWorks will be putting together an online archive of the 9/12 March on Washington."

Why wait, we say. Let's listen in on their blog for a snippet of what the Tea Party Nation has on its mind (names omitted in the interest of privacy):

hello,…the march was awesome as was the energy and decency of the people. I saw a few signs that hurt us a little w racial or nazi slogans, but for the most part I think the march /tea party was a resounding success, and did my heart and patriotism alot of good. I got 130 pics, and took them in an unprejudiced way to show what all I saw. God bless all you God fearing , hard working Americans that participated! It was amazing to realize that most ALL there, were hard working, tax paying citizens! Thank you all again, it gives this Vietnam era Vet a warming of his heart. Keep up the PATRIOTISM, and dont give it up till “they pry it from under our cold dead fingers!” In GOD we trust!!...

Fight Socialism!!! Repeal MEDICARE and SOCIALism SECURITY NOW!!!

There you have it. Right from the horses' mouths. Snicker at your peril

I first heard the song, which according to some was one of the original rap records, played on a Los Angeles FM station - and my mind was blown to bits. I'd never heard anything like it, became obsessed with finding a copy of the album, and eventually snapped one up for a couple of bucks at a swap meet.

Flash forward to the other day when I came across The Wall Street Journal's take on the Tea Party phenomenon. Reading about the party poopers' paranoia brought back memories of Dylan's verse, which for better or worse (the latter, no doubt) I took the liberty of reworking.

Well, I was feelin' angry and feelin' mean,
Got so bad it was about to bust my spleen.
Them Socialists they wus everywhere,
Spendin' too much,
Hirin' all them illegal aliens.
They wanna take away our freedom to fix health care...

Well, we got to the March on Washington in our patriot bus.
We heard speeches an' singin' from folks you can trust,
Who look an' dress an' think just like us.
I hope by now our message is clear:
You're either with us or the Socialists,
And marriage ain't for queers.

Copyright © 2009 Alias Anything You Please Music

Customer Service Operator: "May I ask which pills, sir?"

BSD: "The ones that make me larger."

CSO: "Oh, those pills."

BSD: "Yeah. I need 'em right away!"

CSO: (pause) "Sorry, sir, I'm afraid there's a prob -"

BSD: (interrupting) "A problem?! Like hell. Do you know who you're talking to?"

CSO: "Not that it matters, sir - because you've exceeded the number of refills for the prescription - but you sound like a real prick."

BSD: (fuming) "A prick!! I'll have you know I made more in the last hour than you will all year."

CSO: "Probably so. But you still sound like a prick, sir."

BSD: "I'll show you. Get me your supervisor!"

CSO: "I am the supervisor, sir."

BSD: (deflated) "Oh...but there must be someone I can talk to."

CSO: "As a matter of fact, sir, there is."

BSD: "Who?"

CSO: (laughing) "Your shrink, sir."