Perception. Technology. Electronic Media. Message

"The medium is the message," or so we were told in 1964, as an explanation of the emerging phenomena of mass media via advances in electronic communication. Were he alive today, Marshall McLuhan might be less quick to advance his radical notion, or at least more circumspect in his phraseology. As an academic, he certainly understood the need to 'train perception,' yet was too glib in his attempt to prove another of his sayings: "The future of the book is the blurb." Unintentionally, he left us with a bumper sticker thought accepted into the lexicon, but without value over the long haul. The man apparently lacked perception.

Certainly there were many advances being made in electronic technology that he knew would impact on the culture of the future, and in his book Understanding Media, he devoted whole chapters to television, telephones, weapons, housing and money. As a futurist thinker, he was supposedly disturbed that amid all these technological changes, mankind was "shuffling toward the 21st Century in the schackles of 19th Century perceptions." Yet, instead of providing a reasonable expose and guidepost, he inadvertently destroyed the one concrete historical element necessary for 21st century man to acquire and retain perception. He gave the medium predominance, with no consideration to the message he sent...that content didn't matter.

Forty years later we continue to reap the bitter harvest sown by miniscule and massive electronic gadgetry, mass media shrunken to worthless chatter, and messages filled with state sponsored propaganda, advertising sales pitches, or entertainment geared to low expectations and the lowest potential comprehension. It proves McLuhan correct - in our age the medium (television) is all important and the message nothing more than garbled static when there is a message at all. Is it any wonder we refer to our society as dumbed down?

It is a given, that the intellectual pursuits of most people demand the most frivolous of activities. Their greatest desire is to be entertained rather than to be informed, and the electronic marvel of television has provided them with the golden ring. Since the key to television is the images it provides, it stands to reason that what is accepted without question are the multitude of images rather than substance - in politics, in journalistic news offerings, in celebrity, and even in children's educational and cartoon offerings which are possibly the best marketing gimmickry ever invented, as character-based toy sales figures can attest.

Sly and pervasive, television has been a boon to advertising for every product know to man. It has expanded the lucrative season for every college and professional level sport. It has, along with other electronic based technology like the internet, play stations, and interactive games, become the baby sitter of choice. But its greatest benefit has been gained by the propaganda groups, the manipulators or public opinion, the behind the scenes image and king makers of politics. There are very few homes in our society without at least one television and most have almost as many sets as there are rooms. We are only a single step away from leaping into the middle of Bradbury's book Fahrenheit 451. Ironically, 451 degrees is the temperature at which paper burns, because electronic media has replaced well crafted and content filled books and newspapers at the same time it provides little information or knowledge.

Too bad that McLuhan was prophetic rather than wise. Had he truly foreseen what mankind would become under the influence of the electronic wizardry offered today, he would have stressed that the true message of this modern day medium was that people would grow more gullible, more insipid, and far more stupid. But that would not have been as memorable a bumper sticker.

Thank goodness we can be truly thankful on Thanksgiving!!


On this day before the traditional Thanksgiving Holiday of parades, football games and overstuffed bellies, there are a long list of things for which all thinking people should be heartily thankful.

1. George Bush cannot run for a third term.
2. We are not at war with Iran - yet.
3. We are not at war with Syria - yet.
4. We are not at war with North Korea - yet.
5. The media, after the horror of Katrina, finally started asking questions.
6. The majority of American people are finally questioning Bush's honesty.
7. The majority of American people are finally questioning Bush's competence.
8. The majority of American people finally want us out of Iraq.
9. The American people are seeing Dick Cheney for the slime he is.
10. The Democratic Party is finally showing signs of life.
11. Results of 2005 elections put Republicans on notice.
12. The White House is running scared.
13. Patrick Fitzgerald is reconvening the Grand Jury.
14. Tom DeLay has been indicted.
15. Scooter Libby has been indicted.
16. Carl Rove may yet be indicted.
17. Judith Miller is finally out of the news.
18. No drilling has yet occurred in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge.
19. No suicide bombing has occurred in the United States - yet.
20. Although injured by 5 years of incompetent leadership, the United States is still alive.

Now, if the American people will consciously avoid putting more precocious adolescent brats in Congress in 2006 and another strutting turkey in the White House in 2008, we might survive to shovel our way out of this hole that's been dug for us.

Blatant Hypocrisy and the Kid Card


Isn't there already enough stupidity and lunacy in the world without a bunch of born again hypocrites trying to create more? Even if there were some great designer in the sky, intelligence would obviously be not be part of that design simply because so much idiocy exists and permeates every religion that has fanatic believers - and that means all religions.

Tolerance was always at the top of my list of essential character traits, and because I retain a certain element of idealism at the core of my cynicism, I've always been willing to accept the choices of others as long as those choices did no widespread damage to the right of choice for anyone else. Part of that belief in tolerance meant a willingness to mute my own opinions, and stifle any urge to condemn or belittle the conscious beliefs of those with whom I disagreed. All that changed about seven years ago, and about five years ago I realized silence was being taken as acquiescence. I continue to assure people that they are still responsible for their own choices, and they may cling to them forcibly if they choose, but that does not mean that I won't have my say, particularly because of the ugliness of what we are presently seeing and experiencing.

So, let me raise my voice against this short sighted, sneaky, and phony absurdity called 'Intelligent Design' which is not only being espoused by evangelical and Christian fundamentalists groups for the 'good of children' within our educational system, but for the further enlightenment of all people. To come directly to the point, this attempt to undermine intellect and science in favor of blind faith, creationism, and authoritarianism is pure bullshit. And I refuse to apologize for my language.

It has always been my belief that spirituality and/or religion - of whatever kind - is a personal and private decision. It requires no one else's involvement, blessing or agreement. If whatever someone believes brings them joy or comfort in their daily life, that is sufficient. Unfortunately, too few 'believers' share my attitude toward individual beliefs or toward tolerance, yet the 'Intelligent Design' subtefruge was created and is being led by hypocrites who call themselves Christians or New Testament believers who supposedly follow the precepts of Jesus, the most tolerant, secularly aware, and open man of his age. By their very actions, these supposed Christians have already denied the teachings of Jesus - far more times than Peter's three betrayals.

If their beliefs are so 'right,' so pure and altruistic, why do they deny creationism by calling it something different, by hiding behind semantics, by concealing their intrinsic bigotry and innate desire for a fully submissive and controllable populace who all act alike, believe alike, talk alike and think alike (to the extent they think), and who will all bow to the same authority exactly like a masochist will bow to the dictates of his dominatrix? We would be better served to shelve any worry we have about the potential of cloning, because this effort toward sameness and duplication is far more imminent and just as deadly.

I am also thoroughly disgusted by all the groups with their sneaky and hypocritical agendas who immediately play the "kid card." We see it on school boards, we see it in politics, we see in in educational settings, we see it in housing, we see it in supposedly helpful government programs, and we certainly see it in the flash and sparkle of a religious fanatic's eyes. Designing any program, activity, or movement by using the benefit to children as it's primary attention getter, draw or reason for being is crass and jaded. This 'for the children' technique is as blantantly dishonest and emotionally challenging as saying only support for war is 'patriotic' and those of disagree or dissent are treasonous and giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

Our disregard for the demands of public education - and even private education and home schooling - has helped create several generations of self obsessive and overly indulged children who cannot think without a cheat sheet, who don't read or read poorly, or cannot do simple math without a calculator built into their cell phone, who view integrity as just a word, who have no concept of history or right and wrong, who only want to live in a selfish moment and be entertained, or who think all adults are their enemy, that they can only survive and prosper in gangs, that only money is important, that meanness makes you somebody, that they are immune to everything, that they don't need anybody. The entire society has failed these kids, and continues to fail them and flay them with useless jargon and rhetoric every day.

We teach them to be fearful, we teach them that all adults lie, we never listen to their silent cries for help, or encourage their curiosity or praise their honest efforts. We excuse all their behavior problems with 'just kids,' or 'growing pains' excuses, we attempt to mold them into ciphers without opinions, or conclusions or even questions because we want to stifle their need to know, and provide them only with half answers, restrictions, or no answers at all. We do not expose them to unlimited experience, ideas, options, and in so doing, we do not teach them to think. The ability to think sensibly, rationally, thoroughly is not innate - just like hate, thinking must be learned. And they do not learn by being overly controlled or totally undirected - that only teaches them to hate.

So, never tell me something idiotic has to be done because of the children. And in particular, never tell me that children must be kept in the dark on any topic. And if you've turned your child into a little clone of yourself, steeped in the same fear, the same lunatic and bigoted ideas, with restrictions on what they can read, or what you think are appropriate activities, or friends created in the same luke warm crucible devoid of people who think or look differently, don't give me any garbage about Intelligent Design, because you've already proven you're as dumb as a stump.

I applaud the people of Dover, Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, the majority of the voters in Kansas must have corn cobs for brains.

Beleaguered, Bamboozled, and Drugged Unto Death


A couple days ago, the Business Section of the New York Times carried an article entitled, "Big Drug Makers See Sales Decline With Their Image." It's unusual to find hilarity in business news, but halfway through reading the article, I had to untangle my tongue from my cheek, pick myself up off the floor where I was rolling around, holding my stomach, and guffawing so loudly it scared my cats. Poor misunderstood drug industry kingpins are so misunderstood! Between the Vioxx fiasco, the FDA's image problems, the constant barrage of drug advertising on TV that always seems to list diarrhea as a side effect, the press coverage of all the anti-depressants which cause suicidal thoughts, and the recent poll showing only 9 percent of Americans believed drug companies were generally honest compared to 34 percent that trusted banks, these drug characters are afraid public scrutiny will make them appear untrustworthy. Can you imagine??

The average American consumer has been mistrusting and irritated by drug companies for years...for very good reasons. In spite of the fact that ill customers need their products, consumers are angered by the high prices and the long wait in doctor's offices while drug company sales people breeze in to make their pitch. They resent the propaganda about high research costs making the drugs expensive while never seeing any cures but only an easing of symptoms, and they particularly despise the fact that other countries can buy the same drugs from American companies at much lower costs. Americans might be ill, but they still know their relationship to these pharmaceutical giants is a parasitic one, similar to a Great White Shark munching its way through a school of fish while tiny ramoras cling to its back.

The legal drug industry is a highly lucrative one. After all, our own government has helped them immensely in maximizing profits, particularly among the elderly, their largest market. Recently, however, the largest of them in terms of revenue (Pfizer, Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Johnson & Johnson) are seeing stagnant sales and falling profits leading to layoffs and cuts in research budgets. Even Eli Lilly, whose U.S. sales rose this year, is cutting about 4 percent of its workforce - 1,600 people. All in all, this willingness to trim staff contradicts the pseudo image of pharmas being 'caring' and compassionate about people. Bad for the image.

Layoffs are never a laughing matter but a decline in sales is directed related to a decline in customers. One of the reasons given in the article was "without new drugs to promote as patients expire..." The word expire sort of reconfirms the impersonal, million miles away image, doesn't it? Saying patients die is simply too negative, so in drug speak they expire like the warranty on a chain saw or a coupon for a pizza. No patient is recognized as a person. They are their illness, one in a variety of target markets - the cancer market, the diabetes market, the cardiac market, the acid reflux market. And never forget, the objective is not to 'cure' the illness that creates these lucrative markets. The objective is to temporarily relieve symptoms creating a long term return user, fully dependent on their product.

Not only is the customer imprisoned by illness, but the customer is also a captive prisoner of the drug maker. It's parasitic, not symbiotic. To stay in the money, pharmas also 'reformulate existing drugs,' so they can be taken once a week instead of daily. Removing the jingoism makes this phrase clearer, just as reformulating let's them do a couple things. Most important, it let's them prolong their patent on the formula, which means increased profit for them and higher cost for you, because while the patent is in effect, no other company can duplicate that formula to make a lower cost generic drug. Reformulating also allows them to raise the price on what is presented as 'better.' In reality, it's only slight of hand (in your pocket) and legal theft (from your pocket). Funny how bunco artists never have a positive image.

Drug advertising also has to be mentioned as a negative against drug company image. Because the public, thanks to the Super Bowl, is well aware of how much it costs to run a 30 or 60 second ads on TV, they are very aware of how drug prices increase to pay for these overblown and over priced sales pitches that promote wonder pills without even mentioning the illness they are supposedly designed to help. And, considering how often the side effects mentioned in the ads include diarrhea, it's no wonder the public suspects they're being fed a steady diet of 'bull' everytime an ad runs.

The pharmaceutical companies also consider the FDA as a contributor to their profit problem. It used to be the the FDA was slow to approve new medications until stringent testing was done. That bugged the drug companies. When a more business 'friendly' government administration came on scene, FDA rules were eased, helping to put drugs on the market that were eventually proven unsafe. The drug companies blamed the FDA - again. Now, testing restrictions and lengthy time intervals are being blamed by drug companies for not continuing research into promising drugs like Pargluva for diabetes, as an example. Amazing how whatever the problem in putting a drug on the market and keeping it there, it is always someone else's fault. Is it any wonder there's a image problem?

The most massive blow to the wonderful image the drug companies don't have, was the new drug plan within Medicare - a plan that punishes and confuses the elderly, offers them little to no savings, and yet insures that the drug makers and their friendly and helpful buddies in the insurance industry will keep making obscene profits. Ironically, no thought has been give to those in their customer base that will 'expire' due to anger, confusion and elevated blood pressure or heart attacks, or those who will 'expire' within the huge coverage gap after the first $2,000 in drug costs. How nice for them to legally aid and abet the killing of elderly customers while knowing that as people age, they will simply gain new customers. For them, it's like a first class assembly line on steroids into the great unknown of ongoing profits with minimal losses.

Finally, let me suggest another reason for the non-existent enthusiasm for stem cell research. Granted, the research would not lead to cures to terrible diseases tomorrow, but it is highly likely that those cures would come. Such breakthroughs would be reasons for massive celebration for normal people, but they would eliminate some highly profitable business for the drug companies. If stem cell research and more genetic identification brought cures for diabetes, leukemia, Lupis, HIV, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and a host of other debilitating and deadly illness, there would be no call for little miracle pills to keep the symptoms under control. It would certainly be bad for their image if it were discovered that the drug companies were secretly lobbying against such research, wouldn't it? Not only would they lose their main excuse for high prices - research costs - but they would lose their primary reason for being. They would become the lepers of our age, and wouldn't THAT be a death blow to their image.

Karma and Galactic Pissants

Today has been one of those strange weather days. My home state along with four others was under a tornado watch for over eight hours as I sat here with one eye on the keyboard, the other on the sky and an ear cocked to weather reports. For whatever reason, my town escaped this horrid clash of hot and cold air, but others were not so fortunate, and all in all, the whole day seems to prove the insignificance and basic uselessness of humankind. In fact, all weather phenomenon and natural catastrophes lead to the same conclusion -- we're too smug in our arrogance, basic ignorance, and dreams of the glory of superiority and empiricism.

Proof?

We have no ability to accurately cause, predict or halt the power or paths of tornados or hurricanes. We have no control of earthquakes, sand storms, tsunamis, landslides, floods, falling meteors, thunderstorms or just plain rain. If you can't corral, control, and dictate to Mother Nature, how can any human beings delude themselves into thinking they can be "superpowers?" The largest, most technologically advanced military in the universe cannot subdue the weather, yet power hungry humans who can't control their own urges are convinced they can subdue nations.

Humanity is only a galactic pissant, scurrying around in great self importance through their little tunnels, thinking they can lay aside all manner of wealth for a rainy day, thinking their individual and collective desires have preeminence. Except, Mom Nature has a giant aerosol can of Cosmic Raid to knock us down to size when we get too enraptured with ourselves. Now, if she would only be more precise in her targeting rather than doing the greatest damage to the small worker ants with the least ability to renew themselves after a destructive event. A few solid spritzs of that Raid on power hungry and greedy leadership just might replace hubris with humility, corruption with compassion, and unquenchable hunger for more and richer spoils with a craving for fairness and peace.

Privatization: Selling your soul to the company store.

There's a song from the 50's sung in the deep, sonorous tones of Tennessee Ernie Ford called "Sixteen Tons," that describes backbreaking, depression era work in a coal mine where the mining company owned every human need; the worker's housing, the schooling available for dependent children, the store where the miner had to buy supplies for his job and food for his table. The primary, repeated chorus of that song was "Load sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. St. Peter, don't you call me cause I can't go. I owe my soul to the Company store."

We would be wise to remember that chorus, because if the neo-Federalists, the ultra right of the Republican party, and all the corporate interests who own most of our current crop of politicians get their way, we'll all be singing that song on stage instead of warming up behind the curtain.

Capitalism, free trade, private enterprise, and profit margins are words and concepts all of us find familiar. Those ideas don't surprise or worry us at all, because those 'principles' of a free market economy are how our nation has progressed in the world. Right? Better take a deep breath and re-think that. Those words, under today's banner of Privatization have a whole new meaning...and that meaning is sly and sinister.

Stop and think for a moment about all the things essential for human survival and progress that are being suggested for or already fall under the Privatization banner: food sources, water, education, the prison system, medicine, our Social Security system, even our ballot boxes. The major spiel used by the scam artists and hucksters pushing for complete privatization is that you will have control, government will be very small and uninvolved in your life, and, most importantly, you will become self-reliant.

The idea of self-reliance has great appeal. It works well with the concept of individualism. Both those concepts by their very possibility stress responsibility, and as can be seen every day, we need more responsible people. Even before we became a republic, we as an immigrant people, idolized the bold, brash loner who stood up for himself, fighting the elements, eschewing dependency, making his was forward by the muscles of his back and the sweat of his brow. Not only is that memory largely mythic, but there is a big hole in this type thinking today that no one bothers to talk about. In order for any of these self-directed ways of life to work, the environment in which they occur must allow for them. The environment must be conducive and encouraging. That is not the case. When everything within your environment is owned by a private entity on which you become dependent, even for the very air you breathe, how can you own yourself?

Almost all essentials to survival and to quality within today's life are not only growing more precious for their increasing scarcity, but are more costly because they are privately owned. During our history when agriculture dominated, self-sufficiency through reliance on the land was the primary option for most of our population. We lived, worked and prospered on family owned farms and ranches. Water, usually free for the taking, became an issue only in certain geographical locations. Drought, increasing numbers of people, and the changes wrought by the Industrial age began to change all that. Cities and cosmopolitan areas grew beyond the ability of people to fend for themselves, and they became dependent on wages and materials supplied by others. Today that dependency is magnified, even in former rural areas. Few of us can survive on our own.

Progress has supposedly ushered us into the next stage some pundits and wags have call the Information Age, others baptized the Technological Revolution, and still others with a more jaundiced eye think of as the Age of Supremacy. In my own opinion, this time period is best described as Chaos on the Half Shell simply because like a single spoiled shell fish in a feast of riches, you run the risk of becoming deathly ill through your own appetite. Within this age, we are enthralled with all the venues of communication excepting the simple one where we stand or sit face to face and engage in a genial conversation. Technology is triumphant, be it in military hardware, digital and wireless consumer gadgets, or computerized spy ware that enters very thorough, once private data on you into a massive data base that can be shared by governments, banking and collection agencies, insurance and medical corporations, police forces, marketers, identity thieves, computer hackers and advertising gurus. We are no longer individuals so much as we are multiple target markets for every type business interest, including monkey business.

Herein lies the problem of our disappearing ownership of our own souls.

There has never been a time when I have ever met a business company or corporation with the characteristics of a human being. No such organization or collective is an individual. Yet, these groups through accommodating members of the executive and legislative arms of our government are now being treated better than human citizens. All the regulating bodies supposedly created to increase the efficiency of government no longer constrain or regulate business. No longer does government envision or assess penalties against organizations engaged in shoddy business dealings, fraud, vanishing pensions or double entry bookkeeping. After much blatantly overt - and just as much covert - posturing and positioning, big business through lobbyists and direct purchasing agents has bought representation of their interests over the interests of real human citizens by offering massive political campaign 'donations.' But corporations can't vote, you say? Sure they can. They vote by giving or withholding money, and in so doing control, direct and dictate government actions, none of which are for your benefit as a citizen or a consumer.

The United States is no longer being run by elected representatives of her people. The United States is being run by a consortium of business, legal, medical, communications and manufacturing pragmatists who have sold their honor and integrity for an assured payoff from their real bosses - big business. Politics has become only another game of riding the business tiger where to choose the welfare of humanity over the bottom line of business is to fall off and get eaten. Politicians have sold their souls and yours for a ticket to ride the whirlwind where no one really survives.

If you doubt that you and your soul have been sold, simply look at the legislative changes already passed and currently pending, look at the executive orders that have slipped through in secrecy, look at the propaganda you've bought into, look at how your tax dollars are being spent, take a sharp pencil and run your own numbers on how all these things affect you and your children and their children.

Every piece of legislation geared toward helping people advance themselves, or pull themselves up, or improve the air they breath, the water they drink, the way their children are taught, the way their health and resources are maintained, or the prices they must pay for the simple elements of survival (housing, food, water) have been changed, slashed to the bone, or eliminated at the same time changes to the tax system have been altered to allow the wealthy of the country and the business interests to retain more and more of their money. The big ticket items - the energy bill, the drug bill within Medicare, the environmental bills affecting quality of life for everyone, the bills to allow mining, logging, oil exploration, the bill regarding eminent domain which allows private homes and property to be taken by private interest development for their profit, the bankruptcy legislation and other banking bills, have all taken security, protection, and money away from average people and put it into the pockets of the oil, automobile, utility, oil, chemical, drug and banking businesses.

The concept of a globalized economy, the facade of free trade agreements, the WTO, NAFTA, CAFTA, The World Bank, and all the hundreds of alphabet soup organizations affecting little people worldwide who can't fight back and business interest who don't want people to fight back have been and continue to be designed to make countries and people in all countries dependent. Freedom has nothing to do with it, particularly if that freedom is individual freedom. Democracy has nothing to do with it, particularly since we are no longer a democracy but a "capitalocracy" where money is the method and power and supremacy are king and queen.

Jobs and opportunities to advance in those jobs have all but disappeared. But we have war on two fronts. As long as wars continue, the military is essential as is all the military product, hardware and technology supplied by the industrial portion of that military industrial complex Dwight Eisenhower warned against. And our government under the direction of industry and business which keeps eliminating jobs and other aids to people is assuring that even without a draft, we will always have a military - because when nothing else is available to keep the wolf of hunger from the door, desperate young people will sign on to be cannon fodder. Peace doesn't earn a third of the money for corporate coffers that war brings in.

If you aren't already, you soon will be loading your own form of sixteen tons just to keep your head above the swirling waters stirred by this consortium founded on power and greed. You might grimmace when you put a dish of dog or cat food on your table because you have to eat to keep up your strength for slavery and can't afford anything better. Average people are not only denied comfort and ease, but have no access to steak.

Sing it, children. "St. Peter don't you call me, cause I can't go. I owe my soul to the company store."

A deceitful President, a useless Congress, an apathetic American public

Searching for easy ways to find money to pay for their profligate ways without altering their quest for unearned rewards, earlier tonight, the Senate - that good ol' boy's club that prefers posturing to substance - voted in favor of the Budget Reconciliation Bill. The name of this particular bill would be hilarious if it weren't so terribly sad. In case you don't know, the word 'reconcile' has several meanings: to make friendly after estrangement, to purify by special service after profanation or desecration, to make acquiescent or contentedly submissive, to heal, settle, harmonize, make compatible. What this bill actually does is destroy. It's a stealth bomber dressed up in pretty language that seeks to camouflage the contempt this august body has for all of its constitutients, but primarily for the elderly, the poor, children, and those sensitive souls who prefer retaining our last outpost of wilderness and beauty instead of succumbing to the gluttony of the greedy.

This badly named bill contains amendments to cut spending by cutting Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps and allowing drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to hopefully secure a volume of oil that represents six month's usage in America - if they're lucky. Not surprisingly, G.W. Bush has threatened to veto the bill if it cuts Medicaid, but such a threat from him is the norm, providing wiggle room and the chimera of a caring concern as his poll numbers continue to drop - politics speaking with a forked tongue...Bushspeak.

Never before has such Congressional double dealings made me want so badly to be a true force of nature, a powerful witch, or the personification of a furious vengeful god. Were I able, I would reach out with the muscular arms of Medusa, the calamitous voice of the original earth mother, and the righteous, collective fury of every person whose trust and expectation has been abused, sundered and left to rot by barbarians. Rather than simply rescinding their own little pet projects like bridges to nowhere, fruit fly research, or improved landscaping for a wealthy community, they choose instead to take more away from people who have little left to give. They do it because it's easy, and it's easy because within the atmosphere that is D.C., knowing they've accepted Presidential lies without question, helped to kill and maim their own countrymen, increased the burden of voters seeking to live from one paycheck to the next, sold out the middle class and allowed themselves to be bought by the wealthiest bidders, they can get away with it while pretending to be men and women of character.

How can that be, you ask? It' simple.

Regardless of the fact that the most recent polls show that only 39% of the public approve of how Bush is doing his job, and only an equal percentage is satisfied with the job Congress is doing, they know that you - the American public - would rather sit on your couch potato butts and watch "Desperate Housewives" or "The Simpsons" and whine and complain to each other rather that stiffen your backbones, stand on your feet, and rant and rave at them. You, Mr. and Mrs. America, let them do what they want without raising any hue and cry, without getting on the telephone to scream in their ears, without writing the letters to put them on notice. You'd rather sit in your corner and snivel, while hoping that someone else does for you what you should be doing for yourself.

No matter what excuses you tell yourself, no matter how much you rationalize that God will provide, no matter how often you lie to yourself and your children that no one "can fight City Hall,'' your behavior is that of a slug. You just muddle on, singing the same monotonously sad tune. You make no demands - not of yourself or of the people you employ - your president, your senators, your representatives, or your state and local government. So, you get just exactly what you deserve. Nothing. Nothing but the assurance of more misery for everyone. You act like a rag rug and let others put their foot on your neck while they walk all over you.

As a simple example, look at what Congress and the President have done and not done. Instead of demanding a thorough discussion on stem cell research, you sit quiescent while they meddle with the life of Terry Schaivo. Instead of demanding responsible action on health care, you twiddle your thumbs while they provide protection for gun manufacturers. Instead of demanding real reform of the immigration and naturalization service, you complain about heating bills while allowing them to gut the Clean Air Act. Instead of demanding repair of a crumbling infrastructure, you allow them to pass a bankruptcy bill that endangers you while it provides a windfall for the banking and credit card industries. Instead of demanding they create programs to ease poverty, you roll your eyes and allow them to create more poor. Instead of demanding improved public education for all, you allow them to further your own ignorance.

The next time you're tempted to complain about anything being beyond your control, or about our careening, poorly maintained and sinking ship of state, just save your breath because you're the bum whose hand controls the helm.