Bob Crespo

You don’t need to be reminded that this world is getting out of hand. Anyone with eyes and ears and half a brain can see that. There’s wars, starvation, hatred, exploitation, greed and American Idol to contend with on a regular basis, and now on top of all that the economy is shot so we can’t even spend our way into stuporous complacency to make it all go away for a few hours. Money’s tight for everyone except the wealthy bankers who stole it all and  got away with it. Who’s got the money for a decent bender these days?

You’re thinking, how did we get in such a mess? You figure the world has been in worse shape before and somehow survived, like with World Wars, Hundred Years Wars, the Black Plague and having all our world leaders and assorted royalty dressing up in makeup, powdered wigs and musical theater costumes like it it was Mardi Gras all the time. Those things were pretty disappointing, especially the silly costumes and wigs. What was everybody thinking?

Somehow the world recovered from these catastrophes and mankind moved on in the fits and starts that have marked our slow march out of our caves and hunting grounds into moon rockets and luxury condominiums (Are there any other kind of condos, like regular ones?). From running from giant predators to running water, from smoke signals to electricity, computers and cell phones, it’s been quite a journey. We might have been a lot further along if not for all the warfare, genocide and tyranny. We have also poisoned our water, our land and our air and burned so much dirty fuel to power our new toys that we are now changing the climate of the planet, placing all of us in mortal peril. Two steps forward, one step back.

Not that it’s all bad. People have done and continue to do wonderful and amazing things. We’ve been to the moon, cured polio, invented rock & roll and came together as a planet in The United Nations to declare the universal rights of all mankind. The human rights deal has been spotty at best, but we’re working on it. The problem with that is, and always was, us. We seem to have our heads buried pretty far up our own asses, a position that makes it difficult to notice what selfish and paranoid jerks we’ve been. We hate and mistrust other people and nations for the stupidest of reasons, if indeed you can call hatred remotely reasonable.

We allow 36,000 people to die of starvation every single day, 85% of them children under 5 years old. That’s over 11 million dead little children every year. Uncounted millions more join them in early graves due to the numerous diseases contracted from drinking contaminated water. We know better than this and can do better, but we don’t. Why? Who knows, maybe out of sight, out of mind? Maybe we think it’s someone else’s problem? Or do we think the problem is too big to tackle and so throw our hands up and lament what a hard, hard world this can be?

That’s not the attitude that defeated the genocidal fascists in World War 2 and put a man on the moon in 1969, two fairly monumental undertakings that were completed within a single decade. Isn’t feeding dying children at least as pressing a priority? How about freeing the slaves in many Muslim countries? What slaves, you ask? Their women, of course, fully half their populations under house arrest, denied educations, jobs, drivers’ licenses, property, life choices, freedom of movement, medical care and pretty much anything the majority other nations’ women take for granted. The United Nations Declaration of Universal Human Rights exempts no one, and the countries who hold their women in bondage signed that pledge like everyone else when they joined the U.N. Why aren’t they kicked out and shunned until they live up to their oath?

When human rights go disrespected, nothing is sacred, not the air we breathe, the water we drink, the earth we walk upon or the non-human creatures with whom we share these precious resources. These are the things that provide us with life itself, and like every human being, ought to be cherished, respected and treated with dignity, kindness and love. We violate these basic precepts of life every day. We shit where we eat. This is incomprehensible, especially considering that we have shown time and time again that wondrous things are within our power. By deeds great and small, we have transformed the world, doing and building some pretty magnificent things. Imagine what we could do if our heads weren’t buried up our asses?

Imagine if no nation invaded another with armies? Imagine no man or woman hating another? Picture a world where every human has access to food, clean water, medical care and education. A world where no one poisons the water we drink or the air we breathe. A world where greed is not considered a virtue, but the destructive aggression it has always been. Where theft by the wealthy from the poor is unheard of. Where leadership is not bribed, corrupted or power mad, and nations trade in good faith on equal terms. Where no leader rises to power selling hatred, fear and mistrust. A world where opportunity is universal, and where achievement is celebrated, no matter who does the achieving. A world where our successes, and our burdens, are shared. Where individuals are free to be themselves and groups of people have nothing to fear from other groups of people.

Imagine people speaking to other nations, other ethnic groups or members of other religions with courtesy and respect. Imagine dignity and self-worth being the birthright it is supposed to be. This is not a lot to ask, and only what every human wants for themselves and their loved ones. Why would anyone deny these things to another? They are the same as yourself, and just as worthy of life and dignity. Being civil to one another would not prevent anyone from pursuing their dreams, from getting rich, from living according to their own lights. The Golden Rule is the answer: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. That simple ancient concept can change the course of history and relieve us from constantly wondering what went wrong. What the hell are we waiting for? Why are our heads up our asses?

When engaged in a perusal of the various news outlets real and virtual, some odd items come to your attention, compelling you to shake your head and turn the page, or the channel or the URL address, as the case may be. Even an event so mind-numbingly dull as The Winter Olympics brings its share of Duh moments. Take the TV commentators who were poking fun at Johnny Weir, a member of the America figure skating squad, for his downright pretty appearance and effeminate demeanor. Isn’t it a drop odd that people who are experts on figure skating have anything to say about anyone’s sexual druthers? Hellooo!!

Pot calling the kettle black or catty behavior? Either way, it’s pretty amusing, which is more than can be said about the rest of this ordeal. Outside of a guy dying on a poorly-designed luge run before the Games even opened, a lady curler crying and the loser in the men’s individual figure skating awarding himself a “platinum” medal in a fury for having lost the gold to an American skater, these Winter Olympics provided about the same amount of thrills that they usually do, damned few.

Even those “lucky” enough to attend the games in person got to witness only about a third of a second of any given race, with a blur and a “woosh” substituting for actually watching anything unfold. No wonder they love to watch the figure skaters and ice dancers, who at least don’t leap out of the arena in the blink of an eye. Absently wondering how any of these things wound up the sports section of all places, you shake your head and turn the page.

Unfortunately, you’re now perusing political news, always an adventure when you’re not feeling very adventurous. You can’t help but notice how politicians of all persuasions are touting a “bipartisan approach,” their definition of bipartisan being that the opposition just shuts up and agrees with them. Republicans want Democrats to agree that our government is an instrument of malicious evil in every respect except in their use of military force and (!) torture, which are just fine, while Democrats want Republicans to pay some taxes one of these years, if it’s not too much trouble.

What both fail to realize is that no one voted for compromise, they voted overwhelmingly Democratic and expect the Democrats to implement their agenda, and to hell with the Republicans, who had 8 years to figure something out other than torture, warfare, incompetence and bankruptcy, but couldn’t. Why our president would seek a consensus with such people is a mystery to many of us wondering why there are still so many unindicted co-conspirators pulling inside jobs, looting our banking system for billions instead of shopping for defense attorneys.

No one recalls the last administration courting the Democrats while they did what the hell they felt like doing, legal or not. So once again, being able able to make neither heads nor tails of our current political climate, you shake your head and turn the page. Then you encounter further difficulties, since you are now inspecting something called “Entertainment News.” Once upon a time, there was no such thing as Entertainment News, the public being pretty much okay with the entertainment that the entertainers provided.

Those seeking more would read the gossip columns or buy the trade dailies like Variety and the rest of us were off the hook when it comes to knowing who had a bizarre childhood (who didn’t?), who married a transvestite dwarf in Vegas with an Elvis clone preacher presiding (who hasn’t done that at least once?) and which starlet can consume a cereal bowl full of tranquilizers washed down by a fifth of tequila. That sort of thing never came up and one could enjoy a good performance by an actor, a singer or a comic without the distraction of knowing some weird stuff you’d rather you didn’t. Is dignity too much to expect? Seems so, mostly.

These days, it’s getting harder to watch your favorite performer without a mental image of farm animals in rubber lingerie, so you shake your head and turn the page quick before you find out anything else too peculiar to fully register. Now you’re in the International News section, and you’re wondering what to make of it all. Can it really be true that witch doctors in Tanzania hunt and kill albino humans for good luck charms? That’s a pretty bold statement. Then you wonder who made up all those crazy things about Saudi Arabia, how they enslave half their population, their females, and how they chop off heads and hands in stadiums and charge admission like it was the damned Super Bowl!

That can’t be right, can it? No way! They are, after all, our ally, and America would never ally itself with such barbaric butchers, no matter how much oil they have, right? Right? And so you turn the page again, searching, scanning, surfing, desperate for something, anything that makes sense in any medium. Your mouth is dry, your head is spinning and then your hungry eyes finally find it. There it is!

Today’s funny pages. The good news portion of the day. Finally, something you can relate to, and your head does not shake wearily back and forth, you do not turn the page with a sigh of cynical disenchantment. For a few minutes every day there are talking pigs, blue people, wise ass cats and a lot of crazy impossible fun stuff happening. Then you’re done with the funnies and once again there’s none of those things, which, all in all, seems a glaring oversight on Nature’s part. Might as well laugh it up whenever we can.

Legislators in the Great State of Wyoming have begun the process of the realization of the dream of King Canute, who famously tried without success to “command the tides of the sea.” Their plan? To tax the wind! Brilliant! We’ve had water taxes forever, so why not make the wind pay up too?

It seems that Wyoming, a state that has enjoyed the good fortune to have recently undergone an energy boom with natural gas, has once again overcome being “only Wyoming,” as the other 49 states refer to it, and have built themselves a sizable wind energy industry, making lemonade out of the lemons of being an almost deserted and wind-swept backwater of America.

Eager to rehabilitate their state’s lousy image after having contributed America’s only dictator to our history, one Shotgun Dick Cheney, Wyoming is trying to figure out how to most equitably tax the wind. In an area larger than Austria but sparsely populated by a mere half a million souls, Wyoming has long been in the minds of Americans, well, not really there at all, just some place mentioned frequently in a childhood full of bad Western movies, and rarely, if ever, afterwards.

Taxing the wind seems like a pretty formidable task, but unlike King Canute, who commanded the tides to illustrate even a king’s powerlessness over the forces of nature, these people are serious and mean business. Or at least the business of the power companies harnessing the wind. The fact that the central power companies purchase a lot of power from independent land owners who have installed giant wind turbines on their giant empty windswept Wyoming ranches further complicates their task. Who do you tax the most?

Of course they want to do this right, and not seem foolish before the rest of the nation, and so Wyomans’ (or is it “Wyomingans?” Or is it “Who gives a rat’s ass?”) have not asked their most famous son to weigh in on this issue. Shotgun Dick’s approach to taxation has always been to bleed the working classes mercilessly and leave the very wealthy untaxed. Like the rest of our fine nation, they need another rash of property foreclosures about as much as a kangaroo needs another glove compartment.

The nation watches as an emerging industry takes shape, both in corporate structure and in relation to the government under which it operates. It would be nice for a semi-nonentity of a state to provide the rest of our nation with a working model of alternative energy infrastructure. These new technologies will be of great importance to this nation and the world, and someone has to begin to sort out how all this will work. We welcome Wyoming to provide us with something other that a dictator and fuzzy memories of “varmints and bushwackers” from old movies. Tax the wind, indeed.

Have you seen them? Have they contacted you? Have they attempted to invade your conscious thoughts and brainwash you? Clogged your computer with e-mails espousing Green Causes? We are of course, discussing The Green People. They walk among us, shop in the same stores, use the same roads and mass transit systems, perhaps work with us side-by-side at our jobs, their children attending the same school as our children, seeming like normal human beings in many respects.

But they are different, they are Green People, and they have come to transform humanity and remake us according their own visions, and then… eliminate us completely!

Towards that end, they have already enjoyed remarkable success, especially in having much of humanity install mercury-laden coiled light bulbs in their homes. Their stated reason for such light bulbs was sound, that they would reduce energy consumption on a planet hard-pressed to keep up with ever-increasing demands for electrical power.

The suspicion, of course, is that Green People thrive on mercury and that with every broken light bulb on top of the uncounted tonnage of discarded bulbs, the air, soil and water of Earth will be slowly but inexorably infused with mercury, a deadly poison to you and I, but ambrosia itself to the Green People, washed down by the nectar of mercury-tainted water.

Then there is their insistence that we grow our own fuel for our cars and power plants, replacing petroleum with corn or sugar-based oils, promising cleaner and ever-renewable sources of power. What they neglect to mention is that these fuels will be just as expensive and dirty as petroleum, and that they will remove millions of acres of farmland from food production on a planet already plagued with starvation.

Today and tomorrow, and for every tomorrow until we can solve this plague, 36,000 people will die a painfully  slow and tortuous death from starvation. 85% of these victims are children under 5 years of age. If we listen to the Green People, those horrendous numbers will skyrocket, de-populating the planet so that the Greens can easily take over.

The Greens also actively campaign against the use of clean nuclear power, even though the navy has been using this technology for over half a century without a mishap and the only serious nuclear reactor accident happened in Russia 24 years ago. Since that time uncounted millions have died from the effects of dirty internal combustion.

Greater fuel efficiency for our internal combustion engines is also discouraged by the Green People, who insist they must be scrapped altogether. What chance we will have to invent new technology without using our existing technology is left to the imagination, but imagination without access to a means of implementing our imaginings is an exercise in futility. They would have us live by windmill power, a technology perfected in the 7th Century.

The suspicion is that the Green People are aliens from outer space with a society advanced beyond our own by only about fifteen years, and so lack any of the diabolical weaponry we always imagined space invaders would possess. That being the case, they must resort to other means to decimate our population and take over the Earth.

Cleverly, they have used many of mankind’s own very real problems as a weapon against us, and their success in seeding the planet with mercury via our light bulbs shows that they are apt students of pubic relations. That success seems to have gone to their green heads, and now they envision an America chock full of bicycle riders living in candle-lit homes, purchasing mercury-free water for a dollar a bottle.

Bicycles used to cost one-tenth of what they do now and pure water used to be free. Who owns the bicycle factories and clean waterworks? Green People! Where are the profits going? That’s right, to the Greens! What do they do with the money? They put it towards world conquest, of course. Not much point in invading a planet and not taking it over, is there?

There will come a day when we are all drinking dollar-a-bottle water, and at that point the water they sell us will be loaded with mercury and we’ll all drop dead and the world will be inherited by the Green People without firing a shot, or a death ray, and with our cities, farms, roads and infrastructure intact so that millions and millions of Greens from the Green Planet can just move right in, raid our fridges, watch our DVD collections and sit in our Jacuzzis munching on mercury-laden popcorn! And the government does nothing about it!

Is it too late to stop them? Have they infiltrated the Halls of Power so completely? Perhaps not. Or so we hope. But what can we do do resist the Green People, who are, after all, 15 years more advanced a civilization! They have razors with seven blades on the Green Planet, and have finally ceased using Roman numerals to count their Super Bowls, marking a significant cultural breakthrough for the Greens. Their cars get an average of 54 miles to the gallon! They had iPads 15 years ago! They know how “The Biggest Loser” ends!

So we have our work cut out for us to repel these invaders, those who would pretend to be fighting the great evils in this world while actively engaged in the worst of them. Now they offer us mercury, bicycles and windmills. And  whales, too. Who knows towards what insidious ends the Greens conspire to attack whaling ships? Are the whales cooperating with the Greens?

Okay, maybe you can’t blame whales for bearing a grudge against us, but there’s got to be a good reason why the Greens are “saving the whales.” For what? We shudder to think. Our only defense against the Green People is the defense of the conquered from time immemorial. Breed with them!

As the numerous descendants of the Roman slaves and vanquished races of people did, who intermarried with and eventually outnumbered their conquerors, Rome had to fall from within before it could be defeated from without, with babies as the most effective weapon.

So, young men and women of America, your mission is clear: To marry and interbreed with the sons and and daughters of the Green People. A pilot program has been underway for a generation in Brooklyn, our most active incubator for interracial babies for centuries. There are already some very interesting half Italian, half Green children, or a quarter Irish and an eighth Cherokee, or Black, or Puerto Rican, Greek, Lebanese, Norwegian or any other combination of Green and human you’d care to name.

These children will be raised in a world where Green People are mainstream, much more reasonable, and at least half human! No one wants to wipe out their Mom or Dad, or at least not too many of us. Perhaps one day a new level of acceptance and understanding will be achieved with the election of our first Half Green President, and our two races can live in harmony on a peaceful globe.

So now the mental midgets of the right wing, having failed to convince sane people that President Obama is Muslim born outside the United States, now babble about his childhood in Hawaii, calling it a “foreign place” and “far from mainstream America.” Meaning exactly what? The same can be said about New York City or California. Well, what the daffy right wingers are trying to do is to make people feel that being from Hawaii is somehow un-American. What, Jack Lord, Don Ho and Bette Midler aren’t Americans?

Worse than messing with Jack Lord, his bionic hair and his “book-em, Dano,” mantra, however, is disrespecting the Americans who died defending that American island on December 7, 1941 from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Nobody back then dismissed their sacrifice as the meaningless defense of some exotic foreign land. Hawaii was then and still is America soil. Anyone born there or living there lives under the American flag. American law and the United States Constitution rule Hawaii, just like the other 49 states of this Union.

Is the right wing so short of ideas and policies that personal attacks are all they’ve got? Attack the man’s politics, his failures to deliver on campaign promises, his naivete and inexperience, that’s just fine and the American way. But to attack his patriotism because the guy grew up in Hawaii? What the fuck is that all about? How friggin’ stupid do you have to be to go that route? Do any of them have any better ideas or solutions to America’s many pressing problems? If so, they’re sure keeping them a huge secret.

There’s only so many times you can genuflect at the altar of Saint Ronald Reagan before people start remembering how dumb and dishonest he was too. There was a guy who campaigned against Big Federal Government and, once elected, proceeded to triple its size. He talked about being a tough guy and when the U.S. Marine barracks was blown up in Lebanon in the opening salvoes of the Terrorist War against the West, what was his response? He cut and run like the French Army, then diverted attention from his cowardly act by attacking Grenada, a tiny island less lethal than some of our own urban neighborhoods! His trickle-down economics exposed the conservative right’s view of their fellow Americans as so many dogs fighting for scraps under the dinner tables of rich men. This daft fool is their hero?

He must be, since they’ve been promoting as their leaders and standard bearers some of the stupidest people around in recent years. Sarah friggin’ Palin? Paris Hilton is smarter! How about that underwear model and nude cover boy they just got elected as a Senator from Massachusetts? Wow! Talk about the bottom of the barrel. And what about the media people elevated to political guru status by right wingers. Flush Limbaugh? Bull O’Really? Talented entertainers, perhaps, but completely bereft of any original ideas, unless “I got mine” passes as a policy and belittling the poor and minorities is in their view an original thought.

If they feel, like many people who backed him, that President Obama doesn’t have a stiff enough spine to implement his agenda even with a commanding majority in both houses of Congress, let them say so. Don’t go after his Hawaiian (American) roots. You can’t fault the guy’s intelligence or his personal life, since he was a law professor and is a good family man, but his performance as president is sure fair game. Why the personal attacks and the libel against Hawaiians? Could it be that that’s all they’ve got?

At least they’re not stupid enough as to ask Ms. Palin for any ideas. The last time she had an idea it was to join a political party that advocates Alaska’s secession from the Union. That’s not exactly optimum presidential candidate resume material, so now she’s spoon fed ideas by slightly less stupid right wing political operatives before she is allowed to speak in public (at $100,000 a pop!). The only other idea coming out of the right wing is from former dictator Shotgun Dick Cheney (If anyone thinks Bush The Younger was anything but a puppet, guess again. Talk about stupid!) and that is that all our problems can be traced to the current administration’s unwillingness to (!) torture people. That from a guy on who’s watch 9/11 happened, and who threw New Orleans an anchor while it was drowning!

When you have nothing to offer but desperately want to be in power anyway, the only way to go is the low road; the repeated lies, the unfounded personal attacks and the scoundrel’s last refuge, phony patriotism. The fact is, though, that a steaming pile of dog shit wrapped in an American flag is still a steaming pile of dog shit, and now you have to wash the damned flag under which we all live, even Hawaiians and Alaskans. The right wing would be taken more seriously if they could enlist some smart people to their cause. They could start with a few slightly-above-average recruits and build from there. Meanwhile, lay off Hawaii, where many brave Americans died defending this nation.

Once again the conservative right wing has succeeded in hoodwinking Americans of below average intelligence with no familiarity with history or politics that liberal is a bad thing to be, almost a curse word. Well, what can one say except that when someone calls someone a left wing liberal, they’re actually putting them in some esteemed company, those Americans whose politics looks out for the other guy as well as themselves, while the conservative philosophy is all about getting yours, and screw everyone else.

It sometimes takes courage to be a liberal, the courage to stand up for the rights of people you don’t care for all that much. If you believe in America and The Constitution of The United States, you realize that everyone has a right to have their say, even those who would like to subvert that Constitution by seeking to establish a state religion or wish to violate the Bill of Rights when it comes to “certain people.” They have no right to do these things, but they can talk about them all they like, otherwise their right to free speech is being violated. Liberals want no part of violating the rights of any individual or targeted groups of individuals.

Besides, liberals figure that the more people hear openly what these people are really all about, the more they will realize what complete assholes they are. No one is under any obligation to take such people seriously if they do not commit any criminal acts, and their right to be an asshole must be respected. Talk is cheap. Accomplishments speak much louder. Here’s a few people who might be considered by today’s conservatives to be no good left wing liberals:

George Washington: Farmer, land surveyor, soldier, revolutionary and father of his country.

His accomplishment: America.

Abraham Lincoln: Self-educated lawyer, Congressman, President.

His accomplishments: Preserving the Union and abolishing slavery.

Thomas Jefferson: Farmer, scholar, inventor, architect, ambassador, Secretary of State, Governor, writer, President.

His accomplishments: Writing the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, championing the Bill of Rights, defeating the Barbary Pirates who were attacking American shipping in Africa and founding the United States Military Academy at West Point.

John Adams: Farmer, lawyer, ambassador, Vice President, President.

His accomplishment: Among many other accomplishments, defending the British officers involved in the Boston Massacre, setting an important precedent in equal treatment before the law, no matter how distasteful the defendants may seem, perhaps stands out as his greatest contribution to Americanism. He took the case in spite of his fear that it would damage his reputation, but his honor and his commitment to his beliefs were more important to the man. Of the eight soldiers charged with murder, six were acquitted and two were convicted of the lesser charge of manslaughter. Apparently Americans didn’t hold his integrity against him and elected him the second President of The United States.

James Madison: Lawyer, Secretary of State, Congressman, President.

His accomplishments: Prevented Great Britain from reclaiming her colonies in the War of 1812. Wrote the Bill of Rights. Collaborated with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay on what became known as The Federalist Papers, a series of essays and arguments urging the people of the United States to adopt the Constitution, which was no certain thing in the days following The American Revolution.

Alexander Hamilton: Political philosopher, economist, soldier, Congressman, Secretary of The Treasury.

His accomplishments: The Federalist Papers, contributor to The United States Constitution, advocate of a strong national army and navy, established the United States Mint.

Patrick Henry: Planter, lawyer, Governor.

His accomplishment: The statement “Give me liberty or give me death!” This encapsulation of America still holds up. You think this guy would have shut up when the cynically named Patriot Act sailed thorough a fearful Congress and handed the terrorists a second victory to go with 9/11? He’d have put his life on the line defending the rights and the freedom of American citizens from this criminal and traitorous legislation.

John Jay: Revolutionary, diplomat, Secretary of Foreign Affairs under George Washington, First Chief Justice of The United States Supreme Court.

His accomplishments: The Federalist Papers and the establishment of the legal precedent that the individual states were subordinate to the Federal Government, further strengthening the Union of a young nation.

Thomas Paine: Revolutionary, pamphleteer, radical, inventor, author.

His accomplishments: The original blogger, his pamphlets, especially “Common Sense,” “The Age of Reason” and “The Rights of Man,” were instrumental in convincing the majority of British colonists to overthrow the monarchy and establish a democracy that scrupulously respected individual human rights and recognized no specially privileged classes of human beings. Equality before the law and in society were Mr. Paine’s passions, and he passed them on to all of us as our birthright.

Martin Luther King: Clergyman, Civil Rights activist.

His accomplishments: Led a peaceful and aggressive Civil Rights movement that confronted the innate racism in American society, and in the process changed America for the better forever.

John F. Kennedy: War hero, Senator, President.

His accomplishments: Completing the unfinished work of Abraham Lincoln by introducing the long overdue Civil Rights legislation, starting the race to the moon and winning the highest stakes poker game ever played against Nikita Khruschev’s Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Franklin D. Roosevelt: Lawyer, Governor, State Senator, Assistant Secretary of The Navy, President.

His accomplishments: Social Security, minimum wage, the United Nations, The New Deal, winning World War 2. Generally considered, along with Washington and Lincoln, to be one of our three greatest presidents.

Lyndon Johnson: Master politician, Congressman, Senator, Vice President, President.

His accomplishments: Passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and The Voting Rights Act of 1965, continuing the work of the assassinated John F. Kennedy. Instituted Medicare, the highly successful medical program to take care of America’s senior citizens, and Medicaid, to provide health care for the nation’s poor. Initiated arms reduction negotiations with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. His Great Society and War on Poverty programs greatly improved education in the United States and opened up job market to minorities. Johnson also eliminated hunger from this nation with his Food Stamp and Public Assistance programs.

While none of these people mentioned above were perfect human beings, all of them acted upon their powerful belief in America values and the American people, and the universal human rights that our forefathers pronounced to be “self-evident,” and did so even in the face of stiff opposition, even at the cost of their lives in a few cases. Few of them were particularly religious, but all of them were content to let anyone follow any religion they wanted to as long as they did not force it upon others. All were highly moral and ethical, morality and ethics having very little to do with religious faith. These men were and remain the conscience of our nation, the people who made America America. All of them left our nation, and the world, a better place than they found it. Left wing liberals, every man jack among them. So when someone accuses you of being a left wing liberal, be  proud, be very proud. You’re in good company.

We have seen the future and it is now. Look at all the futuristic crap we already have, and Steve Jobs just won’t stop introducing more modern crap every two weeks or so, before we even figure out what the hell the last one was supposed to do. Every electronic device we have acquired in the past six months is already obsolete and we haven’t even figured out how to use them yet. Who ever uses anywhere near one quarter of all the functions of their computer? And if so, why? For what? Now we hear that some other company has introduced touch screens a lot more advanced than Apple’s, able to respond to an infinite amount of touches. Sounds a little kinky, no?

Still other companies are promising us computers that need no screens, just a pair of 3-D type glasses that project images in front of our eyes in thin air! Others promise that the geeky 3-D glasses won’t be necessary, they’ll just implant chips in our eyes and receptors elsewhere on our person that will connect us to the internet and powerful computers with just a thought. One supposes that cell phones will be included in our chip installations, so we can just do that thumb and pinky thing we use to pantomime making a phone call to actually make phone calls. Presumably, e-mail, calendars, contact lists, address books and GPS devices will also be built in. Wonder what will happen if we don’t pay our phone bill? It all sounds kind of creepy and Star Trekky.

Speaking of creepy, the Japanese are thisclose to perfecting a lifelike sex robot, a computer with plastic skin and organs indistinguishable from the real thing and “fully functional.” Fully functional? Given the very wide range of human sexual preferences, the researchers at the sex robot company must have had some very interesting experiences compiling the computer commands necessary to make a sex robot fully functional. The line for that job had to be pretty long, and undoubtedly the research was exceptionally thorough.

All in all, great news for girlfriend-challenged geeks the world over, and perhaps the end of life as we know it. Robot lovers would find no fault with us, will never refuse a request, never get sick or old or tired of us. And if we tire of them, we could always program a new personality, change their hair, skin or eye color, or simply screw around with other sex robots and never have to deal with jealousy, separation or divorce. Threesomes? Not a prob. Oddball sexual tastes? Just change the settings. Lots of people would swear off real spouses with their insistent demands, their aging and personality changes. Could be a real herd-thinner, this one, with the birth rate plunging drastically and production of sex-robots soaring.

Now add to the list of techno wonders a pill that will keep our muscles and bodies in perfect shape by fooling our bodies into thinking we’ve just exercised for an hour or so. Perfection without exertion! No more diets, no more jogging or sweating in gyms, no more wearing sweat pants all the time when we outgrow yet another wardrobe. Perfect 6 pack abs while we enjoy a perfect 6 pack of imported lager! Does it get any better than that?

Then there’s the plan to seed the planet with trillions of tiny sensors so that nature can now talk to us, with lakes and rivers warning us when they are about to flood, the earth telling us it is about to quake, food crops reminding farmers that they are getting ripe and it’s harvest time and who-knows-what else. Will we even need eyes anymore? If tomatoes will be able to tell us when to pick them, what will these sensors tell about us? Will there be such a thing as privacy anymore? Will everybody else find out all the crazy things we’re up to with our sex robots? Sounds like Big Brother will be watching, and Big Brother will be everybody.

Back to the sex robot thing (that one’s got everybody thinking furiously). These robots beg the question: If they can be created and programmed to be perfect replicas of human beings, why are we limiting them to performing sex acts? Why not send them to work? They don’t need any sleep, and we’ll sure need plenty of it from all the sex we’ll be having. Let them deal with commuting and our crazy bosses while we chill! There’s all sorts of lousy jobs they could be doing, like sewer cleaners, McDonald’s clerks and dentists. They’d never give anybody any lip since they will be programmed to be cheerful and compliant.

And we’ll all know if they’re doing a good job or not with all those sensors feeding us data, maybe even program some of them to get two jobs so we can buy everything we want and not have to do a damned thing. Could it be possible that all this technical wizardry will help mankind evolve into what we’ve always wanted to become, healthy and robust stay-at-home couch potatoes with our every whim catered to?

So, maybe this confusing glut of perplexing technology is leading us to the Promised Land after all. Built-in brain video, beer, chips, perfect physical conditioning without any tedious physical exertion and sex robots to indulge our every fantasy? Sounds too good to be true, so it probably is. Odds are that none of these wonders will work remotely as advertised, and wind up being only more confusing gadgets to frustrate and torture us. But we can dream, can’t we? At least that’s one thing we can all do without technical assistance.

Now this: In addition to the (!) 9 million or so vehicles that Toyota Motors is recalling to correct the self-accelerating gas pedals that have resulted in many fatalities, their expensive Green model, the hybrid Prius, has been experiencing the opposite problem, brakes that fail when they go over a pothole or other “irregular surface,” sort of undermining the whole idea of having brakes on one’s vehicle, you know, stopping the damned thing to see what the hell you just ran over. The results are potentially the same as the gas pedal fiasco, death behind the wheel. Since Prius also features that trick Toyota gas pedal, that car has the potential to kill its driver twice. Who says the Japanese aren’t innovators but copiers? Hell, the best American car companies could do was to have only one fatal flaw per vehicle at a time!

Which just goes to show what success breeds in corporate circles. Contempt. Contempt born of greed, of course, since that is the only acceptable motivation for corporations in recent years. The passion for building a better and safer product, just like in Detroit, was for the founders of automobile companies, not the bottom line money grubbers who run these multi-billion dollar corporations these days. Once the founders of the automotive industry in both America and Japan were safely dead, their successors began earnestly cutting corners on safety and engineering and firing the skilled and dedicated workers who made these same executives so very wealthy by “outsourcing” their jobs to nations that pay their workers in shiny objects, seed corn and sunglasses.

And now Japanese automobile manufacturers will enter the inevitable period of decline experienced by America’s Big Three auto makers. Today’s corporate weenies don’t care what business they are in, they only want to become instant multimillionaires by any means necessary. And if that means saving money on safety and pocketing the difference, or bundling billions of dollars worth of worthless mortgages and selling them as the greatest thing since dark chocolate, so be it. These so-called “automobile people” could just as well be selling oven mitts, washing machines or cookies, it makes no difference to them. Commitment to quality and innovation is a thing of the past, replaced in almost every large corporation by a serious commitment to greed.

It’s not so much making the boneheaded mistake with the gas pedals (and now the brakes), the truly horrible thing was waiting for people to die before admitting there was a problem. In a move that would make all the unindicted coconspirators in the financial industry proud, Toyota executives attempted to pass off the unwanted acceleration problem on careless drivers failing to secure the floor mats. Nine million careless motorists. Who knows what they’ll say about the Prius brakes? Maybe they’ll go the Wall Street route and blame other car companies or, also like Wall Street, claim they had no idea there was a problem.

So far, the president of the company, Akio Toyoda, a master of understatement, has admitted that Toyota is “in a crisis” and has promised to appoint a committee of top Toyota guys to address the problem, just like the committee the last president of Toyota appointed to address the previous set of defects in their cars. The results? 9 million recalls and counting. No word yet on whether or not this new committee will concentrate on public relations or automobile design. Of course that would require Toyota executives to actually talk to the people who design and build their cars, said people generally unacquainted with the fine points of greed for greed’s sake. Corporate executives are uncomfortable around such people, and vice-versa.

So far, the president of the company, Akio Toyoda, a master of understatement, has admitted that Toyota is “in a crisis” and has promised to appoint a committee of top Toyota guys to address the problem, just like the committee the last president of Toyota appointed to address the previous set of defects in their cars. The results? 9 million recalls and counting. No word yet on whether this new committee will concentrate on public relations or automobile safety. Of course if they opt to address engineering issues, that would require Toyota executives to actually talk to the people who design and build their cars, salaried people generally unacquainted with the fine points of greed for greed’s sake. Corporate executives are uncomfortable around such people, and vice-versa.

When the head guys have no idea what goes on with their products, that doesn’t exactly reassure either their customers or their stockholders. That’s a crisis, alright. So look for Toyota City, home of the Toyota corporation, to start resembling its sister city (true fact) Detroit any year now; high unemployment, empty houses and people deserting the place in droves. So much for Toyota’s dominance of the car market, and good riddance to the ugly pieces of crap with all the fun and flair of a Volvo, minus the reliability, longevity and safety. Looks like Toyota executives will have to get into a different business, maybe the Japanese Stock Market and investment houses. Keep an eye peeled for a huge scandal in a couple of years when Japanese financial institutions start selling multibillion dollar bundles of bad mortgages on tiny houses with paper walls.

Well, it’s official. The sports writers and sports announcers are all of a sudden yammering about people no one ever heard of, and that can only mean one thing. That’s right, sports fans, it’s almost Winter Olympic time! Skiers, Bobsledders and the like. Then these sports people, who you read and listen to all year long and who never once mention Winter Olympic sports, all of a sudden become word class experts on the Luge, Curling, Snowboarding and whatever the hell they call that stupid event where a guy on skis shoots up the place with a high-powered rifle. Why more Americans don’t take to that sport is a mystery. Throw in a deer hunting license and a case of beer and we’d dominate.

At any rate, the same guys who prattle about prevent defenses, the pick-and-roll and the infield fly rule now would have you believe that they give a crap about figure skating, which hasn’t been any fun at all since Tonya Harding kneecapped the competition back in ‘94. Literally. Like they know or give a rat’s ass what’s the difference between Speed Skating and Short Track Speed Skating. They do a nice job of trying to get us interested, though, usually by focusing their attention on some obnoxious extreme skier with a few screws loose. Sorry, but Tonya is still the most exciting thing to hit the Winter Olympics. Ever.

Outside of that skate and punch fest called Hockey, there’s not a sport in the whole bunch that either doesn’t require a lot of money to learn or are best performed by people like Canadians and Scandinavians who grew up in chest-high snow. Basically what you see for two weeks on the winnners platform are the blonde-haired, blue-eyed sons and daughters of affluence, not a single one of them other than a handful of the Hockey players and figure skaters who have a shot at earning a living at their sport. No one packs an arena to watch Skeleton, which is a guy on a tiny replica of a toboggan, more like a welcome mat with handles, hurtling downhill on his belly, face-first, at 80 MPH. Only those who attend Nascar races hoping for a fatal crash could appreciate this semi-sport.

Fittingly enough, this year’s games are in Canada, as perfect a symbol for the earnest and energetic ennui that is the Winter Olympics as could be, a marriage made in Dullness Heaven. If Canada did not exist, we’d have to invent it to serve as the living embodiment of boring, but God in His wisdom was, as always, a few steps ahead of us. How could He have known there would be Winter Olympics Games and where best to hold them? Thank Him that at least we’ll have the Super Bowl to quench our thirst for real sports until after the Winter Olympic Games go away and take their so-called athletes with them for another four merciful years. This will be a good time to hibernate for two weeks.

Now the inevitable reports start appearing that the recent devastating earthquake in Haiti may be the beginning of a trend. Scientists are “concerned.” That’s usually the term they use when they have no friggin’ idea, concerned. Now, after the fact, of course, we get word that one science guy issued a warning in 2008 that the fault in the earth’s crust on the island of Hispaniola that contains Haiti and the Dominican Republic could blow soon. Only thing is, he predicted an earthquake several hundred miles away, on the Dominican Republic side of the island. Looks like the study of earthquakes is at about the same level of sophistication that medical science was in the Middle Ages, which makes a lot of the non-scientists among us “concerned,” hoping they don’t start bleeding the earth to eliminate ill humors and amputating perfectly good peninsulas.

Then there’s the reports that the hole in the planet’s ozone layer is mending itself, which on the face of it seems to be a major victory for environmentalists. Not so fast. There’s a little concern coming our way from other scientists who fear that the closing of the ozone hole is contributing to global warming. Well, what’s the story? Do we start belching black fumes from our factories again? Or maybe just take a little time out and realize that these sciences of studying the earth’s tectonic plates, it’s climate and volcanos and the like are in their infancy and at this point about as accurate as the Roman scientists who decided that Vesuvius would not blow after studying the entrails of a dove. We all know how that one turned out: not so good for Pompeians, great for archaeologists and travel agents.

What we don’t know with anything resembling any degree of certainty, however, is whether or not the Haiti quake is the harbinger of things to come in say, Miami or Atlanta, or Caracas or Havana or Rio. Remembering the devastating tsunami in the Pacific in December of 2004, there was no shortage of predictions for similar events, a whole lot of concern, but no answers. Which is not to say that another Pacific tsunami won’t happen tomorrow or next week, or that the Dominican Republic won’t be stricken by a large earthquake soon. We just don’t know. Why pretend?

Time passes differently for a planet than for the creatures that ride its back. What may seem like only yesterday to a planet could be thousands of generations to humans, so our records of these things is by cosmic timing standards brand new and pretty sketchy. We’ve only been using written languages for about 6,000 years, and we’ve only practiced widespread serious science for a few hundred of those years, so our understanding of the forces of nature is on the light side so far. Our ability to predict seismic events is pretty lousy. Hence the “concern.”

We’re not even 100% certain about global warming, even though we are proceeding as if it is a proven fact. When we say that this past 10 years was “the warmest decade on record,” by definition that means it is the warmest decade that we know about. Our record keeping only started in the 1800’s, about 5 plus billion years into the life of the planet. Hell, we didn’t even start until a few hundred thousand years ago, a mere fortnight to a planet. For all we know for sure, the earth is cooling. Or that this warm decade is merely an acceptable fluctuation in temperature indicative of nothing in particular. The odd thing is that humans think we can finally stop talking about the weather and do something about it. Then a Haiti comes along to remind us that we have much to learn.

It’s a great idea to stop poisoning the earth and the sky on its own merits. Whether or not we are affecting the planet with our activities, it’s never a good thing to poison ourselves. Ideally, zero parts-per-million of any man-made toxin is the ideal number, but some of those toxins have provided the way of life that has enabled our other human sciences to flourish, thus vastly improving our short human lives. The science of medicine has progressed from using goose dung to dress wounds to replacing heart valves and curing polio. The science of aviation, in an incredibly rapid progression, went from a 12 second flight to putting a man on the moon in just 66 years. Our computer sciences progressed in a mere half century from computers the size of a house to laptops that outperform their huge predessessors. Hopefully, our earth and climate sciences will progress to the point where knowledge replaces concern. Until then, we’ll have to live on this earth as we’ve always lived on this earth, very precariously.