The Public Option

The economic foundations of the “America Dream” have to come from somewhere. How is it this country, America, has risen above all others promising and often providing the “American Dream?” The “American Dream” is nothing other than financial success achieved without the oppressive constraints of social class and politics. Somehow in the American capitalist frontier the system of supply and demand has been upheld. Commodities worthy of value remain as such, and invaluable commodities that are hawked and gambled upon eventually find their true demise. Hedge funds found their true demise. The bundled mortgages of private citizens held in the poker hands of elitist Wall Street players have revealed their true colors. Without a product, without a Gross National Product, there is no product upon which to gamble. Debt is not a good product upon which to gamble. We have learned that in the last two years. What has been the economic foundation upon which the “American Dream” has been possible? That is a good question. It seems the Free Market System, a system that relies upon honest and unbiased advertising, has been upheld in America until now. Now the airwaves that previously supplied that honest and unbiased advertising have become monopolized compromising the neutral communication of a democratic Capitalist socio-economic system. The airwaves have become corrupt. The infrastructure of America, honest and arbitrary advertising via telecommunications, has become a huge propaganda machine for the Extreme Right. The “American Dream” has been quashed by financial elites seeking to maintain their own power. The mobility of America, the ability to sidestep bureaucracy and large government, has been stymied by elitist America. Big business has squeezed the last penny out of Main Street left holding their dicks and wondering where the money is. In an effort to retain their monetary power, the remnants of elitist America produced by the medical profession and the insurance industry are floundering seeming grass roots lobbies at Town Hall meetings across America. Bucking the undeniable unpopular trend of HMO takeovers of healthcare in America, wildcard Republican extremists have launched an offensive against President Obama shouting such absurdities as “Death Squads.” While most Americans know Medicare and Medicaid are not the most efficient and stealth of health care providers, they are there for the masses that need them. Such is the “Public Option.” Unlike these shouters would have you believe at local Town Hall dissentions, the “Public Option” is meant to be nothing other than a viable option for health insurance for those that remain uninsured. As Obama continues to reiterate, it will not change the existing policies of Americans who are happy with their coverage. The Public Option, like the United States Post Office, is meant to provide and much needed service to and for the American people. The anti-Socialist shouting extremists appearing at these local Town Hall meetings are much more likely to be staged by the Republican party than pro-Obama supporters that slowly are beginning to realize their importance to the country. The stagnation of Old Money and the reliance upon tried and true fixed financial instruments has become real, and a true test of America’s Frontier is now underway.

We Can't Handle the Truth, in America

Upon returning to the continental United States after working on a cruise ship out of San Juan, Puerto Rico for six long months, the social, economic, and political landscape appear evil, bleak, and violent. Returning to a military town with the United States still engaged in an unwanted war of attrition against extreme Islam, the smoke continues to disguise reality. Virtual spin machines still are hard at work like Skynet doing their best to skew America’s political perceptions. Is it possible the Democratic Party is staging Town Hall meetings, supplying them with bought political supporters of our current President? Would the Democrats go to so much trouble to sway America’s perception? It is not unrealistic, because the media predominantly is controlled by the Extreme Right. Therefore their what-should-be-neutral media coverage all ready is tainted. It has been years since we as a people have been able to believe television. The internet is more reliable, but it seems not to be self-sustaining. The input of a myriad of bloggers seems to be the fuel of the internet news services. Without their online chatter, their coverage has waned but not without reason. The presidential election now is over, and the reality of trying to bleed news from the Capital Hill spin machine must be overwhelming. Journalism now will be defined by its traditional definition with instinctual, tenacious, investigative reporting. The good stories are left to those reporters who commit to their ideals. The question whether current Town Hall meetings have been staged is reasonable. Wag the Dog scenarios have existed before, and certainly the challenging of the medical elites’ monetary support is a high enough profile issue. It could define the very nature of America. Are we getting down to it? The issue simply is who deserves? Do uninsured Americans deserve health care? Can we qualify their needs for health care in the shadow of the preamble to the Constitution of the United States, “All men are created equal?” Because citizens are unemployed, poor, or illiterate means they do not deserve the same health care benefits as well-provided-for Americans? That seems to be the case in a country with roots in genocide and slavery. While America has redeemed herself in certain ways with advances in industry, technology, and art, today’s post Bush landscape is one littered with bigotry and racism radiating from a Totalitarian elite pushed into exile by Barack Obama and his fervent voters. Still as exhibited in these recent Town Hall meeting the disparate strains of America continue to fight. Slowly and surely Obama seems to be laying the groundwork for what could become milestone reversals of Bush’s unconstitutional policies and legislation. It takes time, and weekly assessments of Obama’s public satisfaction ratings are nothing more than media ammunition to fuel and disguise the truth. Television continues to be a void of nothing. There is very little worth watching, and the minds of our youth successfully have been shielded from the positive aspects and philosophy of American life. It continues to be a campaign of intimidation, fear, and violence. Formerly good people are taking up arms in ignorance, misunderstanding Obama’s plans. They are running scared, worried about no one but their own damn selves the way we were reared in our Capitalist socio-economic system. Obama is trying to change that with hints of a socialist philosophy. The problem is America’s own Extreme seem just as closed-minded as the Islam faction whom we are fighting. Instead of trying to embrace one another in diplomacy with Christian ethics, we are headed down a path of barbarous antagonism not unlike the Extremism we have witnessed since its inception. Media has adopted and embraced the extreme evil sacrament of terror and unknowingly we watch it daily. How can we not be affected? What is the truth? We can’t handle the truth, in America.

Let Them Eat Cake!

With the recent failure of hedge funds, financial instruments gambling upon consumer debt, it may be America’s realigning economy will become anachronistic. Wall Street’s financial district will disappear, and the quaint but realistic merchant shops once littering Manhattan’s streets and alleys will return. They would be selling fresh vegetables, fruit, meats, spices, perfume, baubles, and other accoutrement to thriving New Yorkers. They would not be selling multiple mortgages packaged at budget interest rates. The need to amass billions of dollars would cease, and humanity would return at a provincial grass-roots level. Guilds would take the place of the House and the Senate, and Free Masons would proliferate. Their symbol is on the back of our paper currency. The mundane skills of blacksmithing, cobbling, furniture-making, and cooking would re-inherit their former glory, and the tenets of American social class would shrink. The economy would contract but would come to rest firmly on a foundation of demand and supply. The Gross National Product would become inconsequential, because America would be concerned only with providing for herself. Imperialist desires would be quelled by a previous War in Iraq, another plunder tapping the pocketbooks of citizens. As the financial industry recedes cloaked and incognito, mainstream American minutemen would launch an offensive reestablishing control of the Federal Reserve. Those guilty of the Wall Street melt down would be humiliated, publicly shackled in stocks at the town square, not Town Hall. They would be left to be tormented by their livid dupes. If they whimpered for contrition, maybe guillotine would be spared.

The New Revolution

Disco dancing and step aerobics could have no faults other than mall hair and “Glam-Rock” clothing. They both are vital physical exercise allowing humans to purge their endorphins cleansing them of the toxic refuse created by living in a Capitalist socio-economic system. While the Humanities suggest Western society long has engaged in music rituals to sanctify romance, America has lost touch with her roots. The driving forces of the 1980’s, love and the arts, have been lost. Only now in the bleak aftermath of George Bush’s economic debacle, “The Raping of the American Economy,” are the tenacious residual strains of romance beginning to resurface. Glorify the individual? Indulge the soul? Embrace the libido? These are new thoughts in a changing era of politics. It may be we reap the musical reward as well as the music of the 80’s provided overt cleansing of the confusion of the soul. It astutely fed the desires of the human soul instead of fueling them like pop music. Music and dance of the 80’s provided pleasure, not desire. Pop music as an aesthetic and a specific music style is effective only in riling people like a Hitler war speech. If you want your audience to revel and buy products, this is your choice. If you want to plant the seeds of a long term economy, gain the adoration of your fans, and invest in America as a country you would choose something else. The musical effect of pop music is nothing other than to flush the audience with raw emotion. It matters not if there is no understanding of the lyric content and how it relates to its audience. Pop music is a device that has been abused in the last decade sweeping America’s real music history under the rug. Time/Warner purchased the rights to the majority of America’s hit music and only offers it in expensive compilations on their website. AM and FM radio were corporately monopolized like television and the propaganda campaign began. Those damn longhairs got pushed out of Texas. I mean the country. While living in the barren aftermath of an economic implosion, Americans have realized they have nothing left to lose. Why not form a militia? Why not buy a gun and carry it to a Town Hall meeting? These are our constitutional rights that have been squelched like radio. Cooley and cunningly America was duped into innocent, naïve, compliance with the Republican party whose private citizens bilked them of billions of dollars for their own personal gain. If that is not grounds for a revolution, I don’t know what is. Maybe music will lead the way, again.

The New Secretary of Straight

I have to take a a few minutes and reflect upon what is happening politically in America. Hillary was taped in Africa representing a hybrid Madeline Albright and Jabba the Hut. In her newfound post as Barack Obama’s Secretary of State, we have heard little from her. We as the American people don’t know if she has done anything since the inauguration. If we were assessing her capabilities of diplomacy while watching the news footage of her trip, she would have received a D-. Wagging her finger and refusing to admit past President Bill Clinton is her husband painted her as a crochety school marm full of sour grapes upon losing her own Presidential bid. “Will the real Secretary of State please stand up, Mrs. Albright?” While Obama’s strategy of hiring political enemies to help bridge the stalemate between left and right in America seems prudent, it seems Hillary is dragging her feet. While it does take time to figure out what one’s job is and then figure out how effectively to do it, America’s diplomatic clock is ticking. Amicable worldwide relations could help trump not only the terror card but the ensuing economic depression. Meanwhile America continues to be defined by her incumbent, puritan-rooted, soap-box shouting Republicans fearful Socialism will deprive them of their benefits the Baby Boomer generation so tactfully arranged. It is this generation of Americans that are “in the money” and dutifully covered by health insurance, unlike fledging Gen. X’ers who hide their despondency by buying portable Apple devices and playing video games. “Will the real Condition of America please rise?” It is a bleak portrait. Obama seems effectively to be sledgehammering away at the crony politics of the previous George W. Bush, but a tsunami of deceit and corruption are floating upon the potable water of the American people. Unemployment continues to rise and banks continue to fail. The stark reality the “cheap money” upon which the credit industry was founded is gone may spark a revolution. What have the people got to lose?