WHAT JUST HAPPENED?

• It has been not quite a year since we replaced a Presidential buffoon with an educated, articulate, multi-ethnic young man who spoke from his heart about "change." What has happened?
  
• At his confirmation hearing for Director of the CIA, Leon Panetta said that "extraordinary rendition," where we have sent prisoners to foreign countries to be tortured, was a tool he meant to retain.
  
• The President has announced that past crimes by Bush officials would not be investigated – not even by a "truth commission" just trying to establish a record.
  
• Gay military personnel continue to be dismissed at the same rate as before.
  
• Despite consternation when Dick Cheney refused to divulge the names of energy executives who had come to the White House in 2002, the Obama administration refused to release names of its visitors until forced to do so by a lawsuit.
  
• Ours is the most virulent society since Britannia ruled the waves. We maintain more than 1000 military bases in other countries, so many that President Kennedy did not know, until the Cuban missile crisis, that we had nuclear weapons in Turkey.
  
• We have become a national security state bent on imposing our will and our culture on the world. The Bush Administration called the Geneva Conventions "quaint" in a memo written by Alberto Gonzales. Maybe our leaders, the present ones included, think of the Constitution as "quaint," too.
  
• In the words of, sheesh, Nancy Reagan, maybe it is time to "Just say 'no.'"

IN GREED WE TRUST

How did greed become the defining characteristic of the United States of America? When did capitalism, a rather bland 18th century formulation of the obscure British philosopher, Adam Smith, become the money grubbing I-got-mine-screw-you credo of our nation?

How does a country where 30% of its people prefer that the others get sick and die without affordable health care also produce the Peace Corps? How do those Christians, who know very well that Christ healed the leper, rationalize that the person who cleans their hospital room is not able to afford a hospital bed when she is ill?

What kind of two-faced hypocrisy does it take to vote a $1.7 trillion tax cut for the rich in the George W. Bush administration and then to stand on the same Senate floor now and say we cannot afford universal health care Senator Grassley, Senator Hatch?

How, indeed, did greed become the defining characteristic of our country?

HAPPY NEW YEAR

I know, it is not really a new year, except for many of us, it is. For kids returning to school in a new grade, this is a new year. For companies whose fiscal year ends in September, the new year is less than three weeks away. For teachers, this is a new year. And for those of us who love summer and dread winter this is, alas, a new year. Let is put up our tomatoes and peaches and basil. Let us store our tubersand bulbs and dream of next Spring's catalogues.

So happy new year to you and let it be so. Let go of the old year's barriers and tear down your personal walls. Lift up your goals for this year and set a new charge in your ambition machine.

Let the New Year Begin!

SCUMBAG MILLIONAIRE

As though the O.J. trial was not evidence enough of the disparate perceptions of black Americans and white Americans, the Michael Vick brouhaha here has been a sobering reminder. Where were you when the O.J. verdict was announced? I remember being in a conference room filled with work colleagues who were about evenly divided between white and black associates. And I remember being stunned both by the verdict and by the applause from the blacks in the room.

Tonight, Michael Vick gets his first start as an Eagles quarterback. And there will be marches outside the stadium, but not the sort of protest rally you, or and least I, would have expected. The marchers will be representatives of the NAACP and local black churches and other organizations that support the ex-convict. These are being referred to as "civil rights marches" by the local media and by the marchers themselves.

By what stretch of the imagination does this scumbag millionaire deserve a "civil rights march?" It puts to shame the real civil rights marches in Selma and Chicago and elsewhere that brought together people of all races to protest injustice. These marches are a sham and a disgrace.

WHAT'S TO EAT?

I was devastated when I received an email titled "Avoid Whole Foods." After years of shopping at the woebegone ACME, pronounced in the native Philly "Ack-Ah-Me," I had discovered the wonderful world of organic, expensive food at Whole Foods only a few years ago. Now I was being informed that the Founder-CEO-Crazy Sonovabitch of Whole Foods is a right wing, libertarian nut case. After a bit of research, so it is. I should have known better. All along, I knew the company was headquartered in Dallas, home of the Screwball. I should have known.

John Mackey, an original Screwball, leads the charge against Universal Healthcare, arguing in several op-eds in the Wall Street Journal (where else?) that rationing health care is the American Way. He also has been fighting against unions for umpteen years. So, anyway, do your own research. I am left with nowhere to shop for food, for God's sake.

Oh, you Southerners go ahead and smirk with your Publicks and Piggly-Wigglys, but we have winter and fallow times to deal with up North here. It's not like we can buy our produce year-round at the farm stand, or grow it out back you know?

A Wegman's has opened recently in Cherry Hill and we have a small Trader Joe's uptown, but now I have to investigate their socio-political lineage and all, and, shit, I need eggs!

Once upon a time, I thought all I needed to know was to avoid Walmart.

Life gets complicated.

BASEBALL IS PASTORAL

It has always been true that football is a violent game surrounded by thugs at the professional level. The Eagles have just proven that characteristic by signing Michael Vick, a convicted abuser of animals, specifically dogs.

Many outcries and promises never again to attend or watch an Eagles game have been heard around town today. The Eagles have scheduled a hasty press conference.

The Phillies' second baseman, Chase Utley's wife, Jen Utley, is on the Board of the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and both she and Chase have been generous donors to the organization. They have also adopted a rescue dog.

As George Carlin noted, baseball is pastoral. Baseball is played in a "park." Football, on the other hand, is played on a "gridiron." It features the blitz and the bomb to get the ball to pay dirt, while in baseball one runs "home" to score.

The thugs have made the headlines today, but the boys of summer have won our hearts.

Go Phillies.

THIS IS BULLSHIT

And so now we come to the hard place and the rock. Philadelphia, due to its lack of fiscal responsibility under numerous mayors, has had to report to a special commission appointed by the State on all fiscal matters since 1986. One of the requirements of the State (for underwriting City bonds) is that it maintain a balanced budget. The State Senate, controlled by Republicans, has failed to approve the Governor's (a Democrat) budget, which was due to be approved by July 1.

The legislature has passed a special bill to pay State employees, so the State Police cars still roll along the Turnpike. But Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, which are both detested by the militiamen, gun toting NRA slobs, and the crustaceans who occupy the rural center of the State, are dying.

Philadelphia's Mayor, Michael Nutter, has presented his required balanced budget to the powers that be, but it has not been accepted because all financial bills are stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate. The mayor was told that, unless his budget is approved by August 15, he would have to take other measures to reduce the City's expenditures. It is not likely that the City's balanced budget can be approved, since the Senate has adjourned for the summer.

Meanwhile, 3000 city employees, including a friend of ours who moved here from New York to accept a city job last winter, are expected to be laid off next week. At the height of the summer heat, trash collections will be curtailed too. 600 police will be fired and 400 firemen will have to go.

This is civilized? This is not the City of Brotherly Love. This is bullshit.