A woman knocked on my door the other day, triggering the barking mechanism inside Maggie, my 100 lb. chocolate lab which, very much like a political salesman, is difficult to hush once they get going. The woman was old, and she had to work her chin off of her chest with a couple shoulder dips and lifts, simply to see me standing above her. Out of consideration I stepped down onto the porch so she wouldn’t have to work so hard, and that’s when I noticed her hands stuffed with packages of photo cards.

“Have you heard of Timothy Slick, or Rodney Starchman?” she asked as she fumbled their cards from the stack. “How about Don Glimmer, or Pat Pearlywhite?” The sheen of the cards caused them to slip and they fanned in her frail forearm, and just as they were about to fall to the porch I reached out to spare her the grief. That’s when I noticed they had elephants all over them.

“What, they’re all Republicans?” I asked, turning them over and around to see all of the smiling faces. They smiled for trust until it hurt. “Not one Independent even?” She stared up at me and her lower lip started quivering. After the moment it took her to gather her cards and thoughts she spoke up as if she’d just remembered that she forgot to buy milk that morning. “Why no!” She looked frightened. “You see, we believe there’s too many people in government jobs, and these candidates here all want to get rid of them.”

“Is that what they’re running on this time?” I asked. “Leaving tens of thousands more to collect unemployment? And who will pay all of the taxes when they are no longer getting any income whatsoever?”

“Well taxes are another thing we want to get rid of because the taxes we pay under Obama is ruining us all!”

“Really? And how is that when taxes didn’t go up at all? And let me ask you this…” I wasn’t going to give this lady the nicety she was most likely getting from every other house on the block – that “Oh but she’s a poor old woman whose only trying to help her cause,” benefit of the doubt, and simply because she was not only voting against her own better interests but she was voting against mine. “… if nobody is paying taxes then where will all of the money come from?”

“Money for what?”

“Money for everything. Every time the population grows we need more police and firefighters. We need street repairs, and public works in general. Costs for education? Where will all of that money come from?”

Her head pistoned in and out of her shoulders as she looked away to the street, panning like an imbedded lawn sprinkler, and just like one she brought her head around quickly to answer the question. “We believe that by cutting all of the government jobs we’ll have more than enough money…”

“But none of these people will be paying taxes then, that’s my point. They won’t have any income, so they won’t pay any taxes. Look, do you think that we’d be in a better position handing back our government to the same people who drove us into the recession we’ve been trying to get out of?”

She started laughing a ‘how dare you talk that way about my child if I was your mother I’d spank your lights out but your generation made spanking illegal so I’d hit you even harder’ laugh. Her teeth were yellowed with the same amount of history she wanted to slap into my head, but I knew for all intents and purposes that she was nothing more than an anti-progressive. She was nothing more than a tea partier too tired to party, and so she settled in with her long time companions, the Republicans. Then her laugh turned sour. “Oh sure, blame the Republicans!” she said.

“They were in charge of Washington when all of this happened,” I reminded her. “And now they want to protect the banks that gambled our economy into the gutter.”

And then the strangest thing happened. It wasn’t the look of intense shock that her face suddenly morphed into, nor was it the way that she pointed up to me with her twisted witch-finger as if she were putting me under  the same evil spell that drove her political views her entire life, but it was the 7 words that followed. “The banks were forced to do that!”

Yup! Apparently the most recent claim coming from the faux-conservative wall of “duh” is that the banks were forced into driving our economy into the gutter. The dog was still barking and without the slightest hitch in timing. Ruff Ruff Ruff Ruff… she went on and it sounded as if someone wouldn’t give the ignition of a dead engine a break. I knew she was just trying to bark some logic into this lady, so I let her go on. I didn’t care if Maggie was tainting my image as some ordinary middle-class citizen, and making me look more like trailer trash who happened upon a stroke of luck. The dog was right, “Listen up or get off my porch.”

This time I was doing the laughing. “Really? The banks were forced to do it?”

“Yes, it was Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac, and all of the regulations…”

“Fanny and Freddy had hardly the share in this that the free market banks had. The Lehman Brothers, and Bear Stearns’s, and as far as regulations there weren’t any, because Clinton under the guidance of a Republican majority chose to do away with bank regulations.”

She just stood with her head shaking, whispering, “No, the banks were forced to do it by the Democrats.”

“No, they weren’t,” I responded. “You just can’t admit that your party bears the brunt of this train wreck of an economy, and I think it’s sad because while all these people are trying to turn it around your party wants to see it fail just so they can get back into power. Well, ma’am, I’m sorry but I don’t vote straight party lines like you do. I try to find the best candidate for the job, and anyone refusing to help our country in a time of crisis is not only an utter ass, but is a treasonous utter ass. I’m sorry if I can’t help you out.” With that I walked back inside and shut the door. I watched her waddle down the steps and down the driveway, shaking her head the entire time. Maggie had to be settled down before she could go back to basking in the sun through the bay window, waiting for the next thing to roar her engines over – the busy squirrel scampering through the yard, the neighborhood skateboarder. I sat watching the lady as she crossed my neighbor’s yard. She was there a whole twenty seconds and back the next day handing him a sign to post in his yard. “Sick freaks,” I said to Maggie. She wagged her tail. “Total halfwits.” She rolled onto her back. It was her way of begging for belly-scratches. “You know Maggie-Moo? I wish you were a Democrat in Washington,” I told her. “At least you know how to bark back.”

US Propaganda Leaflets

Right wing Conservatives in America, mostly those referred to as the “religious right”, have an immense distrust toward all things Islam. They see Muslims as people that are hell bent on taking out the West, and harbor an innate fear of their intentions. It’s this distrust that drives them to utter their justification for war – “We’re killing them over there so we don’t have to kill them here.” It’s that ubiquitous sign of religious prejudice and paranoia that plagues Christian Conservatives, and when confronted on that issue they heave their chests in support of their beliefs. It’s unfortunate that their cries are so loud they reverberate across the oceans, and that so many abroad seem to think that all Americans are as equally intolerant. Consequently, much of the world has an equal distrust toward American intentions.

Our nation is currently stuck in a financial hangover largely because of the recently diffused war in Iraq, and the current war in Afghanistan, sucking trillions from our coffers of tax dollars. If President Obama were to quit in Afghanistan now, the Christian Conservatives would call to have his head on a pike… again. But as soon as the President signed his first defense budget, the war in Afghanistan was his to own. The Conservatives were overjoyed with being able to pass over their bumbled military endeavor to the Democrats. They pointed their fingers like kids in the schoolyard, “It’s Obama’s war now, yup!”

One of Barack Obama’s presidential-campaign promises was to refocus our military attention on Afghanistan. During the marathon to the 2008 election, when the right wing neo-cons constantly questioned ‘Who do you trust to lead us in war?’, Senator Obama proposed his plan to draw down the troop levels in Iraq and shift the resources back to where they should’ve been all along – Afghanistan. On countless occasions, he accepted the weight of the war on his shoulders before he ever became president. So the sudden surprise that Republicans received was in fact no surprise at all. It was nothing more than another instance where their paying attention to anything beyond anti-liberalism fell short of their blind faith in all things on the right-wing.

Conservatives couldn’t bask in their glory for very long, however, for deep inside they knew what we all know – this is their war, as most wars are. It is the right wing that proposes the inflated defense budgets, normally ballooned to leaving all other domestic spending in its immense shadow. They are those who supported the war in Iraq, even after all of the lies and deceit that the Bush-Cheney administration used in starting the war were uncovered. With regard to the war in Afghanistan, well, why wouldn’t they support it? It’s another war against Muslims and their distrustful religion of Islam.

Earlier this week, the Obama Administration offered a half billion dollars to revamp the infrastructure of Pakistan and Afghanistan with hopes of “earning the trust” of their people. The thought process goes a bit like this: To relieve the chances of rogue cells plotting to wage terror on American soil, the governments of these developing, or third-world countries need to have centralized power, and with influence that stretches to all borders. The only way to do this is to have a first-world populace, and the only way to gain that status is by having a first-world infrastructure. In helping them finance their infrastructure the plan of earning the people’s trust suddenly becomes two-pronged; they are left with their necessary first-world hydroelectric dams, power grid, and hospitals, and secondly the people can see that it was funded by western nations. Once these nations have more control over their pockets of human habitation that might currently be ruled by maniacally greedy people, armed to the teeth, and who lack any sense of value for the lives of fellow humans, these centralized governments can stamp out these terrorist cells themselves. It would allow them to kill them over there so we don’t have to kill them here – A much better scenario than members of the right wing would have it.

The question that needs to be asked, however, is how possible is it for the West to gain the trust of the people in the Middle-East? Can building a couple hydroelectric dams and a few hospitals really work to change their outlook on western civilization? To have a change in mind they must first have a change in heart. Can the upgrade in their power grids erase thousands of years of bad blood? Why should we expect Muslims to trust Christians when the history of war between the two dates back as far as the time when they each realized the other’s existence? Never meaning to imply that America should be considered a Christian nation, but when our federal defense team employs hyper-Christian military forces like Blackwater, now Xe Services, LLC.,  who have been reported to use extreme religious prejudice in their motives for killing, most nations would venture to bet that ours is a Christian nation. At the very least, theocratic nations would see it that way. Opposing denominations within the Islamic religion alone have spent thousands of years perfecting their hatred for one another; the thought of a Christian from the West extending a helpful hand could surely bring about an uncomfortable pause in the moment, along with at least a short sequence of ocular nerve twitching. Is it difficult to wonder how people whose everyday lives are engrained with their religion, as opposed to the brush-over one might get from a couple hours in church on a Sunday morning, might feel a bit iffy about their historic enemy erecting buildings, and reconstructing power grids on their property? Even supplying them with all of the military goods they needed to repel a Soviet occupation did nothing to earn their trust, why would they now, especially when Christians harbor as much distrust toward them?

Prior to sending troops into Afghanistan, America waged a propaganda war – After jamming radio transmissions and replacing them with those showing a pro-western sentiment, we sent in air-strikes, where military planes dropped thousands of leaflets onto the people below. The leaflets held rewards for the capture of Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders, while also characterizing the Americans as being friends to the Afghani people. It’s now safe to assume the leaflets didn’t have a vastly positive effect on gaining their trust, for it’s one thing to claim a friendship, but another to leave that new friend for the dogs still patrolling their streets, and keeping them intimidated and living in fear.

It appears that the only way to truly gain a long-lasting trust between the Muslim and Western nations is to lose the religion; yes, it’s truly that difficult. For as long as the two cling to their myths like babies to breasts one will always feel the need to enlighten the other, and if need be, by way of great force. As long as someone is being taught to believe that their god or prophet is better than the other’s they will always feel the need to defend their all-powerful omnipresence; apparently gods need the help of humans to defend themselves against the evil other.

At this point it is impossible to say whether or not the helping hand idea will work to benefit either side in the long term. The Mid-East could very easily thank the West before shooting them in the eye. The Mid-East could also thank the West before their own blows it all to smithereens for Allah’s sake. Perhaps it will have such a profound effect on Muslim nations throughout the Middle-East that they’ll open their arms to us as we’ve never experienced before. For now we can only hope to earn the trust of their people through these means, and hope it spills over to when our troops can come home for good, and they themselves can quell the calls for Jihad. Although it seems that as long as there are people willing to die for their god(s), erecting some utilities as a peace offering is futile, and leaves me with a glass half-full of distrust.

Photo Courtesy of IMEMC.ORG

It should come as no surprise that right wing Republicans are not the only crowd crying out for military action against Iran. Last month from Riyadh, it was made public when Saudi Arabian jet fighters cleared their airspace to allow the free passage of Israeli fighter planes running a mock airstrike on Iran. Though the Saudi’s later denied the clearance orders, one US diplomat claimed the Saudi military has fully agreed to keep their jets grounded once Israeli fighters have entered their airspace. “The Saudis have given their permission for the Israelis to pass over – and they will look the other way,” a US military source in the region confirmed.

This act of alliance doesn’t stop with the Saudi’s, however, as other nations in the region are in line with Israel’s endeavors against Iran. Until the recent unrest sparked by aid flotillas en route to Palestinians living in Gaza, even Turkey had pretended to be unaware of Israeli jet fighters flying in their airspace. Though, the Turk’s sudden restrictions set on the Israeli Air Force may be a bit too late, as the latter have already used that permissive window of time to amass squadrons of fighter planes just north of the Turkish border in Georgia.

With the conservatives in the house and senate begging our government to attack Iran, an American “blind-eye” turned from the threat of an Israeli attack would not come as much of a shock. And any counter attack would only invite retaliation from the armadas of US ships currently occupying the Black Sea, the Gulf of Oman, and the Persian Gulf. In their folly, Republicans have publically backed the Iranian “Green” movement – the insurgence of an anti-theocracy, pro-democracy portion of the Iranian population which would be acceptable if they would simply agree to backing the movement vocally. Of course, the right wingers would rather send American troops as a show of support, as their blinders of arrogance continuously shield all common sense. Many military and diplomatic strategists have warned war-mongering conservatives like John McCain that any involvement in that movement may backfire, and may actually push many “Green” supporters back into supporting their government against western influences. It’s largely understood that a logical rebuttal against the American right-wing equates to arguing with a wall, however.

The Washington Institute for Near Policy (WINEP), a think-tank closely tied to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) issued a letter this year in which Bush’s former national security adviser Stephen Hadley and Israeli Brigadier General Michael Herzog wrote, “By the first quarter of 2011, we will know whether [Iranian] sanctions are proving effective… The administration should begin to plan now for a course of action should sanctions be deemed ineffective by the first or second quarter of next year. The military option must be kept on the table both as a means of strengthening diplomacy and as a worst-case scenario.” Of course, only arrogance could ever play into the notion that military might strengthens diplomacy, considering a multitude of historic examples proves the opposite – Attack a country and watch all of the people who normally root on the underdog come out to join their resistance. In fact, America is notorious for defending the defenseless, why would we expect other countries to act differently? But it doesn’t stop the likes of William Kristol in his “Weekly Standard” where last month he argued, “Unfortunately, President Obama waffled while innocent Iranians were killed by their own government.” – Again, a half-witted bag of testosterone blinded by pride and arrogance but wielding a giant pen. Fortunately for all of us, Obama is the one keeping Israel’s itch scratched – or at least salved. We do not need more enemies which we’ll surely create by instigating another invasion, nor do we have the resources to afford it. Not to mention – the people are already building their own resistance, and instead of disrupting that by flexing muscles in their faces, why not let them fight their own battles, and earn their own democracy, their own peace?

When ranked against Britain, Germany, Canada, the Netherlands, Australia, and New Zealand, the United States finished in last place in a healthcare report released Wednesday by the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund.

American citizens pay nearly double of what citizens of the other developed countries are paying, and to add insult to injury (no pun intended) the care we receive is of lower quality, the report shows.

The data, taken from national patient and physician surveys, showed that in 2007 Americans paid an average of $7,290 annually, whereas in the comparative countries the people spent less than $3,900. Yet we receive less for our money, according to the fund’s Cathy Schoen who told reporters, “We rank last on safety, and do poorly on several dimensions of quality. We do particularly poorly on going without care because of cost, and we do surprisingly poorly on access to primary care and after-hours care.”

The report which judges quality, access to care, efficiency, equity, and the ability to lead long, healthy, and productive lives, showed that Americans are more likely to receive the wrong diagnosis or treatment, and that we’re most likely to be given the wrong tests.
The fund’s president Karen Davis was quoted, “As an American it just bothers me that with all of our know-how, all of our wealth, that we are not assuring that people who need healthcare can get it.”

Currently, the United States is the only developed country without public healthcare. Consequently, 46 million Americans are still without insurance. Many Americans still believe that the higher costs equate to having the highest quality healthcare, yet the report shows that out of the 7 countries the US finished 6th.

Perhaps the most surprising find came with regard to quality where England topped the list. England’s healthcare system is often used by conservative Americans as an example of a failed healthcare system. Of course, those who deride the English system rarely present valid examples to back up their convictions, yet they have a great influence on many Americans who are generally confused about the methods of health coverage offered throughout the international community.

Much to the chagrin of the Republican Party, a clear victory was scored today for the Obama Administration as British Petroleum executives have agreed to create a $20 billion dollar fund from which to pay the victims of the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Though one administration official bluntly stated that the $20 billion is not a cap, and that if legitimate claims arise that exceed the holdings in the independently managed fund they too will be paid out by BP.

Now. we’ll have to watch how the fund’s manager, Kenneth Feinberg will handle the payouts. Known as Obama’s “pay-czar” Feinberg was the man who oversaw the payments that went to the vicitims of the 9-11 WTC disaster, and who was also put in charge of setting salary limits for companies that received money from the $700 billion government bailouts.

For Rand Paul and his Tea Party, and the GOP’s John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, forcing BP to pay for their mishap is a crushing blow, as they support the unregulated free market operations of the private sector. One could only guess that their answer to who pays for BP’s debacle would ultimately come from us, the tax payers, since there is no one else in line.

Though, it seems to me that it’s impossible to put a price tag of all that has already been lost, and all that will be lost as the crisis continues spilling into the Gulf by tens of thousands of gallons every day. It may just turn out to when we get a clear view of BP’s Tony Hayward shuffling around like Steve Martin in “The Jerk”, searching for his remote control and his paddle-ball while repo-men remove his belongings from his mansion. At least we can hope.

Carly Fiorina, the recent primary winner and Republican candidate for a California Senate seat currently occupied by Barbara Boxer, is donning the clothes of the anti-GOP, as she believes the Obama Administration should’ve played a greater role in government regulation over offshore drilling.

In an interview with right wing media outlet Newsmax, Fiorina told the reporter that the Obama Administration was “asleep at the switch” and according to the report “failed to monitor offshore drilling activities properly.” With her constituents almost wholly against regulating the free market which BP is a part of, Fiorina has slipped right into the murky waters that may leave her alienated from those who just elected her to represent them as their Congresswoman.

As ex-CEO of tech giant Hewlett Packard, Fiorina has expressed her beliefs that our government should be run like a business. Although her track record at the helm of HP was disastrous. Under her 5 year watch the company lost 30,000 American jobs either to “lay-offs” or to overseas outsourcing, and cut the company’s stock value by 60%.

Photo courtesy of AP

When asked about volume with regards to anything the non-statistician/“normal Joe” usually answers, “Tons!” when it’s a large amount or, “Not much,” when it is indeed not much. I would think that most people who are seriously concerned over the situation right now in the Gulf of Mexico would answer, “Tons!” because a precise figure is needed only by those who have either given up hope, and so now think it would be interesting to find out exactly how much of BP’s crude continues to flow into the waters of the Western Hemisphere, or by those who have forgotten how to think about the “here and now”.

On Sunday, 54 days into what is amounting to a global disaster, engineers from British Petroleum deployed deepsea sensors so they could produce a more accurate number of how much oil continues to flow into the Gulf of Mexico. Initially BP officials measured the daily flow-rate between 1,000 and 5,000 barrels (42,000 and 210,000 US gallons respectively). It wasn’t long before “outside experts” got involved for that number to be pushed aside, however, and the tally has continued to grow ever since. For a long time it was nothing more than a guessing game, factored largely by the video captured of the endless spew from the broken pipe one mile beneath the water’s surface.

At the start of last week BP had pinpointed a number as the collection cap was securing the oil at a rate of 630,000 gallons a day. A sense of relief rippled, even through the relentless statisticians. But the measure was short-lived, however, as an unknown amount was still seen leaking from around the capture point of the broken pipe. From this point new estimates of the “new” amount being leaked came in, registering at approximately “hundreds of thousands” of gallons per day. Of course, the vague figure still left the curious-minded without that precise figure.

The most recent estimate reported between 760,000 gallons to 1.8 million gallons continues to pump from the broken pipe each day. Though with the assistance of these deepsea sensors – that seemingly have been left to sit in storage up to this point, perhaps along side of some contraption also idly awaiting to be put to use, called a Miracle Plug – we’re finally going to have an accurate number of gallons, or barrels still leaking from the floor of the Gulf. As if it really matters.

In 1992, the city of Chicago experienced a flood in which 250 million gallons of water leaked into a tunnel that was once used in the early 1920’s for the transportation of coal. It happened when construction workers were driving new pilings into the Chicago River. The hammering caused a weakening of the tunnel walls which cracked under the pressure, and resulted in the flooding of the intricate network of tunnels, passageways, and basements throughout Chicago’s downtown “Loop”.

In both cases, the errors were the fault of humans wholly ignorant to what effect their operations were having on the surrounding workspace. The difference in reaction was drastic, however, in the sense that the officials in Chicago knew they needed to focus on nothing but plugging the hole. They called in truckloads of cement, rocks, and dirt in their hasty attempts at stopping the leak. At one point they even tried closing off the hole with truckloads of mattresses. Yes, it sounds silly, almost comical that people would take the tampon method of plugging the leak, and figure that a mass amount of mattresses might do the trick, but we have to give them the utmost credit, simply because they spared nothing in their attempts to plug the hole. The point is, nobody sat around trying to figure out the flow-rate of the water as it passed through the city’s underground, only how to stop the flow completely.

To this point we’ve watched high definition video of the flow coming from the floor of the Gulf, and now we know we can do a fairly decent job of surgically manipulating the area as we witnessed a submersible clip the pipe with a fixed set of shears. We’ve watched BP set “hats” and “caps” on top of the pipe, and all the while oil flows steadily toward the shores of the United States and beyond, yet they still can’t seem to find the urgency in which to drop in everything that isn’t buoyant to try plugging the leak.

There’s a point when we should be able to discount the priorities of someone who seemingly lacks the urgency necessary to quell a situation, and simply shove them out of the way. These people who need an exact figure to measure whether or not we need to take immediate action in any potential dire situation, should be forced to remain sidelined until the situation has been remedied. It seems too often they need to be reminded of the situation at hand, and what is most important. Sure, we can keep them at the sidelines where they could be used to simply answer questions such as, “Have we tried stuffing it full of mattresses?” In the meantime, take a backseat while we panic our way to dumping everything including the kitchen sink to dam the flow from the hole BP punched into the earth, where really no human should be allowed to play.

When city officials and heads of state bid for global sporting events, it seems the desire of winning titles such as “home of the 2010 World Cup”, becomes the priority over the welfare of the public who live and work in the shadows of the sporting venues. With the kickoff of the World Cup 2010 today in South Africa, the news coming from the country that has been socially, politically, and economically ravaged for many years is that this trend of popularity over human dignity continues to thrive.

The inhabitants of Mataffin – a district of shanties in the northeastern town of Nelspruit, with many who live everyday without electricity, running water, and who use any hollow vessel they might have to scoop water from mud puddles, watched on helplessly as their two primary schools were closed to their children, and taken over by construction engineers for the zoning of a 46,000 seat soccer stadium. Decked in safari flare with zebra striped seating, and being suspended by 18 metal structures stretched to resemble giraffes, the nearly $150 million Mbombela Stadium will be host to 4 cup matches totaling 6 hours of soccer. Without a national team of their own to use the stadium once the games have ended, the townspeople will be left with a monstrous reminder of an unattainable life of opportunity, and waste; a hollow super-structure born from hollow promises.

When the land owners sold the grounds, the people in Mataffin were told they would be given improved infrastructure, with new roads, electricity, plumbing, and new schools for their children. Instead they spent three years learning in boxes like trailers made of tin before a new school was built. The roads were never built, and the electricity and plumbing were never installed.

James Maseko, deputy chairman of the ward committee for Mataffin, said, “The authorities still say they will keep their promises, but the community is not sure it’s going to happen. When tourists visit, I think they will try to keep them away from the poor. I feel bad about that because this situation needs to be improved. The only way to improve it is to let others in the world see the situation.”

The situation worsened, however, when the people started holding public protests. One instance, in which the police interfered, turned violent as the protesters burned tires and a police car was torched. The police fired rubber bullets into the crowd, wounding many elderly and children who mingled amongst the protesters. Nhlesiphi Mathebula, an elderly woman whose only crime was to be caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, was beaten with the butt of a police officer’s rifle, as she stood at her front gate concerned and only trying to spot her grandchildren. And as if this wasn’t ugly enough, the violence spiraled further as a string of murders of people related to the situation were later uncovered.

Sadly for the hopes of Mr. Maseko the world is largely unaware of the situation, because the news that came from the host nation as they prepared for the World Cup 2010 was hardly reported upon. Besides, most people have grown so accustomed to the inhumanity that seems to plague the African continent that most reports pass right through our consciousness like water through a sieve. And many of the neighborhoods that lie adjacent to the other stadiums hosting World Cup matches scattered across South Africa were by no means immune to the pre-games strife.

Just outside of Cape Town is a shanty-town called Blikkiesdorp – the “tin can town”, to where thousands of the urban poor are being forcefully relocated so as to avoid being a blight on the landscape en route to Cape Town Stadium, where 9 cup matches are scheduled. Four families must share one toilet and a water tap in Blikkiesdorp, and those who refuse to move there are under the threat of imprisonment. Though ensured by the authorities that the relocation would only be temporary, many of the inhabitants have been there for years now, without any sign they’ll be able to return from where they came.

The practice of disguising reality is common amongst nations holding sporting events that will be broadcast worldwide. Who could forget the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California, when the authorities grew embarrassed by the homeless people living in the vicinity of the event-grounds, and so used some of their budget money to purchase suits and ties in which to disguise them. If only the officials in South Africa could be as peacefully humiliating.

Many Christians believe that morality is born from the 10 Commandments, and that those who do not have a personal relationship with their God cannot possibly be moral individuals. This might be the reason that members of the Texas School Board feel it’s perfectly acceptable to indoctrinate their children into the school of fear and superstition; ultimately training their minds to be void of reason.

Thanks to global information being available with the click of a finger, the issue of “fear”, that is the driving force behind the search for an individual’s spiritual connection to the almighty unknown, is dissolving further each day. This comes even as the fear of our disruptive planet is growing with every natural and man-made disaster that is brought into our living rooms by way of the television each night.

Most people who hold faith in gods will argue against the notion that they harbor any “fear”; they know what they believe in, and that actually provides comfort for them rather than fear. But if it’s not from fear, then why believe in gods; why not let curiosity thrive and allow the search for truth to continue? With this question we are brought right back to “fear”, for those who use “God” as their answer to what is still a mystery to us, either fears the unknown, or fears science finding another instance where God is not the answer. The thought of dying without fulfilling a life’s purpose is a monumental fear of many. Likewise, dying without having someplace to go is as equally significant. Without the careful, and directing hand of a god these things are simply unattainable.

Now, in the age of hyper-information, we are given the opportunity to learn what the world outside the small town is all about. We no longer have to be led by spiritual guides as we learn that morals are not god’s gift, but purely instinctual. The global movement of Humanists is a perfect example of people living perfectly moral lives without gods. Of course, there will always be those who have chemical imbalances, and who might very well have an altered view of the right and wrong ways to treat all things great and small. And those effected by these imbalances are woven throughout every belief system, since they are essentially woven throughout the genes of the individual.

In some unfortunate parts of our nation, these people who have a great fear of science’s ever-progression toward truth, are fighting back tooth and nail. The really don’t want to know that their lives are without purpose, and that everything they’ve always held as truth was entirely false. They don’t want to learn that it’s a fact that we share a common ancestry with monkeys, and sure don’t want to  learn that the more liberally-minded Americans were right all along. They are so fearful of what they may learn that they chose to break commandment by lying to their own children, so they’ll remain fearfully ignorant to reality.

Just last week we watched the Texas School Board - mostly made up of people whose experience as historians is zilch - reform our children’s history books so their kids will be kept from learning factual information. They have the Separation of Church and State – specifically implied within our First Amendment rights so as to keep government out of churches, and churches out of government – nagging at their beliefs, because they want to instill only their religion into our laws. They want nothing more than to close off everyone’s mind to everything but their own beliefs, and influence a nation to be as lost on the road of progress as they are. 

Our forefathers knew one thing; they would form our government to be free of religious preference. Now they’re being demonized by “educators” of our nation’s history. To keep people of a specific religion from having the same access to “All men are created equal,” the Christian right would gladly rewrite the Constitution, as we saw in their support for George W. Bush’s pen when it struck Habeas Corpus from the writ.

If the Texas School Board members held no fear of the legitimacy of their beliefs, they would not fight back so hard against knowledge, and would simply instill God into their children by taking them to Sunday School, as opposed to creating laws that force their dogma into the Public School.

Of course, members of the Tea Party movement throughout America could never connect their views and desires to the support of Venezuela’s own Hugo Chavez. To reach that conclusion it takes thinking through a short series of steps and the utilization of common sense.

The anti-Democratic crowd of Tea Partiers share in common the anti-government regulation, pro free-market sentiment that has spread throughout this nation like an infestation of Kudzu. They believe that anything the government touches dissolves into corruption, and though they will never cease to vote for “new” government officials – as if the new breed of politicians who hold a disdain for all things Washington will make Washington disappear by disbanding the house and senate, before heading home to collect unemployment… or something. They hold the “right to free operation” for corporations very dear to their heart. Essentially, they give full support to foreign corporations running our country – British Petroleum, Spanish owned highways and tolls, Chinese owned ports, Chavez’s Citgo….

Though Wall Street banks were mostly responsible for crashing our economy, and sending it into the toilet-flush like a bunch of Scrubbing Bubbles, Tea Partiers believe the same bankers should be free to operate as they choose to, and mostly rail against the recently passed regulations set for our financial institutions. They protest the regulation of the healthcare industry who charge so high a fee for their services that people are literally left homeless in order to afford to stay alive. Likewise, the Tea Party members believe in leaving the oil industry alone to operate as freely as they want to. The Tea Party hero of Kentucky, Rand Paul, stated that President Obama is un-American because he chastised BP for causing a global crisis.  They essentially believe in allowing the free-market to operate away from the prying eyes of the Federal Government, thinking that once the Feds move in all will go awry.

Tea Party supporters seem to be blind to the reality in front of their eyes – the true workings of the unregulated free market as their own shorelines become drenched in BP’s product. Of course, it isn’t BP’s fault because BP executives told us it wasn’t. They blamed it on Transocean – the rig’s operators. Transocean blamed it on Halliburton for installing faulty parts, who blamed it on BP, and just when we thought the round-robin of fingerpointing was over, we come to find out that BP flatly lied to the public with their original estimation of 5,000 barrels flowing from the Gulf of Mexico daily by over 8 times the amount. America is left with a saturated shoreline – decimated wetlands, and tributaries, and a hope that “…maybe by August,” BP will have the leak capped. They’re unregulated free-market giants who are without enough integrity to accept responsibility. Since they have the ability to push blame elsewhere, even the individuals at fault will never be held accountable for their actions, as that would indicate an admittance to internal failure. Why would they want to hold anyone accountable anyway? Why should they? They’re backed by a large body of politicians and their tea-bag adorned constituents.

One of these giants in the American oil industry is Citgo. The oil company that could be likened to being the Wal-Mart of gas stations is owned by the Venezuelan government, namely Hugo Chavez. Being the dictator that he is, Chavez is despised by the portion of the American poplulation who thinks we have a right in telling other nations how to operate. If a nation’s people are content enough to live beneath the rule of a monarch, Tea Partiers freely speak out against it – whether or not the people there are happy. If a person’s religious rites require they wear a garment that is alien to us, and we find that there are laws in their nation that enforce those religious rules, the right wing portion of America feels they have a right to condemn it. Just last year we watched the upheaval of the Iranian citizens finally take to the streets to speak out against what they deemed as a fraudulent election. The right-wing of America – the “let them take care of themselves” crowd – thought it would’ve been better if Barack Obama joined in, and voiced his opinion in support of the people.  

With Hugo Chavez, it isn’t difficult to spur a fight with a member of the Tea Party, simply by mentioning the dictators name with even a hint of favorable tonality. They’ll tell you in a breath that they’d never stop to refuel at a Citgo, yet they rail against President Obama for even mentioning a word about any free-market operation such as Citgo. They see it as the Feds inching toward the thought of free-market regulations. In the way many liberals wanted to see every one of Bush Jr.’s policies fail, so too would the Tea Party members back a corporation’s right to free operation over any federal decision if for only to see the president fail in his endeavors. Unwittingly, this brings them to directly support the Venezuelan dictator and his wholly owned Citgo.

I wonder, if Obama decided that Citgo was no longer allowed to operate in the United States, would the Tea Partiers cry out against forced removal of free enterprise? In the way that we’ve seen the conservatives try and guard the financial industries that drove our economy into the sewer, we could only guess they would.