A Few Things to Ponder On The Road To Damnation...

Is it me?

The news gets stranger, more bizarre with almost every announcement
and we take it in and we go to work, go home, make dinner, watch some TV
and go to bed.

People don't have time for the news but still find time for six hours of TV.

People don't have time for books and magazines but 45 minutes to 3 hrs for computer games...
We rest, we observe, we play in splendid isolation

In the old days, everyone shared the same TV and watched the same few channels.

Now, we mark progress by each person having their own TV and remotes...and by becoming increasingly isolated.

Conversation has become a lost art.

At one time before the emergence of TV, politicians felt like they needed to win the support of the people

Ever since the advent of TV, that feeling has been lost forever...

Businessmen and politicians are in bed with each other and think there is nothing wrong with it...

The appearance of guilt or collusion means little; why else would our former president have sat on the board with the Arab princes our country does business with in the full knowledge that a percentage of their profits are going to our enemies...

Increasingly, young people find it difficult to parse English language sentences in order to understand what is hype and propaganda and what is factual content.

Few seem to know much about the Constitution or the documents that serve as the foundation of this country.

The word Civics is seldom heard.

Most people are locked into their point of view... New information does not get through our self-imposed screens

We graduate more students but still between 5% and 15%don't have an opinion when it comes to a national poll.

We are told that 20% of American college students cannot findtheir own State on a world map.

Despite the No Child Left Behind policy, children seem to be getting less out of their time in school

Three months ago in Virginia, grade school children performed in a play. They were allowed to read from books because the teachers thought it would be too much stress to have to memorize their parts...

The biggest growth businesses in America are prisons and ammo! We seem to excel at both...

We would rather spend 100,000 a year to incarcerate someone than give them an increase in Pell Grants so that they can stay in school...

Recently, on Jay Leno a college graduate was asked how many moons in the heavens and she didnt know apologizing for not remembering the content of her Astronomy class...

A multi-tier population is emerging where the poor go into the Army in order to get ahead; and the rest of the country for the most part have no idea what is going on or the sacrifices being made; nor are they being asked to make sacrifice.

According to the NRA, there is not one problem that couldn't be solved with more guns...

Companies continue to ignore the idea of Global Warming although most scientists who are not attached to our government, will admit that Global Warming is real.

We are told that burning of fossil fuels will kill the environment and cause illness and death; yet our narrow gauge politicians are victimized by inertia and big donations to war chests.

Leading business execs receive more than four hundred times what the average line employee makes whether or not their companies make a profit...

Candidates are elected not because of their qualifications but because they can raise more money than their
competition...
We are told that the rules of Evolutionary Biology conflict with God's views and no longer apply...

In the preferred right wing texts, women and minorities are described as smaller and darker, not unlike they were portrayed five thousand years ago in Ancient Egypt...
Branding reinforces the idea that you can become whatever your brands suggest without having to do the heavy-lifting.

In the post industrial world, form becomes more important than content.

And increasingly life is imitating art.

We have been tested and we have been found wanting.

Just five years ago, Terrorism raised its ugly head in America.

At the time, we knew we had to tighten up the borders, our ports and our highways...
Our president, in his great concern for the truth of 9/11, waited an entire year before appointing a commission made up of America's number one lackey...

We knew we had to destroy Al Qaeda.

So we ignoredAl Qaeda....
And we went after Saddam Huessein....

Apparently, we could not win the War without disclosing a major CIA operative because she was married to the man who disagreed with the War altogether.

Instead of tightening up our borders, we do nothing suggesting that if we want to make America safe,
we need to go after the enemies "over there."

But we don't make things safer there or here... All we've done is increase the numbers of US dead and wounded. And by the way, don't try to calculate how many are really dead and wounded; we won't know that til we hold Cheney's and Bush's toes to the fire....and we don't seem to have the heart for that!...

The biggest threat to America is the dirty bomb but we make no special effort to clean up the enriched materials that are on the black market

To keep the military industrial complex happy, we buy 235 million dollar jets when 35 million dollar jets had no competition...

We allow our military subcontractors to merge with each other and raise prices...Why not? It's the taxpayer who pays the freight...


The Anti Missile Shield still does not work but we make a big show of how far along we are. Expected investment: 264 billion dollars!

We continue to use fossil fuels and investing in the Middle East where the profits go to fuel Terrorism

Our president past recently retired from an Investment Group of Middle East Advisers..

We continue to pour money into Iraq for the people but it never seems to get there.

Our subcontractors, chosen for their affiliations rather than their qualifications, lose billions without criticism

Our soldiers live in tents and eat off trays while private subcontractors hire their civilian equivalent with taxpayer money and put then up in Four Star hotels...

The president tells us that we must have 23, 000 more troops immediately if we are to win; yet general after general suggested that we did not have enough troops on the ground over the first four years, and nobody thought that was important....

Our biggest potential threat is China; yet without their technology, we couldn't build our highest tech weaponry...

We talk to them about straightening out their monetary policy, yet we maintain a trade deficit of sixty billion dollars a month and do nothing about it.

We have become a third world nation exporting scrap and agricultural products and import finished goods!
Our biggest industry is the automotive but we do nothing to help it. We have to pay fees to market our cars in China; yet, the Chinese get a discount if they market here...

In 2010, there will be 50 Chinese cars being marketed in this country...

The big Computer and Internet companies have become complicit in rooting out freedom in China...

While we are blindsided to everything else besides Iraq, the rest of the world is putting together alliances that leave us out!....

While we are told the economy is better than ever, we see our jobs fleeing our shores and our executives getting richer and richer...

With this government, words are simply mechanisms for getting their own way!

Remember anti-trust: It used to keep monopolies from forming that would control specific industries...

Remember Usury: It was to prevent banks from taking bigger interests that they should be entitled to.

Neither anti-trust or Usury laws are operative today!....


Oversight kept companies and individuals from taking advantage of our government and way of life. When was the last time anybody heard the word "oversight?"


Just a few things to ponder on the way to the slippery slope.

Les Aaron
www.lesaaron.blogspot.com
THE COMMITTEE FOR POSITIVE CHANGE
Twenty five projects undertaken, twenty five projects completed.... A most successful year for
progressive programs...
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