Our sitting president just received the Nobel Peace Prize while escalating the Afghan war and refusing to sign the international land mine treaty, despite the fact that 156 countries have.
This same president is being vilified as a muddled blend of three extremely disparate ideologies -- socialism, communism, and fascism, while in a large part continuing the Bush Doctrine and the corporate status quo.
With all the legitimate work and research over the last dozen (and more) years to help prepare for the Climate Summit in Copenhagen, gullible Americans are believing a well-timed leak repeated by Fox News and the other cable news outlets to discredit global warming and thus weaken the accords.
Catholic bishops are banning the practice of yoga and reiki massage by nuns and lay people because its effectiveness is deemed a threat to the establishment.
A person with obvious sex appeal and little grasp of international or domestic affairs, who quit her job as governor because of a lucrative book contract, is considered a qualified presidential candidate.
Women are made famous and offered lucrative television spots for laying on their backs for a philandering rich man. He will be forgiven because he can swing a club well, while many well-intensioned, community building small business people struggle to make ends meet.
People are scared to support an improvement of our ailing health care system because it could possibly increase taxes and be too socialistic, meanwhile they welcome near unlimited military spending and continue to guzzle gas and cheap food along those same transport-choked highways paid for by those tax dollars.
The nation's leaders are adopting a corporate model to fix the faltering education system, the same model that leaches money from the government to band aide its self-induced cyclical bursting bubbles. To appear successful, mandated tests are made easier and credit recovery programs are offered where the sole criterion for gaining credit is a student's physical presence. The teachers, the one resource that has an intimate day-to-day knowledge of what is needed to improve schools, are shut out of the equation.
Welcome to the world and I offer my sincere apologies for the state of affairs. I will do my part to improve this community and pass on a different and more inclusive message.
