Bloomberg may have done some good things while in office as mayor of NYC, but the one thing he did which I find unforgivable is the feeding frenzy of the rich upon the poor which he encouraged while in office...

The city of Gershwin, the city which prompted the visual love poem photography of De Salignac or Bofinger, the early paintings of Georgia O'Keefe and the cinema of Woody Allen--none as vivid as the collage of images I carry in my mind and heart, taken through the camera of my child's eyes--has given way to a neon/steel/glass temple to the uberwealthy...

All of the "mom and pop" businesses have been pushed out by Starbucks and Gaps...all of the 4 and 5 story walk-ups have been torn down to make way for square-block monoliths, 30 to 40 stories high, blocking out the sun and driving out the working class which can no longer afford to pay $1000-$2000 per square foot prices to live there...

Union jobs, paying living wages and good benefits, are being squeezed out...even raw materials for construction projects--and the labor on those projects--is being purchased from China and India in lieu of local product...

Some say this is "progress"... 

I say it is collusion between the uberrich and the politicians who they have purchased wholesale; a pact to create a world where they and they alone can live in comfort, being served by an underclass which must commute to and from their compounds to wash their laundry and walk their dogs...

All this preoccupation over the "C" word...

No, I'm not speaking about Coulter, or the word used to describe her...and I don't mean "conservative" or "commentator"...

Coup...is the overthrow of Morsi in Egypt a coup, or isn't it a coup? That seems to be preoccupying the entire commentary on the situation in Egypt and our national reaction to it....

Of course it's a frigging coup...to the extent that, in the face of intransigence on the part of Morsi and his Theocratic, Iran-sympathizing thugs of the "Muslim Brotherhood" to yield to the people's demands for constitutional reforms, the army stepped in and made him step down. That's a coup...or a revolution backed by the indigenous armed forces. Take your pick.

What's the big deal? "People are dying in the streets"! Yes. In revolutions, people die in the streets. They did in Russia in 1905, and again in 1917, and for decades thereafter (not in the streets, but in gulags)...they did in France in 1787, and again in 1832...and then the French killed people in the streets of Algeria a century later... Name a revolution--and I am not even going to try to enumerate the incidents of revolutionaries dying in the streets, the mud puddles, the barrios of Africa or South America--name ONE revolution where people did not die, by the hundreds...men, women, children...and worst of all animals--who never asked to be part of this crap...

Wake the f*ck up, kiddies... Gandhi's revolution of peace gave way to what amounted to virtual genocide in India and Pakistan... Things get dirty and nasty when people revolt, and when the other side of the argument really gets pissed they start shooting. Then people shoot back. Hatfield and McCoy, times infinity.

Wanna really, and I mean REALLY have something to get your knickers in a twist about? Hmmm? It could happen here. Yep, right here in Mayberry, Opie...

When Theocrats raise their ugly heads above the water-line, and start to infiltrate the air with their putrid stench of intolerance and bigotry, and that stench starts to permeate the body politic, that's when things get ugly.... And things here in Mayberry are getting pretty pungent....

Theocracy is arsenic to Democracy. It is kryptonite to the superpower of the plurality. It's what brought down the French monarchy--in a staunchly Catholic nation...it brought down the Romanoffs--in a nation virtually ruled by the Russian Orthodox Church... The realization of the poisonous nature of Theocracy is what prompted our founding fathers--you know, the boys Bachmann and Palin are so fond of misquoting?--to make damned sure that Church and State would remain separate...

But now, all bets are off. Under the guise of a "democratic process", the Machiavellian Masters of Koch/ALEC have seen the light....they have infiltrated our legislatures with Right Wing Regressive pseudo-Christians, with an agenda devoted to creating an America carved in the image of the KKK, merged with a sprinkling of the Taliban...marching us inexorably towards a bible-thumping, woman-hating, race-baiting, serfdom where the Plutocrats will reign supreme...all hail the conquering, White Supremacist, misogynist Oligarchs...

Do you really think this will not lead to something very ugly here? Do you really think that "No Justice, No Peace" rallies will move them? Do you really, and I mean REALLY think that all the brutality they are starting to demonstrate to the peaceful opposition they are encountering in Wisconsin, Ohio, North Carolina or Florida is as far as they will go? And do you really think that those of us who have lived through the battlefields of Vietnam, or Iraq, or Afghanistan...or the battlefields of the civil rights movement of the 1960s...are going to go quietly into that "good night"???

So, please kiddies...wake the f*ck up and stop thinking that this is just some reality show, something that you can flip the channel and avoid...Big Brother or Survivor Raleigh...

It's real life...

and it's your asses on the line...

An Open Letter to the "Tea Party"...

I awoke this morning expecting to hear that all the obstructionist crap of the past few months had been put to rest...that we had, in fact, averted the dreaded "fiscal cliff" (OMG how I hate those words)...but instead was greeted by the same crawls and bullets on CNN and MSNBC...the same "no agreement reached" nonsense that I closed my eyes to over 6 hours ago...the same instransigence...the same doctrine-driven avoidance of reality...

I don't know how else to say this:  If you really think that you pay too much in taxes...that your country is too deeply in debt...that our society has gone too far from God and the Bible...then please get on a plane, or boat, and leave....or please kill yourselves...but please, above all, just sit down and shut up.

If you think that this world we have created and that we live in...this high-tech-300-channel-everything-on-demand-high-speed-Interstate-highway-cheap-six-pack-in-every-convenience-store-on-every-intersection-fresh-milk-every-day-flip-a-switch-and-lights-come-on-turn-a-faucet-and-something-other-than-mud-and-benzine-comes-out-of-the-tap world we live comes cheap, then you are just plain stupid or really, really, REALLY FUCKING NUTS!  So, unless you are Amish and don't avail yourself of all these things. sit down, shut up, open your wallet and pay your share.

If you want to be able to drive your Dodge Ram Turbo to the woods, pull out your Bushmaster and kill stuff, or tow your boat to the lake and go fishing and catch and THEN kill stuff...if you want to have electric lights so you can home school your toothless brood...or, especially, if you want to socialize them and send them to public school, in the hope they can then have the privilege of putting themselves and you in perpetual debt paying off their college tuition so that they can go out and get a job working for some asshole who will pay them less and less in proportion to the profits of the company they work for...if you want to have the ability to wave your "Don't Tread on Me" flags at rallies held on public property--parks, public squares, etc.--built, maintained and protected (by police and firemen), all paid from tax revenues...then sit down, shut up, open your wallet and pay your fucking share.

If you want to pretend that you are patriots and continue to pollute our world with your vitriol and diatribes, the right of which to do is guaranteed by our maintaining the largest military force in the world--a force populated by, for the most part, people from the lowest economic brackets of our society and who are being forced to go into 3rd, 4th and 5th deployments in combat zones, only to return damaged in body and soul and find themselves without adequate infrastructure supports to tend to their wounds--then sit the fuck down, shut the fuck up and pay your motherfucking share.

Or leave.  Find someplace else where they will put up with your bullshit without hitting you in your empty heads with a baseball bat, then rape your wife and daughters.  Good luck with that.

If not, then PLEASE sit down, shut up, open your goddamned motherfucking wallet and pay your
share...and stop thinking that your "idealism" even vaguely resembles patriotism or concern for your country's future.  It doesn't.  Your ideas, your words, your ideology is crafted and broadcast by a cadre of plutocrats and oligarchs who could care less about you or your country.  They have their assets, and their asses, covertly covered in tax-shelters and offshore accounts.   They are multinational warlords, and they are laughing all the way to their Swiss bank accounts every time they see you march and scream and elect the flotsam and jetsam you send to Congress to further their interests.

Wake the fuck up.  Sit the fuck down.  Open your wallet...go to Walmart, and then pay your fucking share.