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Wednesday, October 11, 2006



The week has been peppered with the sweetness of the Blue Mountains blossom, Agatha Christie plays (Pauline's touch), Little Miss Sunshine, (Everyone pretend to be normal) and deep stories of how there are really only five types of relatives or wives or ex-wives - the characters just tend to jump from one album to another album ... Although last year a separation was not a music to my ears this year a divorce is a greatest gift I could ever wish for ...

The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class

Another measure of how inequality has widened since Ronald Reagan was elected shows in the ratio of CEO pay to the average working person. It rose from 42 times in 1980 to 85 times in 1990 and 431 times in 2004. At the close of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Benjamin Franklin reportedly said in answer to whether the nation now had a republic or a monarchy: A republic, if you can keep it.

Prescient words from an extraordinary man, and we hardly need wonder what he'd say now. Unlike the Founders, this shameless Congress shares the guilt of a morally depraved president who believes no one has the right to challenge him, champions the use of torture and the denial of habeas and due process rights to anyone on his say alone, now (law or no law) authorizes wiretaps and illegal surveillance on anyone, and calls dissent an act of terrorism in direct contradiction to what Thomas Jefferson believed when he said: "All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." Having now made a mockery of constitutional law, this Congress and president have moved the nation to within an "eyelash" of a full-blown national security fascist police state. It's given the president the right to act solely on his own authority as a virtual dictator to do whatever he pleases in the name of national security as he defines it. It simply means the rule of law has been abolished and ordinary people no longer have constitutionally protected rights. All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent