1.To the degree that we become frustrated with our inability to make a difference and effect change concerning big issues like health care, the economy, employment, education, war, peace, prosperity and individual happiness, as a nation we sink to the lowest common denominator of mundane pettiness. As terrorists plan their next big hit, we’re concerned about a baseball player using steroids. As stupid wars rage without end in Iraq and Afghanistan, we self-righteously condemn a golfer for having too much sex with women who aren’t his wife. Unemployment is at an all-time high, but we’re offended by silly words someone used, quoted in a book. Home foreclosures, unemployment, crime, mediocre education, a bankrupt judicial system: yeah, sure, so what? Let’s talk about late night TV’s comedy lineup. We didn’t have the guts to impeach and imprison Bush/Cheney when we had a chance, so now we’ll damn sure stop gay marriage and write segregation into law. Did someone make racist remarks during the presidential campaign? We can bet on it that when fat cat homophobic white Christian Republicans go behind closed doors, they turn on FOX propaganda TV, light their cigars, drink their Jack Daniels, read their porn magazines and use more offensive racist language than anything Harry Reid ever said. Make no mistake, GOP bigots know exactly what side their white bread is buttered.

2. The Tea Party Movement is the revived cult of the Swift Boat, packaged with a new flag, new slogans and a marketing plan to take Sarah Palin to the White House. The Tea Party Nation is the home of abortion clinic bombers and assassins of doctors who perform abortions. It is the nation of a new breed of anti-intellectual, anti-choice Christian Reconstructionists and Dominion Now believers who, rising like steam from dog shit, smell like the old John Birch Society, they even meet in small cells just like the Birchers did. Members of the Tea Party Movement want to write intelligent design, creationism, marriage law segregation and prayer in school into law. Their nation of conservatism is racist, intolerant, homophobic and white. Like forensic evidence of a crime, the philosophical DNA of the Tea Party Movement matches the ideological DNA of the anti-fluoridation crowd of the 1950’s and is the precursor to a permanent Republican majority. Islamic fascism is to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda what Christian fundamentalism is to the Tea Party Nation. The only difference between the two home-grown terrorist insurgencies is the amount and sophistication of available weapons and the willingness and training to use them. Make no mistake: the Tea Partiers are stocking up on weapons and ammunition. It’s 2010; do you know where YOUR guns are?

3. Before the earthquake, Haiti was a poor, impoverished, bankrupt, backwards 3rd or 4th world country with no economy, no education, no housing, no industry, no life expectancy worth anything, no health care and no money. After the earthquake, Haiti is still an impoverished, bankrupt, backward 3rd or 4th world barely-a-country country with still no economy, no housing, no industry, no life expectancy and no money. Literally overnight, since the earthquake, people want to help Haiti. Where was all this humanitarian concern for Haiti over the last 10 or 20 years when it could have done some good? Give me a break. This earthquake is like everything else: the news covers the story for a few days like a TV drama on prime time, and our attention drifts away. Before we can reach for the remote, the networks find the next big thing to entertain us. Just look at the last few weeks: first there was Tiger Woods, then terrorism on Xmas day and a week about airport security, then New Years Eve, Jay Leno, Fox and Palin came and went, Obama, the economy and the war, then it was Mark McGwire and Harry Reid, this week it was Wall St. bankers, Lane Kiffin and then, finally, Haiti. The worst thing to happen to any people anywhere in the world with a desperate humanitarian need is for the public to find out about it. After a few days of steady news coverage, we get bored and look for the next big thing. If “the next big thing” doesn’t magically appear on its own in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for the networks to invent something to take its place. Humanitarian compassion for Haiti is this week’s “big thing”. A few days from now we’ll be squawking about the Tea Party convention in Nashville TN. Haiti, huh?