"He was an actor of genius. There was no more overwhelming actor on the stage, in the motion pictures, nor even in the pulpit. He would whirl arms, bang tables, glare from mad eyes, vomit Biblical wrath from a gaping mouth; but he would also coo like a nursing mother, beseech like an aching lover, and in between tricks would coldly and almost contemptuously jab his crowds with figures and facts -- figures and facts that were inescapable even when, as often happened, they were entirely incorrect." ~ Sinclair Lewis, in his novel "It Can't Happen Here"

In It Can't Happen Here, Lewis was describing the charismatic politician Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, who poses as a populist, then once elected president turns the United States into a fascist dictatorship, aided by an angry, unknowing electorate and a paramilitary group called the Minute Men.

Sound familiar?  Think Glenn Beck.

Bill Moyer's Journal blogger Michael Winship goes on ...

In its despair and confusion, a large segment of the American populace is prepared to believe anything it's told, in part because we are a country less and less educated, increasingly unable to tell fact from fiction because we are so unschooled in basic essential knowledge about America and the world. ...

The Pew Research Center survey earlier this month reports "nearly one-in-five Americans (18%) now say Obama is a Muslim, up from 11% in March 2009. Only about one-third of adults (34%) say Obama is a Christian, down sharply from 48% in 2009.

Shocking, but true.  An ignorant populace is a nation in peril.

Read Winship's article.

Finally ... the Obama administration lays out exactly the sort of economic recovery plan which American citizens have been clamoring for since this recession began.  Rather than blindly offering blank checks to banks which use the funds to enrich their executives and stockholders instead of making loans to needy homeowners, it's simply common sense to directly fund the sort of infrastructure projects which create and sustain good paying middle-class jobs.

We all know that our highways, bridges, railroads, and airports are falling apart.  Drive down any seconary road in the nation and try to avoid the potholes.  As you drive under bridges, notice their crumbling concrete and rusting trusses.  Read daily about airport congestion, deadly plane crashes, and "near misses" caused by outdated air traffic-control technology.  So why not fix this ailing national infrastructure by providing jobs to those who rebuild it?  What could be more obvious? 

This sort of national infrastructure package has been done before and history tells us that it works.  Roosevelt did it in 1934, and Eisenhower did it in 1956.  Both were resounding successes.  Now it's our turn, and it can work again, if only Congressional wimps and naysayers get out of the way.  Obama promised just this sort of national improvement, and he's prepared to make it happen.  Let's get behind him to see this through.

In this Huffington Post article, a Microsoft senior researcher outlines the many ways in which the recent censoring of Craiglist's adult services section quite effectively makes life easier for the bad guys.  It's an interesting and eye-opening essay.

As a general rule, I am personally opposed to any and all forms of  censorship, most especially anything which prevents adult access to information in a misguided effort to protect kiddies.  Nothing good ever comes of censorship, and when the facts finally become public, they typically result in more damage and scandal than public knowledge would have ever created.  Further, one does not close a busy highway simply because kiddies might foolishly want to play in the middle of it.

Of course I believe that children should be protected from anything they're incapable of adequately handling, including dangerous traffic, poisonous plants, vicious animals, and serious diseases.  That protection must, however, begin first and foremost with their parents or guardians.

But better than parental censorship is teaching kids what the world is all about, and how to recognize the good stuff while ignoring the bad. Adults are capable of walking past an adult bookstore without suffering psychological trauma.  So are kids, providing they've been taught good reasons to do so.

Should parents choose censorship over education, however, there are excellent tools out there to assist in their efforts.  During my years as an ISP, I researched the many ways parents can use excellent, affordable, and easily available software programs to prevent access by their kids to adult online content, and I received many notes of thanks from grateful parents for that information.  So I know whereof I speak.

Sex is the strongest drive in human nature.  We're created that way so as to naturally and normally ensure survival of the species.  Thus, efforts to stifle it (in all of its variations) or to hide its expression  under the rug simply guarantees that it will emerge somewhere else.  And just as that article describes, "somewhere else" will always be a place much more difficult to recognize and manage than Craigslist could ever be.

There are certainly bad guys out there waiting to prey upon kids and adults alike.  But the solution to that problem lies not in censorship but in open, frank, and forthright education for one and all.

"Yeah right", says the National Archives.

Read about it here.

While politicians and others across the country in an election year debate the propriety of building a Muslim center, including a mosque, two blocks from the former World Trade Center site in New York, there's no sign of such debate at the Pentagon.

Instead, about 400 worshipers, including Muslims, attend prayer services every week in the chapel, a non-denominational facility built over the rubble left behind when American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon.

Opponents of the New York mosque say it would be disrespectful of those killed on Sept. 11, 2001, to allow Muslims to pray near the World Trade Center site.

That's never been an issue at the Pentagon, where 125 people who worked there died that day.

Read the entire Washington Post article.

		Anti-Muslim, Anti-Gay '9/11 Christians' Plan Church Near Ground Zero
	So, what if, in addition to the Park51 interfaith cultural center and basketball courts that are not at Ground Zero, we had a bigoted kook-church...

OK ... now that we're (finally) doing the right thing by getting the hell out of Iraq, let's extend that sanity to Afghanistan.  We should never have been in either place, so to stop pouring more billions and American lives down yet another rat hole is sensible, prudent, and simple common sense.  We've been there and done that, so let's leave ASAP before we do even more damage.

Still unconvinced?  Take a look at this video, then visit "Rethink Afghanistan" for common-sense facts.

In a rousing address before a predominantly Muslim audience Tuesday night, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg reaffirmed his commitment to the controversial Islamic cultural center near the former site of the World Trade Center. Central to his speech are these quotable statements:

"Islam did not attack the World Trade Center -- Al-Qaeda did. To implicate all of Islam for the actions of a few who twisted a great religion is unfair and un-American. Today we are not at war with Islam -- we are at war with Al-Qaeda and other extremists who hate freedom." ... "But if we do not practice here at home what we preach abroad -- if we do not lead by example - we undermine our soldiers. We undermine our foreign policy objectives. And we undermine our national security."

Factory livestock farms are slowly, really, and truly killing us.  But it doesn't have to be that way.  All it takes to end it is Senators and Representatives with spines.  If you don't believe it, please read this:

Alas, if those attending the upcoming teabaggers rally this coming Saturday in DC follow these "safety" guidelines recently published by a bloggger in Maine, they're not really going to have much to do during their off hours.  It pretty much warns them away from everywhere anything interesting is happening and from the horrors of a chance encounter with anyone not exactly like themselves.

But then again, hey ... they probably have no interest in nor understanding of such mundane things as The Constitution or the other founding principles of our great diverse democracy, so they should be happy just hanging out in their hotel coffee shops chatting with and stroking the egos of fellow baggers.

Click here to view a Google map of their "safe areas", and try not to hurt yourself with laughter.