Knife to the Throat

It's a lesson too late for the learnin'
Made of sand, made of sand
--The Last Thing on My Mind, Tom Paxton

Well poor boy spent all he had,
famine come in the land
--Prodigal Son, Rolling Stones

I hear the train a comin'
It's rollin' 'round the bend,
And I ain't seen the sunshine,
Since, I don't know when
--Folsom Prison Blues, Johnny Cash

breaking into Fort Knox,
stealing our intentions,
hangars sitting gripped in oil
Crying FREEDOM!
--B.Y.O.B, S.O.A.D.
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Ranger has been on the road for a month now, thinking, driving and avoiding getting lost. He has been a modern day Jimmy Appleseed, sowing his thoughts -- welcome or not -- throughout his travels.

Yesterday we toured Cleveland, Ranger's stomping grounds. Save for the gentrified downtown, the ubiquitous urban decay of Cleveland reflected that seen in Buffalo, Erie, Toledo, and every other city outside of the Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire leg of the tour.

Eastside Cleveland is a garbage dump, an absolute scab on the wound that that is the current U.S. of A. Everywhere, extreme wealth abutted by the more ubiquitous extreme poverty. Our loathing for the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) intensifies and solidifies. Let us rebuild our shit hole cities before we rebuild foreign shit hole cities. We do not have the money to do both.

Our corroded financial reality is now an open scab for all to see, even the ordinarily clueless George Bush. Though one hopes for decisive corrective action, overheard last night in an Ohio restaurant from a table of retirees was the following: "Things may be bad, but they'll be worse if Obama gets in and tries to nigger-rig things."

Happy for the moment they were in their presumed posture of smug superiority and willful blindness. They refused to recognize the people who actually have placed their retirements in jeopardy. These people are in the bag for McCain and Palin, who can can be dumb as logs as far as they are concerned. They will not vote for Obama. This indicts the foolishness of the Democratic voters as strongly as it does the pathetic bigotry of many citizens.

We met a 30-year firefighter earlier in the day and discussed the event of 9-11, with which he had some relationship. Ranger asked why he thought the people in the first plane didn't take action when the hijackers cut the stewardess's throat.

The answer is the U.S. public is lulled into a sense of security. Someone, somewhere, will know what is going down, and will talk the hijackers down to the tarmac, where most passengers will then be allowed to disembark. That is the way this scenario usually played out, but not this time. However, the learning curve was sharp and the third flight saw a passenger rebellion.

The people can yet summon outrage. But they must first acknowledge and assign responsibility. This economic "crisis" has been a long time in the coming; the train's lights have been bearing down the tunnel a long while. Hardly an unforeseen crisis. It now diverts attention from foreign policy, and it will earn BushCheney's minions a final Big Blowout before the elections. It does nothing for the solid, vanishing middle class citizen on whose backs this nation rides.

Both parties promise tax breaks (Obama caters to the middle class with an $85 billion a year plan; McCain pledges to continue Bush's ill-advised breaks, estimated at $1.5 trillion over 10 years.) The current $650 billion+ U.S. defense budget excludes secret funding and non-emergency bailouts, yet we are promised tax reductions?

Do the taxpaying American people (and that includes members of Congress) actually believe taxes can be cut while federal spending is increased? Did money start growing on the blighted birch trees of the Green Mountains?

Such magical thinking has gotten us into this mess. Both parties propose initiatives which cost money. The solution? Lower taxes. Yet everyone has eyes to see. Biden even mentioned the blight in his home area in tonight's debate.

The inner city blight across America is something that neither Obama nor McCain address, save in the vaguest terms. Last month Thomas Friedman wrote about the primacy of need in the U.S. state of Georgia, while the U.S. government pledged aid to the Caucasus Republic of Georgia, albeit a mere $1 billion (Georgia on My Mind.)

Friedman wrote, "Wow, I thought. That’s great: $1 billion to fix Georgia’s roads and schools. But as I read on, I quickly realized that I had the wrong Georgia."

This is where the outrage should lie.