ency by the Federal Reserve, the greatest transfer of wealth to the top 1% in the history of our country through tax cuts and unprecedented corporate benefits, the no-bid transfer of billions of dollars to Halliburton, Parsons and Kellog Brown & Root, etc. for their abysmal assistance in not reconstructing Iraq, the dismantling and disgrace of American foreign policy through the failure to meaningfully advance economic or social equity in Afghanistan, the invasion and occupation of Iraq that sent this nation into a downward death spiral few can imagine stopping, the unrestrained support of Israel’s continued crimes against humanity including the horrific imprisonment and brutalization of the Palestinian population and the aerial bombardment and death of thousands of Lebanese civilians and wholesale destruction of southern Lebanon.

But there’s more: the complete failure to meaningfully address the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina and the collapse of the levies in New Orleans, the upper echelon decisions in the Pentagon to neglect and marginalize the Iraq war wounded by deferring thorough brain damage diagnostics and denying post traumatic stress disorder claims, the patent erosion of our national liberties through egregious legislation like the ill named Patriot Act and the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security (directed by dual citizen Michael Chertoff), the degradation of the CIA through horrific administrative appointments and the blaming of the Iraq invasion on “poor intelligence,” a lie to cover the stovepiping of AIPAC, Mossad and other double agent “intelligence” through Larry Franklin to Douglas Feith to Dick Cheney to the Congress and national press to justify the invasion of a foreign nation and the subsequent death of over three thousand Americans, horrific injuries to tens of thousands more, and the death of over a half million Iraqis and growing.

A good conservative friend and counsel suggests I blame Bush for too much. It’s hard to find a more incompetent target amidst this era of national disaster, but my mark isn’t on the president in this post, but on those who put him in power. Ken Lay, who ran one of the most creative money laundering schemes in modern history, bought Bush his Texas governorship, but there were bigger players in the “nose bleed seats” who put him in the White House and who are now removing him.

One example: the neglect of the war wounded has been written about for the last four years, including this author, with mountains of confirming evidence and thousands of desperate veterans’ claims, but nothing was done, nothing. Recently a story appeared on the front page of the Washington Post in a poignantly and thoroughly researched piece by Dana Priest with all the subsequent feigned cries on Capitol Hill “if only we knew.”

My question is why now? Did the Washington Post suddenly discover it’s inner resolve, or have the people who own the Post and all the major news outlets in print and television (including for example NBC, owned by General Electric, one of the profiteers in the Iraq War) decided it’s time to retire this fool on a fool’s errand and restart the puppet theater of representative democracy through bought and paid for candidates, media controlled “public opinion,” rigged (as needed) electoral processes by “pioneers” Diebold and others, ginning up another sleight of hand in which power will appear to have shifted but doesn't shift at all.

In the Godfather III Michael Corleone says, “I always sought the legitimate world, but the higher I climb in it the more corruption I find.” That’s a mouthful from a character whose life was based on murder and bribery. Francis Ford Coppolla offered America a dose of reality through his brilliant operatic epic (and don't get me started on the mean spirited and vacuous "The Departed").

In the 80s “America was so in need of a wise old man we hired Ronald Reagan to play one,” as American poet Robert Bly used to say. Think of squeaky clean Reagan with his grammar school haircut, jelly beans on his desk, exuding innocence while funding death squads in El Salvador, distributing cocaine in the ghettoes of the United States through a CIA organized network Gary Webb uncovered before he was crushed in a mainstream media onslaught, dismantling our labor unions and destroying working class aspirations for social justice.

Bush Jr. was choreographed in a similar characterization, the Yale blueblood with the folksy country demeanor, “elected” to bring honor back to the White House, a uniter not a divider, etc., etc., ad nauseam. Bob Dylan sang in his harshly criticized album “Slow Train Coming”:

Do you ever wonder just what God requires?

You think He's just an errand boy to satisfy your wandering desires.

When you gonna wake up, when you gonna wake up

When you gonna wake up and strengthen the things that remain?

Shouldn’t we be moving toward a wake up moment in these great United States? The lies of the government and its financiers can usually be debunked with a few keystrokes in Google. There are real journalists who are still fighting the good fight, in the mainstream an on the web, who refuse to be controlled by the industrial powerhouses that regulate much of the media. There are growing populist movements within the US for greater individual autonomy, for control of corporations, for environmental and social justice.

Sinead O’Connor sang wisely in her song “Famine”

And if there ever is gonna be healing

There has to be remembering and then grieving

For there to be forgiving

There has to be knowledge and understanding

It’s WAKE UP time, and each of us are part of this vital change.

Peace.