I AM AMERICA, AND SO ARE YOU, DAMMIT

Is there a typical face of America? Is there any person, or type of person who embodies America the way, say, Winston Churchill once embodied England or Mao Tse Tung represented China or maybe even how Luciano Pavorotti invoked Italy? No, not really. America is far too polyglot of a nation, a place founded on ideas and laws rather than ethnic identity. We've had our share of great men and scoundrels from just about every ethnic group you can name, every one of them as American as the next. Al Capone was no less a product of America than Abraham Lincoln, the same with Charles Manson and Martin Luther King.

It must be hard for the rest of the world to understand the whole concept of a nation founded on the premise that all men are created equal, even those from a different tribe who one has been taught since birth to fear, hate and vilify. That whole equality thing didn't really take here in America right off the bat, it took 87 years after the statement that we are all equal to free our slaves, and another hundred after that to guarantee their ancestors the inalienable rights we take for granted. The indigenous peoples of North America suffered a horrible fate at the hands of America for centuries.

So, our history has been an imperfect one, but still one that kept chasing the ideals upon which we were founded. There is no royalty in America and everyone here has the opportunity to pursue their dreams to fullest extent of their ability without worrying about whether or not their race or ethnic background will render their fortunes forfeit to those in power. Black, white or somewhere in between, what's yours is yours. Jew, Gentile or Atheist, your rights are guaranteed over here. One can travel the length and breadth of this large nation and never be asked for any sort of identity papers or have their presence questioned. No one tells you what it means to be a proper American in the manner of a typical American simply because there is no typical American.

The beauty of that whole deal is that we all get to be who we feel like being as long as we're not hurting anybody else. If you don't like the president or the governor or the mayor of your town or even the local dog catcher you can say so as long and loud as you like and no one will punish you. Or you can mind your own business and nobody has the right to tell you you can't do that either and force you march to their tune. Who wouldn't fall in love with a country like that? And who wouldn't love a nation that embraces people of every background as our valued citizens? For all the ranting and raving I do about some of the things that bug me about this country, I wouldn't live anywhere else for all the gold in all the banks.

I realize how very fortunate I am to be an American and love this nation dearly. The sheer variety of human beings is astounding, the breadth of ideas being bandied about is sometimes astonishing. Could anyone ever get bored with America? That seems very unlikely to me. I have a feeling that this nation has barely scratched the surface of our potential to live up to the ideals upon which we were founded. Come this November we may just take another giant leap forward by electing our first black President. And the great thing about that is that the man in question, Barack Obama, is not running as a b
lack American, but simply as an American.

Which is not to say that all racial and ethnic issues have been settled here in America. That's still a work in progress and there will be those who oppose Obama simply because of his skin color. For people like that you can have only pity, for their unreasoned hatred is a heavy weight, a burden that holds them in ignorant slavery to the cave man within us all. There can be any number of legitimate reasons not to support the man, his youth, his policies or his lack of experience, but to hold one's race against another human being is to deny the human being inside oneself. That shoe can easily be on the other foot.

Whatever the outcome of the presidential race, progress has already been made by the simple fact that mainstream coverage of Mr. Obama has not dwelt mainly on the color of his skin but on the content of his character, that famous subject of a dream that Martin Luther King shared with us forty years ago. Couple that with the fact that his main rival for the Democratic nomination is a woman and you're seeing real progress in the quest for America to become America. The odd thing is that the woman candidate, Hillary Clinton, seems to inspire more divisiveness than the candidacy of a black man. Why that is I can't guess since I can't detect the hateful qualities in the woman that others attribute to her. If Ms. Clinton is the Democratic nominee, I'd vote for her.

While I support Obama, I view Ms. Clinton as an earnest, honorable and legitimate candidate for the presidency. The same with the likely Republican nominee, John McCain, who I disagree with on just about everything and who could never earn my vote. Which does not mean he is not a capable and honorable man, only that my politics differ from his. Whoever sits in the Oval Office next year, I do not envy their task of cleaning up the wreckage of the worst president in American history. Whatever programs the new president has in mind for America will be secondary to the task of getting our nation out of an illegal war of aggression in Iraq and repealing Bush The Younger's attack on the Bill of Rights in America and the Geneva Convention in the greater world beyond our borders. Revisiting the war on al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden just might be a good idea. Reestablishing America's proper course will be a huge task.

On the plus side, that task is already earnestly underway with the candidacies of these two unlikely Americans seeking the presidency and being heavily favored to win. Even a loss to John McCain would not be too big a setback since the precedent has already been sent that the presidency of the United States is no longer the exclusive provence of middle-aged white men. Once a can of worms has been opened there's no resealing it. Whatever their merits or faults, Clinton and Obama have set America back on the road to becoming America. Real progress has already been made that may not be felt for years to come while the new president works feverishly to repair the Bush wreckage.

But something has already changed profoundly, a change for the better that has further opened our open society. As I said, I truly believe we have only scratched the surface of our potential for good. The beautiful idea that is America is moving forward again. The hell with telling the whole world we're #1, that's a childish slogan that means nothing and only engenders resentment. Acting like a responsible nation among nations and ensuring every American's inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness will go a long way towards reestablishing America as the beacon of right and good in this world. And that job is every American's responsibility and an opportunity to further change the course of human history.

America changed history the first of many times by simply coming into existence. The dual charters upon which we were founded, The Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, were world-shaking. These documents were the culmination of centuries of political striving for the common man begun with the Magna Carta and established the United States as the gold standard for freedom, opportunity, tolerance and inclusion. Rejected were the notions of royalty and tyranny. The doors of a nation were flung open to all who wished to come and live this great experiment in human decency.

The Statue of Liberty welcomes them all, the tired, the hungry, the oppressed wretched refuse longing to breathe free. Come here and be an American we told the world, and the world responded and filled our nation with beautiful people of every kind imaginable. We who are Americans are lucky to be here, and must repay that great fortune with the same commitment to our ideals as our predecessors. I am America, and so are you. What are we going to do with that blessing and responsibility? Let's not piss on it like our current president had done for years, that's at least a decent start. We are better than that and we can do better than that. Vote your conscience in November.

LONG DISTANCE WAR

Are there any other nations who are at war and don't notice it? In the United States, we've been at war for over five years and nothing about the feel and experience of being an American in America has changed. Is it just me or shouldn't there be some daily sense of a war being waged in our name? Shouldn't something about everyday life be different? Why is there no major impact on society one way or the next? It's almost like the Iraq war is a bad TV show a lot of people want cancelled but it keeps getting renewed, and that's about it!

It's true that a lot of us are outraged that Bush The Younger attacked Iraq in the first place, a nation with which we had no quarrel. We are further outraged that he let the guy who did attack the United States off the hook. That would be Osama bin Laden, a member of the bin Laden family that has shared decades-long business ties with the Bush family. He even flew members of the bin Laden family out of the country one step ahead of the FBI in the immediate aftermath of Osama Bin Laden's devastating attacks on New York and Washington on September 11th, 2001. Presumably one of those flying out of American investigators' reach was Osama bin Laden's brother, Shafig bin Laden, who was being entertained by the president's father, our former President Bush The Elder, at Washington D.C.'s Ritz Carlton Hotel the day before the attack.

The bin Ladens are Saudi nationals, and Saudi Arabia provided 15 of the 19 hijackers who carried out the attacks. So another puzzling fact is that many members of the Saudi royal family were also secretly flown out of the United States along with the bin Ladens. This was during those first weeks after the attack when you and I were not even allowed to fly so much as a kite. Wouldn't one think the investigators charged with unravelling the chain of events leading up to this attack might have a question or two to ask a lot of these people? And wouldn't one further think that the United States would have to reassess the close ties we have with Saudi Arabia? Or at least have our President Bush The Younger refrain from holding hands with Saudi princes like high school sweethearts? That behavior is blatantly shoving it up our asses that that rich and powerful oil magnates can do as they please, kill who they please and make friends with whom they please, even if they enemies of our nation.

Would Franklin Roosevelt have done the same for members of Emperor Hirohito's family on the heels of Pearl Harbor? Did he break off the attack on Hirohito's Japan to attack a different country that had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor? Did he form a mutual admiration society with Japan's allies, entertaining them lavishly and excusing their open financial and material support for our enemies? The answers to those questions would be no, no he did not. He pursued our enemies to the gates of their capitals and galvanized the nation to join in the effort. Although our enemies were many and their armed forces very powerful, they were crushed completely in less time than Osama bin Laden has been free since he attacked America, only three and one half years.

And even though the Second World War was not fought on American soil, the entire nation knew every single day that there was a war on and that it was far more important than anything else going on in America at the time. The world was in danger, our nation had been attacked and the whole country united in the effort to overthrow totalitarianism. No one again dared attack America until Osama bin Laden, almost 60 years after Pearl Harbor. And Bush The Younger put his defeat and capture on the back burner in order to attack Iraq. Bin Laden was off the hook, able to effectively regroup in Pakistan, another so-called American ally with a government almost as odious as that of Afghanistan's Taliban and Saudi Arabia's tyrannical royal family.

And America shrugs. We are being ruled by a criminal elite who are using their war of aggression and their fear mongering for the purpose of transferring massive amounts of wealth from the working class to the very wealthy, to the point where less than 1% of the population owns over 90% of our nation's wealth. The war we are supposed to be fighting, the war against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda in Afghanistan and now Pakistan has been given a low priority. The focus remains on Iraq, where 20 to 30 million dollars worth of oil is being stolen every single day. Conveniently, the oil meters on the wells and pipelines have been broken ever since the United States invaded Iraq. Of course the Bush Administration blames in on insurgents and corrupt Iraqi officials even though that country and their oil industry has been taken over by the United States, Halliburton and Blackwater, not necessarily in that order.

There is also 9 billion dollars in American currency shipped over there that cannot be accounted for. Bush The Younger's mouthpieces blame in on crude Iraqi accounting methods, as if they would have us believe that Iraqis are illiterate and backwards shepherds who's only counting system is a handful of stones representing each of their sheep. Sorry, but Iraq was and is an educated and sophisticated country quite able to keep track of its own oil industry and any amount of currency. It's only since we invaded and started blowing up a lot of their infrastructure that the country is in dire straits. As painful as it is to say so, Iraq was better off when Saddam Hussein was in charge. Fewer people died at the hands of his regime than under American attack and occupation and the entire surrounding region was more stable than it is today. And still America shrugs.

When the Viet Nam War was being waged, also an unpopular and unnecessary war, the nation was quite aware of the war and it was part of our everyday consciousness. Boys from every neighborhood were being drafted to fight, protests over the war were common and the entire nation openly debated its merits. Directly or indirectly it cost two presidents their jobs and divided our country as never before. Perhaps the bitter memories of those times when the nation was at each other's throats makes many of us hesitant to revisit those emotions. Time and perspective have shown us that it was a bad war for a bad cause and standing up to our government to stop it was a right and viable thing to do.

Sometimes patriotism is best manifested by opposing the actions of your government. Those who sought to stop the war loved America every bit as much as those who supported it and supported the administrations of the two presidents who waged that war, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. The anti-war faction was not seeking the overthrow of the American government, they were simply insisting that the American government live up to its charter, the United States Constitution. We now have a president with a bunch of henchmen who holds our constitution in contempt and claims powers that it never granted him. The abuses of Richard Nixon pale in comparison to those of Bush The Younger, a man considered by many, this writer included, to be a criminal surrounded by criminals. He is attempting to shred the Bill of Rights, has started an illegal war of aggression against a nation that did us no harm and has allowed the torture of prisoners of war.

These are heinous and treasonous acts perpetrated by a sitting president, and there are too many other criminal deeds committed by his administration to list here. The man should have long ago been impeached and now should be under arrest and awaiting criminal trial, not preparing to leave office and handing over a new president the nightmare of undoing the damage he has wrought, as if his were simply another bad presidency. Well, his presidency has not been the case of a bad job done in good faith, it was a series of calculated criminal acts punishable by the same laws he swore to uphold. The violation of that oath and the sacred trust of his office is unprecedented in American history and should not go unpunished.

President Bush the Younger has been an enemy of America and should be treated as such. Not only should he be punished with jail time for the actual crimes he committed, he should be vigorously prosecuted as a warning to any other person seeking the presidency of this nation. Let them be aware that we have a Constitution that specifically outlines the power of the presidency and the behavior of our government towards its citizens. We are a nation of laws and every person, especially the president who swore a sacred oath to uphold those laws, should be held accountable for their violations.

But that's not going to happen. America will continue to shrug, the illegal war devastating Iraq will remain a long distance curiosity and Bush the Younger will go away next January. Our next president will be knee-deep in the shit this man has left behind and our nation will be in debt for generations to pay for his crimes. There has never been a lesser man in the office, and we've had our share of poor presidents. But what we have had for over seven years is a corrupt and manipulative gang of criminals undermining America from within, from the very height of power. They are are enemies of America no less than Osama bin Laden and equally deserving of arrest, trial and punishment under the laws of the United States of America.

D.O.P.O.O. REPORTS: ATHEISTS ARE VERY DEVOUT AND NOBODY'S LEAVING THE USA

After an exhaustive study of all the major religions, The Department of Pointing Out The Obvious is quite frankly exhausted. We have discovered that the most devout believers are Atheists. They are the most dedicated to their faith and the most articulate in the defense of their beliefs. Indeed, a great many atheists are so moved by their faith they feel compelled to spread the word, fervently preaching the doctrines of Atheism to all who will hear. Their deep faith has brought Atheists a great deal of comfort in an uncertain world, a rock to which they cling in troubled times. There is no greater believer, and no more fervent preacher than an Atheist.

The one puzzling aspect of Atheism is that their ranks do not seem to be swelling significantly. While other religions with an aggressive policy towards preaching and conversion grow steadily, the Atheists don't seem to recruit very many new members in spite of their impassioned proselytizing. While they don't knock on doors like Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons, Atheists nevertheless maintain a very high public profile and disseminate their beliefs at every opportunity. Perhaps it's their lack of Holidays that prevents greater recruitment? Or maybe the absence of an identifiable hierarchy like Bishops, Priests, Rabbis, Imams, Lamas and the so forth. The Department would suggest a better organization to which new members can identify, and more public houses of worship so that the newly initiated will feel that the practice of their faith matches the preaching.

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From the desk of The Department of Pointing Out The Obvious: Checking out the worldwide immigration patterns, there's a lot of people leaving their homelands and taking up residence in foreign lands looking for a better deal. The top of the food chain (literally) remains The United States. It's hard not to notice that almost nobody leaves here seeking a better life elsewhere. This is as good as it gets in this hard world. The D.O.P.O.O. has always thought this was a damned good nation filled with fine people and apparently there's a ton of people who share this assessment. Couple that with the fact that America is peopled almost exclusively by immigrants and you've got yourself one popular immigration destination.

Unlike many nations, if you're born here you become a citizen by virtue of that fact, no matter what the status of Mom and Dad might be. And there's nobody that's unwelcome in America. A quick glance outside the Department's headquarters in Brooklyn, New York City confirms. There's even people from Cameroon living here, a nation many Americans thought was a fictitious country from a Broadway musical. Turns out that's not the case. It's a primarily farming nation in Africa of 18 million souls located on the Atlantic coast just above that continent's midsection. As it happens, Cameroon seems to share a striking trait with the United Stares; there are within it's borders over 200 different ethnic groups and they live side by side peaceably, a rarity in Africa, or just about any other place besides America and a few other nations. Too few.

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From the Industry Watch Division of the Department of Pointing Out The Obvious it is reported that by the year 2012 the automotive industry will achieve complete` homogeneity of design. Every sedan will be identical, every mid-sized car, every minivan, SUV, luxury and economy class car will look exactly the same, completing a twenty-five year industry trend. The only difference will be the brand name affixed to each car. The exception, oddly enough, will be the newly revived Studebaker, which will introduce a car identical to the last Studebakers produced in 1966. The Industry Watch Division predicts they will be wildly popular despite getting lousy mileage, having no seat belts, antilock brakes or power windows and failing to comply with modern emissions standards, simply for the reason that it will be easy to find in the parking lot.

WHO ON EARTH IS DEVORAH BENJAMIN AND WHY DOES SHE MAKE PEOPLE HAPPY?

You probably never heard of Devorah Benjamin. A native of Manchester, England now living in Broookln's Crown Heights, married to Rabbi Benjamin and raising their two children and teaching school in the Lubavitch Jewish community seems like a ticket to anonymity. Not the bad sort of anonymity, just the usual good, hard-working citizen kind of life that most of us pursue; doing our jobs, raising our families and doing our best in a difficult world. If that was all there was to Devorah, well, that's plenty enough and admirable in and of itself.

What sets Mrs Benjamin apart, however, is her self-created charity, a mouthful called Keren Simchas Chosson V' Kallah, an organization that provides funding for Lubavitch Jews who could not otherwise afford the opportunity to have a proper Orthodox Jewish wedding. She started this charity not by approaching wealthy donors and setting up a foundation. Devorah Benjamin started by going door to door in Crown Heights soliciting donations, whatever loose change could be spared to help a fellow Jew. Even pennies were welcome.

In densely populated Crown Heights, there is a huge Lubavitch population, indeed it is the main concentration of Lubavitchers and their World Headquarters is located there, at 770 Eastern Parkway, the former home and shul of the late Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the man most responsible for putting Lubavitch on the world map. It serves as their Vatican and is referred to simply as 770. It was Rebbe Shneerson's (Again, in earthy Lubavitch style, simply referred to as "The Rebbe.") leadership and mission that resulted in the opening of Chabad Houses all over the globe. A Chabad House is simply a shul (temple, school or both) run by a Lubavitch Rabbi charged with the mission of bringing traditional Judaism to Jews everywhere. The proper designation of a Luvbavitch Jew is actually Chabad-Lubavitch, their mission, philosophy and sect identity all wrapped in one neat package. Of course there's a whole lot more to it than that, but this is about only one of their number, not the whole ball of wax.

As a member of the second-largest Christian denomination, Lapsed Catholics, I don't pretend to understand all of their beliefs, content to think of the Lubavitch as my Industrial Strength Jewish friends, a group of people who for the most part practice what they preach. And Mrs. Benjamin has been a friend and co-worker for a number of years. What she had accomplished, a vast amount of proper weddings provided for people and the dissemination of the radiant goodwill she exudes, has been amazing. From her door-to-door penny collecting beginnings her charity now brings in between a half and three-quarters of a million dollars per year. None of which, by the way, goes to herself or her family. Hers is a labor of love, a love for her fellow human beings, her love for her faith and her love of doing what she feels is right. She saw a need and did not complain there was a void but took it upon herself to fill it.

She may be dealing with newlyweds who are devout and born Lubavitch or newcomers into the fold unsure of how to go about arranging a proper Orthodox wedding. Well, there's a bona-fide expert in the neighborhood who can advise you of how to go about it or actually provide funds to make it happen. Devorah Benjamin is a household name in Crown Heights and is hooked up with all the caterers, rabbis, photographers, musicians, florists, bakeries, kosher-trained wait staff services (hello!) and anyone else who contributes to the orderly chaos that is a Lubavitch wedding. Even though her charity is now an established foundation with several other directors and sponsors on board, Mrs. Benjamin is still very much the hands-on grass roots organizer she always was.

The other night I handled a small wedding for her, only 50 people and she was in and out most of the day, making sure everything was just so. The Kallah (bride) was from Cody, Wyoming, a convert from Christianity with a dozen family members in attendance. The Chosson (groom) was from South America by way of California and a lifelong Lubavitch rabbi. Before the wedding day Devorah had met neither of them or anyone in their family, only spoke on the telephone with them. Such is the level of trust that those introductory phone calls were all that was needed. Her word is her bond and she expects the same of everyone with whom she deals and oddly enough in this sign-on-the-dotted-line world, that arrangement works.

On the strength of these people's need and several telephone conversations she arranged everything for the wedding, including myself, who set it all up for several hours beforehand and served everybody during the wedding. Most of the food was home-made, all of it donated by members of the community, many of whom have come to feel that Devorah's charity is their charity and much like herself, feels it is their personal responsibility to make sure Jewish weddings are proper and traditional. Apparently her love and passion are contagious.

My duties also included reassuring the lovely people from Wyoming that they had not indeed landed on Mars and they would have a good time. They did, and possibly came away with a better understanding of Orthodox Judaism. Maybe not, but at least they got to meet some nice people and got to feel that their relative the bride is in good hands. Mrs. Benjamin took it all in stride, supervised the whole thing while at the same time planning and organizing several other very large weddings coming up. Some of her weddings have as many as 300 or 400 guests and are held in large catering halls with a full catering staff, wait staff and big wedding band. Our small Wyoming-California wedding boasted a catering staff of one (me) and a piano player who's name I don't know plus a talented singer named Yossi Frankel to do the entertaining and they did a great job. I did okay myself, I might add. Heck, I did add it , didn't I? (I'm very good at what I do, even if can't exactly define my actual job description so easily.)

No matter what the size of the wedding, which hall or small shul in which it is held or what the backgrounds of the engaged couple, Devorah Benjamin does it right and puts her personal touch on the proceedings. That might involve running around like a chicken without a head at large affairs doing a thousand things at once, or like the other night helping me prepare the room, the dessert trays and ladling out the soup, decidedly unglamorous but very necessary jobs. Everything must be just so and she never leaves anything to chance. All that while she was fielding calls on her cell phone involving 15 upcoming affairs of every size and description and slipping home to feed her family and check on the kids' homework and generally doing what it takes to keep her family going. Talk about energy, she's got it to spare.

You can look up her organization on the web. Her site is www.kscvk.org/ and you can see for yourself how one petite woman can do what no one else before her could. This lady moves mountains, one scoop at a time, and her approach to that task has not changed one bit from her beginnings knocking on the doors of strangers. She's still knocking on doors, only his time she's no stranger to any Lubavitch person and every door in the neighborhood is open to Devorah Benjamin. For all her accomplishments and the special regard in which she is held in the Chabad-Lubavitch world, she is still the humble and down-to-earth person she always was, and her love and generosity have transformed a huge segment of her community. Mazel Tov to you and yours, Devorah.

WHO'S IDEA WAS THAT?

Who was it that decided Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton should sit six inches apart during their debates? They looked like a couple of TV news readers. "Back to to you, Hillary."

And who in the Democratic party thought it would be neat to have Superdelegates? These are delegates who exactly nobody voted for and make up one fifth of the Convention's delegates. In such a close contest as the one being waged by Obama and Clinton they could be the deciding votes as to who gets the nomination, thus negating the voter's choices, to say nothing of rendering two hundred-plus million dollar campaigns meaningless. How about a straight up vote count and the candidate with the most votes gets the nomination with no input from anybody but the voters? Of course that would take a lot of power away from the back room king makers, but tough shit on them. If these people like making deals so much they should go into business and find out that every deal costs money, your own damned money and not ours, the taxpayers and voters. It is not yours to play with, either our votes or our money. Stop, thief!

Who's idea in the Bush Administration was it to try to buy the public's favor with a lousy three hundred bucks? Come on, you can do better than that! They know and we know that this is the worst administration ever and has cost each and every American far more than that, even those not yet born who will have to pay for these assholes' eight years of stealing, corruption and mismanagement. You want to buy us now with a measly 300 dollars? Make it 50 grand and maybe I'll shut up.

Who thought it was the dawn of a new day in Cuba? Apparently not their new president Raul Castro, Fidel's dumber brother. You've got to feel for the Cuban people. First the Don gets too sick to run the gang anymore, now Fredo's in charge.

You have to wonder about the decision process of a suicide bomber. Does anybody volunteer? What happens if you're appointed but refuse the honor? What could they do to you that's worse than getting blown to smithereens and becoming a mass murderer in the process? I'm guessing here that these guys are not candidates for a full scholarship. The guy that talks them into wrapping themselves in high explosives and blowing themselves up, though, now there's the guy you want leading your sales department. That's one persuasive son of a bitch.

Who thought it it was a good idea to relocate the Berlin wall in Arizona? And don't the builders of that wall know about commercial airlines, the source of the great majority of illegal immigration? Well, maybe it's better not to tell them. That's at least one set of jobs that can't be outsourced to India or China. And don't breathe a word about the Great Wall of China being a monumental failure. Those pesky Mongol invaders figured out plenty of ways to get over it, and they had more in mind than mowing lawns and picking fruit.

Who decided that the 21st century would be "The Asian Century?" Exactly which part of Asia are they talking about? It's a fairly sizable piece of real estate. And if you happen to be Asian, isn't every century sort of the Asian Century? Maybe it was the clowns who decided that this past century was the American Century, even though a whole lot of things went on elsewhere. And when does Africa get a century? Or Australia? And if Al Gore is right about global warming, this just might turn out to be the Arctic Century. Wouldn't that piss off the labelers?

Who nominated Doctor Phil for the job of America's Life Coach? Bad enough we pay the slightest attention to blowhards like Bill O'Rightly, Rush Limburger, Wolf Blitzkrieg and Bill Mars, do we need another con man telling us how to behave and what to think? This is a guy who blew his first marriage by womanizing, got slapped by a Psychology regulatory agency in Texas for "inappropriate conduct with a young female patient," ran a questionable weight loss business and preyed on the vulnerabilities of an unbalanced young celebrity. I'd rather take advice from Flavor Flave.

In Olympic Sports, baseball's out but synchronized swimming remains. I wonder which sport has more fans? I don't recall ever reading anything about a sold-out stadium or arena with ticket scalpers making a small fortune hawking tickets for a synchronized swimming competition. The only good seats for that "sport" are where the cameramen sit, in the rafters directly overhead. And even then it's as boring and incomprehensible as anything could possibly be. Who on the Olympic Committee decided baseball goes and this sport is far too popular and riveting to eliminate? Maybe one of those guys mesmerized by the Winter Olympics Biathlon where people on skis shoot rifles. Yeah, that's a big box office draw, alright. I know a lot of people who ski and a lot of people who shoot rifles, but never at the same time, what with the safety issues that presents and all. And just about everybody swims from time to time, but nobody I ever met has been excited about an upcoming synchronized swimming meet, going to great lengths to obtain poolside seats, placing wagers on the outcome and cheering their lungs out for their team. Sometimes you just wonder where some ideas come from.

GET A LIFE COACH!

What the hell is a Life Coach? Doesn't a guy who advertises himself as a life coach sound like he's finding something to do with himself because he has no skills at all? When did being a loser know-it-all become a job description? And who hires these people? Don't we all know somebody who always tells everybody else what to do for free? Why spend a penny of your hard earned to ignore some other fool? What the hell has gotten into people? Can't we just figure stuff out on our own anymore?

Were you aware there are more than 8 million results for Life Coach on internet search engines? There are corporate life coaches, Christian life coaches, Women's life coaches (guys probably looking to get laid), strength life coaches and for those who want to really look important there's Life and Wellness coaches, Life and Spirituality coaches (they must be a real yawn), Life and Nutrition coaches, and even life coaches for other life coaches, the ultimate scam. How bizarre is this turn of events? And isn't it sort of a slap in the face to Mom, our original life coach? Does anybody think there's something she forgot to cover? That's not very likely. Maybe they think they need a refresher course on whether or not to run with scissors and when to put on a sweater. People do forget things.

When I hear about scams like this, my first reaction is to laugh. My second reaction is to wonder how I can get in on some of this easy money. I figure if there are people dumb enough to hire a life coach and are going to waste their dough anyway, well, why not hand over over some of their currency to me? As far as I can tell, there's really no specific set of job skills for life coaching, right up my alley. And I can tell an idiot what to do with the best of them. Who knows, maybe I could even do some good for some of these assholes, perhaps coach them into being somewhat less of a jerk. I figure they won't be any worse off for having wasted their dough on life coach services.

Or maybe they will, but that's not the point, is it? One of America's greatest life coaches ever, W.C. Fields, often said it is a sin to let a sucker keep any of his money. So maybe I'll call my service "Get a Life Coaching Company." I'd have to resist the temptation to offer the advice that readily comes to my mind when speaking to somebody seeking to hire a life coach, which would be: "Wake the fuck up and snap out of it, you sniveling wimp!" That would be sort of counterproductive, no? I'd have to develop some more subtle variations of that theme in order to keep them paying me until they realize it's a scam.

And once they realize it's a scam, what are they going to do, sue me? Hah! They'll be so embarrassed at having done something as stupid as hiring a life coach they'll probably pay me extra to go away and not tell anybody they were my client. It's a win-win situation for a life coach. Besides, how could anybody prove that a life coach didn't do a proper job? They're still alive, right? So if you still have a life, such as it is, you have no complaint. No rational being can expect somebody else to change them and make decisions for them and expect everything is going to be alright. As long as the life coach doesn't kill his client, he's done his job, the guy still has a life.

Get a Life Coach Company won't offer any extravagant claims or anything so specific as to be actionable. I'll probably teach people a better way to tie their shoes or hang up their clothes, maybe instruct them to reorganize their filing system or something. Again, I'll have to resist the temptation to tell them to start drinking and smoking cigarettes or to take up crazy hobbies like bunji-jumping and sky-diving. The con-artists' code frowns on ruining a perfectly good sucker who can be bilked of some more of his hard earned down line when some other new-age fad becomes all the rage.

Now that I think about it, this Life Coach scam is even better than the therapy scam. You don't need to be a doctor or a psychologist to cash in and there's no pesky regulatory agency or industry guidelines to interfere with your cash flow. I think the therapy scam is showing signs of petering out, and about time too. Those jokers are the worst sort of scammers, they think they're doing something useful while they overcharge their unsuspecting marks. Hey, I've been to plenty of therapy, what with my being completely nuts and all, and I can tell you from experience that a bigger bunch of clueless losers never walked the earth. The only reason I ever went to therapy was to shut up some people in my life, loved ones and judges and the like. I did my time, listened to their blatherings and went on my merry way the exact same person I've always been.

Luckily I had received invaluable training as a youngster in Catholic school telling religious fanatics what they wanted to hear to avoid get slapped around or whacked with a yardstick. Nuns tend to be especially delusional human beings convinced that everything they think is absolutely correct and it is their mission in life to justify their warped world view by imposing it on hapless children. Lucky for me they're also a bunch of suckers easily mollified by the right mouthful of bullshit. And unlike therapists, they could actually beat you senseless if you didn't learn to play their particular little mind games. Well, after some some severe beatings I wised up and aced that exam, so therapists were just another annoying bunch of small minded killjoys to be placated. They are not in the Dominican Sisters' league at all so I was immune to their feeble tactics.

Any changing I ever did was my own decision, not because some pompous neurotic offered me their ridiculous opinion of what I'm supposed to be like. I figure I'm supposed to be who I am as long as I'm not brandishing firearms or making a nuisance of myself. But my time in therapy was not wasted. It opened my eyes to what a scam the whole deal really is, and what a waste of breath it is to try to talk someone out of being who they really are. Humanity has long recognized this simple truth and for extremes cases they invented prisons, places where nobody gives a rat's ass about your personal growth so long as you remain locked up and not "personally growing" murderous and psychotic at the expense of the rest of society. The smart therapists realize this and so they prescribe powerful drugs to control people who haven't done anything that might get them locked up. This way they can call their pathetic efforts at therapy a success, as long as the mark keep taking the happy pills, naturally. The dispensing of these so-called medicines is nothing but the bald admission that talk therapy is just that; all talk and no action.

They have managed, however, to put the lie to the old axion that talk is cheap, something that scam artists have always know without the benefit of an advanced degree. Ever see a therapist's bill? It's not cheap at all. Somebody's got to pay for their expensive educations in the Art of Making No Difference Whatsoever, and if you're in therapy, it's you. So that's where the Life Coach scam is a thing of beauty, playing on a population of suckers already softened up to the idea that somebody else has all the answers to life's dilemmas, and with a little pompous posturing and judicious mentions of meaningless phrases like "mentoring potential" and "success horizon" you can jump on the gravy train of taking gullible and insecure people's money away from them. Better still, it's their idea to hand you fistfuls of dollars! They'd be more upset if you turned them down, actually refused to steal from them!How great is that?

The fact that nobody knows what the hell you're talking about is actually an asset, they'll think you're smart and know things they don't. In reality, the only thing you need to know that they don't is that you need to get paid for acting like a pompous fool, and paid very well indeed or you're acting like a jerk for nothing. You don't have to "help" anybody, just let them think they're being helped. That's more valuable than anything you might tell them, good or bad. They'll feel good about themselves and you'll have some money you didn't have when you woke up that morning. Eventually they'll wake up and decide they don't need your advice anymore but if you play your cards right, you can make it sound like another success story and they'll recommend your services to another hapless mark.

That's just so much better than pyramid schemes and check-kiting since people who get blatantly robbed for big dough are very unlikely to offer a recommendation to anybody but the police and the District Attorney. Being a life coach, much like a therapist, you're out in the open and people are even actively seeking you out to surrender their money for basically no services rendered outside of wasting small chunks of their lives talking to them about stuff they don't understand and recommending improvements in their minds that will never happen anyway. And nobody goes to jail for their troubles. What's not to love?

So starting right here and right now I'm announcing the grand opening of the Bob Crespo Get A life Coaching Company. For a mere $150 per hour I'll come to your house and tell you that you've been doing everything all wrong and you need to listen to me. Don't worry, I'll reassure you that you are indeed a very good and smart person who just needs a little direction. The First direction I'll give you is how to properly make out a check for my services. After that initial success, you'll be ready for the bold moves I recommend in order for you to keep having a life. Maybe I'll tell you to buy a new couch or something, buy some stock in Microsoft or some other easy to swallow piece of advice that might not help the situation, but will do no harm. Who doesn't feel better sitting on a comfy new couch?

In some extreme cases I might be forced to suggest that you divorce that haranguing bitch that has the temerity to question your decision to hire a life coach. If her shrieking nags haven't produced the ideal spouse they were designed to create, well, isn't that another indication of one more bad decision on your part? The peace of mind to be gained by removing a shrill noise from one's home can work wonders. At least for my continued employment as a life coach, that is. I'll take it on a case-by-case basis, identifying each clients' individual vulnerabilities and exploiting them to the fullest for my own enrichment, just like any self-respecting therapist. Perhaps I will also run expensive weekend seminars so I can get a bunch of suckers, clients,I mean clients into one room and gang-charge them all for several sessions apiece so that I can earn several week's pay in a single weekend.

Nobody's problems will be solved but they will all come away feeling that they have embarked on a serious Quest for Truth and Success, which is what I'll call these expensive weekend sales spiels. This will in turn lead to many individual appointments to boss these people around in their own homes. Surely some of the weekend seminar attendees may be disgruntled, but their will be no refunds since I promised them nothing but Life Coaching, a job harder to pin down that a ball of liquid mercury. Could it be that my ship ha finally come in? Bob crepo, Life Coach! Has a nice ring to it, no? Cha-ching!

MY EMPIRE EXPANDS

Bobcrespo.com, that vast internet juggernaut sweeping the World Wide Web, has now expanded to a new web site on Google's Blogspot called Bob Crespo Speaks. It is strictly a site for blogging my daily tales while bobcrespo.com will continue to exclusively feature my music and short stories, at least until I can figure out some other place to display them. The beauty of it is that it only involves another couple of minutes a day of work on my part. All work and no play makes Bob even more irritable and unreasonable than usual. So now that the mighty Google has joined the Bob Crespo Internet Empire the sky's the limit for my plan for world domination.

Just exactly what I'll do once I achieve this absolute power I really don't know. I haven't really thought that part through. Any suggestions? I'm wide open. I never was big on that whole planning thing. Which is probably why I'm broke, vast internet juggernaut notwithstanding. But I've gotten this far by the seat of pants so I figure something will turn up, some cockamamie idea will pop into my head and I'll run with it. Then I'll have something to do with myself. If that doesn't sound like a viable life model, well, what can I say? Life has been quite eventful and interesting so far and I don't want to screw that part of it up by making plans I'll never follow anyway.

Of course sometimes eventful can mean dangerous or unpleasant, but what the hell, that's all part of life's rich pageant too, no? You've got to take the good with the bad and all that crap. And one can't help but notice that even into the most carefully planned and wel-oiled lives the monkey wrenches fly and things go kablooey every now and then. Defecation occurs, and there's nothing you can do about it. Of course more stuff happens to some than others, and careful people can eliminate a lot of life's nasty surprises. At least that's what I'm told by a lot of people who seem to enjoy giving me advice. I'll just have to take their word for it since their wisdom sort of fades from my brain pretty quick.

Maybe I should start writing some of it down because they really are good people and seem to have a lot of cool stuff figured out, like saving some money and keeping a regular schedule and holding a steady job and things like that. Setting "goals" and making lists of things to do and getting plenty of sleep and eating right. Worrying about stuff that might happen and having a Plan B and whatnot. Interesting concepts. Hope it's working out okay for them.

They tell me I should stop smoking cigarettes but I've already stopped drinking and ingesting various chemicals so I need at least one vexing addiction. Besides, it annoys the crap out of exactly the kind of people I like to annoy the crap out of. You know the type, people who don't even know you and really don't care one way or another about you who stop what they are doing to announce that everything you do is poisonous and sinful and everything they do is healthy and virtuous. Here's a tip when you want to get rid of one of these pests; light up a smoke and tell them to keep on jogging, Utopia's just over that next tortuous hill and there's a whole bunch of people there waiting for you so they can extensively praise your virtues and listen to your lectures. Usually they get the hint, but with the stubborn ones you might need to blow smoke in their face to facilitate their departure.

Back to my half-assed plan for world domination. What should I do once I achieve ultimate authority? Probably lose interest and get involved in something else like I always do. Thinking it over, maybe it's not such a good idea after all. There's nobody that needs straightening out by me, nobody I hate and I haven't got the answers to what life is all about. Sorry. I also have no clue as to what to do with all those places in the world where everybody seems to hate everybody else for no apparent reason. At least not any solutions that wouldn't involve me calling them a bunch of idiots and making things worse, and then they'd just start murdering their neighbors in their beds again. Nobody wants that. Other than the people who live in those places and go in for that sort of thing, that is. It's the rest of us who could do without that sort of behavior.

No, I think i'll just stay here in Brooklyn where I belong, playing my music, writing my songs and stories and living my life, such as it is. Maybe I could travel more, but I've seen some of the world, been to some locales. Everywhere you go there's people all over the place, just like here. Maybe I'd travel more if there was a place that wasn't like that. Wonder where that could be?

So, I'm announcing a new outlet for my blogs, the aforementioned Bob Crespo Speaks. I hate the word blog, by the way. It's better than diary, I suppose, but not much. Most of my blogs are about something specific, unlike this one. When you do this every day you learn to spin our wheels with stuff like this when there's nothing much on your mind. It happens. You can't be riveting and hilarious every day. I know I wouldn't want to hang out with somebody who's riveting and hilarious all the time. It would only be a matter of time before they got on your nerves and you'd be obliged to whack them in the head an couple of times with loaf of Italian bread and tell them to relax already. That way it's not a fatal encounter but the message is effectively delivered.

So, it's time to rest up and prepare for more of not doing much of anything specific. It's harder than you might imagine. There's nobody to tell you what to do and there's no instruction booklet handy. When you invent yourself you're sort of a perpetual work in progress. If i ever find out how I turn out I'll let you know. Meanwhile, life is a gas and the world is full of fascinating people and interesting events. Stay tuned...

CRISIS FOR THE NATION'S COMICS

Before another year passes, the main inspiration for today's comedians will go away. I'm talking about our president, Bush the Younger, the man responsible for probably half the comedic material in the United States for the past seven-plus years. His blatant stupidity, gross incompetency, his lazy work habits and his transparent venality have been a gold mine for comedy writers and performers. Indeed, the man himself is hilarious, even more so in that it is unintentional. His every public appearance reveals a tongue-tied, inarticulate fool holding the most important job on the planet, the President of The United States, a premise that has the makings of great comedy if it wasn't all too real.

And not only is he funny, but his Vice President, the guy who actually has been running the country, one Dick Cheney, is a real-life caricature of a wealthy power-mad villain with no visible emotions and not a bit of concern or respect for America. His most powerful cabinet secretaries, Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft, were also bumbling and arrogant criminals with made-to-order personalities for comics to lampoon. The transformation of the United States government from one representing the people of the nation into an entity that facilitates corporate interests at the expense of those same people is another great comedy premise come to life. Our great comic actors could have a ball with this outlandish premise if it was only a a premise and not bizarre reality.

And what comedy writer could top the notion of attacking the wrong nation in retaliation for being attacked? That's way too over the top for even wildman idiot comic like Jerry Lewis or Jim Carey. No producer would ever buy that insane scenario. And to have the United States hire large and highly paid mercenary corporate armies to supplement our armed forces would really be a reach, a suspension of reality even the most dedicated comedy fan wouldn't buy into. Or having a civilized nation torture prisoners, allow one if its finest cities to drown or having the government conduct illegal searches and seizures of its own citizens. That goes against the grain of comedy, which to be plausible has to have some grounding in reality in order to work.

What president would expose one of our own spies? Everybody knows that would put the agent in question's life in danger and sign the death warrants of all the people who had dealings with that spy in foreign lands. What Vice President would shoot a man in the face and then hide that fact for a couple of days? What president would call off the hunt for the man responsible for attacking his nation? It's just too far-fetched. And what president would have business ties and personal relationships with that man's family and make sure they got safely out of the country one step ahead of the FBI? Get real! And that whole business of having a gay prostitute pose as a member of the White House Press Corps in order to feed a stupid president easy questions? Even Monty Python wouldn't go that far!

But there you have it, an administration pushing the boundaries of comedy, which is really tragedy turned upside down, an approach to painful realities that enables us to laugh at our troubles instead of cry. So perhaps the Bush the Younger Administration isn't a complete fiasco after all. Isn't comedy one of our finest arts? Hasn't many a great mind provided us with much food for thought through the vehicle of comedy? And even if their intentions were not to provide high comedy, why look a gift horse in the mouth? Think of the fun Gilbert & Sullivan could have had writing a great comic opera about these buffoons! They might call it "The Executioner Prince of Texas." The big production number could revolve around the president wanting to get his own face carved into Mount Rushmore, a song and dance number called, "Move Over, Smart Guys" culminating in blowing up George Washinton's face and replacing it with Bush the Younger.

Or how about the Marx Brothers? "Duck Soup Goes to Washington." Harpo would be perfect as Bush the Younger, and his speeches would make more sense with the use of horns, bells, whistles and zany expressions, with a few comic props pulled out of his many pockets for emphasis. Chico could revise his scheming Chicolini character to play Rumsfeld and Groucho of course would be the callous mastermind Cheney, caring only for his own personal needs, with straight man brother Zeppo as his personal physician installing all sorts of whacky gadgets in the man to keep him alive. The great Margaret Dumont would be perfect as Condoleeza Rice, playing her as a clueless, prim matron placed in her job to keep Harpo out of trouble with all the predictable zaniness that entails, chasing him around the oval office with an out-sized hypodermic needle full of sedatives and then inadvertently sitting on it herself, leaving President Harpo free to pull some new outrageous stunt that embarrasses everybody. The possibilities are endless.

But alas, all things come to an end, even world-class comedy acts. No more Abbot and Costello in the White House come 2008. Bud Abbott, possibly the best straight man who ever lived, would have been perfect as Dick Cheney. Abbot never stepped out of character, always playing the venal, selfish small-time con man superbly, content to set up the jokes and allow his gifted partner Lou Costello to play for the laugh. And who better than Costello to portray the tongue-tied inadequacy that is Bush the Younger? Can't you see Miss Hillary as Condoleeza, the love of his life he can never find the words to win over? The beautiful woman who sees Bush the Younger as a lovable and sweet little dunce but out of the question as a serious suitor? Alright, the lovable thing is a stretch, but no more of a stretch than the whole administration has been.

But soon all this comedy fun will be behind us and we'll have a president who's main job will be to undo the wreckage of Bush the Younger and his Zany Players Revue. After all, one can't have a comedy act running the country and not expect them to screw it up big time. There will be wars to end, debts to pay and The Bill of Rights to reestablish, all mundane chores with little or no comedy potential. Perhaps the new president will even catch Osama Bin Laden, logically the only man we need to kill or capture to avenge the attack on America that he orchestrated. That will take more ready-made material away from our nation's comedians who have been having a field day spoofing his video career taunting the United States. More golden comedy opportunities vanishing.

Comic impersonators who have made fortunes mimicking Bush the Younger's easy-to-lampoon idiocy will have to develop new material. The rich source of illogical actions provided by this administration will also dry up, forcing comedy writers and performers of every stripe to find new inspiration. The truth is, Bush the Younger has made life too easy for our comics, and many of them have perhaps grown lazy, accustomed to having their government provide them with their material. Well, that welfare state is going away, people, and as of january 2008 you're on your own. No more freebies from the government.

Unless of course our nation is dumb enough to elect John McCain, or nostalgic enough for the comedy of the Reagan years, where our president was an old guy half daft with senility. Then our comic's skills would be further eroded by having their material gift-wraped and handed to them on a silver platter. Yet another reason to elect a serious person as president in November. Our comic minds are far too important to our nation to allow them to atrophy by not making them work for their material. Having a comedy act run the nation might be zany fun but it takes the incentive away from our professional comics and gives them unfair competition. So, though it's been tons of fun and quite a roller coaster ride, we bid adieu to the notion of dimwit puppet presidents and their venal straight men.