In the immortal words of comedian Professor Irwin Corey: “If we don’t change the direction we’re going in, where going to end up where we’re going.”

Nothing rings more true to me these days. And nothing is more comedic than watching a throw back to the Vaudevillian television days of yesteryear, when “double-talk” comedians were the laughter of the day. Norm Crosby was king, with lines like, “I speak from my diagram and drink decapitated coffee.” It was a prelude to what people will forever refer to as, “who’s on first?” when we are so (deliberately) confused by the verbiage of political speeches and spin.

Well, today’s masters of “double speak” are Capitol Hill comedians, who come out week after week with the most hilariously insane, convoluted, confusing and insulting explanations to their exposed crimes of the week. Illegal spying isn’t illegal in the Bush administration, because it is a “terrorist surveillance program.” Torturing prisoners in military-based prisons isn’t breaking all four protocols of the Geneva Convention and defying the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (outlined by the United Nations General Assembly following the Nuremberg Trials), because it is in the interest of “national security.” And the latest, Bush authorizing the declassification of material that led to the public disclosure to the identity of a CIA covert agent isn’t treason, because, as Bush put it to an audience of college students, and not reporters, “was to let people know the truth.” (Yes, he has the ‘Executive privilege’ to declassify whatever the hell he wants, but when it is for blatant political gain, unethical and with pernicious ramifications of treasonous results, we are back to a presidential excuse of ‘it depends on what the meaning of is, is.’) So, I’ll have a cup of that decapitated coffee now.

If you take a serious look at the bills the Bush administration pushed through with warm and fuzzy titles, they are a plethora of paradigms for double-speak; classic Orwellian language that is derived to make us think something, by virtue of its name, is good- but is really bad. Like, to name a few, “Healthy Initiative Forests”; “The Clean Air Act”; “No Child Left Behind” and “Social Security Reform.” Not only are these bills a farce to what their name implies, to benefit the corporations of whom Bush is really a president to, but they were birthed in propaganda and catapulted onto American airwaves with fake news reporting, know as Video News Releases (VNR’s).

Coming back to the latest comedy show (from the White House press room), Scott McClellan was finally asked by members of the Associated Press about Bush being the “Leaker-in-Chief;” his explanation was the best impersonation I have seen of Abbott & Costello’s baseball comedy act, “Who’s on First?” All Scott needed was a little brown derby to make his uncanny resemblance of Louis Costello complete! Listening to the reporter try and get a straight answer from Scott, and Scott's convoluted replies to her tenacious hold on the subject, just exhausted me afterwards. I can only imagine how the people in attendance felt! Then there was Bush’s answer to a college student, who asked him about the latest revelation of the White House leak; his answer was as comical as his IQ and the fact that this man is holding the most powerful position on the face of the earth. To quote Professor Corey again, “When his IQ raises to 28, sell!”

Bush said that it was to provide the American people “the truth.” This after months of his telling the public that “he wanted to get to the bottom of the leak;” “that anybody who leaked information would no longer be working in his administration;” that “leaks are unacceptable.” Enough is enough! To insult my intelligence by expecting me to believe that George had to tell Dick to tell Scooter to tell Judy to tell US, the “truth?” Well, anybody care to purchase Iraqi real estate? Unfreakin’ real! The only reason I listen to these blatant liars and despicable war criminals, is because aside from American Idol, there really isn’t anything worth watching on television! People who say the media is a liberal organization are just avoiding the truth like an ostrich. Sorry folks, but that is the stone-cold truth. The entire Associated Press advocated military force on Iraq, a sovereign nation that did not attack us, without checking the facts or presenting debate in opposition; they simply said “how high” every time the Bush administration said, “jump!” The rabidly far-right media corporation of Sinclair Broadcasting Systems controls roughly 60 percent of the nation’s airwaves; what they don’t own, Rupert Murdoch does. Murdoch’s satellites deliver TV in five continents (dominating all but Great Britain, Italy, parts of Asia and much of the middle-east); he publishes over 175 newspapers, including the New York Post, The Weekly Standard, The American Review and The Times of London; he owns Twentieth Century Fox Studio and FOX network and 35 stations that reach about 40 percent of America. You do the math. With Sinclair and Murdoch enterprises baking the entire pie- don’t tell me the media is liberal. Murdoch is a media monger, a neoconservative, an oil imperialist, and uses corporate intimidation to advance his stridently hawkish political views. The cheerleader with the biggest pompoms to invade Iraq is a toss-up between Rupert and Dick Cheney.

With men like Murdoch and the Bush administration propagandizing the American people with every breath and every tool at their disposal, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that people still support this president, the war in Iraq and the spineless members of Congress, whose sole reason for being there is to “check” the “balance” of power of the Executive branch. With our economy on a train wreck to hell; our borders open for all to enter illegally and dangerously, with the middle-class disappearing at the hands of a plutocratic empire- will the ostriches have their heads too far down in the ground, listening to “fair and balanced news” to rise against an invasion of Iran next? Will they see that an invasion of Iraq was just the beginning of neo-conservative hegemony in the middle-east for control of the world’s oil reserves? If the American people don’t rise up in protest like an immigration nation, we will let Bush take us exactly where we’re going.

Abraham Lincoln once said, “A house divided cannot stand.” He was referring to the White House, but that can also be said of a country and its peoples. If Americans cannot come together for the common good- how will we ever stand? A difference of opinion and our inherent right to speak that freely must never be compromised but that doesn't mean we must abandon hope in finding common ground. Yes, that presents a great challenge in the United States, with a population of 298, 476, 206 (increasing every 8 seconds) but whether one has studied the Constitution of the United States or just knows its preamble, the ideology behind the document which is the foundation from which America was born, is something most people believe in.

It is not impossible to come together on a platform of humanity without having to give up individual freedom. Hatred, much like terrorism, is not an entity; it is a method by which an act is inflicted. People allow a method to take control, so why not impede the control? We live in a world with coveted doctrine of sectarian leaders, religious dogma, political alliance and cultural belief, which all brings forth emotions fraught with fierce conviction. To even think that we will be a nation of one belief system is not only naïve, but completely unjust. So if there is one thing we can come together on, we should do everything in our power to do so. What we have to gain is far better to all things living, than trying to recover over what could be lost.

Most people do not like being lied to, manipulated, cheated or hurt; I’m willing to bet that nobody else has a spare planet to live on. That being said, people do have the potential to break the chain of corruption, whether towards an egregious government or blatant disregard for good planetary stewardship. We may never wipe out man’s inhumanity to man but we do have the power to slow the self-destructive consequence of greed, hegemony, arrogance, ignorance, negligence and apathy. Having the humility to acknowledge an error in judgment is an admirable characteristic of moral integrity; not commonly shared nor achieved easily- but also not impossible to attain. There are chapters and chapters of world history that teaches how obstinate, nefarious leaders of incredible hubris have brought great defeat and dire consequences to themselves and their peoples, and with the help of citizens in denial or too apathetic to care.

An ocean does not exist by one drop alone, just as life cannot exist by one person alone; people are drops of water in the ocean of life. To share a commonalty for the greater good that strives to come together on common ground, not only results in a life better lived for us today, but we leave behind a legacy for our children based on a stronger foundation that enables future generations to live tomorrow.

Holy Shiite, Batman! American officials are now saying the major problem in Iraq is Shiite militias, not Sunni-led insurgents whom American troops have been fighting for three years. Guess Team Bush can just blame it on the media, no, wait- Clinton! No, wait, Medal-of-Freedom pinning, "bad intelligence!" No, wait, call 1-800-Jenny!

Silly me… The blame will fall on what Sir Lies-a-Lot calls: Nazi-liberating liberals. Today’s propaganda shines the spotlight so bright on us that veterans supporting Bush’s war call us disgraceful for protesting being lied to, manipulated, robbed and murdered. But how does one justify “fighting for our freedom” while calling unpatriotic expressing freedom of speech?

Even though Pat Tillman gave up a lucrative career in the NFL to answer Bush's call for patriots to defend us from big, bad Saddam and his army of mushroom clouds, those not buying the propaganda are bad, not the White House who lied to the Tillman's who said Pat was killed by "insurgents." The truth is that he was gunned-down by American "friendly fire." Not only does the Tillman family have to suffer the loss of Pat, they also have to suffer in the knowledge that the Pentagon exploited Pat's death to make him their poster boy of "Good vs Evil;" to distract from the real reasons behind the war-criminals invading Iraq.

I understand even less the Vietnam vets who support the war in Iraq, because the only difference between Vietnam and Iraq is cultural geography; the excruciating difference between Johnson and Bush is hubris; the obvious difference between holding Nixon accountable for malfeasance and egregious abuse of Executive privilege, but NOT Bush, is Republican control of both Houses; the factual difference between The Pentagon Papers and The Downing Street Memos’ is thirty years.

Saddam was good in the 80’s when he fought Iran, while Iran fought with weapons Reagan gave them. Saddam was good in early 1990 when Cheney did business with him, then bad after invading Kuwait in August, 1990, but good enough for Daddy Bush to leave in power. Then ten years of middle-eastern business BBQ's continued on the royal lawns of the Bush family and their oil-rich, quail-hunting friends. Meanwhile, Osama was stewing as Saddam’s public enemy #1, but Saddam was the bad guy Bush "smoked out of cave" after 9/11, not Osama. The Baathists were bad and Iran and Shiites good enough to liberate, but now that Iran and the Shia are bad, the Baathists are good enough for Bush to suddenly support.

Prior to the neoconservative Bush regime invading Iraq, Saddam had gone public with his desire to change trading Iraqi oil with Euros' instead of American dollars; not happy news for the boys on Wall Street. Now, Iran wants to do the same. With Bush's polls sinking as fast as a Milli Vanilli album; more auto factories closing and American jobs outsourced; a deficit reaching the trillion dollar glass-ceiling; the quagmire in Iraq sinking daily and Americans waking up to the damage five years of corrupt Republican control on Capitol Hill has cost us, my guess is that just before the mid-term elections, October will bring more than Halloween ghosts and goblins. The scary monster ringing our door will be a Bush invasion of Iran.

Hawaii is snowing; Australia had a cyclone, and in the United States, just a few months away from hurricane season '06, Americans are still cleaning up debris after the wrath from a child of Mother Nature named Katrina. And I dare not forget about a little Tsunami that practically wiped out the south-eastern side of the Asian continent.

While the permafrost in the Siberian tundra is dissipating, that could result in the power of releasing carbon dioxide of a million and one Hummers, the ice-layered shores in the Northern Hemisphere are receding and the ice caps melting. Even the news out of NASA was prescient: planet earth, in a view from the top, just doesn't look like it used to.

Yet when I notice advertisements for vehicles, all I continue to hear about are for double-wide, super-charged, 10-mile per the gallon monster machines. And Hummers have the audacity to use advertisements with pictures of planet earth from space like some sort-of global, futuristic hero. Along with their emissions, disposable diapers and too-hot-to-handle Styrofoam cups remain in fast food joints and stores across the U.S.A.

At every opportunity, the Bush administration has cut environmental standards for trucks and SUV's, refusing to mandate these gas-guzzling vehicles from producing fuel-efficient models; they just keep getting bigger in size and smaller in responsibility. Team Bush continues to reward monster-mobile oil companies, and refused to allow the public to know just what the hell, and with whom Dick, "in-the-last-throes" Cheney, talked about during his secret energy task-force meetings and legislature.

Oh, that's right. Oilman Bush told us were addicted to oil!

Over-population correlates to every global ill; and human beings consume more resources than any other living mammal on this planet. If we don't realize how we are directly responsible for the health of this planet before it's too late, to paraphrase Bill Maher: "one day, we will have to wear Hazmat suits just to go outside and get the mail".

When one of the Bush cronies on Capitol Hill silenced the information of a prominent scientist to keep from going public over his very severe and factually-based data over the reality of global warming, I looked to the sky and wondered: where do we go from here?

I am not a fatalist; I am not a tree-hugging Hippie who wants to send tulips to the Middle-east with a scented note that asks, "can't we all just get along?" I am a member of the human race, a mother, a realist and a very concerned citizen of a decaying nation. We sit under the ominous umbrella of a government that continues to put corporate dollars over real public safety. But I guess if Team Bush is so convinced, that we're convinced, that Bird Flu, not the effects of global warming, is what's gonna get us, why then... just belly-up to 'ole McDonalds for a cup 'o coffee before fillin' it up at the pump and let the good times roll!

Hang on to your washing machines kids… it’s going to be a bumpy ride. The spin cycle is in full mode! After five years of incompetence, lies, malfeasance, hegemony, war profiteering and downright, Cesar-would-be-proud, in-your-face greed, talk of IMPEACHMENT goes mainstream, and drowning members in the cesspool of neoconservative Republicans are spinning over the omnipotent sentiment. So they have found their “platform” for the impending 2006 mid-term elections: that to censure and/or impeach Bush for high crimes and misdemeanors is tantamount to... national security!!!

Am I surprised? Of course not. Am I disgusted? Absolutely. Anyone living in America since 2000 knows what I know, but whether one chooses to listen with an open mind is the difference in how people discern the facts. Honesty and integrity is not defined by the political party of choice, but for a politician, such morals must never be compromised regardless of ideology. I know many fine Republicans whom I like a great deal and have much respect and admiration for; people who live with a code of ethics without imposing their belief system on others in judgment. These registered Republicans I speak of all share the same belief: they vote with their hearts, not out of blind loyalty. They have earned the right to complain and voice concern for our country because of their convictions. Because for all the complaining people do about Bush today, anyone who voted for Bush, people who didn't vote or those too afraid to speak against the grain, all got what they asked for. To say now, "I believed in Bush and he let me down" is too little too late and unfortunately, the problem with such hindsight is the consequence we all have to live with today. You know, there truly is a difference between old school Republicans and the neoconservative Republicans of today. Francis Fukyama and William F. Buckley (who initially supported the invasion of Iraq) are of a different breed than Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz; Dwight D. Eisenhower and George W. Bush are not cut from the same Republican cloth; Donald Rumsfeld and Henry Kissinger are a breed all their own.

So how will the latest, most desperate attempt from the neocons to distract the American people away from their corruption play out? It is up to American citizens, what we expect and allow from our government- and the global domino effect of the Bush administration.

Today, far too many Congressmen have allowed some of the most egregious politicians to legislate with gross negligence, to accrue massive debt in order to satisfy a gluttonous appetite for greed. Pork-barrel bills, ignited by K-Street lobbyists, plutocracy, propaganda and corruption, have robbed our hard-earned taxed-dollars. How many private mansions have we built? How many globe-trotting vacations have we funded? How many cars have we parked in upscale neighborhoods? How many Congressional kids have we provided top-notch education for? Not only does every member of government not have to worry about life without health insurance, but their futures are as shiny as the "bling" on their fingers, while the rest of us non-members of their elite club have a future that lacks in the same luster. There is no coincidence in the growing disparity between the rich and poor; when you rob Peter to pay for Paul, Peter remains hungry for a reason.

How nonchalant will the American people remain? Will they support an invasion of Iran? Who is going to believe the Bush administration now that they've cried wolf? Apathy propagates the myth to believe we are "safer;" that pre-emptive strategy provides for safety and freedom. Apathy allows the acceptance of illegal wiretapping, silencing dissent, and changing the rules to allow a president to break the law. It allows Americans to believe we have a strong economy, despite trillion-dollar deficits, elitist tax cuts and a president raising the debt limit- four times in one administration. If more than 2,315 soldiers died looking for weapons of mass destruction that were not in Iraq, but continue to die as the menu changed to “democracy”, and more than 17,000 soldiers have been seriously maimed; if thousands upon thousands of innocent Iraqi families have been blown-up and shot at, how many more lives will American apathy kill? If you don't stop the spin cycle, then you must accept drowning in the consequences that will flood in like water from a Tsunami.

You can listen to people like Rush Limbaugh all day long, but should that voice even have a microphone? A recent Zogby poll taken found 72% of American troops serving in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year. To which the holier-than-thou, (pill-popping) Rush replied: "Anytime an organization has the word 'peace' in it, throw it out. It's just a bunch of long-haired, maggot-infested, dope-smoking, FM peace-types that have an agenda." Remember, Rush is brought to you by Sinclair Broadcasting System, the rabidly neoconservative Republican based company that controls roughly 60 percent of America’s airwaves, mostly throughout American’s heartland, where Rush’s voice is the only “voice” they hear. They are the muscle behind FOX news; the “most trusted news” service, who has been called on their inaccuracies, omission of truth and blatant bias on more than a thousand occasions. But the question remains: How much more will it take before Americans put an end to being "out-FOX'd?"