Ex POST Facto

10. It was really easy to come up with a Halloween costume this year.
9. I never wanted alot of Facebook friends anyway.
8. I've spent the last 2% of my life trying to get into the 1%.
7. I decided to stop being part of the solution and start being part of the problem.
6. I told them about the debit card fees, but they wouldn't listen.
5. I just wanted my direct deposits to be more efficient.
4. Hey, I am just trying to pay the bills and put my kids through school.
3. Henry the K. said "power (and I am adding wealth) is the ultimate aphrodisiac". Do I get any of that or just the bad stuff?
2. I have never shied away from controversy.
1. I work for the man and you don't?

This week's sermon: "Feeding hungry lions."

Yesterday's gruesome spectacle fed our hungry media, supplied ample reality television and satisfied our leaders, be they red or blue inclined. Victim's families of Lockerbie rejoiced, but no justice was served other than the law of the jungle.

How does our country, our system of justice, our laws, our civilization, our tax dollars, our news media, and our population support such a spectacle? How do we justify our CIA drones rocketing convoys that feed a dictator to hungry lions? How can we say or civilization is any better than any other barbaric régime that slaughters thousands? We gladly do the same thing offering justification in the form of attentive media and full gas tanks.

How can this mad world be safer with vigilante justice? We can call Libya safe for the creation of any régime that pledges allegiance to international oil conglomerates. We are satisfied. We win. With this victory, I see the end of a righteous US Foreign Policy, shown to be nothing more than pure hypocrisy.

Our strategic interests were served when we were against Gadhafi and bombed him, when we forgave him and sent him envoys like Condoleezza Rice, and gave him photo opportunities with President Obama. Then our strategic interests are just as well-served when we supply guns to his enemies and have him executed, so that oil can flow freer through the hands of American middlemen to American oilmen who park their profits overseas and don't pay American taxes to the government that lubricates this process. This is what our foreign aid, our foreign policy has become.

Alas, this was a short adventure with a dramatic ending. How much do the 10 year long struggles cost us? 12% unemployment is the quick the answer.

American adventures in the world overall, have been immoral. We felt justified, fighting fascism, but felt no shame in bombing civilian populations. We only won by being more barbaric than the so-called barbarians...and that was the 'good fight'.

The final end to a dictator should also end our misspent dollars and the huge waste we can no longer afford. We should now cease all foreign aid, disband the CIA, close down the NSA and bring home all US servicemen from misadventures abroad. We should see the last of Hillary on the Emperor's platform at the Coliseum, signaling 'thumbs down' as the crowd roars and the madman is thrown to the lions. We should see no more Obamas with nothing to show for his presidency other than two skulls on his shelf.

Perhaps we should mind our own buisness and establish our own economic justice here at home. We have plenty to fix in our own country before we can claim any moral high ground in the world.

Did you pick that nutty white guy as your third choice?

Could you imagine a campaign slogan like this: "Pick me as your 3rd choice". This seemingly defeatist strategy might prove the winning one as San Francisco tests the bizarre Ranked Choice Voting Law for the first time in a mayoral election. With no clear leader in this year's mayoral election, San Francisco could find itself with everybody's third choice as mayor.

Ranked Choice voting is the brainchild of self-described political guru Steven Hill, who says that ranked-choice voting improves turnout and saves money by avoiding runoff elections. He also claims that the system encourages politicians to reach out to more-diverse constituencies.

Mr. Hill's system was adopted by proposition vote in 2004 and now after a long wait, we'll see if it works.

Sources close to Mr. Hill deny that he was reincarnated from ancient Greece where he narrowly lost a hotly-contested vote using the untested one-man-one-vote concept. Close friends also deny that Hill ran a distant third place in a run for high school class president, sourly summarizing the voting exercise as a "mere popularity contest".

Stay tuned. Steven Hill will get his revenge when the nutty white guy wins in San Francisco.

The Arab Spring Grows Into an American Fall.

2011 will be remembered, just like 1968, as a year of uprisings. 1968: The Prague Spring, Paris Days of Rage, Mexico City Massacre, and the Chicago Convention. 2011: The Tunisian Uprising, The Revolt against Mubarak, The Revolt against Gadhafi, and Occupy Wall Street Goes Worldwide. There are differences, naturally, but the parallels are striking.

In the current time frame, the media takes a snapshot and delivers a chauvinistically up-to-the-minute analysis: "It's because of this..."

But these events are not separate and unrelated. Historical hindsight draws them together. Opposition to Vietnam and U.S. Foreign Policy was equated with Soviet oppression in Eastern Europe. Students gassed on the Streets of Paris, Mexico City and Chicago were victimized by the same oppressive police.

So it goes in our tumultuous year. The media came to the rash conclusion that it was all about brutal Arab dictatorship...or so it seemed. Only now do we understand the common thread driving people to the streets. Rising food prices and a lack of economic prospects in North Africa is no different than the protest against abuses on Wall Street and the powerlessness being felt in the United States.

The Arab Spring saw our Arab brothers revolt against their political dictators. Now, in the American Fall, we revolt against the dictatorship of the corporation.