Snark Bait

Bob Davis, Clear Channel AM 1130 conservative talk-show host, in what turned out to be a misguided effort to provide his beefy radio audience an ideological blow job, said he would tell the families of the Newtown massacre victims to “go to hell.” Bob’s “read” on the past few months was that our government’s and the media’s insistence on parading the Newtown families in front of America to affect public opinion was a violation of his rights and a cheesy way to sway people’s emotions. Does anyone out there think children being murdered in a school shouldn’t be considered a compelling reason to effect change in America? Congress tried to pass laws that made it a little tougher for really bad people to buy assault weapons, and 90 percent of surveyed Americans concurred that universal background checks were a no-brainer. The Legislation Failed. Bob Won. Worse, The Acronym Won. America Lost.

“Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all.”—Rousseau

Whether Bob likes it or not, we’re all in this together. This is not ALL ABOUT BOB. Nor is it about the BobClones of the world. Regardless of the divisive rhetoric of his tribe or party, or whackos and pundits who populate the airwaves, the truth is: Connectedness is a fundamental law of nature. We are all connected by countless mechanisms: infrastructures, biological systems, metaphysics, and even the most basic of instincts, survival. To deny is a form of narcissism, a disorder not uncommon among rigid ideologues who regularly push the boundaries of balance and madness. It’s all about them; everyone else, screw off.

We see extreme versions play out in terroristic attacks, hate crimes, and group deviance like the women-repressive cultures that exist in India, Africa, and the Middle East. The signature characteristic being dissociation from other human beings, allowing for all manner of punishment, abuse, repression, and even genocide, practiced with little remorse or contrition. At its most benign, it is blind self-centeredness. At its worst, pure evil. The ancient Christian fathers pronounced a thousand years ago that “selfish thoughts lead a person to passions, habits, and eventual alienation from God and neighbor.” Ironically, religion or the misinterpretation of it often feeds the fire.

An ideologue would contentiously rebut that connectedness is simply another way for liberals to rationalize a growing kumbaya socialism, or the “unconstitutional” proposals around gun control or the thievery of their liberties. It is nothing of the sort. It is simply a call to reason—making the smartest, even the toughest decisions, for the good of the whole. Indeed, connectedness by nature requires that we be accountable to one another and assume personal responsibility for our actions. Yet, people choose to separate rather than enjoin in common cause.

Bob Davis is a smart guy. He knows how to capture and hold audience with hyperbole and inflammatory rhetoric. The question is, is he smarter than the flim flam he sells? Is he smarter than his listeners? My guess is, he is. Way smarter.

Well Played

I’ve never had more confidence in the intelligence, good sense, and intuition of the American people than this week . . . and it has absolutely nothing to do with Barack Obama’s win.

Watching my fellow citizens vote to reject the coarse and divisive statements that have been so pervasive in this year’s campaign was nothing short of exhilarating.

I’m absolutely in love with America’s mind.

A leading official with the Minnesota GOP was asked why his party took such a beating in this election and his comment said it all: “I’m just not sure about our country.” Sir, that is precisely why you and your club were drubbed. The Minnesota legislature’s arrogant Republican majority threw down a Tea Party gauntlet that backfired. Two bills—amendments to prevent marriage among anyone other than a man and a woman and a voter ID requirement that would have precluded many qualified and patriotic citizens from exercising their right to vote—were seminal to the Repub downfall. Both bills were defeated. Minnesota’s vote was not a rejection of these controversial and complex issues, but a call for continued discussion and a more intelligent and thoughtful approach. Well played, Minnesota!

Speaking of intelligent and thoughtful approaches, Minnesota’s iconic demagogue, Michele Bachmann, running in the most Republican district in the state, barely kept her Congressional seat after years of landslide victories. It was yet another reason to believe that people will reconsider their support of a candidate who no longer makes sense.

The real test of America’s judgment came in the resounding defeats of Todd Akin (“legitimate rape”) who lost in Missouri and Richard Mourdock (“rape is God’s will”) who lost in Indiana. Akin and Mourdock should have won in landslides, yet the mostly conservative electorates of Missouri and Indiana did the right thing.

This election, above all, was a choice for reason and decency. Disappointing I know for Romney supporters, but America used its head, rejecting tired bromides, mushy platforms, and self-righteous sound bites.

America knows we can’t become a welfare state and that we have very tough decisions to make about how much we can and should help those in need. America knows when to draw the line on expectations, i.e., where government ends and personal responsibility begins. America knows that honest, hard work reaps benefits and anything else should exact a price. America knows we need to do something transformative and aggressive about our debt, from both the expense and revenue sides. America knows everyone deserves a chance to create a reasonable quality of life and that our bright future requires shared sacrifice. As Leonard Cohen said, “Everybody knows.”

Most importantly, we know when something smells. And for my money, America proved it last Tuesday.

Wasted on Walnuts

The SOPA and PIPA legislation was inevitable. I’ve been doing a broken-record whine on digital privacy for years and it’s finally coming to roost inside the Beltway. Although the current legislation attempts to block piracy, coming legislation will address today’s open market on personal data collection. I find the opposition to this legislation laughable, particularly because the big boys, not the digital purists who are wringing their hands over lack of full access to everything, have a lot to lose once their own piracy of personal data hits the docket.

Facebook, Google, Twitter—and literally anyone who thinks they can gather information about you and sell it to someone else—are in for a rude awakening as more personal financial records are hacked at companies like Zappos, e-Bay, and Amazon. No one is safe in the current environment, not the least of which naïve consumers like you and me, who don’t see what’s going on behind the “you can make money without doing evil” curtains of Google, FB, and the rest of data-crazy Silicon Valley.

I have a young colleague, very smart, very well-educated, who asks at every opportunity, “How can we gather data on this or that group of consumers?” He ignores the fact that there is an implied trust that exists in most ongoing relationships with consumers, one that is at high risk once companies compromise it by tracking purchasing behaviors and selling names without permission. My young friend contends: “It’s one of the most significant trends in the digital space—how can you not be wetting your pants over all the possibilities?!” No doubt, it’s a free ride for the moment, but coming legislation is going to gut this opportunity like a fishing guide at a skinning station on Lake Mille Lacs.

Our government needs to create legislation that protects our freedom without stealing it. Unlike the American Patriot Act that turned a protective shield into a smothering bureaucracy, there have to be ways for your and my personal information to be immune from every Tom, Dick, and Harry who wants to sell us something. What we don’t want to have happen is what the FDA is currently doing to deal with radical changes in nutrition.

The FDA has decided that walnuts should be classified as drugs and marketed as such. The company Diamond Nuts has been hyping the advantages of nuts, supported by research, stating that walnuts are really good for you. Walnuts provide preventative benefits against heart disease. The FDA says that constitutes a health claim, and Diamond must market walnuts under all the constraints that other drug makers operate.

THE SILLIEST-ASS THING I HAVE EVER HEARD.

Where exactly has the FDA had its head stuck, as our society has been turned upside down by the emphasis, need, and demand for better health? Since when did a nut need to be a drug in order to have health benefits? Lays Potato Chips declare themselves to be “heart healthy,” yet the FDA has yet to declare potato chips a drug. Breakfast cereals declare themselves to be “heart healthy,” yet the FDA has yet to put yummy little o’s in the same category with Lipitor. The burgeoning probiotic field is suffering a similar consequence. The FDA is judging them to be something other than they are, simply by virtue of the amount of probiotic in an FDA-sanctioned helping.

The FDA is in the dark ages on nutrition and doing its president no favors. It is discouraging good health practices in its antiquated and misguided approaches. Legislation better be underway soon to curb its inquisition on simple and innocuous health solutions like walnuts and probiotics, or the restrictions will pour water on a growing fire that could otherwise save billions in health care costs.

Minnesota Congressmen and women, where are you when we need you?!

I’m a Sap Too

David Brooks, in a recent NY Times column, talked about having been (past tense) a sap for Obama. Remembering that Brooks is considered a conservative at heart and a political moderate (my favorite kind), he claims to have been buying into President Obama’s rhetoric about doing the right thing for the country, i.e., being an “adult” with Republicans, thinking less about party ideology and more about helping you and me, hard-working, tax-paying, old-shoe Americans.

I guess I was a sap too. I believed the President. I believed in him. I thought his transparency was refreshing, his neutrality enlightened, and his intentions authentic. He was the least political president I could recall. He did not create the economic mess we found ourselves in. That dates back through the administrations from slow-witted Bush and brilliant philanderer Clinton to “Read my lips” Bush and debt-addict Reagan.

Did Obama contribute to the mess? Hell yes! You would have contributed to this mess if you’d had it handed to you as he did. Did he make it worse? It was likely going to get worse regardless of what he or anyone else did. Even brilliant economists can’t say for certain what the right course was for combating this smelly beast of a fiscal crisis. Nor did any of them know how it was going to track. The key villains? Certainly some banks, deaf, dumb, and blind economists, investment houses, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, incompetent bureaucrats, sold-out politicians, Greed, Delusion . . . pick a card. At the end of the day, Fortune magazine’s September 5 cover said it all for me: “American Idiots: How Washington is Destroying the Economy . . . and What We Can do To Fix It”—implying there is a solution.

There are solutions. And I still believe Obama is our best hope for crafting a way out. Call me a sap. I am willing to take the baton from deserter Brooks and run it to the finish line.

For my money, the only solution is every solution—i.e., raising revenues and cutting expenses. In other words, pissing every segment of society off, hopefully in equal increments. Jobs may be the #1 priority but they ain’t going to happen until American business and the consuming public feel better about spending. The only way to make that happen is by finding enough money to pay down the deficit and create sustainable levels of entitlements. Obama wants $4 trillion. So give it to him!

The real saps are the political ideologues, the doomsayers, the wastelanders, and the sound-biters who persist in promoting laughable moralisms, maintaining that our bad economy is about everything but cold hard cash. I wish they’d stuff their Yosemite Sam hyperbole about socialists, disgusting fat people, lazy freeloaders, and vaccination conspiracies where the sun don’t shine. And in my world, anyone willing to let this country spiral into a horrendous economic collapse just to prove a point, is a fool.

Yeah, I’m a sap. I believe we can make it happen. It will take ingenuity, hard work, innovation, commitment, sacrifice, compromise, and unity of purpose. If you’re wondering if we have what it takes, first look inside, and then remember it took exactly the same things to make this country as great as it’s been.

The Invisible Man

I am not a fan of clubs. Hate cliques. Wary of tribes. It’s easy to see why primates are attracted to them, but not us knaves. Like anything, there are wonderful examples of each (though I can’t think of a wonderful clique) and then there are those that make people like me write things like this. Country clubs, political parties, and religions fit all three categories.

Country clubs as an example are quite literally clubs (groups of people who meet regularly for a common purpose), they become cliques (narrow, exclusive groups held together by common interests), and are most certainly tribes (traditional social division consisting of families or communities linked by social, economic, religious, or blood ties with common culture or dialect).

If you are not in a club, a clique, or a tribe, well . . . poor, invisible you.

Case in point, I have what I consider a broad swath of Facebook “friends.” They range from personal friends and family to colleagues, professional acquaintances, and community leaders, movers, shakers, and fakers. Many of my professional FB players often recommend befriending this or that person. Consequently, I have quite a liberal sprinkling of “friends” across the political spectrum. And, the posts I see each day can be alternately enlightening or downright outrageous—enough to occasionally elicit a comment from yours truly, blabber-mouth.

I found myself responding last week to a post from who many consider to be the Grover Norquist of Minnesota. He has a following that would easily win the club-clique-tribe trifecta. When Obama came to Cannon Falls last week, the guy’s FB was lit up like a searchlight at a car dealership, an army of believers mobilizing for an opposition party partay. The posts went from juvenile (“Ick, I still see too many Subarus with Obama stickers’) to talk radio IQ (“He won’t be flying in one of those evil corporate jets will he”) to conspiratorial (“Get the DFL fraud out of the elections”).

I was moved to say something about the situational schizophrenia of last week’s market, sourcing from the gridlock over the debt default. I respectfully requested that this key political Hood and his merry band think less about the petty logistics of bringing their circus to Cannon Falls and more about fixing the country by compromising their tribal instincts and considering entitlement cuts, reduced spending, AND raising taxes. I appealed to them as a guy trying to run a business that has been dramatically affected by their polarizing and inflexible positions.

Earth to Loose: whizzing in the wind.

Aside from being roundly ignored—they knew there was a fox in the henhouse—the only response was a terse bromide about nothing being fixed until all Democrats are eliminated from office.

Therein lies our problem, friends. The single greatest obstacle to fixing the economy is political ideology. It’s no wonder people are turning Independent more and more each day. And, it’s not just political parties that are losing members. Check out the numbers on country clubs and religions.

Moving Right Along

The other day my Millennial son said to me: “I want to start a news source for good news.” Being an avid news gatherer—of magazines, reports, white papers, online newsletters, Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, etc. (Valium, anyone?)—I responded that lots of local TV shows have tried “happy news” but never seem to make it work. Daily doses of treacle don’t appear to make what’s behind the curtain any easier to digest.

He said, “Pop, wake up, I’m not talking about smiley face news. I’m referring to interesting, illuminating, useful stuff. I’m just so sick of the garbage on HuffPo and the depressive rat-a-tat-tat on CNN, I need to find something that encourages me to want to live hard and enjoy life.”

Wow. Yeah, son. Aristotle had a name for it: eudaimonia, the pursuit of well-being.

The news as we know it mostly concentrates on four things: War-Wall Street-Government-Politics. I suppose you could throw in the ubiquitous local stories about meth-addict moms, boyfriends who stuff crying babies into microwaves, or guys who get arrested for the 20th time for DWI or child molestation. And thanks to the magic of instant digital access, the dark side drones on and on from anywhere in the world at the moment it happens.

Lucky us.

Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I’m not sure humans were built for a news feed the size of a spillway, or anything this relentlessly brutal. This is not the world most of us live in, nor is it representative of the real world. This is News World, or better yet, Myopia.

My son and I agreed: We need antidotes, like tapping the slipstream of eudaimonia, finding strength, joy, and solace in our families, art, literature, movies, comedy, our businesses, the Golf Channel, Anthony Bourdain, a good home-cooked meal with a glass of wine or a bottle of beer. Even watching Andrew Zimmern eating bugs is comforting compared to watching a pompous creep like Eric Cantor threaten to take the country down on both knees.

Is it time to turn our backs on the real-time media circus? Indeed, do we actually give the media more power by paying such rapt attention? If 80 percent of America says it’s sick of government, Wall Street, war, and politics, then why not take a hike from its delivery system? Escapism, you say? No way. I find if I miss a day or two of “news” I’m no less an informed or concerned citizen. I just can’t yak it up like a champ at cocktail parties. But then, I don’t even like cocktail parties.

I have a feeling Aristotle didn’t either.

B-B-B-Baby, You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet

I had an e-mail exchange with a conservative lawyer a few days ago who was enraged over the impropriety of what he calls social welfare. Doing a Dukakis on me, he cited his immigrant grandparents who came to the U.S. from Europe, pulling themselves up by the bootstraps to become productive, hard-working citizens. As a proud descendant of same stock, he insisted it’s simply unacceptable to be taxed to fund the indigence and laziness inherent in our entitlement system. “Taxes are code for reparations,” he bellowed.

I agree that social welfare does not equal social justice. Notwithstanding Social Security, which awards people who paid (sans disability) the freight for their pensions, much of America’s entitlement system simply reinforces a not-very-pretty aspect of human behavior. Why work if someone else will do it for you?

 

Liberals would say it’s more complicated than that. And they’re correct.

 

Their bleeding hearts gush with sympathy, compassion, magnanimity, and open checkbooks for every possible segment of our society: the homeless, people who can’t speak English, the elderly, the disabled, people who can’t work, people who won’t work, cute little children, horny boys and girls who just can’t seem to keep their private parts private, the disadvantaged, the uneducated, prisoners, illegal immigrants—you name it, libs cry crocodile tears. Few could argue we can’t let considerable segments of our society fall through the cracks, yet even practicing Christians blanch as they see the needy groups getting larger and needier.

 

Ai yi yi. Sweet polarization. The lifeblood of political ideologies. Left, right, right, left, Boehner, Obama, McConnell, Reid, Pelosi, Cantor. Bachmann, Franken, Maddow, Hannity. Holy crap, someone get me off this Tilt-A-Whirl before I puke.

 

Peter Coy wrote a fantastically frightening column for Bloomberg Businessweek called “Why the Debt Crisis Is Even Worse Than You Think.” Read it. Not the ravings of a leftie or rightie, this is an intelligent, realistic, and unifying appraisal of the mountainous debt we’re facing. Coy says the recent debt ceiling machinating was peanuts compared to where we’re headed. He’s right. The column formulates in excruciating detail the real challenges we face. No hysteria, the United States will simply crumble under the weight of impossible debt if our solutions remain polarized by worn-out left- and right-wing ideologies.

 

Bottom line: We as a country have great assets and we need to use every weapon at our disposal to get out of this mess, i.e., dramatically cut spending, seriously reduce entitlements, repeal the Bush tax cuts from 2001 and 2003, close tax loopholes, get out of the Middle East ,and shift our energy consumption from petroleum to natural gas and electricity, to name a few. Then maybe, just maybe, the $210 trillion dollar debt we’re facing in the next 50 years will be manageable.

 

You love this country? Read the column. Rethink your position. Forget about your immigrant grandparents, God love ‘em. This isn’t about being strong or weak. This isn’t about being inhumane or humane. And it definitely is not the bogus morality play some would have you think. This is about cold, hard, cash deficits—the 800 trillion pound (dollar) gorilla in the room that gets bigger by the day.

Poison People

I’ve seen what poison people can do to a company culture. In fact, years ago I decided to rid our company of as many toxic personalities as possible. Some happened through attrition, some left once they “got the picture,” others were let go. I’m happy to report our toxic waste has been considerably cleaned up.

The trouble with identifying poison people is that they are often passive-aggressive, showing their true colors only in certain circumstances. They can be downright sweet, with strategically select people. They are master feeders and seeders of grapevine gossip. Things are rarely copasetic with them. There always seems to be a problem with a manager, the way a product is being produced, or a colleague. Their negativity can even extend to what others wear and how they act. The poison club is like a high school clique, divide and conquer.

It’s important to delineate “poisons” from “hysterics.” In spite of their Chicken Little view of the world, hysterics are usually well-intentioned, often creative, and overtasked. Gotta love ‘em.

A key characteristic for poisons is that they are rarely team players. Take the senior senator from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell, as an example. As you’ve heard, he’s telling the world that we will never see a deficit strategy until Obama is gone. His basis for such an outrageous position is that he and his party have no intention of working toward a deficit reduction plan with the president. If our legislators are supposed to be a team, Mitch ain’t playin’ ball.

McConnell may be a great foot soldier for his party ideology, and he may be the designated bad cop, but at his base, he is a hardcore, rigid defender of his faith, in the worst sense of that cliché. He’s not alone. I consider Harry Reid to be a similar type of player: an enforcer, a party “goon.”

The good people of Kentucky and Nevada have the common sense to know what’s good for them, and for the country. They know that if we’re going to reach a solution to the deficit, it’s going to require compromise and tough decisions. If Mitch or Harry worked for me, I’d fire them. Maybe Kentucky and Nevada will do the same, come election time.

Cooked Weenie

“His name is Weiner. His name is Weiner. His name is Weiner. His name is Weiner.” I’m quoting a hilarious tweet by The Office co-star Rainn Wilson. He’s referring to the news-saturated Congressman Anthony Weiner, whose Twitter communiqués and rabid denials got me thinking about this week’s missive on the why’s of sexual infidelity among notables.

John Steele Gordon of the Wall Street Journal wrote a predictably Republican piece about the history of political suicide. The crux of the story focused on politicos who have fallen under the spell of extra-marital sex but rarely get booted from their perch like a same-sin CEO would.

I still recall the sense of shock when we first heard about John Kennedy and his furtive peccadilloes with hundreds of women. John Kennedy! Then, brother Bobby. Fathers. Husbands. Millionaires. Icons. Royalty.

In P.D. (pre-digital) times, affairs were occasionally exposed, but only when high-powered men got way careless making hay. Congressman Wilbur Mills was nailed in 1974 after crashing his car in an alcoholic stupor, following a romp in a Washington, D.C. water basin with a stripper named Fannie Foxe. Presidential hopeful and Kennedy look-alike Senator Gary Hart was busted having a bit too much fun on a yacht with his not-wife, Donna Rice. Another Kennedy look-alike, John Edwards, conducted a sordid affair with a “photographer,” producing a child. A subsequent cover-up was ironically funded by no less than Jackie Kennedy’s pal, Bunny Mellon. The capper is he did it while his wife was dying of cancer.

Who are these people anyway, and why do we elect them to public office? Arnold Schwarzenegger, Barney Frank, Newt Gingrich, Wayne Hays, Ted Kennedy, Mark Foley, Larry Craig, Charles Robb, Eliot Spitzer, Gary Condit, Dan Burton, Rod Blagojevich. . . . C’mon America, you have some skin in this game. After all, you’re the ones pulling the lever for these jerks.

Recently, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, was exposed in an attempted rape of a housekeeper in a posh New York hotel. Turns out he’s a serial sexologist, testing his hypotheses on countless women, all of whom appear to be stepping forward to pour gas on the already raging fire. Europe is unimpressed. This kind of behavior is de rigueur over there, expected of men and by women, practiced by heads of state and encouraged by the absence of condemnation.

And now pipsqueeky, not-Kennedy look-alike Weiner, whose marriage of two years with accompanying expectant child was apparently not sufficient to prevent him from doing that exhibitionist thang online, sharing dirty talk and pictures with a variety of young women.

Is all this philandering simply guys being guys? Is it the ease of availability to women who are attracted to the luxury and cachet inherent in celebrity and riches? Do males—socially unchained by power, lots of cash, and subordinates who look the other way—simply have a backstage pass to whatever they want?

Let’s ask former newswoman Anne Sinclair, the wealthy American wife of well-known groper Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Her reaction to her husband’s dalliances: “It’s important for a politician to seduce. I’m proud of it.”

My head hurts.

Sorry to Hear You’re Bummed

New York Times columnist David Brooks says we are witnessing “the recovery.” Yet he’s worried you’re still bummed out. He says you are paralyzed and immobile.

What the hell is wrong with you?

OK, fine, so you lie awake nights worrying about trillions of dollars in borrowed monies, pensions and Social Security payments at risk, Medicare and Medicaid sustainability, the stinking housing market, Germans buying our stock exchange, climate change, increasing taxes, not increasing taxes, the welfare state, the future of capitalism, endless wars, the seeming mental illness of the entire Middle East, skyrocketing gas prices, tsunami-damaged nuclear power plants, out-of-control tornadic activity, Obama’s birthplace, China surpassing the United States as the world’s largest economy, India coming in second, and America ending up as Miss Congeniality, with Snookie accepting the award on our behalf.

Adding insult to injury, those annoying pests in the media have done a masterful job of keeping this freak show front and center, simultaneously irritating and depressing us with minute-by-minute, blow-by-blow accounts of every terrifying new development—often without context.

End game? I’m hyper-sensitized, and according to our Mr. Brooks, so are you—to the point of apoplexy.

You’re going to find this hard to swallow, but things are trending in the right direction. Not because our politicians have all of a sudden come to their senses to legislate an effective plan to patch things up. That’ll happen about the same time professional athletes stop messing with cheerleaders. No, we’re on the mend because the proverbial s**t didn’t just hit my fan or yours. It hit everybody’s fan. The polarization that has gripped this country for so long is slowwwwly vaporizing. And therein lies our salvation.

No longer the lonely Me, We the people are a vast congealment of victimization and shared angst—Repubs and Dems alike, black, white, Asian, rich, poor, employed, unemployed. We are the Republic of Rode Hard and Put Away Wet. So, let’s get up off our collective arse and make a move, shall we? Apoplectic, paralyzed, and immobilized doesn’t seem to be working for us. Hard as it may seem, we need to unsheath our mighty sword, loosen the purse strings, and start buying products. That, more than anything else, will create jobs—and jobs will bring the money we spend, back to us.

It’s time for Us to invest in Us.

Too, we have to quit fretting about whether taxing the rich is a good thing or a bad thing. It’s neither. We need money and we need it now. Consider it a short-term fix, not an anti-trickle down policy. Grab the money, pay down debt, then back off. On reducing spending, pick your poison, follow Ryan’s formula, follow the Simpson Commission—whatever, just stop seeing it as a function of partisan politics. And get out of the Middle East now and invest those dollars in renewable energy. Who in their right mind is not sick to death of small-time Middle East sheiks, hoodlums, and theocrats making us scream: “Thank you sir, may I have another?” And while you’re out there buying products, do not buy from China. Look at the label. Buy from your neighbors and friends.

The United States of We stands ready. Are you ready for a throwdown? Or are you gonna be the eggplant Brooks says you are and go grab a Starbucks, watch more bad news on CNN, and wait for the sky to fall?