This is a perfect opportunity to repeat one of my favorite themes. The "Republican" party is less a group espousing a political philosophy than a criminal conspiracy. People treat "Republicans" as ideological opponents for reasons of their own, having to do with tooting their own horns from a supposed "opposite" philosophical stance.

If you look at the entire Gestalt of "Republican" behavior, it is a mixture of bribery, deceit, theft, propaganda, scapegoating, prejudice, war-mongering, and faux-religious fanaticism. In other words, it's all fake and felony.

Fake and felony do not qualify as legitimate political beliefs. To treat them as such is to engage in co-dependency. For years and years, "liberals" have argued tirelessly against the "mistaken" "beliefs" of "Republicans," and have ironically ended up empowering them.

As we approach the collapse of our economic system and the possible, if not likely, death of our species due to climate change, will "liberals" and "progressives" wake up and start calling the "Republicans" what they are - criminals? Not likely. The ego stance is to the death, and this ideological stance is almost all about ego.

First, I must state the obvious: Excommunicate yo mama! Who cares what the authoritarian "Catholic" church does with its authoritarian delusions? It matters only if you think membership in this cult defines your life and gives it meaning. If that is the case, then good luck.

I went to "Catholic" schools for 17 years, counting kindergarten. One of the most memorable people I knew in those days was an Economics teacher I had when I was an undergraduate. He was a priest from Italy, and was an adviser to the Kennedy Administration and to the Alliance for Progress.

He told our senior seminar that when he was in Latin America he didn't wear his priestly garb, because he had women offered to him when he stayed at the homes of rich landowners. He said all the archbishops had not just mistresses, but poor women who were forced to have sex with them. He viewed the "Catholic" church as the chief impediment to progress in the Southern Hemisphere.

In this context, the plight of the nine-year-old girl fits perfectly. Little has changed in the "Catholic" church over the decades. It was the priests of "liberation theology" that were seen as threats to the old order, and whom were condemned and shamed by Pope John Paul II. These priests, who worked to improve the plight of the poor and oppressed, were also kidnapped and tortured by various dictatorial regimes. most notoriously in El Salvador. The one bishop who actually worked for change, Óscar Romero, was murdered.

This is great work, except for one difficulty. When the terms "American" or "U.S." are used, the Gestalt is of the entire country, when it is actually a narrow elite that foments these various evil policies and practices around the world.

There's a guy who calls the local "leftist" radio station here in Madison every day with an angry diatribe about "the U.S." I call him "U.S. man." His facts are straight, but he comes across as a self-hating "American."

It may seem as a simple semantic problem, but there's something incongruous when "Americans," citizens of the "U.S.," talk about the "U.S." as the purveyor of international crime. The "U.S." is not someone else, even if you speak about it in the third person. The foreign policy elite is someone else, and this cabal does not act in my behalf or in my interest.

Maybe if we learn to define our terms better, we can focus on what it is and who it is that have to be changed and removed from public policy discourse and decision-making.

For a start, we could look at what and who the causes are that moved Barack Obama from being the savior of mankind to the cookie-cutter politician he is turning out to be. Maybe it's because he's an "American."

This is silly. The New York Stock Exchange is not the guiding force in the economy, but a speculative and unstable reflection of hysteria, rumor, guesswork, and momentary whim. As an economic indicator, it is only usefulas a longer-run measure, when looked at in concert with other indicators, like unemployment, inflation/deflation, Gross Domestic Product, durable goods purchases, money supply changes, industrial production, and a number of others.

What is meaningful is what Obama will do to restructure the economy, which he hasn't even begun to do yet. We once had a top income tax bracket of 90%, which Nelson Rockefeller, among others paid without complaint. We once had a relatively healthy regulatory apparatus at the Federal level. We once had a favorable trade balance. We once had a relatively equal distribution of wealth and income. We have none of those things now, so the idea of Obama taking "credit" for a meaningless fluctuation in a whimsical measure of economic well-being over a few days is what I call chatter masturbation.

We are teetering on collapse of our economic system, and it is in the face of a potential global warming effect that may make us extinct. Anybody taking "credit" for anything in this context, and anybody making money from musing about such "credit" are examples of the escapism and focus on disracting side "issues" that keep us from looking at what really matters.