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During the past month we northeastern media elites have learned a thing or two about the kind of wrath Mother Nature dishes out with regularity to the rest of our country, and to the world.

From the comfort of our modestly variable four seasons, we read about mudslides, and wildfires nursed by blazing temperatures;  about tornadoes that throw buildings around, and hurricanes that drown cities.  Internationally, we read about tsunamis and earthquakes that kill hundreds of thousands of strangers.  We sigh in sympathy, and we turn the page, to read on about droughts that bring farmers to their knees.

But few of us know any farmers, and, although we’ve donated to Katrina victims, few of us have invited any of them up north for an extended stay.  Nor were we able to take time out from our pressing engagements, like pitching reality shows and cajoling chirping superstars to record duets, to go down there and lend a hand rather than a tax deduction.

But with the snowstorms of the past month and the nor’easter this past weekend, we’ve had a taste of how tenuous the assumptions that lie at the foundation of our daily lives are.

Assumptions like the multiple ways we have of getting in touch with one another, and how alone and even helpless we feel when the cable feeding us our broadband, our telephone line, and our television signal go down.  Cell towers get knocked out by 70 mph wind gusts, and, my God, we can’t text.  Power’s out, and suburbanite upper-crusters, who think survivalists are contestants in some reality show, have not a clue what to do, except maybe find a relative who escaped the brunt of the storm and go crash at their place.

We learn that what we, just yesterday, considered our high tech birthright can be lost to the elements, disrupted by hackers, or frazzled by solar flares.

The grid we live in and on is way more fragile than we care to think about.  Yet thinking about our dependence on it is precisely the first step we’ve got to take, in order, if needs be, to cope without it.

                          

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Even though I made it clear that I believe it’s a national change of attitude, not individual pieces of legislation, that can put us back on track, this piece demands reading and as such, belongs on the front page.

It’s author, who goes by the pen name “Oscar the Observer”,  is a brilliant attorney, but despite that, he’s also a brilliant thinker and a wonderful man who cares about our nation’s future.

The contributions to his campaign were negligible, but it was clear (from the article) that his very, very close friend owns 1100 payday lenders. There is a culture of corruption in Congress, for sure. It’s evidenced every day. Corker at first denied that he was trying to negotiate (with Dodd) an exclusion for payday lenders from the bill. And there’s a Congressional culture of falsely (or at least inaccurately or incompletely) characterizing support or resistance to legislation, from the electorate, as empirical facts.

The NY Times also reported, earlier this month, or at the end of February, that the GOP leaders went to Wall Street to get campaign contributions to the party, and were somewhat rebuffed. Then Mitch McConnell and Boehner visited Wall Street, and received commitments for GOP campaign contributions. Want to speculate on what they traded for the dollars? Watch whether ANY Republican will vote for the bill reported out of Dodd’s committee. And the Democrats who heavily rely on Wall Street contributions will also vote against it. Cynicism? It’s too mild a term. “Disgust” is much closer to the truth.

We can reduce the disgust by passing legislation that forbids any Representative or Senator from being a lobbyist, directly or indirectly, for 10 years after he/she leaves office and legislation that prevents votes or appointments by one legislator (the Bunning/Shelby ploy) or by less than a majority of the Senate; and a constitutional amendment that: (i) increases the terms of Representatives to 4 years, (ii) caps Senators’ terms at 12 or 18 years, (iii) creates an independent panel to establish congressional districts, so that Democrats are not always re-elected to the House from Democrat-gerrymandered districts and Republicans from Republican-gerrymandered districts or the same legislators automatically winning their primaries and elections in their districts, and (iv) makes the McCain-Feingold provisions constitutional.

But the legislators creating the cynicism and disgust are not interested in any of the above, because the mantra of Congress is “Don’t vote against your own self-interest; just tell the public that they don’t want it and don’t support those changes, because if you say that long enough and loud enough it brainwashes a majority of voters.”

                          

Check out the lead paragraph from an article on the front page of this past Wednesday’s NYTimes:

“Senator Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican who is playing a crucial role in bipartisan negotiations over financial regulation, pressed to remove a provision from draft legislation that would have empowered federal authorities to crack down on payday lenders, people involved in the talks said. The industry is politically influential in his home state and a significant contributor to his campaigns, records show.”

                          

note from LK: today’s missive is from my comrade in arms The Falcon.  His no holds barred style combined with the acute insights that are at the root of his pieces make him one of the few guests who can’t outstay their welcome.

With all the rhetoric spewing about how America is bringing up the rear in the World academically, I was a tad perturbed today to learn that schools are falling like dominoes due to lack of funding.

So, we buy arms, supply God knows which insane countries with defense training, finance Blackwater and other secret Ops, keep the White House swimming pool filled and clean, and bail out…well, we all know all about bail outs!  Free cars, library, guards, gym privileges, parking in DC, etc., etc. for our so-called leaders.  And…a variety of wars that are proving to be un-winnable.

Add it up (if you can add).  Eventually, like in some frightening futuristic novel, America will be crawling with idiots.  But this may actually be good news, because everything will collapse and maybe then the lunatics who saw us as a lucrative Disneyworld, will take a look and say, “Na…let’s go after England instead.”

The Falcon, then, is supporting the closing down of all schools.  Shut em down!  Call in the militias to train our kids in AK47 breakdown and usage.  There will be no Wall Street, no TransUnion or other credit Nazis, no insurance companies, and no lawyers.  There will be no government to screw things up, since things will already be massively screwed.  We will be left to our own devices to survive.

Fire, water, and earth will become sacred, taking the place of the Lexus motorcar.  Basic shelter will override the Park Avenue penthouse, and country “getaways”.  Clans will surface according to ethnicity and common belief systems, and may well even support one another, as long as they don’t get in each other’s faces.  Then maybe, just maybe, a peaceful coexistence will ensue.

Paradise! That is, until someone decides we need religion.

                          

This from the trusty WSJ e-mail news alert service:

Walt Disney and Cablevision struck a deal late Sunday to end their financial feud, restoring Disney’s New York-area ABC station for millions of homes less than 15 minutes after the start of the Academy Awards broadcast.

In doing so, both companies missed a huge opportunity to, however inadvertently, teach millions of northeasterners that they could live without the Oscars.  An enlightening unintended consequence of their business spat was, alas, not to be.

The winner of this year’s Oscar for obsessive interest in things trivial and distracting from the myriad problems that we face…… is us.

                          

“Broadcasts of the New York ABC television station weren’t available early Sunday to customers of Cablevision, after Cablevision and ABC owner Walt Disney apparently failed to resolve a financial dispute over monthly subscription fees.”

This is wonderful news.  A small but important start; may the stand-off endure.  Considering how innocuous pop culture is, how downright destructive it’s been to our national intellect, and the otherwise productive people-hours we Americans waste watching two dimensional reality TV instead of living and enlarging our own three dimensional lives, the positive impact of removing a small but important fraction of the mind-numbing input that assaults us daily is cause for celebration.

And tonight, ABC is scheduled to broadcast the Oscars!

Risky strategic timing by both sides, and hopefully neither buckles under pressure.  No red carpets, no designer dresses, no crocodile tears on the podium.

No televised hypocrisy from the Hollywood political dilettantes, who narcissistically spend millions of dollars to pat themselves on the back while the leftover scraps from their post-award events could feed what’s left of the Haitian people for a week.  (And to the usual retort that points out the good works the stars’ charitable foundations are doing, one has to wonder whether they donate because their PR people see it as a necessary evil, and whether their donations are as big a percentage of their incomes as the working stiffs who either tithe on Sundays or are moved to send in a larger check to the Red Cross than they can comfortably afford.)

One down, around 500 more channels to go.