You sound like a well intentioned man with his heart in the right, at least politically Right, place, looking for and spouting out simple solutions to extremely complicated issues. This is precisely why I became a political activist, because of people who think like this, especially those in a position to make others long for the fantasy of escaping a Conservatively dug economic hole, with a get out free card. This isn’t a negative attack on you Mr. WIMMER. It’s a very positive review of how people like you transformed me from an elitist TV Director into a grassroots political activist. This, Congressman WIMMER, is an American’s challenge to publish in your new book, a point of view that differs from your own. I have hope, because you are not a Ben Quayle nor Michele Bachmann.

Like many adults, as a kid I was delivered into an age of political awareness, glued to the old black and white TV and the first Kennedy/Nixon debate. After the assignations of the sixties, Nixon twice, Kent State and Vietnam, I put away political interest, as one of those “childish things.” I buried myself and my national public spirit in my NYC Media/Theatre/Education career. It was respectful, lucrative and safe from a national journey to the corporate dung heap.

After the disappointments of Bill Clinton and the even more disappointing duped collective national reaction to his disappointing behavior, I left NYC a year before 9/11, to care for my parents. I hadn’t thought of myself as a political anything, let alone belonging to any political Party. Since the murder of humanity’s heroes, murdered our national innocence, I’ve not been one to expect simple solutions or an easy way out. I’m not a blue/green tree hugger, nor an Obama worshipper, but, perhaps because of my talent as a TV/Theatre Director, I know a performance when I see one, and the post Clinton election campaign was a con job long before the Florida epilogue.

People were running so scared & so fast from oral in the Oval, they failed to notice their chains were being pulled and used to bind them to a corporate puppet and his enforcer led regime team. A shadow fell over the land, as the puppeteers, just off stage, pulled their strings tightly around the minds of the body politic and the American people. First term, I got through busying myself with caring for aging parents. However, when just before the GW/Kerry race, I saw a bumper sticker with a red slash through a capital “W,” “wake me when it’s over,” I knew unless somebody splashed a whole lot of cold water in the faces of millions doing a replay of Nero, we were going down in flames, but big time. So I became a political activist, writer and public speaker, because I could see the slow unraveling of our collective common sense, like Rigoletto’s Gilda, who liked being raped enough to die for the rapist.

True, the corporate strings had been attached to a diminished Ronald Reagan long before we knew his condition, but Poindexter and Regan knew and so did the Board Room guys to whom they and Cheney genuflect. It was open season on the American Middle Class, the American Dream, America’s International reputation, our personal family budget as well as national economy, and we still don’t know why, because the depth of Wall Street Bankstas inflicted debt, onto the United States of America, now and in the foreseeable future, has been kept from us. There was massively more carnage “Left Behind” by the Dick’s Bush League, than has been advertized, for just like the recent end of American Iraq combat activity, Corporate owned America and it’s media puppets can’t afford to let us know the whole truth about the wounds they have inflicted on “We the People.” There’s no profit in their confession, and certainly no apology in their vocabulary. All they need do is freeze hiring and wait for the puppets to convince the duped to give the reins of government, to those who hate the very existence of government. Only the super duper wealthy benefit from an absence of government Mr. WIMMER and that’s why I became a political activist. I wish you success with your new book, and failure with your re-election.

America can’t afford Conservative thinking.

When I hear Congressman Weiner enraged at Congressional Republicans, I’m reminded of a joke my Uncle Gino told me, long before an age, that would have had any possibility of getting past my Mother’s censorship. You know the one about the young bull and old bull discussing which tempo to take down the hill for the best end results. Still, I am an Italian, a New Yorker and, before I lived in Manhattan, lived in Forest Hills. So I understand the passion of New York’s fiery 9^TH District Congressman. Indeed, I share his passion against those who have decided to serve Party first, sometimes District, but rarely ever the nation, nor “all of the people all of the time.” I even welcome “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” delivery, especially if it sparks communication between the masses, and not just those who revel in the spectacle of the incendiary. It’s fun, and at least temporarily gratifying to get in a well placed touché, on the appropriate targets, especially when there are so many deserving in both Houses of Congress and among the gang of black robed nine.

However, remembering I also cheered on Bush’s bombing campaign to bury a recording of bin Laden’s voice under the rubble of Tora Bora, while the real villain of 9/11, took a mountain hike into Pakistan, I now recognize the difference between a President who plays at war for profit and one who has killed more Al Qaeda and Taliban with pilotless drones. So, now I see the wisdom of carefully planning the journey of the resurrection of America from the devastation of our enemies, both foreign and domestic. FB’s Scott W., Daniel K., and Randy L, you are so RIGHT and so thoroughly wrong, and though understandable, so are those who jump for joy for one who shouts, as do the mindless Becks, Bachmanns and Palins Rush to do. Screams diminish the art of listening, and firing up "the Base," will prove less helpful than informing the electorate.

Angry yelling from the LEFT, and a Conservative GOP leadership, who long ago lost their commitment to, for, by or of all the people, can only deliver us back into the evil abyss Lincoln inherited from James Buchanan. We didn’t believe a 9/11 could happen, even after Pearl Harbor, but it did, and so can a second Civil War. And as in any war, only the undertakers and “money changers,” win.

While the Goliath Corporate foot print still delivers a crushing load on the back of American families and Cheney beats on with a false heart, memories of how pretzel eating beer fest got us in this twisted mess, continue to fade from our rear view mirror, while repelling repeal residue of Boehner, McConnell and Cantor impedes national restoration, with baby steps in Palin furor.

It’s tough trying to balance short and long term goals when there’s no money coming in, but we still have choices on how to get around the bend:  Lincoln -- “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time,” or GW oil -- “You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on.”  Which American do you want to be?  Most of the time anything seems better than nothing when we can’t see, but we’ve got to stop helping Corporate Un-American Activities cloud our vision with re-direction and misguided projection, “From Sea to Shining Sea.”

Here’s the cold water in our face:  After a quarter of a year, BP Oil Leak Stops, we hope.  Goldman Sachs barely notices the pinch.  Congressman Eric Cantor does a “drive-by” view through tinted limo windows of his unfair jobless job fair, to boost PR curb appeal for corporate sponsors.

By Marcello Rollando

From diminishing medicinal Rain Forest to hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil leaking in our Gulf, we are squandering tremendous streams of wealth and destroying our greatest resource: the earth itself.

Remember, what Albert Einstein said: “If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live. No more bees, no more pollination … no more men!”  Remember, this goes for women and children too, no matter what color, education or income, no matter where we live, be it farm, inner-city or oil drenched beaches, we are truly all connected as one.  Remember, no matter how red or blue our vote was cast, the present we’re in, with all its future potential, was born out of our past.  Remember, death of eco-system in the Gulf region affects ALL, including Americans, of all ages, in all 50 states.  Remember, as the food chain of the planet goes belly up and dies, we decay from the bottom up, “Left Behind” with no pizza, cheese burgers and fries.  Remember, sudden fierce storms of rain, wind, hail, and snow falls whose depths are measured in feet, all evidence an unfortunate ignorance of humanity’s responsibility to our warming global heart beat.  Remember too, all that live upon the earth will one day be gone, if humanity keeps sacrificing our planet like a chess game pawn.

Remember, deserting logic and rational thinking paves the way with gold, for self-serving Rush, Beck, Palin, Jim Bunning, even job saved Barton and Sharon Angles speaking lunacy in bold.  Remember the names of those who led the charge of our lights out brigade, Right back into the Dark Ages of Robber Barons waiting to be paid.  Remember “the small people,” John Yoo, Karl Rove and puppet GW Bush, voodooers all who plowed under our giant roots in law: deforestation of liberty masked as “National Security.” Leveling legal protections guaranteed by Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln, they remind us to remember Franklin’s admonition, for expedient, selfish, overly simplistic solutions, that serve the unknowing puppets of monied corporate brood, deliver us all into temptation, greed and the evil of those unprincipled small minds of crude.