By P.H. Rolen

For those of you who haven’t been watching the American Empire disintegrate in front of our very eyes, here’s the latest news flash.

The great State of Minnesota, the same state that once elected a former World Wrestling Federation wrestler as the state’s governor, after a long and arduous recount process has declared former Saturday Night Live comedian Al Franken the new senator elect form the land of Lutefisk and lots of lakes. Franken, a former radio host on the now defunct liberal radio network Air America, joins a budding cast of classic degenerates in the world’s most prolifically ineffectual deliberative body. Idiot Al, is known for his classless and tawdry roles in comedic satires in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s; most notably his extensive SNL skit appearances.

One role in the 1983 comedy classic Trading Places Franken stars as mentally lacking, drunken, Amtrak baggage handler who entices an exorbitantly sized, caged gorilla into a sexual relationship with a bound man in a gorilla suit. In another classic on-screen performance, Senator Franken, as the socially challenged Stuart Smalley, tries to use his therapy training to rebuild his dysfunctional family. In what might be a bit of Hollywood serendipity Smalley declares to the world that he can achieve anything because he’s good enough, smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like him; atta boy Al, they sure do.

I suppose the only high point I can find in the election of ultra leftist Franken is a fact pointed out by syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer on Fox News’ Special Report shortly after the news of Franken’s victory emerged, “At least there is a Senator in the Senate who admits he is an idiot.” It is really not that it is surprising that the people of Minnesota, with their proud electoral history, will once again be waking up with a hangover shocked to find that they have elected a cheap, menially talented, television satirist to the United States Senate. What is surprising, however, is the thrift and expediency in which the sun seems to be setting on the American superpower. While “We the People” languish in our drunken sorrow for the late “King of Pop” and absorb ourselves in the latest thread of celebrity drama, our republic is slipping by the wayside.

At this very moment our nation is running an annual budget shortfall of over 1.6 trillion with a T dollars. That’s a larger budget deficit than all of the deficits ran under all of the previous presidents of our nation combined! How do we spend that money that we do not have you ask? Simple, our treasury auctions off bonds in the form of national debt at a long term yield to other nations such as China, India, Brazil and Russia. To make it simple, our nation borrows the money, at interest, from other nations. The problem with that scenario is that last week while America was mourning the unfathomable string of celebrity deaths, the nations of Brazil, China, India and Russia were holding a meeting together and discussing ways that their countries could diversify their cash investments away from the U.S. dollar. Like any rational observer, these developing global powers see the 12 Trillion dollar U.S. national debt which is currently slated to double to 24 Trillion in 10 years under current budget projections as an unsustainable health plan for the future of our republic. Frankly, I agree with them.

If those little facts didn’t make you warm and fuzzy inside, the eccentric “Hermit Nation” of North Korea, having breached the nuclear threshold over the last Memorial Day weekend, is now in the process of weaponizing it’s plutonium reserves and has openly said that they plan to use their nuclear arsenal if they feel provoked by the U.S. (who they laughably accuse of plotting nuclear war against them). In the Middle East, after 30 years of praying for a revolution that might oust the fanatical theocratic regime in Iran which has expressed the desire to wipe one of our closest allies, Israel, off the map, the winds of change seemed to start blowing. However, instead of embracing the momentum and empowering the Persian people to take charge of their own destiny we casually watched and cheered but were careful with our words because, as President Obama put it, we didn’t know how things would play out. And predictably the situation played out like one might expect a fight between kids with sticks and rocks and troops with tanks, guns, tear gas, and stun batons might. The good guys lost!

In another abysmal turn of events, in the mighty nation of Honduras the nation’s Congress, Supreme Court, and military forcibly removed a president who was planning a Hugo Chavez style power grab that would have added one more Latin American nation to the growing list of Fidel Castroesque Marxist banana republics in the region. Of course Castro, Chavez, and a veritable who’s who of Stalinist revolutionaries cried foul. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez even invoked the obligatory empty threat of military force from Venezuela’s bold and mighty armed services. Unlike the Iranian situation where American interests were clearly at stake and the U.S. administration decided to wait and “See how it played out,” The Honduran coup, which had relatively little to do with us, drew harsh criticism from the White House with President Obama lambasting the presidential ouster and siding with the Marxist thugs from Latin America, Cuba, and of course the U.N.

Continuing down the line of occurrences in need of immediate attention, the State of California announced this week that instead of cutting the state’s estimated $24 billion budget deficit through budgetary means that they would just be sending out IOU’s to creditors whom the state has current payments due. This effectively means that the state that was once the wealthiest state in the United States and the 4^th largest economy in the world is now in a quasi state of bankruptcy. No word yet on how the IOUs might be turned into cash in a bankrupt, cashless, creditless, state that refuses to cut its excessive social welfare programs so much that it would rather choose the end of the state’s sovereignty

The dreadful list goes on and on my friends. One might expect that any one of the aforementioned crises would be at the top of the agenda facing the newly elected comedian senator from the state of Minnesota once he takes office. But, that would make way to much sense wouldn’t it. When idiot Al gets to Washington he won’t be thrust into our nation’s fiscal implosion, or Iran’s almost revolution, or North Korea’s nuclear belligerence. Nope, the hot items of the day are the new Cap and Trade climate tax that just narrowly passed the House of Representatives. What you need to know is that this bill is President Obama’s vision of killing the coal industry coming to fruition. Conservative estimates put the hike in the average electric bill in this country at around 35% if the bill passes the Senate; all in the name of combating Global Warming during a year with the coolest temperatures since the early 1900s. Furthermore, tacking an extra 35% onto American electric bills during an economic crisis just doesn’t make much sense to me but hey, humans died so that the American Pika might live, am I right?

And of course the most important issue on Al Franken’s senatorial plate will be the ever important national healthcare system. Right now in America over 25 million Americans are living without any form of health insurance. The medical industry pegs one of the single largest causes of the increases in the cost of healthcare as the increasing costs of medical malpractice insurance policies. Exorbitant amounts of frivolous medical malpractice lawsuits are making doctors premiums raise for malpractice policies and surprise, surprise the doctors are passing the costs on to you! We could enact arbitration agreements which have been noted to drastically decrease the price of costly courtroom litigation, which in turn decreases malpractice insurance and your doctor bill. But that cuts the trial lawyers out of the money and with 90% of our elected representatives hailing from a trial lawyer background, hmmm, I’m going to reach and say the idea never gets legs. We could also deregulate the medical industry by eliminating current caps on doctors; increasing the supply of total caregivers and therefore decreasing the cost to consumers. All of this is way too logical though. The current solution being offered is a massive government administered plan that the Government Accounting Office (GAO) price tags at just over 1.7 trillion dollars for the future taxpayers of America.

As Senator Franken comes to D.C. the circus is truly in town and our country is simply slipping away. But America doesn’t care; we’d rather add an extra $1.7 trillion for healthcare to the already near $2 trillion in deficits for the current fiscal year. We’d rather moan and mourn for our favorite television pitchman or celebrity iconic pedophile than really engage in the true enormity of our current predicament. We are like the drug addict who is on the brink of heart failure but insists that one more night of drinking and Cocaine won’t be enough to put him over the edge. We watch the illusion of progress with either glee or disdain simply because our political party is either in power or out of power as if that is what really matters most.

In the 1976 Hollywood classic Network the “Mad Prophet”, television news anchor Howard Beale, goes on live television to appeal Americans into enlightenment from their sad state. Beale’s rant hits an eerie chord of resemblance to today’s malaise. Just substitute “Television” for “Politics” and the mad prophet is spot on for the status quo. “So, you listen to me. Listen to me! Television is not the truth. Television’s a damn amusement park. Television is a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, sideshow freaks, lion tamers, and football players. We’re in the boredom-killing business. So if you want the truth, go to God. Go to your gurus. Go to yourselves! Because that’s the only place you’re ever gonna find any real truth. But, man, you’re never gonna get any truth from us.

We’ll tell you anything you wanna hear. We lie like hell. We’ll tell you that Kojak always gets the killer and that nobody ever gets cancer at Archie Bunker’s house. And no matter how much trouble the hero is in, don’t worry. Just look at your watch. At the end of the hour, he’s gonna win. We’ll tell you anything you want to hear. We deal in illusions, man. None of it is true! But you people sit there, day after day, night after night — all ages, colors, creeds. We’re all you know! You’re beginning to believe the illusions we’re spinning here! You’re beginning to think that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you —You dress like the tube. You eat like the tube. You raise your children like the tube. You even think like the tube. This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God’s name, you people are the real thing. We are the illusion!”

As is politics in our once great nation; idiot Al is joining the D.C. circus and you and I are one step closer to national insolvency. If the Republicans wanted to keep up with the Democrat’s sardonic perpetuity they would run Larry the Cable Guy for the Senate next cycle. At least we could have a few laughs together as the ship sank. However, If Americans want to keep their quickly disappearing superpower in sight and keep the ship moving forward we will all forget the illusions and elect with our minds once again.