"Governments don't keep secrets to protect the public, but to deceive the public."

Greg Palast happens to be talking about a certain Big Oil-friendly blueprint for the future of the Iraqi oil industry when he makes this point, almost in passing, in his just-released book, Armed Madhouse (Dutton), but he could be stating the general premise of the whole book, or of his career as a journo-sleuth in the Jack Anderson mold and stand-in for the little guy in the global economy. His raison d'etre is to ferret out those secrets and those deceptions and present them in all their cynical glory to the people for whom such knowledge is vital: you and me.

In my humble opinion, Palast, an American investigator better known beyond our borders, through his BBC current-affairs show "Newsnight," than here at home, is exactly what a journalist is supposed to be - a truth hound, doggedly independent, undaunted by power. His stories bite. They're so relevant they threaten to alter history - simply by letting the hoodwinked public in on the game while it's happening, which is precisely the role America's mainstream media have abdicated.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Thank goodness the Republicans are around to tell me what to worry about. The flag-burning crisis -- here in Austin, there's that pall of smoke rising from the West every morning (it's from an area called Tarrytown, where they burn hundreds of flags daily).

You didn't know hundreds of flags were being burned daily? Actually, you can count on your hand the number of incidents reported over the last five years. For instance, there was one flag burned in 2005 by a drunken teenager and one by a protester in California in 2002. This appalling record of ravishment must be stopped. You're clearly not worried about what matters.

Gay marriage, now there's a crisis. Well, OK, so there isn't much gay marriage going on here in Texas. None, in fact. First, we made it illegal. Then, we made it unconstitutional. But President Bush is all concerned about it, so I guess we have to alter the U.S. Constitution.

Gus and Captain Call (of "Lonesome Dove" fame) will be an item -- with who knows who waiting in line right after them.

Of Faustian bargains and disposable human beings

(I am dedicating this essay to the memory of the millions of victims of the Capitalist Imperial wars of conquest waged by the United States under the patently false pretexts of spreading freedom and liberty).

Rolling through virtually any reasonably populous city or town in America, one encounters a surreal landscape blighted by grotesque temples to America’s twin gods of Capitalism and Consumerism. As an increasing number of individual proprietors are driven to extinction, Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, and hundreds more leviathan corporations continue their rapid construction of more houses of worship to serve their zealous congregation. Once inside, many Americans gleefully sacrifice an abundance of their greenbacks at altars attended by Consumerism’s unwitting acolytes.

For appallingly meager wages and benefits, the cashiers tending the sacred Churches of Capitalism and Consumerism gather the offerings which enable their fellow faithful to reap the fruits of practicing their devotion.

The 2006 Social Security Trustees Report, which includes the Medicare program, was released on May 1. The trustees projected the year 2040 as the depletion date of the Social Security trust fund versus 2041 in the 2005 report.

Thanks to the Greenspan Commission in 1983, the trust fund is running a surplus of Social Security taxes collected. Contributors include employees, their employers and the self-employed.

As in the 2005 report, the trustees still project 2017 as the year that the costs of the Social Security program will exceed its tax revenues. The trust fund is designed to address this estimated shortfall.

The New York Times ran a report (5/2/06) and the Washington Post a column (5/9/06) that ignored the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office’s projection of 2052 as the year for the depletion of the Social Security trust fund. This slip shrinks the context of Social Security’s future.

Further, the Post columnist wrote the bonds held by Social Security were “IOUs from the U.S. Treasury.” That is an odd description of such interest-bearing certificates.

Steve was always the one who'd get the rest of us out of jail. He had a knack for slipping away just before the police closed in, to find the lawyers, round up bail, or whatever else it took. Must have sprung me a couple dozen times.

Just before the Republican National Convention in Kansas City, I'd gone out to pick up one of our folks stranded hitchiking in a massive thunderstorm 30 miles out. I got lost, and in attempting a 3 point turn, got my van stuck in a yard in Raytown. The homeowner came out, naturally upset that my spinning wheels were chewing up his lawn. By this time I'd blown the radiator and flattened a tire, he called the cops, and I was hauled downtown on a damage to property charge.

Raytown was national headquarters for the Minutemen, not directly related to the anti-immigration zealots of today, but in their rabid anti-communism a similar social set, and this was reflected in their localpllitical establishment. The Raytown cops had such a bad reputation that the Kansas City Police Chief had not included them in his callup of suburban departments for Convention duty.