Today's Elephant: Let them eat cake...

Coming out of the weekly fog of job overload, by Sunday morning I begin to crave the lively art of political-talk TV. The hosts begin each Sunday session by sharing "bites" of current events, chomping on George Bush and his state of the union address for the main course this week. Spincasters pontificate, all hail to the chief, georging-off with fellow newsbugs at the table. Snapping to the status quo, in due loyalty to America being at war and all, the concensus conversation drones on.

During the customary headline news break at the half-hour, that "pachyderm of pain" drops a steamer of truth smack dab in the middle of my living room floor. A litany of human and economic grief clicks past my consciouness... workers laid off in the thousands at Ford, the mayor of New Orleans testifying in Washington, begging for funds and resources already approved, while tornados welcome him back to the Bayou on Friday. Fast forward to Iraq, the steady drip of military deaths, injured civilians, hundreds of billions of dollars allocated by the executive branch to pay for the war this year. Knowing Congressional corruption hearings will debut later this coming week, reform is in the air. And what budget is this that is coming down hard from the President's lair? Huge cuts in medicare, higher interest rates, and the constant spinning of Republican "newspeak" telling us we are better off with tax breaks to the rich, out of control health care costs, fewer jobs and pension cuts for the rest of us.

Commercials grab me away for a moment, encourage me to not forget my dessert, let me eat cake, and IPods, and cheap, trashy, showbiz reports. Will the good people of America, the majority working class, ever pull our heads out of the sand and see this emperor has no clothes?