Kim Kardashian is pregnant. By Kanye West. This is the trending news in America today. A few days ago, Justin Bieber commanded the headlines.
BUT BEHIND THE SCENES, we learned today from The Atlantic that our banks -- like wall street trading -- are merely "black boxes" full of accounting trickery that hide trillions in undisclosed debt and financial exposure. The banks' financials are so obsure that even top regulators and institutional investors admit that the banks cannot be trusted with our money.
We also learned today that economists and pundits are realizing that our nation's economy is still in trouble because the fiscal cliff deal merely delayed the problems in our economy, even as another, more serious approaching debt ceiling crisis is approaching in March. And while Kim Kardashian makes money from gestating a fetus, we have a national debt that keeps rising -- meaning that every man, woman and child is personally burdened with $37,000 of debt.
We can't seem to place our faith in our nation's leadership to fix the economy -- or anything else -- because we have a non-functioning, perhaps even incompetent, Congress. A Congress that, apparently, can only pass laws to divert more money to the military, track parolees, spy on Americans abroad, and build more courthouses to incarcerate more Americans. A Congress that can only name post offices, turn national forests into ski areas, give out medals over a decade late, bend the tax code for airports, spend and lend more of our tax dollars, and -- tellingly -- pass a law to prevent its own members from gaming our financial markets for their own personal gain.
We are unable to fill our nation's high-paying jobs because of under-education in our schools, while the college educated are unable to find employment because of a shrinking number of middle income jobs.
We have an ongoing war on terror that will make us pay $851 billion this year, even as our civil liberties are invaded, our social services and economic safety nets are slashed, and our emergency needs go unfunded.
In meantime, we give our attention to a woman who has no apparent skills or talents, other than to look pretty for photographers.
Before their fall, the Romans gave the unlettered masses bread and circus to keep attention away from the decline of the Empire. Today, we have Kim Kardashian.
Perhaps we should demand more from our nation's leaders. And ourselves. Perhaps we should contact those leaders now and let them know that we do not all have Kim Kardashian on the brain.
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