And now the morning news. . .

I usually never do this, but as I was sipping my morning coffee, I clicked on the news. The brilliant Tom Tomorrow has majestically expressed my sentiments exactly in the cartoon panel above.

Within 5 minutes during a switch or two between the major news networks, I saw that a group of American, Baptist, religious zealots have been arrested in Haiti for kidnapping. They tried to mask their bourgeois arrogance through piety and the statement that “God instructed them” to go there and start grabbing undocumented children at random to take back the the good ole’ USA. It didn’t seem to matter that at least one third (so far) of the 30+ children that they “rescued” weren’t orphaned at all. Even though these non-orphaned children were actually crying and begging the do-gooders to phone their parents at the phone numbers that they had supplied, their laments fell on the deaf ears of the self-appointed rescuers. Their hearing had no doubt been compromised by the loud voice of their God whispering instructions to them. I hope their God has the number of a good attorney. . .

And then of course came the usual “let’s all be frightened” commercials instructing me as to why I should be frightened by the possibility of contracting the flu, of having a heart attack, of not being able to get it up, and much more.

And then, once I heard the CNN morning anchor say with a straight face to an Obama administration financial spokesperson that there are parts of the country where residents would argue that “making $250,000 a year does make them middle class” I turned off the news, walked over to the window, and quietly finished my coffee while watching a flock of geese silently fly through a pristine sky over the recent blanket of snow that was being lit by the golden hues of a rising sun. . .