In the greatest blow to the Swiss since foreign powers stole their Army's plans for overly-complicated pocket knives, Julian Assange has announced that Wikileaks' newest stunt will be to reveal the secret Swiss bank accounts of the high and mighty.
In a televised ceremony slightly more elaborate than the Golden Globes, former Swiss banker Rudolf Elmer handed Assange two CDs which are believed to contain the closely-guarded bank records of 2000 people. Unless the disks accidentally got switched and are, in fact, the Lady Gaga recordings which Elmer was listening to while stealing the data files.
Frankly, we're looking forward to finding out who's been stashing away money and avoiding taxes (humanity's coldest crime). Politicians? Celebrities? Newscasters...?
Meanwhile the Swiss banking industry is in a state of panic not seen since the early 40's, when Nazis opened billions of dollars' worth of new, secret bank accounts...then demanded over 300,000 toasters before they'd leave the lobby.
For now, all we can do is wait for Mr. Assange to start revealing the information on Wikileaks. And warn him to watch out for pocketknives.-
Our nation has set aside this day to celebrate the life and great works of Martin Luther King Jr. And here at Hope n' Change, we think it's a particularly fitting occasion to consider the place of rhetoric and nonviolent protest in American life.
Many of Dr. King's pronouncements targeted a government and laws which were intended to silence a huge number of people. His speeches were powerful, passionate, and unashamedly filled with words like "morality" and "right"... and he did not hesitate to say that these were issues of life and death importance.
He drew crowds which were, to a large degree, not racially diverse. He rallied thousands on the National Mall in Washington DC. And in the end, he changed our nation for the better - not by violence, but by fomenting a revolution at the ballot box.
The parallels to today's Tea Party Movement are striking, including the use of non-violence as a fundamental principle. But the same tools and methods used by Dr. King are now being threatened from those on the Left (and sadly, the spineless on the Right). Laws are being proposed to restrict political speech, and a willing conspiracy between the press and the politicians exists to suppress the voices of those calling for a return to sanity and integrity in governance.
But would such suppression of language and peaceful protest result in a kinder, gentler America? Not according to Dr. King, who said "A riot is the language of the unheard."
Free speech is not the cause of violence. It is the cure.-
In the most striking example of our new, more civil, post-partisan style of government, a Democrat has suggested rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic...oops...we meant on the floor of the House Chamber, for Barack Obama's upcoming State of the Union address.
By longstanding tradition, Democrats would sit on one side of the chamber, Republicans would sit on the other side, and no one would sit with Arlen Specter.
In the past, this has at least made for reasonably amusing television. The entire body of Democrats tends to catapult out of their seats, whooping and applauding, every time the president says something like "the urgency of today demands the thrivance of togetherness tomorrow." Meanwhile, the Republicans glare stolidly as if sizing up a dimwitted waiter who doesn't know his thumb is in the soup.
But not this year. Momentum is building for the Republicans and Democrats to sit together, side by side, to show that despite petty partisan politics and nearly insurmountable national crises, our elected representatives are united in their opposition to lunatics in red G-strings.
And, oh yeah, it will look much better for the president than having a majority of the House scowl bleakly, anchored to their seats, when he insists that the best way to protect ourselves from an approaching economic asteroid is to increase our debt.
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