Senate debate over a major piece of global warming legislation will end tomorrow with a cloture vote and no substantive debate over amendments, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said last night. Reid asserted his authority over the stalled climate bill after Republican opponents repeatedly blocked action on the measure over the opening three days of the floor debate, culminating in yesterday's nine-hour reading of the bill. E&E News

A partisan fight over judicial nominations derailed yesterday’s expected Senate floor debate on global warming legislation when Republican leaders insisted on a full reading of the 492-page bill. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said he effectively put a halt to the climate debate because Democratic leaders did not fulfill a pledge to confirm three of President Bush's judicial appointees before Memorial Day. E&E PM News

These bloodsucking Congressional Representatives kept the doors open, lights on, air conditioning running and their salaries pouring in, while their unwitting interns read a 492 page bill to a roomful of deaf ears. And this single event cost us hundreds of thousands –no- millions of dollars.

Meanwhile, the rich, money and resource sucking politicians know that we won’t notice and bet that we won’t do anything. And for this they always tend to be right. ….Why?

Because, compared with the national budget and other huge government numbers, these wasted American dollars are but a drop in an already cracked bucket. That is the logic of those in power, and as long as we want to remain enslaved, that remains our logic too.

So, you ask, what can we do? Do we march on Washington (ha, ha)?

Unlike our representatives in DC, we don’t have a license to steal. Most American’s can’t afford the time or money it takes to march on Washington or anywhere else. Most American’s like you or me have to stay at home and keep scraping and working our crappy little jobs so that we can pay those big power bills, and in turn, make richer those big politicians’ and their larger than life government budgets.

Millions of our hard-earned dollars, per minute, are flowing out of our neighborhoods and directly into the pockets of those thieves we call leaders. Oh, but it’s not all their fault. In fact, most of it is our fault. If we can’t get our fat butts out from under the even fatter big screen TV, than maybe we deserve it.

Right now, today, the word slave describes you. It describes you and me and everyone else who thinks our big media, big energy companies, big food companies and our elected and un-elected big government is working for our best interests. We give up our freedom every day, a little bit at a time,-and willingly, I might add- to those we say should be doing more to solve our problems.

It was a military man, not a Unitarian or revolutionary, who first warned this country against the dangers inherent in the military-industrial complex. That was Dwight Eisenhower. Did we listen?

About forty years ago, we sent about 50,000 of our kids to death. We elected Richard Nixon president. Did we learn? I guess we did. We learned to sell out. About forty years later we elected our current president, and, as a nation seem intent on sending fifty thousand of their kids to death.

Have we done anything about the early warning from Eisenhower?

Sure. We’ve been vigilantly watching cable TV sports and listening to a watered-down version of hip-hop on our Ipod’s. We’ve been making big companies richer, government officials richer, and selling our kids’ future to China -pretty cheap.

Sure. We’ve nearly wrecked our own economy and many others, and we continue to blame the whole world for our problems. And guess who did learn something, and did do something about Eisenhower’s early warning?

The military industrial complex.

In the last fifty years it has changed size and shape. It is much bigger and vastly more powerful than it was in the 1950’s when the general gave us that prescient heads up. And now the monster is so much smarter.

See, the thing Eisenhower tried to warn us about has become the multi-national food-energy-military and government complex. We will call this crew the NGMFs for short.

But, you may wonder, what could be more American than making a Profit? Big Company=Good Company=Big Profits, right?

That’s how a small problem gains momentum- a couple of hundred million people sitting on their hands for about forty or fifty years, waiting for the problem-makers to become the problem-solvers. Waiting for the equation to become the reality, economic and personal freedom, Profit=Choices=Freedom.

But in practice, freedom has become an increasing variety of bad options, reinventing and recreating themselves via an accelerating positive feedback loop. Cloaked in robes of patriotism, and sold cheap by those who told us that the bad options were our only options in the first place, we are buying a picture that we think resembles freedom but really captures an ongoing snapshot of indentured slavery, with the average American pushing the plow. And we think cows are stupid.

Pick up a book and a box of tools or pick up a bucket of extra-crispy chicken and a remote. The choice is yours. We cannot talk our way out of the problems America faces with the current administration, we can only work our way out. No marches, no demonstrations, just education and hard work.

We will never get a chance to gain true Freedom until distributed renewable energy and local food production are an integral part of the neighborhoods that we live. These are the critical elements that make up the foundation upon which everything good is built. In this effort, which will require a drastic change of thinking and strength of character, we are not even sure that we can uncover, within our own selves, a way to participate successfully in creating a new world order: Distributed Renewable Energy and Local Food Production=Local Profits=True Freedom.

We can choose to unlearn the notion that having lots of gas guzzling cars, eating fatty, un-healthy foods, and watching violent movies are what constitute the parcel and practice of American Freedom. Instead, it is our choice, exercised or not, to take action, that reveals to us the true nature of American Freedom.

Remember the general’s warning: This may be the last chance we have. Let’s not sell out again.