By Charles L.Riccillo

  As was sung during the years of the Great Depression, to a melody by Irving Berlin: "There may be troubles ahead, but while there's music and and moonlight, and love and romance, let's face the music and dance!"

  Sounds pretty applicable to our current times, does it not?!

  Our country, in an Iraq war of futility ushered in by the current president, George Bush, has run up an incredible bill - one, it seems, that we cannot pay!

  As also was mentioned in that song, "Before the fiddler is paid, and while we still have the chance, let's face the music and dance!"

  Yes, it's time to pay the damn fiddler, and so Congress currently attempts to bail out the Wall Street and our banks. Bear in mind that, that all along, no one, but no one, stops to mention how we got into such a damnable position.

  Vice President Cheny isn't worried, nor Georgie boy, because - come the end of their terms of offices - they will go back into their privacy. Cheney will reap the ill-sown seeds of the billions of dollars of profits from Halliburton, all of it appropriated without any question or competitive bidding. George, on the other hand - New England raised and by no means a native or real Texan, stands to gain from the revenue from oil drilling.

  The chant "Drill, baby, drill" ensues.

  Never mind that the oil conglomerates have failed to build the needed refineries in our country, or invest in the infrastructure of the United states!

  Alternatives certainly call out to be implemented: cellular sun panels; clean natural gas, and ethanol; perhaps the safe re-implementation of gravity furnaces in new homes; geothermal energy, and more.

  But, practically, the oil to be refined lays a long way off.

  Meanwhile, our cars are limping to the gas stations each weak.  As for me, whenever I gain the peak of any hill, I coast down the grade thereafter.

  We all turn our thermostats down, and put on sweaters and coats.

  I recall one winter storm here in Colorado - the month and day of which was my x-wife's birthday - which I dubbed "The X's Revenge!"

  My aunt Bess was still living, and I had to shovel my way to the street for ermergencies sake, and then go on to weild the shovel further, down the alley to the house of my mother and father, into their house, out to the alley for wood to burn in their fireplace, and then again a path to the street for emergency's sake.

  It brought up reminiscenses of Winters in Lansing Michigan, where I had to shovel the snow up and over the height of my head!

  I had found only three warm things in Michigan - my Shetland Sheepdog, Thane MacDuff, my electric blanket, and my x-wife.

  I married the last, kept the middle just in case, and shipped my dear pup back to Pueblo.

  But now I'm digging out from another sort of thing entirely - as are many Americans.

  Debt, debt, and more debt. I reflect that it is no accident that "mortgage" has as its meaning the root of the Latin, "mortus" - "death!"

  I keep playing my bills, and think of what a "-mountian-man' hulk of a friend used to say: "Hell, Chuck, what are they going to do? Eat you?"

  Now I wonder if in fact my body will turn into the cannibalistic stuff of "Soylent Green!"

  Who knows? Maybe they can eat me.

  But, at the very least the economy's now attacking everyone's wallet like a huge, starved moth, which has a bottomless cavern of a stomach.

  I have no more stomach for the matter at all!

  How about you?

  So, just what can we do?

  The answer is to demand accountability!

  The measures implemented by the lame duck Bush admistration have clearly exceeded anything our founding fathers ever intended.

  Our nation, with its foreign policies and bankruptcy, no longer stands proudly as the envy of the world!

  Clearly, the time for change has arrived.

  Let's "pay the fiddler," and move on.

  Onward to change.

  Onward to Obama and McCain!