A couple weeks ago, I sarcastically stated that the world’s credit agencies were starting to threaten multiple national credit downgrades as if they had a plan to leave the planet altogether.

We may be past sarcasm.

Obama must be stopped while we still have some tyrants left!

On the eve of the tenth anniversary of 9/11, my thoughts turn to peace. It’s hard to keep them there, though, because of the chorus of voices that scream for violence and war.

I grieve for those who died ten years ago in New York, DC, and Pennsylvania, as well as all who have died — and continue to die — in the wars spawned out of that attack. I long for the day when military fly-overs at football games become a thing of the past, and our cities have more statues to teachers than generals.

But the cheers for executions, and the willingness to spend billions of dollars on weapons to dole out death but mere pennies on social services that preserve life in one way or another for the most needy among us tell me that the day I long for is quite a ways off.

Fifty years ago today, East German soldiers began overseeing the construction of the Berlin Wall. That wall came down in 1989, but as Der Spiegel reminds us, other walls remain elsewhere in the world.

Even more insidious, though, are the invisible walls we build with money and defend with lawyers, all in an attempt to defend the status quo and nail things down as they are right now.

Sorry, but life is like a river, and you can’t nail it down. Count me among those who yearn for life without such walls.

The flood of waters continues, but as usual during a natural disaster, the flood of rumors is rolling right along with it. Mythical levee breaches compete with imaginary government policy decisions, all of which combine to try to drive those who are dealing with the actual flooding bonkers.

And don’t even get me started about a Fukushima-style disaster in Nebraska . . . Get a link, people — and it ought to be from someone closer to Nebraska than Hawaii.

Rumors flow faster than the water during a disaster like this. The folks who are working on protecting homes, businesses, and communities have enough to do without having to beat back rumors — but this, too, is part of dealing with a disaster.

The Right-Wing still knows how to become outraged about the important stuff…at least according to what the Village tells me.

Things were going along pretty well for the Bush Administration Apologists Alumni Association. Sure, they were out of their old offices, but things were good. Obama adopted their wars as his own, the economy has sputtered along long enough to have become (in the public’s mind) at least as much Obama’s fault as theirs (thus the cries of “deficits! deficits! deficits!” from those who launched us into two wars), and most of the BAAAA have landed in cushy lucrative new digs.

Then Obama had to ruin it by getting bin Laden. Suddenly, all the old discussions are back — at least as far as torture goes — and this has at least some of them very worried, like Michael Mukasey.

He should worry. A lot.

American politics has taken a bloody turn. Much of the Right’s agenda is punitive and built upon vengeance against those they have defined as domestic enemies. They seek to disenfranchise their political foes, deny health care to “others,” leave the elderly to die alone in the streets, and abandon public schools so the privileged can use the tax money for their exclusive private schools.

In today’s politico-media sphere it is easier than ever to define some evil Other and blame “them” for the problems “we” face. The right-wing attacks on teachers and other public servants are the most recent example of a pernicious human habit that is now and always has been a real threat to a civilization’s social, political and economic viability.

Well, now it seems that Texas Gov. Rick Perry has been attacked by one coyote and three “anarchists.” Quite the inspiring credentials for a presidential run, I’d say.