I’m back in Manhattan for a couple of days.

I spent the last few weeks taking care of chores at home, and now am in the city to eat at a few good restaurants with some friends and go to the theatre.

I managed to get in some reading from Seth’s list of favorite books I found while monitoring one of his email accounts, The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczny and Steinbeck’s Travels With Charlie, both excellent. The second was actually a “reread”, the first a “first read” for me.

But getting down to brass tacks: We (Seth, Wolf, Chuck and I) have all become tired of the field of professional career politicians that have been running this country of late.

I’m not only speaking of the Democrats, but of the Republicans as well. Both sides are much too concerned with playing party politics to spare the needs of the American people any of their precious time. The reason for having our two party system is to allow room for compromise of one kind or another. I mean let’s face it: Both sides, while claiming that they are open to compromise, are lying: In both cases, it’s “my way or the highway”.

This might suffice for the more politically, logically or morally (each to his or her own morality) motivated among us, each of us “knowing” what is good and what is not good for our country, but without some kind of compromise, a little pain on both sides, perhaps, no one is going to “win”; However, the American people will be the big losers.

The government (mostly the Democrats, but still the government) put us in the economic fix we’re in by going outside the authority placed in them by the Constitution and causing the mortgage crisis that snowballed into the present mess, and every repair job they’ve executed on our broken economy has only made things worse.

These professional politicians are literally destroying what was unquestionably the greatest country in the history of civilization. I say was because they’ve about brought us to our knees, and they still persist in continuing on the same path, that of placing the welfare of we, the people as a united entity second to the whims of the special interest groups that support their campaigns.

Meanwhile, again unconstitutionally, they’ve voted themselves salary increases, elite health benefits and even six digit retirements (pretty good, that, considering that politics was not intended to be a career field); all, according to the Constitution, the kind of stuff we, the taxpayers, are supposed to decide as initiatives on the voting ballot.

They’ve also now been reported to be profiting via investments made based on privileged insider information they possess as part of their jobs, a criminal offense if we rank and file citizens do it. Politicians in the House and the Senate are becoming millionaires through insider information generated portfolios.

Oh, of course they’ll see justice done for these dastardly deeds: They merely introduce toothless legislation to prevent themselves from reaping the rewards of their malfeasance, then go back to business as usual.

I fear that our government’s become as corrupt as that of any third world country, and like in those dictatorships, the people are powerless to do anything about it, except…

…except that this is the United States of America, where we can vote them all out and replace them with patriotic, honest man and women, non-politicians who will serve six years or less and then return to the private sector, depending on their own private resources for building retirement incomes, acquiring the levels of healthcare they require, etc.

But we won’t vote them out, will we?

No, of course not. Everybody (not, however, those of us here at Hard Astarboard) will continue to support the Romneys, the Gingriches, the Obamas, the Pelosis, the Reids, the Perrys… and the politics will continue, along with our own downward spiral until there is little left to distinguish between the United States of America and any third rate country you care to name.

I say this: If we continue allowing the career politicians to stay in office, we will thoroughly deserve the price our children and grandchildren will be paying down the road, because we will have begged for it via our own stupidity.

Like Seth would say, “the government needs an enema.”

And he’d be right.

Where the presidential primaries are concerned, Herman Cain is still our man, and let the opposition keep on throwing fabricated sexual harrassment charges at him. The best thing Cain could do would be to minimize these innuendos, treat them as he might a fly buzzing around and forge ahead with his message.

And that, said Mrs. Wolf, is that.