With A Rasp And A Hiss, That Snake Has Given Us Some Vicious Bites

Our wildly voracious ruling class--corporations, millionaires, and the like--continue their feeding.

This rodent rampage always takes its toll.  And if that weren't bad enough, consider the devastating bite from one of these creatures.

The saw-scaled viper.  Never, ever turn your back on 'em.  Unquestionably one of the most lethal snakes on the planet.  In some regions, its bite kills more than 80 percent of its victims.  This viper's venom is "hemotoxic," meaning it'll make your wound bleed like crazy while excruciating pain gallops all over your body.

So why the name "saw-scaled"?  It's because of some serrated scales on its lower flanks that, when poised to strike, are dragged across each other producing a rasping sound, made all the more frightening with a loud, sinister hissing.

Too many of our politicians remind me all too much of the saw-scaled viper, but a special one that invariably harms the public and protects its rodent pals.  The worse part about this is how we so often get fooled into believing that viper, which always promises to protect us from those ravenous rodents, would never turn on us who took him in.

New York Times writer William Rivers Pitt had the same feeling almost exactly a year ago today when he wrote the following:

"I've been thinking a lot lately about the old story of the Lady and the Snake.  One day, so the story goes, a lady was walking down the road when she came across an injured snake.  The lady picked up the snake, brought it home, and nursed it back to health.  Over time, the lady and the snake became the best of friends.  One day, the lady was in her garden with the snake, when the snake lunged forward suddenly and bit her in the throat.  As the lady lay dying, she looked at the snake and said, 'Why did you kill me?  I was your friend! I took care of you!'  The snake looked at her and said, 'Lady, you knew I was a snake when you picked me up.'

This is how I'm feeling about the President of the United States these days."

Join the fast-growing club, pal.  Now consider that Pitt wrote this at the end of 2009, just after Pres. "Yes We Can" Obama had shamelessly lied about sticking with us in the fight against a blood-sucking medical/industrial complex which has turned health care into a criminally negligent, profit-crazed racket.

Obama was more than willing to settle for a few pitiful crumbs and then had the audacity to hoot over the "great victory."  Ah-huh.  Pitt continued:

"But I really don't like getting lied to, especially after everything this country has been through, after everything that was done by millions of Americans to clean house and get this ship of state back to some semblance of stability.  Obviously, a politician telling a lie is not big news - my personal theory, based on vast personal experience, is that if you've heard of a politician, odds are that person is a creep you wouldn't want to be in the same room with - but Obama's public option canard was exceptionally rank."

I can only imagine what Mr. Pitt has to say about yet another colossal Obama betrayal a year later, when he rolled over and doled out even more corporate welfare windfalls.  I know how Global Research writer Larry Chin reacted to it earlier this month.  With about as much joy as Pitt had over Barack's health care cut-and-run:

"Obama’s Orwellian embrace of all things corporate and politically rightward has been deliberate, forceful and consistent throughout his career; not the product of cowardice, weakness, incompetence, naïve idealism, or bad timing.  This is Barack Obama, as he has always been: a servile facilitator and protector of the political establishment; an insidious capitulator and “consensus man”; a sellout who piously sits back and lets others fight (while railing against their “bickering”), and then accepts whatever deal is politically expedient -- no matter what morals or principles he violates, no matter who or what he betrays.  To the pious, sanctimonious and self-serving Obama, it is wrong to be a “purist”, but good to be “impure”; a muddler.  A sellout."

Double ouch.

Hmmm, can't argue with either of them.  And I have little doubt there's more and more of us Obama voters now falling fast into the realm of the disillusioned and disgusted.

Which leads us back to the issue of this duplicitous saw-scaled viper.

What will he do--or not do--next?  Continue to sit idly as the Palestinians are massacred and cleansed from their homeland?  Make excuses while climate change ravages the earth to the point of no return?  Carry on Bush's insane $12,000,000,000 a month losing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq......and perhaps gear up for a suicidal third war against Iran??

"I'm no radical," remarked Pitt, "I just believe with all my heart in the idea that is America, an idea that has been poorly served for the entirety of this thankfully dying decade, an idea that has once again been sold down the river by another lying politician. That idea deserves better, as do we all, and if the Obama administration keeps this despicable behavior up, they are going to find themselves squared off with a legion of newly-radicalized people who will wonder why they ever picked this snake up in the first place."    
 Yeeeeppp.  That blasted snake.  

Oh what the hell, people.  This is Christmas week and it's a time for music and more music.  How about a song to get everybody singing along?

Here's a 1968 Al Wilson classic that will fit.  The melody's nothing short of mesmerizing and Wilson's vocal prowess has real, well, bite to it.  As it should.