But Debt

Everyone around me’s got a crisis of their own -
can’t pay their student loans, can’t afford to keep their home.
I can’t solute my flag as a symbol of this nation,
with the hating, and the fighting, 
I just see red, blue, and division.
I wake up at night and hear the sidewalks scream,
“Our American dream is tearing at the seams!”
But for my brother and me there’s no recovery-
no plan, no system, no bailout for the people-
Tighten your belts, keep faith, look ahead
(though you’ll be paying off the mistakes that your parents made 
until your dead and rotting and they can’t afford to bury you).
In Detroit, the morgues have no vacancy,
the children don’t have the love they need -
did you hear that they asked kids to bring toilet paper to school?
Not just books and pencils, but lightbulbs, too.
We’ll never fix this country if we don’t protect our future,
education is a vital sign, we’re flatlining, we’re failures
to the ones we should look out for, who look up to us.
When you ask them in ten years what stuck
what will they say? 
The protests? The music? The battling talking heads?
How many billion dollars to banks and cars that didn’t do a damned thing
for any of them?
When we stop learning, we stop living,
and without access there is no right to knowledge.
We can’t expand our minds if there’s no one there to teach us,
so stop rewarding GM’s CEO and motivate our teachers.
Give them books, give them desks, give them computers and a stage!
Art’s the first thing on the chopping block,
creativity loses to standardized testing.
Flash forward a hundred years to a world without dancing
or painting or singing or movies.
The business defeated the craft and now we’re left with nothing.
But debt.

I am proud to welcome aboard brooklynmutt’s newest contributor, Rose Dalton

High-res Some expert scientists say that half of the U.S. population could be infected with swine flu this winter. But there’s good news: Since the only way the government will treat you for free is when there’s a newsworthy epidemic, this might work out to a form of de facto health insurance! We certainly won’t be getting anything out of the Obama Administration. The Smirking Chimp

Some expert scientists say that half of the U.S. population could be infected with swine flu this winter. But there’s good news: Since the only way the government will treat you for free is when there’s a newsworthy epidemic, this might work out to a form of de facto health insurance! We certainly won’t be getting anything out of the Obama Administration.

The Smirking Chimp