The President signed a new law this week overturning a right-wing court ruling banning the Obama Adm from bringing trade cases. At the ceremony he announced an official action before the WTO to force China to resume the sale of rare earth metals. These exotic metals are required to produce anything more advanced than what might be made by a 18th century blacksmith. The US was a major producer of rare earths until the Bush Administration allowed China to purchase, close and strip all the mining and refining facilities in America. China did this worldwide and now controls 97% of the supply.

Obama did slap China with 99% tariffs on tires and steel pipe early in his administration. He’s been blocked from similar actions since then by the corporate dominated courts. Enough Republicans were publicly shamed during this election year into supporting today’s law allowing Obama to resume these trade actions.

Every time I look up from what I'm doing, another Republican is charging off into some self-made fray, seated backwards, on a mechanical pony -- the kind bolted to the floor, requiring a quarter to rock back and forth -- shouting incoherently, trying to make the metal animal charge faster, trying to make it back up, all the way.

The screeching and screeds are usually about mandating religion in the schools and some neo-creationist harangue, or else revising the history books to show how wonderful and not-at-all demented they themselves are, or about GOP men's rights to dictating vaginal probes into women's vaginas and their God-given rights in specifying women's health care, or else it's some frothy meringue regarding how the non-job-creating but-still-so-called "job creators," corporations and the rich, should be spared paying any taxes as their forbears once gladly did.

It is difficult to know where to start, to know where the most appropriate jumping-off place might be.  Instead, we will simply stand up, move to the popped-open door, gauge the height off the ground as being good enough, hook up the static line, check ourselves and the package, and just jump -- parachuting in with some stray facts and thoughts, ammo that will come in handy in the incessant political wars.

The pallets of ammo were too big to send in this trip, but the treasure-map directions to get to these word-artists' palettes are safe, they are right here, good as gold.  Meanwhile, not to worry, the enemy will never find the secret stash -- facts, truth, and logic -- as they've been overlooking them for decades, right under their noses, if they'd cared to look.  All this time, we figured we'd just not yet stumbled on the secret code or right sequence of facts to unlock their arm-linked, lock-stepped, right-wing minds.

Our dear friend Reaper has been by, testing the limits, if any, of our deep, highly personal, and intimate relationship -- keeping an eye peeled to see if we will flinch, spook, or be thrown: More atrocities arriving in Afghanistan, as you know, more fallout from our going gunning-around in the world, eager to carve more notches in our gunbelts, always set to cowboy-up, war-whoop into this rodeo's lineup.  True, our Grange Hall dance card of death is all full up, from all our usual and growing carnage abroad:  We're dancing as fast as we can.

Something inside snaps. Then, dying time begins: men, women, kids, all ghastly.  Corpses get grimly abused, set on fire.  Body parts get saved as grisly souvenirs. Same old ghost stories.  Burn a holy book or three, keep the place and its people gasping. This is Reaper's Magical Mystery Tour! The soldier this time in the center, atop a momentary, personal pentagram of examination and crucible of soul-testing, had already been on three tours with Reaper Magical Mystery Tour Services, in Iraq.  How many rides, how many tours is enough?

If you have not yet adjusted your clocks to Daylight Savings Time, from being out partying, or just plain forgot:  Greetings!  We are from your future!  We come in peace!  And, may we say, how remarkably lifelike you look for this hour!

On the other hand, if you already have your clocks all synched up, you already know that no one here has jet cars as yet, no street-corner teleportation chambers to Mars Base 179, and no take-charge robo-maids whirring around chasing Elroys or Astros, no aprons trailing behind, no doilies askew atop metallic heads.  Sorry, it's not that kind of future -- we'd need a longer head start than an hour for that.  Still, there's no reason to feel counted out or killed by the clock -- although, we shouldn't expect much from Daylight Savings Time, as there are no places for saving up daylight in time vaults, no Sunshine Savings & Loans as yet.

There is time for cereal-box gazing on weekends, an opportunity to let the cerebral rocks in our boxes clunk and clatter around at will:  Call it morning meditation, western-style, you could, something we all do while building a bridge back to this world in the daylight, still halfway mourning our lost dreams.

Today, a bald marketing message hogged a side of the box, hugging the spine of the cardboard rectangle, catching us square on.  We stared at the message for some time, steaming our eyes open with hot coffee taken in a huge mug, faces steam-bathed.  On the box, someone had cobbled a message, gotten paid real money for it, despite -- or, to spite? -- the deeply-flawed-dumbness of the thing.  Perhaps, while we were busy having the most important meal of the day, the cereal makers hoped to blow one right past us, have us not notice it was the least important message we'd see all day or all year.