Being reflective; personally taking stock of a situation, or issue, seems to be anathema to the nature of most people who prefer that matters be handled by leaders of groups they belong to. Whether the issue is government, war, crime, drug-addiction, or most anything else, they are quick to pass the buck, determining that it really isn�t up to them to take stock . . . with that 50s' mentality that �father knows best.�

And as a year comes to an end, instead of personally taking stock and weighing what is happening to their nation, Americans� choice is to keep the mind relaxed and let the president tell them in January�s State of the Union speech �how things really are.� Let the lies and B.S. roll!

My background as a business counselor compels me to help close this 2007 calendar year with a socio-economic and political statement of �profit and loss;� its bottom line soon to be incorporated into a balance sheet that will give us a snapshot of what we, the stockholders of the Empire, hold as equity entering 2008.

Before we look at the revenue and expense components of America�s P&L, we should take a look at that bottom line, which to no one�s surprise appears as the blood-spilling continuation of embarrassing failures for the seventh straight year, courtesy of the most incompetent management team ever to run the Empire. Our nation has been piling up losses during this time in such a spendthrift and indurate way to the point all retained success built into the balance sheet throughout the years has been now wiped out, and the losses are already eating away into our investment, our, until now, untouched legacy of democratic capital. Bush has succeeded not only in mismanaging the nation�s affairs but he is recklessly leading us into un-chaptered political bankruptcy . . . sure to happen by the time a new same-old-face president is inaugurated in January 2009.

Few years as 2007 have brought the United States so little in political and socio-economic revenue, either foreign or domestic. On the domestic front, there was little the government would provide via judicial determinations by the tilted-right Supreme Court (evidenced by the partial-birth abortion and a half dozen other rulings); or needed legislation from Congress; or any constructive leadership by the White House and its appendage, the Pentagon. Although both houses of Congress were controlled by the lesser-evil party, they could not muster the votes to overrule a veto-happy Bush, whether on issues of war or even providing healthcare for the nation�s children. It would be difficult to come up with just one significant thing that could be construed as something of value for the nation as a whole coming from any of the three branches of government.

As far as revenue from foreign policy investments, which have been mostly made in the currency of war and threats to other nations, one could hardly expect positive returns. There was a lower count of dead Americans in Iraq -- the only ones we care to count -- attributed to the military surge, and little else. One cannot think of any dividends from foreign sources that could add economic, military, social, or political value to the P&L. Even in the area of global warming, we antagonized the entire world, losing at year�s end the support of the other Kyoto treaty non-signer, Australia. A final tally of foreign and domestic accomplishments (revenues) yields nothing but a big fat zero.

Ah! But if our successes were few or nonexistent, our failures can be measured in grand scale, both internationally and domestically. Our expenses reached levels we would expect from a teenager with a credit car with �no limit� stamped on all four corners loose in the mall. Monetarily, our insatiable borrowing, not only from the savings of people in other countries but from our own future generations, reached a level not only difficult to understand mathematically, but impossible to accept morally. And our dysfunctional, make-believe, consumption-driven economy has brought the nation to the edge of the precipice, with overvalued assets in both real estate and the stock market to a figure now approaching the nation�s entire annual GDP of over US$13 trillion.

Little needs to be said about our overseas failures, not just in the Middle East, where we have erred miserably in an unjustified and chimeric pseudo-protection of Israel, but everywhere else as well. After seven years of trying, Bush finally succeeded in making Russia once again a potential enemy of the US, instead of a friend and partner in seeking harmony for the world. And the tally of potential enemies, and disappointed friends, grows as nations in both Africa and Latin America no longer see a mutuality of interests between the United States and themselves.

One could easily conclude that the US government is not only coldhearted towards the peoples of the world, but cares little about its own citizenry, its interest being solely in self-perpetuating its power, and the financial welfare of a select-few who control the lion�s share of wealth and power in America and elsewhere where capitalism flourishes.

This exiting 2007 was for me one more session for Bush et al to chisel at the shrinking equity that Americans have in America; a year in which a mendacious government continued whittling away on those inalienable rights of man, stated in our Constitution as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

For years we have observed how social and political events have taken place in this nation, clearly pushing it towards the path of fascism, American fascism; real fascism, but rooted in this United States; a fascism different from Hitler�s, or Mussolini�s or even Franco�s, but fascism nonetheless. These days, our own NS-Frauenschaft provides the nation with fascist whores who trot with impunity up and down Main Street, anywhere in this land of ours, dressed in vibrant, patriotic red-white-and-blue colors; dollar-stars in their eyes; silver crosses as pendants; and, yes, unabashedly toting Bibles. Our Lady Liberty has now been replaced by replicas of a fascist libertine; a libertine venerated as the immaculate virgin-mother of corporate, military and evangelical America.

Yet, with such clarity provided by this year�s socio-economic and political statement, Americans remain undeterred, meekly consenting to everything the government puts on their plates, eating their Soylent Green as if it were the greatest gourmet delicacy.

� 2007 Ben Tanosborn