The green light flickered and our show “Mother Earth’s Weekly Squirms” was on. Our Mars TV panel, back from vacation, was complete.

“Dear panel,” I began, “the news from Mother Earth is increasingly bizarre. We see a near collapse of financial systems moving toward a deflationary spiral, sparks of another Middle East war, religious strife is booming and the Obama administration is still using Bush for all the ills that they created themselves. Shamus, can you explain?”

“The socialist nincompoops are outdoing themselves. They argue that Americans don’t want more of the eight Bush years but they do exactly the same, only ten times worse, using the financial crisis to their advantage. The USA has been on a slippery socialist slope since the Republicans dropped their Contract with America and the socialist elite used the vacuum to take over.”

“The Federal Reserve’s subsidizing the economy to fuel consumer spending and the Democratic expansion of the national debt have consistently undermined the free market for more than a decade,” Elmer added. “The Obama administration put the nail in the coffin by breaking the contract of trust between investors and manufacturing industries. Investors place money expecting a reasonable rate of return. When the Obama administration began nationalizing auto industries and didn’t pay them back, investor money dried up and no wonder the job market stalled.”

“You cannot run a socialist theology in a free market system,” Tamil pointed out. ”You need a tyrannical dictatorship based on fear and brute force. The Soviets eventually failed but only after seventy vicious years, and tens of millions tortured and death. Communist China, drawing the lesson, is using capitalist formats to feed its billions of people but is still a crude and dangerous dictatorship. The Obama socialists are trying to achieve the same, smartly using the democratic system with their combative rhetoric of class warfare and by deliberately destroying America’s free market to make everybody dependent on government to stay in power.”

“I agree,” Shamus said. “Obama and his radical associates are reforming America through misinforming the public and brainwashing its children, like Islamic madrassas, and although they are in a minority, their intellectual zeal has made substantial inroads. But America’s love for freedom is too ingrained in its society. The Obamas will eventually fail too, albeit after causing serious harm to the USA and the rest of the world that depends on its engine of growth, and it will take a decade or more to recover.”

“Should this concern us on Mars?” I asked

“To the contrary,” Elmer believed. “NASA won’t have money to send more spy monsters, Russia either, China isn’t there yet, and that will delay the moment Earth kids will come and stare at us through a glass wall like watching sea otters in Sea World.”

“It does concern our investments on Mother Earth, though,” Shamus said, gravely. “The Obama regime has set a deflationary spiral in motion and the first signs are already visible in their declining housing market and falling mortgage rates. Their stock market will collapse too. You can’t mess with the laws of economics and short selling politicians do it all the time. Glad our system doesn’t allow that here. And now it’s being done with a fascist agenda of statist control. It’s time to sell our assets. The longer we wait, the lesser we’ll get.”

“Pasha, any views?” I asked.

“I don’t understand why they let Lindsay Lohan out of prison after serving only two weeks out of six,” she said, shaking her head. “My viewers were stunned.”

I saw Elmer and Shamus exchanging quick looks of ridicule towards their female partner.

“And why Paris Hilton was let off for carrying cocaine,” Huda remarked, supporting Pasha. “Those are all signs of a declining society.”

“And why they encourage the demise of Christianity versus adoration of Islam. It’s religious Earth wars all over again,” Pasha said, noticing Elmer’s flickering eyes.

“Do you think Earth will ever stop this religious madness?” I asked.

“It won’t,” Elmer said. “The prophet Jesus taught tolerance and forgiveness, but the Jews killed him anyway. After that kings, emperors and popes abused Christianity for power and greed, till Luther put oil on the fire and religious wars between Catholics and Protestants bloodied the soil for centuries, not so long ago in Northern Ireland. Now Islam is battling Christianity, again.”

“The difference with Christ,” Tamil said, “is that the prophet Mohammed, who came six hundred years later, was a warrior and submitted peoples to Islam with the sword, preaching intolerance of other religions instead, and they swarmed the belly of Europe till the Christians defeated them in Spain in the Middle Ages. Now Islam, seeing a weakening Christianity, is reaching as far as New York.”

“Planning to build a huge mosque near the Holy Ground Zero,” Pasha scoffed, “and that mayor and B-Husain Obama allowing it in the name of religious tolerance that Islam doesn’t even recognize. Why not first a Christian church in Saudi-Arabia? And then the US State Department using taxpayer funding to send the Imam who’s behind that mosque to the Middle-East to discuss differences and securing at the same time money for his mosque. Political hypocrisy on Earth knows no boundaries.” 

“The secular socialist forces in Europe and America are purposely undermining Earth’s Christianity,” Huda opined, “but they’re giving Islam a pass because of its belligerent threats. It’s a cowardice that will destroy their culture. Islamic Sharia law has no place in Christianity and democracy, and denies women’s rights. Not surprising to see leaders like that Geert Wilders from tiny Holland fulminating against Europe’s islamization. He won many seats in their parliament because they’re really getting scared.”

“I understand that Mr. Wilders is coming to New York on September eleven to join and speak at a protest against that mosque,” I said. “Interesting development. But would the financial ruin of Mother Earth not have any impact on this?”

“Deflation may slow construction,” Shamus said, “but unemployed workers will get hired even if it’s against their beliefs. And as long as the USA sends oil money to Saudi Arabia that money will flow back into the mosque. ”   

“What would you advise the USA if you were in their shoes?” I asked.

“Voters who want freedom must take interest in the fate of their country and speak up,” Tamil said. “They say twenty percent are Obama socialists, forty percent are conservatives and the other forty is independent. That group voted for Obama’s change, not realizing that it meant the discomfiture of the USA as they knew it. If they don’t take their country back coming November and change sides in 2012, it’ll be stolen from them right under their nose, maybe for good.”

“But we know they have no charismatic leader to beat the pied piper!” Pasha exclaimed. “And no appealing theme to beat his socialist melodrama, no Contract with America. Only saying no to Obamacare and Michelle’s taxpayer veggie garden is not enough to explain your different philosophy.”

“The art is how to explain boring economics 101 in simple and clear terms,” Shamus said. “That defeats socialists outright. I remember Reagan could, with his “government is the problem”. Books won’t help. Paper commentaries won’t. Speeches by current leaders won’t. Someone strong must be found to energize the voters as the pied piper did, with the opposite vision of freedom and free enterprise.”

“That’s an issue we’ll take up with the viewers on Earth in our next panel meeting,” I said. “Thank you all for listening in.”

Kathryn was back in her Omaha studio with her weekly panel on “How The World Turns” and we sat ready in our UCB studio in Mars City waiting for the connection. On my side were Elmer, Shamus, and Huda of UCB. Tamil and Pasha were on vacation. Our discussion was going to be taped for UCB’s popular show “Mother Earth’s Weekly Squirms.” The red light buzzed and the VC showed Kathryn with Fred, Tony, Charles and Bob as her regular panel members, and Pete and Sue as the representatives of Earth’s Unspoiled Youth having innocently but passionately voted for President Obama.

“Do you see and hear us right, Kathryn?”

“Beautiful and clear,” she responded.

“Same here,” I said. “Our panel on Mars is very keen on how Earth’s history is evolving and before we got connected voiced much concern about the growing divide in the USA. Do you think there is such a thing?”

“Very much a topic on the table here,” Kathryn said. “There are clear signs we’re going to have another civil war.”

“What makes you think that?” I asked, getting worried about my offspring on earth.

“One side says it wants to take their country back, and the other side is hanging on to it, busily changing, and both sides say they’re talking on behalf of the American People.”

“There must be something wrong with the math,” Shamus said, always making the mistake of thinking in terms of numbers.

“It’s much worse than that,” Fred said. “The current administration is stealing billions of dollars from the other side, so that they won’t have a dime left to work with if they ever come back.”

“No harm at all,” Bob said. “By that time the Government has all the money and nobody will be poor anymore, whatever side you’re on. That’s the beauty of socialism.”

“But who will make money to pay taxes for the Government?” Shamus asked, visibly intrigued by Bob’s visionary statement.

“Everybody will work for the Government and gets a salary minus their tax and national health premium,” Bob explained. “Enough left to buy your bread and butter and own an electric car. Everybody’s equal.”

“Will the other side of America be happy with that?” Elmer asked, looking at Shamus, his face showing bewilderment.

“The other side won’t have a vote anymore because the administration will change the Constitution locking them out, and it’s about time we put some order into this country,” Bob said, emphatically. “After all, we’re a democracy for all the American people, not just for one side. Elections do count.”

“Did you really vote for that?” Huda asked.

“No, we didn’t,” Tony thundered. “Except a few independent thinking journalists holding out large warning signs, nobody read the works of the sixties communist radicals or took Jeremy Wright at his word, and these are the people behind Obama’s change. Now these spooks are all over the government or disguised as Czars in the White House. That’s not the change America wanted.”

“Which America? It’s the Bush recession, stupid,” Bob countered.

“No, it’s the Obama bankruptcy, stupid,” Tony shot back.

“The Tea Party’s groundswell is a clear sign that the other side is alive and kicking,” Charles intervened. “It’s  a new phenomenon that didn’t exist in previous elections. It hates all politicians, especially those who say they know better than they. Mainstream America wants freedom and self-expression to invent and expand, not shared misery for all. You’ll see how big that side of America is in November 2010 and 2012.”

“On Mars we believe in the economic laws,” Shamus lectured. “Freedom and invention make a better world for all. Socialism means power grab of a few over all. You saw it on Earth in the Soviet Union. It’s unnatural because it kills all incentives except the one for absolute rule. I don’t understand why Earth would want to go back to a failed policy like that.

“I agree,” Fred said. “Come down and explain that to Obama and his socialist clique. They love aliens anyway.”

“You’ve to be a darned good talker to make anybody believe that,” Bob snickered. “As I said before, there’s nobody on your bloc that can.”

“That’s a point I feel most uncomfortable about,” Pete said. “We need someone who can mesmerize us the same way as the Pied Piper did.”

“I feel trapped too,” Sue admitted. “You guys talk a lot about what side knows better, but there isn’t anybody who’s convincing me. I’m scared to death about where Obama’s crowd is taking us. Your side may win a few seats in November as always happens midway a presidency, but if the Pied Piper tinges a notch to the center by 2012, he’ll walk away with us again like Clinton did in 96 and we’ll sink even deeper into the mud during the next four years.”

“For Reagan, it was his optimism of “Morning America” that brought the USA back to its feet after Carter,” Kathryn said, summarizing the decades. “Then came the short era of “Read my Lips” Bush 41, who only won the Gulf War; next Clinton, only remembered for lying that he didn’t have sex with that woman, followed by Bush 43 saying he’d serve the nation, not just one party, making everybody feel delusional. And what did we end up with: Obama who wants to change all that for grey matter, forever. That should make every American wake up in cold sweat. Give me Morning America. We need somebody like that.”

“Hear, hear,” Bob smirked. “You’re wearing nostalgia’s old hat. We need progress.”

“That’s exactly your problem,” Tony remarked. “Your progress isn’t progress, it’s stalemate that will kill us, either by a bomb that we can’t stop or bankruptcy that we can’t recover from, most likely both.”

“All right Tony,” Sue said, “but how are you going to prevent that for us poor kids?”

“Yes, good question,” Shamus said, coming out loud over the intercom, “we’d like to know that too.”

“Light the fire at the grassroots level that America’s burning like Rome in history or the Reichstag under Hitler,” Tony said. “Even school dropouts remember that. The more scared they get, the brighter their flames will show. People will rise against this socialist administration. It’s already happening.”

“That’s what I meant by civil war,” Kathryn moderated. “The two sides will meet on the Mall in DC and fight it out with megaphones, drowning each side with their soccer vuvuzelas and the loudest megaphone will win.”

“So far, the loudest megaphone is with Obama from the Rose Garden across the Mall and he knows it,” Bob said, still smirking. “You can’t convince by fear mongering alone. The American people are dead scared from the eight Bush years.”

“Of the eight Bush years, apart from the good tax cuts, Democrats resisted each economic move, including improving social security, had a majority in Congress for the last two years and that’s when the current mess started,” Fred deadpanned.

“Oh, well,” Bob said calmly, “nobody remembers that but they now feel the Bush recession.”

“I disagree,” Pete said, “what will hurt us kids much more is the oncoming tsunami of the Obama Bankruptcy. What you call the Bush recession could’ve been simply managed by reactivitating the business cycle. Any economics textbook will show you how. Reigniting optimism in the private sector by promising to keep taxes low, cut spending, and let bad apples sink.”

“That’s what we do, simple but powerful economics, no ideology,” Shamus interjected from Mars. “The private sector’s the engine of growth. Your administration did the opposite trying to prove their point and no wonder the economy’s failing.”

“The radical socialist authors of this administration use a crisis to the fullest to impose their philosophy,” Charles said, “it’s in their textbooks and thanks to their lucky majority they’re succeeding. Once everything grinds to a halt after they leave, if they ever do, there won’t be a business cycle anymore. It’s like a grasshopper’s hurricane. Americans will feel terribly deceived, especially when they realize that the grasshoppers have ruined everything for good and they have to start all over again.”

“To summarize, dear audience on Earth and on Mars,” Kathryn said, “what seems needed here is some honest and  strong economic talk, no ideology and wrapping bad bills in fancy names to mislead the populace. And because that’s not happening, I predict the populace will rise to save the USA. And with that we’ve come to the end of today’s show. See you next time. Wish you the best on Mars.”

“Thanks Kathryn, great discussion, ” I said. “Next time we’ll let you know Mars’s views on all this.”