Everyone knows who "Big Brother" is, of course, because we all had to read George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four at some point in our schooling. Big Brother is the fictional benevolent figurehead in Orwell's "negative Utopia" masterpiece, whose beaming visage is a front for a totalitarian police state which spies relentlessly upon its own citizenry. Television sets, in this future world, are both unavoidable and two-way -- broadcasting images of what you are doing in your own home to the government watchers. To some extent, Orwell's dark fantasy has become everyday life in some places (it's almost impossible to avoid being publicly filmed now in cities like London, for instance). But there's been a balancing revolution in surveillance as well -- which is more and more apparent in the recent news. I'm going to call this effect "Little Brother" -- citizens watching, filming, and reporting on governmental activities to a rapt worldwide audience. And we've already seen how powerful a tool this can be in the Middle East.

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Seriously, how many people does anyone know who get a whole week off for Presidents' Day?!? Congress doesn't take vacations one day at a time, instead it takes off whole weeks -- at the drop of a stovepipe hat. This has long annoyed me, but it becomes particularly odious when Congress is faced with a very serious deadline -- one that might wind up with a government shutdown -- and nobody even suggests that they might want to get back to work while this clock is ticking down. Not Harry Reid, not John Boehner, not Nancy Pelosi, not Mitch McConnell, not any Tea Party Republican -- nobody has even entertained the idea that Congress should forego just one of their weeklong "district work periods" (which any sane Human Resources department would call "vacations").

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Before I even begin here, I'd like to address what my critics will respond with, when they hear what I have to say. They're going to call these ideas "class warfare." You know what? They're right. I am calling on the middle class and the working class and all the other classes that make up over 19 out of every 20 Americans to start fighting back. Note that, please -- fighting back. Because there has indeed been class warfare waged in America in recent decades, and our class is losing -- and losing badly. The wealthiest of the wealthy -- the modern-day robber barons among us -- have been successfully waging class warfare on the rest of us for so long now that I am sick of it and I think it's time the rest of us fought back, rather than meekly submitting to the whims of the moneyed class. So, before my critics even have a chance to respond, I will save them the trouble -- you are damn right that there is class warfare happening in America. By admitting this, I'm urging the people who have borne the brunt of the situation to wake up and begin to stand up for what is right.

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Before I even begin here, I'd like to address what my critics will respond with, when they hear what I have to say. They're going to call these ideas "class warfare." You know what? They're right. I am calling on the middle class and the working class and all the other classes that make up over 19 out of every 20 Americans to start fighting back. Note that, please -- fighting back. Because there has indeed been class warfare waged in America in recent decades, and our class is losing -- and losing badly. The wealthiest of the wealthy -- the modern-day robber barons among us -- have been successfully waging class warfare on the rest of us for so long now that I am sick of it and I think it's time the rest of us fought back, rather than meekly submitting to the whims of the moneyed class. So, before my critics even have a chance to respond, I will save them the trouble -- you are damn right that there is class warfare happening in America. By admitting this, I'm urging the people who have borne the brunt of the situation to wake up and begin to stand up for what is right.

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The revolutionary tidal wave (or, if you prefer, the "Tunisami") sweeping the Middle East and North Africa spreads ever wider, as in country after country young protesters take to the streets in an attempt to change their countries' governments. But don't expect an outcome equal to the (mostly) peaceful overthrows in Tunis and Egypt in every single country now affected by this "people power" movement. There are major differences from country to country, both in terms of the form of government (and the military), and in terms of the likelihood of a victorious outcome for the protesters.

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It's "Budget Season" once again in Washington, and since it's going to be a particularly contentious and complex one this year, it's worth taking a moment at the beginning to provide an overview of the entire process which is about to play out over the next two or three months. There are, at this point, three main budget battles to be fought. One of these isn't strictly a budget battle, but will likely devolve into one, hence its inclusion in the list. Two of these have hard and fast calendar deadlines. All three of them are going to be major political battles, and it's unclear what the outcome of any of them is going to be at this point.

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Corporate America is on our minds today, because President Obama just gave a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. With the future decidedly uncertain, Obama made overtures to the corporate community, and also called on them to be responsible and help build the middle class of this country, by insuring that all boats are lifted by the tide, and not get (as he put it) "left behind, stuck in the mud." This wasn't the only time in the speech he got Kennedyesque, also calling on the corporate titans to: "Ask yourselves what you can do to hire more American workers, what you can do to support the American economy and invest in this nation."

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Egypt, it seems, is failing to follow a convenient storyline for the American journalists to follow.

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The day after President Obama's big yearly speech to Congress and the American people, most pundits and talking-head types in the media are vying to outdo each other on stating "what it all means" or similar high-flown overanalysis. What many of them seem to have missed, however, is the fact that Obama used his speech to introduce a few topics into the political debate. Some of these topics have been around for a while, championed by various people and groups, but what seems newsworthy to me is the fact that Obama included them in his list of proposals for the future.

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Well, it's that time of year again. The time of year when pundits across the land helpfully (oh, so helpfully) offer the president advice on what he should say in his "State Of The Union" speech tomorrow. While I've engaged in this sort of thing before, this year I'd like to make predictions of what President Obama will say tomorrow night (as opposed to what I would like him to say). Which means I'm not endorsing any of this personally, merely attempting to predict what will be in tomorrow night's speech in advance.

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