http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI_Oe-jtgdI

If you want to know how to scam the world into doing your bidding, study the 1962 film The Music Man. In it, “Professor” Harold Hill, played brilliantly by Robert Preston, is a traveling salesman and con artist who convinces a small Iowa town that juvenile delinquency is threatening their very way of life. The threat comes in the form of the insidious, corrupting influence of a pool table. To remedy the situation, the citizens are convinced that they must put their children in a marching band led by non other than Professor Hill. Of course to even get started, the parents must buy instruments and uniforms from…Professor Hill.

If you think this is just a quaint old movie, think again. The Music Man provides the blueprint for the electoral strategies of both the Republican and Democratic parties. Find a problem that is either small or imaginary, blow it all out of proportion, and claim that you are the only one who can solve it. Yes, that's right folks. We've got trouble…right here in the land of the free…with a capitol “T” and that rhymes with “G” and that stands for Global Warming/Terrorism!

Sing along, everybody:

Seventy six Marine brigades in Afghanistan

A hundred percent carbon tax right behind

Followed by years and years of the pols exploiting fears

That were mostly or completely in your mind!