"So many books..So little time..."

That's the rueful sentiment displayed on one of my favorite sweatshirts. It pithily rfelects the frustration of avid readers faced with more reading material than they can possibly persue.

The only soultion is to be scrupulously selective. Don't read anything that confuses fact with fiction, such as most of the mainstream media. Eschew the ranting of tiresome right wing ideologues.

One of the best ways to create time for really useful books and magazines is to refrain from reading, watching or listening to anything about politics and politicians. Given the enomous space and time in the media devoted their legislative posturing, this frees up an amazing number of hours that would otherwise be lost.

Many people still believe we have a democracy, and that we shoud therfore follow closely the activities of our governments. After all, they argue, the policies the politicians favour and the laws and regulations they enact can affect our lives and livelihood, sometimes quite signifcantly. True enough. But, because these policies and laws are now  drafted by Wall Street boardrooms and the offices of the Business Council, their enactment in the legislatures has become a mere fomality. An anti-climax. Like Lola, what the corporations want these days, the corporations get. Their political lackeys see to that. And what the corporations want is rarely of an benefit to the rest of us.

To keep taking the politicians seriously, to treat them as anything but business flunkeys, serves only to sustain the illusion that it is they, not their corporate masters, who are responsible for all the economic and social ills being inflicted on us.

Granted, there is some entertainment value in the antics of the people we elect to neglect our needs and pass our tax payments on to the bankers and CEOs. Their pretension that it is the voters they serve, not their corporate masters, has its laughable aspects. Their bombast and blustering can be amusing. So can their elaborate attempts to disguise their servile adherence to the corporate agenda.

As long as you know that the legislative debates, the committee hearings, the election promises, and all other politcal activities are now theatrical events, divorced from reality, no harm(other then wasting time) is done by reading about them or watching them on television.