If your bummed by Obama, nagged by nukes and turned totally off by your TV, here's a happy holiday homeopathic: THREE LEGGED COYOTE, the soulful, irreverent and occasionally hilarious new DC by Dana Lyons. ( Lyons Brothers Music. www.cowswithguns.com).

My brilliant singer-songwriter-activist long-time buddy has done it again.

Lyons is the singing satirist whose "Cows With Guns" has become the anthem of the vegan/vegetarian movement. The very idea of uzi-packin' bovines has become stock-in-trade for even those pacifists who would end at last the horrors of factory farming.

Dana has also rendered immortal a wide range of dam-busting, nuke-fighting, war-opposing activists. Their often lonely quest for peace, justice and the long-forgotten American way somehow finds a home in Lyons' range, which roams from the soulful to the sinful with shocking ease.

If you pay attention only to the commercial and so-called "public" media in the United States, you'd get the impression that the response around the world to President Obama's proposed escalation of the decades old U.S. war on Afghanistan has ranged from tepid to positive.

Inside Afghanistan - well; when do we ever hear from anyone actually in Afghanistan? I mean the Afghans themselves? Obama claims, as the Bush administration did, that The U.S. will be heading an international peacekeeping force representing more than 40 nations in an all-out effort to, in the words of both Obama and Bush "get the job done". What job? That's a question the media, by and large seems reticent to ask.

In the few days immediately following 9-11 ( September 11th, 2001, that is) I had occasion to be in New York City. The Pacifica Radio network was in a state of crisis as self-appointed rogue national board of directors had assumed control of the 5-station network and was busy scuttling its best programs and dismantling Pacifica station by station.

Manassas, VA - Richard A. Viguerie, Chairman of ConservativeHQ.com, has written a blog on his Web site stating that conservative litmus tests for Republican candidates are "well intentioned," but "would do little to solve the two fundamental problems within the Republican Party: bad leadership and conservative acquiescence to bad leadership."

The article, at http://conservativehq.com/blog_post/show/470, states that liberal Republicans "are merely an annoyance."

Rather, Viguerie writes that the "current Republican leadership has consistently supported our national slide to socialism."

He cites Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Minority Leader John Boehner, and former Bush White House political advisor Karl Rove as Republicans who "have consistently abandoned constitutional principles of limited government in favor of socialist-statist programs, all in the name of 'winning.'"

Deficit reduction:

Our new approach in Afghanistan is likely to cost us roughly 30 billion dollars for the military this year, and I will work closely with Congress to address these costs as we work to bring down our deficit.

Why we must save some crumbs for domestic needs:

But as we end the war in Iraq and transition to Afghan responsibility, we must rebuild our strength here at home. Our prosperity provides a foundation for our power. It pays for our military.

The other really good reason to invest in peace:

We have to invest in our homeland security, because we cannot capture or kill every violent extremist abroad.

Testifying to the character of our men and women:

We will remove our combat brigades from Iraq by the end of next summer, and all of our troops by the end of 2011. That we are doing so is a testament to the character of our men and women in uniform.

Risking a line that any non-military audience would cheer inappropriately for (while claiming Taliban-Al Qaeda links and threats the White House had previously rejected):

There can be no greater gift that you can give your loved ones, or the world, this holiday season than Robert Greenwald's documentary "Rethink Afghanistan."
While President Barry Obama was busy resuscitating Lyndon Johnson's "bright and shiny" Vietnam lies in his national address Tuesday night, the American people should instead have been given a more sober assessment by Greenwald as we forge into the valley of fallen empires.

Obama is President primarily because, as a state senator in Illinois, he made a speech opposing the folly of occupying Iraq after 9/11. During his presidential campaign, famed Afghan hawk Zbignew Brzezinski emerged as a key advisor on central Asia. In his book, The Grand Chessboard (1997), Jimmy Carter's former national security advisor makes it clear that controlling the oil and gas fields of central Asia and the pipeline that runs through Afghanistan and Pakistan are the keys to dominating the 21st century.