Convicted criminal is free!

Hide the kiddies! A convicted criminal was released from prison last night!

Oh, wait a minute... it's Martha Stewart, the "martyr saint" of corporate scandals.

Well that's at least how the media is covering this, no doubt at the behest of her own corporation. Martha was released just after midnight following her five-month stay at "Club Fed" for her role in lying to federal investigators looking into her sale of IMclone stock, and if the midnight time was to somehow prevent a media circus, federal officials were mistaken.

Granted Stewart's role in the great corporate scandals of 2001 was minor compared to the folks at WorldCom and Enron, but she was also the most publicly-recognized figure caught up in it, so obviously prosecutors wanted to make an example out of her. And they did. And I don't know why people were freaking out over it while prosecutors were also making the execs of WorldCom and Enron do the "Perp Walk".

But personally, this commentator is SICK AND TIRED of hearing about Martha Stewart and her "harrowing ordeal" in the cushy prison facility. And I know that I'm not the only one who is sick of it either. There are plenty of other things that we should be concerned about rather than what part of Stewart's cushy mansion she won't be able to venture out to during her five-month period of house arrest.

In fact, if anything, Martha Stewart GOT OFF LIGHT! And you can probably attribute that more towards her celebrity status than for what she did. She got a speedy trial and a quick stay in prison. And now she's going to write a tell-all book about her "trials and tribulations", she's got TWO television shows to work on, and her business is doing better than ever.

Meanwhile...

• Social Security is going down the toilet, and rather than discuss the issue, people want to defer the matter to the old fart mafia (AARP) and let the world's biggest Ponzi Scheme continue to play out and bleed America to death. You don't like the President's plan? Fine! Come up with a better plan that doesn't involve shoving more tax money into this government black hole! I'd rather support the Fair Tax bill than keep the status quo.
  
• Gas prices will be spiking as much as an extra quarter-per-gallon this year, but auto makers still want you to buy either Sport Utility Vehicles or big pickup trucks! We're still selling oil from Alaska to the Pacific rim, including to that demented dwarf in North Korea. And we still haven't started up any new oil refineries on US soil since the 1980's! How do these people think oil is turned into gasoline? Fermentation? Alchemy? Wishful thinking? Divine intervention?
  
• Budget deficits are going up, wasteful government spending is going up, needless government regulations are going up, bankruptcies are going up, inflation is going up, prices for goods and services are going up, and the interest rate is going to go up. (Huh? I thought that cutting interest rates is supposed to keep inflation down! WTF is going on, Greenspan?)
  
• Bible-thumpers are busy pulling off a Taliban-style coup, interjecting religion into everything they see, and trying to turn America into a Christian theocracy. (Oh, yeah, it's BAAAD for the Middle East, but fine and dandy in America!)
  
• We have private companies buying and selling our personal information like baseball cards and not being held responsible for the security breaches and ID theft that results from it.
  
• We have courts sacrificing freedom for expediency, and it looks like the US Supreme Court will legalize the blatant government THEFT of your private property if that theft gives local governments more tax money.
  

But we're not supposed to worry about those things, because the media has us wrapped around Martha Stewart's middle finger. And if it isn't her, then it's Kobe Bryant or Michael Jackson.

Come on people! I shouldn't be the only one who sees the smoke and mirror trick for what it is!