Happy New Year to you ALL!

This New Year’s Eve, like so many in America, I will be with a group of friends from a Twelve Step group celebrating the incoming 2011 with coffee and home-made pies and pizza at the local Alano Club.

Not all of those present will have a home of their own to go home to. Many, even in so remote an area as Western Washington, are homeless--but even many of these persons will sleep on cots and couches in the relatively warm homes of those of us more fortunate than they are.

But there is still considerable needless suffering throughout America as we shuffle into 2011. So many persons are suffering for lack of food, shelter, medical care and other problems--problems that these persons did not bring upon themselves.

And yes, there is a difference between inevitable suffering and the suffering we bring on ourselves. Admittedly, much of our suffering is self-inflicted.

Have you heard of the monkey trap? It has a very small opening at the top. When the monkey reaches into it for a piece of fruit, he is unable to pull his hand out again because his fist clutching the fruit is too big. To be free, all he would have to do is open his fist and let go of the fruit. But that is the one thing he, like the Republicans in Congress, have been unwilling to do.

And so he is caught. He is caught by his own greed....

But then, don't we all--Democrats and Republicans--find ourselves in similar situations time and time again? Don’t we make our life a monkey trap? We trap ourselves with our own greed, fear, lazy habits, addictions, anger and resentments ... in a word, everything we hold onto.

But right now, my thoughts are with the very poor and homeless. I hope that the millionaires and billionaires who held 97% of America hostage--including the chronically unemployed and unemployable--so that they could hold onto the tax cuts for themselves are happy tonight.

We'll have to wait until next month or the month after that to see what more the new Republican-led House of Representatives can attempt to grasp from the poor so as to shore up the "economy" while reducing the National Debt.

They need some time to get Christmas out of their minds before reaching once again into the Monkey Trap.