Fast Food Nation predicted this — the first US case of Mad Cow Disease. If you haven’t read Fast Food Nation, I highly recommend it, although reading it could scare, anger and disgust you.

There is something fun about the last week before break. Everyone at Beacon is exhausted but happy. There’s a sort of general agreement that we all want to go on break for a little while. And that’s a good thing.

For basketball, we’re going to go into the break with a win, which is always a good feeling… in both English classes, I feel good about where folks are… I’m loving having a few weeks away from grad school… and generally, as I sit here, framed by a menorah and a Christmas tree, life feels pretty good.

It’s a good feeling.

Paul Krugman writes in this week’s Nation about how even Business Week is reporting that fewer and fewer people are doing better than their parents did. Krugman really does an amazing job of writing about how the Bush Administration policies are doing away with the Horatio Alger dream of social mobility in favor of creating a caste system.

Krugman, especially in the Nation, writes in an inflammatory style, but he also is raising really important points. Bush’s vision of this country is different than most people’s views. This is not a man who is interested in the American Dream. Everything he’s done – from his economic policies to the bidding process on the Iraqi contracts to his non-policies on CEO white-collar crime – suggests this is a man making sure that he and his continue to amass wealth and power.