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If you want to be seen as a flag-flying, macho American, you’ve got to have the right ride — and nothing says swaggering hedonism and outta-my-way arrogance quite like a Hummer.

Yes, it’s a high-dollar, gas-guzzling symbol of excess, but hey, that’s the point! As the founder of a Hummer support group once snarled, “Those who deface a Hummer in words or deed deface the American flag and what it stands for.”

Actually, I thought the flag stood for liberty and justice for all, but that’s now just a quibble, because Hummer no longer flies the red, white and blue. It’s turned commie! General Motors has quietly sold its Hummer division to the Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co., a construction and equipment conglomerate in the bicycle-pedaling People’s Republic of China.

The land of Mao, who vehemently denounced the material and moral decadence of the West, now owns one of the West’s most decadent consumer products. Though the Hummer’s Chinese name is “Han Ma,” the marketing concept for this humongous armored chunk of ostentatious testosterone remains the same. Han Ma means “fierce horse.”

It’s a brave new car world we now live in. GM, a remnant of its former self, is essentially owned by the U.S. government, Chrysler is coming under Italian control, and both Jaguar and Land Rover are in the hands of India’s Tata Motors.

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Obama spaketh, and it was good: “We have to find more environmentally sound ways of mining coal than simply blowing the tops off mountains,” he proclaimed.

And, yea, in the mountains and down through all the valleys of the ancient land of Appalachia, hearts were filled with joy, for here was a prophet of hope who was signaling that a change was coming — at last, the endtime was at hand for the brutish coal-mining method called “mountaintop removal,” which is an abomination.

Even as the people rejoiced at this good news, coal barons trembled in their temples of black gold. For a decade, these mighty extractors of wealth had been allowed to accumulate unto themselves enormous profits by exploding the tops off the peaks in Appalachia, the oldest mountain range in all the land. With the top third of these awesome, forested mountains reduced to rubble, the barons used giant machines to strip out seams of coal, and then they simply shoved the rubble and toxic coal waste down the mountainsides, burying the valleys and streams below. It was a desecration — but the love of mammon made it the law of the land.

Then, behold, now the prophet became president, so he was in a position to put his words into action.

And act, he did. On May 15, it was announced that Barack Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency had quietly approved 42 of 48 new Appalachian mining permits sought by the coal barons.

Say what? The prophet of change and hope just OK-ed more desecration by coal mining profiteers? What in the name of a mysterious God is going on here?

Politics. Politics at its weaseliest. Industry supporters point out that while Obama had expressed his concern about this detestable practice in last year’s presidential race, he had not actually promised to halt it. Cute, huh?

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Out in Arizona, an old tombstone bears an epitaph for a young gunslinger: “I was expecting this/But not so soon.”

Gunslinging, of course, is a high-risk business. But today, some of us can expect to have the following marker on our graves: “Here lies a guy/Killed by a pot pie.”

America’s pot-pie threat lurks in an ingredient that today’s producers of frozen foods don’t list on their packages: salmonella. In just one salmonella outbreak in 2007, the Banquet brand of pies sickened an estimated 15,000 people in 41 states.

The true culprit in such poisonings, however, is not the little deadly bug, but the twin killers of corporate globalization and greed. Giant food corporations, scavenging the globe in a constant search for ever-cheaper ingredients to put in their processed edibles, are resorting to low-wage, high-pollution nations that have practically no food-safety laws, much less any safety enforcement.

Consider the case of ConAgra Foods, a massive conglomerate that sells 100 million pot pies a year under its Banquet label. Each pie contains 25 ingredients sourced from all over the world — often from subcontractors who don’t report their sources. Until the 2007 salmonella contamination of its pies, ConAgra did not even require suppliers to test for pathogens, nor did it do its own tests. Since poisoning one’s customers turned out to be a bad strategy for earning repeat business, the conglomerate now runs spot checks — but even when it detects contamination in a pie, it has not been able to determine which ingredient is the bad one.

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No doubt you’re going to feel terrible about this. Top executives of Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street powerhouse, are in a pout about how they’re being treated by you and me — i.e., the public.

These execs are used to being revered as financial geniuses, but having taken a $10 billion bailout from us taxpayers last fall, they’re now widely viewed as … well, as welfare recipients. Like other welfare checks, the big one that Washington doled out to Goldman Sachs came with some strings attached, causing the chieftains to get all huffy. Especially galling to these princes of privilege is the limit on salaries and bonuses that bailed out banks are allowed to give to those in the executive suites.

Thus, Goldman recently threw a little hissy fit and haughtily declared that it will pay back our $10 billion to get the blankety-blank government out of its private business. Bold move! At last, Wall Streeters are reasserting their rugged, free-enterprise ethic, right?

Uh, not exactly.

What Goldman officials fail to mention is that they’ll still be clinging to several other lifeboats floated to them by those skinflint meanies in Washington. For example, when insurance giant AIG was given some $200 billion last year to save it from total collapse, $12 billion of it was actually a pass-through payment to Goldman Sachs. Best of all, this quiet handout did not come with any of those nasty restrictions on executive pay — so Goldman is happily hanging onto this backdoor subsidy.

Then there’s another $28 billion that was slipped to these hardy free-marketers in the form of special low-interest loans guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. — a subsidy that Goldman’s chief financial officer concedes is vital to its survival. Far from foregoing this government underwriting, the bankers say they expect to ask for $7 billion more of it.

Additionally, Goldman has taken many more billions’ worth of low-cost loans from Federal Reserve funds. How many more billions? The Fed and the bank say this is “proprietary” information, not for public disclosure, even though it is public money.

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“Regulate the health insurance giants,” chanted the reformers.

“Stop denying coverage to sick people,” they demanded. “Stop jacking up premiums,” they cried. “Health coverage for all,” they bellowed.

It was an impressive show that the health care reform movement put on last week at a hearing before the Senate finance committee. It was especially impressive because those doing the chanting, demanding, crying and bellowing were not aggrieved outsiders, but the ultimate insiders — the health insurance giants themselves!

When the dogs begin demanding leashes, you now that something unusual is afoot.

Indeed, two things are afoot. First, the public is fed up with our country’s insurance-dominated health care system, which cares first about corporate profits and only secondarily about the health needs of America’s people. As a result, we pay more for health coverage than any other country, yet the quality of care we get ranks 37th in the world (below such countries as Malta, Morocco, Chile and Dominica).

Insurance companies maintain a massive money-sucking bureaucracy that exists essentially to say “no” to policy-holders who need approval for treatment and to say “hell no” to anyone who can’t afford the ever-escalating price for those policies. In the richest country in the history of the world, 47 million Americans are uncovered, and many millions more have “coverage” so thin that it leaves their families out in the cold for most ailments. This is why 76 percent of the people said in a March poll by the Pew Research Center that our health care system either needs “fundamental changes” or needs to be “completely rebuilt.”

Which brings us to the second factor in play: political change. Americans have been angry about the insurance-run system for years, but neither party produced results. Bill Clinton botched reform in the early ’90s, spooking Democrats so badly that, for years, they wouldn’t even attempt major reforms. George W. Bush and congressional Republicans never met an insurance company they wouldn’t hug, take money from and serve faithfully, so they’ve simply ignored the people.

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Sam Rayburn, a longtime speaker of the U.S. House, once said, “Every now and then, a politician ought to do something just because it’s right.”

Last week, 45 U.S. senators dodged an excellent chance to do just what Mr. Sam advised. At issue was a straightforward, common-sense amendment proposed by Dick Durbin, D-Ill. It would have allowed bankruptcy judges to help hundreds of thousands of financially strapped homeowners who now find themselves trapped by exploding, exorbitant interest rates that bankers had attached to their loans.

Here was a conspicuous opportunity for even the most ethically blind of our congress-critters to take a principled stand, for Durbin’s bill practically had a flashing red-and-yellow neon arrow attached to it, declaring, “Vote Here for the People Against Greedy Bankers.”

Actually, even GBs would’ve benefited, for the bankruptcy provision would have allowed families to stay in their homes and keep making monthly payments to banks (albeit in reduced amounts). Also, banks could still make a profit (though not a killing), and there would be far fewer vacant homes going on the market, thus giving a badly needed break to America’s depressed housing market.

What a sensible idea! So, naturally, the Senate stomped it to death.

The members were prodded to do so by Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and other upstanding members of the hyper-aggressive GB lobby. These are, of course, the same banksters who for years speculated rapaciously on people’s homes, created a housing bubble that has since burst and shattered our economy, reduced their own financial fiefdoms to insolvency, then rushed to Washington to unscrew the Capitol dome and help themselves to a taxpayer bailout that is nearing $3 trillion.

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I’d like nothing more than to give the bailout scandal a rest — but the bankers won’t let me! They just keep coming at us with ever-more-clever inventions of greed and deceit.

Their latest bit of hocus-pocus, accompanied by big puffs of smoke, is a dazzling show of profits. Yes, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and other financial giants that only yesterday were insolvent basket cases now report that — poof! — in the first quarter of this year, they magically produced blockbuster profits. Absolutely A-mazing!

Of course, it’s a con job. After all, magicians don’t perform magic. They create illusions.

Hoping to con investors and the public into believing that the wizards running Wall Street have quickly and brilliantly restored these banks to financial health, the wizards did exactly what they’ve done in the past: They goosed up their books with accounting tricks and sleights of hand.

First — and most obvious — the “profits” are made possible only because you and I have stuffed the banks with massive infusions of tax dollars. Indeed, they wouldn’t even be standing without our money. I don’t mean merely the $700 billion straightforward bailout approved by Congress, but also the nearly $2.5 trillion in such backdoor subsidies as dirt-cheap loans and government guarantees quietly extended by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department.

Second, the banks lobbied for and won a regulatory break that lets them pretend that all of those bad housing investments weighing down their books like a load of toxic waste are worth … well, worth whatever the bankers say they’re worth. So — Shazam! — huge losses are wiped clean by banker fantasy.

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Texas politics has long been a source of great amusement for the people of our state, but it’s often a source of bafflement for people beyond our borders. So, sometimes there’s a need to explain what’s going on here, and this is one of those times. In this case, the explanation is simple: Our governor is a goober.

Texans have known this for some time, but Rick Perry — whose chief claim to fame had been that he has a spectacular head of hair — was unknown outside the state, so he was our little secret. Now, however, Perry’s gooberness has gone viral. He’s a YouTube phenomenon and a new darling of the GOP kingmaker, Rush Limbaugh.

He broke into national consciousness on April 15, when he spoke at one of the many “teabag” rallies that Republican operatives set up around the country to protest Barack Obama’s deficit spending. Appearing in Austin before a boisterous crowd of about a thousand people who were fuming about everything from gun control to the Wall Street bailout, the governor opened with this shot: “I’m sure you’re not just a bunch of right-wing extremists. But if you are, I’m with you.”

Then came the thought that earned him YouTuber-of-the-Day and a favorable mention from Lord Limbaugh: Texas just, By God, might secede from the union if Washington keeps messing with us.

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