democratz.org, January 24 at 9:53 pm,

If you want to enforce accountability, support ratios of benefit, so that manipulation is prevented on both sides of the equal sign, all else is a false dichotomy that is in pursuit of a false view of advantage.

A new message of hope for Liberals and Progressives in America. http://www.hoflink.com/~dbaer/speech1-22-2011.wmv

Protest the companies that give money to conservatives in both parties. These companies fund conservatives and allow conservatives to inflict punishment on the less fortunate so let us hold those companies accountable by boycotting them until we get the legislation we want.

Sign this petition at http://WWW.DEMOCRATZ.ORG if you want to get congress to enact a $10 an hour minimum wage, The Employee Free Choice act, a real prescription drug benefit for Medicare in part B, an End to 2 expensive wars, a single payer government health insurance plan, Tier 5 unemployment benefits extension and the women’s freedom of choice act into law. Post this message on facebook groups, pages and profiles. Thank you.

After you sign this petition Join the the facebook page at

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sign-this-petition-for-progressive-legislation-at-wwwdemocratzorg/181036078591739

Then you can click on a link called suggest to friends.  Select every friend you have and yes it will send it to every one of your friends you select to invite to the group which will tell them to go to this petition and sign it.

one has to wonder about the well-timed unveiling of the new super-duper Chinese jet fighter…

I can’t help but think about Reagan’s “Star Wars” program and the subsequent Soviet arms buildup that ultimately contributed to bankrupting their economy.

Mr. Scheer said:

“Why do we have a post cold-war military budget that Republicans and Democrats are afraid to challenge?”

Assuming the question isn’t rhetorical, let me take a stab at an answer:
Both the Democrats and Republicans are owned by their major campaign contributors: the same corporations that profit from the financing, manufacturing, sale, and distribution of armaments.

If the appointments of Daley and Immelt don’t make it obvious there’s a rat in the woodpile, what will?

( btw: the dollar numbers on the Boeing sale to China are grossly over-inflated. see Seattle Times for story. )

It’s the Third Way or the highway.

The Third Way think tank cloaks itself in the “progressive” mantle:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Way_(think_tank)

The Progressive Policy Institute hews to the Third Way political strategy:  http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ka.cfm?knlgAreaID=128

Both of these false conflations are as critical to obscuring corporate-statism as is anti-government rhetoric. 

Public interest advocates have not taken it upon themselves to publically deconstruct the Third Way.  Given the fast-breaking campaign against KORUS FTA, this might be a good time to pick this low-hanging fruit.

Key points in such a public information effort might include:

•  In the United States, populists from the right-wing, some libertarians, and the now-radical left see the Third Way as the underpinning of corporate-statism, in which both of the two dominant parties serve the global capitalist agenda, as evidenced by that country’s historic levels of wealth inequality and increasing household/community insecurity.

•  The Washington-based think tank of the same name as the political strategy Third Way obscures its corporatism by labeling itself “progressive.”  However, their board member financier William Daley, now Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff, was a lead player in the passage of the precedent-setting supranational arrangement known as the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA), against which were arrayed unionists, environmentalists, and activists in civil liberties, economic justice, human rights, etc.

From Sam Stein at the Huffington Post, 11/02/2010 (midterm election day):

[When Democrats reconvene following Tuesday’s elections, there is going to be a fairly contentious debate over what went wrong—both on policy and political grounds. On Monday, the moderate wing of the party made a pitch for greater post-election relevance, with the group Third Way explaining that it “is crucial for Democrats to return to the center with bold and bipartisan policy solutions that are realistic in the next Congress and resonate with moderates and Independents.”]

From Russ Baker at AlterNet http://www.alternet.org/story/40482/?page=1 

The Top 10 Corporate Democrats-For-Hire

They claim to be ‘centrists,’ but these D.C. Dems—whose corporate agendas aren’t too different from Bush administration policies—are living proof that the system needs fixing.

“How big a problem is the growing influence of the bipartisan Beltway Party? Details on this can be found in a report from the Real News Project, a new nonprofit noncommercial investigative reporting outfit I founded.

http://whowhatwhy.com/2006/06/14/25-democratic-consultants/ 

“RealNews examined the track records of prominent Washington Democrats, consultants, advertising and public relations executives, lobbyists, attorneys and the like who have close connections to the top circles of their party. Many of them served in the Clinton-Gore White House, and many of them will likely be tapped should a Democrat be elected in 2008 and have considerable influence in a future Democratic-controlled Congress.

“We scrutinized scores of Washington Dems and found many ensconced in firms working to advance corporate agendas that don’t look that different from policy we see emanating from the Bush administration. To be sure, many of these people have redeeming qualities, represent some admirable causes as well, and may personally harbor inclinations for the greater good. Yet, in trying to earn a handsome living in Washington, they apparently do what a person’s gotta do. Can political success and influence be attained without working for The Man? Let’s defer that debate for another time and start with a few facts.”

Since private business’ Conservative Right-Wing of the U.S. Government, with the assistance of the cooperating conservatives on the Left, destroyed manufacturing in the United States, what good is it going to do to make deals with China to buy U.S. goods and products, when manufacturers aren’t producing goods and products in the United States, nearly everything purchased in the United States is made in China and the wealthy are hoarding the money that could be used to reinvigorate U.S. manufacturing.