This is pure insight as to how the neocons work. They have done more studying and research in how to handle and munipulate this country than most people can imagine. Want more of the same, elect mccain. Then flip a coin for the 2 demos. The iron grip of corporations on our government will be extremely hard to cast off because that is where the neocons had inserted themselves and their ideologies, if it can be cast off. That is why this country will really go to rock bottom before it comes back and then there will still be the elites to deal with. They really seemed to have hidden themselves behind an inpenatrable curtain to ensure their control over any future world that comes along. They are the real enemy.
Perhaps the saddest thing that I DO NOT hear especially from the democrat side is any way to break up the illegal monopoly being held in our MSM. It that is not addressed, then the prospects for any upturn for this country will fade even more.

surround the house in droves!!

fat chance….........

Everything the Bush administration touches is in ruins. It is like a reverse “Midas touch,” instead of turning into gold, all turns into the equivalent of a nuclear winter (which Bush couldn’t pronounce anyway).

Rather than Steinbeck’s Winter of Discontent, Bush’s tenure is an 8 year-long winter of our disgust while he continues his reign of tyranny.

It’s like we stand around and wait for spring when it is within our power to remove the cause of “winter.”

While not abandoning it entirely, it is time to diminish the sharp focus on the failed Bush 8 years, and hit the nerve center to eliminate Republican McCain for his Bush alliances and kiss ass to the Republican party factions.

That is unless you want four to eight more years of the same.

mccain and who everelse is above the hunger the people face daily…..

go away

  food water shelter
    nothing more

spot on jleman…

lets hope someone has his hand on the rope for all of the liars

This same bunch came to power with Reagan and they basically formed the “Gestopo” which went around and made government employees take lie-detector tests. This was because of “Deep Throat” and Daniel Ellsberg with the Pentagon Papers. You’ll remember Cheney and Rumsfeld being part of the Nixon WH? Well, they came back in spades. Long term Pentagon employees and other branch employees were getting out in droves. So much so that a former Air Force Officer I knew went out and set up a business placing highly educated government employees with high security clearances into the private sector. Wonder if the employee’s political leanings had anything to do with it? Much like the U.S. Attorney General’s office?

While I can appreciate your comment, let me point out a bit of history which relates directly to your thoughts(questions). When the telephone companies started up there were lots of room to set standards and engineering goals(rules). Individual companies started designing standards which would suit their individual profit lines. In the U.S., it started to become a problem to place a call state-to-state and across the country. AT&T;was set up as a monopoly(conglomerate) to counter this with regulatory oversight. This succeeded. In France, things were allowed to seek their own level which resulted for many years in terrible phone service.
While we maybe have had ten years of less accidents, that is not to say things in the system will be reaching a critical point of massive breakdown. Changes in technology may have played a large part but things are engineered with finite life expectencies and the individual parts reach them dependent upon many factors and variances. When profit is the standard and safety takes a back seat to CEO’s and management’s pocketbooks you have the potential for disaster to strike and the fall back plan of “let the lawyers deal with it” springs into action along with the familiar synopsis of “pilot error”, blame the victim. CEO’s and others have their “golden parachutes” but none of the passengers or crew are allowed to have them? And, just to pound the point home, does the President and the Vice-President fly on the same airlines as regular people do? It’s pretty much the same as; has Bush and Cheny sent their daughters to Iraq to be raped by contractors or killed by roadside bombs, snipers and so forth?
The premise of this administration springs from the “class issue”. Rather, they act like they are a different class of society which is a separation issue. Furthermore, the extension of this into the “Imperial Presidency”, and their feelings of being above the Law of the Land(Constitution) just begs a pinpick to their balloon. Such a pin is impeachment and jail time without a pardon.

As much as the ‘Trickle Down’ facade of Economics ahs proven to be more approriately referred to as “Sh*t rolls Down Hill” . so goes the charade of ‘small Gov’t’ credo’s by ‘fiscal Conservatives’ . this doctrine should be called this should be referred to as ‘Profiteering Privitization’ . Add to that the ‘Democratization of the ME’ is really the “Land Grab of the UAE”.Same goes for those Unnecessary Hearing yesterday- they should have been advertised as ‘Employees trying to justify their continued Employment’ I’m not just talking about the Gen & the Amb- I’m talking about the 99% of the ‘Senators’ asking the questions. they have been given their Orders and have Chosen to disregard them. A democracy is not governed by the Employees- but by THE PEOPLE. Whether of not it woudl be a mistake to ‘cut & run’ is irrelevant- those are theri Marching Orders. WE’VE already decided this Action in Iraq is NOT WORTH IT. WE need no Stinking hearing,We are the DECIDERS _right or wrong, good or Bad…Do Your Damn Jobs!!!

This might be part of it Pedro, but I suspect that the bush gangsters are using the playbook from all other fascist and totalitarian regimes.

The point is to set up a shadow government that acts behind the scenes of the ostensible government, and eventually overtakes it.

That much is a brilliant strategy as well, but it’s not new.

And, the regulators that are allowed to be made to ‘look bad’ are really just part of the shadow government. They ARE in bed with the corporations, (the shadow government) and that has been the case since Regan did his deregulation.

Industries like the airline industry have fought hard against any sort of regulation, because at the bottom line, safety cuts into their profits as much as labor does. So, they cut deals with corrupt regulators, (and it doesn’t take many). They have their own ‘people’ in the FAA, the Environmental Agencies, the labor regulators, (EEOC is basically manned by the corporate entity now) and on and on.

So, I’m not so sure that they wanna make it ‘look like’ regulation doesn’t work. They wanna make sure that it DOESN’T work, because of the greed.

Again, regulation cuts into the corporate bottom line, and the Government and the Corporations are now one and the same.

Marie suggests that they airline industry has become their ‘customers’ but it’s really more about them being ‘partners’.

The ‘small fry’ working in these agencies, (like those who perform their work on the principles of regulatory standards) have long since been run out,(like these whistleblowers or potential whistleblowers) or are otherwise uninformed that the corruption even exists.

Doesn’t this whole mess seem reminiscent of the times that gave us the term “robber baron”? Politicians were being bought for their votes to help keep the corporations profitable. The Public finally had enough, and oversight commitees were instigated. The corporations then just started buying off their watchers. This has happened so many times that the Public is used to it. Nobody really expects anything to change, because nobody is willing to stand up for the Public. Until such time as the Public remembers that America belongs to Us, not the government, this country will continue to be ran into the ground by Big Business for pure profit.
  People of America, you NEED to wake up and DO SOMETHING for the future of our government and, most importantly, our country!

BRAVO! This just puts it all right there for us.

I ditto KISS in the excellence of your commentary.

So many that we will probably never know, because it spans the entire government. That’s one of the reasons that the VA and other public health care agencies have lost all of their professionals.

Remember the oil “embargo” from the Carter years?
Working in the oil fields at the time, I knew all about that baloney. The pipelines weren’t pumping because the tanks were full. We were capping wells as they were discovered because they were “marginal” at the going rate but the logs said otherwise.
The usual 24HR shifts of refineries were cut back to skeletal 8HR because the tanks were full. New field finds were capped and sworn to secrecy(normal but, under the circumstances, one wondered). Then came the collapse of the oil industry in the U.S. At least, the exploration part. What does that tell you? Carter did nothing and nothing was done under Reagan. No investigation.
Meanwhile, the Old West was recreated in South America in Venezuela, Equador, Colombia and so forth. The whole operations shifted overseas for exploration and the “profits” off of the “embargo” paid for it.
I’m with KISS on this. What? Does the mention of a solution just scare the beejeezus out of the media? Time to reverse the “Drug War” and start filling up the jails with the corrupt politicians and corrupt corporate management. Impeachment is not something to be “taken off of the table” by one of their own. It is a tool for the people. Yes, it gets messy! It’s called democracy in “action”. Strip corporations of their legal standing! No one “needs” then unless they plan on breaking the law!? Use impeachment against their paid, unregistered lobbyists in all branches of government, federal and state.

Excellent commentary. I avoided saying Nixon because he was only one that justice was partially being served. All the others escaped with impunity, and in all likeliness so will Bush.

Let’s see? Beginning with the cabal of Reagan, which were leftovers from Nixon(those not in prison), we have the proclamation that they will dismantle government by running up the debt and thereby forcing the cutting of the budget(social programs and business regulation) while stocking the regulatory agencies with cronies(or incompetents) to prove to the public that government doesn’t work. This has now been expanded to include the Presidency and the(adding another dimension to the word) Vice-Presidency. Borrowing from the book, “1984”(doublespeak and the unending war), and from the history book(Hitler’s burning of the Reischstag and the Nazi’s use of propaganda) we are now faced with a shadow government consisting of treasonable corporations in league with extrajudiciary mercenary armies. The invention of the modern instrument of a “Corporation” began at the behest of businesses to cut their losses to sailors families through illegal trade wars(Opium Wars) with foreign companies, in Britain by the monarchy. No democratic action there. It was about evading responsibility and being profitable. If the hands off approach to business matters had been followed, the wars would have proven themselves too costly to everyone involved. And now? We have the “corporate” entities with “contract security personnel” unleashed over the globe along with military(ops) and black ops(CIA, State Dept., NSA, military, and the unending list) with backup from hundreds of military bases on foreign soils. We use “foreign aid” to train “foreign militaries” to use and purchase U.S. military hardware. Taxpayers pay for our military to train other militaries in subduing civilian populations(illegal in our country) through the use of torture and other means. And, does anyone wonder where all of these operatives got their training and from whom? Did they one day wake up and say, “I think I’ll go and pay for training to become a killer or torturer?” A doctor requires hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for their education, and living expenses. What does the highly paid “contractor” pay for in education expenses?
Why do we have socialized killing and not socialized medicine?
How many veterans go out and commit criminal acts with all of the associated costs to our society? How many veterans commit suicide? According to stats released some years ago, the Vietnam vets suicides surpassed the direct death number of 55,000.
Political planners knew about demographics, and economics pre-Vietnam. They saw a massive number of young males coming of age in static economic times. Young, unemployed, politically active males would upset the apple cart of the status quo.
The only people who prospered from Vietnam were the investors, the arms factories and the surrounding support industries for the military; in other words, corporations. Reported fraud of defense corporations fell on deaf ears.
Surprised? Oh, and all of that nasty business going on over in Vietnam? We’ll blame it on the vets. Not the military/industrial complex and the investors/politicians who promoted official policy of death, torture, rape and whatever towards the population.
Surprised? Some of the neophyte politicians(draft evaders) from those days have all grown up! Same play, different page of the same book.

Granted all of this abuse has come home under the the Bush administration, but remember that Carter, Reagan, Bush senor and the Clinton administration all had the mantle” We don’t need no stinkin regulation”. And the lame brain, addled minded Bush has absolutely no idea how to fix this mess. But what kind of fix do you think these 3 blind mice will have to fix these gigantic problems. Not one of these incompetents has the mustard to promote regulation and to give us our Bill of Rights. But than the media is not concerned with history or rights…just money like all good corporations.
Marie, you showed us the problems, but you are a little shy on the solutions.