I think all of us see that the 2 party system is really a corporatist UNI-Party system whose sole purpose for existence as degenerated into funding corporate welfare/entitlement programs.

Please - let’s join together to send all the DC bums to an unemployment line where they belong.
do ANYTHING but vote for the losers; Consider

1. voting for roadkill
2. voting for your favorite aunt or uncle
3. voting for ANY 3rd Party candidate - even if it’s just a candidate which you, your family and a few neighbors have agreed is better than any of the above.

“Obama himself will share responsibility for the, in my opinion, inevitable loss of seats by Democrats in the Legislature, and, quite possibly his own as well. Considering the radicalization of the GOP this would be an astounding feat. ” - Why are you assuming that we have no other choices. In the last election we could have voted for R. Nader, or for C. McKinney; while it’s true they couldn’t have done much with a Democratic congress, perhaps less damage could have been done by the 2 faced UNI-party in congress. 

I personally hope people will vote for their dead dog - rather than any congressional incumbent, but perhaps it would be better to vote 3rd Party or for your favorite aunt or uncle.

I suppose ultimately, when politicians talk about protecting “American interests”, it boils down to what those interests are and which Americans own them? Not the majority, that’s for sure.

“If anything, this decision is a loss to all Americans and to the rule of law.”

This line is crucial to understanding what has become of American law. Along with politics, it too has become corrupted by power and greed and no longer has anything to do with real justice and holding criminals to account. Basically if you are rich and powerful you can do what you like in this country providing you do it to foreigners, poor people or minorities. You won’t get away with it, if you hurt other rich and powerful people, as in the case of Madoff.

It is horrifying to see America’s unwillingness to look for true justice anymore. America turns a blind eye to injustice in Gaza as well. I genuinely no longer trust the judiciary or politicians in the US. They are as corrupt as Karzai and a lot more powerful and dangerous.

The rest of the world just looks on and shakes it’s collective head in a kind of resigned dismay.

Folktruther, November 4 at 11:30 pm #

The American legal, electoral, political, economic, and truth systems are obsolete. 

One might argue that these institutions are corrupted and usurped rather than obsolete.

All the insurgents need is to get weapons they know will be good to attack their occupiers. Or they could just bide their time and get the intel needed to do a sever blow to the USA bases in their land. I know I would get as much of an advantage as possible.

“The U.S. government has offered no apology and has kept Arar on a terrorist watch list.” - I guess if you’re not going to admit your mistake - much less the crime - you’re not going to apologize either.  The torture policy is helping to recruit “insurgents” who want to throw us out of the Middle East and so it endangers our troops.  If Obama’s Administration has no ethical problem in expanding upon the program of “extraordinary rendition” - otherwise known as kidnapping & war crime” - it has no real interest in making conditions as safe as [possible for our soldiers or in furthering democracy in the Middle East any more than GW did.

The American legal, electoral, political, economic, and truth systems are obsolete.  They are visible political furniture to assure the population a sense of continuity, but they are devoid of people power.  the US power system now functions, and has since the 9/11-anthrax public relations homicide that initiated the War on Terrrorism, not on the basis of classic fascism, but simply as a lawless gangster system.  the laws simply don’t apply anymore to the powerful.

The principle of rule has been called by Noam Chomsky the Mafia Principle, the intimidation and inducing of fear in anyone attmepting to defy American power.  It has supplanted the traditional American bougeous Democracy for the same reason that the Roman Empire supplanted the Roman Republic.  T

he enormous and growing economic and political ineequality.  Daniel Ellsberg maintains that the US has undergone a coup, a political revolution that has changed our form of govenrment. And this is due to the economic inequality which is concealed and disguised in the mass media. 

Half the American children are now on food stamps and the proportion is increasing; a million chldren are homeless; there is not adiequate prenatal care of pregnant women, making the US among the highest rates of infant deaths of any developed country.  There is not even a general health insurace program and it is unlikely one will be developed.  While the rich are not only obscenely rich, but are subsidized by huge payoffs of the taxpayer’s money. While the real unemployment rate is nearly 20%, the offical rate not including workers who work part time or have been unemployed for a year.

To maintain this gross inequality America has the largest prison population in the world, the largest military budget by far, combat units in the US trained against American people, torture, lawless and arbitrary imprisonment, and militarized SWAT police to prevent demonstrations and dissent.

To conceal, disguise and justify the violence of the American power system, the mainstream truth system of the learned and mass media and other truth organs has developed an Orwellian irrationality.  Deceit from both Gop and Dem leaders are routine, and the media sanitized of those truths that subvert current oppressive Amereican power. 

And the economic and war sitution is deteriorating, leading us further into the culture of barbarism.  the plutocratic Mafia that rules, under Obama’s current Inspiring bullshit, has been successful in intimindating the population.  The mainstream truth conesensus embodies Faith by the Gops, Hope for the Dems, and Americans are afraid to challenge it.

The abuduction and lawless imprisonment and torture of Americans and everyone else by the power structure is now routine, supported by Obama as he escaletes American wars, ostensibly to keep Americans Secure.  While financial inscurity grows.
 
  Sooner or later, friends, we have to face the fact that the American power system has reached the end of its lifetime, and has to be replaced.  Honest economists, a minority, maintain that the US is not recovering from this depression, and the low intensity wars are continuing. The American power structue is commiteed, indeed trapped, in a no win situation, and can’t excavate themselves.  Any more than the Soviet power structure could reform their economic system, or the Czarist power structure end the war in 1917.  It will have to be done by the American people.

Don’t you just love “change” when the criminal organization gets a new don and everyone else thinks that means the crimes will stop? Such easily fooled and desperate fools. Desperation breeds that in those who want real change but get the same old despots in new faces and facades. Right now our political system is run by the kind of people some would call crypto-fascists. They want a despotic gov’t but just don’t quite have it yet so they operate behind the scenes in what Woll calls “inverted totalitarianism” where the machinery of a democratic-republic is paralyzed or operates against the will and needs of the people. [Check out how our health care change is being sabotaged.]  We see it now. It has been going on since 1980 without change.

We are only allowed two parties with the kind of free access to the nation wide CMSM to make a chance to get enough votes to win an election. In both heads of the same party the crypto-fascists make sure no one who remains, like Kucinich, will actually change the totalitarian trajectory this country is going on. We are just one Greater Depression away from getting it. [In case no one has noticed we are in a Great Depression right now with 17-20% unemployment!] Which explains why we are still on that brink of collapse. Part of their plan after failing in 1934 to capture the USA and make it safe for Robber Barons for ever and to partner with their Axis buddies failed. Now they try again and it looks like they may succeed. They want to be the Axis of power in the world all over it like a rash.

Thanks Amy for persevering, we need more like you to point out the failure of the “Torture Zealots”.
I wonder how many Torture Bins my god worshiping country has both here and abroad?
Bush was the the worse at usurping the freedoms of the constitution but maybe Obama is about to overtake him. The elected officers of the highest office of our country not willing to apologize for their terrible mistakes..how dreadfully sad.

Barack Obama is responsible for the continued use of torture.Torture has been repeatedly proven to be an ineffective way to garner intelligence. Torture is a violation of international law, our own law, and certainly of any reasonable moral code. Barack Obama is thus in violation of the law.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. While the economy will greatly influence elections these next few years, Obama himself will share responsibility for the, in my opinion, inevitable loss of seats by Democrats in the Legislature, and, quite possibly his own as well. Considering the radicalization of the GOP this would be an astounding feat.

This case is the clearest signal for why these extraordinary activities should never have been allowed.  History has shown us, over and over again, that a law, once passed, can and will be abused.  It is so much easier to be overly aggressive in administering “justice” than it is to be cautious.  Why error on the side of this man when it is so much safer for the authorities to decide he is a danger and should therefore be sent to Syria.  The whole problem with the Patriot Act and this rendition program is the propensity of the authorities to throw away our liberties in the stupid pursuit of the occasional real terrorist.  What ever happened to the idea that it is better to release 100 guilty men than to convict a single innocent?  Has that been turned on its head?  It would appear to be the case.

It is amazing that an intelligent administation can be held in ignorant thrall by policies that have been proven not only inhumane, but actually counterproductive—breeding more terrorists and increasing the fear and hatred of this country rather than decreasing it—that thrall being the mantra of “soft on crime” now revised and extended into “soft on terrorism”.  It is proving impossible to move toward wiser policies while at the same time we are dragging the chains of torture and extraordinary rendition with every step we take. History and our Constitution tell us that we are a free country, yet we are bound by fear of doing what we know is right.  The country is in danger of becoming one vast Camp Delta, self-imprisoned by its own chains.