Yes, Bill. You have wasted enough time. And your arguments are still incoherent. Who do you blame for the Vietnam war? The politicians or the sheep who voted Nixon back in (in the same year that they killed Bobby Kennedy)choosing to believe Nixon’s lies, even though he was a crook, a proven liar and a war monger? He was also a drunk and a man who ate anti-depressants by the jar, these being provided to him without prescription by some Doctor Feelgood. In other words he was what they call a narcissistic psychopath.

Who exactly do you think will benefit from saying all politicians are bad so just don’t vote? You know as well as I do that if people take that attitude or worse throw their vote away on a party that can’t possibly form government it means that the Bush’s and Cheney’s of this world (or their proxies) and their Tea Party friends will form government. These people are Fascists- do you understand that? These people had John Kennedy killed because he was planning to withdraw American troops from Vietnam. And their long reign has brought America, decade by decade, to its knees.

There can only be one reason why you’re apoplectic at the thought that Clinton left a surplus and that is because you will have to admit that Bush pissed it away and then ran up trillions of dollars in debt to the Chinese and the Japanese. If you weren’t so devoted to the Republican Party you wouldn’t be so white hot with rage on that particular issue. You can play your funny games with the word ‘surplus’ but two and two is still four and you can’t spin that. The fact of the Clinton surplus removes one of the main lies the Republicans always tell, which is that they are good economic managers. They are appalling economic managers and worse, as Oscar Wilde said of the aristocrats of England: “They know the cost of everything and the value of nothing”. They cling to their freemarket ideology even while the economy goes down in flames around them. In other words, they are stupid and they are shits -obsessive, Bible bashing shits but shits nevertheless. Learn the lessons of history and don’t vote for them.

Oh Lord it’s hard to be humble
when you’re perfect in every way.
  I can’t wait to look in the mirror
cause I get better looking each day
  To know me is to love me
I must be a hell of a man
Oh lord it’s hard to be humble
but I’m doing the best that I can

Thanks Mac Davis,  I have the same problem,

Well, you are on the net just as I am.  I too resisted
the internet until about eight months ago.  None of my
posting has anything to do with EGO. Anyone that knows
me will tell you that I have never been about EGO.

  I, like you , was hoping a progressive internet site
would be a place to discuss ideas and solutions, it is
not, this is a Democrat Apologist website.

I have been shunned everytime I try to get a thread going
to address solutions. The only solutions anyone on this
site has is to go to the polls and vote for a democrat.
They believe 1. that the politicians give a crap about
them .  2. That solutions will not require their sacrifice
Blow it out your ass pal…..............................

Am an old man and I tell my friends that at my age the computer age when right over my head. As far back as I can remember I have never seen what is taking place here.  This seem more of an ego thing between ofersince 72 and Diamond and others at times.  Everyone has the right to believe the why they want and if it done with PURE INTENT some how we will all be in the same place.  But this is not the case here.  Thanks to ‘Truthdig’ for giving us the platform. We should be using our time/life in helping our community and not inflating our personal egos. Like today is Labor Day.  This holiday has become a very big joke.  Not the workers but the employers who give jobs to people. This is why the middle-class is disappearing. There is plenty to do beside stroking our own backs. Enough is enough.  Tlamatini-vicente

Case closed, diamond:  you’re illiterate, incompetent, or both (at a minimum:  you actually appear to be a persistent idiot, at least in the vernacular sense of the term).  Here’s why:

1.  You stated “You simply cannot sustain the argument that Nixon didn’t lie to voters in 1968” - but then I never made that argument, hence your statement is incompetent and/or illiterate.  What I DID do was counter your statement that “Nixon lied about the Vietnam war the way he lied about everything else. In 1968 he claimed that he would end the war but once re-elected on this lie, instead he continued the war and expanded it by bombing Cambodia and Laos” by observing (and giving you references for the fact) that both the lies AND the bombing of Cambodia and Laos began under Johnson (hence hardly on their own constitute evidence of escalation by Nixon).

2.  I also countered your claim that Nixon escalated the war by noting (again with references) that it was Johnson who increased our presence from 15,000 troops when he took office to 540,000 troops when he left office over 5 years later, whereas Nixon began drawing down troop levels just 6 months after taking office as part of his attempt to negotiate an end to the war (and indeed also thereby significantly decreased troop fatalities, contrary to your earlier suggestion).  It is true that Nixon intensified the bombing campaigns in an effort to pressure the North to the negotiating table, but that hardly compared with Johnson’s earlier escalation because a) it was far less massive and b) it was part of an EXIT strategy rather than a VICTORY strategy.

3.  Instead of babbling on incoherently and attempting to infer incompetently from equally-incompetent political posturing, LOOK UP THE F*CKING DEFINITION OF ‘SURPLUS’ AS I TOLD YOU TO AND SEE WHAT IT ACTUALLY MEANS WHEN APPLIED TO THE “TREASURY” (as distinct from the BUDGET - again as I already pointed out).

4.  After you’ve done that, at least TRY to educate yourself about why there wasn’t even any actual BUDGET surplus under Clinton (as ofersince72 pointed out).  I suspect that this will be considerably beyond your own limited intellectual faculties, but anyone better equipped to understand this should start with http://www.ssa.gov/history/BudgetTreatment.html, which explains why the ‘surpluses’ of the last Clinton years were illusory (basically, they used accounting techniques which had applied a decade or more earlier but by the early ‘90s had been revised in order to try to present a more honest reflection of actual deficits, though obviously that attempt had only limited success given that most reporting continued to use the earlier, rosier, more misleading analysis rather than the revised legal definition).

5.  Lastly, knee-jerk Democratic apologists like you clearly wouldn’t recognize real progressives if they kicked you roundly and soundly in the rear end (as they’ve been doing here for the last few days).  Calling us closet Republicans is as absurd as calling Obama a socialist, which puts you on about the same intellectual level as those tea partiers you’ve been railing against (no surprise there).

I’ve wasted enough time on you:  anyone with even a shred of competence who has not already left in disgust can now come to their own conclusions in the areas under discussion here without any additional input from me.

Having a debate on who and when escalated the

“war” in Vietnam serves little purpose.  Just as today,

both parties participated to an equal extent to that

tragic and shameful history.

The exact Zappa quote…...

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s
  profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where
  the illusion becomes to expensive to maintain, they will
  just take down the scenery, they will pull back the
  curtains, they will remove the tables and chairs out of
  the way and you will see the brick wall at the back
  of the theater.”

“Due to the fact that the banks, Big Oil, defense
contractors, and other wealthy special interests decide
the topics , the narrow parameters and rules of any
“public debate”, is it any suprise to anyone that a
productive and honest debate is absent from the
political scene”

commondreams poster spacecadet.$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Of course, the Clinton surplus myth was based on

“projected” paper work.  He did not leave office with

a surplus, in fact a 5.7 trillion dollar deficit.

What is intergovernmental debt?  It is debt that the

government owes itself, mostly from borrowing from

Social Security.  Increased borrowing from Social Security

is how deficits were magically transformed into surpluses

under Pres Clinton.  The mythical surpluses under Clinton

came from borrowed money, so they weren’t surpluses at

all,  they were deficits.

  Today,  with the new Deficit Reduction committee,

those debts to social security are going to be wiped out.

Meaning the final theft of social security will be a

done deal….....

KEEP VOTING FOR THE DUOPOLY…..
There used to be , years ago, a political process within
the duopoly for the plutocracy.  Those days are gone.
The Democrats don’t even bother to make a party platform
anymore.
As Zappa told us…when it got to expensive to keep the
stage play of democracy going, all we would see is the
bare brick wall at the back of the stage when the curtain
fell down

You are still that old chunk of coal ,

Too bad ...Like most Democrats , you will tell any lie

to support the Duopoly.

I don’t believe there is any hope for you to be a
diamond someday.

Tiresome, Bill. Really, really tiresome. You simply cannot sustain the argument that Nixon didn’t lie to voters in 1968 when he said he would end the war. He didn’t end it. Instead he launched a huge bombing campaign on Cambodia and Laos and didn’t end the war, he continued and extended it. He could have ended it but he didn’t and it was left to the Viet Cong to end it by taking Saigon and watching the American forces withdraw in disorder. You might also note that Nixon constantly referred to ‘peace with honour’, just like the Tea Party with it’s ‘Restore Honour’ rally. Lies and hypocrisy, as usual. The far right are so predictable: claim that they’re on God’s side and so very, very moral- while breaking or planning to break every law and every commandment. Business as usual.

If Clinton left no surplus why was there so much political argument about what to do with it? I remember that fuss, even if you’ve erased it from your memory banks, the way you do with anything that makes any Democrat president look good. Clearly if it didn’t exist there would have been nothing to argue about. Following the rational idea that both sides of politics don’t argue over a surplus that doesn’t exist I have to conclude that you’re just pushing more propaganda my way. It’s very clear that you are a Republican voter and supporter or you wouldn’t be prepared to spend so much time and energy trying to make them look good (give up, it’s impossible) and trying to make the Democrats look really, really bad. I know all about the Bay of Tonkin non-existent incident. Everyone knows about it. Informed people have known about it since the days of Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers and Watergate. And your point is? Oh, let me guess: it’s something that might make a Democrat look bad or at least make Nixon look less bad. I have a Master’s degree in German and a double major in English in my undergraduate degree, so I don’t need any help from you on words, in at least two languages. But it’s typical that when you’ve been proven wrong, someone of your limited intellect and maturity would immediately resort to name calling and smears. I’m used to that. It’s nothing more nor less than an admission of failure to make your case.

I don’t think you realize, Bill, just how dire America’s international reputation has become thanks to people like Nixon, Reagan and both Bushes. In a survey commissioned by the BBC World Service and released in March 2007 it was found that:

‘Israel, Iran and the United States were the countries with the most negative image’ globally. Israel was viewed negatively by 56% and positively by 17%. Iran was viewed negatively by 54% and positively by 18%. The United States had the third highest negative rating with 51% negative and 30% positive. This puts America neatly in between Iran and North Korea as a negative influence on the world. No doubt you have a reason or various reasons why this is not a consequence of Bush senior and junior’s wars or Reagan’s Friedmanesque economic de-regulation/financial corruption agenda but clearly the rest of the world wouldn’t agree with you since Bush II was president when this survey was done.

No ofersince72 you won’t ever be a diamond until you learn to think. At this point it’s clear no one has ever taught you how.

Just envision the way the “democracy” of corporations are then replace what we have with it. The changes? The pretense of freedom would be removed and the clarity of what it is will be obvious.

I’m sorry but only a total imbecile, with no grasp of the corporatocracy in which we live, would vote.

Do you have a say in who the president of Coke is? Exxon? Fruit of the Loom? Of course not. So, why the hell do you think you have a say in who the president of the corporation known as The United States of America is? It’s absurd.

All a vote is, is the prison warden allowing a show of hands so that the inmates think that they have a say in how the prison is run. It’s a dog & pony show. Enjoy!

Diamond…..I still love you, man

That is why I am dedicating this for you
you can also thank Billy Joe Shaver, one of my favorite
Austin guys, and who has spent much sweat bridging the
cultural gap between Mexicans and Americans.

Hey, I’m just an old chunk of coal
But Im’ going to be a DIAMOND some day
I’m gonna grow and grow till I’m so blue pure perfect
I’m gonna put a smile on everybody’s face
I’m gonna kneel and pray every day
Lest I should become wain along the way
I’m just an old chunk of coal now Lord
But I’m gonna be a DIAMOND some day

I’m gonna learn the best way to walk
Gonna search and find a better way to talk
I’m gonna spit and polish my old rough edged self
Till I get rid of every single flaw
I’m gonna be the world’s best friend
Gonna go round shaking everybody’s hand
I’m gonna be the cotton pickin’ rage of the age
I’m gonna be a DIAMOND some day

I’m just an old chunk of coal
But I’m gonna be a DIAMOND some day

Forget to take your medication today, diamond?

1.  Try using a dictionary to find out what words you don’t understand really mean.  The first dictionary definition that pops up if you Google ‘surplus’ will do fine.

While the BUDGET had a surplus under Clinton at the end, the TREASURY (your word, remember?) was still several trillion dollars in debt - hence had nothing remotely resembling a surplus (again, see that definition - and specifically its use with accounting).

2.  Since you appear to be able to use Wikipedia, you can begin your education about the Vietnam War there.  As a quick overview of when escalation occurred, Eisenhower left 900 military advisers there and Kennedy left around 15,000 American military personnel there (he started a draw-down of 1,000 just before his death as part of a planned exit).

Johnson began the real ground war in early 1965 with an additional 3,500 Marines.  By the end of that year our presence had grown to nearly 200,000.  By the end of 1968 it had risen to 540,000.

THAT’S escalation.

Bombing in Laos and Cambodia started LONG before Nixon took office - see references to the Ho Chi Minh trail bombings in both the main Wikipedia article and Operation Commando Hunt.  As did the lies (starting with the Tonkin Gulf ‘incidents’ on August 2nd and 4th, 1964 and continuing with Johnson’s “policy of minimum candor”).

About 62% of our military deaths occurred in the 4-year period 1965-1968 under Johnson.  About 38% occurred over the next 7 years under Nixon - more than half of those in 1969 as Nixon started drawing down our forces in July, 1969 (only 6 months after taking office).

You don’t need to be a fan of Nixon to accept the above facts - just a fan of the truth.

3.  It seems that you want the electorate to do what our Democratic leadership explicitly refuses to:  hold Republicans accountable for the egregiously illegal abuses of the Bush era (most of which the Democrats in Congress either actually supported or at least tolerated without any real objection, by the way).  Interesting logic, that.

4.  And you STILL have nothing to offer as an alternative to using the only real club we have to force the Democratic establishment to shape up or ship out, I see - no surprise there.  I, by contrast, do subscribe to “the art of the possible”:  it is possible to bludgeon the Democrats into shape (or irrelevance) by using the only real weapon that a two-party system provides - the other party - and that’s exactly what I’ll be doing, temporarily unpleasant though the consequences may be.  Things are already unpleasant enough under Democratic governance that it really won’t make all that much difference and, absent any better suggestion you might have but so far have failed to present, is the ONLY obvious way to open up EVENTUAL possibilities for improvement - because WITHOUT the Democrats around as a faux alternative to those nasty Republicans interest in third parties WILL increase - dramatically.

Please don’t continue to babble:  it’s just tiresome.  Instead, try responding SPECIFICALLY if that’s something you’re capable of doing.

You’re wrong TD. Very wrong. The differences between the Republicans and the Democrats are stark and undeniable. They always have been all through their history as political parties. Only an ignorant fool would claim they are the same. The other problem people with this mantra have is really very obvious. By voting either for no one and staying at home with your cat or voting for a proven loser like Ralph Nader who can never win and never form government you have simply dealt yourself out of the game. I call that surrender.

Demonizing the Democrats will only ever give comfort to the Republicans and that is a fact: a huge, glaring, irrefutable fact. Until there is a third party in America (such as the Australian Greens who now hold the balance of power in the Senate there) that is credible and has a voter base of 72 million registered voters as the Democrats have it is garbage to talk about voting for another ‘progressive’ third party. All that does is split the left vote and weakens the Democrat vote giving aid and comfort to the party that is the enemy of working Americans who make up 70% of the population: namely the Republican party. Politics is not about ideals and high flown rhetoric, in the final analysis it’s about numbers and I can add up and work out percentages and it seems you and Bill and ofersince72 either can’t or are simply pushing someone else’s ideological barrow. The facts won’t go away because you carp and moan all day long and vent your spleen. And numbers don’t lie. The average American has a seventh grade education so if you find a way to make them vote for a Green party or for Ralph Nader in big enough numbers to form government let me know. Until then you should live in a world of political reality always remembering that politics is the art of the possible, not the perfect.

Re: By diamond, September 4 at 4:50 pm

diamond wrote:
“Everything Bill and ofersince72 write is deceptive, propagandized bullshit.”
___________________________________________________

No diamond No. Your above statement is completely untrue and false. Bill and Offersince72 have a very good understanding and grasp of what is going on and the theatrics and the make belief bullshitting of this failed two party system.
You are brain washed and blinded by partisanship and are having the Democratic Party blinders, right on your eyes, that are preventing you from seeing the facts that are right in front of your face and almost tounching your face.
There is no REAL difference, whatsoever, between the Democratic and Republican parties. Both of them are owned and controlled by the copotocracy and Wall St. There is only difference in style and slogans.

Orwellian doublespeak? Now there’s something you do know all about and so does the party you support.  There’s only one word for someone who goes on voting for Ralph Nader election after election: cretin. Not that you did. There’s only one word for someone who thinks Nixon didn’t escalate the Vietnam war: ignoramus. Do you look good yet? No. You don’t.

Hey Bill,  the new Orwellian doublespeak is,

if you voted for Nader the last several elections for

president, you are a Republican Troll.

Keep talking,  you make me look good.

I like the Republican troll thingy.

Every time you defend the Democrats with one of your
lies, you make my point.

Clinton didn’t leave a huge surplus in the treasury, Bill? Really? This one statement proves that you are:

(a)  moronic
(B)  a Republican (that’s a tautology)
(c)  a liar
(d)  so full of hate for the Democrats that even things that are historical fact make no impression on you whatsoever.

Clinton’s slogan when he ran for office was, ‘It’s the economy stupid’ and that’s why he left a surplus, because he set out to do exactly that. And he did. Bush has left America bankrupt, mired in two disastrous wars, with a terminally fragile financial sector and looking morally adrift. And your cure for America’s ills is not to vote for the Democrats so that the Republicans or their shadow organisation the Tea Party can take government and do it all over again, only worse? Stupidity of the voter is always the conservative politician’s best friend and in you they have a friend indeed.

And ofersince72 has revealed his true colours by defending Nixon. He’s also a Republican troll. Nixon did escalate the war in Vietnam. That is a simple historical fact which is well known to people all over the world so denying it just makes you look idiotic. Nixon lied about the Vietnam war the way he lied about everything else. In 1968 he claimed that he would end the war but once re-elected on this lie, instead he continued the war and expanded it by bombing Cambodia and Laos. 40% of all the American soldiers who died in Vietnam died after Nixon promised to end the war in 1968. And there were even points where he phoned Kissinger, while in a completely drunk and drugged state, in the middle of the night and told him to use nuclear weapons on Vietnam. Fortunately Kissinger’s rat-like cunning prevented him from doing anything apart from saying, ‘Yes, Mr. President’ and going back to sleep. He knew in the morning Nixon wouldn’t even recall the phone call. But if Nixon had used nuclear weapons on Vietnam I know that ofersince72 would still say Nixon hadn’t escalated the war because he loves Nixon. This means he’s a Republican troll claiming to be some idealistic supporter of some never named third party which he will vote for to ‘punish’ the Democrats for:

1. Trying to pull the United States into the 21st century on health care.

2. Sending troops to support the UN in Bosnia where a massive genocide was taking place and women and children were in rape camps. Peace was restored under the auspices of the UN. This was an appropriate use of US power. Unlike the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan which are illegal wars with no UN approval fought for oil and to put puppet governments in place.

3. For cleaning up the Republicans’ various messes yet again.

Everything Bill and ofersince72 write is deceptive, propagandized bullshit. Even though ofersince72 uses lots of capitals and exclamation marks to make it look as if he’s telling the truth. It was Reagan who started the 30 year war in Afghanistan by supporting the Mujaheddin and it was Reagan who started shipping US manufacturing overseas. My guess is, you would know at least some of the sordid history of the Republican Presidents if either of you ever read a history book -or wanted to know.

And you know another word for blame? Accountability. If the Republicans aren’t blamed for what they’ve done and held accountable electorally they will do it again. That’s something you can count on in an uncertain world, children. Along with the fact that Ralph Nader will never be president.

Excuse me Bellamy Brothers,  I changed the age….......

He turned sixty-one last Sunday
In his hair he found some grey
But he still ain’t changed his lifestyle
He likes it better the old way
So he grows a little garden in the back yard by the fence
He’s consuming what he’s growing nowadays in self defense
He get’s out there in the twilight zone
Sometimes when it just don’t make no sense

He gets off on country music
cause disco left him cold
He’s got young friends into new wave
Buts he’s just too damn old
And he dreams at night of Woodstock
And the day John Lennon died
how the music made him happy
and the silence made him cry
Yea he thinks of John sometimes
And he has to wonder why

He’s an old hippie
and he don’t know what to do
Should he hang on to the old
Should he grab on to the new
He’s an old hippie
his new life is just a bust
He ain’t trying to change nobody
He just trying real hard to adjust

He was sure back in the sixties
That everyone was hip
Then they sent him off to Vietnam
On his senior trip
And they force him to become a man
While he was still a boy
And in each wave of tragedy
He waited for the joy
Now this world may change around him
but he just can’t change nomore

He’s an old hippie
and he don’t know what to do
Should he hang on to the old
should he grab on to the new
He’s an old hippie
his new life is just a bust
He ain’t trying to change nobody
he just trying real hard to adjust

Well he stays away a lot now
From the parties and the clubs
And he’s thinking while he’s joggin’ round
Sure is glad he quit the hard drugs
Cause him and his kind get more endangered everyday
And pretty soon the species
will just up and fade away
Like the smoke from that torpedo

He’s an old hippie
and he don’t know what to do
Should he hang on to the old
Should he grab on to the new
he’s an old hippie
his new life is just a bust
he ain’t trying to change nobody
he just trying real hard to adjust

But Diamond,

  Good ole Rachael and Keith aren’t going to tell

you about that ......they will be to busy talking about

some little fib Beck said about holding a piece of paper.

But if anyone is really interested in what is

really going on in Iraq, because the major news

services aren’t going to tell you squat…

Go to TruthOut and read about the workers there in
Iraq right now….You will see that it is not
ethnic rivalry,,,,but the U.S. and the new installed
U.S. puppet government killing union organizing of the
workers.

And around, and around and around we go…
Where we stop, only few of us know…

It’s called the blame game
Let’s do Clinton
Clinton, Clinton, Bo Binton
Bannana, Fana Fo Finton
Fe Fi Fo Minton
Clinton…....

Now let’s do Bush
Bush, Bush Bo Bush
Bannana, Fana Fo Fush
Fe Fi Fo Fush
Bush

Now lets Obama
Obama, bama bo bama
Fe Fi, Fo Fama
Bananna, Fana, Fo Bama
Fe Fi Fo Mama
Obama

It’s the blame game,  brought to you by
General Electric , Murdock, Disney, Wapo , Times and the
Journal…..THE BLAME GAME…..

Richard Nixon didn’t take office until

the middle of January, 1969,  and Democrats have

the nerve to pervert history and say Nixon is the one

that escalated the Viet Nam war…........

Like the Republicans don’t do enough history perversion,
the Democrats have to help them.

If it weren’t for the IWW, the socialist party,

the other unions, and mass demonstration…the

NEW DEAL would never have happened..

And furthermore….you can thank HENRY WALLACE and his
faction of the Democrat Party for the NEW DEAL , not
FDR.

The ONLY thing that the Dems and Pubs know how to

do by themselves,  is take us to war….............

But really, it has been a duopoly for the plutocracy

for a very long time…

No one really wants to admit that every piece of social
legislation was brought about by protest, burning cities
down,  organized resistance, ect.

Never, have the Dems or Pubs…just said, “You know
public citizen, we love you so much,  I am going to do
something great for you.”
That ain’t ever happened!!!  Including the NEW DEAL.

I believe you could sum up the

Democrat vs Beck/Palin show as the

B A B Y…..B O O M E R….S H O W….................

I doubt a large number of voters under 30 even vote
this time around.  They sure don’t care about
“The Show”.  That is for the fifty and older crowd.

McGovern is the last candidate from a major party

that I voted for as president. Lost that one.

that is why i am ofersince72….

but with the way this country has been led…
I have nothing to be ashamed of.
It isn’t going to get better…Dem or Pub…
Where we are at right now, is the best shape anyone in
our generation is ever going to see it.
I sure wouldn’t want to be in our children’s generation.
America is going to rot and rot some more.
Thanks to us baby boomers.
We undid many generations of hard work in just one gen.
We turned our back, and voted for our self-interest with
little regard for anyone else or the future, now we are
reaping what we sowed.
Dem or Pub…...What does anyone think the landscape is
going to look like in just five years.????
The Democrats don’t even have a party platform.
Even if the Dems keep the majority and get re-elected to
the White House….what significant change will we have?
It’s lost..
The plutocracy won.
Community living is the only way the public is going to
survive.  Trading and bartering. Getting out of vehicles
and talking to neighbors, throwing cell phones away.
The younguns understand this..
To them…this Democrat vs Palin/Beck show is stupid
old peoples stuff, and they are right.

Whoops - I didn’t mean to leave George McGovern out of the list of bling-less Democrats with at least some substance.  Of course, his handling of the Eagleton situation didn’t help him either.  As for Humphrey, he simply didn’t have the courage of his convictions to repudiate Vietnam and thus lost whatever substance he might once have had (Bush I didn’t either when he continued the disastrous Reagan economic policies which he had correctly characterized a ‘voodoo economics’ a decade earlier, but he faced a sufficiently uninspiring Democratic candidate in 1988 to prevail nonetheless).

I can’t remember,,

What party held majority in Congress during the
Nixon and Reagon presidency??

“Nixon escalated the Viet Nam War”

WOW…..You are desperate…..

Ah, diamond:  I see that you’re not merely factually- and logically-challenged, but perhaps mathematically-challenged as well.

Our election system is based almost exclusively on plurality (‘first past the post) wins - i.e., a candidate can win with well under 50% of the popular vote (even without the idiosyncrasies introduced by the presidential elector system).  This means that unless those ‘crazy’ independents who vote for other than the two major parties actually manage to get their candidates elected, their votes can have NO influence on the balance between Democrats and Republicans.

Plurality elections are the major reason why we’re being strangled by two unacceptable major parties (and why people like me have little recourse but to vote ‘strategically’ in order to try to break that stranglehold).

In actuality, of course, neither Democrats nor Republicans always vote straight party tickets, and Independents overwhelmingly vote for one of the two major party candidates.  The reason why 4 of the last 6 presidents (since you seem not to be counting Obama in order to try to make some kind of point:  if you count him, the numbers are 3 and 3) have been Republicans is that the Democratic candidates haven’t managed to inspire their bases and/or swing voters as much as the Republican candidates have:  Kerry wound up being Bush Lite in 2004, Gore ran a lack-luster campaign in 2000 (running away from the Clinton administration rather than trying to leverage its prosperity - leaving aside how much credit it was due for that), Dukakis was too intellectual for the electorate, Carter had the albatross of the Iran hostage situation around his neck (as well as a lot of disaffected Kennedy supporters), and Humphrey had Vietnam to answer for (and refused to repudiate it).

In other words, save for Clinton and Obama, the Republicans have simply out-blinged the Democrats:  the American electorate is drawn to shiny things (or, lacking that, folksy things) rather than to substance (which Gore, Dukakis, Mondale, and Carter arguably had at least some of).  Had it not been for Watergate and Gerry Ford, Carter might well not have been elected in 1976.

Oh, by the way:  Clinton in no way left a surplus in the treasury - he merely enjoyed a sufficiently exuberant economic environment to allow the huge pile of debt to stop increasing temporarily and got out in time to let Bush take the fall for the following recession (not that Bush’s policies didn’t make matters worse after the recession hit, of course).  Perhaps you actually knew that but just got carried away.

As for your closing drivel, ‘blame’ is what people like YOU are trying to place, rather than seeking actual solutions.  I’ve never suggested that the Democrats are mostly to blame for our problems - just that they’re the ones currently keeping them from getting fixed (and to all appearances dedicated to continuing this policy).  Perhaps they’ve just been inspired by the political and personal success of Republican venality and might not have developed it on their own, but it really doesn’t matter:  they are what they now are, and what we have to deal with.

I’ll ask one more time:  if we DON’T bludgeon the national Democratic establishment sufficiently either to get it to shape up or to destroy it and make room for better representation to thrive, what OTHER strategy would you suggest to turn this country around?

i say we change the subject and everybody read this

there are some cool ass newspaper articles here from the founders days talking
about the same thing we talk about today. 

1809 guys and it fits today!!!  WOW
http://politheo.com/americanpolitics1809.html

His health care involved adding some smaller companies to the league of special corporations who torture us with their health care options. They didn’t want more in the exclusive club. It has since been mislabeled as “single payer” which it wasn’t. Just enlarging the club of health care oligopoly, he and Hillary had a financial stake in that too.

So he didn’t go into Iraq, we already had and the no fly zones and whatever the troops did still left Iraq a prisoner to be fired upon at will. The whole invasion and subsequent attack and blockade violated many international laws and our own laws but he did nothing but maintain it. He was no liberal.

Didn’t he help in the disaster of Bosnia authorizing bombings? That wasn’t a liberal act either considering liberals didn’t want him to kill people and bombs are the most effective terror weapon and least precise.

The Republicans have 55 million registered voters, the Democrats have 72 million registered voters. It would seem that this means it should be easy for them to be elected to government but then there are the 42 million so called independent voters and they do crazy things like voting for Ralph Nader and other minor parties that can never form government and this cancels out the advantage the Democrats should have. It’s because of these so-called independent voters that of the last six presidents, four have been Republicans and all of them were disastrous in varying measure:

1. Nixon- Escalated the Vietnam War, used the CIA to carry out a burglary so he could spy on Daniel Ellsberg (Watergate), used the secret service to spy on American citizens, including journalists, lied to the American voters by promising to end the Vietnam War but didn’t end it and bombed Cambodia and Laos instead.

2. Reagan - tax cuts for the rich, introduced Milton Friedman’s free market, economic rationalist madness, covert genocides carried out all over the world, began the proxy war in Afghanistan, armed and funded the Muhajeddin, extremist Islamic fundamentalists and landowning mullahs (now the Taliban), bankrupted America.

George Bush I - tax cuts for the rich, first Gulf War, didn’t fix Reagan’s economic mess

George Bush II- tax cuts for the rich, carried out total deregulation of the financial sector, 9/11, anthrax letters, began illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, presided over global economic collapse and meltdown of entire financial sector of America, set up Guantanamo Bay, presided over rape, child molestation, torture and murder in Abu Ghraib and then denied it was a government program, ditto for Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

By comparison Clinton refused to invade Iraq in 1998 when the neo cons sent him what is known as the ‘January letter’ demanding that he invade Iraq with or without UN approval. This earned him the undying enmity of the neo cons and the extreme right of the Republican Party. They then set out to destroy him with smear and scandal, hoping to impeach him and throw him out of office. And why wasn’t Clinton able to get his health care reforms through?

‘In 1997, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, along with several other groups, filed a lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and Donna Shalala?  over closed-door meetings related to the health care plan. The AAPS sued to gain access to the list of members of the task force. Judge Royce C. Lamberth found in favor of the plaintiffs and awarded $285,864 to the AAPS for legal costs; Lamberth also harshly criticized the Clinton administration and Clinton aide Ira Magaziner in his ruling.[13]  Subsequently, a federal appeals court overturned the award and the initial findings on the basis that Magaziner and the administration had not acted in bad faith.[14]’ Wikipedia.

When your political opponents can use the court system as a wing of their political party, it doesn’t seem to me to matter if Ralph Nader was president or not. They would do the same thing to him. Blaming the Democrats alone for a system the Republicans own and have completely corrupted makes no sense at all. And putting the Republicans back in power will do nothing whatsoever to fix it because they are the problem, not the solution. Clinton left a huge surplus in the treasury but Bush II pissed it up against a wall and then borrowed trillions from the Chinese and the Japanese. But I’m sure you have a way to blame that on the Democrats too.

That’s the point of taking over a duopoly in the first place vicente carranza. The the crypto-fascists have two false faces. One just looks better than the other but the outcomes? Mostly the same. The difference is that the Democrats aren’t as taken over as the Republicans but not by much.

Well, vicente, I can only think of two possible explanations for your post:  1) you’re completely unable to understand what you read, or 2) your tongue is firmly in your cheek.

For your sake, I hope it’s the latter.

Wow - I guess that after people like diamond run out of new ideas (which seems to have happened after the first post in this case:  note that there’s STILL no offer of any OTHER way we might get the Democrats to shape up, nor anything beyond “But the Republicans are WORSE!!!” on the table) they resort to putting words in other people’s mouths and then arguing against them (it’s always easier to argue against straw men than the real thing).

Of course there are differences between the two parties, and indeed IN THE SHORT TERM the Democrats can reasonably be characterized as the lesser evil (though still decidedly evil, mind you, beyond any shadow of a doubt).  The problem is that IN THE LONG TERM they’re the GREATER evil, because THEY are the party establishment standing squarely in the way of getting real progressive options on the table:  they corral most progressives into setting their principles aside and, however reluctantly, supporting them with exactly this tactic of saying how much worse the Republicans are, and thus stifle any REAL change (instead, providing some small diminution of the Republican rush to catastrophe rather than actually moving AWAY from that direction).

For those not wholly occupied with finding excuses for the party’s behavior (and thus willing to move outside their comfort zone) the situation is pretty clear:  support Democrats and keep moving in the direction we’ve been moving for at least the past 30 years at varying rates of speed, or abandon the Democrats and try a strategy that at least MIGHT result in actual change.  Many of us abandoned the Democrats after their abject failure to mount any effective opposition to the transparently unnecessary and illegal invasion of Iraq - but since supporting and voting for third parties has indeed been relatively ineffective in causing the establishment Democrats to change or wither away some of us have decided to use our votes more strategically by voting Republican (thus doubling the force of each vote) to try to destroy the national Democratic establishment as the necessary precursor to giving better representation a chance to grow.

It’s telling that diamond refers to data not updated since 2002 - the last year that I found supporting the party to be reasonable (well, I supported Dean in 2003, but he was effectively marginalized - if you don’t know the details, don’t bother babbling about this).  As for the party still supporting labor today, that’s a real thigh-slapper:  labor came down squarely on the side of Blanche Lincoln’s primary opponent Bill Halter in Arkansas, the Democratic establishment reacted by coming down squarely for Lincoln, she eked out a win, and the White House then chided Labor for having wasted its effort.  Not that this administration hasn’t done plenty of other things to poke Labor in the eye with a sharp stick, of course (they REALLY weren’t happy with what happened to health-care ‘reform’, for example).

As I said before, we’ll just have to see what happens in November.  I’m hopeful that the party will get its richly-deserved thrashing (and will certainly do what I can to ensure that), because it really doesn’t have anything substantive to offer in the way of accomplishment for its past two years nor any credible excuse for that situation given its solid control of Congress and the presidency.  Still, the American electorate is sufficiently ignorant and irresponsible that anything could happen, so rather than make predictions I’ll just continue plodding along doing what I think is right.

Here is what I just faxed to Senator Leahy’s office.

Honorable Senator Leahy,

I signed your petition for a Truth Commission.

I urged many others to do so.

If this commission comes about, how are we to know

that it isn’t going to be just another Democrat

white wash like the Brit’s was?

Sincerely,

OFERSINCE72

please sign the petition, then request what I did.
Senator Leahy ...fax   1 (202) 224-3479

Dear Truth Dig editor and webmaster,

The little blurb of mine that you just censored is just

the reason why we can’t get anything done or our bad

policies turned around…

And also just why the Maddow and Olberman show is a joke

What is the matter TRUTH DIG editor and webmaster,

THE TRUTH HURT????

Re: By diamond, September 3 at 5:24 am

diamond,

There is something called “token voting”, where some Domocrats vote progressive but they know it, that their vote will not be sufficient to defeat the blue dogs and conservative Democrat plus the Republicans.
It is a gimmick just for public consumtion.
The Democrats have been in control since 2006, but the Republicans always got all what they wanted accompanied with some theatrical fake disputes with the Democrats, again, for public cosumption trying to create the impression that there are differences between the Democratic and Republican parties.
There is no REAl difference between the Democratic and Republican parties. The difference is in style.
The Democratic party, like its twin brother the Republican party, both are owned and controlled by Big Finance/Corporations.

Labor??????  What Labor????

Sure looks like you threw your vote away

Diamond…..

People like Bill justify voting for Ralph Nader (which is like throwing your vote away) by claiming that there is no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. This is a myth and one that is very useful to the conservative side of politics:

‘Yes, there is a huge chasm between the way most of the members of the two major parties vote on many issues.  Vote-Smart.org lists 107 different ratings.  Of these, fully 93 found the parties stratified on either side of the fifty percent mark, one supporting a particular interest, and the other opposed to that same interest. The parties do not simply differ slightly on the issues – they often differ like night and day.
     
What’s most instructive are the particular groups that found the parties to be voting with their wishes.  Looking at those groups, together with their self-described missions produces a composite view of the positions of the parties. I have not updated the figures on this page since the year 2002, but there hasn’t been any need to do so because the purpose of this page is to highlight the contrast between the two parties, and if anything that contrast has only grown in the period since this study was made.

The most glaring disparity between the parties is regarding organized labor.  Sixteen different labor unions provide ratings of Congressmembers’ voting, and all 16 – every last one – found that the Democratic Party voted in favor of the interests of the working men and women that they represent, while the Republican Party voted against those interests.  In fact, the most common rating individual Democrats in Congress received from labor unions was a perfect 100 percent – voting with that union every time.  In stark contrast, the most common rating any individual Republican received was a perfect zero, never voting with that union even once.  For example, of the 261 Democrats in Congress that the United Food and Commercial Workers union rated in 2001, 206 received a perfect 100 percent rating.  In contrast, of the 269 Republicans in Congress the UFCW rated in 2001, 232 received an unqualified zero.  It’s as if the Republican Party has declared outright warfare on working people in this country.

“But what about business?” might come the rejoinder.  When that general charge has been expressed more narrowly, it translates to: “The Democrats and the Republicans are just two branches of the Business Party.” The facts show how totally untrue that charge is, and coming at this matter from opposite points of view, business and labor both say the same thing, i.e. that Republicans favor business interests, while Democrats favor workers interests.

Five different special interest groups are listed as representing business on Vote-Smart.org, and all five found the Republicans to vote with their interests while the Democrats vote against them.
As demonstrated by their voting records, Democrats are viewed by working people, women, seniors, African-Americans, Hispanics and consumers as the advocates for just and equitable working conditions, for civil rights, for protecting the environment, for reproductive freedom, for gun control, for education, for public health, and for humanitarian social policy.

And the Republicans?  The Republicans are viewed by big business opponents of taxes on business, or those who benefit most from business and opponents of government services to any entity other than businesses, as services require taxation to pay for them. Perhaps they can best be defined by what they’re against, rather than what they’re for: they are against all those groups and all those social aims that the Democrats serve. However much they might protest this characterization, their voting record speaks for itself.’

So next time you vote for Ralph Nader, Bill, don’t pretend it’s the lesser of three evils. It isn’t.

The control of information and the creation of

non-issues as a diversion to the issues that really are

of a concern, is not just something that happened overnite

It was the sixties that the oligarchs became overly

concerned what a well educated and informed public is

to the plutocracy.  It was a well engineered and thought
’ out plan, some of it real subtle , some not so subtle.

Removing the Smothers Brothers was one of their first

acts and a not so subtle one, same with WGTB, Georgetown

University Public Radio.  But most of it was real subtle

and carried out through the seventies, fined tuned ever

after.  They did their best not to make an obvious control

to the majority of Americans.  Much was written about this

in the seventies, eighties, ninties, and up until today.

Chomsky and Parenti come to mind as have written some of

the enlightening facts of the take over of information

and issues to be discussed.

  However, it was not just the news services that had
to be contained to keep control of information and issues.
For during the sixties there was also an explosion of
topical entertainment that hit mainstream. The beat
generation offered no big threat since it reached small
audiences, so Lenny Bruce and Phil Oches and such, no mind
However Bob Dylan changed all that. Soon , you had a whole
counter-culture of anti-status quo hitting the major media
Frank Zappa, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin
and many others as the anti-draft and anti-war movement
became more than something for the Oligarchs to contend
with.
  So, around the time of the Nixon inauguration, topical
entertainment was attacked.  By as early as 1973-73,
most entertainment with a social messege no longer recieved the widespread distribution. Groups like the
Rolling Stones, signed major recording contracts that
forbade such social messege. Same with McCartney, he
turned whore. Some, like The Doors, refused to sell out.
Until today, The Doors refuse to let any of their hits
be used for commercial purposes.  Cadillac really wanted
their “Move on to the Other Side”..had to settle with
Led Zeplin.  I have always believed that Morrison’s,
Hendrix and Joplin’s death were mysterious. Of course,
they had to depict them as worse kind of drug addicts.
The quality of music, the amount of time rehersing,
ect…leaves on to wonder…Yet the Stones, used to fly
all the way back to Europe in between shoes to get blood
transfusions.
  Every now and then today a group will break through,
like System of a Down.  It is very rare.
Our entertainment industry is just as controlled as the
news media.
H A R R Y…..B E L A F O N T E….
I will never forget the contributions you gave the world.

It is a great tag-team match Murdock and General Elect

have going..

  Murdock puts out rediculous non-issues and talks
rediculous about these non-issues of no concern…

then
  General Electric spends weeks bebunking rediculous
dumbass non-issues..

It is a great show….....................

I really find no need to supply ample reasons to
back my assessment of GenElectric,however,their endorsment
of the U.S. response to 911 comes to mind, their lack
of questioning about weapons of mass destruction until
after the fact,  Olberman’s obsession for the withdrawal
of U.S. troops from Iraq until Obama took office.

and there are so many, many , more…

what a diversion…..it is good for the public consumption
good guy…bad guy routine.  We are the good guy faction
of the duopoly, managers of the Plutocracy for the
Oligarchs…..GO GE, GO GE, GO GE, GO GE, GO GE.$$$$$$$$$

Call it diarrea if you care….

Never have I defended Palin/Beck…

however , we already are in “free market libertarianism”

Continue giving credibility to General Electric, we will
continue our backslide.

P.S.
As you may have already noticed, labels put on me don’t
bother me.

ofersince72, again you dodge the question and blow smoke. I see quite find in all that “light” & the smoke you spew. [You made a claim about MSNBC that is backed by…nothing.] As for remedies, that isn’t what I asked and you know it. Maybe you are a troll or trollish, best to have that attended to before it becomes full blown troll. Explosive diarrhea is better than being one of those.

With our manufacturing base overseas and at the mercy of whom ever owns it, and our gov’t being held together by those corporations they have allowed to take over functions that only gov’t should do. We are in deep doo doo and they will make us pay to wipe up their mess. I haven’t heard Palin or Beck or any of those “free market Liberterians” have a problem with it. I an many others do.

Re: By Lafayette, September 2 at 3:58 am

Lafayette wrote:
“We are transitioning paradigms, that is, evolving from from the Industrial Age into the Information Age—and the dislocations will be just as great as during the transition form the Agricultural Age to the Industrial Age that began in the 19th century”
_____________________________________________________

We heard that trite misleading but still infuriating bullshit before.
There is a big difference between the transition from the Agricutural Age to the Industrial Age and current transition from the Industria Age to what you call Service/Information economy.
In the first case, the vanishing Agricutural jobs were eventually replaced by good paying Industrial jobs.
In the second case, the good ndustrial jobs, that paid living wages accompanied with good benefits are mostly being replaced by low paying jobs working for McDonald, Walmart or bar-tending or as waiters/waitresses. Most of these jobs don’t provide living wage jobs and provide minimal to zero benefits.
In this case the Industrial jobs didn’t become extinct, only in automation cases, but were shipped offshore to China, India, ...etc etc…
Many of what you call Information Age jobs and many of the semi-professional jobs are being offshored too. Any job that can be done on a computer connected to the internet is a candidate for off-shoring.
This offshoring process, is not cast in concrete or dictated by nature, but it is done by man and what is done by man can be undone by man.
This offshoring process has to be stopped and gradually reversed or the result will be the disappearance of the middle class and the society will be composed of very thin super-rich class on the top, followed by a thin middle class, followed by poor struggling class that includes most of the population.

Buh-Buh Buh—BARBIEQUE—I think I love you!!

Oh, I get it.

“Now I’m stocking shirts in the Wal-Mart store
Just like the ones we make before
‘Cept this one came from Singapore
I guess we can’t make it here anymore”

Should I hate a people for the shade of their skin
Or the shape of their eyes or the shape I’m in
Should I hate them for havein our jobs today
No I hate the men sent the jobs away.”

So the rubbish that I see on the internet are those
trying to make me accept a military economic employment
system.

Well, BobZ, I never SAID I was a Democrat, so it’s not clear why you think I should SOUND like one.  I’m a progressive, and I vote for progressives - which some Democrats used to come close enough to being to earn my vote, but not any time recently.

People like me voted for Gore in 2000, by the way:  the Democratic party had yet to become so blatantly cowed/corrupt/corporate-owned that we couldn’t stomach that any more, nor had America descended anywhere nearly as far into the decadent incompetence that requires better-honed choices (and I still appreciate how Gore seemed to grow after 2000 into someone I could vote for today even if he might not be my first choice).

The knee-jerk Democratic stalwarts just don’t get it, I guess.  Sometimes you NEED to cut off your nose - not to spite your face, but to save it - when its cancer will otherwise surely spread.  But no, you just keep on making increasingly pathetic excuses for Obama’s continuing sell-outs (I already listed enough that I won’t bother to do so again, since you clearly have your eyes tightly shut in this area) and (yet again) whining about how the nastiness of those Republicans justifies putting up with ANYTHING that the Democrats might do.

Good luck with that.  A lot of people bought into it in 2004, though wound up pretty disillusioned with Kerry.  A lot more bought into Obama’s lofty and continual promises of ‘hope’, ‘change you can believe in’, and ‘an end to business as usual’ in 2008, and were even more let-down after he took office (though some, like you, seem to cling to comforting illusion in preference to reality).

We’ll see how things work out in November.  I have no particular desire to say “I told you so” to people who disagree, I just mean to do my best to ensure that the party pays as heavy a price as possible for its actions to maximize the probability that it will, finally, understand that to win, it has to stand FOR something, not just against some real or manufactured threat (Obama did seem to get this during his campaign, but quickly abandoned it after being elected - so clearly the lesson needs to be taught again and more forcefully).

{o72: Did the Harvard study on welfare take into consideration that our manufacturing base has been
shipped overseas}

The above is the sort of rubbish commentary that is presently all over the Internet.

Manufacturing started leaving the US a long, long time ago. It is not some recent, spectacular event. Look at the facts, before blogging, which are these: For at least two decades, BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) data has shown that American jobs are preponderantly in the Services Sector. Today the breakdown between Manufacturing and Service jobs is 12 versus 78%. The rest going to agriculture and construction.

Ours has become thus a Services Economy, which means that manufacturing will continue to remain in niche-sectors for as long as labor-costs are the key element in any given production process. For those production processes that can be automated and labor input reduced, those jobs will remain. What jobs might those be?

Mostly those that are tertiary, meaning related to manufacturing but ancillary. For instance: inventory management, transportation (shipping) and distribution (sales/marketing). However, those sorts of employment find themselves accounted for in the services-sector for statistical purposes.

We are transitioning paradigms, that is, evolving from from the Industrial Age into the Information Age—and the dislocations will be just as great as during the transition form the Agricultural Age to the Industrial Age that began in the 19th century. Agricultural jobs were destroyed by the thousands upon thousands as people—seeking the higher wages—flocked into large cities where manufacturing plants were being established.

Such transitions are historically ineluctable so let’s just get used to them. Meaning what?

Meaning that revamping our workforce with increasingly better skills and talents. This places the onus on Education, which is a long-term evolution. There is no “Quick Fix”, which Americans love so much because it is fast and painless.

Presently, American education, in an international comparison, is woefully mediocre. (If interested, see the detailed PISA research on educational performance done the OECD.) There are far too many drop-outs and far too few secondary-school students going into tertiary education (whether vocational, college or university).

This is America’s key challenge in order to maintain its competitiveness in world markets. The Educational system must be tasked in terms of teaching performance and its ability to “through-put” students from a High-School diploma into post-secondary schooling.

“Be all ya wannabe” is a New Age falsehood. Be what you can be is the rule. Meaning empowering oneself with the skills necessary to perform increasingly more complex tasks, particularly within the Services Sector.

Because that is the way the world is evolving. And lets stop wailing about “Manufacturing jobs going off-shore”. That sad fact was unavoidable. We should have been preparing for its consequences.

Instead of bathing in the radiant sunshine of the dot.com boom ‘n bust, which proved to be fools gold.

Other countries were doing this, whilst we were out to lunch. Now we are paying the consequences of that oversight.

{o72: Did the Harvard study on welfare take into consideration that our manufacturing base has been
shipped overseas}

The above is the sort of rubbish commentary that is presently all over the Internet.

Manufacturing started leaving the US a long, long time ago. It is not some recent, spectacular event. Look at the facts, before blogging, which are these: For at least two decades, BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) data has shown that American jobs are preponderantly in the Services Sector. Today the breakdown between Manufacturing and Service jobs is 12 versus 78%. The rest going to agriculture and construction.

Ours has become thus a Services Economy, which means that manufacturing will continue to remain in niche-sectors for as long as labor-costs are the key element in any given production process. For those production processes that can be automated and labor input reduced, those jobs will remain. What jobs might those be?

Mostly those that are tertiary, meaning related to manufacturing but ancillary. For instance: inventory management, transportation (shipping) and distribution (sales/marketing). However, those sorts of employment find themselves accounted for in the services-sector for statistical purposes.

We are transitioning paradigms, that is, evolving from from the Industrial Age into the Information Age—and the dislocations will be just as great as during the transition form the Agricultural Age to the Industrial Age that began in the 19th century. Agricultural jobs were destroyed by the thousands upon thousands as people—seeking the higher wages—flocked into large cities where manufacturing plants were being established.

Such transitions are historically ineluctable so let’s just get used to them. Meaning what?

Meaning that revamping our workforce with increasingly better skills and talents. This places the onus on Education, which is a long-term evolution. There is no “Quick Fix”, which Americans love so much because it is fast and painless.

Presently, American education, in an international comparison, is woefully mediocre. (If interested, see the detailed PISA research on educational performance done the OECD.) There are far too many drop-outs and far too few secondary-school students going into tertiary education (whether vocational, college or university).

This is America’s key challenge in order to maintain its competitiveness in world markets. The Educational system must be tasked in terms of teaching performance and its ability to “through-put” students from a High-School diploma into post-secondary schooling.

“Be all ya wannabe” is a New Age falsehood. Be what you can be is the rule. Meaning empowering oneself with the skills necessary to perform increasingly more complex tasks, particularly within the Services Sector.

Because that is the way the world is evolving. And lets stop wailing about “Manufacturing jobs going off-shore”. That sad fact was unavoidable. We should have been preparing for its consequences. Instead of bathing in the radiant sunshine of the dot.com boom ‘n bust, which proved to be fools gold.

Other countries were doing this, whilst we were out to lunch. Now we are paying the consequences of that oversight.

Bush II is the one who made the agreement for the

Augest 2010 draw down of troops and turning operations

over to the Iragi

(that I believe this is a joke with so many mercenaries
and 50k troops remaining, along with the permanence of
U.S. bases and presence in Iraq is some what in material
to what the agreement that Obama professes to be keeping,
it was a Bush treaty, so to say that there still would
be 150, 000 U.S. troops in Iraq if McCain was president
is an opinion, not fact.)

If one were to look at the Congressional vote
for War on Iraq, they would see the Democrat complicity.
I, as a Nader voter can play the blame game to, It is
all those who voted for Gore and not Nader, the reason
this country finds itself in the dire position that it
finds itself in.

Did the Harvard study on welfare take into consideration that our manufacturing base has been
shipped overseas,  that the labor unions have been broken,
that a good portion of America is underemployed and many
single parent Moms have to work two jobs to make ends meet
Did this study on welfare take into consideration that
America has been reduced to a military economic
employment complex?  Did it look at the institutional
racism that Michael Alexander addresses in her book
The New Jim Crow?  All these issues to me go hand and
hand.

So What is the Democrat Party platform for this
November’s elections???

To: Bill

You don’t really sound like a Democrat at all. Otherwise you would not be
cutting off your nose to spite your face. Because people like you thought Gore
and Bush were tweedledee and tweedeldum, they helped put tweedeldum in the
White House and 4400+ lost American lives later and hundreds of thousands of
dead iraqis, and a trillion dollars wasted that could have been spent improving
the lives of average Americans. Your comments about Obama are also way off
the mark. He has followed through on his major campaign promises in less than
two years in office. Do you really think we would be better off with John
McCain/Sarah Palin in office? We would still have 150,000 troops in Iraq, we
would be in the 2nd great depression, and all of the work toward energy
independence would be gone right down the tubes. Because of Obama we now
have thousands of young people who can stay on their parents insurance
policies, and people with preexisting conditions can finally get health care.
There are huge differences between Democrats and Republican’s. Republican’s
fundamentally don’t believe in government and go out of their way to prove
that government is not the answer, because they stack all of the government
agencies with people like “heckava job Brownie.” And how would you like John
McCain picking two Supreme Court Justices? In the next session, they would be
working on overturning Roe vs. Wade.

people are not blind or adamant they are buyers…caveat emptor

Mind Control or Marketing

If you were asked to judge a policy proposal for addressing a social issue,
which would be more important to you, the content of the proposal or the
party that wrote it?

Most of us would answer that the specific policies would be much more
important than the political party that proposed it. Most of us would be dead
wrong.

Political marketers know that they have to target swing voters (undecideds,
independents, etc.) with their ads and other efforts because trying to change
the mind of committed party members is next to impossible.

In The Neuroscience of Political Marketing, I described research by Drew
Westen at Emory that showed political messages were processed primarily in
an emotional, not rational, way.

A study by social psychologist Geoffrey Cohen at Yale shows that cognitive
dissonance plays a big role in the way people evaluate political issues, and that
they will adjust their beliefs (and maybe facts) as needed to resolve that
dissonance.

Cohen’s experiment was simple. He organized two groups of subjects, one
composed of liberal Democrats, the other of conservative Republicans.

Then, he showed them very different proposals on the topic of welfare.

One policy proposal was very liberal, and involved large expenditures of tax
money. The other was harshly conservative, and proposed far lower levels of
assistance and expense.

As you might expect, the liberal subjects preferred the free-spending plan
while the conservatives liked the restrictive plan.

Here’s the bizarre twist: when the subjects were told that the plan they didn’t
like had been proposed by their own party, their attitudes changed and they
favored the plan they had initially opposed.

the rest @ http://www.politheo.com/think.html

If you care to believe that
General Electric and Viacom have your better interests
in mind…...Go ahead, that is your belief.

I cannot change your mind from voting for one of
the facist factions of the duopoly that have wrecked
our country, its economy, its standing in the world,
its reformation into making this a military economic
employment complex, destroying the environment,
employing institutional racism and just a general
degradation of our society,

And you cannot change my mind to vote for one of them.

Night-Gaunt

Can’t help it if you are blinded by the light.

I have offered many solutions,....you none…...........

Evil is described by M. Scott Peck as “militant ignorance”. Characteristics of an
evil person…..
Is consistently self deceiving, with the intent of avoiding guilt and maintaining
a self image of perfection

Deceives others as a consequence of their own self deception

Projects his or her evils and sins onto very specific targets (scapegoats) while
being apparently normal with everyone else (“their insensitivity toward him was
selective”

Commonly hates with the pretense of love, for the purposes of self deception
as much as deception of others

Abuses political (emotional) power (“the imposition of one’s will upon others by
overt or covert coercion”

Maintains a high level of respectability and lies incessantly in order to do so

Is consistent in his or her sins. Evil persons are characterized not so much by
the magnitude of their sins, but by their consistency (of destructiveness)

Is unable to think from the viewpoint of their victim (scapegoat)

Has a covert intolerance to criticism and other forms of narcissistic injury

One More Thing (tm Rachel Maddow):

You (sort of) asked what my definition of ‘evil’ is, and gave some examples of what yours might be.  I’ll suggest that even more evil than your examples is someone who rails against those examples while surreptitiously embracing and extending them - or, to put it another way, the villain who confronts you demanding “Your money or your life!” is arguably less dangerous (and evil) than the one who hugs you like his best friend and in the process plunges a knife into your back.

(As with all analogies, YMMV.)

Well, since you ask:

I voted for Nader in 2004 after Kerry’s post-primary transformation into Bush Lite, and left other national ballot slots blank (since there was no one there who deserved my vote).  Ditto in 2008 (I was one of the few who actually examined Obama’s positions rather than just listened rapturously to his calculatedly-vague stump rhetoric).  I did support and vote for one promising Democratic progressive for the House in 2006, only to see her start breaking campaign pledges 2 months after taking office - at the behest of her Democratic leadership, of course.

But it took the persistently blatant perfidy of Obama’s health-care-reform charade (though that was just the worst of several such carefully-orchestrated debacles) to convince me that the rot in the national Democratic establishment is so complete that they need to be destroyed by any (legal) means necessary in order to make room for decent representation to rise up to fill the vacuum.  So now I’ll be voting Republican in every national race where no SERIOUSLY credible progressive is running until that mission has been accomplished:  yes, it turns my stomach, but there’s no other obvious way to create a situation where real change will eventually be possible.

I asked in the post to which you just responded for other ways one might get the party to shape up, but it seems that you have none to offer - only the tired old “But the Republicans are so BAD that you HAVE to support the Democrats!” mantra.  Well, no, I don’t:  I didn’t have to in 2004, or 2006 (with that one regrettable exception that has since, along with Obama’s outright perfidy, helped disabuse me of that optimism), or in 2008, and I sure as hell don’t have to this time.

Your statement that “the Republicans have been the government of America for most of the past thirty or forty years” (in fact, Republicans have controlled the House for only 12 of the past 30 - or 40 - years, and the Senate for only 16 of the last 30 - or 40 - years, and while they have held the presidency for 20 of the last 30 - or 26 of the last 40 - years for much of that time Democratic Congresses, until complete abdication of their responsibilities under Dubya, held them in check, though truth be told Richard Nixon was more progressive than Barack Obama is, so his tenure arguably shouldn’t be counted in the ‘nasty Republican’ column despite his personal failings) suggests that you may have a considerable learning curve to surmount before you can understand the realpolitik being discussed here.  For that you have my sympathy:  it’s not a heartening experience, but it is a necessary one.

It is old school dilution of critical thinking methodology

The Art of Propaganda: 7 Common Tactics Used to Influence Behavior

In 1939, the New York-based Institute for Propaganda Analysis published an
article on the seven common propaganda devices with the aim of encouraging
critical, rational thinking amongst citizens.

Here are the seven common propaganda devices:

1. Name-calling

This involves the use of words to connect a person or idea to a negative
concept. The aim is to make a person reject something without examining the
evidence because of the negative associations attached to it.

Examples of words include ‘Terrorist‘, ‘Nazi‘ and ‘Queer’.

Name Calling is used as a substitute for arguing the merits of an idea, belief, or
proposal. It is often employed using sarcasm and ridicule in political cartoons
and writing.

2. Glittering Generalities

The opposite of name-calling, this involves the use of highly valued concepts
and beliefs which attract general approval and acclaim. These are vague,
emotionally attractive words like ‘freedom‘, ‘honor‘ and ‘love‘.

This method works because these concepts/words mean different things to
different people, while still having a positive implication.

When someone talks to us about democracy, we immediately think of our own
definite ideas about democracy, the ideas we learned at home, at school, and
in church.

Our first and natural reaction is to assume that the speaker is using the word in
our sense, that he believes as we do on this important subject. This lowers our
’sales resistance’ and makes us far less suspicious..

the other 5 @ http://politheo.com/artofpropaganda.html

Well tell me Bill, who are you going to vote for if you don’t vote for the Democrats? Ralph Nader, the Sex Party, the Tea Party, The Republicans? There’s not an infinite choice and allowing those brain dead bastards in the Tea Party or their masters in the The Republican Party anywhere near the levers of power will mean war with Iran and complete bankruptcy on every level for America. Raging against the machine is all very well and good but at some point you have to pick a side for the sake of your own survival and you have to take responsibility as a voter and a citizen for the fact that the Republicans have been the government of America for most of the past thirty or forty years and they and their Fascist neo con friends have taken America down the road of no return. If you don’t call taking America into two wars on endless lies and deceit and causing the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression evil then I don’t know what your definition of evil is.

Who wants to take that chance?  I’m certainly eager to, since it appears to be the ONLY chance to deal a sufficient blow to the Democratic establishment to get the party to return to its values - and if that doesn’t happen, then it really won’t matter very much which party is in power (the rush to the precipice may be a bit slower under Democratic rule, but the destination will still be the same).

The Democrats have had more than ample opportunity over the past 4 years (and especially over the past 2) to show their true colors, and what they’ve given us is unsustainable corporate-friendly health-care ‘reform’, ineffective corporate-friendly financial ‘reform’, continued war in Iraq (unless you don’t count the 50,000 troops and 70,000 mercenaries who’ll be staying there indefinitely), escalated war in Afghanistan, enthusiastic continuation of the Bush Wall Street bailouts (presided over by the same Wall Street insiders, no less) and unConstitutional encroachments on civil liberties (well, actual torture may be less in favor, but they’ve substituted sanctioned extrajudicial assassination - even on American citizens), ‘transparency’ in government only when it suits them, backroom corporate dealing to squelch desperately-needed reform (so much for “an end to business as usual”), a ‘stimulus’ 1/3 of which consisted of unproductive tax cuts, no changes for Guantanamo and “Don’t ask, don’t tell”...

That’s how Democrats have governed while they had the power to change most of those things (yes, even health care, since they could have passed the public option during reconciliation but instead chose to drown it like the unwanted kitten that it always was).  If you’re happy with that, by all means vote for them.  If not, exactly how do you propose to get them to shape up without using the only real club that we’ve got?

Beck/Palin is a reprise of the Reagan playbook of 1980 - spread out a thin
veneer of pious platitudes, without ever mentioning that behind it all is a
massive concentration of wealth that is determined to take out all of the social
safety nets that were enacted into law during the Great Depression and during
the Kennedy/Johnson years. Reagan did a superb job of turning the country
rightward and making out poor people to be the bad guys. It didn’t take long
before we were worshipping CEO’s, something that would have been
unthinkable in earlier decades. Reagan was a lot smoother but not much
brighter than Plalin but that makes no difference. The same whites who voted
for Reagan will turn out for Palin and Beck if they get on the 2012 ticket. They
will push to overturn health care and Wall Street reforms, push for an invasion
of Iran, and make permanent the Bush tax cuts. Social Security will become
privatized and Medicare will be deemed too expensive. That is their game plan.
And of course unlike Reagan who wasn’t much of a church goer, they will be
pushing religious fundamentalism down our throats. And watch out if you are a
minority and/or live in a large city. Our police will be pressured to ignore civil
rights and other Constitutional rights. And heaven help you if your are a
Muslim-American. America will move to the extreme right and become a
quasi-facsist state. Of course they will do it ham handedly and America will
probably wake up in time to see what is going on and get them out of office
after one term, but who wants to take that chance.

Actually, it is a korporate idiocracy.
I am furious that Bush and his cabal are not being prosecuted, so many of us want
to go back to the good ole days when Bush promoted selfishness and stupidity as
core values.
I know some of you think Obama is the devil incarnate, but what I see is an honest
man who had good intentions coming in and is being ground down by the repug
slime machine.
he has intelligence, class and culture,  which is why the repugs and others of their
kind hate him, because they do not.

By ofersince72, August 31 at 10:21 pm Link to this comment
They already are repealing them, they are toast.
This whole mess is a dog a pony show that wouldn’t be
here if it weren’t for the likes of
Viacom…...using Colbert and Stewart
General Electric…....using Maddow and Olberman
Truth Dig….......using Robinson…Dionne…Scheer
and others
These are the ones that have empowered Fox and Glen Beck. ofersince72

Bullshit! Now how about some proof? Since these people not only ridicule them but dissect them and show where they are wrong in history and legality and the Constitution and logic, this helps them how? Ignoring them won’t make them go away, it will just let them grow without criticism. So you want to help and empower them then? That is the outcome of supporting those being attacked by Olberman & Maddow and others.

Can you prove your charge? I don’t consider myself and elite person, those are the oligarchs who want the Republic gone. Fortunately some of the corporations are still more interested in money and they find that with Olberman & Maddow and others. What is your solution? Just shutup and let the Becks & Palins of the world get off scott free? That is what you are advocating. So whose side are you on again? Maybe you are one of those of which you hint at. It sure sounds like it.

You are making a common mistake and using the tactic of the enemy, attack the messengers and those who rightly criticize bad ideas from hucksters of the fascist elites. You’re wrong the problem is that the oligarchs are organized because they know the only way to get what they want is to remove us as a problem. That is first on their list.

So lay out what should be happening now. What has Ron Paul done or said to make news? Any meetings? Pronouncements? Give us something?

God’s eye never sleeps and they are doing their level best to make sure we are under their scrutiny considering the Dominionists think they are the vice reagents for their god on earth.

Articles like this only echo and amplify the power of the authoritarian right. We
all know what Beck and Palin stand for. We all know who and what they are.
Their political “positions” have been ridiculed, applauded, titrated, and analyzed
ad nauseam. The right uses these self-aggrandizing “profits of doom” as point
runners to skew the debate their way, and the left uses them to stir up fear and
anger. So what’s new?

————————

But one thing stuck out in this otherwise dreary piece: the claim that god has
“strong bi-partisan credentials”.

What?

The Xtian god—the ultimate authoritarian figure—could not be more right
wing. He demands absolute devotion, he monitors our behavior day and night,
he threatens us with torture (endless, no less!) and maintains the largest Gulag
in the universe for those who forswear fealty, he wipes out his enemies with
weapons of mass destruction while bribing his chosen ones with promised
lands to curry their favor. Only his elite and most dogged loyalists are granted
access to his pearly gated inner circle. He’s a misogynist, an egotist, and a petty
hypocrite. All of these are bellwether characteristics of garden variety
authoritarian despots.

Why are these morons being given air time? Unless, of
course, that there is an ulterior motive being promoted
by the media itself?

Both are brain-dead. One hasn’t a cogent argument in her quiver—and she makes the word “bimbo” sound like a term of flattery.

The other is Uncle Sam wrapped in the American flag, with a bible in his Right hand. America is turning back to God? Goodness, I didn’t even know He was running in the election. Where? For the Senate?

Their populism thrives of the Dumbing Down of America. A great many years ago our founding fathers, having seen first hand, the devastation that religious wars had had in Europe understood that Religion and the State are twains that should never meet - like matter and anti-matter.

And yet the Rabid Right insists that God is central to a well-run government based upon as little taxation as possible and a free-hand for Free Enterprise. Meaning what?

Meaning that low taxation has created one of the most inequitable countries on earth. (Not so, you think? Read this bit of serious research, here: http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html )

Meaning also that Free Enterprise when left to its own devices leads to unethical conniving of the kind that brought us Toxic Waste, the Credit Mechanism Seizure of 2008 and the Great Recession of 2009.

And this happened because a Republican administration neutered regulatory agencies because they “interfered with doing business”. And, yet, we should vote for this crowd?

Yep, the Gallup Poll gives them a ten point lead.

Wow, are we ever dumb.  Because, contrary to our belief, Barack Obama doesn’t walk on water. And he can’t cure the most intractable unemployment problem in three decades that was handed to him on a platter by Dubya. So, he must be punished.

In fact, we are dumber than dumb if we believe these Mindless Morons can do any better. It took us thirty years to get into this Deep Deep Doodoo, and Americans expect a full recovery in just a few years?

Yep, that’s dumber than dumb and “in denial” of economic reality.

Hmmm.  Some people might consider that the ‘brainless clowns’ are those who are still buying the “You’ve GOT to support the Democrats because the Republicans are so nasty!!!” drivel that’s been being shoveled out by first the DLC, then the DNC, and finally even nominally progressive groups year, after year, after year - even after the Democrats took control of Congress in 2006 and then increased that control (plus took the presidency) in 2008 and still somehow just couldn’t manage to change the course of the country (that “change we can believe in” thing plus “an end to business as usual” that we were promised during the campaign but which kind of evaporated as soon as the election was over).  A very wise man once said that the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing time after time and hoping for a different result, you know:  when a strategy just isn’t working, it’s time for a new one.

And that’s what not continuing to cast knee-jerk votes for what claims to be the lesser of two evils is:  not a protest, but a very specific strategy of destroying the real forces that are getting in the way (the Democratic establishment) to allow better representation to fill the resulting political vacuum - even if doing that requires temporary Republican governance while that strategy plays out.

But it does take a certain degree of intelligence (and guts) to stop throwing good money after bad and strike out in a new direction, I suppose.  Probably far more comfortable just to keep hoping for the best, wringing your hands when it doesn’t turn out that way, and finding increasingly implausible excuses for those you continue to place your faith in (faith’s wonderful that way:  it doesn’t require any substantive support at all when it’s sufficiently blind).

They’re loud and they’re Fascist and they’re repulsive but there aren’t enough of them to take government, unless ‘progressive’ voters stay home or actually vote for the Tea Party or Ralph Nader or some Republican as a ‘protest’ against something (take your pick, there’s an issue for every brainless clown to ‘protest’ about). These Christo Fascists only need to get control of both houses and there will be endless war and total economic chaos. After that, it’s anybody’s game and the end of empire with a vengeance.

Another thing you dummies haven’t figured out

about the Beck/Palin show that is constantly dumped on us.

It has been a conspired media attempt to keep

RON PAUL out of the news and a no count in the

Republican Party.

Keep it Centrist…Keep it Centrist….Keep it Centrist…
all dialogue…..Get Ron Paul out of media attention.
Your Oligarchs, owners of the Plutocracy, don’t give a
rat’s ass whether Obama, or Palin is president, just as
long as it is status quo policy that they are.
Now I don’t know whether I would support a Paul presidency
or not, but damn sure believe he is worth a whole lot
more attention that Sara Palin or Glen Beck..
So thank your Racheal Maddow, Keith Olberman,
Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert for doing just as the
corporate owners of the media, protectors of the oligarchs
wanted them to do$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Another thing you dummies haven’t figured out

about the Beck/Palin show that is constantly dumped on us.

It has been a conspired media attempt to keep

RON PAUL out of the news and a no count in the

Republican Party.

Keep it Centrist…Keep it Centrist….Keep it Centrist…
all dialogue…..Get Ron Paul out of media attention.
Your Oligarchs, owners of the Plutocracy, don’t give a
rat’s ass whether Obama, or Palin is president, just as
long as it is status quo policy that they are.
Now I don’t know whether I would support a Paul presidency
or not, but damn sure believe he is worth a whole lot
more attention that Sara Palin or Glen Beck..
So thank your Racheal Maddow, Keith Olberman,
Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert for doing just as the
corporate owners of the media, protectors of the oligarchs
wanted them to do$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

But dear precious “LIBERAL INTELECTUAL ELITES”

One thing your Oligarchs, owners of the Plutocracy,

can’t have is unity.  It threatens their power.

So you managers of the Plutocracy for the Oligarchs,

you are going to keep this divisive policy up forever.

And there are several managers of the Plutocracy working

for the Oligarchs on these threads.

Here is how the “LIBERAL INTELECTUAL ELITES” talk..

Well, you know,  it is the Oligarchs that control the
Plutocracy and these fellows control the finances.
Well guess what, we have some evil beings that are going
to challenge who gets to manage the store for our
Oligarchs.  I do not like these managers,  they don’t
hide their lies like our managers do.  Our managers for
Oligarchs hide the niggers away, then talk real nice about
them.  These mean ones, that Palin girl, and Mr. Beck,
they just come out and don’t hide their dislike for the
niggers.

All the extreme issues that we have in this country,

and we are going to spend all our time and energy dicussing Beck and Palin.

I can’t think of two bigger media dumbasses.

And here we are the “intellectual elite”,  screw all
the ecology problems, Obama right on them, scriew all
the problems, congress is right after them….we have
these two ignoigorant asses to discuss, in depth,
tummy tuck size, genital size, blaa, blaa, blaa,
because we are the LIBERAL INTELECTUAL ELITE.
We know the problems.
yeah, yeah,  it is all Israel’s fault, we never did
anything wrong,,, just Israel…...all Israels fault
we are perfect…we are the “LIBERAL INTELECTUAL
PROGRESSIVES ELITES”. Ask us if we are smart.

Wake up people! Join the Revolution! This is “non-sense”

The world is on fire and we allow clowns to distract us as our house burns down. 

Join the Revolution! - We don’t have to live like this anymore.

http://www.SaveTheWorldNow.osixs.org and http://www.commonsense.osixs.org

FIGHT THE CAUSE - NOT THE SYMPTOM

They already are repealing them, they are toast.

This whole mess is a dog a pony show that wouldn’t be

here if it weren’t for the likes of

Viacom…...using Colbert and Stewart
General Electric…....using Maddow and Olberman
Truth Dig….......using Robinson…Dionne…Scheer
and others
These are the ones that have empowered Fox and Glen Beck.

By all means read Robert Jensen’s article on Beck in today’s Counterpunch.org

Glenbeck’s “new” message of stressing that “salvation” is personal and is not collective, is the same old conservative message of “personal responsibilty”, but is beautified.
Personal responsibility is a right wing euphomism for repealing of what is left of the New Deal’s government programs from unemployment insurance, Social Security, Medicare, food stamps or any government assistance for people no matter how dire their situation, and channel the money saved into tax cuts that benefits mostly the super-rich.
People who are dismising Beck and Palin as laughable, better think again.
Beck and Palin would have been laughable if we are having:
1)Politically enlightenend population.
2)Population with a long memory span.
Unfortunately, the population is polotically naive with very short memory span, who voted, again and again, against their own interests and in favor of the super-rich class!.

They just might have their corporate , fascist, censored
media systems make all the conversation around a senseless
cartoon character named Glen Beck and have journalists
write story after story after story about this worthless
piece of shit that the so called intellectual elite eat
up when they should be ignoring that he is even alive.

I’m sorry,  the Dems and Pubs have already made complete
asses out of the American public.