LAFAYETTE: I’m not the one chewing your ass. I dig the objectivity of your posts. I don’t care where you’re writing from. Keep posting!

    It’s obvious that all three branches of American Government are top heavy in corruption. It’s not just President O. Perhaps “traitor” is an extreme term to use, (and I still hope Obama steps up), but he isn’t fighting at all. I accept your point that political change is slow, (and kneejerkers don’t think long term), but compromise is not an option when a Bushite fascist coup has overthrown our Constitution, an unrestrained Wall Street is looting and destroying the lives of millions and social disintegration and poverty is everywhere you look. I’m pissed and apparently I’m not the only one. Thugs understand a fist in the mouth. Boehner and his posse are thugs. It is no longer a question of speaking truth to power, it is a question of speaking truth to an outright tyrannic manufactured evil lie. Obama needs to declare his stance and reconnect with “We the people—”.

      I don’t know what you think I mean by the word “disintegration” but the civil, social and economic glue that forms the fabric of American life is unraveling at a tremendous rate. What “was” is gone, what “is” is chaos, and what’s coming is terrible to contemplate. Americans in isolated pockets still enjoying the benefits of the vanishing “American Dream” have the luxury of intellectual opinion. Those encountering the unbuffered energies of the present cataclysm feel food and warm shelter may escape them forever.

    I’m praying people vote. I’m praying Obama and the Dims hold on. The Rethugs are poised to deliver the death blow to American Freedom. But,(fan that I want to be) I don’t feel any sympathy for Obama or Pelosi at all. We need voice and we need fight.

    Keep it “ROCKIN’” buddy—I enjoy you.

All this pondering and struggling over who to vote for is pointless.  For the vast majority of us the choice is simple.  For the immediate future there are only two choices.  Democrats or Republicans.  If you don’t like the democrats and you like the republicans even less then vote democrat and try to take over the party by sheer numbers. The same for the republicans The only power we the people have in this type of situations is block voting.  Swallow your pride, stash your ego, surrender your mind and vote along with all the other working stiffs in unison.  All together now.  Very simple.  Why don’t people get it?

Glider,

My ballot just arrived, and I’ve reconsidered my earlier point about “why not to vote Green.”

I wouldn’t want them to carry any ball over the long haul because of the two reasons I cited, but your argument on the message to the Dems has equal weight with mine, if not more.

On balance, we’ll probably get more good than not from a strong Green turnout. At least it puts their platform in a stronger bargaining position, assuming they don’t split progressive sympathies should a really viable third party of progressives and indies actually ever emerge.

Most voters thought Obama would cut the expenses of a wartime economy and
pass the savings on to heavily taxed workers.
They also thought he would create millions of public sector jobs, take over
healthcare costs, do away with DADT, and end the war on drugs.
But he has done nothing but display a gift of gab. Expect a small turnout for the
Democratic Party in the November elections.

Glider,

Agree with your “if. . . .then” statement, but that’s some distance from where America actually is.

The odds of any progressive/indie third party that’s simultaneously viable are enormously stacked against us, and I believe that splintering/lack of of strategic canniness would be fatal.

Still, I applaud you for voting your principles. If the Greens call to you, go for it.

I also agree with your read that “not voting” sends a more ambiguous message to the Dems than voting Green, but if the Dems are crushed, the message still would be pretty damned unambiguous.

The Dems will try to come back, playing the same old games in 2012, with Obama play-acting the progressive role in the interim, while blaming the Republicans for his failures. The Dems have only themselves to blame, however. It wasn’t that they drifted to the right. It’s that the party itself was rotten to its core.

The vampire metaphor really does apply here. Garlic and the crucifix are only half measures. Vichy’s head needs to be cut off (that’s already happening by way of funding) and a stake needs to be driven through its heart.

Only then can a potentially viable third party on the left ever actually hope to get off the ground. If it doesn’t happen in 2012, then things will get much worse very quickly.

mdgr,

If everyone had always cast their vote based on ideology rather than the lesser of two evils I think we would not be in same mess we are today.  On a personal level for me I also realize that no politician I am aware of has ever won by a single vote margin.  So voting based on my beliefs feels just fine to me.  But whatever voting apathy sends its own message as well, albeit a less decipherable one.

On Glider’s “Vote Green” suggestion:

As I said in some of my former posts, the first problem is that the Greens seem to be committed to nominating unelectable candidates.

While ideological purity is great, it is a luxury that will almost certainly seriouly splinter any other progressive/indie third party that is willing to make at least some compromises outside its ideological purity zone. There’s no success like failure, Dylan said, and the Greens are an object-lesson in precisely that kind of trajectory.

Politics requires compromise of some sort—though not the unmitigated whorishness of Vichy—and almost by design, the Greens also tend to scoff at any kind of strategic planning. That would be the second reason why I wouldn’t want them to weigh in at that “magic level of votes” (I think it’s 5% but I could be wrong).

For these two reasons, I would not want to see them actually on the ballot even though I would probably agree in principle with most of their platform.

The ideological purity test that is zealously non-strategic is an easy path to suicide. Against all odds, I am still hoping that we can actually grasp the brass ring in 2012. For that, however, we need to be as canny as Rove and no less strategic.

mdgr,

“will only be voting ballot measures this time round”  ???

I suggest voting Green Party as a protest vote that tells the Democrats they clearly they your vote due their New GOP imitation and not to the Repug/Baggers.

Slander is only slander when it’s untrue.

DUMBER THAN DUMB

red: It is hard not to see the current Congress and President O as traitors to those who elected them. Posters often take responsibility for failing to push him harder, but Obama, after one of the greatest political mandates for change ever given an American President, isn’t interested in the mandate or the Americans who gave it.

It’s easy to see - presuming one has a brain at the top of their neck.

We have Tripartite Political System the hallmark of which is the Balance of Power, innovated first in America (and now copied elsewhere in the world) to assure that political power does not aggregate to just one individual (or one party led by one individual). In fact, it works so well that the tripartite system devolved to state legislatures in the US.

What rationale substantiates your allegation that Obama is a “traitor” to his cause? That accusation implies that he, and he alone, was personally responsible for pushing through Congress legislation that you wanted passed. And that he failed at his duty.

We elected the PotUS not the King of America.

The construct of Congress did not permit that presidential legislation, in the form initially proposed, could be accepted by some members of Congress (namely the BlueDog Dems and the Troglodyte Reps—who were pounced upon by vested-interest lobbyists).

Attend to that problem (Congress and Congressional lobbyists) and maybe we’ll finally get the sort of legislation that we, the people, want.

Otherwise, as Americans, all too accustomed to the Fast ‘n Dirty Fix, we cannot possibly understand that controversial legislation (due to vested-interests) takes time first to settle into the mentality of the American people and then filter up to Congress by means of elections to the House and Senate.

Once Representative and Senators sense the flavor of grass-roots sentiment, there is not a lobbyist in Washington who can turn them. Not one, because as elected officials they will feel that their reelection may be endangered. This IS the power of a democracy.

If the above quoted comment is a general belief, then we seem not to have understood what is happening politically in our own country … and now, like spoiled brats who did not get their way, we are going to vote against the one man who had the courage to try to reform the system. Rather than vote a Congress that will permit a PotUS to introduce reforms.

[Let’s not forget that Hilary’s proposed reform of Health Care was shot down in the same manner during her husband’s tenure in office. Did we blame her for being a “traitor to the cause”? No, we didn’t.]

This sort of infantile behavior defies credibility. We, the people, are going to bite off our nose to spite our face.

That’s dumber than dumb.

Post subject: Republican Strategy

Part of the Republican strategy is and has been for quite awhile is to create this air of inevitability as if the election is already over. It’s a done deal. They are so far ahead in the polls and the minority party historically has always gained seats in congress and sometimes captured the majority. Therefore they will prevail in the election.

Of course, this is the old self-fulfilling prophesy scam. If you are convincing enough people tend to buy it and since many want to vote for the winners regardless of party it tends to work. Of course, it could backfire. The Republicans might be so good at their lies and distortions that rank and file republicans buy into the scam too and stay home and not vote because why vote if the outcome is a forgone conclusion. The Democrats play that game too but they don’t seem to be as good at it. Even though the Democrats ironically have more money this year the polls show the Republicans ahead. It would be extremely hilarious if the Republican strategy backfires.

mdgr: Inferential logic is allowed on this side of the water,

Not by me. Slander is slander, not “inferential logic”.

Try harder.

Thank you all!! (CMR included.)

    Like MDGR my pessimism often overwhelms my hope for the American future. It is hard not to see the current Congress and President O as traitors to those who elected them. Posters often take responsibility for failing to push him harder, but Obama, after one of the greatest political mandates for change ever given an American President, isn’t interested in the mandate or the Americans who gave it. (Or so it seems to me.) We wanted a fighter and got leadership that decided to “make nice” with thugs.

    The manufactured propagandist “politics of fear” spin is obvious obfuscation that replaces actual political dialogue but the stench still manages to distort and distract just enough to keep truth and change out of the reach of an already brutalized America. Mr. Kutler laid out the basics in a no frills article but posters here have been saying the same things for months. My fingers are crossed that the Rethugs don’t regain power and President O finds salvation—we’ll all see.

      For those of you living abroad (LAFAYETTE) I appreciate the objectivity and I lament the strangle hold of greed that prevents America entering the ranks of other modern nations. (We’ve all read the falling social/financial staistics that track our decline.) I’m not sure how aware you are of the vicious emotional shift in the day to day reality of the average American. The damage and disintegration is visible everywhere. The buffer between living in a civil open society and an open air asylum is quickly disappearing. The streets are getting meaner and dumber. Concealed weapons permits are encouraged in my State. Unsolved murders abound.

        Whatever the ‘cause and effect’ posters or Journalist might desire to attribute the American nightmare, the nightmare remains and the horror deepens. Civil intelligent humane Americans stand between the unknowing violent machinations of those cast into the cauldron of ignorance and social disintegration and the knowing violent criminal conduct of those in Washington who create it. It is the eye of a storm bound to destroy.

With all due deference to pompous poseurs who have French monikers and like to talk philosophy, it might have been more appropriate, existentially and epistemologically speaking, to look at the “thing” that’s called Obama and conclude that it was more of a pimp for Wall Street than it’s prostitute.

Still, the contempt with which the Wall Street Journal treats him would seem to suggest that he is its whore, not its pimp. Inferential logic is allowed on this side of the water, alas, even if a logical positivist might look at a duck and—hearing it quack and walk like a duck, and having duck-like appearance—demand to see its pedigrees before achieving insight.

In one thing we agree, however. There is a lot of c cerebral garbage strutting itself onstage in the wonderful realm of blogland.

Sorry for the ad hominem, but one good turn deserved another: It is time for the garbage to disperse.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101015/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_marijuana_legalization_justice, not that it much matters.

Lafayette, enough proof has been given, ad infinitum. One does need to expend their energies debating the issues endlessly with someone with your penchant for pedantry, diversion and digression.

While I am not suggesting you do that deliberately, you, sir—assuming you have proof of any of the several genders out there—are amongst the blog posters who, if objectivity and brains were a requisite standard, should be deemed radioactive.

SLANDER OR FREE SPEECH?

mdgr: He was set up by Wall Street as a charismatic and electable Uncle Tom, someone with no real principles

Yet another falsehood without the slightest shred of evidence.

When one makes such a claim, it is alway necessary to prove or substantiate it. Otherwise the allegation is just pure, unadulterated slander.

If there were a law against it ... half the posters on Internet political blogs would have nothing left to say.

Was Free Speech meant to include slander and defamation? Methinks no.

Good article. It was very long, but well-argued.

What also needs to be said is that it is not a matter of Obama “regaining” his voice from 2008. As Chris Hedges said, Obama was only a brand, not unlike Calvin Klein. He was set up by Wall Street as a charismatic and electable Uncle Tom, someone with no real principles (the decision to oppose the DADT court decision is today’s latest, but that’s a veritable footnote to a long litany of horrors) whom it could control. The irony is that even the WS Journal now holds him in contempt.

It’s a game: Vichy or Berlin, and the good news is that a lot of people are done with it. Would rather burn my ballot with countless others for the TV cameras, but in 2010, I’ll be voting for ONLY the Initiatives.

Democracy, as Mr. Hedges observed, is dead in America. Rome, however, took a very long time to die. The only good news on the horizon is that America’s death throes will be short.

ADVERSARIAL DEBATE

Of course, Marx and Engels figure in, too, but why state the obvious?

Because with all the media blather and its onrush of empty sound-bites, you cannot imagine how one gets lost unable to tell the forest from the trees.

State it, even if obvious. Build upon it, make important cogent conclusions – which become the clarifying light that edifies and leads us out of the abyss of ignorance.

Point and counterpoint, adversarial debate - both not to dominate a conversation but to elucidate.

Onwards, upwards, breaking the bonds of benightedness.

Freeing us …

PHILOSOPHY REDUX

François-Marie Arouet (21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778), known by the pen-name “Voltaire” :

I disagree with what you say, but I will defend unto death your right to say it!

PHILOSOPHY

cmR: Fascist party programs contained active social welfare policies to be implemented through a corporatist state, so there were indeed overlaps with Progressives and with New Dealers. But so, too, were there overlaps with the world’s Social Democrats and Christian Democrats

Thank you for our daily dose of claptrap. Excellent rant and factually incorrect from an historical perspective.

The problem with history is that it is … uh, history. It is the past trying to indicate the future and not always successfully. Regardless of the origins of fascism, to use that word in the same sentence with progressive and Social Democrats is defamation by association. 

Social Democracy today is alive and flourishing in Europe. (How that must grate you.) It has overseen the postwar renewal of Europe, risen from the ashes of a fascist war. It has united Europe unlike it has never been unified before, even under Charlemagne.

By most measures, Europe is a better place to live in because of its Social Justice and the primacy of Public Services - the safety-net that Americans talk longingly about but have never seen. Europe is a better place to visit because it has preserved its patrimonial heritage, rich in the arts and science and philosophy – the aggregate of which remains an anchor in the troubled seas of globalization. Europe is a kaleidoscope of cultural diversity, with a tolerance of all religions, all ethnicities and all varieties of thought.

Europe is not the United States. Its ethos is not founded in a competitive warrior-like spirit. Europa is a goddess, after all. She nurtures. Its cultural identity is not anchored in enterprise, its people are not workaholics and its rich do not figure extensively in Forbes classification of billionaires. And yet its influence is carried far beyond its physical borders – by the arts, by fashion, by its cuisines, by its philosophical dynamism.

An American university professor exclaimed recently at the Sorbonne in Paris his wonder that philosophy was taught in secondary school. Anyone in America ever study philosophy in High School? I didn’t.

Philosophy is not just the study of the writings of dead men. It is, rather, the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence - of who we are and how we define ourselves. And Europe tasks its children in secondary school to think in these terms. In fact, to graduate from French High School one must pass a series of tests, one of which is in philosophy.

Does this matter at all? I suggest that it does. To understand who we are requires certain tools that we have not yet learned. Tools employed to address existential problems/challenges by a critical, generally systematic approach and a reliance on how to do so by means of rational argument.

‘For decades now, the ‘progressives’ (liberals or ‘The Left’) in our country have been propelled by two powerful influences: Saul Alinsky and Cloward and Piven. (Of course, Marx and Engels figure in, too, but why state the obvious?)’

Who says? Most of the people in America who want a decent health care system and wage justice and better, safer working places and an end to futile, corporate driven wars have never heard of these people.  Marx and Engels are also only bogey men to the 70% who want a decent society. They have virtually no understanding of what these men were rejecting or how they wanted society to be. Your claim is merely an assertion which couldn’t be backed up by any examination of why people want progress. People want progress because it IS progress and most of all they want it for their children and their grandchildren because they don’t want them to have the injustice and struggle that has been their lot. This is just as true in America as it is in India.

‘In 1966, Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven authored an article in “The Nation” magazine that has been followed as closely as a blueprint by organizations such as ACORN and, dare I say, the Democrat Party (at least the present-day incarnation of the Democrat Party). Incredibly, we are seeing the fruits of that seditious strategy in the news everyday. And I say ‘seditious’ advisedly, because the end result will be the capitulation of our national sovereignty and way of life to those who seek to control us and rule over us.’

“Seditious?” Again all of this is mere assertion. There is not a single policy of the Obama administration (a centre right administration which only looks left to neo cons and other fanatics) or the Democrats that could be called ‘sedition’, even under the arcane and archaic articles of the so-called ‘Patriot Act’. But if you want to talk about a threat to the Constitution and the rule of law and democracy itself then you should consider what the Bush administration wanted to introduce in Patriot Act II.

1.Privacy Invasions. USAPA II dramatically widens the powers of government to invade the privacy of Americans and others living here. This includes:

o Broad new authority to compel information from ISPs, friends, relatives, businesses and others, all without informing you.

o Immunity for businesses that voluntarily turn over your information to law enforcement.

o Extra punishment for use of cryptography—no connection to terrorism needed.

o Instant police access to your credit reports upon certification that they are sought “in connection with their duties”—again, with no connection to terrorism needed.

o Relaxed requirement of specificity for warrants for multi-use devices like PDAs and computers with telephonic capabilities.

o DNA collected from all terrorism SUSPECTS/DNA database information open to all law enforcement.

o Less judicial oversight of surveillance.

It hasn’t been introduced yet but if the Republicans get anywhere near the White House in 2012 it will be. As Bush was so fond of saying, ‘You can count on it.’

Roy,
By your “descendant” logic you are an ape.  Going back 100 years to pick and choose negatives with which to paint modern day “Progressives” is a propaganda tactic of our modern day “Progressive Hunter” Beck/Tea Bag Fascists.  It parallels Hitler’s relentless campaign of his time against Germany’s real “Socialist” party.

I call myself a “Progressive” and despise Woodrow Wilson.  The Federal Reserve and Private Banking System are an abomination, and should be rightfully Nationalized (the single greatest FDR shortfall).  On the other hand these Banksters were not the most transparent lot and the full comprehension of their evil was difficult to realize.  Other than the Libertarian fringe and the Progressive fringe, I do not see any mainstream party pushing that agenda today.  I see no Tea Party outrage over the Bankters stolen trillions, only fake Corporatist sponsored outrage against upper income level taxes and middle class oriented programs.

The political platform of the Fascism of the 3rd Reich is a mixed bag if you are honest.  It had elements of what “Tea Baggers” favor, and elements of what “Progressives” favor.  To view this objectively please examine Hitler’s 1920 speech outlining the “Twenty Five Points” of the German Workers’ Party (http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/25points.htm). 

In teasing these positions apart the essential point discovered is that it was the Beck/Tea Party like themes that specifically led to the Holocaust and Imperialism of Nazis.  These shared disastrous positions include extreme patriotism, an anti-alien platform, intolerance towards non-Christians, advocacy for racial purity, and promotion of military colonization.  These were the essential core elements that drove the atrocities of the 3rd Reich.

What is generally missed in historical documents due to their justified focus on the holocaust and debacle of WWII, was the positive side of the Nazis governance.  And that is that they produced the single greatest economic miracle the world has ever seen.  Going from 30+ percent unemployment to near full employment and a trashed economy to one that nearly defeated the might of the rest of the world combined.  That miracle was due to the Progressive-like elements of the party.  It was the Tea Party-like elements that brought the fruits of their good economic policies to wreak havoc upon the world.

Progressives

American liberals are descendants of the early 20th-century Progressives, who in turn shared intellectual roots with fascists. Both fascists and liberals seek to use the state to solve the problems of modern society. Many fascists, including Mussolini (but not Hitler) started as socialists—though almost none started as liberals, who stood for representative government and mild reformism. Moreover, fascism’s combination of nationalism, statism, discipline and a promise to “transcend” class conflict was initially popular in many countries. Though fascism was always less popular in democracies such as the United States, some American intellectuals did flirt with its ideas. Fascist party programs contained active social welfare policies to be implemented through a corporatist state, so there were indeed overlaps with Progressives and with New Dealers. But so, too, were there overlaps with the world’s Social Democrats and Christian Democrats, as well as with the British Conservative Party from Harold Macmillan in the 1930s to Prime Minister Ted Heath in the 1970s, and even with the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations. Many on the left today call themselves “progressive,” and they do so not just because it’s a nicer way of saying “liberal,” but also because they very much intend to revive the political principles of America’s original Progressives, from the Progressive Era of the 1880s through World War I. In response to repeated bank runs in the early 1900s, progressives created the Federal Reserve System. This flew right in the face of Thomas Jefferson, who argued that the “Bank of the United States is one of the most deadly hostility existing, against the principles and form of our Constitution. “It didn’t take long to prove Jefferson right, as the worst financial disaster in U.S. history happened largely because of the Fed’s continual contraction of the money supply before and during the Great Depression. Progressives redistributed the wealth by implementing a “progressive” income tax sold to America as something that would lower tariffs and be a tax on the wealthy. Woodrow Wilson led passage of the Revenue Act in 1913. The rates only lasted four years, then all Americans had their taxes jacked up and they haven’t come down since. The bottom tax bracket hasn’t paid single digit percentages in taxes in over 60 years. They introduced the first nanny state efforts in 1919 with Prohibition. They convinced the nation to ban a drink. Then, the final straw: The president of peace, just a few months after narrowly winning re-election, entered America into World War I. It was billed as the war to end all wars — because progressives thought they had the solution to world conflict — and brought us the League of Nations. Another failure. The reason is that America’s original Progressives were also its original, big-government liberals. Most people point to the New Deal era as the source of big government and the welfare state that we have today. While this is perfectly accurate, it is important to understand that the principles of the New Deal did not originate in the New Deal; rather, they came from the Progressives, who had dominated American politics and intellectual cultural a generation prior to the New Deal. We have no less an authority on this connection than Franklin Roosevelt himself. When FDR campaigned in 1932, he pointed to the Progressives – and in particular to Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson – as the source of his ideas about government. In terms of the personalities who made up the Progressive movement, some are familiar to us and others are less so. The movement was comprised of well known politicians like Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt; but it was also comprised of intellectuals and writers who are less well known but who have been very influential in America. (Continued)

Progressives (Continued)
Even less well known was Herbert Croly, but Croly was highly influential, since he founded and was the first editor of The New Republic – which became the main organ of Progressive opinion in the United States, and is still one of the most important journals on the Left today. I should add here that Woodrow Wilson actually fell into both of these categories – he was both a well known politician and president, but also was, for decades prior to his entry into politics, a prominent intellectual (a college professor and president of Princeton) who wrote many books and influential articles.
The party’s platform should have appealed strongly to blacks, intellectuals, and labor union members, but the support given them by the Communist Party was used against them by both major parties. The progressives maintained their right to accept support from any group. This was high-principled but politically fatal. Wallace received only 2.4 percent of the popular vote and carried no state. In 1950, the party opposed America’s decision to fight in Korea. Wallace split with the party’s leadership on the issue and resigned from the party. The Progressive Party disappeared after the 1952 election. Only time will tell if another progressive party will be formed that works.
Progressives destroyed the bottom rung of the ladder of economic success by corrupting a public school system in which half of the students never graduate and half of those wo do are fundamentally illiterate. Every major inner city in America from, Chicago, Detroit, Oakland, St. Louis, every school board and school district, every city council in those inner cities is 100% controlled bt the Democrat Party and progressives and has been for 100 years. Everything that is wrong with the inner cities of America that policy can affect Democrats and progressives are responsible for. They have their boot heels on the necks of poor black and hispanic children all across America and are crushing them every day.
The Democratic Party and Progressivism is the most powerful force obstructing opportunity for America’s poor and minority. It oppresses them with their creation of the modern welfare state. Progressives engineered a welfare system that destroyed the inner city black family and created a vast “under-class” so mired in the culture of dependency and povert that they may never escape.
Progressives are the most racist bunch of monsters in history. Margret Sanger is the champion of the progressives. She was such a nasty racist with her evil eugenics programs. Hitler modeled his eugenics programs on the American Progressive Eugenics Movement of the early 20th century. Her whole purpose for abortion was to rid society of what she called the less desirable minorities. Her legacy lives on in the racist fact that children of color are the victims of 2/3 of all the abortions committed since Roe v Wade. Black women, who make up only 12% of the population have had over 40% of the abortions ever committed. They are nearly 4 times more likely than their caucasion counterparts to get abortion, just as progressive darling Margret Sanger planned.
For decades now, the ‘progressives’ (liberals or ‘The Left’) in our country have been propelled by two powerful influences: Saul Alinsky and Cloward and Piven. (Of course, Marx and Engels figure in, too, but why state the obvious?) In 1966, Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven authored an article in “The Nation” magazine that has been followed as closely as a blueprint by organizations such as ACORN and, dare I say, the Democrat Party (at least the present-day incarnation of the Democrat Party). Incredibly, we are seeing the fruits of that seditious strategy in the news everyday. And I say ‘seditious’ advisedly, because the end result will be the capitulation of our national sovereignty and way of life to those who seek to control us and rule over us.

Good article,
Obama is the Anti-FDR, and has only cemented FDR’s position as America’s greatest president.

And the blame-game goes on, and on, and on.  Blame
the media, Obama, Congress…  How about blaming
ourselves, this vast electorate out here.

It is, after all, the responsibility of the public to
make it safer for a politician to do the right thing.
The government we get is the government that reflects
us. 

An idea was floated years ago which suggested that
Congress, purposely,  makes it fairly easy for a
person to cheat on his income tax so when Congress
cheats and lies the man-on-the-street is likely to
let it ride - given that he also lies and cheats.
Seems far out but it is something to think about.

What is WRONG with liberal media???

“For the past year, the media, reflecting disenchantment with Barack Obama, their very own rock star…”

Oh yeah, THEY picked Obama to be THEIR star, and now THEY’RE so terribly disenchanted THEY simply MUST tell you about THEIR feelings over and over and over because they have advertisement space to sell.

“... we can ask if the Democrats’ troubles are not so much about what they did (WHAAAA???) but rather, what they did not do.”

Isn’t your job to report what they did? You know, the facts?

When did working in the media become the job of not informing people about actual happenings? Could that possibly explain why we have a plethora of kooky candidates, and a public that believes speculative fantasy instead of scientific fact?

Yes, politics in the 30’s was different than it was today. But, oh duh, so was the media. In a BIG way. Roosevelt’s fireside chats were a major media event. Now, tell me, what did the President discuss in his last radio address? Don’t know?

Tell me again, Stanley, whose fault is that?

I agree—it is the great middle’s disappointment. It is sad that today the large stage politicians are either very timid, wishywashy or bland except those that hate, howl, bully, and—out and out lie.

“Americans had clear, constant reminders of Herbert Hoover, the “money-changers in the temple” and “economic royalists.” He knew the perps, accomplices and accessories that “caused” the Great Depression. Such attacks today would be almost unthinkable—unless one gave up campaign contributions.”

A young man of color from lower middle class origins trying to imitate Clinton?  He is just not FDR material.  But he could address campaign reform and maybe get his mojo back along with maybe starting to give pols freedom to legislate without worrying about campaign “contributions”.  He won’t do this most obvious thing, so is he really as smart as he is said to be?  Compared to Republicans, he is a genius.  But it wouldn’t hurt if we pushed him for getting money and revolving doors out of politics.

” . . . and further, we can ask if the Democrats’ troubles are not so much about what they did, but rather, what they did not do.”

No, it’s in fact about what they did.  This is just more packaged baloney by the the Democrat Fear Machine.  Blah blah blah.  Obama is a liar and a betrayer to the hundredth power.  If you think of yourself as progressive and you vote for the Democrats, you’re throwing away your vote.

The only reason Obama ‘cant lose’ in 2012 is that Obama is a Republican.

Here’s what Obama has done:

1. Gutted real financial reform (no Glass-Steagle, no ‘too big too fail)
?2. Rejected the only health care option that would simultaneously extend
coverage and cut costs (single payer)
3. Supported a stingy stimulus (one-third tax breaks)
4. Doubled-down & accelerated the Bush bailouts
?5. Escalated a fruitless war in Afghanistan
6. Not helped people in bankruptcy & needing mortgage remediation
7. Not passed a jobs bill & had trouble extending unemployment compensation
8. Ignored previous Republican profligacy, crimes, misdemeanors
9. Used “Heck of a Job, Timmy” to promote low taxes for the wealthy on capital
gains, dividends and ‘carried interest’

Here’s what he did when he came in:

A. Kept Bush advisors in the two key areas where people wanted change - the
Economy and the “War on Terror”
B. Believed unrealistically (and kept believing) the Republicans would line up for
“bi-partisanship”

Now, Obama will just love the Republican Congress; he will finally have his
beloved bipartisanship. Obama will get bi-partisanship by finding common
cause (not that kind) with the Republicans and continuing to beggar the middle
class to cover corporations and the wealthy.

It is just a shame, a nominally Democratic Congress had to be sacrificed for it.
It could have been hoped the nominal Democrats might have become real
Democrats; the Republicans certainly wont. But Obama will cater to them and
Obama will win in 2012.

From the “Whitehouse Insider” series :  “Well, that doesn’t actually prove the president didn’t read the bill.  Yeah…ok.  But I followed up with this story with someone in the White House.  Guess what? The president was briefed on the bill – he never read it - it was a damn running joke among all of them!  But leading up to the vote, back when the battle was raging in Congress, President Obama was throwing fits over the delays, telling his aides something to the effect, “I don’t care what it is I just want something on my desk to sign.  Get me a –expletive- bill.  Just get me something to –expletive- sign.”  And that is just what those Democrats in Congress did – they got the president a bill.  And now they are paying a very high political price, and this president appears to care less.  He is basically telling members of his own party “You got me my bill and thank you very much. Now go to hell.”

Read more: http://newsflavor.com/politics/world-politics/white-house-insider-what-the-hell-have-we-done/#ixzz12HhOI

Obama “The One” an FDR?  Now, that’s a damn running joke.

Fear is just one of the addictions in the US.

Keep voting for the folks that tell you 24/7 to be afraid, and who maintain the system of Apartheid genocide in North America.

Go on, get out there and pledge your allegiance to your abusers.

Stockholm-syndrome?

Don’t be afraid.

Just do it.

What a chickenshit world!

Never thought I’d actually be glad that Bush and Cheney were so awfully, terribly bad that they quite possibly doomed the Republican party for more than a mere two years.  But quite possibly that is what happened and the Democrats quite possibly may hold their majority for another two-year period—during which they may be able to get their act together and actually do something that will bring significant improvements for ordinary Americans.
  Such as?  End the wars.
        Stop the corporate piracy.
        Put people back to work, partly by
          infrastructure rebuilding and partly
          by encouraging new enterprises
        Get rid of at least some of the evils of
          the past like Guantanamo and other
          needed prison reforms, improve edu-
          cation, get rid of excessive sur-
          veillance and promote openness and
          cooperation.
  Somebody’s got to do it.