Naiman's analysis is consistant with all I have seen as a 20 year political activist.

It is also consistant with the late Walter Karp's book "Indispensible Enemies". This is the best book yet on the American nominally two party system.

Karp was an editor for Harper's Magazine. He showed how the political world is divided into hacks and reformers. He showed how the hacks of both parties work together to keep reform and reformers out of power. As a local Bellingham state representative said "I take care of the Republicans on their issues and they don't run a serious candidate against me. Collusion.

Where Karp opens up a new world is when he talks about dummy candidates and thrown elections. It took 10 years of three or four meetings a week for me to be able to see elections being thrown but it happens all the time.

Reading Karp will change your world view in wonderful ways.

THEY ARE DOING AS THEY ARE TOLD.................!!!!

"...If Members of Congress who vote for the supplemental suffer a sufficient political backlash."

It seems to me that this is the next step. A concerted all-out effort by all peace groups. This is the time!

Now we're getting somewhere...

Politics is a chess game, not an arm wrestling match. You strike only when you have diverted your opponent's attention to another part of the board.

The appearance of weakness can be a great advantage in chess.

Let's try to remember that the Dems never intended to reduce funding for the troops. They only attempted to attach conditions to that funding.

This whole episode may have been just a tactical "probe" to size up the Republican defenses, and shore up the weak links in the Democratic line.

It appears that six Democratic Senators need "deals" to placate the pro-war factions in their states.

Now that we know who they are, The Dem leaders can go to work on them.... and some of the Republicans too.

Lieberman's a lost cause, no matter what his affiliation. He could switch parties and give the Senate leadership back to the Republicans but he is - no doubt -extracting some sweet "deals" from Harry Reid by remaining as a swing voter.

The Democrats who voted for the war funding are counting on the fact that there is no election this fall, people's memories are short and subsequent events will overshadow this vote. They also think that antiwar Democratic voters have no place else to go. These things make it difficult to exert much pressure on the Democrats at this time. As the 2008 election approaches things might change to make it more possible to influence them, especially if the war continues to go badly despite Bush's surges.

When we knew the vote was tossed by the Supreme Court in 2000 and suspected that Ohio skewed things in 2004, there was still the sense that the two parties really stood for at least minimally opposed positions. Now? That both so ostensibly answer to their lobbyists' bidding and that US corporations are making a killing on (killing) war, the sense of betrayal is as blinding as staring into the sun. Not long ago a college address by a computer genius/founder stated that the only ones to deliver us will have to be ourselves. Coalitions of all those groups of conscience are a start, the need for a viable 3rd party could not be clearer. Funds collected to provide air time to viable candidates is MOST important to flood out the false-news of the status quo media sources that are quite happy with the way things are. I feel stunned with this news.

"This [the U.S. Constitution] is likely to be administered for a course of years and then end in despotism... when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other."
Benjamin Franklin

"If fascism ever came to the United States, it would be wrapped in an American flag."
Huey Long

"fascism - A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."
The American Heritage Dictionary, 1983

"The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy."
Alex Carey

"The point of public relations slogans like "Support our troops" is that they don't mean anything... That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. Its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That's the one you're not allowed to talk about."
Noam Chomsky

Well it's really getting muddled and confused now isn't it?

Democrats are supporting the war by obfuscating the issue. Listen to Joe Biden's convoluted arguments about getting Republicans to come along with him but they need to feel supported etc., ad nauseum.

Simplify. We followed a criminal lying regime into a quagmire called Iraq and now we are asked to trust it and support the "troops" in their "war" against "terror".

Troops support their commanders who support their "commander-in-chief" who is a confirmed scoundrel.

It is not anyone's duty to "support" troops who are pawns of criminals.

Let's support truths, not troops.

The crux of the problem is that the majority of the country rates Bush into the abyss, believes Iraq was a mistake, and that we're basically on the wrong track with just about everything.

Who, really, are the Democrats afraid of? A shrinking minority of pro-war fringe right-wing activists who are basically no political force today?

Why did Gore pick the most conservative running mate (Lieberman, later rejected by his own party) in '00 before 9/11 and the war? Was Gore trying to appease the "right-wing" of the Democratic Party?

I think not on both counts.

It really seems more consistent that they must appease people above, rather than below. And the people "above" want the war. Who are they? Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg Group, Carlyle, the M.I.C. in general?

Ezeflyer (good quotes again! thanks) I remember as a child watching a Candid Camera episode where people, every day types on the street, were convinced to picket with BLANK signs. Sheeple, indeed... it was irrelevant WHAT the protest was about, they were merely passionately incited to take up a blank sign! I never saw my father laugh so hard...

I apologize to those who read all the articles on commondreams, but I want to reach as many people as I can. This information has me completely freaked out.

A Presidential Directive was signed by President Bush on May 9th giving him unconstrained powers in case of a national emergency. In the case of a national emergency (terrorist attack), I don't want that psychopath in charge of anything. How can he get away with this? It's terrifying!!!

worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55825

© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

President Bush has signed a directive granting extraordinary powers to the office of the president in the event of a declared national emergency, apparently without congressional approval or oversight.

The "National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive
" was
signed May 9, notes Jerome R. Corsi in a WND column
.

It was issued with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, as a Homeland Security Presidential Directive.

The directive establishes under the office of the president a new national continuity coordinator whose job is to make plans for "National Essential Functions" of all federal, state, local, territorial and tribal governments,
as well as private sector organizations to continue functioning under the president's directives in the event of a national emergency.

"Catastrophic emergency" is loosely defined as "any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage,
or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions."

It says the president can assume the power to direct any and all government and business activities until the emergency is declared over.

The directive says the assistant to the president for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, currently Frances Fragos Townsend
, would be designated as the national continuity coordinator.

Corsi says the directive makes no attempt to reconcile the powers created for the national continuity coordinator with the National Emergency Act
,
which requires that such proclamation "shall immediately be transmitted to the Congress and published in the Federal Register."

A Congressional Research Service study notes the National Emergency Act sets up Congress as a balance empowered to "modify, rescind, or render dormant" such emergency authority if Congress believes the president has acted
inappropriately.

But the new directive appears to supersede the National Emergency Act by creating the new position of national continuity coordinator without any specific act of Congress authorizing the position, Corsi says.

The directive also makes no reference to Congress and its language appears to negate any requirement that the president submit to Congress a determination that a national emergency exists.

It suggests instead that the powers of the directive can be implemented without any congressional approval or oversight.

Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke affirmed to Corsi the Homeland Security Department would implement the requirements of the order under
Townsend's direction.

The White House declined to comment on the directive.

Here's the simple answer: don't be terrified of a sheet of paper.

Bona fide resistance movements throughout history have dealt with far, far, worse than statements and declarations. I believe it's an empty demoralizing tactic. We'll be downright lucky if we're not invaded by a real foreign threat at this point, given how thin Bush & Co. have stretched our capacity. But we're such a heavily armed country that there's no doubt that old-style militias would form and drive out a foreign army. So it's probably just a scare tactic aimed at us, for our own pleasure?

Think about how it happens that we are being hornswoggled into swallowing the notion that Democrats, after riding into power on a surge of popular antipathy to this war, are terrified to offer any more than weak, token opposition because they are afraid someone might say they didn't support the troops. Yes--this is obvious bullshit. But how is it that the myth is being perpetrated? because the mass media is part of the team. It's not the MIC we have to worry about anymore--those were the good old days. Now it's even bigger--it's the Corporate/Government/Media Complex gripping our world by the balls. Yes, arms profiteering is part of it, and AIPAC is part of it, but those are just parts. The oil and coal companies are in on this too--the war in Iraq is about getting control over the major oilfields there, and everyone is Congress knows it. They mouth fairytales about liberation and Saddam and WMD and wahtnot--but they all know what the real game is, and they have no intention of leaving until Iraq's oil is safely flowing into the waiting tankers of Exxon, with permanent military bases to safeguard the lines.
Congresspeople know they can rig the system so that we have no real choices, and they know that they can keep us playing the game, trying to get more or better Democrats in, as though that will change anything. Sooner or later we have to stop wearing ourselves out spinning the hamster wheel faster, and look for a way out of this cage. I believe TV is the key.

"They [Reid, Pelosi] don't want to acknowledge that the "Republicans" who are the problem are part of the "Democratic" caucus. They prefer to be denounced as wimps than to acknowledge that they can't compel "Democrats" to conform to the will of Democratic voters."

Herin lies the crux of the issue. The Democratic Party has a very wide swath of DLC-types that burrusky (first post) has alluded to. I have watched the grass-roots Left thrown under the bus so many times in the last thirty years by the Democratic apparatchiks and real politicos when serious issues are at stake, I've lost count.

If the Left cannot make the DLC types more afraid of them than the GOP neocons, it's time to take their votes elsewhere. Now.

Good to hear Samuel Johnson again! You know how he'd vote! No duplicity and weasle behavior with Dr. Johnson. Would that our own "conservatives" could be both moral and conservative.

They are not, however. This administration is essentially amoral. This has never been more apparent. There's always been corruption and malfeasance in government, and it is also true that those drawn to power occasionally see themselves as beyond good and evil, but this administration is an unprecedented gathering of sociopathic personalities around a common endeavor which involves the violation of the fundamental principles that underpin this republic. From the perspective of the international community, this administration is an anomaly on the world stage as fearsome as the rise of Nazi Germany.

Having said that, back to the chess game. What Congress is not doing and should do is to declare the game over and make a stand on principle. Playing games with sociopaths is not productive because they are inveterate cheaters. The only way to deal with them is to call them out and force them to show their hands. Because their hands are dirty, they will do most anything to avoid that call.

Thus far, the Democrats have permitted George Bush to maintain the perception that he is a man of principle and a good man. He is not a good man. They have not exposed him as the Republicans attacked and exposed Clinton. It is necessary to expose this man and knock him off the high ground he's standing on. That would not be difficult to do, in theory. All it would require is for the Democrats to organize a campaign to focus on Bush's incompetence, his chronic lying, his fiscal mismanagement, and so on. He has less intellectual and human substance than Alberto Gonzalez. This would not be a tawdry exercise in "negative" tactics or character assassination, it would be a legitimate and much needed critique of his job performance.

The Democrats seem to be unable to take the moral high ground from a demonstrable sociopath. There is no moral outrage in face of the amorality plainly apparent to anyone with a conscience. One has to ask why they are so compromised? Why do they play footsy with unidicted criminals? What are they so afraid of?

So, back to the chess game. God help us all!

"When the leaders speak of peace, the common folk know that war is coming. When the leaders curse war, the mobilization order is already written out." - Bertolt Brecht

Now we enter the Iran phase of the never ending war.

Wrong. Democrats DON'T prefer to be denounced as wimps rather than to acknowledge that they can't conform to the will of Democratic voters. What they do prefer is to be denounced as wimps rather than to acknowledge that they are being paid off to keep this war going. Obscene amounts of money. There's too much money in the war business, that's what made America what America is today: WAR.

I absolutely have NO intellectual respect for anyone who thinks there's an ounce of a difference between Democrats and Republicans. I read Chomsky and Vidal. The two-party system in the US is a well designed illusion to make citizens believe they actually have a choice.

The US government is in it too deeply. The administration and congress (effectively the same thing now) cannot back out of Iraq regardless of what some of the people say they want, to do so would prove how wasteful it all was. The citizens of the US are unwilling and unable to act in a manner that will effectively change the government position because they are not sufficiently informed, both by design and by choice. The 2006 elections changed some names on some congressional doors, but had no effect on the way the country is run. There are a few voices of reason around, in fact some appear here, but these are a very small minority. Everyone is afraid, from the little men in the white house who fling around the most potent weapons in the world, to the sad little people on the street with minds full of TV commercials and a few fleeting media-fabricated memories of 9-11. The political system that formerly represented the American people has been replaced by one that now represents the money of their employers. "The Public" is now along for the ride simply because they generate GDP, and nothing more. Jefferson, were he here, would scream for another revolution, but he would have to beat some cute cheerleader on American Idol first. Even if he did, the typical American is too fat to move in any useful way, and too scared of risking the 401K. There is some hope in all of this though; the pendulum always swings back. Perhaps it will bring with it the fall of the US, after finally being confronted and beaten down by the billions of people it has held subservient over the last 200 years, and another nationality (or nationalities) will rise in its place. Or perhaps the US won't entirely lose that war, and those that remain will reconstruct some form of self-rule that makes more sense. However it happens, it will be an interesting spectacle no doubt, and one the granchildren of all of those who are alive now will remember well.

It's obvious the Democrats are just posturing. When they need enough votes to override a veto, they have a mere majority. When they need a mere majority, they fall short.
Why are we really still in this debacle? Many people think it is about oil, but that explanation rings hollow. The war with Iraq is ruining the country to an unprecedented extent; oil gains can't begin to make up for the damage. In the President's simple, simple mind he thought this war would play out exactly like the first one--over in a few months, patriotic shock and awe over the American war machine.
We are down to ego's now. If the war were to end today, it would be his failure. Even this simple man knows that the surge is likely to fail, but double or nothing sounds pretty good to him.
The President may be delusional, but most members of Congress aren't. They will be judged even more harshly.

We can either act to change our ways or at some point the rest of the world will do it for us and we will be wishing we had taken it on ourselves. So which will it be? We may have more guns than the rest of the world combined, but we only have 20% of the world's population. Can't win. And no bully can stand up to a united opposition. An intervention is coming, sooner or later. For the sake of the dying, I hope it's sooner.

Are there any patriots in the Government?

Cruxpuppy: Good points but remember, it is the Christian fundamentalists, an "army" over 40 million who have been deceived by their "church leaders" that Bush is a "man of god." He hides behind that false characterization to simulate a person of good intentions, etc. And to our knowledge he's faithful to Laura (though I wish we could send Laura to the "Loreena Bobbitt School of Mate Obedience Training" right about now! And Kathyodat, yep, sooner or later an equal opposite force will foment, as this monster can't be left on the loose indefinitely. Hey, maybe x Files had it right, maybe some UFO will fix it for us! Word is they don't want a bunch of nuclear weapons or any shield with radiation powers to destroy OUT in space... not like we managed our own turf that well given the state of our globe.

Actually Siouxrose, I wasn't thinking in terms of UFOs, but something a little closer to home, and along more economic lines.