This comment could be in response to several of today's articles (Rosa Brooks, Marie Coco). Despite these numbers, Bush and the Bushistas are disturbingly undaunted, and the Democrats seem to have little inclination to "break with Bush on the war in Iraq, trade policy, tax policy and just about everything else."

In fact, the lower Bush's poll numbers sink, the more cowardly and accommodating the beltway Democrats become. If one didn't know better (and I DON'T know better), one would swear they were in cahoots, that they aren't really an opposition party at all. Occasionally you get a televised impassioned speech, which seems mostly for the purposes of keester covering ("I said on such and such a date that we ought not bomb Iran"), but media coverage of these speeches is spotty and nothing seems to come of them.

Cindy Sheehan isn't the only one discouraged by the lack of any way to affect this crazed and crazymaking junta. That seems to be their strategy -- keep doing what they want to do until all opposition knocks itself out by butting against a stone wall -- the immovable object meets the highly resistable force.

We could wait them out, but they seem to be hell bent on more war, and the environmental issues that they are conspicuously not addressing (except for the occasional "for the record" speech) are the real "gathering threat" and one with the capacity to inflict huge amounts of harm on huge numbers of people.

When people say "We've got to get these people out of there" I wholeheartely agree. But how?

How you ask? Read on for 1 possibility.

Things will change only when the populace is alienated and hopeless.
Then they may :
STAND UP - for what they beleive to be right.
SIT DOWN - in the nearest street to bring transportaion, retail, everything to a standstill.
FIGHT - I hope like Gandhi's Pathan friend Badshar Khan(Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan) (check him out)
FIGHT - Even if it means sacrifice to themselves to totally repudiate the oligarchy

When people realize that they cannot ignore the actions of the government and relaize they themselves are the governmet, only then is change possible..

Allow me to quote another blogger of my vintage - estebandito:
(I hope he does not mind)

'As an old hippy draft-dodger,who has been out in the streets se'veral hours a week behind my Iraq anti-war signs demanding an end to the madness since this insanity began (how many years now?), I gotta report: very few people of any age give a good goddam. Oh yeah, we "protestors" get a free coffee now an then and lots of happy honking as the cars go by, but the truth is very sad. Old radicals tell me they are afraid of losing their subsidized rents!! " FBI lists! Got no time for it…"

Practically no one can remember that the way a people get new governments and new directions is ancient and simple: you stop up the streets and you go to jail for misdemeanors and then you go back and do it again. respectfully and peacefully. The fact that this is so self evident yet almost completely ignored tells me that our population of united statesians has largely ceased to function as truly caring, conscience-filled people. Reasons are many……but we are losing hope, and we deserve whatever happens to us now. This is not nice talk in front of the children, or at parties.

Nevertheless, I will continue to sally out and attempt to show folks the facts as well as try and get them to laugh at our predicament ( i usually dress as a clown 'cause clowns have more fun…..it seems like the compassionaste thing to do.'

The reason for this situation is that the Republicans are not now, never have been, and probably never will be, conservatives. A conservative is one who wishes to conserve their culture, country, and its people. Republicans have done nothing whatsoever to further any of these goals, and much to damage them. As autocratic as southern slave-holders were, even they couldn't stomach Republican avarice, referring to them as "money grubbers."

In other words, real conservatives aren't elitist pigs who want to get rich by using the government to make everybody else poor. Bush's tax cuts are a prime example; the average American worker gets seventy cents a day in tax relief while the rich get millions. Considering that it's impossible to buy even a small sandwich for seventy cents, maybe the Republicans should tout their tax plan as anti-obesity legislation.

It gets worse. Republicans offshore literally millions of jobs, leaving the American worker holding the bag. The Republicans are trying to open the door to the possibility of literally billions of "guest workers" who will constitute the final push in the Republicans' quest to drive the average American into destitution. With few exceptions, Republicans who oppose Bush's immigration plan have done so only because of their constituents. If Americans hadn't raised such a ruckus about this proposed bill, the Republicans would've quietly passed it.

Bush came out with a proposal to make workers pay income tax on their employment-based health insurance. Fortunately, the Democrats have derailed this proposal. This list could go on and on....

The reason conservatives tossed in the lot with the Republicans is that they had no other place to go. And now they're paying the price. Bush and his Republicans have done more damage to the real conservative movement than Democrats and liberals could ever dream of doing. The American people are waking up to the true nature of the Republican party, and all I can say is it's about time.

Wouldn't it be simpler to annexe Mexico and make it the 51st state ? This would enable a mass of American investment down there,and as more jobs are created, less Mexicans would need to migrate north. The billions spent on border control could be used to unite instead of divide.

FightforPeace:

In 1848 the US thoroughly defeated Mexico. All of Mexico was America's for the taking. We didn't take all of Mexico because of huge, gaping cultural differences, and the fact that unlike the southwestern territories, the rest of Mexico was populated, with a unique culture. Those cultural differences haven't changed, and Mexicans don't want us overrunning their country anymore than most Americans want Mexicans overrunning our country.

One thing the Iraq War screams out to anybody willing to listen is that the US has no business trying to tell other peoples how to live, and we have even less business in their countries forcing them to live in a manner we find acceptable.

America won its southwestern territories fair and square. But it wasn't right then, and it certainly wouldn't be right now, to dictate how Mexicans live in their own country.

Respect Mexican sovereignty.

Paranoid Pessimist: "If one didn't know better ... one would swear they were in cahoots, that they aren't really an opposition party at all."

There isn't an opposition party and there hasn't been one since the end of WW II. There is only one party - the party of money, the party of corporate power.

Which is precisely why Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and co will be able to declare themselves still in power come November, 2008. There will be no opposition to it - formally anyway. The non-opposition-democrats will simply roll over to the controlling-party called The Corporate Money Party.

There might be (though I'm not holding my breath) some informal opposition - maybe a few street protests and maybe a storm of e-mails. But it won't be enough to change anything. The snowball is on course and gathering momentum every moment.

Which does not mean that you shouldn't e-mail and call and peacefully protest. I still do, if only for the selfish reason that these actions might possibily diminish some of the harmful karmic consequences that will certainly come into my next lifetime just because I had the misfortune to be born in this country.

ionwash:

Not being a believer in next lives or karma, I wish there was something we could do that actually stood a chance of having some effect, but I don't know what it could possibly be.

curmudgeon99 has some appealing ideas, but civil disobedience, to have an effect, has to be widespread enough to actually mess up the system, and that takes time like it did for Gandhi, or organizing like it did for the Bolesheviks in 1917 Russia. By the time people get desperate enough to stop up the streets and peacefully go to jail again and again, it will be way too late. If it were to start small and looked like it could be effective, the Homeland Security spooks would swoop in and eliminate everyone involved -- trips to Uzbekistan for waterboarding, or annihilation like the Branch Dividians. In our Orwellian multiply-monitored times, you would never be able to communicate nationwide enough to pull that off without alerting the forces of repression.

Of course, as always, I could be wrong and would love to be proved so.

"...Democrats might want entertain the notion that it is time to break with Bush on the war in Iraq, trade policy, tax policy and just about everything else."

That's funny. As if Dems aren't sucking down corporate cash as fast as inhumanly possible. It's not about breaking with Bush, it's about breaking with the system that's now in place. If one accepts bucks from bomb-makers, then they will talk about "ending the war" (even though they know there is no actual war,) while insuring said non-war continues. Merck pays the campaign bills and we get talk on health reform as the Treasury is drained.

The few righteous Dems are slammed, smeared and ignored - think Feingold, Byrd, Waters, etc, by the powder Blues who never saw a greenback they didn't love.

The more pressing question is.........would you even listen to what these 29 percent have to say?

Effective opposition to Bush:

Kim Jong Il-got his nuke and is still dictator of North Korea.

The Iraqi Insurgents-Preventing Bush from plundering Iraq's oil and defying US occupation.

Ineffective Opposition to Bush:

US Congress-Corrupt and impotent.

US Citizens-Irrelevant, not the Deciders. Are not players on the world stage.

United Nations-How many nukes and brigades does the UN have?

Other Govrnments-US has more bombs than there are cities to bomb.

"we deserve whatever happens to us now." When historians look back on this period in American history they may describe it in the same way Cubans refer to the disastrous loss of sugar-daddy Russia in 1990 as " Special Period " a period when WHO , Miami-living Cuban ex-patriots and Revolucionaries all agreed that among other deprivations adult Cuban citizens lost an average of 30 pounds of body weight. No,there wasn't a sudden rush on Fitness World weight-loss facilities.

Cubans' problems were external: peak-oil and pits- sugar.America's problems are internal : governmental evil and public disinterest.

Generally speaking , Cubans admitted their mistake of relying on the beneficence of the USSR and took the tough but correct steps towards self-sufficiency.

As yet a very tiny number of American citizens are echoing " curmudgeon99's" sentiments and realisticly admitting that the US public is as responsible for the present condition as the government.

Election reform...we must change the electoral college, insure accurate and incorruptible vote counting, make available to the citizens all sources of contributions to the candidates.

As for the next election, I think all progressive parties, Greens, etc. should drop individual and party egos, join together for the express purpose of outvoting the two major parties with a focus on returning power to the people via honest and ethical representation, to correct the dissolutions to the Constitution that have shifted unbridled power to the rogue element now in the White House, getting out of Iraq, restoring our reputation through diplomacy not bullying, and responsibly taking actions to join in the more serious effort to reduce global warming through alternate and renewable energy sources. Is this possible? Not much time left.