Shenonymous,

All I can do is shake my head at your remark. I think I will just keep to reading the articles, and refrain from making comments. Good luck to all you so-called progressives.

The crucial issue above all others, and with some probability reachable, is to remove ALL! private funding of ALL! political elections. This drum must be beat over and over, people must be organized around the issue, and we must be tenacious as Gandhi in pursuing this, even if it takes years; elsewither lies the dissolution of this country and probable ruination of the human species, no issue for Arda, who loves us not.

pfutrell, you are so welcome. If you don't find my biases helpful, you may ignore them. Are you suggesting that the only thing we can do is piss into the wind, just identify problems? I urge you to go at that with others who pontificate.

Aren't you sharing your biases with your comments? You know what that old adage God helps those who help themselves means? Help yourself.

Shenonymous
Thanks for sharing your biases. Extremely un-helpful.

Maybe it's time for Huffington to write another book, "Becoming Fearless….in Democratic Politics." Nader2000 has an astute perception of what needs to be done with the blue dawgs and replace them with those who are resolved to carry out the will of the people. Ron Paul is a pro-lifer and against abortion. That makes him a pariah in the women's camp, which a Muslim who has very little regard for women, such as Hassan, most likely would not understand. But this is America, and most American women are pro-choice, and vote, and Ron Paul is most worrisome. Democrats are to be more trusted than Republicans, Libertarians,… and by reason of their attitude toward women, Muslims. RichM thinks he may have "formed an accurate understanding of crisis's nature" but he doesn't offer a plan to redistribute the power from the financial tyrants. A great number recognize the power of corporation, i.e., Ralph Nader for one, and a profusion of others, but identification of a problem is one thing, having a viable strategy to fix it is another. Other than that, it is simply hot air.

Don't kid yourselves. Cindy Sheehan will cave to the Democratic Party interests just like all the rest of them do. It won't take three months once she's in office.

iammyself; Thanks! May Kurt Vonnegut rest in peace. We do miss him.

Clemsy; The crooks in charge would only use the draft as a last resort, for fear of an insurrection within the ranks by educated draftees who know the score. And with lucrative signing-up bonuses and re-enlistment ones, they'll get enough people for the war machine. Plus we are recruiting foreigners to join our armed forces with a promise of citizenship as well as the economic package. The olt time Mafia would have been envious. Or the James and Younger Brothers, etc. Plus we have the 'legalized mercenaries' like Blackwater.

Thursday night I was listening to talk radio and the host said that in a high school poll, 40% of the seniors didn't know who fought in the 'Revolutionary War'. Unbelievable.

It just may be too late.

"There are two parties in this country: The Winners and the Losers. The Winners are the Democrats and the Republicans, the Losers are the rest of us." Kurt Vonnegut

http://www.pbs.org/now/arts/vonnegut.html#

Two parties, or a hundred parties, you still have to build a coalition large enough to do things. The Dems do not currently have a coalition large enough to do things against Bush's wishes, otherwise we would have health care for kids. Just 7 votes short.

So you build a green, liberal group outside the two parties. Fine and well. But then, to get power, you have to work with one or the other of the existing parties. Whichever one you choose will win. Great! Maybe eventually you become the large coalition and the other ones have to come to you.

Unfortunately, we don't have a leader. Cindy is busy incinerating herself against the powerful leader of one of the other coalitions. Ralph is past tense. Kucinich is part of one of the other coalitions. But build it and someone will appear, maybe.

However, this is a long term strategy. Americans are usually more pragmatic, and would rather just win the next election. After all, eight years of Bush, and, as Anney points out, we are almost a fascist state, and we might not even be able to recover. So, maybe something shorter term would be expedient.

Clemsy; Those figures are troubling. The reactionaries have done an outstanding job of dumbing down the public. More later.

One more time:

The two-party system is not written explicitly in the Constitution but is an inescapable consequence of the electoral structure that we have and could not change without rewriting the Constitution, which would be extremely dangerous if it were possible and in any case is something a progressive minority cannot possibly do.

District-by-district winner-take-all elections cause the two-party system to be the only party structure that is dynamically stable, and prevent any third party from rising to the level where it can win representation in Congress, even a single seat. The one exception to this rule in US history is the emergence of the Republican party due to an issue that divided the nation sharply on geographic (and economic) lines and resulted in a civil war.

Runoff voting is still winner-take-all. IRV would create a warmer climate for parapolitics, but would not result in the emergence of a unified Left party that could rise to the level of winning. Instead, there'd be dozens of little Green, Red, and other shades of splinter parties, all claiming to be more correct than the others, draining progressive energies and flushing them down.

The way for progressives to access power is by organizing as a constituent bloc and acting withing the Democratic side of the formal two-party system. That does not mean blindly supporting "the Democrats." It means supporting those Democrats who are progressive, supporting but pressuring those who we can get something out of, and running progressive candidates in primary challenges against those who deserve it. Like my congressman, Steny Hoyer, for example. Or Nancy Pelosi, who has earned a primary challenge from Cindy Sheehan, but I expect will have the pleasure of trouncing her in the general election instead.

And, no, I am not Ralph Nader, but I did vote for him in 2000, sorry to say.

Here's your answer:

http://americanprogressiveparty.com/

It is illogical to try and take a battleship and try to steer it in a direction it does NOT want to go! So, you build a new ship that wants to go that direction!

Makes sense to me!

RichM October 27th, 2007 12:14 pm

You are right on on Daniel David. In other words the Dems = Bush enabler, and Daniel Davids = Dem enabler.

"It is time to prepare and coordinate work stoppages and the general strike by people who really care about this country. Talk is endless and so far, hasn't resulted in much undoing of these past seven years."

Never happen... not unless they start forcing our kids into uniform. Peaceman, it may be time but we have neither the general outrage nor the numbers.

45% of the populace still think invading Iraq was the right thing to do. 30% think things are going somewhat well, 30% think things are going somewhat poorly. 35% still think Bush is, well, sane.

To get anything near a popular revolt will take numbers much higher than that.

If the military continues its deterioration, and conscription becomes a necessity as far as the leadership is concerned, then you may get people in the streets.

Not before.

And you have to give Bush credit. Despite record-low approval ratings, he's unabashedly playing — and winning — the PR game on the war.

No, Adrianna, you do not have to give the chimp credit. You do not have to validate his game. Why don't you give up the capitalist game yourself? You may find it difficult to operate in a capitalist society after giving up the game yourself. But at least you would be operating by your principles. Or at least by the principles that you claim to have. Progressive principles make a lot of sense. Especially when we operate by them. That is, when we stop running the capitalist rat race and institute power and responsibility for all. Umm, free education, free healthcare, free transport, ya know - we were supposed to get some benefits from the industrial revolution. But instead we made all those advancements into - what else - an ever larger prize for the winning rat! Winner take all, Adrianna!

pfutrell

"No one has a clue what to do, or what "fighting" entails. About the only thing we can do is identify our fear, frustration and rage. Whoop-dee-do."

I think we'll "know" when the time has come. Things haven't coalesced yet.

=====

Paul Bramscher

"But if we can get many progressives at once, all over the country to run for elections simultaneously, we might see real change."

That's a great idea, and I agree that Wellstone's loss was a terrible tragedy, but there aren't going to BE many progressives running all at once in the 2008 elections. And I don't think we have that much of a time safety-net. Bush is successfully pushing his aggressive plans right now. (Don't get me wrong: I DO think that's a great idea.)

And as for change, I'd be satisfied to see a Constitutional government restored to America with one additional piece -- get corporate-sponsored election-money entirely out of the picture. Unfortunately, Congress votes itself the benefits it wants, so this is hardly likely to happen. I, myself, would like to see Congressional benefits granted or withheld by the citizens based on their performance.

Daniel David (11:17 am) jeers at CD posters who recognize the need to break from the 2-party framework: "There are now 96 posts above, a majority of them advocating a third-party takeover of government and corporate influence, and none of them with a credible plan to make it happen. And they call me silly for knowing a Democratic sweep is the best you can hope for..."

The present situation can be compared to a huge & brutal prison camp. Most of us -- ie, the general US population -- are the prisoners, and the camp is run by ruthless tyrants. From time to time, various prisoners get together to try to formulate ideas for escaping the tyranny & attaining our freedom. Daniel David, in this analogy, is the prisoner who jeers at those of us thinking about breaking free. He tells us that it's hopeless, and the best we can hope for is some minimal cosmetic change in prison management personnel.

Or, if you like, the Daniel Davids are like the Tories before the American Revolution, cynically telling everyone that it's hopeless to fight the British Crown; they're just too strong, so the best we should hope for is that King George will die, and we might get a slightly more benevolent king.

Naomi Wolf's video:

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/177.html

Naomi has not "failed" me (Paul), or the progressive movement. If I reacted a certain way, that reaction is all my own. And maybe I overreacted. The jury is still out on that.

The similarities to steps undertaken by fascist regimes to our own recent history are eerily similar, but we tend to think "it [fascism] can't happen here". Well, I think it can. I think it has to certain extents (what do you call McCarthyism in the 50's) , and it has taken someone at the helm (JFK) to prevent its happening, and of course, he got killed for it. And his brother and MLK, ... not coincidences or the work of lone madmen.

I appreciate the words of encouragement, the cheerleaders who say "don't get discouraged, but go out and fight". Where should I do this? I've been to marches, they are futile. So where? "Get progressives onto the ballet ..." Our system is so corrupt, that anyone not drinking at the teet of the corporatists will not make it. And if they do make it on the ballot, our election systems will rig it so that they lose.

Thanks anyway, folks. No one has a clue what to do, or what "fighting" entails. About the only thing we can do is identify our fear, frustration and rage. Whoop-dee-do.

Skip fear altogether, skip the fear-mongers too. At times I think this country's real voice is kept in check by fear on all sides. Fear of terrorists, fear of Bush and his supposed Gestapo. Fear of your neighbor, fear of the inner city, fear of persons of color, fear of poor people and the homeless, reasons abound for cowering.

There is the truth, and that may be ugly in and of itself. But its ugliness stays with it, it shouldn't rub off on us. America needs to convert truth into action as cleanly as possible, no counter-productive emotions or reactions -- not even anger -- to the extent possible. None of this is new. It's been codified millenia ago in philosophies from India to Japan.

Push isn't quite ready to come to shove just yet, though. It'll take some catalyst. The problem is that evolution and stepwise refinement is clearly superior to any sort of revolution. If revolution, the wrong sorts of people will still be at the table, arrogant insiders, the biggest guns, new boss same as the old boss, dominated by the wealthy for the wealthy, pershaps their usual reptilian intelligence but little or no human wisdom, etc.

The Wellstone machine was a good one. But if we can get many progressives at once, all over the country to run for elections simultaneously, we might see real change. If one is afraid before getting out of the starting gate, what if push really came to shove? Bury one's head in the sand instead of standing up?

Here's a great clip of CNN's Jack Cafferty, calling for viewers to "overthrow Bush":

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/66260/

"It's not like anybody gave President Bush any of these powers -- he took them, as a brain-dead Congress just stood there and watched," says Cafferty.

Excellent comments by most of you on Arianna's article. The Common Dreams 'regulars' and new posters to this site remind of the 'White Rose' society in Nazi Germany. They were bright German students who opposed Hitler and his government and wrote articles and passed them around. The Gestapo rounded them up and some were imprisoned, some tortured, and some executed. Many Germans were so fearful of their 'benign' totalitarian government that they were giving the Gestapo names of people, including friends and relatives, whom they thought were 'unpatriotic' to the 'homeland'.

It has been said that "action speaks louder than words". Aldo has it right. The first step is a coordinated effort for work stoppages and the eventual general strike. Unless we shut the country down, and repeal and rescind EVERYTHING that Bush and his crime family, which include most of the Democrats, passed, then kiss any hope you have of restoring any semblance of what this country once was.

Alliances are forming around the world to combat the American bully. The German 'superman' and the Japanese 'samurai' were eventually defeated after causing much death, destruction, misery, and suffering.
We may be next.

People...the Democrats are not the remedy, but part of the problem.

pfutrell

One way to deal with fear is to fully accept it, but then let it turn to outrage and make a commitment to use that outrage energy to fight, to say NO to the powers that would suppress your freedom and that of millions of others. You won't be alone.

We all seem to have some sort of belief or trust structure about various facets of life that occasionally gets smashed. When that happens, I think a natural reaction is fear, and if you're lucky, the fear turns to anger, either at oneself or at the agent-of-betrayal.

My anger at the Democrats for not fighting the Bush administration and instead collaborating with them was born not long after the 2008 elections. I couldn't imagine why they were doing it, just realized they were.

Then came the gradual realization that the Bush administration was slowly but surely destroying the Constitutional principles on which our government is based, though now we're discovering that he did many of those things in secret rather rapidly. We just slowly discovered it.

And finally came the realization that without the Constitutional framework and citizen protections that America is built upon, the ones that Bush et al have destroyed, some other kind of government is operating. Whether one calls it fascism or corporatism or imperialism doesn't matter, but American governance now really does fit the description of fascism that was "perfected" by Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin together. The patterns of warmongering, fearmongering, and increasing citizen repression are astonishingly similar.

But 70 years ago, the citizens of Germany, Italy, and the USSR were mostly asleep. Americans may be slow in their realization of what's happening, but we aren't exactly asleep. The average citizen is very angry about Bush's war in Iraq and is screaming for it to end in spite of Bush's wishes. Americans are seeing that Congress is abysmally failing at stopping Bush, and it appears that the Democrats who were elected on the basis of their promises to stop him are just not doing that. Some Americans buy the excuse "we just don't have the votes". Many Americans don't buy that at all, so there's a great deal of consternation and confusion about the Democratic failure. So I think the American public is in the midst of a confusing and painful stage of "consciousness-raising", questioning what's going on, while the Bush administration confidently and aggressively tramples all over citizens, the judiciary, and Congress itself.

I cannot forget Bush's early "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." CNN transcript, Transition of Power
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0012/18/nd.01.html

So he decided to create a dictatorship and so far, it's working.

Maybe because I'm older, I feel as if I don't have much to lose, so I'm willing to stand up and fight and take the risks when the time comes. That time will probably be different for everyone. Does that sound dramatic? Maybe it is, and maybe I'd fail terribly, but I think it is the best thing I could do.

Transform fear into courage and anger and a will to protect American freedom. Americans are a LOT feistier than we might suspect.

But then, Daniel, the Democrats won't repair the damage and will only make themselves look like idiots trying to do so.

Hey, I want the Repubs out as much as the next guy.

But I want the Crazies out of power more.

Is there anyone, anyone at all, capable of cleaning the mess? When looked at from this perspective, who will look worse trying?

Oh yes. Sorry for mixing all those metaphors...

There are now 96 posts above, a majority of them advocating a third-party takeover of government and corporate influence, and none of them with a credible plan to make it happen. And they call me silly for knowing a Democratic sweep is the best you can hope for, even though far less than perfect, and far from assured. As of now, there is a very good chance of conservatives winning it all, again. Then you can blog for a few more years about third parties that don't exist, again.

Hmmm. Seems some folks would like a popular revolt. Great idea. I would like a popular revolt.

One problem... Enough people would have to be informed for the 'popular' part to work. Most Americans are news skimmers and haven't a clue as to what's going on.

Too many Americans still think of America in a magical way: can't happen here, Americans don't do things like that...

I could go on.

And things have gone so far the country's ability to confront itself is even further disabled. We're torturing people in a concentration camp for Christ's sake!

Remember Zaphod Beeblebrox in Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? He wore glasses that got darker and darker as things got bleaker and bleaker...

I've gotten to the point between "Go, lemmings go!" and waiting, like Alice, for the fall down the rabbit hole to end.

Exactly what do you do when you're trapped in a Kurt Vonnegut novel?

I really don't know anymore.

it time for a stike. People should walk out of there jobs fpor a few days.

pfutrell,

Then Naomi Wolf has failed you, and the progressive movement. We don't need to be disouraged, frightened, perpetually hiding behind aliases in forums like this. We need to be emboldened, to come out in large numbers, run large numbers of progressive candidates at the same time across the country, etc. America will only end if cowardice, ignorance and apathy rule the day.

And if that proves to be true, it will deserve to end as we know it.

Maybe the Democrats in Congress are listening to the public. They see that Hillary Clinton the hawk is way ahead in the polls. Hillary Clinton is the woman who would not commit to being out of Iraq by 2013 although earlier in the year she said if Bush had not ended the war by 2009 she would. So perhaps the public ought to stop being angry at Congress. And don't forget she voted yes on the Kyl-Lieberman(the turncoat) resolution. Watch out Charlie Brown, Lucy is doing it to you again.

If you are a Clinton supporter do not be a hypocrite and blame Congress for what you are doing. I know there are some people who are supporting Clinton because she is a woman-that is demeaning and a betrayal of feminism.

Help build the Green Party and help avoid the messes like the one we are in in Iraq in the future.
The Dem's for the most part are just masked Republicans. Lets all grow up and realize the fact.

"If ever "it will be possible to build a broad-based movement aimed at taking power away from the big business elite," then the most effective way to do that, in terms of electoral politics, will be through the Democratic side of the two-party system, because the latter is not a conspiracy for control but rather an artifact of our electoral process, which is more or less dictated by our Constitution."

It is not dictated by our Constitution, and oh yes, it is a conspiracy.

There is nothing in the Constitution that would forbid multi-member House districts in larger states. There is nothing in the Constitution that would forbid states from passing instant runoff voting for the Presidency, the Senate, and statewide races. Proportional representation should not be a problem for state legislatures, either.

The Republicans scheduled their 2004 convention for early September in New York City. Hmm...early September...New York City...could it have had anything to do with exploiting 9/11? The problem was that Bush's nomination at the convention was after the filing deadlines in 8 or 9 states.

Instead of moving up the convention or petitioning Bush onto the ballot as an independent, the Republicans asked the state legislatures to change the filing deadlines to accomodate Bush. In every one of those states, including states with Democratic Governors and Democratic legislatures, they got their way- with help from Democrats! In The Most Important Election of Our Lives, the Democratic Party chose to help out Bush.

That didn't stop the Democrats from fighting tooth and nail to keep Nader off the ballot in 2004, or the Greens in 2006- sometimes in the SAME STATES that they changed the rules for Bush! That shows us who they view as their real enemy.

hibcap_halo
You still don't get it. The Dems are truly about "hard" and "balls". But not against the Republicans, Bush and war efforts, rather against the progressive, peace-loving Americans (there are not as many of them as you'd like to think though)

I agree, it is time for the dems to play hardball.

Maybe they should ask the republicans to show them how. Zing pow!

Anything that requires "hard" and/or "balls" is simply not part of the current dems vocabulary or (in)action plan.

It is time to prepare and coordinate work stoppages and the general strike by people who really care about this country. Talk is endless and so far, hasn't resulted in much undoing of these past seven years. Today, more of us will march and demonstrate aroud the country but the Republicrats will continue their murderous rampage in Iraq and Afghanistan, and support dictators in other countries with our taxdollars

If we want to repeal and rescind EVERYTHING Bush has passed since 2001, we must shut the country down. All working people, union and non-union alike, must unite against this hypocritical and criminal government.

It has been said, "talk is cheap, action speaks louder than words", but if the majority prefer the life of a serf, and enjoy the ignorant lifestyle, then what?

Alliances are forming around the world against the American bully. We are so filled with the hubris of invincibility , similar to the 'superman' and 'samurai' of WW2, that we as a nation may have to suffer the consequences of our actions like those countries did.

rtdrury; Well stated.

If I ran for political office, I would do away with corporate influence altogether (which obviously, would make it substantially difficult to get elected). I would restore integrity to the Constitution, and encourage voters to not be influenced by this xenophobia about immigration. I would encourage people to form other parties that will enable us to extricate ourselves from the chains of bondage to this dysfunctional system controlled by the Republicans and Democrats. I would restore jobs to this country and enable the "Mom and Pop" stores to return without having to worry about the heels of the Walmarts and Targets on their throats. In fact, I would make it so the "Mom and Pop" stores could enjoy robust business. I would completely overhaul the public school system and make college much more affordable, especially for families with lower incomes. I would completely reform the tax system and more equitably distribute the wealth to completely close the gap between the rich and the poor. Most of all, I would abolish the (Un)Patriot(ic) Act, and have those who committed crimes against humanity held accountable for their actions (I think all of you know whom I am talking about). I would restore peace in this world through diplomacy and understanding rather than war. Above all, I would bring back our country that all of us lost. May God Bless all of us, and help us get out of this prison.

Best regards,
Claudius

fedupwithpolitics October 26th, 2007 12:28 pm
Arianna has forfeited her "voice of moral authority" since she refused to press Pelosi about impeachment. That was a distinctively undemocratic use of her journalistic powers of access to Pelosi....

--------

Agree. Huffington's smarts and progressive musings shouldn't get her a pass as a serious journalist. Her site has become nothing more than drudge-left, with inordinate amount of space being given to entertainment and 'dog-ate-my-homework' stories and a serious bias on what it chooses to report.

Arianna's overwhelmingly interested in only one thing, promoting arianna. Ultimately, how can one trust someone so ambitious as to find a way to attach her name to virtually everything on her site ('huffpo news,' 'huffpo entertainment,' etc.).

While some of the bloggers on her site are serious journalists, she gives the rest of the site over to her friends. As for me, after posting negative comments about some misleading headlines and what I considered bias on her site, I had trouble posting again, so I assume I've been banned. Just makes me appreciate true progressive sites like Common Dreams even more.

Arianna Arianna,

Are you trying to play funny with us? They are two wings of the same rotten, corrupt bird... Ordo Ab Chao, look it up. Try looking up 'Cognitive Dissonance' while you're at it.

I use to go to Huffingtonpost before the right side of the page became The Inquirer. Now she said she plans to turn it into a more 'balanced' take on news and opinion with right wing folk chiming in... 'fair and balanced' shall we say.

I'm beginning to think she relishes the perks of riding that rotten bird... maybe that explains the rather limp interview with Pelosi. If the comment section on her sight has any bearing on what her posters told her to ask Pelosi... she didn't.

Enjoy them perks sweety... good luck with The Enquirer.

Wow. I just followed that link above with a video from Naomi Wolf, the End of America. It is frightening, and it is happening.

Any of the guys we like -- if any of them get beyond what MSM and others would like, they're going to get shot. Dennis would certainly be shot, he's way too nice.

What happened to those 3 solders who wrote in the NYT about turning against the war? IED's, huh? Lobbed by whom, I wonder ...

And as people have noted, Paul Wellstone's mysterious plane crash, and the cover up of technical background that immediately followed the crash.

It's happening people ... what can we do to wake up the rest of America? What can we do?

On peaceful resistance. I don't remember Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Pinochet ... being brought down by peaceful means.

I concur. Arianna has forfeited her "voice of moral authority" since she refused to press Pelosi about impeachment.

What advice does she have to give? The dems are not immature adolescents. They have tons of "consultants". What they are doing is well thought out and planned. They are doing the bidding of their real constituents: military industrial complex, big money (oil) and the Israeli lobby.

So there is no need to give them any advice. The only advice that may be necessary could be for the American citizens, which would be "Democrats are part of the problem - so ditch them".

And as for Ariana, my advice is to stop pandering to the corporate funded Democratic Party. You have lost your moral authority with your so called interview with Pelosy.

1599 as described by iowairish is the culmination of the fascist coup.

What this means is that ANY demonstration such as tomorrow's antiwar exercise, ANY person expressing views against the admin. such as IMPEACH are GUILTY of actions proscribed by this act - think about it!

Look at what happened to Representative Pete Stark when he had the gonads to speak up about the madness in Iraq on the House Floor the other day. It wasn't the Republicans that made him go back to the floor and retract his statements,and apologize to the president. It was his own party! There is just to much money involved in this mess for the Dems to take a stand against de-funding the conflict in Iraq. To many districts that receive benefits, and too many stock holders of this military industrial complex to risk messing with it. Gradual is the name of the game for the Dems. The Clintons are calling the shots.

The blame is not a dem/rep issue. It is a corporate vs. we the people issue. Both parties are given campaign contributions from the CORPORATIONS. No matter who wins, the corps win. It is just that simple.
What America needs is for the voters to undummyup and vote for candidates that REFUSE to take campaign contributions from corporations.
Insurance, medical, pharmaceutical companies spent more on Bush and Clintons that any other candidates. They win either way.
Oil companies, as in C Rice, ex-Chevron board member, wants us to take over IRAN. At what cost?
GE owns and controls what is seen on MSNBC and NBC. Rupert Murdock owns FOX. DUH? Do our media sources have agendas different from We the People?
Ending the war? Both parties are bought and paid by those that make $$$$s from war. "Divide and Conquer" are brought to us by the sponsors of just about everything. Oh yeah It's got a HEMI!!! Don't worry about a little heat. Let's kick A$$ to control oil.
America needs to take control of he wars, markets, and the politicians. DO NOT vote for a corporate sponsored candidate. Vote for a candidate that stands for the issues of "We the People."
Every one that does not see to the peoples needs, should be flushed out during the next election. Let the incumbents know that their careers are only as long as they meet our needs. Get a second job lined up.

A lot of people, including Arianna Huffington, still don't get it. The Democrats are equally guilty for our illegal and immoral war in Iraq, which is not really THE central problem, but merely a symptom of the CENTRAL problem which is...CORPORATIONS RULE not only America but the entire world. Follow the money. You can bet your ass that the politicians will.

Hassan,

Naomi Wolf thinks it isn't too late yet either, but she says citizens MUST act before they are totally cowed by the strengthening oppression.

It breaks my heart, too. It's a nightmare, and I'm sorry that for you that so much of this is familiar.

Naomi Wolf believes strongly that the Bush administration must not be just impeached but prosecuted and sent to prison, or nobody will be safe.

There's an essential problem with Arianna's thesis, namely that the Democrats are an anti-war party to begin with.

The time for the Dems to play hardball was in Chicago in '68. Now is the time for Americans to play hardball.

Good for Arianna! She is so damn level-headed.

If the democrats have 1 ounce of sense, they will do just what she says.

The war is immoral, illegal, and extremely wasteful.

anney

That M.O. is familiar to me. I grew up in Iran in the 60's and 70's and that was life then. A knock on the door in the middle of the night and you were gone, and I mean gone. That was my childhood. Now I see this happening here, I can't bear it. I just think, rather feel, that it is not too late yet. If we can just get out of our group echo chambers and work together...

Re: Bill 1599...

One of the points Naomi Wolf makes

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/177.html

is that a society in the midst of losing its freedom to a dictatorship is initially made afraid of an enemy, either internal or external, but usually not someone the average citizen identifies with. These enemies are imprisoned and tortured or killed. During this time, the ciizens are more or less troubled about it, but they shrug it off because the victims are not "like them". But usually very quickly after that the "enemy" expands to include people that the average citizen does identify with -- scholars, teachers, perfectly reputable people known to various segments of the population who have protested under what they thought were the protections of free speech are also designated as the enemy. Then, not much later everyone is designated as the enemy of the dictator, simply because the dictator knows that the citizens are enraged at the loss of their freedoms.

During this time life goes on pretty much as usual with people shopping, partying, doing their daily things. Rarely are booted government marchers frightening citizens on the streets. But people are no longer free to protest government actions without punishment or speak their minds freely. They are now living under the heel of a dictator.

Hassan,

You're preaching to the choir in a way. It sure looks to me, too, as if that's what the Democrats have done, but I thought now would be a good time for any Democratic defenders, if they know, to explain some other reasoning on the part of Bush and how Bush can have such confidence if the Democrats disagree with him and are unsupportive of his world-view.

Calling all flying pigs! Calling all flying pigs! You are wanted to courier the Democrat leadership's "stop teh war" papers to their fellow Democrats because the Democrats have decided to do something about the war other than use it as tool in the 2008 Presidential elections. well, after Hilary has gone soft on the issue (doesn't want to upset teh people who are financing her) what can they do?

But don't hurry, pigs - the Democrats need to have the backbone installation operation first (either that or an injection of ethics and integrity - which, like Dracula ingesting holy wafer, they may not survive) and the recuperation period will preclude any serious anti-war action for some time.

RUN-OFF VOTING

There is an alternative to winner-take all voting that could bust up the Dem-Rep stronghold, but it's not legal and would not likely be so, for same reason third parties have been stiffed out of debates and other proceedings for years.

Run-off voting would require voters to rank all the candidates from first to last. One possibility is some candidate less than the first rank could get the majority vote. Another possibility is to require, for example, a second round of voting between the top two ranks by majority and the next highest.

It's likely to result in one major party opposing a third party because most voters would not rank the other major party as number 2, i.e., Dems would not rank Reps as 2 and vice versa. It's also quite feasible for the third party to win when it receives a majority number two rank over either number one rank.

That means candidates like Nader and Paul would have a serious chance of winning under run-off voting, which also reflect voter preference far more accurately than winner-take-all voting. That's why the idea is always killed by the Dem-Rep.

BILL 1599

If that bill is not shut down as a nut case, there'll be some cold dead fingers to pry from keyboards as well as guns. It's time to get out the pots and pans of Molly Ivins and hit the streets with some real noise. Now they're trying to control what we can read.

A GAO report out recently said the terrorist watch list is above 800,000 and was increasing at something like 20,000 a month and essentially is out of control because there is no central control - any participating agency can add to it with various criteria and once on or with a similar name to someone that is on, it's rare to get taken off.

UNITARY EXECUTIVE

See Bruce Fein on Bill Moyers on PBS, on what Bush filed recently as asserted powers to take over the nation.

The answer dear anney is: He is so confident because he knows they are cut from the same cloth. Why else would he brief Hillary and Obama on ways to keep Gitmo running? The decomrtic field, Gravel and Kucinich excluded, are nothing but Bush light. They are mere window dressing on Project Empire. Listen to them, don't take my word for it.

For diehard Democratic supporters, a question. (Actually, for anyone who wants to speculate.) If the Democrats play hardball with Bush and convince us all that they're NOT supporting his many many unconstitutional actions, what then is Bush's end-game? I don't understand at all why he would create the chaos and destruction he has if he believes it'll be immediately stopped after a 2008 Democratic win.

To be specific, what's the purpose of all these trillions of dollars spent on warmongering if it abruptly stops soon after the Democrats win then? The only thing I've heard Bush himself say is that the next president, no matter who, will learn how difficult things are in the world and understand his actions, or something like that. Is this coming from a conviction that his world-view is undeniable? Does he believe the Democrats buy that? What's going on?

Bush has an unusual amount of confidence that the things he has started will continue of necessity. I've never in my life heard a president confident that the next president, particularly of the opposing party, will continue his agenda or his wars.

What does Bush really believe, and how do the Democrats fit into it?

"So Bush replays his patriotic greatest hits while the blood of our soldiers continues to flow — in the process making our country not more, but less, safe."

exactly! the more soldiers he can get to die in Iraq means there will be less soldiers available for helping the "homeland" here in N. America.

"But the truth is, Democrats have all the votes they need to stop the war"

you're thinking that collaborators complicit in treason will suddenly switch course and NOT submit to BushCo? dream on!

Rich M and PJD:

I guess I'm guilty of not looking closely enough at Paul's website, prefering instead to review the videos of him. After such a viewing (and thanks for taking me on on this):

1. He does NOT advocate getting rid of Social Security. He has proposals on increasing its solvency, including eliminating government borrowing of its funds, and reduce excessive government spending, and providing options to Social Security as a means for retirement saving.

2. He advocates border security, and no amnesty for illegals. I would prefer a much more nuanced approach.

3. He is against the so-called free-trade deals, Nafta and Wto.

4. He is against government collecting and storing data on citizens.

In short, I have not found too many objectionable things on his website yet. Will keep looking. Again, thanks for taking me on. I appreciate a thoughtful dialog on what our options for leadership are. I know this forum is not the place to discuss Ron Paul, but I feel compelled to bring him up because when I hear him, he makes so much sense, and he is so unequivocal on what he thinks, that he's music to my ears. I also like Dennis and Gravel, but Paul is somehow more forceful to me.

Americans will end the war when we cease as a people to honor its practitioners. Neither party intends to cease the rhapsodies & ecstatic celebrations of those who pulp human beings, or shut down the factories that make the missiles, bombs, planes, ships & tanks.

Surely, the Democrats are fully aware of the options available to them for stopping the war. Yet they choose not to use them. And while this represents a complete abdication of moral responsibility, one is still left wondering why they are doing so. My best guess is that they have been persuaded by their consultants that playing to the Republican base will win more votes than playing to the Democratic base. And let us not forget how deeply some Dems are sucked into the military-industrial complex, Hillary Clinton being a case in point. That particular disorder is not limited to Republicans.

pfutrell ( 6:12 pm) writes to PJD: "...I respect Hassan when he says he's trying to avoid labels. So maybe you ought to also...I think Ron Paul deserves to be heard, and not merely labeled and discarded. ... If you listened to him, you would never liken him or his policies to Reagan, Bush, Nixon, Bush Jr.,..."

You don't realize it, apparently, but PJD already provided an excellent answer (3:53 pm). The positive things you wrote about Paul are generally true, & were acknowledged by PJD. But you somehow missed the negatives he cited. These basically center around the fact that Paul, like all libertarians, opposes all government-run social services. That means, for example, no Medicare, no Social Security, no government student loans, no unemployment insurance. Paul wants to undo most of the New Deal -- which was the foundation for most of the progressive reforms of the last 70 years. // I believe Paul is also against government regulation of business, espousing a kind of a Herbert Hoover-style, laissez-faire philosophy. // In addition, he is very sympathetic to xenophobic vandettas against immigrants. He supports building the wall on the Mexican border.

On Ron Paul's website, his 6 "Freedom Principles" are listed. Here are the last two:
5) Government exists to protect liberty, not to redistribute wealth or to grant special privileges.
6) The lives and actions of people are their own responsibility, not the government's.
- Rush Limbaugh & all the rightwing radio jocks say the same exact thing. What it means is, every single person in society has to sink or swim on his own. If you can't pay your way for any reason -- including illness or loss of your job -- that's just tough.

Everyone sees that Paul is quite different from other Republicans, in many respects. Many admire his opposition to imperialism. PJD's last sentence was "We welcome Ron Paul's antiwar and anti-US imperialist views, but the rest of his philosophy is repugnant." That's a clear & concise way of putting it.

jlocke123 asks

"are any of you involved in real face-to-face politics?"

If you send a letter or an email, you get a return with a lame excuse. If you place a phone call, you get a staffmember who claims to know alot about the issues, but doesn't, gives poor excuses, and abruptly hangs up. If you show up in person to the politician's office, you get arrested (you can ask Cindy Sheehan and Rev. Lennox Yearwood about that). So to answer your question, basically no.

anney, thanks for the video link. Very chilling.

Both Naomi Wolf and Naomi Klein are on to them. The last two minutes are the most critical. I hope everyone heeds the warning. I fear for my country.

Thanks again...

The polling numbers for Congress are, what, 11% favorable?
There's a real chance for third-party candidates. Bitter Republicans might be more willing to vote third-party than Dem.

If any Greens (let's say) got elected they could have power beyond their numbers. They could triangulate between the R's and D's. It's possible they could be the swing votes necessary to get things done.

Cindy could be the first one (I just know she'll turn Green). Imagine a second, and third...
Democrats will turn Green with envy (hey, pretty good, eh?)

'Bitter Republicans' -- start throwing that around.

Hello, 1984; Goodbye, Reality,
I've been a Democrat my entire life. They were the good guys. REAL PEOPLE. The bright light that anchored the high end of America's political spectrum.
When they said they were going to do something, by golly, they were going to do it! Because they had PRINCIPLES. They had INTEGRITY!

What happened?

It's like in the book/film 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' when old, familiar, loving friends somehow turn into heartless automatons overnight. Has Cheney been using Blackwater to spread Republican 'pods' around?

First, they needed a 'mandate' in the voting booths, to empower them to change America's direction and get our troops home. Well, they've had the mandate for going on a year now; the troops are still there and, when it comes to Iraq, Democrats in Congress seem to be lying low, hoping the whole thing will blow over and spare them the awful political risk entailed in confronting the Idiot-In-Chief.

Maybe they've forgotten where they stored their spines when they had no more use for them.

Oops, I forgot, 'these things take time'. Well, I guess SO!
They're bound to when the majority party keeps authorizing one blank check after another to keep all the parasites that feed at the Iraqi Banquet fat and happy.

Now, a new storyline has developed: What the Dem's NOW need is a bigger, better mandate!
Boy, howdy! THEN we'll see some earthshaking changes. But in the meantime, we gotta keep first things first, and that means more contributions, more campaigning for our favorite, work, work, vote.

How could I so ... obtuse? They didn't mean they'd march the troops home THIS year; they meant NEXT year! Maybe. Or possibly the coming Spring when all the 'NOW WE'RE GODS!' celebrations peter out after Hilary-the-Anointed is elected, along with super-majorities in both houses of Congress.

How could I so dim?

I've got one thing to say to the B.S. about, 'Hey! Now it's too close to elections! Can't get the country's fascists all energized by making a democratic fuss!' How the 'red' states vote is not what my beloved Dem's have to worry about. All of a sudden the support of all we constituents has become a given. Just pat us on our little heads and we'll be quiet, until 2010 rolls around and it's time to INSURE that our 2006 and 2008 gains continue.

Somehow, I don't think so. And I'm not alone.

Wildlander - Bill 1599? I looked it up and was astonished. I hope every poster to this site reads it. The fact that it was introduced by a Democrat (and a female) and passed almost unanimously is horrifying. Read the full text of the bill at: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-1955

For those of you who want the highlights, read this:
SEC. 899B. FINDINGS.
The Congress finds the following:
-- (1) The development and implementation of methods and processes that can be utilized to prevent violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence in the United States is critical to combating domestic terrorism. (comment: Domestic terrorism - what the hell does THAT mean?)
-- (2) The promotion of violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence exists in the United States and poses a threat to homeland security. (comment: oh, for Pete's sake.)
-- (3) The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens. (comment: bye-bye net neutrality)
-- (4) While the United States must continue its vigilant efforts to combat international terrorism, it must also strengthen efforts to combat the threat posed by homegrown terrorists based and operating within the United States. (commnent: In the words of one of Harry Potter's teachers: 'Constant Vigilance, Potter!')
-- (5) Understanding the motivational factors that lead to violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence is a vital step toward eradicating these threats in the United States. (comment: how about we just de-motivate Mr. Cheney?)
-- (6) Preventing the potential rise of self radicalized, unaffiliated terrorists domestically cannot be easily accomplished solely through traditional Federal intelligence or law enforcement efforts, and can benefit from the incorporation of State and local efforts. (comment: 'incorporation' - more profits for the corporate elite.)
-- (7) Individuals prone to violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence span all races, ethnicities, and religious beliefs, and individuals should not be targeted based solely on race, ethnicity, or religion. (comment: Lip service - of course they 'shouldn't' be targeted, but they will.)
-- (8) Any measure taken to prevent violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence and homegrown terrorism in the United States should not violate the constitutional rights, civil rights, or civil liberties of United States citizens or lawful permanent residents.
-- (9) Certain governments, including the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia have significant experience with homegrown terrorism and the United States can benefit from lessons learned by those nations. (comment: homegrown terrorism in Canada? what exactly would this be?)

I'm more anxious than ever to get the hell out of this country. The direction it's headed is no direction I want to be associated with.

Nader2000-

You seem to conclude, in your 3:12pm post above, by [virtually] saying that a two party system is implied in -- or somehow intended by - the US Constitution.

As you must know, the Constitution says nothing to this day, nor ever implied anything earlier, whatsoever, about political parties. Nor were there any clearly-defined, formally organized, or even consensus-acknowleded 'best-number-of' political parties in 1789, at the outset of US Constitutional governance.

Among the reasons (maybe) you're not getting much positive response, here:

Many Progressives find it ironic if not hypocritical that someone with the screen name Nader2000 (presumably a Nader supporter), would now be advocating that Progressives stay within the Democrat Party, when it was Nader, himself, who ran several times for president outside the Party - citing his need to do so for the very reasons you are now arguing against.

That said, let me admit that, for a long while, I, too, argued for 'rescuing the Dem Party from within,' by the same political calculus as you [still] do. Prior to abandoning my own position, it didn't seem realistic to me that the extreme crisis of democracy we face, could be dealt with by further-fragmenting an already-fragmented opposition to corporatocracy, etc., with a third party 'alternative,' likely to go nowhere.

I changed my mind because it became increasingly clear (since 2006) that there wasn't a 'crisis' within the two party system itself: IT had provably morphed into a hermetically-sealed, highly-functional, one party system on all the crucial issues of the day and, ITself, was experiencing no 'crisis' in its ability to effectively-deepen the overthrow popular/Constitutional government.

Therefore, for me (and many others), the crisis of US democracy is now no longer about the long-gone Denocratic Party. The crisis, as I see it, has become instead: The inability of an abused citizenry to move beyond the hypnosis of a locked-down, one-party-system-posing-as-two.

Arguing that the Dem National Party can now be progressively reformed from within, is scantly different than a pre-Revolution, progressive Tory arguing that basic human freedom and self-governance was [then] still possible for the colonies, under rule by England's hopelessly-corrupt monarchial aristocracy....as if, then, the English Monarchy could be reformed from within by 'negotiating' with its objectors!

If you, Nader 2000, speak for Ralph Nader (and, for all I know, you may be the actual Ralph Nader), please undestand that, while your policital calculus may make sense from a limited set of premises, it does not make sense from that wider set of premises which many of us believe the current situation demands.

Viz: Our Constitution and our government's citizen-accountable controls have already been functionally-overthrown by an Executive claiming Unitary Powers, and by an artificially-constricted party system (in the Congress) which is unable to thwart the Executive or preserve America's chartered principles guaranteeing citizen rule.

Those of us who provisionally-intend to vote for Kucinich, for example, won't finally do so because DK is a Democrat, but only because he's the most visable/viable candidate representing loyalty to this country's governing principles.

It will be intersting to see, given the current direness of America's deeper-than-party crisis, what Ralph Nader, speaking openly as himself, now suggests Progressives do - in light of his previous runs as a 3rd party Prez candidate.

If Ralph Nader could do anything useful now, to help rescue what remains of Constitutional rule, it would be to come-out publicly, and at least try to reconcile why, what he earlier justified about reforming America's broken/fradulent, two party system - when he was running as opponent spokesperson against such -- no longer applies in the [far-more-dire] present.

Oh and by the way, Dennis Kucinich was one of SIX no votes on bill 1599.

GO DENNIS!

If the Dems are going to play hardball - - really - - it will have to go something like this: You give us the S-CHIP funding in full that we have passed in both houses with a majority, and we'll give you half of what you have requested; give us funding for our nation's infrastructure which your administration has let slide and we'll give you the rest of what you've requested. Mr. Bush, if you really want to support our troops, scratch our backs and we'll scratch yours! Otherwise, pull every single one of those folks (except for the private "security contractors") out of Iraq, and you'll be doing them the biggest favor they could ever have!

PJD:

To your response to Hassan (on Ron Paul)

I respect Hassan when he says he's trying to avoid labels. So maybe you ought to also.

You've labeled Ron Paul as a "libertarian" (which he ran as a few years back), but if you listened to him as an individual, he has great concern about the corporate takeover of the US political machinery.

Ron Paul is addressing the systemic failures of our government today, and he seems to be the only one doing it, and he's only doing that. He's not, like some of our favorite democratic sons and daughters (excluding Dennis), accepting fat paychecks which will surely compromise their future actions, if not their current platforms. He returns a portion of his paycheck every year to the US Treasury, and has never voted for a raise for Congressional persons. He is not beholden to anyone or any group, and has pissed off his opponents in the Republican party mightily for his consistent stance against the wars on terror, drugs, and of course, Iraq.

The systemic failures he is pounding on in an unrelenting manner, are:

1. The Corporate running of our government.

2. The "hidden" taxes due to deficit spending (mostly on military) that hurt the middle and lower income brackets, which by the way lead contributes to the trend of the outsourcing of jobs because our financial "needs" as individuals end up being more costly for companies.

3. Foreign policy involvements that always have "blowback" (unintended consequences) years later. And in this critique, his scope is not limited to the last decade or so.

I think Ron Paul deserves to be heard, and not merely labeled and discarded. There are many videos of him. If you listened to him, you would never liken him or his policies to Reagan, Bush, Nixon, Bush Jr., or any other of their ilk.

PJD

I don't know what you mean by "troll"? Is this an insult? If it is, it is not helpful and does not advance the discussion for me. I am trying to learn here, and willing to listen. But do not take me to be naive either. Progressives seem to have an agenda that i generally agree with. But I am a pragmatist first and foremost, and do not see value in endless agruing about third parties, abolition of the electoral college and surely don't think that the Democrats are part of the "solution" here. These discussins frankly make my head spin, and remind of the burning question of the middle ages "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin". When I say that I want to avoid labels, it is because too often labels are used to discard people and ideas. They are conversation killers. I agree with (P)s on most things, but not all, but I am not interested in the violant overthrow of the government, or overthrow of the capitalist system etc. There is an election coming up and there are only three candidates worth supporting for me. Gravel, Kucinich and Paul. I can not afford to be dismissive of any of them if they have the right ideas for what is going on today. May I remind you there is talk of WWIII, permanent state of war etc. I am not naive enough to think that I will like all that anyone of them has to say. But when a candidate says he will stop the war immediately, is against the empire, will close our overseas military bases, against the militay industrial complex, against corporate welfare, aginst influnce of AIPAC, for net neutrality etc. etc. Do I dismiss him because of the label others put on him? Do I worry about being called a troll, whatever that means? I have two sons and I don't want to see them sent off to be killed, have their heads blown-off or if they are lucky become killers, if that makes me a troll, I'm O.K. with that.

You've got quite a dilemma. On the one hand, attempts to reform the Democrats have perennially failed. On the other hand, Third party start-ups have no track record in the US. Two bleak prospects to choose between.

----------------------
1) Nader: The "Democratic Party" is a weak organization, with little power to discipline politicians who may have been elected as "Democrats",

2) Nader: then the most effective way to do that, in terms of electoral politics, will be through the Democratic side of the two-party system, because the latter is not a conspiracy for control but rather an artifact of our electoral process, which is more or less dictated by our Constitution.

3) Nader: we have had "Democrats" and "Republicans" since before the Civil War, and many attempts to organize third parties since then have come and gone, risen and failed, always for the same reason:
-----------------------
1) This is something I haven't heard a lot about. If the Democrats are such a weak organization then isn't it necessary to reform the structure before you have a hope of creating or changing a cohesive policy?

2) I'm not sure why you think that the US constitution dictates that you limit yourself to the Democrats? Is it actually written down in the country's founding documents? Other countries with first past the post systems have more than two parties.

3) If new parties have been subsumed into the Democrats, perhaps that is a form of progress. If the democrats are able to absorb another party, it may be because they have met the expectations of that smaller parties supporters, something they might not have otherwise done.

I'm persuaded by the phrase "you go home with the one that brung ya". Those large corporate donations given to the two parties lead me to believe that the elites would not be unhappy with either electoral outcome. Tails I win, heads you lose. They are getting their money's worth. Are you?

Finally (I promise) I can't help but notice that posters on this site are well informed, well intentioned and cogent. Nevertheless I hear a great deal of fatalism. Now I realize that your political system sucks but are any of you involved in real face-to-face politics (presumably with the Democrats) or I don't know, some other party? In other countries, that's pretty much how it's done. It seems to me that you people make more sense than the ones running your country.

Is there a record for the number of op-eds/essays "demanding" or "calling on" or "requesting" our Congress do the right thing by people who should know better? Why, after wholly ignoring the will of 99% of We The People, would this essay, as opposed to the thousands and thousands that have come before over the past seven years, convince our so-called Representatives to finally, for once, do the peoples' bidding?

Before we can reframe, we need to accept what our lying eyes are seeing: for all intents and purposes, on all of the truly important issues, the parties have merged, and are allied against "us." Let's stop wasting time and energy reminding them of their duties and responsibilities as elected reps of the populace, and start focusing on the only answer we have left: how to make them pay for their choice to end the American experiment by running strong, progressive candidates against all of them, except the few who continue to fight the good fight.

Wishing isn't working. It's time to go old school and throw the bums out.

You know, I finally have been given some hope. People are beginning to figure things out.

COMarc, RichM and others. You are right on target.

With the recent vote on Bill 1955, it will soon be a crime to think. Both Democrats and Republicans voted nearly unanimously for the bill. Why? Because they know the public is catching on.

Before one can act, one must first think. And they are making it illegal to do that in any manner. In partnership with the Patriot Act, your words spoken on the phone or email - even in jest - will land you in jail. This new bill 1955 makes you a domestic terrorist. And the Patriot Act then takes effect and takes away your rights as a citizen. They have no repealed the First Amendment, they have written new legislation to make the First Amendment null and void. They have done an 'end run' around the people.

Both the dems and reps are in this together. This idea of two parties is a act. Why do you think they brought in Reagan. He was a movie star - he taught them all how to act good guy - bad guy. But they are really one and the same. They have for the last 3 decades put up a coinvincing act. And now that the cat is out of the bag, they are protecting their place in power by force by taking effectively taking away your right to think or speak.

If you folks do not figure it out soon. It will be all over. This country will no longer be a democracy nor will it be a nation of free people.

When you lose your voice, when you lose your rights.... they can do whatever they want to you. And you are by definition a slave.

If you will note, George Bush's grandfater acted on behalf of Hilter. In our country, family values run deep and are passed on from one generation to another. And if you will note, Bush, Cheny, Rumsfeld, Rove...

they are all germans. They gender minorities are there as tokens to convince you of affirmative action. But Rice only does what she is told. She is a white-ass kisser. The same was true of Gonzales. And he will soon find out there he was just a puppet and will take a fall in the pending prosection he faces.

Our governement is not one of repbulicans or democrats. I tis ONE of the corporate elite. The oil barrens. The bank barrens. They are there to empower the few at the expense of the many. No different than Hitler. No different than Stalin. No different than any other corrupt regime.

The only thing that has proven to stop it is an uprising of the people themselves. But that assumes an inner sense of integrity. Which clearly most of the people in the US no longer have. If you think otherwise, then prove me wrong.

In the Senate the Democrats don't even need a majority if they are willing to do the "F" word...filibuster!

However much we hate it, it seems the Dems have us over a barrel unless we get a Gore/Nader, Gore/Gravel, Gore/Kucinich, Gore/RFK Jr., Gore/Redford, Gore/Sanders, or something else with Gore in it.

One of the problems with the Democrats is the way they view 'coalitions'. The Democrat view of a coalition with progressives is one where the Progressives vote for pro-war, pro-corporate candidates who have a (D) after their name. Then, once in power the pro-war, pro-corporate (D)'s don't ever support anything that progressives support. And they maintain the political system that attempts to place the only choice between competing pro-war, pro-corporate Democrats and Republicans.

All of this relates to the above conversation on proportional representation and campaign finance reform. What to me has always seemed like a fair deal from progressives to the Democrats would be that we'd support the Democrat candidates in exchange for the Democrats using that electoral success to pass a series of changes in American electoral laws exactly like these. Proportional representation for elections. Campaign finance laws that limit the power of big money. Media laws that insist on items like the fairness doctrine and making airtime available to all candidates for free as a condition of their license to get the public airwaves.

The telling point about the Democrats is that they are completely unwilling to do this. Quick, tell me what campaign finance reforms have the Democrats been fighting for since taking control of Congress? None would be the correct answer. All the Dems wanted was for this money to flow to them instead of to the Rethugs. The Dems are as equally uninterested in a free and fair system of elections and the Republicans.

I thought this was the deal that the Greens and the antiwar movement should have insisted on before agreeing to support the Kerry campaign in 2004 or the Dems Congressional campaigns in 2006. Give us something concrete that helps to remove the unfairness of the American political system. If they won't do that, it makes no sense to support any Democrat because even if they win we'll still be the in the same monopolistic, lessor-of-two-evils system in the next elections.

The fact that the Democrats are unwilling to make any compromise on any issue with progressives to form a coalition is telling. The Dems idea of a coalition is that they follow their pro-war, pro-corporate policies and nominate pro-war, pro-corporate candidates and us progressives support them getting nothing in return. And completely off the table and beyond any consideration is the notion of the Democrats doing anything that would make our system of government anything close to fair and free and responsive to the citizens.

Since the Dems refuse to form any real coalition with progressives, the only choice left to progressives is for us to build our own party and run our own candidates.

A better article would be 'now is the time for American citizens to play hardball with the Democrats.' Its time to stop accepting their lies and their phony excuses.

Come to Denver in August 2008. Make it clear to the Democrats by the presence of millions of American citizens surrounding their convention that we the people of the United States are tired of this and insist that it ends now.

Send every single Democrat that doesn't support an immediate cut-off of war money into retirement. Let the leaders of the Democratic Party look out on the wasteland of seeing all their candidates losing elections in one year.

Send Nancy Pelosi off to retirement and put Cindy Sheehan into her seat in the Congress. And find about 450 more Cindy Sheehan's out there to put into the seats of our Congress.

Its time for the American people to play hardball with the Democrats. Its time to teach the Democrats the lesson that they are there to serve the people of this country, and that when they don't they lose the privilege of representing us. Play hardball with the Democrats in the only terms any politician understands. Send them into defeat in their next election.

A must-see clip (1 hour) of Naomi Wolf discussing America's fall into fascism:

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/177.html

These are the steps out of a free society she has identified:

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy (if real, hype it)

2. Create a gulag

3. Develop a thug caste

4. Set up an internal surveillance system

5. Harass citizens' groups

6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release

7. Target key individuals

8. Control the press

9. Dissent equals treason

10. Suspend the rule of law

Wolf's conclusion? Impeachment of Bush and Cheney is not enough. Prosecuting (and jailing) them for crimes committed is the only rational solution.

Share this video widely.

Nader2000 (4:18 pm) writes, "...I do agree with you that the 1996 telecom act was one of Clinton/Gore's worst betrayals of the public interest to corporate power. However, it is very hard for any politician to oppose the interests of the people who control the eyes and ears of the public, when the latter are very well organized with respect to their own business interests."

- OK, great. However, the very mechanism you describe is PRECISELY why I believe the Democratic Party is in effect dominated by corporate power. Your comment there specifically referred to the telecom companies forcing Clinton/Gore to betray the public interest; I am merely extending that very same mechanism to describe the relationship of corporate America to the Democratic Party as a whole (with perhaps an honorable exception here & there -- not enough to make any difference in the big picture).

The kinds of organizations I listed above -- CFR, Business Roundtable, Bilderbergers, rightwing thinktanks like AEI, etc -- are nothing if not "very well organized with respect to their own business interests." They are all interlocked with the military industrial complex & the national security establishment -- jointly, this is the layer of American society that runs the country. The interests of the rest of the population counts for nothing, relative to the influence of this layer.

Democrats & Hardball Arrrgh har har har.

Pigs will fly.

@Nader2000:

While proportional represention might be considered an improvement by some, that issue seems more of a straw man than a response to any of the suggestions made here. Was someone recommending that or some other such electoral change requiring constitutional amendments to eliminate what is now almost exclusively corporate representation, proportional or otherwise?

You say that "[w]inner-take-all elections, particularly in a large regionally diverse but not strongly divided nation like the US, make a two-party system inevitable because a third party cannot rise ...[etc.]" Hmmm. Interesting assessment, but rather puzzling to this feeble brain. Other regionally diverse democracies appear to have found ways to accomodate multi-party systems without being too strongly divided(?) in the process. To the contrary, some of them seem to have achieved a reasonably good semblance of "checks and balances" thereby, with which their citizenry, in general, seems quite content.

Admittedly mere ignorant foreigners can't be expected to understand the uniqueness of the U.S. version of the "greatest democracy on earth" and its limitations on multiplicity. Come to think of it, I'm not sure I do either.

gyptian October 26th, 2007 12:08 pm

"The war cannot possibly "end" without this voter support and governmental authority vested in something other than Republican hands."

This delusion that Democrats are gonna save the world is the biggest lie floating around. All the Democratic candidates pretty much support this war and the next. ...
#
Arvy October 26th, 2007 12:14 pm

Time for the Dems to play hardball?!! You just don't get it, do you?"

right on both counts. the constant call for the democrats to save us on here is becoming silly to the point of ludicrous. the wimpocrats don't want to end the way! we have to have a 3rd party!

Why on earth would anyone expect the Democrats to oppose this war? Since the Huffington Post is a Democrat suck-up site, it helps to try to spread the myth that the Democrats really oppose this war and are just too cowardly to stand up and say so. Thus this sort of BS about how now is the time.

The problem is really that the Democrats are paid and funded by the very same people who are making money from this war. Defense industry and oil industry contributions to the Democrats have spiked since mid-2006 when it became obvious the Republicans would lose control of Congress.

Remember that Reid and Pelosi clearly and directly promised that there would be no cuts to war funding immediately after the last election. Google up any of those 'meet the new leaders' interviews from the days after the 2006 election and you can clearly see this.

So, what you've really been seeing for the last year is Reid and Pelosi very strongly and firmly delivering on this promise. They aren't weak. They are strongly doing exactly what they promised they'd do. So why on earth would anyone think that now is the time that they'll do something different?

With liars like the Democrats, always watch their actions and ignore their words. And their actions have been to fully fund this war at every possible opportunity. The rest is all smoke and mirrors and phony political theater to try to con fools into thinking they really oppose the war. Thus we see the 'non-binding' resolutions and Reid deliberately using tactics that require 60 to 67 votes to succeed and ignoring tactics that might succeed with just 41 votes.

The key thing to realize is this. The Democratic Party is not a democracy. It does not operate from a bottom-up fashion. It instead is a top-down organization where all decisions are made at the top. And the top of the Democratic Party is clearly and strongly committed to supporting and continuing this war. When none of the top Democratic candidates would promise to have all of our troops out of Iraq by 2013, they could not have said this more clearly.

Calling on the Democrats to end the war is a waste of time and breath. What we need are new representatives who aren't a part of this lying and corrupt party.

PJD

There's been a lot of discussion about (god I hate this expression) "trolls" lately. If the post is intelligent, why not be willing to discuss it? I enjoyed reading your reply, I thought it was well thought out and supports many of the conclusions I'd come to on my own about libertarianism. So, I learned from it.

I've read quite a few of the posters here go off and involve themselves on sites that represent the other point of view. And I've admired some of their observations when they've posted here, so, is that fair?

When there's stupidity, it's not too difficult to find the flaw in the rational.

RichM-

If you believe America is run by some huge conspiracy involving
"CFR, the Business Roundtable, the Bilderbergers, the rightwing thinktanks like AEI," there is not much I can say to convince you otherwise. I see a system that is much more open and amenable to influence from new players who organize effectively.

I do agree with you that the 1996 telecom act was one of Clinton/Gore's worst betrayals of the public interest to corporate power. However, it is very hard for any politician to oppose the interests of the people who control the eyes and ears of the public, when the latter are very well organized with respect to their own business interests. The Left and the public interest community were also asleep at the time. I know because I tried to raise the issue, and was met with a cynical fatalism that denied anything dramatic was happening and pooh-poohed the idea that new technology such as the internet could have a revolutionary impact if it were kept free from corporate control.

Arvy-

Re: "I fail to see how one of the collaborating parties is any more (or less) an artifact of the electoral process than the other, let alone one that is constitutionally dictated."

The two-party system is an artifact of the electoral process. What is dictated in the constitution is that each state gets two Senators and a number of House members in proportion to population. It would be impossible to convert that to a pure proportional representation system by any formula without rewriting the Constitution and renegotiating the balance of power between urban & rural, and every other constituent group in the nation, which is pretty impossible. So we have Congressmen elected in winner-take-all elections from single-member districts and Senators elected in winner-take-all elections from larger districts (states). That's not going to change.

Winner-take-all elections, particularly in a large regionally diverse but not strongly divided nation like the US, make a two-party system inevitable because a third party cannot rise to the level of strength needed to win even one seat in Congress, let alone the presidency. If you had three parties, splitting the vote into thirds, one of the parties would slip and dissolve, because most issues shape up as Yes/No questions and one party allies with the people on one side, the other allies with the other.

This is only a crude sketch of the dynamics, but the fact is we have had "Democrats" and "Republicans" since before the Civil War, and many attempts to organize third parties since then have come and gone, risen and failed, always for the same reason: they can't get to winning, and one of the two parties that do have access to power always coopts any constituency that grows strong enough to have some actual influence on election outcomes.

For progressives, the route to power via elections goes through the Democratic primaries and nominating process and by becoming an organized constituency that can deliver votes on election day, as well as apply pressure between elections.

Third parties and independents (Nader) are selling snake oil.

PJD

I don't know if you just fed a troll, but that's the way I see libertarianism, too. Too Ayn Randish for my conscience to bear. If individuals had as much freedom from social control as some libertarians seem to propose, well, sooner or later, a GW Bush would arise in their midst with a destructiveness beyond all hope of reining in. That's because there are always those capitalists without conscience or concern for others. Society MUST check these individuals or be destroyed by them.

Did I just feed a troll?

Hassan,

Most CD'ers have trouble with Ron Paul because he is a "libertarian".

We are for individual liberties to the extent they don't exclude responsibilities. However, the "libertarian" movement in the US believes in complete, unfettered capitalism and capitalist wealth accumulation.

They believe in the abolition of all government regulation over business affairs - safety, labor, environmental - everything.

They believe in the abolition of all government benefit progreams - progressive income taxes, inheritance taxes, health and welfare and social security programs, or unemployment benefits. In other words, everything that counteract the extreme concentration of wealth and power and concomitant disempowerment of workers, that naturally results from lazzez-faire markets.

They are opposed to anything public or commonly-owned - public schools - public transit, public parks or public spaces of any kind.

In other words, Libertarians advocate a extreme version of the system that has been tried before, from the 1840's to the 1920's, resulting in misery and suffering that is well chronicled by people from Charles Dickens to Upton Sinclair and John Steinbeck.

The history of the US since Ronald Reagan has been one of gradually putting in place much of the Libertarian philosophy, it's ideas have been so impregnated in the US mind that the very word "social" or "society" invokes fear and contempt in the US mind, and the concept of "freedom" has been reduced to strictly a peculiar economic sort - freedom is reduced to freedom to buy things and to sell our labor - competing with our co-workers who should be our comrades in a race to the bottom. The results are as predicted. We are seeing impoverishment of everyone except the the top 20% wealthiest. We are also facing environmental catastrophe for which the libertarian philosophy offers nothing to ameleorate it.

I forgive you for thinking I am engaging in hyperbole, but I have heard "libertarians advocate every one of the above things.

We welcome Ron Paul's antiwar and anti-US imperialist views, but the rest of his philosophy is repugnant.

Nader2000 (3:12 pm) asserts, "If ever 'it will be possible to build a broad-based movement aimed at taking power away from the big business elite,' then the most effective way to do that, in terms of electoral politics, will be through the Democratic side of the two-party system, because the latter is not a conspiracy for control but rather an artifact of our electoral process, which is more or less dictated by our Constitution."

- Fine. You just keep believing in the Democrats. (By the way, how's that been workin' out for ya, over the last 40 years?)

- About whether the 2-party system is a "conspiracy for control" -- In effect, it actually IS precisely a "conspiracy for control." It can be argued whether or not the rich white male landowning "framers" consciously intended for it to work out that way, but that's besides the point. // What's far more relevant is that the people who make up the CFR, the Business Roundtable, the Bilderbergers, the rightwing thinktanks like AEI, etc -- all of these people perceived very clearly that the POTENTIAL existed to force the 2-party system to be used just as I outlined above. Today, therefore, that's exactly what the system has become.

- You also say that "the corporate media has a stranglehold on the eyes and ears of the nation... This greatly limits the ability of Democratic politicians to move in a progressive direction."

Tell me then: why did the Clinton/Gore admin pass the Telecom Act of 1996, which greatly strengthened that very stranglehold? That legislation was extremely far-reaching, yet received almost no news coverage whatsoever at the time. Rather than fighting against it, and making very clear to the general public just what was at stake, Clinton & Gore quietly went along with it. Why do you suppose they did that? If they couldn't bestir themselves to fight a thing like that, how committed could they possibly be to defending "We the people" against the depredations of the big-business elite?

To "keep working to change the Democrats from what and who they are now into a different set of folks with a different agenda" is to arrange the chairs on the deck of the Titanic.

It's a waste of time and idiotic. The Democratic Party is corrupt to its core and has been in the pockets of Republicans for decades.

What Sheehan is doing is the only way out. Democrats need to be challenged in elections by real progressives and exposed for what they are: Republicans in sheep's clothing.

[quote]RichM October 26th, 2007 2:36 pm -- The 2 parties, then, are really partners and collaborators. They are not "opponents." Neither represents "we, the people" at all, though the D's sometimes pretend to do that, while the R's don't even bother to pretend.

As long as we accept a system that functions like this, there is no possible solution to the crisis. You cannot escape from corporate control of life, when there are only 2 parties, & both are controlled by the same corporate elites.[/quote]

That's it in a nutshell as I see it. I would add only that I think Nader2000 does make one valid and important point in noting that the corporate media has a stranglehold on the eyes and ears of the nation, or at least a very large segment of it. They are certainly a large contributor to the overall problem at present.

I disagree very strongly, however, with Nader2000's suggested corollary that "the most effective way to do that [build a broad-based movement], in terms of electoral politics, will be through the Democratic side of the two-party system, because the latter is not a conspiracy for control but rather an artifact of our electoral process, which is more or less dictated by our Constitution."

I fail to see how one of the collaborating parties is any more (or less) an artifact of the electoral process than the other, let alone one that is constitutionally dictated. But, to whatever extent either or both are, the underlying problem would seem obvious and, as RichM suggests, the symptoms are not going to go away until that underlying problem is addressed.