mikepeters - like others here I often try to probe - with a baseline skepticism - the limits of working within the system. But, no matter how it sounds sometimes, I haven't given up on trying to work within the system. I'm not a violent revolutionary nor are most others here. Most of us love our country, but we damn well want our government back under control of genuine democratic process. As for a 'plan,' in brief: I'm convinced that no meaningful change can occur w/o removal of the key linchpins that prop-up the oligarchy and snuff democratic structures; like money buying-off federal elections. I'll keep it simple: we need candidates who tell the truth in detail about how rotten the system's become, even if people don't want to hear it at first; candidates who'll courageouly organize the People to take their government back, fix it, and make it function honorably - as it was intended to.

Daniel David - Thanks for your reply. I think all of us have to demand more from candidates and officials, right now, not at some always-receeding point in the future. You take a lot of flak here because you're seen as too patient in dealing with BS'ing reform candidates, and too patient with the proven monstrousness that so much of the System has become. But you always keep your civility and add many thoughtful perspectives to the debate. It's a brave thing you do, to maintain a consistently moderate voice on a site like this. And even if I often strongly disagree with you, I do respect you and value your presence.

That's kind of ironic that this very same site that posts this article has a knack of censoring posts and banning users that just so happen to be real progressives and liberals. With such a blatant hypcrisy, I'll say SO MUCH FOR FREEDOM ! Let's fix our freedom here first before talking about freedom nationwide.

The current Congress cannot pass decent legislation on this that will be signed by President Bush. The next Congress probably cannot either if they face a veto from President McCain. There isn't going to be another President Clinton.
So count telecom spying as another long term reason you need President Obama.

I'm sure that national security is improved now that they know what kind of pizza I order and my harassment of quarry foremen to let me in to hunt stones. Yea, they prolly know about my four minute blues greeting by Fenton Robinson of Somebody Loan Me a Dime fame on my answering machine followed by the tune Frybread to make their stomachs growl.

The corporations who enabled "our" government to illegally spy on us beginning at least 7 months before 911 already have immunity, just not in writing.

And it's cheap, too:

Donations from Telecoms '08, so far:

McCain: $205,500
HRC: $165,150
BO: $120,893

Of course, one could always vote for REAL change:

Donations from Telecoms '08, so far:

Ralph Nader: $0
Ron Paul: $0
Cynthia McKinney: $0

The fascist state is well advanced. The current cabal of evil is methodically destroying the democracy and putting in its place a despotic regime, one that seeks to dominate the world by force.

America must be knocked off its perch. Soon. It has grown too big for its boots. It has become a danger to the world.

Other nations of the world must unite to stop its further expansion, to curb its imperialism. There is no other solution.

Check out my four-point plan which involves other nations in the world uniting against America.

www.dangerouscreation.com

The corporations are pushing hard to make the USA a fascist police state.

Some of the evidence of this:
http://home.comcast.net/~plutarch/PoliceState.html

The Clintonites need to think very seriously about their candidate's character. She meets every diagnostic criterion for Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and someone like her is very unlikely to renounce and revoke the unconstitutional powers this administration has arrogated to itself. It should be recalled that Bill Clinton tried to give himself similar powers and was shot down, ironically, by the Republicans.

Here are the criteria:

A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

1. has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
2. is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
3. believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
4. requires excessive admiration
5. has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations
6. is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
7. lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others
8. is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her
9. shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

In this story of the Corporatocracy's surefooted march toward tyranny, I see one ray of hope. I guess I am always looking for some ray of hope. That there are still people like this Babak Pasdar who did not just let the matter rest... who saw something wrong and spoke up. Do we know what has happened to this individual since then? I would be interested to know, but I googled for a while tonight and found nothing.

I am grateful that he made himself heard and that the truth was told. It shows that one person does have power. And that truth has power. I am reminded of a Malvina Reynolds song:
"...God bless the truth that fights toward the sun
They roll the lies over it and and think that it is done
It moves through the ground and reaches for the air
And after a while it is growing everywhere..."

May we continue to hear from those who dare to speak truth.

Yes people, we are being listened to , and soon to be watched with digital two way TV, but hey only a parnoid power hungry non-democratic government is worried its freedom loving people would want to live unaccousted by electronic survaliance, to bad good police work didn't stop those Arabs from smashing planes into a large bastion of socilist power, called the NY Port Authority, with its 5 Trillion dollar a year bonding company on the top floors, bonding city Gov's new bridges, and the like all over the world, yes we may still be feeling the effects of that one, certainly the fear-mongers are making sure they use it as an excuse, to consildate power, and run us into a well lied about war, with the US treasury being drained so rapidly it is taking the liguidity out of the country, but hey who needs a house, of reasonbly price education, we want SLAVES uneducated SLAVES

Daniel David, I do not agree with your take on the over-arching struggle between Christianity and Islam. For one thing it leaves out an vast number of folks who are Buddhist, Hindu, pagan, and spiritual but not religious. That is by far not a complete listing and I apologize to any group not mentioned. That Crusades framing is part and parcel of George Bush and company, so please reconsider that ugly Holy War mentality.

The struggle is, and will continue to be about the few who own/control/pillage/exploit the many. It really isn't any more complicated than that. All the ascended Masters, including but not limited to the Master Yeshewa ( Jesus) taught the same Truths. It was humanity's general inability to understand the core teachings, and thus their subsequent co-opting of same into dogmas and doctrines that distorted and thus destroyed the universality of their message.

You have a good heart, of that I am sure, so please refrain from any hint of "enemy patterning." It has been used throughout human history to justify atrocity after atrocity solving nothing. We are long overdue for a shift in consciousness. Blessings!

Daniel David -

You're now verging on religious sentiments in your projections of what a theoretical President Obama can or be able to do to a system that's been corrupted structurally, beyond any formally democratic-process remedies.

I've read your posts for months, and although I disagree with many of your premises and conclusions, I respect you for being an always intelligent thinker and a solid - however Old Time - progressive.

I say 'Old Time progressive' because I sense that you completely fail to sense or acknowledge that this country is currently where it provably is: at the end stage of a democratic governance collapse that will not be reversible without, if at all, violent revolution.

Do you really think that any progressive presidential candidate, if once elected, can any longer challenge the entrenched plutocracy, if he or she doesn't even name the problem of plutocracy, and campaign on its popular resolution, openly?

Likely you'll say: Look back to a far worse time, Jeff/Seattle: The Great Depression: when a popularly elected president, FDR, leading the People intelligently, was able to adriotly rescue the system both for them and its abusers, at its then, most vulnerable-to-date nearness to popular overthrow.

But I could not consider such an historical analogy accurate or valid, if you offered it as proof of reason for hope [in Obama] in the present situation. Nor, if you're as smart and honest as you seem to be, could you.

Therefore, Daniel David, please in any case tell me: How do you see our present political and economic system now being transformed-to-survive by ANY political leader who fails to articulate to the general populace the underlying issues that are causing its ruin-for-the-many?

Jeff/Seattle; I too read Daniel David's post's and can relate to his sense of things, but I ask you, having dismissed working within the system, what you suggest?

Armed resistance perhaps? Fight the Seattle Police? Really?

I will vote for Obama. Again, what is your plan?

FrederickJohnson; We're not sensored here, really

Is it the GENERAL-STRIKE thing? Who cares! Write (think) between the lines!

Oh, are you forced to thread on CD?

Let's not forget the Soviet Union's experience with collapse of a government that had run itself into the ground.

I don't think it need be armed, merely resistance. And when the stuff hits the fan I would rather have Obama in the White House than the other two surviving candidates.

And that stuff is going to hit sooner rather than later. Recall that the U.S. was in extremely dire straits when FDR morphed the system. We're passing peak oil, there are global water shortages, there is no longer a grain storage system in the U.S., the dollar is collapsing and we are mired in debt with a vastly reduced industrial capacity for paying off that debt. A significant drought in the American midwest could bring widespread hunger within a calendar year. War in the Persian Gulf could bring the oil system to a halt in weeks.

Armies of unemployed were marching on Washington when FDR took action. Tent cities of the homeless and farmers wiped out in the dust bowl were springing up. There are tent cities forming in California now. Homeless numbers are swelling.

"The times they are a changin'"

Have you seen the Verizon ads on TV that show the customer being followed around by hundreds of phone company employees, just waiting to help? The person using the phone is newly empowered to speak his/her mind to all. These ads are designed to lower any expectation of privacy that consumers/voters might have about their phone conversations. That whole privacy thing is just so 20th century! You wouldn't indict a member of your entourage would you?

FLYERMAN: Nice analogy... one Saturday Night Live should fully exploit to expose the stark truth behind it!

To Jeff/Seattle,

I've been criticized at CD for my posts by many people, but your note above is the kindest and the most thoughtful that I can remember seeing. Thanks, respectfully. Here are some open answers about me and my political thinking.

I always try to write with some sense of personal conviction, even knowing that some of the time I may be expressing half-developed ideas from feelings as much or moreso than from any real wisdom or deep facts (since I'm not a heavy-duty scholar). I don't do it to cynically tease the readers or to try to be a know-it-all, but sometimes (not knowing really what to say about a topic) I just start typing and wait to see what others think that is different. I once saw a book entitled "Often Wrong, Never in Doubt" and laughed out loud to myself that the phrase describes me well on my self-therapeutic visits to CD.

You are right that I'm an "old-time" progressive (age 56, male, one long-term marriage, and NOT, as some imagine, paid by Democrats or even actively affiliated with them in any way beyond my personal voter registration.)

You are also right that I sometimes verge on religious sentiments, because I still believe that personal faith in Jesus Christ is worth having, and that to whatever extent we can collectively follow his real (mostly liberal-minded) teachings that we and our society will be better off. That said, I have experience in several churches, both large and small, and no longer belong to or attend any of them.

Regarding Democrats, I believe they get elected generally by people who do not wish to see society dominated as much by for-profit corporations as Republicans recommend. I think that two over-arching struggles in the world today are about whether people should follow Jesus or follow Islam , AND whether we the people shall control our man-made corporations or whether they shall control us. So I always like Democrats, even knowing that SOME of them are lazy party hacks, that all of them are also corrupted to an extent by incorporated money and agendas, and that as a group they can only be marginally better than Republicans as a group. I do know, though, that if you always have enough Democrats in Congress, for instance, that you can always control the agenda and maybe talk about issues like health care instead of issues like more tax cuts on capital gains and dividends to corporation owners. Having the White House too is way better yet--especially because of Supreme Court appointments and advantage on the veto. So, I'd be happy to have any Democrat there--even Mrs. Clinton, except that she is now fully swift-boatable and probably cannot win.

Regarding Barack Obama, I think he is "special" for both his eloquence and for what a bi-racial American president can say in image both at home and abroad. I also do think he has good judgment, that he's having to be very careful to be hawkish enough to qualify with voters for "Commander in Chief" and that he will be one of the wisest (most liberal) leaders we have ever seen if we can just slip him past the reactionaries and get him into office. I am taking some of what I believe about Obama on a sort of "faith" (also could be called a hunch). But I'm more than willing to risk that (compared to McCain) and appreciative of him not going publicly so far to the left as to render himself unelectable. I don't believe he's "perfect", but I do believe he's "good."

As for "revolution" in America, I believe we can do it at the ballot box, and I pray that something violent will never be needed here to re-order our politics. It is true, though, that we have already gone way too far down the corporate path and that we need a citizen-demanded "change."

starofthesea,
Thanks for suggesting you think I might "have a good heart." I can agree with you that none of us should be "enemy patterning". Although I do believe that the struggle about Islam will continue to be an "over-arching" theme of the world, I do not see Islamic people as "enemies. I do see them as badly misled by their leaders to the notion some of them have that they are called to make Islam rule the world. I do believe they have been given an unnecesssary bunch of writings as their "truth" in the Koran that has caused some of them to believe they must make others "submit." Christianity, on the other hand, works best when people accept it (or not) willingly, such as in the USA where we have both freedom OF religion and freedom FROM religion. If the world of Islam starts to push harder on others for "submission", than indeed they would be enemies. But not yet, and maybe never.

Daniel David

Aren't you a little too paranoid about Islam?

I aint buying the whole Koran is all about peace bit but there is as much fodder for warmongers in the Bible as in the Koran, n'est-ce pas?

Iraq's interim constitution, passed under the U.S.-led occupation, makes Islam "a source of legislation" and stipulates that no law may "contradict the universally agreed tenets of Islam."

If it is the reason we had to go to Iraq, what the hell is it in the Iraqi constitution?

Maybe they are not as crazy as we are?