Right on the money Bill Moyers. I don't agree with everything you write but in this you've got your finger on the pulse.

I'm not sure what we need in this country, clearly we need to stop the flow and super concentration of wealth in the highest strata of our society. We are turning into a third world country with a hereditary elite.

Obama/Moyers '08!!!

it showes that you can still control people, you only have to be good at one thing - propaganda. In the age of the mass media nothing else matters...

Jewbacca;
working on the sabbath? tut tut.

Moyers is quite right, and paints a rather scary view of what's to come in the usa.

"what's to come" is already here.

Thank you Bill Moyers for fighting the good fight. You are a rare ray of light in a very dark world.

The very first thing we need to do is reject the one-party (two-party) system entirely. Stop the vicious circle "catch 22" of viability and simply say "NO" to our corporately sponsored oppresors. Recognition that we are an occupied nation - by a cabal of corporations controlling every aspect of our lives - and rejecting it, even when we personally "like" candidates, is a good place to start.

Television is the key. It is the chief device of the propaganda machine. Film and video move too fast to allow perusal of the message, and the presence of that 'news' device in every household absolutely assures that over 50% of those viewers can be swayed in their views to support the ruling barons. [Please stop calling them elite - there is nothing elite about thievery, oppression and other forms of knavery so common in that category of creatures.] No matter what else we do, the bottom line is that we must find some way to eradicate television and its ubiquitous presence in American life. Without that done, we cannot fight this fascism, even with the guns that more and more of us are buying.

Our neighbors are brainwashed...you know that behind the wheel of every "powerful" gas guzzler is a weak scared devotee to FOX news and a proud dittohead. Our ELECTED representatives including and especially Bill helped this happen. The wise and fair New Deal is almost as dead as the Fairness Doctrine, while the New Jersey Generals of politics, the Democratic Party, cannot muster the balls to flush Shillary. I just want to know when my opportunity to stop Lady Liberty from being beaten and raped is....

Perhaps the entire problem could be condensed into two words __ HUMAN NATURE __.

We American for the most part are all guilty. "We the people" have allowed to happen what has transpired over the past 60 years.

"WE" by a large majority do not vote, and even those who do vote every election, by again the large majority, are primarily swayed by televison ads, we don't bother to study the important issues. There are few Statesmen who serve in our local or state governments and in our congress. Those who rule do not want stateman in office and we seldom get them.

Consequenlty we end up with a majority of elected who have decieved us and who are under the "bought and paid for" control of a very few people who actually own and run almost everything, including our press and media.

An example is, when an employee begins to steal from their company, they soon need that stolen money to continue the life style it affords, they never stop stealing until they are caught. ___ Once humans are corrupted, including those elected, they stay corrupt, they are humans who have allowed greed to overcome their conscience. ___ It's human nature.

When was America *ever* democratic?

America was founded by rich, white landholders; with blacks still in slavery and women nowhere to be found politically.

This was followed by decades of rule by the elite -- the robber barons, railroad tycoons, Wall Street, the "malefactors of great wealth."

All this exploitation nearly sunk capitalism, until FDR, a rich boy who, ultimnately and successfully, knew how to protect his own, "saved" the system with a series of reforms -- not fundamental changes, but rather " reforms" -- which over the past 30 years have been systematically dismantled by the Republicans and the right -- with the explicit consent and/or acquiescent of the Democratic Party.

-- Is the Electoral College democratic?

-- Are the choices presented to the American public come election time democratic?

-- Can a country that has such abiding poverty, unemployment, economic deprivation, *structural oligarchy* built into it be in any meaningful way considered a democracy?

As far as advanced industial nations are concerned, social democracies exist in the Scandanavian countries, but certainly not in America.

As much as I admire Bill Moyers, he needs to face up to the fact that what's needed are FUNDAMENTAL CHANGES, not more "reforms."

Calling for just reforms nearly got him kicked off PBS (*public* broadcasting, *corporately* sponsored -- go figure that one out) -- let's see if he has the guts to argue for fundamental changes to the system.

Unfortunately, while still on the left, Moyers, like many, has moved to the right slong with the "moving political consensus."

The American democratic model was born in an agrarian society. Since industrial and post-industrial societies have subsequently replaced it, democracy may not survive. Only if the people shift from the having mode orientation toward life to the being mode will it avoid succumbing to the failure-to-thrive syndrome.

Moyers describes a battle being lost by an entity known as the "middle class". Oh yes, we can't forget another large group of people generally referred to as "blue collar".
This battle need not be lost if the bastards are reformable, which they certainly are. Their is no jail or assault of propoganda that can hold back the wrath of the oppressed. This is in no way a good thing, it's always human nature at it's very worst, history shows us this again and again in cyclical menace. Shining beacons of hope are usually assasinated.
It's not just the factory job that disappeared, it's the 100K programmer who suddenly finds himself thrown out like garbage by his corporate masters. It's the loved one dying from a treatable disease for lack of "tribute to the machine." Constant outrages like this in a broken land that have illegitimized so-called authority. The media is held in check by fear, they don't want to get hurt either.

No disrespect KP. We are obviously using different meanings of Human nature. I think of Human nature as something unique to us all, and not to certain groups of people. I have had this debate with others before who suggest it Human Nature to commit murders and rapes. Certainly it something some humans do, but it not something all humans must do. So my definition is from Wikipedia where there a good discussion on the various POV's.

>>Human nature is the set of logical characteristics, including ways of thinking and acting, that all normal human beings have in common.[1] The branches of science associated with the study of human nature include sociology, sociobiology and psychology, particularly evolutionary psychology and developmental psychology. Philosophers and theologians have also carried out research on human nature.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_nature

I cant help but believing that it "human Nature" is a type of copout to allow a behaviour we can control by claiming it something that is just part and parcel of our makeup.

I do understand your own meaning of the word is likely very different.

Those types of people you just described are humans ~GWNORTH~. How they act is Human Nature. ___ Words are words.

The only three political commentators in Ameri(k)a who get it right 100% of the time are Moyers, Nader, and Kucinich. For those voting for Clinton and Obama you might want to not only read this piece, but understand its context.

Like many of the Hopi mentors Ive known who assert one thing to the younger brothers and sisters: "PREPARE!"

I dont think its a series of narrow escapes. I think its a series consistent descents without good depth perception, because the media is paid not to mediate these descents.

As kindly Uncle Joe Stalin said, "It's not who votes that counts, it's who counts the votes."

I'd love to see Bill Moyers as President, but undoubtedly one of the large cadre of "lone crazed assassins" would take him out before he could get his hand off the bible.

Obama/Clinton/Edwards(AG) 2008 is the best fast plan we have to mitigate what Moyers is talking about. Some other year with dumber dumbed-down media (and citizens) is just harder.

Bill Moyers does speak the truth. That takes courage and Bill Moyers knows the price of courage. Yet he continues to "let his light shine". Thank you Bill Moyers!

Would that we each be courageous enough to speak Truth when and as we see it where ever we are.

Huck is correct.
"PREPARE!"

I just think it's a huge mistake to constantly attack poorer people, by calling them "bastards" or whatever, or attacking their leisure pursuits. It's a mistake to call women names, even Ann Coulter. And it's a bigger mistake not to realize the importance of our own progressive culture - why didn't everybody run to see "Body Of War", which should have gotten our economic support? It's more important than alot of other things to support our own culture. That is where culture wars are actually won and lost.

Stop the planet... I want to get off.

LONG LIFE TO THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION!
A little perspective can be useful if one is to avoid the flawed perceptions that come from being too close to the subject. That simple observational truth was the point of Noam Chomsky's 'journalist from Mars' thought experiment in his 2002 book, Media Control (Seven Stories Press). The accessibility of this idea threw the apologists for fascism in the corporate media into an infantile tizzy and their response only multiplied the public's exposure to the idea, albeit in a negative and incomplete way.

Let's take away from Chomsky's Martian journalist the benefit of language and allow him only visual observation of behavior and then ask "When was slavery abolished?" or "When did the American Revolution succeed?" the only sensible response would be that both are good and necessary ideas, but at best are works in progress.

If you are among the many with an opinion about Howard Zinn's great book People's History of the United States, without the benefit of actually having read it, you may be surprised at how little of that history you know. The Founding Myth that has been created to insure our subservience is that of the Great Men bestowing freedom on the people, much like the return of Moses with the stone tablets. The genius of Zinn's work is to show that the masses have wrested such freedoms as they have (only at great cost and with great effort) from those same Great Men and the financial, social and political interests that they in fact served. He also points out that the electoral process has mostly served as a diversion from that struggle and this idea is especially important in an election year.

Those who grew up in the Periclean age of the American Empire (1945-1973) have an especial difficulty in separating out material abundance from moral integrity, but the time that our masters shared with residents within national boundaries is past. We have all been invited to lunch, but we are on the menu rather than the guest list. This has been fairly obvious since 1973.

The inability of the public to absorb that knowledge has only been sustained with great amounts of money and some skill on the part of the corporate servants who take up most of the public space in our discourse. The willingness of our co-humans to harm one another for the barest individual gain has certainly inhibited natural corrective processes, yet moments of clarity in the body politic continue to occur with some frequency. We may be in such a window of opportunity now when polls show that so many believe that the country is on the wrong track.

Nothing less than revolution is required. In the past, all revolutions involved violence. It may be possible for a violent revolution to result in peace and justice but none has, so far. There have always been non-violent components of revolutions and those have often been the most successful. In a time when so many can be harmed by so few, doesn't it make sense to work on the non-violence thing to make a real revolution? Do not mistake this for an easy answer. Adoption of non-violence by a revolution provides no guarantee that suffering can be avoided in doing what needs to be done. The magician's trick of misdirection will work on many of the aggrieved but naïve, causing them to bite their own tails. They may also bite you. Non-violence, like old age, is not for sissies!

Civil disobedience and non-violent direct action can circumvent the misdirection of the corporate media and make each person a primary source for the history that must be made. Your actions must show those who labor under delusions that the only threat they face is from their own false beliefs. Show them the man behind the curtain. Replace their fear with understanding. Forgive their foolishness without reinforcing it. Make no compromise with falsity, but include rather than divide. And most of all, have courage!

It's time for America to say that there is something more important than the pursuit of private interests. The environment, human rights, the public health and safety, the dignity of individual human beings and the welfare of our communities should all come ahead of the pursuit of corporate gain. Our laws should be changed to reflect this and, until they are, America (and the liberal democracy more widely) will continue to slide into oblivion.

That's an amazing article, written by a master of his trade. I wish I could be optimistic about Americans getting their shit together, but I'm not.

It's as if Americans are living on a massive aircraft carrier, with all kinds of high tech gadgetry, chock full of all the food they can eat and any kind of mind numbing entertainment they want. There are no portholes to look out of but no one cares, they are in a stupor, lulled by the low hum of the engines running full steam toward god knows where while the captain plays high stakes poker with his officers. "We're the greatest ship on earth."

The crew is fat, lazy, and non thinking dullards that believes the captains lies. But the massive war machine is about to run aground.

What does "prepare" look like?

Good article Bill!

You rightly and eloquently focus on the threat to democracy from the growing abuses of the wealthy. However there is something you aren't getting right about the domain you know best, the Media. You write:

"...the media moguls have decided that uncovering the inner workings of public and private power is boring and will drive viewers and readers away..." and "Media owners who should be sounding the trumpets of alarm [are] undercutting the basis for their existence and their First Amendment rights."

But when you speak of the wealthy, the "insiders", the "speculators", and the "conglomerates" swallowing up the media - just where do you place the Media Owners in this picture? Editors may be pawns doing the owners' bidding, but how can you separate the owners from the rest of the power structure? Do they not belong to the same country clubs, share the same assumptions, participate in the same ruling class conversation, raise capital from the same investors, invest their own money across the economy? Just which interests of theirs are they undermining?

This was not perhaps so completely true when you were young. Now the situation seems to have passed far beyond the control of journalists and editors, with the smaller and independent commercial media being a nearly vanished species.

Hardly a day goes by without some vital story vanishing into the black hole of media silence. Dockworkers on the West Coast shut down the docks to protest the War? Did it really happen? Was that news? Or did I just dream it? The great haul of captured Iranian arms in Iraq that turned out to have no, zero, Iranian arms in it? Was that news? Does anyone know except for a few oddball readers of the alternative press? And a hundred million people more or less who've never heard of Kucinich? Excuse me?

How could this kind of silence happen unless it is manufactured and enforced by agreement at the top?

It is time to be talking instead of creating alternative media - to which Common Dreams is a contribution - that can bypass The Media and allow the people to talk to each other in our millions - nay, scores of millions - in a conversation that focuses on needs, realities and solutions. Common Dreams is a start, but we need to find a way to make a quantum leap in our reach.

For whatever good it will do, I mailed my ballot today with my vote for Obama. Maybe it's the unknown factor with him; he's a fresh, young face; with a totally different genetic background from all the rest. I had hoped to be voting for Bill Richardson, and haven't been able to get with any of the other, even Obama.

My little container garden is growing. Saw three carrots making a show this morning.

Two days-old sparrow hatchlings were dumped from the nest after three days of near 100 degree weather. Guess it was just too much for them, or else the parents dumped them overboard to save the rest.

I've made the decision to give up my basic cable to use the $22 a month to support the local library - closed now for a year because Bush wants the timber money from OR going to Iraq instead. I'll get a whole lot more from the library than I do from basic cable. And since I won't have that to watch, I can give up on the once a week newspaper I buy for the TV guide it carries.

Not much, but but with my steadfast refusal to give WalMart a cent of my money, I'll also no longer be contributing to any other big corporations - except for the medical insurance one, and I'm working on that one.

WHY has MSNBC/NBC, CBS (& FOX & CNN) been putting out PRO-Obama/Anti-Clinton PROPAGANDA...everyday all day long - since last November?

ANSWER: Because Obama is PRO-Nuclear & he voted FOR the Cheney Energy Bill; Clinton is NOT Pro-Nuke & Voted AGAINST the Cheney Energy Bill.

GE owns MSNBC/NBC, Westinghouse owns CBS ... & Thanks to the Cheney Energy Bill they are planning to reap BILLIONS in profits (Risk-Free) from building 29 new nukes AND from 30-40 years of HIGHER ELECTRICITY RATES. (GE & Westinghouse have been pumping $Billions of ADVERTISING dollars for all their PRODUCTS - Into Every FORM of MEDIA, for generations.)

Other participants in Cheney's NExt Big
MONOPOLY POWER
---ENERGY RIPoff---
Excelon Corp. of ILLINOIS, Entergy (owners of many utilities in the Southern States); 3 consortiums of nuke industry corporations.

McCain voted for the Cheney Energy Bill & has already said on the campaign trail: "I have to remember to say ... its absoultely necessary for...us...to build nuclear power plants."

Cheney, GE, Westinghouse; the nuke industry ... Are running Obama AND McCain for President. The only way we are going to get the NEW Clean Green ENERGY Technology/ECONOMY we need is the election of Clinton to the Presidency. We cannot afford to squander hundreds of $Billions on Obsolete 70-yr ofd nuclear power plants.

Last week's NEWS: The governor of South Carolina is refusing to allow the Federal govt. to ship 30 tons of plutonium into South Carolina---until the Feds provide him with a written agreement that the Feds will --REMOVE-- the plutonium from South Carolina---in the event their plans to produce nuke reactor FUEL are unsuccessful.

Looks like the govt. wants to move 30 TONS of plutonium from the western states to South Carolina to locate it closer to the 29 nukes to be built in many of the Eastern & Southern states.

(See Map at NY Times LINK: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/washington/31nuclear.html?_r=1&oref=slogin )

(BTW a microscopic particle of plutonium, once inhaled, will kill you from lung cancer in about a week.)

Plans to build those nuclear power plants are well advanced - with licensing hearings already scheduled for the first few.

If you think nukes are ok... just
GOOGLE: Rocky Flats Denver plutonium, and, Hanford WA nuclear waste.

OBAMA = NO Experience Getting CHANGES made,
His whole campaign is based on ONE Big LIE:

Obama claims 7 years experience in the Illinois legislature - Working Across the Aisles, Bringing people together to get good CHANGES passed -as exemplified by 26 good bills with his name on them.

A Chicago reporter says all 26 bills were passed in ONE Year and they were NOT Obama's.

http://wweek.com/editorial/3418/10516/

EXCERPTS:
But what's interesting, and almost never discussed, is that he built his entire legislative record in Illinois in a single year.

Republicans controlled the Illinois General Assembly for six years of Obama's seven-year tenure.

Then Emil Jones Jr. (became the Senate Majority leader), He became Obama's kingmaker.

Jones appointed Obama sponsor of virtually every high-profile piece of legislation, angering many rank-and-file state legislators who had more seniority than Obama and had spent years championing the bills.

During his seventh year in the state Senate, Obama ... sponsored a whopping 26 bills including many he now cites in his presidential campaign when attacked as inexperienced.

Working Across the Aisles/
Making CHANGES = ZILCH

Taking Credit for Other People's
Work/INTEGRITY = ZERO

Obama's book "Audacity..." confirms those 26 bills were passed in the last year Obama was in the Illinois legislature
--when--Democrats had a majority.
Quote:

"After two terms during which I labored in the minority, Democrats had gained control of the state senate, and I had subsequently passed a slew of bills, from reforms of the Illinois death penalty system to an expansion of the state's health program for kids. I had continued to teach at the University of Chicago Law School, a job I enjoyed, and was frequently invited to speak around town."

PLEASE Pass the Word. Since the TV "News" has now become nothing but Obama Propaganda, its up to We The People to get the Real News out.

Let's say 60% of the population is working class, 30% is professional class and 10% are property owning elite. Out of every calorie expended by people in any class, 20% benefits the working class, 30% the professional class and 50% the elite. If the parents, employers, schools, and entertainment and news media illustrated these distributions and raised them as a prominent issue, and suggested how people might act to create more equitable distributions, then more equitable distributions would be realized. The people have to know why and how to act.

pardon my french but, fuck those of you who talk about preparing. You talk from victim mentality.
We are NOT VICTIMS and this fallacy must be stood up to. We have inherited this
beautiful, fragile, alive world and WE cannot just sit around and collect our rice and dried
beans, and 50 lb. bags of dog food and wait for the poop to hit the friggin fan. It has already hit the
fan and maybe we were too distracted with staying alive to notice To go to the next step of neo-con
thinking and "preparation," we'll need canned air, canned food, bottled water (yeccccch),
and eventually brain transplants to plug into the latest fix. And then there'll be those "identity
cards" that George Orwell predicted in his book "1984." We will need them to buy groceries,
get prescriptions filled, buy bottled air. Is this really where "we" want to go folks?

Thank You ~ELME~ excellent.

The truth shouldn't hurt, but for many it will and does.

Elme...thank you. I definitely noticed the Obama promoted by NBC owned by GE connection a few weeks ago. Thanks for spelling it out.

randolfski- you need to realize we are way far into it at this point. Please read Naomi Kleins "China's All Seeing Eye" inorder to understand that it ain't going to be identity cards or little microchips.... it is technology like you can't even imagine and it's already here.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/15/8970/

Bill Moyers is always interesting to listen to or read.

As for human nature, the dominant ethics of the society affect what people view as human nature. This was brought home to me at a vegan meal program where for the most part, the same people did the work. Even though people might mouth the ideas of cooperation, the ability to get without giving was the behavior.

The me first, look out for #1 mantras combined with the suburbanization of America, the unions trading militant unionism for benefits have helped build our current predicament. And yes, Madison Avenue, McCarthyite politics and the military-corporate industrial complex surely steered us where we are.

We're entering a period where our society, not just parts that have long been disenfranchised, have to undergo a transformation. Whether positive or negative, towards democracy and sustainability or fascism, destructiveness and unsustainability, it will happen. The combination of the end of cheap oil/energy, global warming and its many effects, environmental degredation/ toxification and the rapid increase in food prices will surely have combined catastrophic effects.

Nonparticipatory democracy doesn't work. And my fear is that people will not confront the situation we're in and the powers that put us here. Doing nothing, not getting involved will just bring people closer to the rapids and waterfalls of our societal direction. We're living in a period of institutional irresponsibility/lawlessness and personal sink or swim.

We must find a way to pluralistic community. We must find a way to accountability.We can no longer allow the pillagers and wasters to continue their desructive ways.

And without a doubt (or in botched Spanish sin doodah) we all must make the small changes and contribute to the big changes that need to happen for a more positive outcome. It's going to be a rough ride regardless. I for one, don't want to go to hell in a handbasket without paddling upstream.

Democracy? Ben Franklin gave us a Republic - if we could keep it. Alas, we didn't.
Veco wrote that nations cycle through Theocracy, Aristocracy, Democracy and Chaos.
Welcone to chaos.

The elephant in the room that even Bill Moyers won't address is the perverse belief that the resources of the planet belong to those with the talents and/or good fortune to get them first. The resulting inequitable distribution of capital goods that is the consequence of laws which codify this belief will always lead to the distortions of reality that we see under capitalism. Paradoxically, while education is the only way to correct this false belief, the present education system is itself a victim of it.

The money quote:

"Here is my bias: extremes of wealth and poverty cannot be reconciled with a genuinely democratic politics."

Which means: salary/profit caps, non-profit health care and education and prisons, seriously harsh and oft enforced punishments for white collar thieves and domestic Constitutional enemies, publicly financed elections (including equal and free "air" and print time for all candidates,) and, most importantly, a relentless attack on Greed Spongiform Encephalopathy, the un-addressed epidemic presently effecting most Americans. Like sex ed and drug ed, "greed is bad" ed needs to begin in elementary school.

Three or so months ago, I was flabbergasted when, during a local newscast in Denver, a commercial for homebuilder HB Horton was broadcast... the announcer boasted that home prices had hit "rock bottom" and it was now "time to buy!"

Uh, say what? Reeeeeally? Rock bottom?

I emailed the manager of the Gannett station asking about the dubious and misleading statement by his client, and he simply said that "they don't censor their clients advertising".

There was, at a time, a "Seal of Good Practice" that the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) used to abide by. Station and sales managers routinely checked commercials for any false claims and the like, before they aired.

I guess those days are over with. The same station hosted a web program on the real estate crisis. I emailed the host asking about the commercial that ran on his station and mentioned the NAB Seal and he said he'd "never heard of it", and came across as a holier-than-thou-snob.

More evidence (like we need any more) that anything presented by the MSM and their client advertisers, should be always be suspect.

At least we have CD and people like Bill Moyers.

Daniel David,
I admire your steadfast, non flustered, ever hopeful optimism about the Democratic party coming to the rescue. You seem to be an honest, kindly person, with seldom a harsh word for anyone. But I think you are living in an era gone by and are in denial about the current democratic party. Maybe your talents could be put to use in an alternative party?

presence, namaste, nspire, etc. how do you do that?? Sometimes I get so enamored with your creative dazzle I forget to read the content, which is usually very nspiring. Your words are often a beacon of light, thanks.

To address the threads topic ...Bill Moyers ROCKS!!
To address "elme"'s atatement that Hillary doesn't support nuclear power...

All 3 U.S. presidential candidates back nuclear power
By Jeff Mason - Reuters
Published: May 7, 2008

INDIANAPOLIS: But John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton all have different approaches to how they would use nuclear power, seen by some as dangerous and others as needed to fight climate change.

John McCain embraces it. Barack Obama wants to address its flaws. Hillary Clinton is cautious but not opposed.

Nuclear power - controversial in the United States and throughout much of the world - is on the agenda of all three U.S. presidential candidates as they seek to diversify the country's energy mix and reduce its dependence on foreign oil.

Interviews with top policy advisers to the three White House hopefuls reveal a varied approach to a technology that some observers consider a necessary answer to fighting climate change and that others view as expensive and dangerous.
...
Clinton, a New York senator also seeking the Democratic nomination, has said she prefers using renewable fuels to fight climate change because of nuclear energy's risks.

"Hillary has real concerns about nuclear power because of the issues around safety, waste disposal and proliferation," her policy director, Neera Tandem, said.

"She opposes new subsidies for nuclear power, but would continue research focused on lowering costs and improving safety," Tandem said.

The major roadblock to new U.S. nuclear plants has been finding a home for nuclear waste. Congress designated Yucca Mountain in Nevada, about 90 miles, or 145 kilometers, from Las Vegas, to be the U.S. waste repository, but development of the storage site is years behind schedule and it has powerful opponents like the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not issued a new nuclear plant license since the mid 1970s. Utility companies have balked at proposing new plants because of concerns about safety and cost overruns.

Despite signs that that trend may be changing, the environmental group Greenpeace, which opposes nuclear energy because of the serious problem with waste disposal, does not see an industry renaissance on the horizon, said Jim Riccio, the group's nuclear policy analyst in Washington.

He described the Democratic candidates' positions as nuanced. Clinton's energy platform is "better than the others" because of its focus on nonnuclear sources, though she appeared to change her stances in different states, he said.

Both Democrats have received campaign contributions from nuclear energy companies, Riccio said, Exelon to Obama and Entergy to Clinton.

There is one point that Moyers has missed. Democracy is rule by the people, backed up with elections where the people mark their choice on a piece of paper. That paper can be counted, verified that it marked the clear intention of the voter. It's worked for decades after the introduction of the secret ballot.

In the upcomming November election how many paper ballots will be counted? Those who do not think about the integrity of the vote may be content that the electronic machines are made by corporations owned by members of the Republican party. Can anyone really trust the outcome of the upcoming election?
If, and that's a heck of a big if, the dems win in a massive landslide then I may start to think that democracy has survived the bush years. But an election that sees McCain as the victor will herald the end of democracy in the usa, if such a concept hasn't ended already.

Stopping to think one is the greatest place on the planet without actually having any knowledge of other places would be a good starting point!

America is as closed a society as North Korea, with the exception that ideas actually get out of America - but none ever are allowed to enter America. Americans don't even know how Canada functions, by comparison. Let alone other places.

Every time I am there I just shake my hand in utter disbelief when uneducated people in their trailer parks still honestly believe that this is better than everything the rest of the world has. We have no trailer parks in Europe, thank you very much.

So looking around you instead of investigating your own belly-buttons would be a great starting point for Americans. Every single issue Bill Moyers mentions has of course been encountered by other countries but nobody in America bothers to look at how they solved it. Oh yeah, reinventing the wheel must be a national pastime!

Not having looked around to investigate how others solved their problems got America into this situation where the only ones who believe that America is the greatest place to be in this world are Americans themselves or those who come from the Third World.

For the words 'America' and 'Democracy' to be linked together is, in 2008, unforgivable.

America is not a democracy since Bush came to power. You only have to look at Iraq to see what America means by democracy.

America exports its 'Wild West' ethos wherever it goes, the one where the law of the gun and the missile prevails. America has lost the plot.

Or is it just revealing the true nature of its plot to control the world and remake it in America's ugly, greedy image?

P.S. Check my blog for some thoughts.

At the end of the day, WE, the PEOPLE, are going to win this. It doesn't matter how bleak it looks today.
In evidence, i submit that here we are, the people, discussing the state of our "democracy," an act not even imaginable twenty years ago. Tens of millions of people around the world protested BEFORE the Iraq War--nothing in history ever touched that kind of awareness.
I submit that the rise of "socialist" regimes in South America-an act of utter defiance of the neo-liberal Clinton and WTO paradigms of social control testifies to our eventual victory.
I also submit that the rise of Russian independence, regardless of our feelings about the rule of Putin, must be viewed as an act against the current neo-liberal agenda and its constraints on social programs in countries.
the world is just starting to wake up. We WILL win!

Is anyone out there in the U.S. paying attention? Why has "The People" given it all away?

Human Nature it is, but is is all so the sheer impossibility for the average individual to crawl out of the noisy white noise and mess that is modern, commercial media, less of a problem in Australia, the UK and Europe with strong public media organisation, ABC, BBC, etc. I am of the opinion and based on University media study as well that the corporate media have a lot to do with this, chasing ratings and money, dumbing down an already half witless population who have succumbed to the I want it now culture: The endless search for the latest spectacular, the belief that sport of any kind IS worthwhile entertainment, that analysis, reading, thinking is a waste of time and hopelessly boring:

Where do you stop - its hard to know where to start. Maybe we the people will revolt, but will they do it when its too late, only when the world and its American commercialism and insular ism starts to crumble and the real world enters that universe, but it maybe too late to save. maybe America is looking at the next great conflagration, speed-ed up by technology and greed. If the mistakes that caused the wars of the 19th and 20th century were bad enough, maybe this time around it will be like the second coming.

But will god, or some omnipotent being be there to press the reboot button?

"Terms like "liberty" and "individual freedom" invoked by generations of Americans who battled to widen the 1787 promise to "promote the general welfare" have been perverted to create a government primarily dedicated to the welfare of the state and the political class that runs it."

Those who take the oath of office to uphold the promises of the consitution have not done so. Maybe we should start using words like 'criminal" and "treason" to describe the intentional destruction of America as a sacrifice for Globalization.

It has long been recognized that our democracy could only be subverted from within. Consider it subverted.

Treason is a crime.

What's wrong with this country? Well, for nearly as long as I can remember, whenever something wasn't quite right, or something bad happened, everyone cried, "The government needs to fix this!" And everything needing to be done, it was "Let George do it."

Well, guess what - we've gotten what we asked for.

I have a couple of observations on "human nature".

I worked for many years in factories. Industrial, with workers of different "races". This social production, had a bonding effect that allowed us to fight together for our common interests. This was the material bases for our "human nature". Joint action was based on an understand that we were part of a class.

If any of you have been in a natural disaster, you will find the disaster as the material bases for people working together. People will do heroic things to save other people. "Human nature", this is the kind of action people will take, and will do what ever it takes to save their community.

Individualism, is pushed on us every day. As individuals we can and will be beaten. If we become conscious as a class, and fight as one for our class interests, we will not be defeated.

Flyer man (3:30pm).......Amen

Chris Horton (3:42pm........Amen

Quality Time (8:22pm)......double down Amen.

Anyone in West Palm Beach want to start the revolution here?

Anyone??

Veco? I did a google search and came up with nothing...