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Second Thoughts
Saturday, October 10th, 2009
Friends,
Last night my wife asked me if I thought I was a little too hard on Obama in my letter yesterday congratulating him on his Nobel Prize. "No, I don't think so," I replied. I thought it was important to remind him he's now conducting the two wars he's inherited. "Yeah," she said, "but to tell him, 'Now earn it!'? Give the guy a break -- this is a great day for him and for all of us."
I went back and re-read what I had written. And I listened for far too long yesterday to the right wing hate machine who did what they could to crap all over Barack's big day. Did I -- and others on the left -- do the same?
We are weary, weary of war. The trillions that will have gone to these two wars have helped to bankrupt us as a nation -- financially and morally. To think of all the good we could have done with all that money! Two months of the War in Iraq would pay for all the wells that need to be dug in the Third World for drinking water! Obama is moving too slow for most of us -- but he needs to know we are with him and we stand beside him as he attempts to turn eight years of sheer madness around. Who could do that in nine months? Superman? Thor? Mitch McConnell?
Instead of waiting to see what the president is going to do, we all need to be pro-active and push the agenda that we want to see enacted. What keeps us from forming the same local groups we put together to get out the vote last November? C'mon! We're the majority now -- the majority by a significant margin! We call the shots -- and we need to tell this wimpy Congress to get busy and do what we say -- or else.
All I ask of those who voted for Obama is to not pile on him too quickly. Yes, make your voice heard (his phone number is 202-456-1414). But don't abandon the best hope we've had in our lifetime for change. And for God's sake, don't head to bummerville if he says or does something we don't like. Do you ever see Republicans behave that way? I mean, the Right had 20 years of Republican presidents and they still couldn't get prayer in the public schools, or outlaw abortion, or initiate a flat tax or put our Social Security into the stock market. They did a lot of damage, no doubt about that, but on the key issues that the Christian Right fought for, they came up nearly empty handed. No wonder they've been driven crazy lately. They'll never have it as good again as they've had it since Reagan took office.
But -- do you ever see them looking all gloomy and defeated? No! They keep on fighting! Every day. Our side? At the first sign of wavering, we just pack up our toys and go home.
So, at least for this weekend, let us celebrate what people elsewhere are celebrating -- that America now has a sane and smart man in the White House, a man who truly wants a world at peace for his two daughters.
Many, for the past couple days (yes, myself included), have grumbled, "What has he done to earn this prize?" How 'bout this:
The simple fact that he was elected was reason enough for him to be the recipient of this year's Nobel Peace Prize.
Because on that day the murderous actions of the Bush/Cheney years were totally and thoroughly rebuked. One man -- a man who opposed the War in Iraq from the beginning -- offered to end the insanity. The world has stood by in utter horror for the past eight years as they watched the descendants of Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson light the fuse of our own self-destruction. We flipped off the nations on this planet by abandoning Kyoto and then proceeded to melt eight more years worth of the polar ice caps. We invaded two nations that didn't attack us, failed to find the real terrorists and, in effect, ignited our own wave of terror. People all over the world wondered if we had gone mad.
And if all that wasn't enough, the outgoing Joker presided over the worst global financial collapse since the Great Depression.
So, yeah, at precisely 11:00pm ET on November 4, 2008, Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. And the 66 million people who voted for him won it, too. By the time he took the stage at midnight ET in the Grant Park Historic Hippie Battlefield in downtown Chicago, billions of people around the globe were already breathing a huge sigh of relief. It was as if, in that instant, one man did bring the promise of peace to the world -- and most were ready to go wherever he wanted to go to achieve that end. Never before had the election of one man made every other nation feel like they had won, too. When you've got billions of people ready, willing and able to join a cause like this, well, a prize in Oslo is the least that you deserve.
One other thought. The Peace Prize historically has been given to those who have worked to throw off the yoke of racial discrimination and segregation (Martin Luther King, Jr., Desmond Tutu). I think the Nobel committee, in awarding Obama the prize, was also rewarding the fact that something profound had happened in a nation that was founded on racial genocide, built on racist slavery, and held back for a hundred-plus years by vestiges of hateful bigotry (which can still be found on display at teabagger rallies and daily talk radio). The fact that this one man could cause this seismic historical event to occur -- and to do so with such grace and humility, never succumbing to the bait, but still not backing down (yes, he asked to be sworn in as "Barack Hussein Obama"!) -- is more than reason enough he should be in Oslo to meet the King on December 10. Maybe he could take us along with him. 'Cause I also suspect the Nobel committee was tipping its hat to all of us -- we, the American people, had conquered some of our racism and did the truly unexpected. After seeing searing images of our black fellow citizens left to drown in New Orleans -- and poor whites seeing their own treated no better than the black man they had been raised to hate -- we had all seen enough. It was time for change.
Thank you, Barack Obama, for giving us the opportunity to redeem ourselves. Now for the tasks ahead. We need you to do all that you promised to do. We need it. The world needs it.
My prediction for the future? You become the first *two-time* winner of the Nobel Peace Prize! Yeah!
Fred (that's Norwegian for "Peace"),
Michael Moore
Comments
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272 Comments so far
Show AllIf any so called "terrorist" leader reads this discussion, we should have no fear of any attacks from them.
Well. These are exactly the sentiments I and many others had the day he won and especially after reading your original smart-assed "Earn It!" letter. It made me think of Joe Wilson in its aggressive know nothingness.(Did anybody even bother to read why the Committee said they gave it to him?)
So ...? Apologize.
It seems to me that everyone is surprised that Obama is acceptable as president by the corporations. Do you all not notice that Obama, Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Nixon, Kennedy etc. and all the way back have all been controlled by the corporations? We need public campaign financing and equal free airtime to all candidates in order to stop this. The congress is run by the corporations, the senate is run by the corporations..etc. Why are you all so shocked about Obama? Because he is a black man you thought he would be able to throw off the bonds of the corporate fascists that have taken over our country? Ha! Foolish people, living in the dark. Shine the light on it all and realize we have been invaded by these corporations and THEY RUN EVERYTHING! We are not a "free" country. Freedom is relative. Until public campaign financing becomes a reality, with free airtime included equally, you and I and the govt. will all be enslaved by these corporations. It is not the candidates or elected officials that are to blame, it is our system. Change the system (good luck with that!) and you will see change. Only the problem is that the people we rely on to change this are the very people who are bought and paid for by the corporations. Read up on corporate fascism and you will realize that with the "personhood" of the corporations came the downfall of "free enterprise" and the system of Govt brought forth by our founding fathers.
Marcie,
Exemplary comment,
Not that it probably matters much but I have tried to explain corporate fascism and democratic tyranny on these threads a few times and met nothing but resistance. I typically begin by showing that the investment class was 2% of the population in the 1920s and by the mid 1980s, 25%. Then I am careful to explain that by 2007 the number reached 50% but much of this rapid climb was due to 401(k)s being used to replace retirement funds. I am not sure why just yet but people are having trouble accepting that corporations are an embodiment of the franchised population. Many of the participants here are convinced that the recent economic crises changed that inescapable fact somehow. I have explained that equities have nearly returned to where they should have been in the first place but the idea that the majority in this country does not share the belief that a collapse is imminent has a distracting affect. Naturally, whether the economy collapes or not has nothing to do with the inescapable facts regarding the size or political influence of the investment class but this has been an obsticle just the same. Anyway, I have explained how the the system was designed to protect against populism and how that makes corporations with "personhood" a de facto founding father with increasingly less of a threat from populism but I fear that I have not the time or the patience needed here. It seems that the demand on these threads is for some indescribable delusion. But that does not take anything away from the fact that your comment may be just enough to open a mind or two.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
To refer to corporate legalistic "personhood" as a "de facto founding father" is to reach back and tar the founding fathers (even the most federalist, pro-central bank ones) with an insult regarding a misconstrued court ruling that did not happen until a full century after 1776. Other than that it is a good post.
metal,
Is it possible that you simply do not understand Madison's intent regarding Populism? And that you are distorting what I said as a vain ploy to include a court ruling that is beside the point? "Personhood" gives the corporations the same protected status that Madison's framing provided to the founding fathers and I think if you read my comment again you will see your distortion. You are applying your values to my comment and then adding an irrelevant fact to reach an irrelevant conclusion so as to disparage. (Almost clever but not quite honorable)
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
James Madison from Federalist Paper 55:
"In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion never fails to wrest the scepter from reason. Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob."
Madison's sentiments conflating mobs with populism have very little directly to do with the ruling in the 1870s that sent corporations toward 14th Amendment "equal protections" that equate corporations with flesh and blood human beings in terms of artificial and real personhood.
You said: "Anyway, I have explained how the the system was designed to protect against populism and how that makes corporations with 'personhood' a de facto founding father with increasingly less of a threat from populism but I fear that I have not the time or the patience needed here."
I fail to see how the hurdles to populism created by some of the founding fathers 'make corporations with "personhood" a de facto founding father. I do, however, see how those hurdles help reduce the influence of populism upon American corporations. Your characterization of me as "not quite honorable" reveals more about your thin skin than anything else.
metal,
I have no need to insult you but you do not understand Madison's point of view. If you really want to understand why the far-Left's efforts are increasingly futile, there is a transcipt on a Chomsky interview on STWR. Somewhere near the middle of the piece Chomsky talks about Madison's protections against Populism. I don't have time for this now but will check back in an hour or so.
I also wrote some lengthy comments on this subject on a thread connected to FOLLOW THE MONEY on this site.
I do not have thin skin, I gave you something you obviously need. Presuming that I care what people on the fringe Left think of me is antithetical to the truth, I would worry if folks here agreed with me. I have been involved on the Left for more than 30 years but there are levels, as in all things.
metal,
In my original comment I used corporations in the objective sense. I did not assume that all corporations are corrupt or of an insulting nature. Nor did I suggest any such sweeping notion. It is your assumption and generalization that adds insult, and that has some connection to your need to include the court ruling regarding corporate "personhood", which is absolutely beside the point; if the court ruling happened yesterday it would have no affect on my contention.
As I said, "personhood" gives the corporations the same protected status that Madison's framing provided to the founding fathers. (Notice that I used "gives" as opposed to "gave" and "framing" so as to suggest that "protected status" is built in, [as it is])
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Garsh! You sure told me, R.L. Love, and I'm still not motivated by your intellectual laziness enough to decode your inscrutable gibberish: Your undefined terms, your weak and unsupported connecting leaps and contentions, or your childish need to heap insult on insult. You deride an "assumption and generalization" that you claim I made, but I have never assumed all corporations are corrupt "or of an insulting nature" whatever the hell that means.
I am familiar with Madison as I am with Jefferson, Mason, Adams and Hamilton. I think there are numerous contemporary reasons for attacking Madison's elitist positions on similar grounds to those that could be used to attack artificial corporate "personhood." You didn't "give" me anything. You just gave your obviously needful ego an effete pat on the back.
You gesture at some work by Chomsky on the STWR site, but there are over 20 pieces on the Chomsky page, he is notoriously long-winded and you are too lazy to cite a title.
You have somehow taken offense at your own projection of wrongful assumptions on me and then, even more dysfunctionally, taken your offense to yourself personally. Perhaps you are a corporate executive or owner who has deeply repressed your shame at some nefarious corporate practice to which you are secretly addicted. You also seem to wallow in vaguely derived hairsplitting.
Artificial personhood as a special legal protection was conferred on corporations in the U.S. by the courts decades after James Madison was dead. It was not legally "built in" to pre-1870s concepts of corporations as legal entities. Many town councils still had direct voting oversight over corporate business licenses issued to business operators in their respective townships prior to the 1870s--regardless of Madison's framing of anything.
With regard to your opinions of the Left and "fringe Left" as you internally define them for yourself--who is it you think is supposed to care? Jesus Christ? Milton Friedman's ghost? I've encountered your anal-reactionary, molehills-into-mountains type before and I've never known one who did not undermine or destroy more than he or she ever unified or built. Most of them were humorless zeros with not a single significantly positive accomplishment to their name. You are too lazy too cryptically evasive and too boring to merit any further response.
metal:
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
WARNING: Delusions may occur when efforts to gain power are misguided, uninformed, or fantasy based to begin with. Symptoms include: vain distortions; confusion; presumptous contentions; a propensity for the reliance on irrelevant distractions; unwillingness to understand simple concepts, (especially when patient must admit that he or she is wrong). In extreme cases patients will protect false premises and resort to vile and ludicrous insults to provide the integral distractions needed for their state of denial. This condition is sometimes diagnosed as simple ignorance although ignorance is treatable via education. These cases do not respond favorably to education however, in fact, in some cases education causes a sense of false confidence. This false confidence and the prerequisite apperceptive mass therby provide the subject with a verbosity which tends to allow the illusion of understanding the very subject matter that confuses him or her, (This has an indoctrinating affect which of course can lead to epidemics). Furthermore and moreover, learning tends toward a predilection for the use of sterotyping, generalizing, and presumption as needed to deny the diverse and unique traits of others. Those who oppose the delusoinal are often categorized as members of vilified groups so as to distort an existing information base.
Idealogical delusions are typically outgrown although some cases do require therapy. Advanced stages of this illness are often evidenced as an aberrant need for affirmation. Another early warning sign of the advanced stage is the patients inability to take conversations to "full-circle" conclusions (see this thread).
Patients are typically not violent. Ramifications include vast amounts of wasted time due to the inherent dynamics of affirmation and indoctrination, (These dynamics are of course simular to those so integral to faith based religions). Other side-effects include the constant supply of misleading and distortable material that emanates from those who suffer from this disease. And of course these patients do often bring shame to what are sometimes worthy causes.
(busy not lazy)
Metal.. Tell me simply and without tons of dialogue...do you believe that the corporations are running the presidency, the house and the senate and all of us? And do you believe that the simple way to stop this corruption is public campaign financing and free air time to all candidates running? This way they can actually tell people what THEY stand for and believe in without being a puppet for the corporation that contributed to their campaign. What is the point of all this dialogue? We are here now and what will we do to solve the problem of the special interests and lobbyists? I am so tired of all the intellectualizing. How the hell will that solve Americas's problems? Come up with solutions...all of you or just be quiet..you aren't helping. Use logic..think about the problem and come up with SOLUTIONS and then take action to change what isn't working. That will re establish freedom but you have to work hard and do something to solve these problems. Take action, join organizations, make phone calls. Be a part of the solution, not a part of the problem. Just like we apply this to our lives and families, we must apply our problem solving skills as humans to changing the status quo. Things have to change in America (We have to change it)or corporate fascism won't be the only kind you see here.
marcie....I know you did not ask for my input but I have to say that until we each realize that we must be that change we wish to see (Gandhi) we will focus on changing the system, that which is outside of us. This dislocation from personal power is a problem who's solution is the awareness of that mental choice. Change your mind and you will change and be the change. So simple, yet overlooked time and time again.
R.L. Love
Since you keep bringing up Madison and Populism in your posts, I found out The Constitution Signers were almost all millionaires and populism was something that threatened the status quo.
Web definition of Populism:
"the political doctrine that supports the rights and powers of the common people in their struggle with the privileged elite"
We have a lot of misconceptions of our Revolution. if you get the time check out
http://www.boisestate.edu/socwork/dhuff
/us/chapters/chapter%202.htm
"By the 1820s two schools of thought had emerged. One school pointed the finger of blame at the individual behaviors of the very poor. One committee claimed to have found that a majority of the poor had “fallen on evil ways”. A second school viewed economic conditions as the root of the problem. This systemic theory enjoyed enough popularity that, in 1817, the U.S. congress passed a bill creating funds for public works projects. However, President Madison vetoed the bill. Today it is almost beyond comprehension that, at a time when fewer than three hundred people worked for the federal government and more than a hundred years before the passage of the social security act, there was such powerful support for a national welfare program."
-------------
Thanks for helping me learn more.
Jim,
I take it you are not angry at me for what I said on "Follow The Money". I'll assume YOU got my hint and I am glad.
Don't be fooled by that "tiny oligarchy" nonsense, there are about 350 billioniares in this country and they have the full support of about 20 or 30 percent of the population. This class is bound by systemic design and the 401(k)s are a glue. Any meaningful change in this country was difficult enough when the investment class was 2% of the population or less and now we have what is essentially a democratic tyranny, something new.
The I.R.S. has allowed an amnesty period for capital flight funds to be brought back. Not much has been made of this but the largest capital flight flow in the history of the world took place over this past year or so and I suppose this was kept quite for fear of panic. The Obama folks have calmly and cleverly put the super-wealthy in a no-where-to-hide-their-money-that-is-safe situation. I don't know the exact date but the amnesty period is ending soon and then things should begin to get very interesting.
Capital flight is nothing but loose ends, the affects of which involve all economies and make development of poor nations almost impossible. The threat of capital flight is a precious bargaining ploy that has allowed the wealthy to not only get wealthier but to corrupt the development process. But all this must change so as to protect resources, and environmentalism is the underlying impetus. Saving the planet is going to be about effeciency and that must start with the effecient use of capital. But that is not possible so long as capital concentrations are so large as to dictate the avoidance of risk. I will run out of room here if I try to explain in much detail so allow me to just say that it is mostly to do with the localizing of commerce and a reversal of migratory trends. Biochar soil is very likely going to allow farming to be relocated in accordance with water supplies etc. If you don't know about biochar you are in for a treat.(just enter the word)
Anyway, I think the Obama team is about to put on a full-court press that required a great deal of preparation and thought. If I am reading things correctly we are about to have the conversation about value itself. This is the conversation at the end of the road that humanity has been on for centuries. It includes most everything of central importance, the value of vocations or what might also be put as the value of a person's time in relation to others (economic justice). And the value of resources or what is also the property rights issue(environmental justice). I suspect that this all has a lofty ring to it but climate change is requiring a structural shift and population factors (food and water security) are forcing these issues to be dealt with. And it is about time.
I am 53 and I have never voted for anyone because I have always felt a no-vote sent a better message although I think I was wrong about Obama?
Another important clue is that the banksters would have been punished moreso by now if the intent were not to give them enough rope to hang themselves. They are about to be trapped between public opinion and the no-more-capital-flight-option. The public's anger toward Wall Street should be good for a few more percentage points worth of marginal tax rate increase but it makes perfect sense to wait until the capital flight option is eliminated.
The Obama people are concerned about history, not money. But power is so concentrated due to our framework. It is important to understand that the Senate's veto power gives the same advantages to corporations that the founding fathers afforded for themselves. But moreso because stockholders add a numerical advantage to what was already an advantage via an imbalance of representation, this mostly due to geographical factors.
If you are interested there are historical clues that lead to what is a way of understanding the core dynamics and a sense of what must be done to fix the system. The tarriff of 1816 was a ploy which diverted wealth from agricultural concerns to provide infrastructure which benefited the "entire nation". One must do a lot of reading between the lines and I can explain further if you are interested but for now I'll just "point the way". The Agricultural Depression of 1921 tells a great deal. The USDA had had cabinet status since the 1880s and the War had been over for 3 years and farms were allowed to continue the production levels dictated by Europe's farms being used as battlefields. The ensuing glut was cleary intentional and yet another ploy to control labor costs via the devaluing of staple goods(yellow dog contracts integral here). Farm subsidies eventually became a more sophisticated extension of this same ploy; and with global implications that have come to affect ALL VALUES. Don't be distracted though by "U.S." farm subsidies, this is about the developed nations in concert. Anyway, consider the challanges inherent to climate change pressures and what an obsticle the concentrations of power in the developed world will most certainly be and CHANGE is much more complicated than advertised. But once this challange is understood the strategic manuverings of the Obama team begin to make sense.
ray
Jim,
I tried to add to the comment below but exceeded the limit so I removed some of the first paragraph. It may be a little scattered but I think you can make sense of it.
And one more thing...Bush had 8 years to screw up the economy and govt and anything else he could get his little "C" STUDENT hands on with Dick "Darth Vader" Cheney, the lead corporate fascist of Haliburton and now you want Barack "the superman" Obama to fly in and fix everything in less than a year. Wave your magic wand Obama (I guess some of you go for the Limbaugh song..Barack the magic negro) and make everything OK again. JESUS CHRIST has been trying for 2,000 years and notice the progress he has made. Give it a rest people. Think about what you're trying to do. Sheeesh!!! How psuedo-intellectual of you all. Thank you MICHAEL MOORE FOR TRYING TO SHED LIGHT ON A NATION OF JUDGEMENTAL AND IMPATIENT PEOPLE. I guess you're not perfect either and are just a human being. Instant gratification anyone? Yeah..that is who we are as a nation.......
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Since last year the need has been clear for a national progressive convention/leadership summit. This is an idea now also being supported by Ralph Nader. But there is disturbingly little response to this idea from America's scattered progressives and the leaders of their various organizations. Support for it on CD is lukewarm at best and most posters ignore it without offering any better alternatives.
It has been clear since the era of Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan--the first broadcast MSM feeding frenzy that displaced hours of authentic news coverage in a daily, weekly and monthly "news" cycle to focus on ratings whoring over a third rate human interest story--that American progressives need our own mass market media platform to get out our message without it being filtered or displaced by the "mainstream media." To that end I have repeatedly proposed that multiple progressive low power FM radio stations be used to create blanket market penetration of populous towns and cities with overlapping broadcast ranges to duplicate the market penetration of corporate media platforms. I receive scant response from progressives on CD to this idea--even though Republican controlled FCCs have repeatedly & bitterly resisted the spread of low power FM (because THEY recognize the threat it poses to corporatist & far-Right media domination) and the FCC under Obama is finally working to make licenses for those frequencies easier for local groups to acquire. Support for this idea on CD is almost nonexistent and most posters ignore it without offering any better alternative.
While it is one of the historical jobs of the progressives and far-Left in America to bash the lies, corrupt agenda and weaknesses of the corporatist and far-right manipulated Establishment, the other primary job of the true Left is TO PROVIDE INNOVATIVE IDEAS FOR GOOD GOVERNANCE, TACTICS & STRATEGIES FOR ACHIEVING THOSE IDEAS, TO ORGANIZE TO BRING THEM ABOUT AND TO PRESSURE MORE CENTRIST POLITICIANS TO EMBRACE PROGRESSIVE REFORMS. In the past, organized progressives, socialist public speakers, organized labor, multiple daily multi-language newspapers in a more literate society, and a less corporately dominated academia took ideas from the progressives and socialists and transmitted them via street action, public speaking, print media and academe to the political class. We didn't have TV yet and radio was still spreading so most people read enough newspapers to still know the difference between communism, different degrees of socialism, democracy, capitalism and fascism.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Nowadaze, the American masses are more ignorant of progressive, socialist, and environmentalist ideas than they ever have been. Most of them are unequipped to even understand what informed progressives would consider a very basic explanation of those ideas. It is one of the historical jobs of the just-Left-of-center reform advocates like Michael Moore to explain simplified versions of some of those ideas to our dumbed-down masses on a level they can more easily grasp. The other primary job of the just-Left-of-center reform advocate is to provide political media cover for politicians with Leftist tendencies to begin to move the Center of Power back towards the Left. There are far fewer people in Michael Moore's position with his media reach to provide this CRUCIAL cover than there were even 25 years ago, let alone compared to the peak of organized Leftist influence on American thinking and American policy in the 1920s and 1930s.
The job the just-Left-of-center reform advocate must do is one of the most difficult jobs of all because it requires one to walk a political tightrope--especially these days with media ownership concentrated in the hands of only five gigantic conglomerates. That reform advocate must get the message out to the masses on a level they can understand, sympathize or empathize with without alienating so many of the overwhelmingly corporatist media gatekeepers and conservative Establishment that they begin to see such an advocate as a serious threat to their bottom lines. Then they will disrupt even "entertainment news" coverage of that advocate's ideas, suppress distribution of the reform message in other ways, or devote enough McNews cycles to collectively tear the reform advocate's reputation to shreds and smear & drown those ideas in the media echo chamber of the corporate and far-Right.
Right now I think they are afraid that if they focus too much on Moore it will only draw more attention to his ideas. But he might still provoke their wrath enough for them to systematically and permanently marginalize him. And there is no one in America in a position to take his place and do his urgently needed work. Ralph Nader doesn't do SNL that often, Johnny Carson isn't around to have Gore Vidal on as a regular guest, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are long on critiques but short on ideas for reform and Bill Maher sporadically tosses out an actual idea but can't seem to decide if he's a Libertarian or not. Arrianna Huffington simply sounds too Park Avenue Eva Gaborish for most Amurkans to take seriously.
Moore offers simple, publicly palatable reasons and excuses for what are obviously needed reforms and this serves as cover for politicians who want to move in a Leftwards direction. Moore is hardly the pointless loser he is painted to be by the more reactionary posters on CD. In fact this country needs several hundred more like him with market penetration in every city. Just-Left-of-center reform advocates like him with his market reach are increasingly scarce, not increasingly more common. And the progressive and far-Left have nothing like him in terms of popular name recognition and broad appeal--nor do they even have a media vehicle to deliver such a message in the first place.
So unless you've got better ideas than the ones above for organizing and getting out the progressive message, you need to quit your bitching and actionless blasting and do more strategizing, organizing and working on coming up with and spreading innovative ideas for progressive reforms.
metal, you're assuming all of us prefer reform to revolution. Among leftists, that's not a safe assumption.
This leadership summit idea would be useful, but what would be our focus? Who would the representatives be? Considering the broad span of leftist ideas, often contradictory, how would (or should) we bridge the gap (especially between conciliators/apologists and radicals/firebrands)? Considering that many existing leftist conferences already exist (usually oriented towards specific topics like media reform), how do we ensure this will be more effective?
I don't mean to puncture your idea, but we need to address these issues. Let's not repeat the history of the repeated splits in various Communist Internationals.
Personally, I think we need to focus on both practical tactics of independent living and amplifying resistance. Our ideological counterpoints themselves are quite strong, while those of modern capitalism are bankrupt.