'The pieces are in place for the Plutocrats final victory...'

And what is that final victory? Owning everything? OK, let's say the top 10% of fellow Americans finally 'win' their Class War and own everything.

Then what? What's their plan for the other 300 million of us?

And do they know the one thing we do own is over 250 million guns?

Yes the capitalist aristocracy is the most diabolically manipulative Ruling Class in human history.

But the fact remains the United States willfully turned itself into Moron Nation and skipped gleefully into the capitalists' slave pens.

Identifying with its oppressor -- "I too can become a millionaire and root like a pig through the ruins of my victims' lives" -- Moron Nation then adopted as its own the morally imbecilic credo of the Ruling Class. Not just infinite greed, but infinite greed as ultimate virtue -- Ayn Rand's reversal of every ethical precept humanity ever uttered.

Relishing its single-minded maliciousness, Moron Nation next traded off our freedom for a nutrition-less diet of trinket materialism and pornographic celebrity-worship. It fattened itself on the toxins of anti-intellectuality, racism, misogyny and xenophobia.

And when its moronic binge proved cancerous, when its gorging acquisitiveness murdered the American experiment in constitutional governance and slew the American Dream, Moron Nation took final refuge in virulently pathological denial.

Its culpability is no different from the culpability of the Germans who voted Hitler into power, no different from the Nazi electorate that unleashed the modern agenda of world conquest Moron Nation has since ironically fulfilled.

O yes: warfare based on lies is warfare based on lies, no matter the language.

And extermination is extermination, whether imposed in death camps or inflicted by abandonment and neglect.

Verily, as was Nazi Germany in 1944, so is Moron Nation today.

It's end is certain. All that remains to be decided is the means and timing.

Until then there is naught but deepening darkness, die Götterdämmerung, the pre-Armageddon twilight.

That and the rage and grief and terror of those of us who struggled to avert the apocalypse but now – because we stayed here too long fighting for a realm no longer our own – cannot escape the deadly undertow of its self-inflicted demise.

Fine and dandy, John, but why no mention of the complicity of corporatist Democrats, lead by the biggest bait-and-switch president ever elected, Barack Obama? Or the Democrat Bill Clinton, who while president was instrumental in dismembering Glass-Stiegel?

Truth, without a Doubt.

In relation: Beatitudes: A "Godless" Jesus?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rBhPDctqCg

Merkans will demand facts to backup claims that, for example the Medicare program operates on a tiny fraction of the overhead of the privateers that supply it, and a tiny fraction of the overhead of any/all privateers, including those in the finance-destruction sector and in the military-destruction sector supplying the Pentagun.

But those same Merkans won't demand facts to backup claims that the privateers operate more efficiently. So to deal with this obvious bias, we have to phrase the news reportage in terms of the bias and the massive waste of the private sector. For example, any time one needs a comparison for waste in any context one can ask how it compares to the waste of 60% of the healthcare expenditures in the USA by the healthcare privateers. And what exactly are Merkans getting in return for the Pentagun's budget that exceeds the entire rest of the world's military budget? What about the cost of transport in the USA that is over twice the cost in Europe, per capita? What about the cost of education in the USA that is over twice the cost of education elsewhere? These cost are all of course inflated by the privateers. The startling aspect of the Merkan predicament is not that Merkans live with massive delusions but that someone fed those delusions to them and figured out how to make them swallow.

If our vote is manipulated, what difference does it make who we vote for?
Before 2000, I suspected that our vote didn't count. After 2000, I KNEW that our vote didn't count.

RE: But government isn’t the enemy. Laissez faire economic policies are.

Laissez faire (free market) economic policies were the policies of the 19th century capitalists who were also known as liberals. That is why the policies of the Washington Consensus, globalization, Milton Friedman, Larry Summers etc are called "neo-liberal." These are not conservative policies (even though they may be promoted by so-called conservatives), they are in fact classical liberal policies. The liberalism of FDR was really more of an aberration. The neo-liberalism of Obama and Clinton belongs to the older and more consistent liberal tradition. Conservatives don't oppose liberalism per se, they oppose FDR liberalism - which is what they have been trying to eradicate ever since FDR died (and are near complete success).

Of course the rich have destroyed the economy. If they had to share it with the rest of us what would be the ego gratification in that. If they have to share not only will they take their billions and run but they want to make sure we don't have anything left for ourselves, And still Americans fondest wish is that someday they too can be rich bastards, We have to get this fantasy out of our system and perhaps the privation of a depression is the only way to do it,

The Elephant in The Room:
An Armed Citizenry vs. A Tyrannical Government

By Kirby Ferris

“What if the American government ever “goes bad” and becomes a police state? That tyrannical government, IF it could enlist the willing support of every American soldier and every American cop (which is thankfully doubtful), could field perhaps a total of 1.5 million armed personnel. These duped soldiers and cops would have to go to their jobs each day facing a bare minimum of 10 MILLION very, very motivated and angry armed American citizens. The other 55 million would sit on the fence waiting, with their guns, to see which way the tide was flowing.
Additionally, you must logically ask WHY the present government is so obsessively committed to “gun control”. If our government has become so overpowering, so omnipotent, and it’s a waste of our time to even imagine resisting tyranny, then why do “They” even worry about the citizens being armed?
And why did the political regimes that committed genocide though the history of the 20th Century, first REGISTER and then CONFISCATE firearms before marching unarmed masses off to killing fields?
If an armed government is so omnipotent, why have so many armed governments gone to the effort and expense of gun confiscation?
The Turks did it to the Armenians. Lenin did it to Russians. Hitler did it to many Germans and all Jews. Stalin gave Russians a horrific double dose. And Mao, the world record holding mass murderer, did it to Red China.”
The Second Amendment has nothing to do with “hunters’ rights”. It is not even to protect us from burglars, rapists, muggers, or even lunatics like Jared Loughner. These uses of a firearm for food or self defense are actually “spin offs” of the original intent of 2A.
An armed citizenry is a polite citizenry, this is true. However, an armed citizenry is the ONLY way to insure, to guarantee, that the potentially megalomaniacal egos of politicians, authoritarian police hierarchs (like Sheriff “Dimwit” Dupnik of AZ) and the military leadership are kept under a quiet, and yet very emphatic, restraint.
An armed citizenry whispers into the ears of every politician, soldier, and cop: “Steady there. Think again. Remember, if you get too far out of line, and come to enslave us, ‘We the People’ have retained the power to kill you."
http://jpfo.org/kirby/kirby-elephant-in-room.htm

I've had it. It's time for folks to just come out and say that taxes on the wealthy need to be raised to confiscatory levels to be redistributed to the dispossessed Middle Class, in the form of either a robust welfare state or a vibrant jobs program. If we get called Marxists, then so be it - capitalism has outlived its usefulness for the lumpenproletariat.

It's weird watching the slow crumbling collaspe of the place in which I live. I have been reading enough about peak oil and the peak of many resources, to know that this is the long slow slide down to the bottom of the pit......However, I hope, that the pit, would be one in which we could go back to depending on nature for a living, no big banks to take your money away through usury interest rates and nice peaceful days, working with your family and community to survive, but also to live it up once in a while in a neighborhood get together, or something like that. Oh, that was the 17 adn 1800's...... when we had "growth" to look forward to......Now we don't...

Liberals and progressives don't seem to get it. Our democracy is broken, and stinks to high hell with corruption. Voting won't get us anywhere. Lets hear the word 'revolution' a little more, folks.

"The pieces are in place for the Plutocrats final victory … an industry friendly Supreme Court; a Democratic Party that is either in collusion with the plutocrats, or so cowardly as to be neutered; a press that reports outlandish lies and objective facts as if they were equivalent; and a public that is dazed and confused and convinced the government is their enemy."

Uh, wake up... the oligarchs already have that!

Several years ago this author (John Atcheson) wrote an article about the Arctic methane threat which was posted here at Common Dreams... Atcheson was correct about that soon to come disaster and he's correct about the coming depression and we aren't going to enjoy it.

During the past depression there were millions of small farmers, food was actually plentiful and inexpensive... A bushel of veggies sold at the Farmer's Market for ten cents, a chicken for fifteen cents, a dozen eggs was a nickel, flour was two cents a pound... This time there won't be much of any food to buy, so be prepared for Hell on Earth...It's very, very serious... So is the Arctic methane threat, we have about two more years... ~~Bing~~ (arctic methane)

what was so great about the 30's depression?

The link: they've produced profound income inequalities and the severe economic downturns that inevitably follow. does not work.

"Botched" credit crisis drives down stock prices. Unemployment drives down labor costs. Lower credit rating raises interest rates. Another housing dip cheapens real estate. ALL GOOD for those holding $2.4T in cash with more off-shore.
America ... SOLD!

It should be obvious to students of American history that we are now in a new civil war in which the south has taken over the republican party and spread their hateful ideology across the country using evangelical christianity and the gospel of greed. We can see what they have done in the states where they have won in 2010 with their assaults on women, unions and voting rights and once they take control of the federal government they will ultimately reduce the role of the federal government to starting wars to satisfy their love of hunting and killing foreigners.

To change the system we need a depression. This time let's do it right, not half botched like FDR. We must create a permanent Social Democracy that works, that employs every able bodied American, and can be the model for the future, space colonies, and the entire world.

A quote:"If Jesus ever existed, he was neither a liberal nor a hippie. He would have been a revolutionary: he challenged the authority of the state and of the religious status quo. His ideas, if executed by enough of his followers, would have overthrown the Roman empire and the Judaic orthodoxy; liberals don't do things like that."

Oh, what a reasoning!

Don't give up on your belief and hope! Life is more than what we objectively see. In our human language, JESUS WAS FLEXIBLE, even unto that HOUR he said: "Father forgive them for they know not what they do". His work was not to end the Roman Empire, which did after all end by itself. Remember, he also said: Give unto a Roman Emperor what is his---if only you also remember to give unto "God" what is His". a gift to the latter kind is complex - for what can anyone give to a Giver -- than to be firm in belief and hope.

All of us have knowledge and problem holes in us. Jesus saw it and many a time he did carefully bow out of the "public eye" to return yet with a greater force of witness to what he was to do for mankind - though incomprehensible to mankind. Pilate in this wonderful history or narrative saw something deeply faulty. He cautioned and in thought about the democracy of his days, he turned very liberal not to offend, hoping people had seen the efforts and good works. In the end, it was the angry mob that democratically had the ball of democracy in their court. There was it, and Jesus and Barnabas - you know who the latter was], side by side were voted for, and Barnabas emerged the winner. That was a version of our earliest democracy, but do we take the time to learn and relate? A big irony!
No, I must argue!

Obama is absolutely not Jesus and yet we talk and exemplify in comparative as well as abstract terms, according to our understandings or interpretations of the day's challenges we face. It is so easy to crucify people and forget to see the larger picture: "you" and "me", "our values, practices and systems". Many truly wish we could take more time, reflect more, before "casting stones". We write as we want to appeal to conscience and yet the conscience in us all is dead --- one of the reasons we keep persisting in the circle/hole we are in. If every voter knew himself or herself well, knew the system and the rest of it, cries for the good, effectiveness, success -- all accompanied and informed by "moderation" in a world that things do end], --- I guess were it so, we would have each and everyone done better than find unworthy scapegoats when some culprits drive things out of proportions of reason: among others a clear show of "lack of love for other, especially those worse-off in systems".

We 'politicize' Jesus. Good enough if only we are inwardly touched enough to capture his story, which we tend to dismiss or grow more and more unsure of! Like all other good philosophers, if you prefer putting it that way, much of the message is "love" --- not sexual less I be misunderstood! Both are meant for us as humans, but we must be able to separate and not misunderstand! We invent political adjectives: liberals, progressives, partisanship, etc., in the case of US "show of lack of love and understanding" played out on budget, debt ceiling and social securities, signals clear misconception and failure. With the results we see, adjectives like these are empty or words without a 'soul'. It is not one man's fault should we have heard him well and taken pains to understand and address our system and voters' awareness. We keep on deflecting and make no news good news!

There are always second chances, for that was the purpose of the "liberal" Jesus if it will please many to see it that way. The first of the chances is: the planned MINI CONGRESS - its 'hearing' senses and ability to comprehend and change course and boldly correct, considering the cries pouring out of America and the World at large, creating economic panic here and there. Alternatively, second as a chance has to be pains, woes and unpredictable deeper crisis, with outcomes difficult to construe for the already over-flogged 2012 elections. It might not turn out as it was with Pilate, because no matter how blames are pushed around, the people do see and try to understand how and why things go wrong. If for some "depressed" reason you first bow to a wealthy group of privileged persons 10 or 20 cents and yet they want the whole dollar with inadequate compromise spirit, but continue to get wilder and wilder, believe me the people do see.

Some think them passive and foolish. But they are not foolish in spite of how anyone twists and turns by hooking on one person in the show in a system that should learn and play well with the 'myths' of extremely difficult times, especially when the myths do have a history chained to the group and their persistent styles cum intrigues. That is not to say that there are not the good ones. Surely there are with the little we have seen as we try to make better meaning of the adjectives "liberals, "progressives" and "partisanship." They only have to increase in number and truly give mid-field politics the character of our time - indeed with the love of people at heart.

These will help calm down the "analogies" we are seeing with the right to worry about. All hope is not finished for America and world economy. We only have to truly put our forces and resources together. It will be well again hopefully!

I feel like a Jew watching the Nazis take over the country.

It is interesting that even critics accept the Republican framing of these things:

"Since Reagan, Republicans have been on a “starve the beast” campaign – by which they mean eviscerate the government by taking away as much revenue as they can."

Sorry, but that just is not true. Republicans have not worked to lower the tax burden of the lower or middle portions of the population. They have not worked to lower government spending. Reagan set a record for federal spending while he slashed social programs. Bush II set the next record, again while slashing government programs.

More, and more importantly, Republicans have not worked for smaller government. What a farce! They have worked to reduce the share of resources to the young, the poor, the elderly, students, labor, soldiers, and the middle class.

Mr. Atcheson, you clearly have enough information right here to recognize this. Stop and think about it, and call it what it is.

Appreciation for the 'typographical' correction: Barabbas not Barnabas!

On the substance of what the issue is about, there is a sense of frustration, due partly to the way things present themselves. While that is indeed sad, it is not enough to give-up on, at least if being a "humanist" can stay a 'figurative' option; preferably while not stop to keep searching --- for you will find in the end!

Putting that into the ongoing discourse of US problem, I know is not easy. The problem is "political" and politics as we traditionally get to know, quite often would like to separate morally-intoned debates from its 'senses' of pragmatism. That is, of-course, not to say that it operates fully at the level of what we know about "so-called" objective facts. Human elements as we see and know truly deny validity of any claim to that effect. On the whole therefore, most of what is done in politics is "half and half": a kind of blend after all. When you have to blend thus, you mix proportions, and probably watch out for result dynamics: the best tool to lead on the way to adjust or rethink the proportions. Listen thus therefore, my point with that which is "moral" in the blend, is found in the way we also allow our conscience, should it not be dead] to guide our senses of the proportion as we adjust the blend - making it relatively perfect and perfect ------ yet never perfect though! It is one of the best ways to defend us and say with hands on our hearts "we DO the best possible" in our politics to heal it.

Letting that treasure: inner gift and light come to our help, is what is bluntly looked down on in politics. In the blend, lack of proper review of its proportion is an arm of our folly. We must each ask the other, including our politicians, why are we despondent? Why do we close doors of deeper understanding and chances for peace in us and our affairs? We listen too little, learn slowly, are overwhelmed with self pride, nonchalant, and for these as a reason the waters that need not pass under our bridges keep passing, and we keep responding shouting out wolves that we ourselves create, due partly to our blindness amidst "light". Any God couldn't come us nearer than in the way we are seeing but proudly not wanting to see and enjoy the glorious free gifts round about us. IT WAS A FINE THING THAT THE JESUS REASONING CAME INTO THIS AMERICAN DEBT CEILING, TAXES, SOCIAL SECURITIES - BUDGET SQUABBLES INVOLVING THE PRESIDENT, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES AND THE SENATE - THE CONGRESS).

I never underestimate any of these instances and I am sure their operators fully get the stuffs in most of what we are concerned enough to venture air our types of views and feelings - tagged to different papers and debates attracting them. In most cases, even among parties especially on the right there, those running them hardly talk without referring to God as the base of their positions. Let there not be too much gap between words and practice or results, for that will never heal despondent groups and individuals. Nobody in this world or nation is self-sufficient, so if Americans say they do not need help in any form including words, they are not true to themselves, for that comes to them anyhow!

COMING WITH ALL MANNERS OF SHIFTS OF BLAMES, STATISTICS AND RATINGS AS TOOLS TO COMPLICATE POLITICS AND THE ECONOMIC LULL, EVEN IF TACTICAL FOR SEVERAL REASONS, IS NOT GOOD TO OVERDO, BECAUSE NO ONE WINS AT THE END, THINKING OF THE MEDIA CULTURE BEHIND ALL!

It should be time to let the Executive have a peace of mind, and the Congress adopt the peace and harmony road to doing the work all of them were sent by their people to do. Continuous acrimony is an ill-wind never to blow their country good or individuals and groups spear-heading such. USE YOUR GOD-GIVEN POSITIVE ABILITIES TO MANUFACTURE A WAY OUT BUT IN DOING SO, REMEMBER THAT YOU ARE NOTHING WITHOUT THE PEOPLE.

I find myself in a unique position. I am at the same time a successful contract and cash-flow savvy import/export entrepreneur living off my creativity as an author of metaphysical books, a professional psychic whose video-recorded area of expertise is the financial sector, a news junkie trying to make sense of our time, and a consumer caught in the same web that is now catching my middle class neighbors and even some of the rich people here in the Hamptons where I live full time.

To make sense of anything this big and important, you have to allow your consciousness to rise as high above the battle field as you are capable of elevating yourself in the hope of seeing the big picture and a way to deal with it successfully. Reading articles here and elsewhere show a fundamental flaw in the authors' approach: Never denigrate your enemy. In fact, no American should think of another American as an enemy, if they are really serious about solving this crisis. America could return to its greatness and go on to be even greater if/when we cut through the crappola and see the situation clearly: "Great wealth invites theft," as the Book of Tao clearly states. Competition is real. Business people run businesses to their advantage. Nothing lasts forever. What we are seeing is the worlds' businesses averaging out the global wage and standard of living for everyone in this interconnected world. Some countries Brazil, Chile, have it right. We need to get it right.

I have a lot more to add, but that's enough for now, right?

Condensed to one single sentence: You have allowed and are still allowing the wrong people to chose Your fate.

All government workers given power have to swear to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. If the Constitution is enforced as it was written, you are never going to see a Social Democracy or anything resembling a cradel-to-grave socialistic style government in the USA. In fact, it can easily be said and proven that our current ratings downgrade and financial troubles are the result of this being the end of the natural cycle of the Ponzi scheme that was tried as a noble effort to give aid and comfort to the generation that endured one or two World Wars and the Great Depression and to show them that their sacrifices would benefit their children and grandchildren. If we were still on the gold standard or any other fixed monetary standard we would not be where we are now because anyone in their right mind would say "We only have so much money, we cannot promise retirement money and medical coverage and corporate welfare for everyone because it will bankrupt us." The Jekyll Island clandestine meetings in I believe 1914 illegally saddled us with the Federal Reserve, owned by banks/people that may or may not be US citizens and so may or may not have our best interests at heart. They have been printing Qualitative Easing BS funny money to give the banks and the plutocracy that owns them and the Federal Reserve time enough to reposition themselves so that they can keep owning us wage slaves and the game that is rigged for them to win. It is rigged for them to win because most people, all in the same boat, blame the Libs or the TEA Party or the Democrats or the Republicans - it's pathetic. I am incredulous that anyone who lives as a wage slave would waste their time and energy slandering their neighbor instead of using their time and energy to take back our government and our prosperity from the Federal Reserve System and the plutocracy it supports. They bought and played President Obama, just like they buy and play so many well-meaning people. But by organizing politically using the Internet and Twitter and similar, we can and MUST take back our country, stop the wasteful spending, corporate welfare, fraud against the govt (against us all!), pork barrel rolling You vote for my ripoff and I'll vote for your ripoff legislators,...You know what I'm talking about. But stop the bickering about TEA party, Republicans, right wing, Christians, all that horrible crap that demeans everyone who says such things. As Sun Tzu said, "If you know your enemy and you know your self, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles." We are not each others' enemies. Taxed Enough Already patriots are, for the most part, as scared and scarred and well-meaning as you are. I'm going to try to implement my ideas with the hope that the bickering and name calling will stop as our goals become more clear. I hope I'm right.

"With private industry sitting on top of some $2 trillion in profits, exporting jobs, and shutting down plants, only government spending stood between us and an economic Armageddon."

It amazes me how Obama can go on about creating jobs and expect Americans to believe in him. He is no FDR nor does he plan to be one. He fooled us once already and he may just get the next four to do the same damage considering the alternatives but we now know the snake when it hisses. The truth of the quote is painfully evident as corporations are now involved in the rape of China and other countries they are settling in. They know America is tapped out because they deliberately caused it. As we know, a Wall Street democrat protecting the wealthy is impotent and uninterested when it comes to saving this country. The destruction may already have gone too far to reverse. Corporations won't be happy until they've stolen ALL our money. Job creation indeed...

I agree with what this essayist says - it's not news. What was as interesting to me was the striking picture of the impoverished, displaced Depression family. Then the author goes on to claim that there is no racial, ethnic or other subgroup that can safely be stereotyped and ridiculed in today's America, except possibly Muslims. Really? What of mountain folk? Hillbillies, Crackers, Okies, Arkies, Opies, Bible thumpers, White Trash. Many of them tend to show up in the Tea Party. In spite of their many recidivist beliefs, they know that the left elites and most of the government cares nothing about them and looks upon them with cultural contempt. And they reciprocate in full. We have to overcome this cultural and political tribalism, and that can begin with a unified left badly splintered by an ageing identity politics motivated by resentment and preoccupied with "narratives" and "opening new spaces" and by moving beyond our infatuation with a postmodern philosophy itself fascinated by difference and difference only.