Amazing what a consumerist society creates or should I say destroys as it certainly has destroyed and notion of the civilian's duty of eternal vigilance. Couple that with the subverted neoconservative owned M$M with its well fertilized dumbstream garden and it becomes obvious to not just what we lost be HOW we lost it. The huge influx of sociopaths and psychopaths all tend to strengthen this lost of priorities. Who the hell wants to pay attention and remain vigilant when american idiot is on or the never ending roll of empty spectator sports pouring out of the telly just about 24/7/366.

Yes, goebbels must be smiling in his grave at this extraordinary bit of people's mind control.

Why does MM even write for CD? He gets torn new ones every time he does.

But I suppose in a few months after more and more censorship there'll be practically no left wing people here on CD to make any comments.

It'll be wall to wall Dem apologists and liberals.

You mean that wasn't 'Morning in America?" Oh, I get it the spelling of morning was MOURNING not Morning. Get it. Thanks, Mike. It was also the beginning of the death of our vaunted consumer society as well as small business all over America is dying on the vine. In my area most the middle class family style restaurants have failed and been replaced with these huge $8.00 a head buffets for the Proles and ultra expensive gourmet restaurants for the Corp. elite and the Drs. and other professionals that now make huge incomes.

i remember when ronnie did in the air traffic controllers - none were more surprised than the air traffic controllers themselves

they underestimated the psycho factor in ronnie - who was well on the slippery road to dementia at the time - it got worse and in the end he was only allowed very short periods of exposure to the public - he had a five minutes a day of clarity at best

he sat int he oval office eating jelly beans and watching cartoons which he loved - so much for his hollywood past

he often forgot what he was talking about even under those conditions - he was almost childlike - he was scared of himself

and they call him a great president

here's a guy who's greatest moment on screen came playing a straight man to an ape - bonzo, bobo or whatever the hell his name was

sorry it was bonzo

"College prof Peter Boyd tries to salvage his professional and personal reputation by using a lab chimp to prove that environment trumps heredity in behavioral development. "

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043325/

owwww!!!!!!!!!!

during filming ronnie bitched that the director liked the chimp more than him, that he gave him all the best camera shots

he was further aggravated when the chimp used to hold him down and give him tittie twisters and yank his under wear up the crack of his ass

he felt the director was encouraging the chimp to do it

sadly, the chimp was killed in the proverbial single car accident one morning on the ventura highway

ronnie conspicuously did not attend the funeral

a little known fact about ronnie is that for years he thought that margaret thatcher was a line backer for the baltimore colts

another little known fact was that his favorite hobby was to sit in the oval office and throw his jellybeans in the air and try to catch them with his mouth. he wasn't very good at it and three times in his first year in office alone he had to have a jellybean surgically removed form his nose

historical fun fact: ronnie accepted bush daddy as his running mate because he thought his wife - weighing in at a solid 230 - played linebacker for the baltimore colts - who could blame him for that when you think about it

later when he found out that she didn't he sent the cia detail to find out who was playing linebacker for the colts

he was devastated to find out that johnny unitas had retired 25 years earlier

he encouraged babara bush to try out for the colts - which she never did due to a herniated disk injury she sustained one night while bitch slapping the shit out of her hubby bush daddy

oddly, he thought that his wife nancy was a pencil...........

It's all about flying "cheaper". Or is it? Thing is the rates haven't gone down, only the safety factor.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/flying-cheaper/

The rich have private jets (and you better not cut off their subsidies and tax breaks on those private jets), the rest of us fly on the public airlines if we dare.

Capitalism needs Have-Nots - that's called 'consumer demand.'

The problem? The vast majority of Have-Nots have enough food, water, shelter, clothing, and stuff. Which is why 'consumer demand' is flat, and why our 70% consumer-demand supported economic system is dying.

Theory: in order to restart their game, the Haves decided to destroy the Have-Nots economy, thereby stripping as many as possible of their jobs, money, homes, stuff, (and dignity,) and then slowly sell it all back to them during the 'recovery,' which will start when the Haves decide it's time.

Crazy? Well, remember what happened when TV sales flatlined because the average home had 3 and nobody was buying TVs anymore? 'Our' government declared analogue TV illegal, forcing everyone to buy new digital TVs.

Same thing, writ large...

I quit ATC at Chicago Center 4 months before PATCO was formed, to continue my training as a clinical psychologist.

Before commenting, readers do well to read the Wikipedia material about PATCO and President Reagan. The link is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Controllers_Organization_%281968%29

Trylon

I believe Obama's political hero has always been Ronald Reagan and not FDR but because this would offend many democrats they glossed over his musings about that. We can see clearly now that although he may admire Reagan he unlike his idol doesn't have any serious political convictions other than maximizing corporate campaign donations and acting as a moderate conservative a philosophy he shares with many pre-tea party republicans and that is why he has refused to ackowledge the gravity of the unemployment crisis and proposes nothing more than patent reform, tax cuts and free trade deals as solutions to the real problems caused by the plutocracy and theocracy.

IMO, Reagan's contribution was ideological. He morphed "capitalist pigs" into "job creators." It was the Mr. Goodbar effect. Nixon and Ford were too liberal.

Not Regan's first betrayal - he was President of Screen Actors Guild (SAG), a union, from 1947 to 1952. At the same time he was also an FBI confidential informant and a studio committeeman pledged to identify and blacklist actors with communist views.

Does Moore not read his comments on Common Dreams? Does he think he has an audience on CD? He certainly hasn't learned from the CD audience. If Democratic Party apologists/supporters such as Moore write on CD, of course their articles will get ripped by the posters.

Moore writes this article about the start of the downfall of the Middle Class 30 years ago and in usual Democratic party blames Reagan and the Republicans, without mentioning the 30 years of complicty by the Democrats. No mention of the wars and tax cutting by both parties. Rather Moore endorses two organizations that support the Democratic Party, the AFL-CIO and Moveon.org. Moore, once upon a time, you educated society with some good films, now you have become a Democratic Party shill.

Moore's comments are correct, but shallow. He should be complimented on pointing out how the capitulation of the AFL-CIO was critical to Reagan's busting of PATCO; however, he continues to sentimentalize the loss of the "middle class" in the United States, when, in fact this was a continuation of the historical attack on U.S. unions which dates back to their formation during the era that we call the "Industrial Revolution."

A more important event for U.S. labor was the merger of the conservative guild-union federation, AF of L and more militant CIO in 1955. At the time of the merger the density of U.S. workers in unions was at 35%, an-all-time high. It declined steadily after the merger until labor unions by-and-large have become irrelevant today.

But the AFL-CIO was a wild success -- for capitalists. It had two fundamental purposes: 1) to undermine and destroy militant unions and unionism around the globe (often working in murderous conjunction with the CIA); and 2) co-opting the U.S. working class by mopping up the last of militant unionists who had been hounded during the McCarthy era; propogating the myth of the "middle class;" pushing cooperation (collaboration) with the masters; and reducing militant activity to, at best, ritualized strikes that rival kabuki theatre in their emptiness.

An even more important event for labor was the 1947 passage of the Taft-Hartley Amendment to the Wagner Act (the already-weak fundamental U.S. labor law passed under Roosevelt). Taft Hartley literally outlawed solidarity actions with its illegalization of so-called "secondary boycotts;" and more importantly it gave federal judges near-absolute authority over labor disputes via various kinds of injuctions. The Labor/Democrat failure to defeat Taft-Hartley in 1947 effectively ended real labor unions in the U.S.

John L. Lewis, the leader of the United Mineworkers of America called Taft-Hartley "the first blow for fascism," in the U.S. at a senate sub-committee hearing that was reviewing the effects of Taft-Hartley on U.S. labor disputes.

So Moore, while well-intentioned, is a little late and a little short on all of this. But it don't matter none because this is just history and history is boring and irrelevant. Like Gar Alperovitz's piece on the use of atomic bombs against Japan.

Have a nice day. The sky IS falling.

Michael Moore said, "Why not use today to pause and think about the little steps you can take to turn this around in your neighborhood, at your workplace, in your school? Is there any better day to start than today?"

DAMN RIGHT MIKE! I'm so sick of these armchair patriots who don't do a thing but talk. Blah, blah, blah, nit pick, nit pick. Jealous little assh*les because you are a man who actually tried with his life!

THANK YOU for your many years of activism. This country is little better place becuase of you!

(And no, I don't agree with everything Moore says, that's not the point. This is America, we agree to disagree freely. The point is HE IS DOING SOMETHING. His many documentaries HAVE helped. You deserve whatever you get if all you do is bark... WHEN are YOU going to help?)

Again, listen to punch line, the whole point that Michael Moore was making, "Why not use today to pause and think about the little steps you can take to turn this around in your neighborhood, at your workplace, in your school? Is there any better day to start than today?"

This is the best article I have read in eons that really got my blood boiling and makes me want to take action and do everything I can to return America to the once great nation it was before this happened in 1981. It's so true that we have sat back and allowed ourselves to be pushed around, punished, and made to believe that we don't deserve more. I was 20 when this all started and I remember what things were like before. I remember having only a Dad that worked, and a Mom who could stay home and take care of the home and us children. I remember how great we all once had it and then we just allowed it to be taken from us. It's high time we stood up as a group and demanded what is rightfully ours. We need to take our pride back and force corporations and government to listen to us and to do something that will bring us back to our former glory days!