I'm packing my bags and leaving this country as soon as I graduate college, the government is officially a fascist regime now, and the people have no voice (as if we ever had one). Now, there truly is no point in voting in any election, as it will be corporate america who chooses who represents them, not we the people. This one of the final nails in the coffin for the USA.

Hear, hear, David! If you weren't too young, I'd beg you to take me with you.

Brad blogged...

"In the meantime, we're sure the "grass roots" Tea Baggers, outraged by corporate money special interests, will be infuriated by this decision, light up new protests in every town in every state in the union, and demand that our country be returned to "We the People" as the founders envisioned.

Right?"

Absolutely! Just as fast as the corporate-supplied buses can get them there!

Yes, well, if others would supply the busses, they'd use them.

Let’s take Sarah Palin and her followers seriously.  They’re tapping into anger that’s real and spreading.  Don’t let them become the voices of the angry working (and increasingly unemployed) classes.

From Tom Dispatch.

If we'd quit pointing our fingers, there's a force that could be greatly helpful, but nooooooooo.... We're too educated and intelligent for that and so we'll just sit back and let the FASCISTS use our brothers and sisters.

I mean, in case you haven't noticed, we just lost World War II.

If I had the money I'd buy a shipping pallet or two worth of copies of The Art of War and give them away to anyone who expressed the desire to memorize it. It wasn't written to help bad guys continue to prevail. It was written to teach good guys how to beat the murderating fucks of the world. Alienating the energy that can help you is NOT a good strategy. It's a recipe for defeat.

THE DEEPENING, NEARLY BOTTOMLESS, POOL OF PROSPECTIVE TEA PARTIERS....

First the actual tea bag participants must understand how they were used... and by who... and for what purpose.

It will not be easy for them to accept that they were used and their innate prejudices fanned to a roaring flame by, and for the benefit of, the very forces that they were supposed to be protesting against.

The tea bag participants must denounce and reject the very corporate sponsorship that gave birth to them...

... and this would seem to require the for-profit tea party political orgs to go away or restructure as well...

... and they must denounce and reject the bigoted, often outright racist, vitriol that flowed in along with them.

Then, I think, we can work forward together from there.

Again... the Republican in the MA-Sen race tried to deny any association with them for a very good reason.

Think the newly limitlessly powerful corporate oligarchs are going to stand for bailing out the masses they are starving? Or do you think they're more likely to round up agitators?

zap

They're not likely to understand if we don't help them with that. You can't sit back and wait for them to spontaneously realize the full picture, especially not when they're so boiling mad, in such a blind rage they will go with any flow that helps them vent it. WE have to help them vent it, or Sarah Palin, and company, have them. Game. Set. Match.

The M$M is salivating over the new Ad revenues that's going to flood into their coffers...
ALL on OUR Public airwaves!

Did you ever notice in EVERY news blurb on the radio about this, they make sure and say: "unions can give unlimited money"? As if that's the same! It's "even" because unions who don't have 1% of corporations money are also unlimited.

Special to Agent 99,

As you've suggested to me, why not fucking get over it?

Many who call themselves "left" in this country have a serious problem of elitism, as eloquently outlined here:

http://www.smithbowen.ne...ame/stopme/contents.html

The Democrats are now (and have been) the party of their campaign contributors. Obama has spent the last year demonstrating why nobody who wants change should ever believe in them.

The Tea Partiers are the people who know they are being shafted, and who are bringing new energy into American politics. So Karl Rove tells them they are clever and brings them on board. The "left" fears them, probably because they didn't go to Harvard and they don't agree with all of the sacred bovines or pass all of the cultural litmus tests you have to offer.

These people think you hold them in contempt, and as long as they think that, you'll never get one of them to vote for you or your candidates.

If the Democrats offer no hope, you'd better get your ass in gear and start explaining to the tea party folks just how right they are to be angry.

AND THEN LISTEN BEFORE YOU LECTURE.

They never tell you in the "news" that corporations have all the money to give, and a lot of it is from tax cuts.

Thank you, Mitch.

So, Mitch, then what have the Tea Partiers really accomplished if they simply vote Republican? And don't tell me they're not voting Republican. Then who are they voting for?

I'd join them, too, if Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann weren't speaking at their "Tea Party", how do you explain that?

Danny

Have you noticed that the people who OWN the news are getting their mitts on the unions through the Tea Parties?

Are you going to just sit back and gripe about the news instead of retrieving the aggrieved from their death grip?

So, what have they accomplished if they don't get a 3rd party in there, and simply get more Republicans in there like Bush/Cheney? Who are they FOR, Mitch and 99? WHO are they for? Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann?

We never hear any specifics who they are FOR!

I explain that by stating that Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann aren't really as stupid as we like to make them out to be... or, more accurately, the people they're taking their orders from aren't... and it's time we rose to it instead of just hoping our facile ridicule could possibly do the job.

99: why don't you tell us EXACTLY what they Tea Partiers are accomplishing???

99 & Mitch: who are the Tea Partiers endorsing...besides Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann? Name the INDEPENDENT non-Republicans they are leading the charge for. WHAT exactly are they doing? THEY don't know what they're doing when they are asked, as was proven over and over again when people ACTUALLY TALK TO THEM!

They're for anybody who will promise them that this fascism will cease, and it's only fascists so far who are willing to tell them that. Party is IRRELEVANT. They want anti-fascists. LIKE ALL AMERICA HAS PRIDED ITSELF IN BEING ANTI-FASCIST. The Supremes just took away the last vestige of impediment to fascists. Parties, sides, don't matter at all. Democrats are crystal clearly as fascist as Republicans. It's We The People against the fascist oligarchs, and if people with brains don't get on making that clear to the masses, America stays a fascist country.

Big Dan

Why don't you sit down and THINK a little more? Maybe read some of the links I've provided you here and at your blog over the past months and months and months. Quit being so defensive of your urge to ridicule and revile bad guys—done and again but only increasing our weakness—and start figuring out ways to prevent these fucks from getting the blue collars Obama has shit all over away from us.

So, 99: You are saying: "TEABAGGERS ARE AGAINST FASCISM, SO THEY DO WHAT FASCISTS SAY BECAUSE FASCISTS ARE TELLING THEM TO BE AGAINST FASCISTS".

Do I have that straight???

The fascists [corporations, banks and wealthy individuals... Wall Street] have control of all three branches of government—any party, Republican, Democrat or third— and the media and the military and private military, intelligence and security contractors, and our prison system. THIS IS A FASCIST STATE.

The Tea Party people, most of them, understand this much and want to stop it. How is that not PERFECT for non-fascist progressives to join with and improve? Why can't WE get speakers up at their rallies? Why can't WE go to their rallies and demand speakers?

Jeremy Scahill comes immediately to mind as an ideal speaker for such a rally.

So, 99, YOU are saying: "TEABAGGERS ARE TOO STUPID TO KNOW THEY'RE BEING LED BY OTHER FASCISTS"!!!

99: So YOU are PATRONIZING them, saying they're not SMART ENOUGH to KNOW they're being tricked!!!

...but forgive them! They're too STUPID to know it! Until the RIGHT people come along to lead them!

So, 99: You are saying: "TEABAGGERS ARE AGAINST FASCISM, SO THEY DO WHAT FASCISTS SAY BECAUSE FASCISTS ARE TELLING THEM TO BE AGAINST FASCISTS".

Do I have that straight???

Yes. That's just about right, except your emphasis seems to be more about ridiculing them for not understanding this stuff as well as you do, instead of wishing to help them start understanding it as well, or giving them something better to follow even if they're incapable of fully understanding.

99 says give 'em a break! They're too stupid to know they're being led by other fascists!

99: So YOU are PATRONIZING them, saying they're not SMART ENOUGH to KNOW they're being tricked!!!

...but forgive them! They're too STUPID to know it! Until the RIGHT people come along to lead them!

So, Danny, you prefer Beck and Lumpboil and Gingrich do the patronizing?

Brilliant.

Here's a simple experiment we can all try. I'll try it myself, sometime in the next month.

Attend a tea party meeting in your area. Remain relatively silent, but try to smile a lot. When you speak, make sure that at least half of your speaking time is used in asking questions. (Not questions with an attitude, but questions that you believe the person you are questioning can answer.)

If asked about your own politics, answer honestly but briefly.

I'll be curious to see what happens when I try this.

99 says give 'em a break! They're too stupid to know they're being led by other fascists!

Should I say to give you a break for being too bull-headed to upgrade your strategy to something that might work?

Again, thank you, Mitch.

They're a confused mob that can be easily co-opted by the wrong people! Give 'em a break! Karl Rove just got to 'em before WE did!

To quote from Jeff Knaebel's Human Conscience or the Blind Law of State Violence: Presenting a Clear and Present Choice to the Power Structure:

...I pointed out that the most powerful weapon of the organized propaganda of this out-of-control non-human machine is our own mind that we have surrendered to the TV, corporate media, and State-manufactured consent. Are we not insane to support this depraved automaton with our votes and taxes? I asked students, "Are your studies training you to become a corporate warrior, or a messenger of brotherhood?...

I mean ... right?

They're a confused mob that can be easily co-opted by the wrong people! Give 'em a break! Karl Rove just got to 'em before WE did!

Which does not mean we can't get them away from him!

THE ONLY WAY TO SAVE THIS DEMOCRACY is to find commonground with the tea party movement. It sounds distasteful to me also. But the citizens in the U.S. ARE divided and CONQUERED.

The Oligharchy has divided us into left and right and never the twain shall meet...They're counting on us lobbing epithets and hate at each other...while the Oligharcical lying fascists rob us blind.

The Constitutional convention made peace with the slaveholders in order to find commonground and throw off the British empire (they postponed the civil war for the next century)....

I can hold my nose, approach a teabagger in peace and ask questions (As Mitch suggested)

I'm not trying to win the argument anymore...I'm trying to not be a citizen of a fascist totalitarian state.

This going to require huge sacrifice...

ANY angry mob, ANY angry person, who does not have reality perfectly in mind is very easily coöpted by any person or group who supply, or seem to supply, a channel for relief, for redress of grievances. Like taking candy from a baby kind of easy. Has happened a few million times throughout history. Even smart people get snookered by this means. So stop letting it be only evil fuckers who use this mechanism to gain their ends.

We can use this mechanism to free everyone.

Quit losing to people like Karl Rove.

Thank you, BlueHawk.

To encourage folks to click on this...

http://www.smithbowen.ne...ame/stopme/contents.html

...I'm extracting the following quote. (My only complaint about Michael Smith's brilliant unpublished work is that it's hard to know how to choose a smallish quote.)

Annie is very puzzled by most of her fellow Americans. She doesn't understand their taste in food, or clothing, and she really doesn't get why so many of them go to church. More than anything else, though, she's baffled about why they hate liberals so much.

Social Security, student loans, interstate highways, subsidized mortgages, electricity in every darkest Dogpatch of the benighted South --- all these things, and more, were the liberals' gift to America. They're all things that regular Red-State Americans consider their birthright. In fact, it's not too much to say that all these liberal initiatives built the world the liberal-haters live in. So what's their problem? Why do they have to bite the hand that feeds them --- that's fed them for three generations now?

Annie, though she won't admit it --- old Commie that she is --- suspects they're just stupid. She won't come right out and say so, but she talks a lot about how all these white-bread, flyover-country Amurricans are "deceived" and "fooled" by the mass media, how they're "misled" by demagogues and TV preachers, how they're "deprived" of important information, how they're "distracted" and "stultified" and "hypnotized" and "lulled" and "educationally deprived." It's not their fault, of course, poor babies; they've been schnookered.

But if they're that easily schnookered, doesn't that suggest that they're really, well, not very bright?

This conclusion doesn't satisfy me. I'd rather start from the premise that the Red Staters, the Bush voters, even the holy-rollers, are in fact just as smart as the next person, and that if they hate liberals, they might have their reasons.

The teabaggers are:

- FOR war
- FOR torture
- AGAINST health care reform AND single payer (that's what you keep avoiding, they're against single payer, too!)
- there is a LOT of racism in their "get togethers"

What good are they, if they are easily co-opted? You keep apologizing for these cretins and maybe they're a lost cause and a waste of time and they represent the WORST of America. They are the FOX "news" and Rush Limbaugh fans who, for the first time, unglued their eyes off FOX "news" and became "energetic idiots" and showed the world who they are, and they're proud of it!

Why should I go to a tea party event? To see Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann? To hold up a sign against health care for all? Hold up a sign that says "I'm FOR war, and against health care for all!"???

Quit apologizing for them and making excuses for them, they're the worst of the worst. And they're always on TV, that should tell you something. The REAL protesters protesting good causes like protesting against the war, against mountain top mining, etc...ARE NEVER ON TV, because corporate TV wouldn't be caught DEAD televising them!

I went to a "Tea Party", and I'll tell you what...if I yelled out "health care for all" I'd probably end up getting lynched...at least boo'd out of there!

People say the tea partiers helped elect Scott Brown. So this is the fruits of what they're for? Scott Brown? Replace one idiot with another idiot?

What are the FOR? WHO are they FOR? Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann?

They were NOT against the bailouts when Bush was doing them. They had their thumbs up their asses when Bush started all these wars, shipped our jobs to China, took away our liberties with the Patriot Act, set up cameras everywhere to watch us, spied on our phone calls...THEY ARE REPUBLICANS! Period! The ONLY people they have ever endorsed are REPUBLICANS, I don't know why no one is saying this!

Big dan @43

- FOR war
- FOR torture
- AGAINST health care reform AND single payer (that's what you keep avoiding, they're against single payer, too!)
- there is a LOT of racism in their "get togethers"

That's because they don't know any better...They've been told for over a generation that the left are evil commie gay lazy fucks, who by the way hates whitey...

We have to show them they've been LIED TO...That we share a common interests in getting our country back. We won't turn everyone...but we can turn enough to make a huge statement for truth.

It's not funny either, I sat on a local newspaper blog comments section on this very subject and the limbaugh nuts were agreeing with us on how this was bad for the country. I then told one of the commenters on there who was an obvious lib to watch this and that their attitudes/comments would change as soon as Lumpys show came on the radio, sho nuff, about an hour into his show the same crazies comments all changed to saying how this SCOTUS action was a good thing.

Who says Lumpy doesn't have an impact?

THEY ARE REPUBLICANS! Period! The ONLY people they have ever endorsed are REPUBLICANS, I don't know why no one is saying this!

Because it isn't true.

And even if it were, it doesn't have to stay that way unless people keep thinking the way you're thinking.

Tea Partiers and Lefties and Righties who don't want that crap healthcare bill put Brown in the Senate. A big chunk of each of these demographics actually want single payer. Some just don't want people like Obama deciding who lives and who dies. Some just don't want to pay for it. But MOST Americans want it.

The good news is that Justice Sotomayor is a liberal (in this vote). One more appointment to go, sigh.

Mitch Trachtenberg: "...Many who call themselves "left" in this country have a serious problem of elitism, as eloquently outlined here:... These people think you hold them in contempt, and as long as they think that, you'll never get one of them to vote for you or your candidates."
****

I don't mind hanging with commoners because I am one. I know exactly what class I belong to. Here's what I (and probably a whole bunch of so-called elites) don't and will never have in common with the teabag movement and causes me to dismiss any chance of commonality or similarity with them: guns and racism.

I see people showing up at political rallies with guns and a sign saying 'I didn't bring my gun to use it - this time' (a paraphrase but darn close) and I know I have nothing in common with those people and don't want to meet them. I see people carrying stuffed monkey dolls with Obama written on their little monkey hats and I know I don't have anything in common with those people and don't want to meet them half way. I see a teabagger with a sign that not only uses the word "nigger" as a pejorative but mis-spells it (how stupid do you have to be to mis-spell your most degrading racial pejorative?) and I know that's not a crowd I'm going to build a bridge to because I don't want them as friends or allies.

That's not elitism, that's common decency on my part. I'm not going to culturally devolve or pretend to, to win over those people. They're a fringe elements of the political spectrum; I think they're dangerous bigots and I do hold them in contempt for it. That's their fault because that's the image they cultivate and maintain.

If there are teabaggers that aren't dangerous racists then they need to disassociate themselves from those that are unless they also, as part of the larger group, want to be dismissed as dangerous anachronisms the society left behind a couple of generations ago.

The teabaggers are just people that left the GOP, and the GOP is courting them to come back.

By and large, they are stupid/ignorant/uninformed/wrong (take your pick).

I don't see any benefit to courting the teabaggers.

Sadly, a lot of their fundamental anger is based on truth: That the government is fucking over the citizens in the name of bigger government and more powerful corporations. Unfortunately since the GOP is courting them, you can be damned sure that message that unites the teabaggers will never actually be acted upon.

Whoa, Flo, waaaaaay not funny. How many "progressives" are now going to point and laugh, or ridicule and deride, call them stooges and shills... ad nauseam... instead of get them back from Lumpy? We need brigades of tea party infiltrators....

Agent 99 @46

THEY ARE REPUBLICANS! Period! The ONLY people they have ever endorsed are REPUBLICANS, I don't know why no one is saying this!

ALSO...Has anyone ever heard of the term "Reagan Democrat"?

Yeah these were union member democrats that voted for Reagan and became republicans during Bush 41...

Taking our country back is way past party affiliation...

Big Dan @ 43

- FOR war
- FOR torture
- AGAINST health care reform AND single payer (that's what you keep avoiding, they're against single payer, too!)
- there is a LOT of racism in their "get togethers"

-- FOR WAR
Therefore, if we can agree on who the bad guys are, they will fight them. Unlike most graduates of the Ivy League back in the seventies.

--FOR TORTURE
No response comes to mind.

--AGAINST HEALTH CARE REFORM
But they are for Medicare, in droves. So Health Care Reform should have been, and should be: "Medicare for all."

-- there is a LOT of racism in their "get togethers"
There is a lot of racism in "our" get-togethers. But we'd never use the "n" word. We're ladies and gentlemen.

[ed note: format edited to aid clarity... —99]

I tried to fuck with them 99, but they kept deleting my comments after that

I got an e mail from a wing nut murderator telling me to knock it off

Okay. I'll just this leave this thread to everybody who wants to call them enough bad things to obviate action now. Just try to remember that calling things this way doesn't make it so, and doesn't make it ultimately so even when there's some truth to the name you give it. What does that is your failure to engage positively.

And, lotta, the Second Amendment is there so the people are not helpless against tyranny. People who bring guns to these rallies are expressing their rights as Americans to defend themselves against tyrannies like what just came down from the Supreme Court. If enough unarmed innocent Americans have not been tasered or dragged off by the police for you yet, when will it be enough?

Flo

I'm positive the ONLY way left open to us is to get in there face-to-face at the rallies.

I need funds to get to these rallies! Anybody got a bus for me?

BlueHawk @ 51: Right on!

Lottakatz said: That's not elitism, that's common decency on my part. I'm not going to culturally devolve or pretend to, to win over those people. They're a fringe elements of the political spectrum; I think they're dangerous bigots and I do hold them in contempt for it.

Nobody has asked you to devolve or pretend to. I wasn't asking anyone to spy, or to develop a curriculum or repair manual. I was asking people to find out what the people who attend their local tea party meetings are like BY TALKING WITH THEM AS IF THEY MIGHT BE PEOPLE.

I would hazard a guess that if you were at a tea-party meeting and someone said something overtly racist, you'd find a great deal of support if you called them on it. I would not be surprised if there's a great deal of racism at the meetings, but I don't know, having never been to one.

As a gay white Jew who "passes" on all fronts, I'm privy to the hypocrisy that humanity exhibits on the subject of bigotry. I find overt bigotry to be much less of a problem than covert and even unconscious bigotry; I have no idea how others, especially those of other races, feel about this.

Sorry to crack the discussion about tea, but this item reporting yet another closed-door sellout by Obomba is not being mentioned much of anywhere dispite its gravity:

"While the Massachusetts voters were casting their ballots to install the upstart Republican Scott Brown to Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, President Obama was hammering out an agreement with Democratic leaders to support a plan to issue an executive order to cut entitlements, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid."

Obama continues to solidify his position as Public Enemy #1.

A point of clarification is needed. It's not corporations that are evil; it's the management of corporations that make the decisions about what the corporation is going to do that's evil.

99, I've never talked to a teabagger, but the impression I've gotten from their news coverage, signs, speakers and websites is that they are not true social libertarians. They are economic libertarians who are upset with the Republicans for doing too little obstruction of the Democrats' economic policies. I'm not convinced that they will see this as a threat to their own freedom, but rather as a victory for--ahem--corporate freedom. They may want well-sponsored candidates.

I think you're also ignoring their express statements that they don't want to be reasoned with.

For my own part, it comes down to a choice between emigrating (I hear New Zealand is nice every time of year) or running for office, with my opinion on every issue for sale on Craigslist.

Oh, karlof1, I wonder if that could be why these people are bringing their guns....

Mitch says:
"Here's a simple experiment we can all try...
Attend a tea party meeting in your area."

Woah! Novel, doable, social experiment, Mitch!
As I have already tried this many, many times (I have TeaPeople in my own family, even!) I would be VERY curious to hear how that plays out for all...

...but especially Agent 99, who keeps insisting that rest of us just don't get how to finesse them (though she has given us no evidence that she has managed to do so successfully or even attempted it outside of her truncated efforts here with Damail).

After weeks of raging against us for being "too smart" for her rude new brand of hostiles(conveniently forgetting that she is, too); after belittling us all for being wrong about them (despite little to no evidence that she is right), now that her most blistering, condescending remarks are starting to rival theirs in their hatred and rage, I would very much like to hear how that goes.

As ZAPKITTY points out, in order to redirect their rage, you would have to get them to accept the idea that corporatocracy is happening at the hands of their very own founders. What will that take? ...

I'm not saying it can't be done, as I've posited before - the Tea Party is cut from a very wide swath of populist rage - maybe 99 and Mitch CAN turn them loose on the real bad guys. (Though I find it interesting that much the way the TeaPeople didn't acknowledge - and still won't - the 8 years of criminal policy leading up to this, I don't remember 99 ever jumping on the Ron Paul movement to "harness" their considerable libertarian juice.

NOTE: As a former Ron Paul supporter, I can find very little info on how many RP people have been absorbed into the greater TBE fold. However, NONE of the people I worked with are active within the TP movement (except maybe Granny Warriors who I adored / she funded the '08 NH Primary Republican Recount and then went racist batty nut-jobby after Obama took office - had to detatch.)

Sincerely, nothing would make me happier / give me more instant gratification than turning the ravenous tide of the Tea Party toward the mendacious corporations that control them. My own extensive efforts with my own Aunt have failed miserably. I can't cut through her Beck-isms; her mind has been completely co-opted.

Brad hits a fine bell-weather for litmus with this article - will the TeaPeople be foaming frothy at their rude little pie-holes about this SCOTUS RULING? If not, can you get them to focus on that, 99?

Do update us on your progress. And please share your tips that I'm too smart to pretend to be too dumb to understand.

Karlof1,

Actually, it is the current legal corporate structure that is evil. It is literally designed to create single-purpose entities that don't take human considerations into account.

Responsible management means ex-management.

Jon, I don't think they want to be reasoned with either! I think they want the fascism to stop and don't grok exactly how that is working... but it seems clear... neither do most progressives. What we can all agree on by now is that we're being fucked over by the wealthy and powerful and it would be a hell of a lot better if the people who are truly on the side of the American Public got the leadership of the tea parties away from them.

99 said somewhere:

They're for anybody who will promise them that this fascism will cease, and it's only fascists so far who are willing to tell them that. Party is IRRELEVANT.

Give me a break, 99. The Tea Baggers don't give a damn about "fascism". They have no clue what that word even means.

I hope someone figures out how to explain them to it, and can be louder than all the corporate Republican money which will be drowning that explanation out. If they knew, they'd be pissed and could save the world.

But they watch Fox "News", because they are Republicans, no matter how you wish to continue deluding yourself (a handful of Ron Paul libertarians who haven't figured out yet how they've been coopted by these pro-corporate, anti-Constitution GOP snake oil salesmen) and they have NO interest in doing anything of the things they've been told they believe in.

I hope, somehow, I'm wrong, and they wake up. I got about 50/50 money says the Congressional Dems have as much of a chance of waking up as the Tea Baggers do.

That said, be careful hijacking this thread please. The SCOTUS disaster is the most important decision in this country's history. Period. Ever. The U.S. as we know it, as far as I can tell, is now gone unless something changes, somehow, somewhere. And if our hopes are hanging with Tea Baggers, well, the outlook is bleak tonight...

And please share your tips that I'm too smart to pretend to be too dumb to understand.

Yes, sit back and wait for it.

Jeannie Dean,

I'd be curious to hear more about your conversations with your aunt. What worked, what didn't? Did you think she had any valid points? Did you acknowledge them to her at the time? Can you describe any personal life experiences she'd had that led her to believe differently than you do --- or do you just have different core value systems?

Brad the all-powerful,

Start a new thread. It's easy.

99, "Fascism is Government control of corporations" in their collective minds, remember?

Brad writes:
The U.S. as we know it, as far as I can tell, is now gone unless something changes, somehow, somewhere. And if our hopes are hanging with Tea Baggers, well, the outlook is bleak tonight...

"The U.S." was gone long ago. All that's changed, thanks to Mr. Scalia and Co., is the likelihood that internal violence will necessarily precede any change.

Brad, could you see if, say, Jeannie Dean, or Big Dan, would like to take over as moderator here?

The SCOTUS disaster is the most important decision in this country's history. Period. Ever

Because that is precisely true, and a great many in tea partiers have been screaming about this trend... indeed, at least started screaming about this decision, per Floridiot, makes discussion of same no hijacking. My hopes are hanging with everyone, regardless of political outlook, getting up and smacking this down. The tea parties are at least people up off their butts.

I'm not kidding. I've been telling you for quite a while I don't want to be spending so much time paying attention to your comments threads, and do it mostly to keep people from being aggravated to death by mess-ups and trainwrecks here. I will be pleased as punch to train anyone you can get for the job... just be backup for emergencies and spend my time more effectively....

99 said, "I think they want the fascism to stop and don't grok exactly how that is working..."

Exactly my point. They think fascism is the government takeover of healthcare, not the corporate takeover of government. How do you intend to rally them against a threat they may view as an ally?

Flo

Fascism is Corporate [oligarchy] control of Government, and can be Government control of Corporations when the government is the oligarchy. Either way is fine by the fattest cats.

Mitch @62....Thanks for your reply. I am aware of the mandated goal of a corporation to maximize profits at the expense of everything else, and I am aware of corporations run humanely. The fact that some are run humanely makes my point about the nature of those running corporations that have very inhumane consequences--they are Barbarians unworthy of any civilized treatment, and they have existed in many guises throughout history, with Hitler and Stalin as epitomes.

Agent99 @60.... if the report is accurate and Public Enemy #1 tries to circumvent the congressional budgetary process, then I'd be bringing my guns too.

Floridiot @68...

99, "Fascism is Government control of corporations" in their collective minds, remember?

Actually fascism is Corporations in control of government...

There is a HUGE difference ...

Jon

I think the way is to agree with them about the fascism, agree with them that Democratic Party fascists have to be ousted, and add that so do the Republican ones. The minute we start lending our brains to ousting officials who are corporate or oligarch owned, whatever party, instead of trying to, or seeming to, defend the bad guys "on our side" is the minute "the other side" loses its grip on anti-fascist activism.

karlof1 @60....

if the report is accurate and Public Enemy #1 tries to circumvent the congressional budgetary process, then I'd be bringing my guns too.

Yuh, I'm all over the map since learning of this decision. Impulses to bolt. Impulses to run out and find a gun. Except I'm scared to death of guns. But I think I want a bunch of them. Wondering if my passport has an RFID chip in it. Looking for a Lotus Buddha seat to hop onto. Sticking my head in a bucket of ice water. You name it.

Well, it could be two ways, but only if the corporate interests are elected or appointed into watchdog positions like it is now.

But it is still the corporate interests too close to the decision making of the peoples Government that IS Fascism.

Yes Blue Hawk, you are correct, but that is what the tea partiers think.

BH, Flo was being sarcastic. He knows what fascism is.

Oh, guess it would have been helpful if I'd refreshed the page between mouthfuls of chicken sandwich before I answered for Flo.

Sorry.

@NYCartist #47: I have a theory, which I hope is not proven true. Obama KNEW he could appoint a liberal, because it was vote #4 in a 5-4 situation.

I think if Obama is given a chance to appoint another, the Dems will "compromise" with the fillerbustering Republicans (the way the Republicans compromised with the minority Dems, NOT) and appoint a centrist, pro-corporate, pro-business, semi-fascist.

I would love a Lawrence Lessig or such, but I think we'll get a Stevens type who swings with the right wing more often than not. Probabaly on every issue other than Roe v. Wade, because the Rethuglicans don't really WANT that overturned, or they lose a giant part of their core power over their base.

As to the Tea Baggers, I tried to figure out what they actually STAND for by looking at the forum where their "platform" is being discussed.

Here were some of the threads:

Cap and Trade Environmental BS --- OK, so they don't believe in Climate Change, a principle that is understood and accepted by a MASSIVE plurality of scientists the world over. Scary lack of understanding of FACTS.

Abolish All Unlawful Spending --- which to them, is most entitlement programs or Federally funded programs, but NOT Defense Spending or any part of the Military / Industrial / Security aparatus.

Reverse Roe v. Wade --- Pure Republican and right-wing fodder.

Term Limits --- A great idea.

Pull the US out of the UN --- Wow, that's a nice approach to making the US a Moral Leader in the world.

Education --- As long as it's on the local level and includes anti-science and religion.

Flat Tax --- Wow, can you imagine ANYTHING less fair to the working person?

Secure the Borders --- Brilliant, short-term thinking that the corporations who need the cheap labor will NEVER accept.

Re-word the 10th Amendment --- I have no idea WHAT they are "thinking" on this.

Energy Independence --- Great in principle, but it has nothing to do with not driving F110 trucks or car pooling or wearing sweaters and putting the heat at 60 and the air conditioning at 68.

Oh, and their "core belief" is that the President of the United States is not a U.S. Citizen and that somehow, that means that they could get rid of him NOW.

PUH-LEASE. If these are the people we need to unite with to survive, then as Brad said, we are doomed.

Progressives don't seem disposed to admit that people in this administration, like Geithner, but many more, are corporate interests running the government. It's only when the Republicans are fattening their cronies that we kick, and are never willing to cede that Democrats are really and truly doing the same thing. This pisses off righties as badly as we were pissed off by Dubya and Fudd doing it.

I don't know why in this dire a circumstance people can't even yet drop the urges to fight each other in favor of fighting the enemy.

This one's for yew 99 xoxox

http://www.ask-mr-waldo....s/bushphotofound_318.jpg

News report:

In a stunning result today the election for the CEO of the Corporation of the United States the American people spoke in unison with 300 million votes going to a human being.

Then, to show it's power the corporate structure voted it's 3 billion shares for somebody we've never heard of.

All hail our new CEO.

----------

Seriously, if they can speak then what stops them from voting?

Agent99 @70... I too share your frustrations and acknowledge that Teabaggers are at least off their butts, but like the 1870s-1900 Populists their energies are being coopted by a political party that shares none of their angst. But just imagine how Bryan's Cross of Gold speech would be received today.

Brad @64.... As a historian, the USSC decision isn't the darkest in US history. IMO, the covert overthrow of the Articles of Confederation and railroading of the 1787 constitution that is responsible for our current troubles is the most important dark event in US history. That event made possible today's.

That said, the USSC decision could spark a "Bastille moment," given the uproar and open rage I've read on a few other sites. But many thus enraged are well informed of the many backroom deals and sellouts made by the current Public Enemy #1, which had already fired-them-up, with the USSC just pouring more gas on the already lit fire. However, the USA has never been a democracy; so, democracy wasn't overthrown. And yet this could be THE catalyst to finally make the USA into a democracy.

The tea party folks don't need to protest over this, because we've got a Democrat majority that will swing into action here and...

1. Sue every state involved in gerry-mendering districts, to include those that allow sitting MOC's to literally draw their own districts.

2. Overturn this ruling by simply passing a tougher law that could still be challenged again, but would take years to get to the SCOTUS.

3. Set up blocks of media time to be purchased BY THE MEDIA from the FEC to be used for political ads, and only these time blocks can be used for campaign spending. (There's an idea that actually generates revenue)

Yes Karlof1 @ 84, you mean like this?

BTW, I am an elitist liberal who has been a Democrat (or 3rd or 4th party) supporter for my entire life.

And I am SICK AND DISGUSTED of Obama, beginning the moment he put Rahm and Axelrod in charge and then Sumers and Geithner.

Problem is, while I am sick and tired of Obama for being TOO RIGHT-WING and CORPRATIST, it seems that those who would be called upon to be my soldiers-in-arms at the barricades are sick and tired of Obama for being "a socialist?"

I'm afraid that I can't stand shoulder-to-shoulder and risk my life with/for anybody stupid enough to believe that Obama is a socialist. If they don't have enough critical thinking skills to see the lie in that, then my elistist mind says they aren't safe enough to fight with.

And don't get me started on the religious wingnuts who believe in The Rapture. It scares me that 25% of the country is totally insane by any clinical measure.

I believe we should have mostly debates. This saves money and it keeps the decisions based on debates and arguments rather than advertising. I agree that there may be Republican influence here. However, to blame conservatives is wrong. I am conservative and I don't agree with this move. I believe good debating like in this forum is a good thing. Let's not lump people into groups unless it is justified. I belong to a social network that is conservative at www.heywhateversocial.info and we don't go after power but really try to support others. Plus, it invites healthy debate

Agent99 @76.... Guns are of little use unless you know how to use them; and since we're talking revolution, then you'll need to know how to use them in combat along with small group tactics (Yes, I was once a Stormtrooper). For myself, "bolting" is not an option because of current responsibilities. I do think peaceful change of the sort required is a chimera, a fact yet to be seen by many well intentioned folk. The heroine in "The Terminator" overcame the surrealness of her situation and stood up in her own defense despite her timidity. The rather unfortunate fact is that there's really no place to run to. Our backs are against the wall, so the only thing we can do is rise-up, go forward and counterattack.

Oh, Flo, I love you SO much. Thanks!

karlof1, yes, I think I'd be a danger to myself and others with a gun. Someone told me maybe I would do okay with a sawed-off shotgun strapped on, just sort of generally hit whoever was coming to take me out, but the short and short of it is: Much as I want peaceful revolution, I think think they are making it impossible, and Kennedy reminded us all what happens then.

I completely agree with Brad that this is the most important decision ever... given all the other givens across our landscape... and it means completely unbridled power to the people our country was founded to bridle. I could sit back and help list all the shortcomings and delusions at work in the tea party minions with some others, but I can't get over my admiration for their willingness to stand up and fight, and I know that can be channelled into getting our country back for all of us.

I guess I should remind people that we don't want to be a democracy. Pure democracy is only majority rule. No protection for the little guy and the weirdo. We want to be a democratic republic. Not an oligarchic republic... not a fascist state.

Agent 99 said on 1/21/2010 @ 3:49 pm PT... #54

And, lotta, the Second Amendment is there so the people are not helpless against tyranny.

- I love the 2nd Amendment. I own a gun. As long as there is a government citizens should have guns. That's always been my position.

People who bring guns to these rallies are expressing their rights as Americans to defend themselves against tyrannies like what just came down from the Supreme Court.

- By what, showing people they have guns. Unless they're willing to take it to Washington and do something to one of the SCOTUS majority that voted to remove the prohibition against limited corporate funds for electioneering then their display is vanity IMO. Publicly displaying their guns and saying they're unhappy with the government didn't prevent the last SCOTUS decision. It's an exercise in intimidation IMO and it isn't even working. And they seem to hate liberals, I sure hope it doesn't work!

If enough unarmed innocent Americans have not been tasered or dragged off by the police for you yet, when will it be enough?

- I'm not ready to carry a gun and shoot cops if I see them tasering someone. It may well go down that way at some point or cause a riot, I anticipate that in fact it will, but I'm not there. If you're asking if I'm fed up with tasers as compliance tools and torture devices, yes, of course. I'd like to sit on a jury wherein such actions were were being challenged by the victim. I'm not exactly sure what you're asking me but I'm not going to become an armed vigilante if that answers anything.

Floridiot @86... Yes, something like that (That's quite an interesting manuscript; I've never seen it before and will need to reread it). Those are the events that provided the rationale for the Articles's overthrow and imposition of our very anti-democratic constitution. US history is mostly that of an elite dictatorship of the sort favored by Plato and illustrated in his "Republic." Of course, no US history textbook tells that story--we've all been "very carefully taught."

Which brings me to Agent99 @90... "...it means completely unbridled power to the people our country was founded to bridle." Um... that would be the Spirit of '76 you're referring to, not what's contained in the 1787 constitution, yes? Further, "... getting our country back..." And just when did we have control of our country?

I don't mean to be harsh. It's just that We the People have never actually had control of the federal government, which means we've never had control of the country. What we need to do is make the country ours and strictly regulate corporations, poltical parties, and other concentrations of power and wealth within US borders.

Karlof1 @ 93, oh yes it is very interesting, more chapters also

lotta

I'm not advocating violence. I'm just trying to point out that the people bringing their guns to those meetings and rallies were not there to shoot them any more than you or I would be there to shoot them. They were there to express their feeling that the Bill of Rights has been trashed and they intend to use those rights even if the government trashes them... which rocks, not sucks.

karlof1

I don't dispute you, but we did have something more approximating what we all grew up being trained to believe we had, and fixing it so we finally make it the country we all believe we had is just fine with me.

This SCOTUS decision amounts to losing World War II.

That's what I think is crucial people assimilate.

Just to let my tribe know--I've got eyestrain again. Been spending ungodly amounts of time here because I need to. Must take break. The eyestrain hurts not only my eyes and head but makes me sick to my stomach. Most unpleasant. Gotta heal. Later, babes.
love,
Dave

... Mitch Trachtenberg said on 1/21/2010 @ 3:58 pm PT... #57

- Nobody has asked you to devolve or pretend to. I wasn't asking anyone to spy, or to develop a curriculum or repair manual. I was asking people to find out what the people who attend their local tea party meetings are like BY TALKING WITH THEM AS IF THEY MIGHT BE PEOPLE.
*
I have some hard core racists on the in-law side of the family, Their bigotry informs and reinforces their politics and their politics informs and reinforces their bigotry. I worked with people like that too. I've spent many, many hours (that I can never reclaim) talking to them, in general, about politics and about the specific targets of their bigotry. All I got was a headache, I didn't even get a t-shirt. They weren't shy or courteous. They were open about it and if you didn't want to hear it and expressed that in simple practical terms- 'lets not got there, its so-and-so's birthday, can we just let it rest today'- you, me and hubster actually, were told 'no, it's free speech'. No, we don't any longer talk to them and haven't in years too numerous to count.

Work was different. When conversation and appeals to courtesy didn't work I was a b****, I would just say 'I'll report you'. A threat of greater force (rules, regs, etc.) would shut them up.

I just don't talk to bigots because at some point every conversation gets around to their bigotry and I have to leave or argue. Remaining silent or glossing over it to get something from them is a 'devolution' to me. Actually in conversation people have made racist comments or bigoted remarks and I've said things like , 'don't go there, I'm not into that' conversationally and they got back on track. I don't care how bigoted people are as long as they don't bring it to the job, politics or me. I got along with those folks well for years. I do not think a crowd carrying signs like I have seen would be amenable to having a conversation untainted by their views on race or other targets of bigotry.

- I would hazard a guess that if you were at a tea-party meeting and someone said something overtly racist, you'd find a great deal of support if you called them on it.
*
Or get your butt thoroughly kicked

- I find overt bigotry to be much less of a problem than covert and even unconscious bigotry; I have no idea how others, especially those of other races, feel about this.
*
I agree in major part, at least you know who your enemies are.

David Lasagna

THIS WILL HELP....

I have to resort to it more and more....

Today is why the 2004 stolen election mattered.

White supremacists are trying to nab the tea partiers, but, so far as I know, haven't gotten very far. I don't think racism is the problem as much as it is a convenient thing to call them instead of "anti-American" like they called us when we were running around with a Hitler mustache painted on Dubya posters. There is the danger of this getting to be like Nazi Germany, though, where the public just stops fighting the racism or classism of the leadership... humans being too like herd animals when under this much duress... which all just goes to underscore the dire need to unify against the bad guys instead of scratching each others' eyes out over partisan differences. The unifying thread is that we all want "Good America", not fascism.

Air America hasn't been as informative and entertaining since Randi Rhodes and Al Franken left. I can tolerate Ron Reagan and Stephanie Miller, but it's more entertainment than news.

But this is not good...

And where is our best buddy Mike going to go??

It doesn't rain, it pours.

Legal minds - suppose Obama does appoint the next justice and they are liberal, replacement for whom? Kennedy, right? (Not that it is at all likely, given the past year of corporate rim-jobbing.) What's the likelihood that they will overturn this ruling?

Helo good day I really impress about your all topic I Want to Visit your site every I hope you will post a new story every day..great.

Why is that talking head speaking as though Franken were still on AirAmerica?

Which best buddy, Mike? Papantonio? I don't know. If you mean Malloy, he's been off AirAmerica for a long time.

The next one off the SCOTUS is likely to be Ginsberg, no? Or even if it's Kennedy, there's little chance a seriously way progressive liberal will be chosen... more like partisan bloodbath time over someone who at least isn't overtly Republican... but safely conservative enough.

I don't know why anyone would be left thinking there's any likelihood any branch of our government will overturn what their owners want....

Call me cynical, but I really think Obama and this Congress have gone way too far into the complete appeasement mode—I mean, they're talking giving Social Security and Medicare shaves while approving obscene war spending bills—for us to be dreaming they're going to get religion, even after having their asses handed to them in Massachusetts....

Lottakatz,

I confess I have no idea how to deal with "hard core racists" other than to avoid them. The problem with ignoring them, which I'm sure is as obvious to you as it is to me, is that racism is endemic in our society, and if you let a hard-core racist remain unchallenged in a group, the group might follow them down their unfortunate path. We are all sheep about these things, to a greater or lesser extent, and it's not just a theoretical problem.

I honestly believe that the typical Tea Party person is someone who is just as good (and bad) as I am, but who has, for whatever reasons, developed a completely different concept of what the problems and solutions are.

I think it's a mistake to mix up the idea of the "typical Tea Party person" with the idea of "hard core racist," just as I think it's a mistake to mix up the idea of "typical leftist" with "arrogant asshole who thinks they should be the dictator-God."

I'd bet that latter distinction is lost on many Tea Partiers.

COMMENT #70 [Permalink]
... Agent 99 said on 1/21/2010 @ 4:27 pm PT...

Brad, could you see if, say, Jeannie Dean, or Big Dan, would like to take over as moderator here?

No, thanks!

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Danny's a Big Chicken!

Brad, I'll be happy to moderate any future anti-Israeli threads if 99 can't do it.

Oh, THIS is rich.... OMG!

I think I just choked....

Let's drop this false "elitism" crap, too. That's a tactic, a Republican tactic, that's been around for decades. That's nothing new. The "right" pretends to be the "real Americans" from the heartland, and the "smarter elitists" make fun of them. That is total bullshit folklore, and it's been around for decades.

That is a way to tag a liberal who's arguing, the "straw man" argument: call them an "elitist", attack their character instead of sticking to the facts and the arguments.

And elitism evokes having $$$, right? You mean like the Bush dynasty family? Oh, no, that's right, he wears a cowboy hat and you can have a beer with him! And he doesn't speak well! I guess he's not an elitist!

The "elitist" thing is BULLSHIT! And it's been around forever, at least as far back as Nixon. Nothing new.

The "elitists" are now in the Republican Party. And the media isn't "liberal", let's drop THAT rightwing folklore, too!!! BOTH GOP "folklore".

So, if WE argue...we're "elitists"...what bullshit! So we can't argue, right? I suppose I'm a millionaire and I went to Harvard...NOT!!! And Bush never went to Yale, now, did he? No way! He's not an "elitist"! You'd have a beer with him! It's all folklore, it's a smoke and mirrors, it's all snake oil. All these people like Michele Bachmann, these "down to earth" people from the heartland, are all millionaires and they say if you argue with them, you're an "elitist". Cut it out!

She is milking the government (she's against) for millions, did you see that article recently? These "people's representatives", the down to earth Michele Bachmann's and George Bush's!!! No way are they "elitists"! No one in the Republican Party is an elitist! Right???

Scott Brown DRIVES A TRUCK!!!!!!!

Dick Cheney hunts quayle with the boys! He's not a billionare elitist who dodged the military!

The elitists are only on "the left", right? There are NO ELITISTS on the right! And how DARE YOU argue with these down to earth people and call them what they are: STUPID!!!!!!!

How DARE we "elitists" stop the good down to earth people from the heartland from ruining our country!

99, I did mean Malloy - here's on here in the Pacific NW on AM 1090, 9pm - midnight. Yes, I wasn't thinking that he was no longer Air America, but with AA tanking, what's going to happen with progressive radio in general? Or does it even matter?

I'm sorry, Danny, but I think continually ridiculing them for falling for disinformation, instead of getting in there with them to get it straightened out, really righteously can be construed as elitist... not to mention how many white collar liberals truly do not get what it's like to be struggling as hard as most of us have to struggle.

Most of these people we're ridiculing so regularly are gauche, have no class, no manners, no articulate expression, and they DO feel dissed by elitists... with reason... with that reason... and we all sit back, because we don't think we're elitists, and keep on making them feel like morons. Instead of trying to understand where they're coming from, really trying to stand with them however we can, we just keep on bullhorning our disdain for them. It's identical to the thing where we are aghast that nobody seems to want to understand why so-called "terrorists" are mad at us. If you stay blind to the humanity of the opposition, you stay vulnerable to their actions against you.

Soul Rebel, I personally feel that at this juncture it does not matter, might actually be a hinderance... but I know that's blaspheming here. Don't get me wrong, I think broadcasting the real to as many as possible is mandatory, but it's such a mess out there, so much filthy rich opposition, it all gets turned into fodder for them. So, I think we stand up and clap this down, and then figure out the radio thing.

I'd like the partisan stuff to just chill out, freeze, and we all put all our energy into coming together.

I don't think it's sunk in for many people here, yet, that this decision is the worst possible news we have EVER gotten.

If we can't come together, what have we got left?

Not our country. Not anything.

CAN WE IMPEACH ROBERTS?

AND SCALIA AND THOMAS AND ALITO AND KENNEDY?

Its a disaster. Its the end of the republic. For those of us who live here, this decision will bring about our total ruin.

But considering the history of this country and its people, there may yet be benefit in the elimination of our "democratic" government for the rest of humanity.

99, I like your way of thinking. Somehow, somewhere, we ALL need to come together to stop what's going on in this country.

"All for One, One for All" type of movement. But I agree, the "racisim" is where I draw the line too.

Here's another movement forming after the ruling today. Dont know if you saw it.
FREE SPEECH for PEOPLE dot org
http://freespeechforpeople.org/

This decision is simply the final, official declaration of The Golden Rule --- those with the gold, make the rules. It has always been that way, but now it is WRITTEN.

MONEY NOW TALKS, it's that simple.

PS to 99 re impeaching members of SCOTUS. Yes, it CAN be done. No, WE can not do it, only those "elected" to "represent" us in the House of Representative can do it, so NO, it won't happen.

Oh, in re impeachment, I should add...

Had Obama come into office and begun the 1000 investigations of the crimes, high crimes, treasons, and other illegal acts by the Bush/Cheney administration over 8 years, as well as an investigation into the election frauds of 2000 and 2004, and held the criminals fully accountable and all the proofs and evidences been made visible, then perhaps an impeachment of judges and other lifetime appointments made by the (then discredited and jailed (if not executed)) Bush could have been impeached as having been "wrongly placed by an illegal President, and a continuing affront to Justice."

But, alas, that's not exactly how it played out.

Well, Brad and friends started that, aview, and is linked in this post and probably on half the blogs in America by now, and, yes, yes, yes, let's all sign more petitions, but this is DIRE and a hairy deal cannot cease being made of it... hairier than signing petitions and supporting everything that goes to smacking this down... this is horrific news for everyone, right, left and center, everyone here and out there.

I'm with ya, CharlieL....

A Birthday Present for Granny D

interesting idea. won't happen of course, but agile thinking.

Obama's response was not terrible, but methinks just words again. I smell another blown opportunity in the offing.

Link

Someone got the right idea though.

I love this place in cyberspace. Cuz of the inhabitants.

Their raves and rants.

All with heart

As the world tears apart

And we scheme to bring it together again.

See you soon, I hope.

In another 5 to 4 decision – the worst since Bush v Gore – The Supreme Court INC. has left the American people to smolder and stew over another ridiculous decision that could be debunked by a high school graduate. Since I’m a high school graduate, let me give it a crack:

How is it fair to give some people more free speech then the rest of us, or, for that matter, more free speech then the people they’re speaking FOR. If corporations have free speech, as the court ruled yesterday, why should management or even one person be able to talk for every single person who works under him as a group?

How did I do?

@ Mitch (#66) asked:

I'd be curious to hear more about your conversations with your aunt. What worked...?

Nothing worked, I'm afraid, Mitch. Not reason (she deflected with Foxisms) not love (there is no love where there is no understanding or respect)and most distressing to me, not even humor (and I’m supposed to be a professional.)

"…and what didn’t?"

Facts. Seems we can’t agree on ‘em at all anymore. It’s crazy. We have completely different root assumptions, now, where we didn’t just two years ago. Devastating to find that no matter how well crafted my position, no matter how much time spent, no matter which golden links I procured - I was unable to shake her off her “Too Many Czars” meme (along with so many others lifted directly from Beck and Limbaugh, et al.)

Sacked me something wild to experience the full might of my best efforts, measure to so very little effect. Puny me. My real world best proved a measley, mild non-threat against whatever super-power frequency lies they can megaphone and dark-lord over our public airwaves. The battle for the frightened, vulnerable mind of my Aunt Sue was over before it began.
I was a qualified non-starter.
I failed miserably.

Mitch, you can actually see so for yourself via our last exchange as it played out months ago, very publically, on my Facebook homepage. I do believe it is the last communication we are likely to have:

http://www.facebook.com/...4479313&id=584372447

I’d welcome everyone to read it, as I remember thinking I’d gone out of my way to be funny, lythe, curious, loving, playful and respectful – but maybe some of you would disagree.

The topic ranges from health care (I don't have it) to 9/11 (I was a first responder). To me, what this strange exchange makes painfully clear is: a). The unbridled power of propagandized, omipresent media b) Aunt Sue’s reaction / response to accepted facts and how quickly they derail her / shut her down in light of over-exposure to said media.

Aunt Sue is an excellent case study in the TeaPerson Demo. IMO: Retired Floridian (forced out of Real Estate when the housing bubble went bust), living off her Social Security, previously unaffiliated / no political party until now but (pre-Obama)leaned independent. She’s VERY upset about illegal immigration (having to press “1” for English), but not terrible concerned about undocumented workers (truckloads of brown people bussed in by big corps from up north to clean up Lower Manhattan and New Orleans). She found Bush disagreeable but never much cared to act on that urge, never bothered to self-educate, even with a favorite niece running around filming stolen elections.

Today, thanks to Blecky –Glenn, Aunt Sue is now 100%convinced Obama was born in Kenya and is a socialist, no matter how many times I link to the definition of socialist, no matter how many times my boyfriend and I point her to the certified birth document provided and posted online by the State of Hawaii, no matter how many times I send her Matt Tabai's Rolling Stone Article about Goldman Sachs.

That shit just ain't on her radar no matter what I do...

For the record, I have run the gamut of excuses for her willful ignorance over and over again in my mind - trying to find excuses that allow me to find a way to forgive her.

One day I thought: "How can I hold her ignorance against her, when her own "Senator" is telling her there are death panels and that lie is being repeated by real "news people" she respects? If I send her a link to the Bradblog, but she sends me an article or ten from her e-network of terrified like minds that refutes it, but she wants to believes it - we are at an impasse.

No, I will not agree to disagree on facts.
We no longer have a concensus on reality, people, and I don't know how we self-correct, for that. Can you build us a magic machine, Mitch?...

I really, really like your idea of making this a real world exercise, Mitch. (In 99's case, I want video.) Can we make that happen? Or are we more comfortable sitting here extrapolating hyperbolic arm-length assessments, raging in unfounded, untried, flaming, noisy debate? ...I'd hate to ruin anyone's critique, no matter how rude and ludicrous.

New heights are only a crude Malkin hotlink away.

(If that link doesn’t work, Mitch / all - might have to be a Facebook friend in order to view it - either send me a facebook friend request, or email me at jeannie@jeanniedean.com and I’ll be happy to send it to anyone who is interested.)

Given the givens, given what is happening, what Obama is making and letting happen, that the Supreme Court just ruled us officially fascist, it doesn't matter if someone is racist, they're still fighting against fascism. It doesn't matter if they think Obama was born in Kenya; it doesn't matter if they're against abortion; it doesn't matter if they call fascism "socialism", especially since it is socialism... for rich people; it doesn't matter that they're ideologically opposed to you.... None of that is pertinent. They're fellow citizens and they are angry about a lot of the same things we're angry about.

If you're friendly and not attacking their belief systems and making them try to defend their ignorance—willful or otherwise—very many of them are all ears... and all heart.

This isn't a culture war.

It's a fascist shift.

We just went into the overt zone.

It's terrifying.

All of us are in trouble.

Not for nothing, but I find it especially telling that what with all this blustery tea talk here - everyone has roundly ignored Brook's (a real teaperson with real opinions that everyone CLAIMS to know the mind of)very interesting comment @ #85 re: this SCOTUS decision...

Brook doesn't think this, the worst SCOTUS decision ever, roundly rejected by - well, everyone - needs a fix, because...DEMOCRATS are going to "swing into action" and render the SCOTUS decision null and void?! Through the courts?!?? For gerrymandering?!! Really? I think those are all astounding statements on so many levels I can't believe no one has dared to ask:

1. When, if ever, have you seen "Democrats swinging into action" for starters?
2. Sorry, but what are MOC's? And if they draw up districts, isn't that also gerrymandering?
3. I'm not sure what you're suggesting with your #3:

3. Set up blocks of media time to be purchased BY THE MEDIA from the FEC to be used for political ads, and only these time blocks can be used for campaign spending. (There's an idea that actually generates revenue)

...are you talking about network sponsorship of candidates' air time? Selling off public air time for corporations to pitch their guy? Like "Scott Brown, brought to you by AXE" sort of a thing? And the FCC profits? Isn't that the system we are now likely to have in place with this ruling anyway? I'm not trying to be snarky, I really don't follow. Please explain.

99 - did you just read my link like you normally don't and then pop off at me like you were going to do anyway?

...oh, and if you believe Amy Goodman (and you may not, these days, who knows with you) you're wrong about the White Supremacists / TeaPeople Crossover:

http://www.democracynow....te_power_usa_the_rise_of

I don't believe Aunt Sue's (Teapeople = "Aunt Sue") is / are racists, and I think I alluded to that above - I think Aunt sues are scared and vulnerable and I think they like being scared and vulnerable. They are authoritarian, dead-locked swingers.

If you, 99, are thinking along the lines of "herding them" (classy sign of respect, btw, just like you spun above to Big Dan while you slap us with your upstage hand for the same) - how many dangerous others, who AREN'T afraid to strap sawed off shotguns to their backs, have the same urge to control them as you?

If you believe Amy Goodman (and I don't know that you do, these days) you better get going, 99.
The White Supremacists have a jump on you.

(and Hell yes, if you're serious about getting to a teaparty rally, 99, find one and I will find a way to get you there, I swear I will. I'll even send you my camera. I'll even help you post the video. Email me at the above address...or continue sniping at me. Can't wait to see what you do, you unpredictable mule, you.)

99 @ (#65)

Yes, sit back and wait for it.

Jeezus, 99. I believe I can hear you you hissing at me as you type.

Okay, seriosly then, have you actually joined or tried to find some online /local Tea Party groups? Put any effort into this "calling" of yours? It seems that I just took time and care to cite a real experience with real consequences that really hurt that you (probably) didn't bother to read because you've already decided what you're going to decide. What I write to you / for you doesn't matter. Same knee jerk reaction, same attempt to shame.

...just read that back. Maybe you have more in common with the Teapeople than just a communal white, hot rage for Obama that borders on hysterical.

That my real life experience should be ruled and/ or subjugated by your untried science because "you've studied this stuff" - your steady innocuous dismissal usually followed by an accusation or a round insult, like (an idea) is "just dumb" or I'm "just wrong" regardless of what evidence I've presented, regardless of how eloquently I've argued it.

So question: do you go over to HOT AIR and post Glenn Greenwald quotes? Are you luring them over to your blog with promises of free chocolate Apolcolypse Advent Calendars? What trying TEAPARTY-ING civic duty thang do YOU daily perform; what grand uniting thing do you DO that gives you the right to continue to rage at the rest of us, comment after comment, writing the same?

it doesn't matter if someone is racist, they're still fighting against fascism.

What? Not if they're fighting alongside minority people who also want to end the fascism. Especially not if the racist people who want to end fascism also carry guns.

And how can you organize a movement, sic. get my Aunt Sue to march with me down to Wall Street to protest Goldman's hold on Obama when she doesn't see that as the threat? The threat is death panels. Where is the meaningful point of action in common, there? You go get shot with me outside Goldman Sachs, and I'll go pretend to pass out in the Halls of Congress to protest my own Health Care.

This isn't a culture war.

I know that. We know that. They don't know that. Can you please tell them that for us? Thanks.

All of us are in trouble.

Yeah, I know, 99. You're not the only one with a handle on that newflash, either.

Sheesh, Jeannie.

No. I did not read your link and snipe at you. Fact is, I hadn't refreshed the page, had just watched a video of a tea party protest elsewhere and came here to say what I said, completely unaware of your long story about your trouble with your relative. Then I went off and answered a long email. And here I am checking in and finding you melting down again about my airy fairy notions of making common cause with... people.... Sheesh.

What a mess! the bloated money-hungry and so called "elected officials" are so well entrenched in their positions,they no longer even effort to hide their greed from the "people"!(do not misunderstand my sentiment,I love my country,or at least the idea of "the land of the free")

I think it was Napoleon who said "there will always be kings,queens,and emperors though, they may not be known by such titles!". (i.e senator,president,congressmen)

It's a shame that our founding fathers fought a war for independence, just to find out that their noble groundwork passed on to us has been so twisted and broken that we are now more suppressed,taxed,and oppressed that the cure for tyranny is more tyrannical than the original!

I say make all political affairs a public service with jury pay and medicare benefits!

Let those families that own the most land be the first to have their sons and daughters drafted and sent to the front lines,instead of those families that do not even own a patch of land lose their brave sons and daughters fighting for a country that they own no part of,and have even less say when they are taxed for say earning pay to live and eat!

I fear that something is going to give,If there is not rapid change,and woe to those 5% of the population that-for now-own and control the united states...land that bows to the highest bidder!

By the way I am not some radical,militia member or any of that just a citizen of a once great country watching in horror as the run-away train flies down the track at an ever increasing rate!

Hear, hear, Andrew.

Keith says this could be his last special comment (because he gives GE et al a good spanking)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMTJ--JWJqM (PT 1)

http://www.youtube.com/w...pF5g&feature=channel (PT 2)

Wow, Flo! I think Lumpboil may even have heard that! Thanks.

Good aint it, 99?

While Keith mentions the Chubb Group (I love his people behind the scene BTW, they're tops in my book), I looked into them and they are a large insurance conglomerate with ties to the Council for National Policy. This is gold, with everyone (and I mean everyone) you ever heard of being present and accounted for, including two of its founders, check this out, Tim LaHaye and Morton Blackwell, DeLay is a member.
Read the front page first and then have a look around the index and see if you can be as stunned as I was. They claim they are the alternative/replacement for the Council on Foreign Relations...WoW!

Jeanie, i'm talking about limiting the amount of time that can be sold for political ads, and those blocks of time have to be purchased first from the FEC. I think it's a good idea, because it makes the amount of money raised irrelevant. You can only purchase a limited amount of ad time and controls can be put into place to make sure a balance is struck.

MOC's are members of Congress, and yes in some states they actually get to draw their own distric map. The House hasn't really been democratic ever since these practices were put into place.

"Either we'll all stand together, or hang separately."
Ben Frankin

WHAT PART OF WEDGE ISSUES DO YOU ALL NOT UNDERSTAND ?

Wedge issues exist for a reason...they've been used to divide the American citizen against itself. They've been shamelessly used for over 30 years now...and now we're at a point that the American public may NEVER stand united again.

We progressives being sane; means WE MUST reach out in truth and sincerity to the tea-partiers...not reach out in a condescending or elite way, but reach out to them on their level and pull them up to the truth. It won't be an easy task. But it must be done. it's gonna be time consuming and extrememly frustrating at times...BUT IT MUST BE DONE!

If we the sane , rational and fairminded progressives are to walk out our talk. We need to infiltrate the tea party movement with truth and justice as our motivation. Anything else is conceding defeat and letting the fascists filthy bastards have their way.

WAKE THE HELL UP!

I guess this comment is for Brook, being a part of the TB movement...

Did you see Mitch McConnell and his osteoporotic wrinkle convention yesterday, as they were lauding the freedom and liberty now afforded corporations in their newly legalised bribery scheme? Their unabashed glee could not be contained, it was a veritable smirk-fest around the press conference microphone. When rich old white men gather with that degree of exultation, it can't be good...for anyone! Boner was slightly more reserved in his facial expressions, but his rhetoric was the same. Apparently we are all now going to be victims of the "sunshine" that gave him his radioactive complexion.

So do the TB'ers know that we are all equally screwed under this ruling?

Again, with the SCOTUS, the "out" for them to seem like they're not fascist, is the media saying "...and unions" every single time they report on it. Can't corporations spend like a million times more than unions, because they have a million times more money?

Watch how EVERY TIME you hear the blurb on the radio, they say: "corporations AND UNIONS can give as much as they want".

That's like saying: "Big Dan and Wal-Mart are free to give as much as they want"!

I just heard it AGAIN on the radio: "corporations AND UNIONS" can give as much as they want! That's the way the corporate media is selling it to us.

Also, NO mention that it's an ACTIVIST CONSERVATIVE court, no mention at all, after all those decades of saying "activist LIBERAL" court. I guess it's not activist...if it's liberal. And that makes sense that the media would say that, because they are pretending they are liberal.

99 ~ I resent your characterization of my rational, measured, response to your barbed comments as a "melt down". It isn't.

I actually worked hard and spent real time in my above responses to your many, many comments in this thread, trying show you the respect you genuinely deserve, and so very rarely show others.

I won't bother doing so in the future.
But that offer to find a way to get you to a tea party still stands.

@Brook: thank you for answering my question.

How much does this ruling really change? The limits on contributions to individual politicians still stands --- this ruling just gives corporations the ability to form associations and run their own ads to express their point of view. this has already been happening, so it just gives what is already going on more legitimacy.

MA proves the will of the people can still prevail, as long as we vote. Coakley had the advantage of Kennedy's donors and the SEIU gave her a truck load of money, and it still didn't carry the day.

The left has all the power right now --- if you guys don't like this, get a bill to reverse the decision passed in Congress.

In my fantasy world, the left figures out how to make the right's mastery of propaganda boomerang on itself.

In my fantasy world, for example, the right makes the argument that taxes are too high and the left agrees-and-presents-a-pie-chart showing, among other things, military expenditures versus civilian foreign aid. With some heat, the left asks where we should start cutting but keeps the pie chart out at all times and doesn't let the right say foreign aid without asking, sincerely, what else? "Well, it doesn't look like that will make much of a difference, does it? What else?"

In my fantasy world, the left proposes that foreign aid be CAPPED at 10% of the military budget, that tax rates be CAPPED at one third for incomes under $10 million, that people should all be charged the SAME rate for Social Security, no matter how high their income --- no higher rate for the second million, etc...

In my experience, nobody listens to anyone they think they completely disagree with. Even when we "try," we usually fail. It's really hard.

Everyone is missing the point. Money in politics can only corrupt the politician. I say it is about damn time we corrupt them with corporations/businesses, the only productive entity in this country, than the labor unions and leaches that suck on American prosperity and tax payers. I work for a corporation. We actual produce something while providing jobs and growing the economy. Get off the grade school ideal that business is bad/evil. Give me a break...

RE: Comment 143...

Here's why the Oligarchs could care less about "wedge issues"

Wedge issue #1 Abortion: Oligarches could care less about whether or not a woman has the right to choose. They simply use it as a wedge issue to divide the deluded religious right and cultural conservatives against the progressives...The abortion issue only serves to distract our attention from the really important issues of the day...ie; economic issues and employment, the erosion of our Constitutional rights and using our nation's military for corporate purposes.

Wedge issue #2: Gay marriage...
Give me a break...do you actually believe the corporate, wall street, military industrial cabal gives a flying squat about "the sanctity of marriage" ? Haven't you noticed how cavalierly they've treated their own marriages ?
The gay marriage issue is simply a wedge issue to enflame the religious right and drown out public debate/discussion about more serious issues and cover the Oligarchs out right theft of our resources...
No offense to the gays among us, I believe you should have the same rights as everyone else...but the gay marriage issue is sucking way too much political attention in this time of our nations fundamental crisis.

Wedge issue #3: Immigration...For years these lying greedy fat fucks have exploited illegal immigrants for cheap labor and they still do.
Illegal immigrants are a convient target when you need a wedge issue to enflame racial conflict and demonization of the very people the corporatists shamelessly exploit....

That's just a small sample of how we've been collosally bamboozled into falling for fake wedge issues in order to divide and conquer the American public mind.

JK,

In an Adam Smith world, perhaps, you are right.

But please don't confuse productivity with getting money.

Let's call a business that grows food "productive." A business that figures out how to get subsidies for growing food is not "productive," it's just figured out how to get the government to collect taxes from the whole population in order to pay it.

And a business that makes bets on horses (or housing prices) and then gets the government to collect taxes from the whole population in order to cover its losses is not productive.

But the latter two are now going to own our government (even more), because they will have our own money with which to persuade us. It's a vicious spiral down, because the first example isn't going to be able to compete against the second example in the free market.

JK @150

Everyone is missing the point. Money in politics can only corrupt the politician. I say it is about damn time we corrupt them with corporations/businesses, the only productive entity in this country, than the labor unions and leaches that suck on American prosperity and tax payers. I work for a corporation. We actual produce something while providing jobs and growing the economy. Get off the grade school ideal that business is bad/evil. Give me a break...

Just what have corporations provided other than the highest unemployment rate since 1982 ?

How come American income has stagnated since the mid 1980s ? While corporate income in the board room has increased to all time record levels ?

Why have corporations shipped 10's of millions of American jobs overseas, in order to exploit cheap labor ? What are they producing for America ?

Aren't those corporations economically treasonous ?
What now gives corporations the right to demand they control over the politcal process in this country ?
Any foriegn corporation with a fat bank account can now dictate to America by way of political funding; policies and laws that benefit that foreign corporation...and damage America.
Have you ever heard of corporate economic terrorism ?

You give us a break sir...Corporations in control of the polital process is fascist by defination.

BH,

Just what have corporations provided other than the highest unemployment rate since 1982 ?

An unlimited supply of cheap goods from China and other exploited labor pools. That we buy.

Why have corporations shipped 10's of millions of American jobs overseas, in order to exploit cheap labor ? What are they producing for America ?

Asked and answered: "in order to exploit cheap labor." They are producing cheap goods for us to buy. And we buy them. Which is to say they are simply supplying our demand.

But that's the government we will be stuck with, if this ruling has its desired effect.

Jeannie Dean,

RE. you and your Aunt Sue. And the immigration problem. It all started during a democratic administration.

In 1995, Larry Summers was clinton's Under Sec. of Treasury. Mexico wanted a loan because they were broke. Summers could not get it passed in Congress, so he made the loan through a fund. Forget the name of it. Then he charged outrageously high interest rates.

So in Mexico, say , your house payment had a 7% loan. It went to as high as 50%. Same for businesses , farms and vehicles.This started the mass migration of Mexicans to the US.

Alan Greenspan stated in his memoir, that created a lasting bond with him, Rubin and Summers. The loan was paid off early!

And I guess you see how Summers was rewarded.WE had a new slave labor class.How many people have stopped to think why that migration was so sudden.

Agent 99

I agree with you we are officially a fascist state now.And like with so many laws, the corporations were already acting like it was law even before it was passed.

Here in ME where I live , our newspapers are totally "state media". Corporations run the state.Two of our utilities, Maine Public Gas and Central Maine Electric are owned by Iberdrola of Spain...funded by Abu Dhabi Energy.

I think this has been posted, but here it is again:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com...677/vp/34985508#34985508

I do think that some common ground with tea party folk needs to be found. Focus on the issues we have in common. Leverage their anger and feed it and avoid the divisive issues.

Speaking of the tea partyers and their protest tactics, I wonder what would happen if a bunch of unified protestors were to show up outside some SCOTUS judges houses in protest and packed weapons in the same fashion they did with the town halls earlier. Would the government finally respond and shut them down or let them carry on. Might make for some scary moments, but with the emotions running now, I wouldn't put it past some folks doing that. I wonder if that might be ultimately what makes some SCOTUS judges realize the scope of what they've just done and the potential consequences for doing so.

On more practical and constructive means for fighting this, two ideas came to mind.

1) Ariana Huffington has earlier been championing the "Move my Money" movement to get people to move their money out of big banks into smaller local banks and credit unions, and some have suggested that perhaps even forming credit unions that will take actions based on what its new members want done. Perhaps if there's already efforts now made to form a newer credit union with that effort, it can be made with a charter to spend a LOT of money on ads that would champion a constitutional amendment to shut down corporate personhood in the course of promoting itself as an option for those who want to keep their assets at a place where people want to see them leveraged for their own good, not against them. Might be better to use something like that where we still have our money intact there than donating tons of money to other groups to do the same thing.

2) try to pass more local campaign finance laws to restrict non-human contributions at the state or local levels. Now courts will try and state that the SCOTUS decision doesn't allow this, but perhaps if the legislation is written well enough, in order for higher courts or SCOTUS to dismiss these laws, they'd be forced to deal with the original opinion that formed the stare decisis not even being a judicial decision, but a former railroad exec court clerk's head note that created this "law", and force them to explain this in their decision.

Mitch @ 154:

Corporations actually subverted the U.S. minimum wage laws and child labor laws by outsourcing jobs. Actually, slavery never stopped...it was outsourced.

Personally, I'd love to see a nationwide non-profit credit union/credit card company not affiliated with Visa, MasterCard, AmEx, or Discover. 1% of every purchase back to the vendor, 1% of every purchase back to the cardholder, 1% of every purchase to charities voted on by the cardholding membership.

Call them KillTheBank cards and you'd have a substantial membership with substantial vendor penetration --- at least among small business --- in no time.

In re Brook in COMMENT #148

"The left has all the power right now --- if you guys don't like this, get a bill to reverse the decision passed in Congress."

WTF?

The centrist, corporate, pro-business Democratic Party has the power. The left is not even at the table in most cases. The "taking off the table" of impeachment and single-payer before we even got started is proof of that.

And, BTW, just as a matter of civics (which they haven't taught in the RRR, test-based schools in many years), a "bill" won't overturn a SCOTUS decision on "Constitutionality" --- it will just be ruled equally unconstitutional. We will need an actual AMMENDMENT to the U.S. Constitution to right this right-wing activist court decision.

from soul rebels link/

Crimes Against Humanity

Complaint Filed Against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al

International Arrest Warrants Requested
January 20, 2010 "Information Clearing House" - -Professor Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign, U.S.A. has filed a Complaint with the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (I.C.C.) in The Hague against U.S. citizens George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, and Alberto Gonzales (the “Accused”) for their criminal policy and practice of “extraordinary rendition” perpetrated upon about 100 human beings. This term is really their euphemism for the enforced disappearance of persons and their consequent torture. This criminal policy and practice by the Accused constitute Crimes against Humanity in violation of the Rome Statute establishing the I.C.C.

The United States is not a party to the Rome Statute. Nevertheless the Accused have ordered and been responsible for the commission of I.C.C. statutory crimes within the respective territories of many I.C.C. member states, including several in Europe. Consequently, the I.C.C. has jurisdiction to prosecute the Accused for their I.C.C. statutory crimes under Rome Statute article 12(2)(a) that affords the I.C.C. jurisdiction to prosecute for I.C.C. statutory crimes committed in I.C.C. member states.

The Complaint requests (1) that the I.C.C. Prosecutor open an investigation of the Accused on his own accord under Rome Statute article 15(1); and (2) that the I.C.C. Prosecutor also formally “submit to the Pre-Trial Chamber a request for authorization of an investigation” of the Accused under Rome Statute article 15(3).

For similar reasons, the Highest Level Officials of the Obama administration risk the filing of a follow-up Complaint with the I.C.C. if they do not immediately terminate the Accused’s criminal policy and practice of “extraordinary rendition,” which the Obama administration has continued to implement.

The Complaint concludes with a request that the I.C.C. Prosecutor obtain International Arrest Warrants for the Accused from the I.C.C. in accordance with Rome Statute articles 58(1)(a), 58(1)(b)(i), 58(1)(b)(ii), and 58(1)(b)(iii).

In order to demonstrate your support for this Complaint you can contact the I.C.C. Prosecutor by letter, fax, or email as indicated below.

//////////////////////////nothing can change if the past criminal behavior is not punished,i hoped we the american peops could do it ourselves,thru our president and court system but since that is not to be this professor from my neighboring community has the right idea...and yes criminal prosecutions would start the ball for impeaching the suprems

Cascadiance has some good ideas . . . but corporations have been working on this take-over a long time. And yet, many Americans cannot, or choose to not, see that their freedoms are being taken away.

I hope more Americans start to wake up and certainly progressives need to come down from our intellectual high-horse and organize to take back our country.

Another idea...

Do we know who the court reporter for the Supreme Court is NOW? The one that will be writing the head note? This decision implictly gives them the right to create law through what they write in their head notes, since the whole case is based on one flawed and corrupt head note.

Perhaps if the court reporter can be persuaded to write in their headnote that the court basically gives rights to court reporters to create law through what they write in head notes, and that the court reporter finds that the court ruled that corporations DO NOT have rights of persons, we could create a NICE constitutional crisis for the court to have to deal with and explain to those not beholden to corporate power!

@Brad on #64:
Remember the question I asked you at the Webster film festival "With Mr Smith(Edwin Smith)going to Washington and the SCOTUS decision of citizens united v FEC, How screwed are we?
I think you summed it up here...

DENY corporations 'persondhood': make the recent SCOTUS decision MOOT! Move to amend the Constitution to permanently deny these mere 'legal abstractions' the power to buy OUR government !

http://www.movetoamend.org/

I'm leaning towards BigDan's line of thinking. You don't cast pearls to swine.
And IMO, people who honestly believe that Sarah Palin is a viable presidential candidate, fits this bill.

"the land of the free and the home of the brave"

Free ?

Brave ?

Indoctrinated ?

Specter

Greenwald

"CALL FOR IMMEDIATE ARREST OF 5 SUPREME COURT JUSTICES FOR TREASON"

THE FIVE THAT STAND AGAINST ALL AMERICANS, THE “MAFIA” JUDGES

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor

Five members of the Supreme Court declared that a “corporation” is a person, not a “regular person” but one above all natural laws, subject to no God, no moral code but one with unlimited power over our lives, a power awarded by judges who seem themselves as grand inquisitors in attempt to hunt down all hertics who fail to serve their god, the god of money.

More...

Betterthannosn said:

You don't cast pearls to swine.
And IMO, people who honestly believe that Sarah Palin is a viable presidential candidate, fits this bill.

You can either try to change their minds by talking with them or try to pretend they don't exist, and insure they never hear a voice to the left of Glenn Beck.

I'm not overly fond of the 50 million people (give or take election fraud) who apparently voted for George W Bush in 2000 or the 60 million people (give or take election fraud) who voted to reelect him after watching what he'd accomplished in his first term. But I know they exist, and I know they vote.

I'd rather talk with them than stick my head in the sand.

Remember, these people think they are standing up for what's right. So do you. So do I. That's a start.

I read the Greenwald piece. One thing he's not noting, is that their decision is "fair", in that Big Dan and Wal-Mart each equally can give unlimited to politicians.

Yeah, my $10 and Wal-Mart's $10 Billion.

That's not addressed by Greenwald.

And also, Greenwald compares unions and Planned Parenthood to corporations. That's the same comparison! Sure they're at a level higher than ME, but corporations for all intents and purposes have unlimited wealth. You can't compare what a union can give vs. Wal-Mart, that's ludicrous. Just as ludicrous as saying I can give unlimited as well as Wal-Mart.

Yeah, that's "equal"...because we can both give unlimited...my $10 and Wal-Mart's $10 billion.

I agree with Greenwald with one thing: it's already bad before this ruling.

I hate to bring up Hitler, but the Hitler regime made everything they did "legal", they didn't actually break any laws technically. They changed the laws so everything they did was legal.

Interesting article on the Tea Party folk at TPM.

http://tpmmuckraker.talk...r_not_to_gop.php?ref=fpb

Actually alternative currencies are something the tea party and left can agree on. Some of us are working on that --- it is a tough sell, because most people know nothing about banking or the Fed.

The Fed works off of debt issue central banking --- an age-old practice that guarantees the banks profits with taxpayer money. This is why you saw the Federal Reserve Act followed quickly by the Income Tax. The shareholders become obscenely wealthy. With that kind of wealth, the absolute power maxim comes into play, and controlling the banks becomes insufficient. They have to get control of the political process, the media etc...
Okay, so u can do ur homework on the Fed and the Rockefellers (major shareholders), but you will discover that no other family has more political and economic power than the Rockefellers, and nobody gets to the White House without their approval. This is not conspiracy folks --- it is fact.

The bottom line is that community currencies are coming into vogue and the beginnings of a move to abolish the Federal Reserve Act itself. Study the WIR community currency in Switzerland. it's been around for decades and works well to promote local economic activity.

There are alternatives to debt issue central banking. this is the national conversation we should be having.

Greenwald also doesn't address that the playing field has been rigged: things like Planned Parenthood were systematically defunded to therefore have less to give, while the Wal-Marts and corporations had their tax cuts.

The bottom line is this: those who always have more $$$ always say it's "fair" to have no giving restrictions. If corporations are limited, it's a fallacy to say their "freedom of speech" is restricted. That's like saying they only have freedom of speech if they can give unlimited money.

So, that's implying "freedom of speech" = money.

So, "freedom of speech" = giving unlimited money? They have no freedom of speech if they can't give unlimited money? Of which they have all the money?

Outlaw the corporate form of business organization and revoke the existing corporate charters, all of which can be done at the state and local level. Corporations are thus effectively killed, although the problem of money in politics would still exist. Not as radical would be to alter the fundamental corporate mandate that it enrich its stockholders at the expense of everything else. Or, only allow non-profit corporations.

I think it much easier to either kill corporations outright or alter the corporate form and then address the problem of money in politics.

I've been holding off from commenting on this thread, but you all (especially 99) are seriously deluded if you think the tea-bag heads are capable of doing anything but being herded around by the corporations for the corporations' own uses. They inflame their emotions, and then set them loose to yell, scream, shake signs, etc. They will never realize they have been used, ever. There is no way to spread the message, it will be drowned out in the millions (prob. billions) of dollars worth of corporate propaganda. No one will be able to talk over the corporate-funded megaphones. There will be no "reasoning" with them. We are fucked.

I just some questions, because I'm not sure if I understand this now;
As a US citizen I can donate up to $2000 toward a campaign. As a corporation the amount is unlimited. Does the corporation have to be US based? Can foreign corporations make unlimited donations to campaigns? If not right upfront, through US subsidiaries?

How is it that corporations now have more freedom of speech than actual US citizens?

Am I confused? or is this what they have really done? I really like Granny Doris Haddock's suggestion of really tightening the rules against benefitting from conflicts of interest.

Link I Just Received From One of My Racist Putz Tea Partier Friends

COMMENT #179 [Permalink]
... Chris Hooten said on 1/22/2010 @ 4:19 pm PT...

I've been holding off from commenting on this thread, but you all (especially 99) are seriously deluded if you think the tea-bag heads are capable of doing anything but being herded around by the corporations for the corporations' own uses.

Hey! I've been saying that the whole while!

Aaaaaarrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!

99: maybe he's not a Tea Partier.

That's like "Reagan Democrats". Reagan Democrats are from 1980, 29 years ago. When is it safe to say, 29 years later, you're simply a Republican and not a Reagan Democrat? If you're a Reagan Democrat since 1980, guess what? YOU'RE A REPUBLICAN!!!

I'll be here all ze veek...

No, Danny, I've known him for thirty-five years and he's a right-leaning, good old boy tea partier. He voted for Obama because he wants Single Payer, and he's mad as hell at what he got for his vote. I don't blame him one tiny little bit. And that link came from his tea party listserver gig. He forwarded it to me. Check out the pledge on that page beside just the song.

Glenn Greenwald is getting hammered, here's one of about 400 comments disagreeing with him:

What are the disclosure requirements?

It is my understanding that to contribute to a PAC you must be a US citizen and you must be on record as having contributed. Greg Palast makes several good points, viz

anyone can go through a PAC's federal disclosure filing and see the name of every individual who put money into it. And every contributor must be a citizen of the USA.

But under today's Supreme Court ruling that corporations can support candidates without limit, there is nothing that stops, say, a Delaware-incorporated handmaiden of the Burmese junta from picking a Congressman or two with a cache of loot masked by a corporate alias.

With no disclosure agreements to at least allow us to identify the perpetrators, what is to prevent the following scenario:

1) All of the major media corporations decide that, for the benefit of their polluting subsidiaries, a totally Republican congress/executive is required.

2) With $10's of Billions from "unidentified sources", but really from Exxon, et al, they flood the airwaves for the next year (or better yet, 2011-2012) with their support ads for their candidates.

3) They, as CBS has in the past, simply refuse to air ads representing ANY opposing views or candidates.

4) The EPA is dissolved, all laws preventing pollution are removed from the books and the corporations go their merry ways doing as they like.

Corporations are, by any way of looking at it, legally constructed, immortal, sociopaths. Money is the ONLY measure of success, and if killing babies made them money (and they could be sure of not being identified), they would do it in a heartbeat; after all, they have done it in the past.
—tgasaway

http://letters.salon.com...9b81cb247e5ec4ae8a9.html

http://letters.salon.com...ns_united/view/?show=all

I too am packing my bags to leave this country as soon as I finish college. However, in the meantime, I try to inspire the people to do what our forefathers did against England. A revolt may be necessary to ensure the USA actually stands for what is in the constitution and preserve our rights. Granted we may end up with 2 or more countries, but in each one there would be like minded people who are generally in agreement about how to run their nation. Imagine a nation for the Faux News junkies and a nation that is truly progressive. We may even have one where freedom is important and there are no lawyers.

Just a question or two.
Down here (NZ) if you profit from a crime your assets are taken by the "state" .And I think in China (etc.)if your company causes the death of a person as a result of your "maximizing profits" and cutting corners you as the Company Head are executed for criminal liable .
Therefore a push for these additions to "Corporate personage" might create an interesting situation.Imagine the CEO of Union Carbide Bhopal disaster being executed for the horrific lost of life.

You shouldn't expect to have your cake and eat it !

Mick, some here in the US get to have their cake, eat it, and eat everyone else's too. In fact, this is very much a 'let them eat cake' scenario. The French were pretty innovative in their solution

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Not sure I'd be opposed, if that's the way the cake crumbled...might be the way it's heading. 200+ years later, the French seem pretty happy.

Well, that graphic looked perfect in my box! @*%$!

An earlier comment re: the right of unions to make contributions as the corps are now allowed reminds me of a comment by a French philosopher: "The French Constitution allows the rich to sleep on a park bench just as the poor do now". The unions new found right is perhaps the mirror immage, but the concept is similar.

It is my experience that many of the radical right are not actually stupid, they just have an aversion to reading. That includes history, philosophy, science or anything which requires thought. History shows us that if you wish to exert absolute control over the masses, you don't do it all at once with one sweeping law. You do it piecemeal. Our armed forces take an oath to the Constitution, not to their leaders. The government has set it up wherre they can hire surrorgates,Blackwater etc. This was done during Katrina. Look for them to start "protecting TeaBaggers and detaining protestors. Corps are allowed to hire private security. The Second amendment will be expanded to allow everyone to own an assault rifle, if they can prove they took an approved course in automatic weapons use. Guess who will have the only approved course? Watch for the application of disparit laws which can be used together to accomplish a very different end.

I am not advocating the violent overthrow of the U.S. Govn't. I am merely making a prediction based on reading history. I think Doughboy is on point about what may be the last resort many may take. If ones vote no longer has value unless you sell it for cash, the frustrated patriot will take other steps.

Doughboy, one wonders which country you're going to go to? The EU is now run by an un-elected High Commission packed with crooks, and they've run roughshod over national referendum after referendum saying the people do not want a federal Europe. UK pols have reneged twice on campaign promises to hold a referendum on the EU there --- they don't want to hear the answer.

Canada drills for oil wherever they want without the pesky EPA, and they've turned parts of the country into a moonscape.

What part of New World Order don't you understand? There is no place to hide from the global government crowd. They want to implement the EU model around the world.

Brad,

The SCOTUS decision was a direct result of the overwhelming 22 million True Vote Obama landslide. Don't believe the bogus 9.5 million recorded vote margin - a 13 million discrepancy.

In the 2006 midterms the Democratic True generic vote share was 56.4% but only 52% officially.

In 2004, Kerry won the TRUE VOTE by 10 million but lost by 3 million RECORDED VOTES. LIKE 2004, A 13 MILLION DISCREPANCY.

The SCOTUS decision was an act of DESPERATION. The R/W can no longer expect to steal elections now that the Democratic base has grown so big. But Obama squandered the oppotunity to govern from the left; perhaps he never intended to. It is clear that Obama's advisors don't want the public to know that he won by more than double his official margin.

The nation moved solidly to the left in 2006. And 2008 was just a presidential re-run of the 2006 midterms.

The sordid history of Election Fraud goes way back. Just check the 1968-2008 True Vote vs. Recorded Vote table and click on the Recursive "True Vote Model" link.

http://richardcharnin.com/

The calculations prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the Democrats are complicit in covering up election fraud, whether or not it cost them the election.

The average 1968-2008 presidential TRUE VOTE was Dem 49-GOP 45%. It is exactly the reverse of the the average RECORDED VOTE.

RE: Armed revolt

That's a sure loser.
The fascists have implanted a false belief in the protective power of firearms into the public discourse. The only thing a firearm would protect you from is your neighbor. No firearm made will protect us from the fascists. The corporate-government's arsenal makes an assault rifle or any firearm impotent.

Any time you hear some yokel babbling about his rifle protecting him from a rogue government, just know you're listening to a babbling idiot.

The only weapon we have against a corporate-rogue facist government is the power of truth, an uncompliant population dedicated to self determination and solid get the word out informative truth tellers...

To the religious among us...God won't help and your prayers are useless unless you're willing to stand behind and walk out what you believe...
Too many religious folks have left out the bedrock of spiritual practice...LOVE...of your neighbor no matter what his/her beliefs are, a stauch compassion for your fellow man no matter what his beliefs are...and an unwillingness to be dominated by lies and the love of money.

Revolutions aren't easy....we have to become willing to look out for each other as if everyone else is a family member, be willing to stand as one in the face of seeming irresistable power...be willing to LIVE for what we believe...
The enemies of democracy aren't strong people...they're simply fearful souls who have acquired the belief that weapons and money are power...they believe in illusions, illusions are nothing.
Truth is everything....when we detach from our conditioned illusion of material wealth and realize we the people are the wealth of nations, not money or weapons then we'll be free.

Gandhi freed India from the British empire...without firing a shot.

Bluehawk @194 "Gandhi freed India from the British empire...without firing a shot."

Yes, but the British Empire was totally bankrupt, and exhausted from war with no public enthusiasm for maintaining its Empire. But the Brits did manage to muck things up through its partition of India prior to exiting the scene. That partition has destabilized the whole of South Asia ever since.

to Bluehawk: read sun yat sen: Dont fight on your opponent's terms. Entrenched power has more money to buy hi-tech, so dont use hi-tech. Power has many laws, comply with all laws to their disadvantage. 1. In my area, if you have a traffic accident you must stop and exchange information etc. What would happen if three vehicles had a minor accident during rush hour at the worst choke point in town? 2. Anyone who files a law suit must be answered by the defendant within 30-45 days or the defendant loses by default. corporations and the gov. are required to use a licensed attorney to answer. Even gov attys are expensive so most corps or gov agencies dont hav many just standing around. What would happen if a lot of people decided to make a "reasonable" claim for SS Disability benefits? Go to all public meetings. Dont disrupt the meeting, just ask questions, lots and lots of questions. Use at least 3 people who do not look alike: a hippy type, an older guy in a suit and middle-aged woman. Sit in a diamond formation. One person asks a reasonable question, and gets support from another from a different social type. Bring cameras in case of brutal reaction. This can be fun.

I guess the Supreme Court is not as "learned" as I thought. Aren't we in the middle of a horrendous economic crisis because we gave the banks and corporations free rein to do as they please with little to no regulatory activity? Haven't the gurus of economic libertarianism like Alan Greenspan admitted that there was a "flaw" in their logic when applying this free-wheeling methodology to our economy? And the Supreme Court thinks that we can apply this same kind of logic to our political system in the form of campaign financing. I think the Supreme Court members are too sheltered from the realities of the economic troubles of the day. We can not trust corporations to have a conscience to do the right thing for the country, especially when there are legal obligations to maximize profits for the share holders. When will this libertarian idealism be understood to be an idealistic impossibility. The mob mentality that is what makes populism ugly applies to the corporate mentality of selfish economic single-mindedness. A mob of people (corporation) whose only collective commonality is greed will continue to rape and pillage until the society around them is non-functioning, like a cancer.
We have written laws (many times poorly) in response to the ugliness of human and corporate anti-social behaviors. The Supreme Court has just wiped the slate clean and told us to start over. Will we be able to create a new system of checking on anti-social behavior before the system becomes bought and paid for by the wealthiest?

Since the Supreme Court has now opened the spigots of campaign spending, we should try to find ways of using this unpleasant situation to balance the playing field. I think the idea of taxing campaign ads/contributions is a decent idea but can be expanded to help curb the inevitable glut of campaign spending that will occur. Like income tax I think that campaign expenditures should have a progressive tax structure to them. Below a certain amount and they are not taxed. Small private citizen contributions will not be affected. As the amount goes up the percentage is increased. Corporate, union and other big ticket special interest contributions will be taxed heavier. The money raised from such a program can be used for public financing of elections. Candidates of any party, with the proper number of legal signatures can tap into this account.

Yeah, Art...I get to give my unlimited $10 and Wal-Mart gets to give their unlimited $10 BILLION...it's "even"!!!

Can I sue the government, because they are limiting my free speech by taxing me so I have less money to give to politicians? Since MONEY = "FREEDOM OF SPEECH"???

SPEECH = MONEY

Somehow we're infringing on SPEECH by limiting MONEY!

I've looked in at Drudge for a couple of days now and there is NO MENTION of this week's SCOTUS decision. There is some drivel about how many Americans think Obama is anti-business.

This is the biggest gift the right wing has had in decades and it's not news?

make SCOTUS limited term positions

karlof1 @196

Yes, but the British Empire was totally bankrupt, and exhausted from war with no public enthusiasm for maintaining its Empire. But the Brits did manage to muck things up through its partition of India prior to exiting the scene. That partition has destabilized the whole of South Asia ever since.

And our Federal Government is mired in record debt, fighting a perpetual war on terror on two fronts, soon to be many more...

But that's besides the point...the point of my whole comment @194...
Is that truth always wins out...truth doesn't need to mount an "armed" resistence.

We can conjure up all kinds of "yeah buts"....but it's only our own resistence to walking in Love, Justice and Truth, it takes great effort. Some folks just aren't up to it...

BlueHawk @ 195,

Exactly. Love and truth win long-term. And they're far more appealing to live with, even if you don't live to see the promised land.

Nonviolent resistance works wonders, though it takes time, enormous courage, and enough confidence in victory to live with setbacks without turning permanently bitter and hateful.

The structure of life in the United States today is probably more dependent on the cooperation of the public than it has ever been.

The day Wal-Marts nationwide are empty of shoppers will be the day the Obama administration or its successor starts listening to the left.

Mitch @204

Very well said...

How many people commented above, over and over? 4? 5? I call that "reaching out!" So what makes you, Agent 99, think there are so many Tea Baggers? Last I heard 77% of Americans want single payer health care, and last time I heard the Tea Baggers don't. That makes 'em 23%, which is a far smaller number than 77%.

Please Grow up! "Big" Dan and others blaming tea baggers...

This is a supreme court ruling that fucks all of us.

If you want to call out Glenn Beck at News Corp. or Keith Olberman at the GE desk, lets do it.

As long as you blame this on your fellow people then the intelligence agencies and the Coup of this country is doing its job.

207

The ones I know wanted Single Payer, too, but got pissed off when that didn't even get on the table. Sure, plenty of them are unclear on the concept, but they tended to think that it would be doctors and hospitals as normal, only everybody could go to them... not mandated premiums, mandated hassling with insurance companies and co-pays, plus government boards to decide what care is worth it and what isn't. That's what turned them on that score, and, aside from their confusion and inarticulateness on some of the issues, they're pretty much angry about the same things we are.

And it doesn't make a difference if their ideology is different. They're our fellow Americans and they want to fight for it. If they're 23% wanting out there to fight, that's 23% to... what?

As much as Tea Partiers irritate me. I agree with 99, they are fellow citizens and by definition that makes them one of us.

Until we on the left realize that all of US are needed to restore democracy then we'll continue to bitch and moan about being screwed over...Isn't that a coincidence ? Tea Partiers think they've been screwed over too...go figure.
Let's not do an idealogical test on the left like they did on the right to see who gets in the clique....As American citizens we were born into the same clique.

Agent 99 stated it very well...Tea Partiers are inarticulate, sadly misinformed and some are racists...well guess what ? Racists signed the Declaratin of Independence and the Constitution....

We who are better informed can educate and become the articulators of the betrayal that the majority of the country feels at this time, and all we need to do is present the truth that's missing in the Tea Parties in a non judgemental, non-elite manner....

We can turn the Tea Party movement from it's unfocused and shrill anger...into a movement for Truth and Justice....

We can haggle over the small shit later...It's too important that we the people stand as a single voice.

The birth certificate nonsense aside and Obama's a muslim comedy...other than that Tea Partiers were right about Obama, he's a sellout who is too cozy with Wall Street and the status quo.

If that were heard by Obama and any other candidates running for office..The people as a single voice demanding Justice and equity in this country...That my friends can not be ignored...

I don't care how much money corporations flood into a campaign....

RE: 210

If that we heard by Obama

Should read:
If that WERE heard by Obama

fuckin' SCOTUS keyboard...

[ed note: "SCOTUS keyboard"... LOL —99]

Also...

We on the left need to stop the verbal warfare with the righties....it only further divides us.

I'm focusing on verbal ju-jitsu...deflecting conflict by cooperating with the other side...We need to learn to debate by asking pertinent questions, not bludgeoning the other side with our intellect or logic.

We may be right, but it only further entrenches righties into their idealological darkness. So what if we win an argument ? But still haven't come together on commonground...hell what was the use in arguing in the first place ?
Winning an argument with a fellow citizen doesn't change anything...it only further distances the us.

Let's let go of the need to be right...and focus on our willingness to heal. Leave our misinformed friends the room to discover the truth for themselves...we can be a guide incognito, but not the presenter of that truth. Righties don't want that.

Truth discovered together is more powerful than Truth force fed...in other words...Let go of our egoic need to seem superior. Tea Partiers are above all fearful people, fearful people are freed by allowing them the room to see for themselves.

I've pointed out on this blog that the fiscal issues central to the tea parties affect all of us. Do progressives believe they will be spared if the nation defaults on it's debt? The only reason we haven't defaulted yet is that we are the world's reserve currency. If China/Russia succeed in replacing that --- the consequences are unpredictable, but they will be severe.

If you're tired of watching members of Congress use the stimulus and health care bills as their own personal re-election slush funds, then you agree with the movement.

Our national debt will reach parity with GDP within the next 24 months. That is a sobering statistic. We've now got a very brief window of time to demonstrate real determination to deal with the problem or the rest of the world will rise up and overthrow the dollar hegemony.

I can think only of some minor edits to improve what BH wrote at 212, and which I believe to my core. Begging his/her forgiveness, I've made the edits in italics below.

Let's let go of the need to be right...and focus on our willingness to heal. Leave our misinformed friends the room to discover the truth for themselves...we can be a guide incognito, but not the presenter of that truth. People don't want that.

Truth discovered together is more powerful than Truth force fed...in other words...Let go of our egoic need to seem superior. Most of us today are above all fearful people, we are freed when allowed the room to see for ourselves.

Brook @ 213,

Do you believe the stimulus is worse than the Bush administration's willingness to lower taxes on the wealthiest while taking us to a war we could not pay for? If it is, why is it?

Once the bottom dropped out of the economy, what alternate approach would you have used to try to get people back to work?

The stimulus is the worst way to create jobs, because it's focusing mostly on large infrastructure projects. That leaves out a lot of other sectors, and totally skips small business. A study in Ohio shows that most of their money is going to Democratic districts. Isn't that a coincidence? You've got politicians playing politics with the stimulus.

In addition, you've got a lot of these green companies waiting on Obama rather than forging ahead, expecting him to level the playing field for them. The health care industry is very much in wait and see mode on a lot of fronts. The uncertainty surrounding these bills is killing jobs.

I agree that cutting the corporate tax rate would have been much smarter, because every business benefits from that. 35% is too high in good times and is insane in a recession. Democrats chose a top down approach, and so far it's not getting the job done.

Brook,

I'm not sure who you're agreeing with about cutting the corporate tax rate --- I don't feel it should be cut.

What assurance does anyone have that lower tax rates would increase jobs? At your 213, you complain about the debt. Wouldn't cutting tax rates raise the debt, or do you still believe in the Laffer curve? Did it work out well when Bush was President, or did lower tax rates simply change who got money? My understanding is that Bush entered office with a surplus and left with the largest annual deficit ever. Haven't we all agreed that trickle-down was a failure?

I do agree with you that some green company plans are probably on hold until they determine who gets the loans --- the first round of tax credits has already been announced.

You're saying that the stimulus is being disproportionately spent in Democratic districts. Maybe. Weren't the Bush tax cuts disproportionately handed out in Republican ones?

Re: Cutting the corporate tax rate...

Cut corporate taxes only if they can prove that their product or service is supplied by 100% of American labor. If any of the product or service is done by ANY foriegn worker or offshore...then their tax rated will be significantly increased.

American corporations can't brag about supplying Americans jobs and prosperity, while their labor is done mainly by exploited foriegners. These very same corps claim to be the biggest American patriots...what a crock of shit.
I'm damn tired of that corporate tap dance...

Corporations that shipped millions of jobs overseas and then left the unemployment bill for the American taxpayer, shouldn't have gotten a tax break, they should have gotten heavily penalized.

Greed is a terrible way to run a company or nation...

I know I'm dreaming...that will never happen now...

BH @219,

Boycotts based on lack of American content DO have a chance, and can start small and grow.

Campaigns to require American-based corporations to publish their American payrolls and American content as part of their SEC disclosure documents DO have a chance, and would dovetail nicely with boycotts.

The left, somehow, needs to learn how to reverse the impact of corporate advertising. I'm not sure how, but the task is to make it so that the lies implicit in the advertising can no longer be missed.

I think Tea Partiers are right about one thing that's always struck me as a serious intellectual failure on the part of the left.

There's no reason --- especially today --- to think that the people will accomplish via government something that the people aren't willing to work for on their own. If the left can't get 10% of the population to participate in a boycott, it's not going to get sixty Senators, or fifty one, or ten. If the left CAN get 10% of the population to participate in a boycott, it can scare the Senate shitless.

One campaign would be to have volunteer greeters in or near the parking lot of Wal-Mart (etc...), with large banners reading "Welcome to China" --- there could be handouts with very large Chinese flags dominating tiny American flags, showing a graphic comparison of the Chinese/Furner content against the Merican content.

The crowd that is now focused on poor Mexicans who are trying to come here to send cash back to their families would, or should, eat that up.

"Welcome to China," says the round guy wearing a Mao jacket. Let me explain how we keep our prices so low. It only costs 20 cents to hire an 11 year old from the provinces, because she has no other options if she wants to eat. Thank you for buying the sweater she produced --- you just paid $4 to General Electric for advertising, $2 to the top 100 Wal-Mart executives, and $0.02 for that girl's labor. ALL OF US AT WAL-MART THANK YOU.

Up until the last year of his term, Bush's economy was very good. We had an unemployment rate below 4% at one point. The housing bubble burst just like the internet bubble burst, but that was caused by interest rates and not tax rates.

Bush did fail to control the deficit, which is why you are seeing the tea party carefully vet who they are going to support. We don't want anymore cut tax and spend RINO's.

The real problem is there has never been a serious attempt to cut the size of government, since Gingrich tried and failed. While state and local governments have been cutting to the bone, how many federal employees have you seen laid off? How many have been asked to take a pay cut? Obama hasn't even made a symbolic move of cutting the White House staff. 20% of federal employees now make 100K or more in salary, and some of these folks sit on an advisory board a few weeks a year to earn that. Do the math on how much we are going to have to pay for their retirement. It adds up to about $ 2 million for each of them.

Cutting corporate taxes will make America a more competitive nation to keep and attract jobs here, and it will help small business the most.

Brooks,

Isn't complimenting Bush on the economy up to his last year a bit like saying that the car was working fine until the gas tank ran dry and the oil pan stopped dripping?

Was there any gain in productive capacity in the United States during Bush's eight years? I don't think so. I think corporate profits went up because of outsourcing, tax changes, war, and the loss of power by unions. I don't think quality of life went up for the typical American worker.

As for the size of the federal workforce, here are some figures. You'll notice it went down substantially under Clinton, but rose under Bush.

I agree with you that too many Federal employees make more than $100,000 --- the inflation in Federal pay was severe under Bush.

Here's a link from Cato that compares average pay rates --- the Federal civilian work force is below that of most of the energy industry, and near that of utilities.

I don't see any equivalent for MEDIAN pay rates, but I'd bet it would show a very different story. As we both know, when Bill Gates walks into a bar, the average net-worth of everyone in the bar climbs into the multi-millions.

I still don't understand what facts you base your final assertion on; how would simply cutting corporate taxes make America more able to keep and attract jobs? What would keep the corporations from distributing the gains to their shareholders and executives, and continuing to outsource jobs? Won't the continued decay in infrastructure and education hurt our competitiveness? Why not collect the taxes and invest them in infrastructure repair and targeted growth industries like alternative energy?

Brook @223
Stop with the corporate tax cuts crap.

Corporate tax cuts don't "trinkle down"; they get ate up in executive bonuses which is their purpose. A corporate tax cut hasn't saved one American job....get real.

Your constant defending the greedy corporatocracy is counter productive to democracy.

Here's a news flash for you guys: every business within 5 miles of your house is a corporation. The food in your fridge, the desk you're sitting at, the lights working in your house --- all brought to you by a corporation. Most of them are run by hard-working folks making middle/upper middle class money. If each of them could pay less taxes and hire just one more person --- look at the difference that makes.

Study what happened in Ireland, when they dropped their corporate tax rate to 12.5%. It transformed the nation, because American/Euro corps went over there and set up shop. In a global marketplace, the top corporate rate matters.

In this country, you see the jobs going to the Sunbelt states with low tax rates and right to work laws. TX has been weathering the recession pretty well, while CA teeters on the brink of default. Any lessons to be learned there, guys?

You guys can spout your theories on trickle down stimulus all day long. I'm more interested in what actually works.

You guys can spout your theories on trickle down stimulus all day long. I'm more interested in what actually works.

I'm interested in what works, too. You still haven't offered evidence that reducing corporate taxes will work in the U.S.

You say that Ireland has a corporate tax rate of 12.5%, and that lowering the rate brought investment. Sure, Ireland has been a leader in the "race to the bottom" on corporate taxes. But Irish tax revenue declined from 45 billion to 35 billion from 2006 to 2009. The Irish government spent 56 billion in 2009, so this doesn't look very sustainable.

Further, Irish personal income tax has two brackets: 20% and 41%, with 41% kicking in at 36,400 euros. There's also a value added tax, something like a national sales tax, that brings in nearly 40% of tax revenues.

What happens when Ireland decides to collect as much in taxes as their government costs? Should they raise the top income tax bracket to 50%? Raise the VAT? Or raise the corporate taxes back to the rates used in the rest of Europe?

Brooks, what logical connection is there between corporate tax rates and employment within the United States? I can understand why, perhaps, paying the business share of FICA for American workers might have a positive effect --- that would lower the cost of hiring Americans as opposed to outsourcing. But why should just lowering the general tax rate help bring jobs to America? Especially if the reductions are not tied in any way to using American labor or American-made products?

Sorry, Brook (not Brooks), I'm not good at this technique of echoing people's names back at them.

Brook @226

Here's a news flash for you guys: every business within 5 miles of your house is a corporation. The food in your fridge, the desk you're sitting at, the lights working in your house --- all brought to you by a corporation. Most of them are run by hard-working folks making middle/upper middle class money. If each of them could pay less taxes and hire just one more person --- look at the difference that makes.

* I prefer the food in my fridge to be grown and produced locally, not by some international corp.
* I prefer my furniture to be manufactered by Americans...not in Chinese or Taiwanese labor.
* My power I prefer to be publically owned, not by some corporation. Power should be a community resource, not a corporate product.
Also Brook....check into the difference between corporations and small businesses. Large corporations are killing small Mainstreet businesses.

Study what happened in Ireland, when they dropped their corporate tax rate to 12.5%. It transformed the nation, because American/Euro corps went over there and set up shop. In a global marketplace, the top corporate rate matters.

I wonder how the Irish middle class wage earner is doing.

In this country, you see the jobs going to the Sunbelt states with low tax rates and right to work laws. TX has been weathering the recession pretty well, while CA teeters on the brink of default. Any lessons to be learned there, guys?

That's way oversimplified...especially pertaining to what's happened in California.

You guys can spout your theories on trickle down stimulus all day long. I'm more interested in what actually works.

I don't remember anyone mentioning a "trickle down stimulus"...

Ireland should emulate my state that has a balanced budget amendment, and our governor quickly moved to cut spending to keep pace with the lost revenue. We are hurting for sure, but we have no long-term debt and are holding our own. This is sound fiscal management.

I can tell neither one of you have run your own business. Large or small, the tax laws are the same. If i have to explain how sending 35% of my profits to the feds gives me less to work with to grow my business --- maybe you should apply for a job in the Obama White House. I think you'll be a good candidate.

Brook

Whatever the rate, entirely too many huge corporations do not pay their share, do not pay at all. EVEN if yer just a small business, paying 35% to the common welfare instead of growing your personal welfare, even if it might instead have eked out a paycheck for another person, is considered by most decent people to be the price one should be avid to pay for a decent society.

Leaving aside the indecency of our society, one can't build the common welfare unless the commons will support it. This has nothing to do with capitalism vs. communism or socialism, nothing to do with form of government and monetary policy, or even taxation. It has to do with citizenship in a decent society. Tough shit if that 35% could grow your business. Grow it more slowly or leave it where it produces enough and use that extra growth energy to make a better world instead of merely a more profitable one.

Life isn't a Ponzi Scheme, even if too many want to play it that way.

We should emulate your (unnamed) state, we don't know anything about business (you're wrong, btw), and we should apply for jobs in the Administration because we are know-nothings?

So, no answers, huh, Brook?

Brook @230

I can tell neither one of you have run your own business.

If I had a dollar every time some corporate apologist used that weak argument; I would be rich.

I think 99 @231 fielded that nonsense well...I won't add to what she said.

Small locally owned businesses are what fuels a robust economy. According to how that business is structured a 35% tax rate isn't a given. Many small businesses are not paying 35%...but they are employing local citizens who are paying payroll taxes. UNTIL...
Some corporate asshole with local political connections swoops in...cuts a no tax deal with the state and local governments and bigfoots that small business into ruin.
That corporate asshole then shortly ships the manufactering of the product overseas and leaves the state the bill to pay unemployment benefits...until those run out...

Corporate asshole ruined a community's economy...and didn't pay a dime in local taxes....
It's happened 1000's if not 10s of thousands of times over the last 25 years.

Here in California, we know what it is like to have no limits on corporate spending on elections; our government is no longer functioning. The ruling last week by the US Supremes has no impact whatsoever on elections for California state offices because California campaign finance law is already considerably weaker than federal law, and corporations already can and do spend massive amounts to influence state elections. The ruling illustrates yet again that Fair Elections public financing of campaigns is by far the best solution to ending the corrupting effects of the outrageous amounts of money in politics.
On the June 8 ballot Californians will have the opportunity to vote for the California Fair elections Act, an important step in changing the way we finance campaigns so elected officials are accountable to voters, not donors.

It's a classic argument that neither side is going to agree on. My business is not a Ponzi scheme. it's honest work that supports my family.

At the risk of sounding evangelical, progressives need an old-fashioned come to Jesus moment. There is simply not enough money in all the millionaire bank accounts to pay for all the things you want to do. Roll back the Bush tax cuts, and it's still a drop in the ocean. The unsustainable costs of SS and Medicare, plus our enormous debt make a very deep hole to dig out of. I'm interested in hearing what you guys propose to fix these very serious problems.

Brook @235

You mean that 8 years of W Bush wasn't a "come to Jesus" moment ?

Your comments seems like your blaming this country's ills on Progressive policies...
While you ignore corporate welfare, fighting two draining wars where no objectives can be met, except to further enrich defense contractors (corporate) and Wall Street sucking a trillion dollars of tax payer funds into their greedy hands....

But you would begrudge a senior citizen medical care...and a retiree social security...
Methinks you corporate apologists need to come to Jesus and stop worshipping at the temple of Mammon...rememeber your humanity.

Corporations don't breath air, so they can pollute with impunity,
Corporations can't get physically ill, so they don't need medical care,
Corporations don't feel hunger pangs, so they don't care about poverty,
Corporations don't have a sense of personal self worth, so they could care less how many people are unemployed.

It's ironic that Brook, while defending the souless enitities called corporations, is telling others they need a "come to Jesus" moment...

That's truly laughable....

Growth capitalism is a Ponzi Scheme. Support your family and pay your 35%. Your idea of increasing the comfort of your family over increasing the quality of the society they live in is a Ponzi Scheme mentality. If there's enough money or credit or good will to provide healthcare and infrastructure and social safety nets for citizens, these should be undertaken before using any of those to pay out trillions for wars and trillions for bank bailouts. ANYONE CAN SEE THAT. Free market capitalism is a Ponzi Scheme. IT HAS BEEN THOROUGHLY DISCREDITED.

Those at the top of the pyramid are paying to bullhorn the revival of its credibility, but it's plain as day anyway... but thanks for boosting our stats with yer obtuse arguments, Brook. Big help.

Brook,

I'm going to have to leave the conversation, but here's my response to your invitation @235.

First, I don't doubt that your business is honest work that supports your family.

Second, I don't disagree that we've been dug into a very deep hole. (We may disagree about who got us there, and why. We both know the famous Grover Norquist quote.)

What will get us out? One possibility is that we won't get out. It terrifies me that the biggest military power on the planet is also the biggest debtor. That sounds like dynamite.

But people sometimes rise to the occasion, even when we don't expect it to happen. Vaclav Havel was able to fight a system with truth, and win. Nelson Mandela was able to fight a system with truth and love, and win. Martin Luther King was able to move things forward despite the bottomless hatred inside so many of America's powerful whites.

The list goes on, and I'm sure it would include hundreds of unknown names.

What's going to have to happen is that Americans are going to have to learn to get our satisfaction from seeing our neighbors able to eat, rather than from buying a larger TV, car, or boat. Someday, we may be able to feel shame when we keep far more than we need while others go without, for no reason beyond bad fortune in parents. The solution is in your bible, whether you believe in God or, like me, just believe in the Sermon on the Mount.

There is a Buddhist story about heaven and hell that I love as much as anything I've ever heard:

Hell is a huge banquet hall filled with delicious food. Yet everyone in the hall is hungry, because everyone has long, unbreakable fingernails that keep them from being able to put food in their mouth.

Heaven is the exact same hall, once the people have learned to feed one another.

Mitch and 99 @237-38

99 ...Very good points...I'm amazed at what the corporate apologists refuse to see.

Mitch...beautiful...

Well, the standard progressive anti-corporate rhetoric continues --- even though i've pointed out the lowly Chinese guy running his buffett is a corporation.

You guys simply aren't even trying to dig deep for any real solutions to the problems facing this country that are viable.

Bill Gates pointed out the economy will take years to recover, but there is no way in hell that tax increases are going to fly to pay for an out of control government.

So, we have to think in different ways about wealth, and there are plenty of experiments going on around the world. Community currencies are a viable way to boost local economies. North Dakota has a state bank that can capitalize their banks without running to the Fed. MN has a transportation act in their congress that will use debt-free, interest-free money to pay for transportation projects.

These are where the solutions lie, folks. The 20th Century model of funding government with taxes and debt will not work for this century. The obligations are simply too large, so we either start thinking outside the box or watch SS and Medicare pay out to the last dollar and then fold.

Don't be too sure the Tea Party people will jump on board with us. Karl Denninger is one who likes the decision. http://market-ticker.org...f-Speech-How-Quaint.html Well at least he started a lively debate at his forum in this comment thread: http://tickerforum.org/c...ker/akcs-www?post=125556 Hopefuly, at least *half* of them will wake up. But I won't hold my breath.

Brook...your strawman arguments are getting tedious.

Bill Gates pointed out the economy will take years to recover, but there is no way in hell that tax increases are going to fly to pay for an out of control government.

Please show me where any of us proposed increasing taxes...you made that up.
What we did state was that many corporations actually aren't paying ANY TAXES AT ALL.
But you ignored that point...

You also haven't addressed at all the corporate welfare that has sapped our treasury, the bigfoot drain of Mainstreet business that multi-national corporations commit and then leave the government with the unemployment benefits bill to pay.

You seem to be a one trick pony...hammering the same tired point, without addressing anyone else's points one bit.

So, we have to think in different ways about wealth, and there are plenty of experiments going on around the world. Community currencies are a viable way to boost local economies. North Dakota has a state bank that can capitalize their banks without running to the Fed. MN has a transportation act in their congress that will use debt-free, interest-free money to pay for transportation projects.

I think myself, Mitch and 99 have all stated that locally based economies are what makes prosperity. Businesses that the people of the community own, manage and employ citizens of that community...not just retail...but manufacter or originate the service their business provides.

I think you just like to hear yourself blabber...read back...pick out a point that myself, Mitch or 99 made and answer that.

Stop conjuring up strawmen out of whole cloth...

Edward Miessner @241

Turning half the tea partiers would be awesome...

I in no way entertain that we need to turn all of them...half of them waking up would be an awesome movement.

Here is one sensible Tea Partier trying to reason with others on one topic: marriage equality.

http://teapartypatriots....-marriage-equality-a-tea

Definitely an upstream battle.

Fascism had it way starting on 9-11-01. But look at some interesting factors, regarding that. Research, you all. Look at science. Then realize that this is what and where power hangs its fascist hat. Expose. Be an activist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXE1g2VEwYE

http://911blogger.com/node/22042

Haven't been able to keep up with these threads, unfortunately, but I peaked in long enough to see that Brook is pounding the same old nonsense. Still.

Here's an idea for the new century for ya, Brook. How about cut the *real* strain on our budget, since you've convinced yourself your so concerned about "out of control spending by the Government". That would be the military budget. The largest in the history of the world, and largest than just about everyone else's *combined*.

That cost, for phony, endless wars that I'm quite sure you supported, continues to bankrupt the nation, even as you refer to Social Security and Medicare as a drain. They are nothing --- nothing --- compared to the cost of your endless, needless wars.

Reduce the military budget by the tiniest percentile, and everything else can be paid off in a heart beat.

Are you REALLY concerned about out of control governmental spending? Then let's hear you call for a cut of the military budget to pay off our budget shortfalls --- and its interest --- everywhere else.

Concerned about the "defense" of this country? I'm sure you'd agree that paying off our debts to foreign country is likely the most important thing this nation can do to defend itself against ultimate ruin.

So, let's hear ya say it. Or, you can simply reword the same tired old Fox "News" Tea Bagger screeds here yet again. Up to you.

Brad @246.... Exacamundo.

Roughly 1 Trillion dollars per year goes to support the US Empire, and that doesn't include the monies raised il;egaly by the CIA to fund their balckest ops. $1 Trillion per year. Just think what that could have been used for over the past 15 years--because that's how long we've been spending averaged for that span--$15 Trillion. Wasted. Squandared. And then there's the next 15 years, with probably much more than $1 Trillion per year given the future wars envisioned by US Imperial planners. And with inflation, lets say $20 Trillion of wanton wastage--not to mention the Priceless Lives murdered--over the next 15 years.

Well there are a lot of Ron Paul supporters at the tea parties that want out of iraq and afghanistan as well. So, you guys may not know these people like you think.

The CIA has clearly been busy cornering the opium market in Afghanistan. Ron Paul excoriated them in his latest speech.

Cutting the military budget still won't make up the long term difference though. SS and Medicare have to be overhauled and soon or they will go broke.

Progressives need to address these serious fiscal problems or you're not going to attract independent votes.

Brad

i don't get this ... if the supreme court decision actually troubles you ( as it seems to have shaken a lot of us ), how can YOU in good conscience advertise ( & directly or indirectly support ) this Carly Sneed-Fiorino for senator nonsense ... she's as glaringly CORPORATE as they come !

she's the former corporate director of both Hewlett-Packard & Lucent fer chrissake !
( & arguably one of the worst CEOs ever !) & her business legacy is one of cynically engineering & fostering a profits over people mentality at all corners ... patentedly disgusting, frankly ...

just don't see, Brad, how you can, in good conscience, support her bid to run for senate against one of our better anti-corporate, enviro-friendly lawmakers, Barbara Boxer

it appalls me actually ...

Brook,

Of course cutting the military budget will help. When you say it won't make up the long term difference in SS and Medicare, that's like saying that there's no point in patching the biggest hole in the dike because there are other holes, that over the next twenty years, will become critical.

One area where we probably disagree is that I don't feel the 25% or more of our economy that we devote to trying to rule the world has helped us one bit. It has diverted productive resources into their opposite.

There may have been an excuse for some of our military spending until the Berlin Wall came down. There is no excuse for our level of military spending now, when our "enemy" can bring us down with box-cutters or a high-school chemistry lab.

How many soldiers have come back dead, psychologically damaged, or without a limb, thanks to W's illegal wars?

How much has our debt, and therefore our obligations to a set of dictators in China, increased?

How many people have lost their mothers or fathers, sisters or brothers, children or grandchildren or neighbors to American-manufactured bombs or land mines? How many of those people might want to attack our country, when they weren't interested in doing that before?

Surely you can see the difference between cutting guns and cutting butter?

Mitch @250 RE: Brook....

Sadly Mitch...Brook and others like him, can't or refuse to see the difference. Big Business trumps all...
So what if people are dying in poverty, soldiers and Middle Eastern civilians are dying needlessy and communties across America are devastated... etc etc.
Those things are good for business so it must be okay...

Mitch you need a "come to Jesus" moment...

BlueHawk,

In my experience, people argue their position more and more strenuously when they worry about how shaky it seems. Put another way, it's darkest just before the dawn.

For those of us who believe in Democratic change, respectful argument with those whom with we disagree is both critical and practical. Practical because it has the potential to show us the flaws in our own arguments, and because it is a sharing of information, even if that isn't obvious in the moment.

The left is always for "the people," but when a whole lot of "the people" get together in Tea Parties, the left shows no interest. It remains in its circle-jerk, coming up with schemes that, to "the people" are more and more hare-brained.

Sure, corporate domination of media is part of the reason people buy into right-wing propaganda. But I firmly believe that people are not stupid. When someone comes along (like the Obama from the campaign) who puts an appealing face on liberal change, a lot of people will listen, despite Fox News.

It's a shame that the Obama from the campaign went AWOL within weeks of being elected. I think there may be horrifying reasons, but that's another story. The important point is: a large majority of people voted for someone (someone black, fercryinoutloud) who talked about liberal change.

Not sure you guys understood i want our troops out of iraq and afghanistan, so we are in agreement there. There is a rogue faction of our military/intelligence that are involved in numerous illegal activities.

I view the repeal of the Federal Reserve Act as essential to fixing our fiscal problems. These crooks are responsible for financing these rogue factions and all kinds of corruption around the world. We don't need the Fed. The Treasury can issue debt-free money as required by the economy. Getting support for this will be a huge battle, but i believe progressives support us on this.

Brook @253

Halle-friggin-luyah!!!!!

I agree 100% with that.

That my friend is our commonground...

Brook said @ 248:

Well there are a lot of Ron Paul supporters at the tea parties that want out of iraq and afghanistan as well. So, you guys may not know these people like you think.

I know them quite well, Brook. And many of the Paul folks are pissed off at the pretender tea baggers for coopting their legitimate movement (no, they didn't wait to be concerned about the Constitution and spending, until there was a Democrat in office, they've been yelling and screaming and being marginalized by you Bush supporter/sore loser folks for years.)

Cutting the military budget still won't make up the long term difference though. SS and Medicare have to be overhauled and soon or they will go broke.

Apparently you've been spending too much time drinking tea and not enough time educating yourself about the spending you've been convinced that you're so furious about.

Is it because Glenn Beck and friends don't often show you this chart?

Now that's the 2006 budget. Since then, Defense Spending is just 54% of the budget, instead of 57%, but to suggest as you did, that cuts in military spending --- far and away the greatest expenditure in this nation --- "won't make up the long term difference" in the deficit, suggests (yet again) that you have been extraordinarily mis-informed.

Noah A. @ 249 -

I don't have direct control over a number of the rotating banner ads you're likely referring to. I've not seen the Fiorina ad you mention. Those rotate based on where you are logging in from, and what information is on the page you're viewing itself.

While I certainly don't support Fiorina, our policy is that we have a separation of ad and editorial and we don't bar ads (even if I had been familiar with that one, and was able to track it down to filter it out of the rotating feed from Google) unless they are blatantly disinformative. If Fiorina wants to waste her pennies on The BRAD BLOG, that's up to her. It's likely money NOT spent elsewhere where her ads might have a bit more of an effect.

Check out Bill Still's new movie called The Secret of Oz or his older 3 hour movie called the The Money Masters (link below) for a great history how the Illuminati took over the right to print money, cause inflations, cause the Great Depression, and way to fix the system.

http://www.esoterictube....m/the-money-masters.html

International bankers control of the US money system must end if "WE" Americans are ever to have a government of "WE THE PEOPLE" again. This system which gives so much power and discretion to a few men whose sole purpose is to obtain the greatest possible profits from the use of other people's money MUST BE STOPPED.

The recent Supreme Court Justices must be charges with TREASON, and this decision reversed to ban the Corporate elites from the US Election system.

Corporations must also be banned or laws enacted severely restricting control of the US mass media and political lobbies such as military "death" contractors.

Another problem endemic of this Fascist decision to allow politicians to be bought by International Corporatists is that NON-AMERICAN interests will now have this control in state and or national matters. Another slap in the face from a group of greedy lying killers.

We are no better than NAZI Germany except we have Arabs as scapegoats instead of Jews. Until repaired, "WE" need not call this government a Democracy because it total bullshit.

What we need from the New World Order Illuminati is a new holiday to light of firecrackers on the date of this decision to celebrate the interlocking enslavement that got passed off as US law.

Fck these bastards.

cool !

thanks, Brad for the update & the explanation ... i was certainly hoping that to be the case, for i couldn't figure out why on earth Fiorina's mug would be up here ... what alarmed me though, was that her ad fell not at the top of the page w/ the other rotating ads but just to the right of the main text on your front page (& just to the left of the leader for the Coakley concession story ), making it appear as if it certainly was an endorsement ( yikes !) ... am grateful to learn otherwise !

( although this was my 1st post-response, since i'm not one to jostle jaws much on blogs, i AM a frequent visitor & love yer 'slant' on things ... keep up the WONDERFUL work ! )

- thanks

This should give all who have discriminate thinking and speaking skills the right to immediatelly begin pointing out the clear differences here and start calling them by their true labels:

"FREE SPEECH" and
"BOUGHT SPEECH."

OK, here's a song parody re this decision, with apologies to "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer":

You’ve got Roberts, Alito, Scolia and Thomas
Kennedy joined them, and now I can promise
We’ll regret their call,
The most heinous ruling of all.

Rudolph the corporation
Didn’t even have a nose
But it could still smell money,
That’s the way our country goes

All of the human beings
Had to scrape to pay their rents
To Rudolph the corporation
Who owned all the tenements.

On that fateful winter’s day
Roberts came to say,
“Rudolph with your mega bucks
Dress up in this brand new tux...

Now if the people protest
Drown them out with money. See
Rudolph the corporation
You will now own history.

donilo