I hope this does not instantly morph into a partisan shouting match, but am pretty sure it will. Fact is, we expect our politicians to lie to us and they do with impunity. We need to raise a major fuss every time any politician of any party stands there and lies to us.
As it is they seem to know they can get away with outrageous lies.


Anyone who thinks lies are the exclusive province of either party is simply dellusional.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100220/ap_on_an/us_consequences_of_untruths_analysis

We need a dictator, not a President and Congress. They are hopelessly enslaved by corporate interests, and simply will not act in the interests of the majority of Americans.

Goldman Sachs just posted record profits..........pulling the same kind of financial voodoo in the derivatives market that took us down the road to recession, and by preying upon people with credit card balances. So far Congress has done nothing to regulate the banking industry to try to stop the looming crash that will come when these derivatives are exposed as the Ponzi schemes that they are.

The blood from this gutted economy is on the hands of both parties........but we'll vote for them in the next election anyway because
the other guy will take our guns/allow gays to marry/not allow gays to marry/you get the idea.

We're a pathetic excuse for an electorate.

Yep, toss a wedge issue or two into the mix, some unflattering video and your candidate wins.
Then we all get on the merry-go-round until the next cycle.

I fear KK may be right. Our elected representatives are bought and paid for by corporations, unions, special interest groups and any other group that can scrape together enough money to turn their heads. Add to that the recent Supreme Court decision that seems to open the buy-a-politician floodgates even wider, including foreign interests, and I believe we are doomed to mediocrity at best and complete collapse at worst.
Add to the above the fact that most politicians seem far more interested in their survival and party domination than they are in making America better. And then consider ethics committees that are worse than useless. We are indeed in a major mess, and I don't see an easy way out.

Hey, we have the very best government that money can buy!

Problem is, even if we had a benevolent dictator, he or she would be bought off by the same corporate interests that own our present government. Therefore, a different form of government wouldn't benefit any of us; just the super-rich.

No one's listenin', but I keep sayin', "up the revolution!" Maybe go French style this time - the entire aristocracy gets beheaded. Create new opportunity for a new generation of corruption, greed, avarice, and all the other assorted negative attributes of humanity.

Thankfully we are not a Democracy.

+2

Fortunatly there is a document that provides a pretty good road map for successful governance. If your rep does not vote in line with it, then they are in violation of their oath and of their office,.....they must then go.

Publicly financed elections would be a good first step.

I agree

Can you old farts remember LBJ?

I'd take Ron Paul for President anyday of the week and twice on Sunday.

Hell KK,.......he'd get you half those things anyway.

Got anybody better?

The time to vote for RP was in the last election.

The way things are going, he just might get some traction in the next election...................and 27,823 people nationwide will vote for him.

Ron isn't exactly in trouble, but, the tea baggers that he helped to create are
turning on him down in Texas.

Someone hit the nail on the head with the publicly financed election idea.
I have thought for quite some time that campaign funds should be capped
at a certain amount, 5 mill, 10 mill. whatever. An independent 3rd party would over see the funds. IMO that would drive the politicians back to having more debates on free tv, they would have to do more interviews to get their message out, and would cut down on the deluge of political ads during election years. Now it is just who can raise the most money.

Did then and will again if he runs. C'mon Dan,......have a little faith. Over 2mil pulled the lever for Ron in the primaries and who knows how many write-in ballots for Prez. Campaign for Liberty itself is well over 1mil members nationwide now.

How about this? Maybe we should take down the American flag and put Goldman Sachs insignia up in it's place.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0109/18047.html

I think that he was a guy who used to pick up Beagles by their ears.
Did the same thing to the opposition.

1. publicly funded elections would eliminate a very significant part of the "buying your own Congressman or Senator" problem. Who are the ones who are against this on "free speech" grounds? The corporations who already own their own Congressman or Senator, and the pre-owned Congressmen and Senators, the ones who are supposed to be representing us.

2. Getting recommended by CPAC is like getting a recommendation on diet plans from Rosie O'Donnell...also known as the "kiss of death". Sorry 'bout that, Ron Paul...shouldn't have been hanging with those dipshits to begin with, you get what you deserve...which is a newfound decided lack of credibility with the folks who "used" to support you.

Fish on...

Todd

An interesting bit from Time magazine recently:

GOP/Dems Work Together -- When Retired

Suggests that the constant need for fund raising in modern American politics is a major factor in the huge degree of partisanship we're seeing. I was really sick/sad the day the Supreme Court recently reversed the rules prohibiting corps/union campaign contributions -- this article made me even more disappointed with that decision.

I admit it's very hard to reconcile how to balance free speech concerns versus limiting monied interests in politics--but it seems like some big BIG changes are needed to set things back in balance.

I continually am struck how my "representatives" (say from my home state of Washington) vote along GOP/Democrat lines far more often then they vote as a block of WASHINGTON representatives... Are they representing my state, or their PARTY?

Obviously, seeing as how his "War on Poverty" was a resounding success.

(the ball is on the tee KK )

Guilt by association huh? You must not know his positions or his supporters very well. #2 there was a fairly ignorant comment.

Funny thing Hank is that it seems Todd has no idea Paul supporters are the arch enemies of Neocons everywhere (for many reasons but mostly for differences on foreign policy).

Paul has attended the CPAC conference many times. He's often met with boos.

Hey Todd,

Whats wrong with making an attempt to persuade so-called conservatives into accepting a realistic world view?

No problem with gathering up as many supporters as you can...and yes, guilt by association does come up, or you wouldn't have all the righties continually harping on about a total non-issue, that of ACORN.

CPAC is full of nutcases.

That being said, it was a bit refreshing to see some of the attendees at this week's conference booing that hateful bigot Sorba...I'll admit, that surprised me.

Fish on...

Todd

I didn't ask whether or not the right uses ACORN as guilt by association. How old are you? They did it so it's OK for you to do it?

ACORN is full of nutcases too, so are a lot of other organizations from all shapes. What does that prove? That some people are crazy? Pat yourself on the back now.

I can say with 99.9% certainty that the boos for Sorba were coming from the C4L attendees, they were there in force as they were last year. So see,.....the very fact that Paul and his supporters were there resulted in an occurence that "suprised" and "refreshed" you.

Well this took longer than I thought it would, but the outcome was inevitable.

Methinks that SW takes the InterWebz a little too seriously.

Fish on...

Todd

Ok I'll concede that I get a little worked up at times but you still averted from addressing anything I said.

That being said, I'll take what you said with a grain of salt considering it came from someone who has made over 10,000 posts here over the course of ten years,..........I take the interwebz a little too seriously??

Maybe you should take a peek in the mirror duder.

That's only about three posts per day...yer averagin' 'bout the same so far

Fish on...

Todd

Touche

Speaking French now? Are you surrendering?

Surrender to you Commies?,....... Never

I'm just man enough to concede to someone when they have made a good point. No sense in letting pride get in the way of logical conversation.

You might want to write that one down.

To Dave's and Dan's OP, I think this is very relevant about the demise of our republic
("to control The Majority strictly, as well as all others among the people, primarily to protect The Individual’s God-given, unalienable rights and therefore for the protection of the rights of The Minority, of all minorities, and the liberties of people in general")
Which is wrongly called a democracy ("majority over man"), and may help "shed the chains" (see 14th Amendment, below) of our current coke/pepsi corporatist governance.

its a brief soapbox, then I'll go back to contemplating weighted vs. unweighted worms "in the zone".

We can handle big words, big concepts, need big attention spans (turn off the TV), big consequences (debt slavery for most americans) for ignoring it. This is where the "uneducated electorate" needs to pay attention. There is a strong streak of learned anti-intellectualism that's pervasive in our culture. I don't think that's an accident. But it is harmful to a national dialogue on how to weather the next decades.

http://www.tripzine.com/listing.php?id=corporate_metabolism

"Individual Sovereignty

In 01861, the US Civil War erupted, ostensibly over the moral issue of slavery, but arguably fought over political and commercial issues: Northerners distrusted the Southern plantation model, convinced that it would not support the economic expansion required for their corporations.

Toward the close of the conflict, in 01864, President Lincoln sent a letter to Col. William F. Elkins, apprehending the war's true nature and eventual outcome: "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, ... and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." Note that these words came from the man — one of the first notable Republican leaders — who had championed a bloody war effort to crush anti-corporate rebellion.

Slavery was abolished, and three years after the war ended, the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution established "equal protection" under the law for all persons. Or was that "equal protection" for corporations? Within two decades, in 01886, the infamous Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (118 U.S. 394) case invoked the 14th Amendment to protect corporations as "legal persons" which in turn acted as agents and property of "natural persons". In other words, as constitutionally endorsed tulpas. This decision strengthened precedents established by Dartmouth v. Woodward to remove control of corporations from state/populace jurisdiction. In a haunting sense, the text of the decision also recalled the "natural man" quote by Hobbes.

Question #4: How much did the 14th Amendment actually get used to benefit African Americans?

Writing fifty years later in 01938, US Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black echoed Lincoln's eleventh-hour realization: "...of the cases in this Court in which the Fourteenth Amendment was applied during the first fifty years after its adoption, less than one-half of one per cent. invoked it in protection of the negro race, and more than fifty per cent. asked that its benefits be extended to corporations... I do not believe that the Fourteenth Amendment had that purpose, nor that the people believed it had that purpose, nor that it should be construed as having that purpose."

There you have it folks. Thirty years after the ratification of the US Constitution, the original experiment in democracy was over. Defunct. Back to being worse off than they'd fared as colonists, the Americans got pissed off and started to war with each other. No matter what you learned in school (using textbooks produced by corporate publishers, no doubt) the war concerned slavery... It meant precious little about ending the subjugation of African Americans, since de facto civil rights would not even begin to happen for another hundred years! The war, however, meant much more about establishing and enforcing corporate slavery, which 118 U.S. 394 practically guaranteed. America launched into its heyday of trusts, robber barons, etc. Individual sovereignty was all but gone. In effect, referendum by the populace had itself become a risk externalized by the corporate form."

Ain't it provoking?

Tangled webs ain't in it, what?

BEHEADINGS? COUNT ME IN!!

"tree of liberty", and all that..

I think it needs some watering