It boils down to this: Their opposition is more adept at selling lies than the Democrats are at selling the truth.
A case in point is the recent appearance of the Speaker of the House to announce that the president has no fiscal-cliff plan - none whatsoever. And it is more than likely that this lie, like all its cousins that came before it, is largely believed by those who heard it. The truth is that the president has actually submitted three sequential fiscal-cliff plans to Boehner, as the latter well knows. The most recent would call for a deficit reduction of well over $4 trillion and would roughly match spending cuts with revenue raisers.
Highlighting another example, a recent Bloomberg poll revealed that 62% of the respondents thought that the annual deficits were getting bigger, while 28% thought they were about the same and only 6% believed they were getting smaller. These views were consistent with a tsunami of distorted information disseminated from right-wing shows that allege to report the news. The truth is that the deficit for fiscal 2012 is $211 billion less than 2011 and the projected deficit for 2013 is $188 billion less than 2012. It is nothing less than disturbing that only 6% of the public knew the truth on this important matter.
Dan Rather was interviewed on television the other day and his main complaint was that lies have become a central component of some newscasts. One doesn't have to be psychic to know that he was referring primarily to FOX News, the broadcast company that was denied the right to establish an operation in Canada because that country has laws against lying in news reports.
While journalistic integrity would be a welcome goal in the U.S., it is an unlikely one. The Supreme Court would undoubtedly strike down any such legislation, just as they have struck down many of the provisions that attempted to control money in politics. In the name of free speech, the current makeup of the court seems determined to cut the political legs out from under the middle class.
So, while it is true that the Democrats are suffering from a failure to communicate, it is equally true that there is little they can do about it. The so-called 1%, the “elite,“ have erected the perfect stumbling block. In achieving their goal of converting our democracy into a plutocracy, the wealthiest among us have not only conducted a decades-long campaign against organized labor, which was once the muscle of the middle class, but have also used their wealth to purchase control of both the political process and the mainstream media.
It is their ownership of the newspapers, radio stations and TV channels across this nation that explains the woeful ignorance of Americans on important issues, and poses the likelihood that the situation will not change until or unless the system does. This is not a conspiracy theory, it is a fact. Consider the following brief summary of the billionaire raid on the media, and especially in light of the curious fact that the targeted sector has not been profitable and is steadily becoming less profitable.
Billionaire Charles H. Brandes now not only controls USA Today, but also 1,000 non-daily publications and 23 TV stations with a market reach of 20 million households. Billionaires Barbara Cox Anthony and Anne Cox Chambers control 17 newspapers, 15 TV stations and 79 radio stations. Other billionaires that now have control of various media are Rupert Murdoch, Sumner Redstone, the Newhouse Brothers, Ham Saban, Edmund Newton, the Sulzberger family, the five billionaires that currently control the Hearst Corporation, and even the “sage of Omaha,” Warren Buffett, who has taken control of the Washington Post through Berkshire Hathaway.
Furthermore, for the first time in 32 years, the George W. Bush administration enhanced the influence of these owners by giving them the right to create local monopolies involving different media. In the light of all of this information, it is not surprising that Freedom House ranked the U.S. 16th in terms of freedom of the press, and Reporters Without Borders placed us in 36th place.
Meanwhile, President Obama and the Democrats will continue to knock their heads against the wall as they attempt to get out the truth.
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Comments: 135
Doesn't sound like you're a big fan of free speech... That's one of the few areas Americans still have any exceptionalism left.
I find the Republican apologists completely dishonest in their purposeful shallowness of virtually every argument, the use the - both sides do - whatever it is ... but not in the same frequency, in the same equally in magnitude and not for the same percentage of the population. Both parties may be full of it, but the Republicans are overflowing from everyone orifice to the point where many people miss that there is nothing but BS there.
Hardly, the reverse is more true of you, you like most Republicans fail to test your ideas by allowing free debate or backing it up with ideas and most of all goals, ie. end results. Republicans (& Libertarians) refuse to talk about the end results except in vague abstract concepts of the market, that has nothing to do with people. Some people in the Republican screed should necessarily die in order to somehow better the country. Genocide as social policy.
But, not in the least, most Democrats see clearly that their party has problems, but those problems have as their root cause the militancy and success of the Republican party that has made money predominate over democracy and ideas.
Certainly President Obama has gotten so much more criticism from the Left than any Republican has ever gotten from the right, or acknowledged from the Left.
Republicans really have nothing to offer us but more of the same recipe that is not working, so of course they have less, if only by definition than the Democrats ... the problem with the Democrats is that they have been almost as much lassoed in the same private/corporate pigpen and more unwillingly than the Republicans.
No Republican can think for themselves and when they try we get stuff like the comments about rape and women ... if only people would snap out of it and realize their comments about justice, equality and the economy are just as absurd and mean-spirited.
the reverse is more true of you, you like most Republicans fail to test your ideas by allowing free debate or backing it up with ideas and most of all goals, ie. end results.
How do you know that applies to me? How do you even know I'm a republican? I've got news for you, I don't support republicans. I support the efforts of a handful of individuals, but cannot support the party in general, or 98%+ of their politicians.
In general, yes. Now and then, though, one party really does excel over another in that regard. Republicans today really are in the most dysfunctional state I've ever seen them.
Libertarians are just revolutionary Republicans - think Birchers.
The recent history in the US is the history of sleeping Americans waking up and realizing just how bad the Republicans party is screwing them, and in the name of all the things the Libertarians want to increase.
> There's a reason we heard the phrase "anti-war left" so much but not "anti-war right".
Yeah, because your BS free market monopolies have taken over the airwaves and the publishing houses by appropriating private profits from prices that are too high and using them to "tax" the American citizens to destroy their government. That's why taxes need to be almost confiscatory at the top level of the economy. There needs to be a maximum wage ... that is, money itself needs to be regulated, otherwise there are some wahoos at the top who make the lives of ever other person on the Earth a useless endeavor. They steal the soul of the planet and for no rational reason or meritous result.
We have allowed ourselves to drift straight into the rapids of a particularly small and turbulent storm that may well be orchestrated by the phony governments of both sides who use their too big to fail into push private industry and people into positions of absolute authority that should not even exist, and have no legal legitimacy, yet day by day there is no one major issue that can be latched on that people can agree on because many different yarns are spun to the many different audiences out there that are all manipulated into fighting each other.
Au contraire, but there is no point in discussing any of that with you because you are irrational on the subject and will not address anything that does not fit your papers. Markets exist to serve people, not the other way around. You'd have every American living in poverty to just "romance" the centerfold image of your Libertarian version of the free market, which is anything but.
If you don't want socialism forced on you, send the SSA a letter and tell them to force your communist SS checks to pay off the debt and your socialist Medicare to someone who needs it. This country should not be run by whatever whimsical nonsense happens to please you, or whoever's priming you with this nonsense, there are real needs and problems that needs solution past nonsensical comedy bits - in case you have not noticed it is not working.
You made all that up.
If you don't want socialism forced on you, send the SSA a letter and tell them to force your communist SS checks to pay off the debt and your socialist Medicare to someone who needs it.
As soon as I can opt out of the costs and benefits, I will happily do so.
This country should not be run by whatever whimsical nonsense happens to please you
Correct, society should not be run by me- or you, or anyone else.
there are real needs and problems that needs solution past nonsensical comedy bits - in case you have not noticed it is not working
I know that status quo is not working, that's why I demand changes.
Sure, it's just an odd coincidence that the changes you want fall right in line with the Koch brothers and other fascists misdirected as Libertarianism, the changes you want are exactly what the economic elites, the bankers, CEOs and financiers want too, deregulation, smaller government, they just put a nice rosy spin on it called Libertarianism.
Anyone with a brain saw through the glaring bait-and-switch and got out of the Libertarian movement long ago for exactly that reason.
Read that CATO institute (Republican Think Tank) paper on how the Libertarian vote is in play and Republicans want to grab it. As such you are hearing all kinds of sweet words and nice ideas, it is a bait and switch for radical Republicanism. Also note the cynicism of Republicans who care more about saying specific focus-group tested phrases than standing for anything - BECAUSE THEY REPRESENT INTERESTS THAT THEY DO NOT FEEL FREE TO STAND NEXT TO.
It's the same with the TEA Party, that coincidentally appeared shortly after this paper and these ideas of co-opting swing voters that are gullible to being confused with slogans and talk.
The thing with Libertarians is all it is, is a party originally created back around the time of Nixon to protest the Republican micromanagement of the economy - wage and price controls, that is being used to lead gullible away from the Democrats by a lot of carefully constructed nonsense talk that really takes the concerns of honest people and tells them everything will be fine if they hate government.
Now I didn't you just used your ADD to refocus back on your Libertarian cheerleading.
Explain to me how Libertarianism - as defined by the Libertarians - is any different from the radical Republican Business agenda that approaches Fascism asymptotically - the more concentrated wealth and power, the more Fascist it becomes?
How is libertarianism different from "radical Republican Business agenda"? I hardly know where to begin, Republicans support innumerable taxes, subsidies, targeted tax breaks, government regulations, government licensing, price controls, and countless other interventions into the market, all of which libertarians reject.
Republicans (and Democrats) use these policies we object to to concentrate wealth in power into their hands and the hands of their supports, all at our expense, and constantly claim it's all for the public good to encourage public support for it. It's time to rollback.
That's total nonsense ... Republicans support taxes? HA!
But what they do is they support political powers that can move them towards their agenda of total privatization, and that is the same goal as the Libertarians.
Yeah, I can see you don't know where to begin.
Allowing a laissez-faire free market in a country where property rights is everything is an endless formula for dictatorship because it subsidizes the rich and the powerful.
The reasons you give are just dodges that Republicans have to do right now in order to stay in office. Democrats too, but at least they have a different people oriented rhetoric and do occasionally try.
They generally support the established tax system. Would you like to prove otherwise? You can't.
But yeah, since you insist on changing the subject again, of course I want to abolish as many taxes as possible.
No, you use that "as possible" phrase to make yourself sound reasonable, but it's clear the country needs more revenue to run. It's all in the language and you misuse and misdirect every chance you get.
The government was defunded, corrupted and turned into a virtual fascist corporate dictatorship, maintained and covered by the thinnest ideas and the thickest marketing propaganda. It's very clear that if the people demand democracy the government as a puppet of the corporations with respond with violence, just as the US government has done overseas in many many other countries.
it's clear the country needs more revenue to run.
I assume you conflated the country with the state. The state needs less revenue, not more.
Maybe you need to read it again, maybe with a dictionary, or an adult.
When political influence payments are considered to be "free speech" at the expense of the voting public, I believe something is terribly wrong. As far as news reporting goes, I would strongly favor journalistic integrity while maintaining the individual's right to free speech. After all, if we require integrity in the marketing of popcorn, should it not be required in the information that essentially shapes the conduct of the nation.
I agree that there is a cult of deception that pervades the political process and it can be briefly described as hiding the fact that both parties represent the sources of their money and lobbying perks, but the Republicans are much more aggressive in doing so. In catching the news on many different stations, I have found that the leading, lying news team by a long shot is FOX News which panders to the right wing.
I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican. If there was a party that truly represented the middle class, I would be there. I dislike the Democratic Party for participating in the ongoing destruction of the Labor movement and for promoting globalization, the two factors that hurt the middle class more than any other. As far as the GOP is concerned, no member of the middle class should be a member unless they want to bet against their own best interests, in my estimation.
And when it comes to lies, I hear far, far more from Republican mouths these days.
I agree. I find the problem to be solely in the fact that politicians have the power to act against our interests. It's the power, and nothing else, that draws all the money towards Washington in the first place. We have to take that away, instead of trying to restrict free speech.
After all, if we require integrity in the marketing of popcorn, should it not be required in the information that essentially shapes the conduct of the nation.
I also agree with this, provided that we're not talking about government regulation to "force integrity", which is impossible.
I'd say the Libertarian Party comes closest to representing the interests of all people, including the middle class and poor. But even they deviate from libertarianism many times, just a whole lot less than Democrats and Republicans.
In fact we have been moving towards this far-right-wing agenda for years now and the more we move in that direction the more problems we have, the more pain we have, the less room there is for democracy, the less room there is for a middle class, and the less room there is for even fair and informative discussion, and the less room there is for democracy. Make no mistake, Libertarian movements are just another far-right revolutionary putsch, the movement to take away rather than restore our rights, but done completely without any information, just vague hand-waving stuff about the market, the precedence of private capital, the evils of government, etc.
We are forced to confront the relative thrust upon us that democracy must have a socialist component to it and tyranny stems from too much private power, to little information and way too much intrigue and disinformation.
I can see both sides of this and used to consider myself right wing and viewed America as veering leftward for at least a century. Now I don't see much meaning in "left" and "right" wing labels.
I know what liberty, and the philosophy of it (libertarianism) is. That is what I'm talking about and supporting, not necessarily any group that claims the label but fails to practice the ideas.
I too went through my Libertarian phase after reading Ayn Rand as a young man. Later I developed enough compassion to return to my more socialist roots.
There it is. That, not lazy indolent freeloading citizenry, is behind
1) skyrocketing health care costs
2) far as the eye as see deficit spending
3) overly expensive ineffective regulatory burderns
How do today's special interests destroy the legislation they don't like?
By killing the legislation?
No. They do it by padding the legislation. Make it 3000 pages instead of 50 pages.
If Republicans could just visit planet Earth now and then and connect with reality on this, maybe we could work with them to solve the problems at hand.
Hardly, but any system can be corrupted, and what corrupts the system is the rich and powerful. When things get so bad there is a breakdown sometimes people who say they are working for the left step up to take charge, but they are always just right winger fascists or totalitarians in disguise, the only way to tell if there are real democrats in charge is by measuring democracy - period. Even then institutional forces such as classism and racism skew governance.
If government is the problem, what this cries out for are reforms of our government.
Starting with repeal Citizens United.
What total bullshit, there is no other way to say it. Ask those in Sweden and Denmark if they are suffering, hardly. This statement pretty much impeached everything you say on Gather. That you can generalize with no qualification means you have no interest in honest fact-based discussion unless it is inside your own comfort zone of taking the few words you misdefine and putting them together in a way that totally idiosyncratic to the right and has no bearing on the real world.
I don't make that statement lightly, "socialism increases human suffering". Its 100% true, backed up by science, history, and logic. Schedule permitting, I will address this subject more thoroughly at a later time.
Got to go get a cut and paste from your handlers? I'll lay odds that all you do is misdefine socialism as Cuba, or the USSR.
Oh, and to truly wipe out anarchy, you’ll need to address international anarchy by ending national sovereignty and creating a global government.
So what was the point of bringing up anarchy? To scare people away from libertarianism?
Bruce:Got to go get a cut and paste from your handlers?
LMAO. All you have to offer now is insults and demagoguery? Forget it. You’ll have to find someone else’s time to waste; I have no interest in arguing with someone who is unwilling to debate in good faith.
I refer other readers that are interested in my claim on socialism to this article; I invite them to consider whether the USSR or the USA represented a more compassionate society. The USSR was based primarily on socialism; the USA had a substantially greater libertarian/free market influence. A study of economics reveals socialism is destructive and wasteful: it cannot calculate, i.e. there is no market price system to provide accurate signals as to what goods and services are most desired by society. An economic system that holds back mankind's economic progress is not compassionate in my book. Finally, consider morality: socialism is a system that relies on the initiation of aggression- that is not compassionate either.
For one example, the minimum wage was indirectly referred to above as compassionate; just the opposite- it outlaws employment, robbing the low skilled from getting a job and climbing the ladder. Personally, I could have gotten a job much earlier if I had been allowed to negotiate a lower wage with an employer. Instead, it took a long time to find work, during which I earned $0 per hour and gained no work experience.
That’s the kind of compassion socialism offers. I am glad the next generation is waking up to this.
I don't see any good faith in any of your posts. You never try to understand what other people are saying, you are always trying to rope them into your defined terms. Your idea of conversation in good faith is someone else blindly accepting the kind of nonsense, or the framing you filled your first paragraph with and then going round and round.
The idea you are trying to prove that minimum wage is not a positive thing for people is like a Confederate soldier talking about how blacks were better off under slavery or women are better off without the vote. It's fully idiotic.
If that's all you're going to do, like I said, go waste someone else's time.
You said it.
Absense of a state means that big existing power and money rules - period. And they set the rules, they have no obligation to level the playing field or listen to anyone else ... in a Libertarian world it is only the rich and powerful that have liberty ... and it is not liberty as in "freedom", it is liberty as in "taking liberties" as in right, birthright, prerogative, entitlement, privilege, permission, sanction, authorization, authority, license, power.
You are arguing for oligarchy by focusing on the liberty of the powerful. That is a waste of everyone's time.
We're never going to agree. The only thing we should agree on is to not force ideas on each other. You can have your socialism, and I'll have my libertarianism. You can band together with your fellow socialists and tax and regulate yourselves to death, I want nothing to do with it.
Except Libertarianism as you use the word is not what people think it is ... just like socialism was not what the German people thought it was ... both are bait and switch political intrigue.
I don't know whether you're completely ignorant about libertarians or just dishonest.
1. "With no government the rich and powerful are not regulated in any way at all" - False. Libertarianism is not lawlessness. No one is allowed to violate the property rights of others, regardless of their wealth. The elites oppose libertarianism for this very reason- their current system relies on what libertarianism outlaws.
2. "Ron Paul who talked about how... people that cannot afford health insurance should die" - False. Someone asked him this, and he said "no", we shouldn't do that.
Someone is gullible about the realities of libertarianism, and it's not me.
The law of the rich and powerful is the law that the world has been trying to move away from for hundreds of years ... democracy was the latest, best, final step in that that we know of, and you and your Libertarian liars want to walk that back to what is virtual feudalism.
When rich and powerful are not regulated, there is no property rights ... other than their property rights, and they turn everything into their property, just like kings of old. You and your ideas are just terribly backward and dishonest.
And Ron Paul in the last series of Presidential debates that he took part in said it loud and clear about health insurance. The video is out there. It was not disavowed or spun at the time, because that is what he said.
What else is this supposed to mean?Sorry, sounds like lawlessness to me, if that's not what you meant it was poorly worded.
The law of the rich and powerful is the law that the world has been trying to move away from for hundreds of years ... democracy was the latest, best, final step in that that we know of, and you and your Libertarian liars want to walk that back to what is virtual feudalism.
The best and final step is not mob/majority rule (democracy), it is libertarianism, which is ludicrous to compare with feudalism. What do you think libertarianism is anyway? Define it, as you use the word.
When rich and powerful are not regulated, there is no property rights ... other than their property rights, and they turn everything into their property, just like kings of old. You and your ideas are just terribly backward and dishonest.
Thanks again for demonstrating you have no idea what you're talking about. At this point, I only respond for entertainment, but this is getting boring fast.
You attempt to associate my ideas with the elites turning "everything into their property". That's the opposite of libertarianism. Apparently you chose to not comprehend this Ron Paul... It was not disavowed or spun at the time, because that is what he said.
I know, because what he said was right. It appears you're oblivious to what he actually said, even though I provided you with a direct link.
You're an idiot ... I did not say the state of the rich and powerful not being regulated was lawlessness, you just made that up.
The law of the rich and powerful is the law that the world has been trying to move away from for hundreds of years ... democracy was the latest, best, final step in that that we know of, and you and your Libertarian liars want to walk that back to what is virtual feudalism.
When rich and powerful are not regulated, there is no property rights ... other than their property rights, and they turn everything into their property, just like kings of old. You and your ideas are just terribly backward and dishonest.
And Ron Paul in the last series of Presidential debates that he took part in said it loud and clear about health insurance. The video is out there. It was not disavowed or spun at the time, because that is what he said.
> Libertarians are quick to argue that socialism leads to fascism.
> However, it is actually the opposite, Libertarianism leads to fascism.
> Why is this? Politically, liberals are for regulating business and giving more benefits to the middle class and poor. For example, the government spends money on transfer payments to the poor and elderly (most developed nations spend even most on these things). And the bulk of it's regulations are on consumer, worker and environmental safety.
>If these things are removed, then there is nothing in the way to stop corporate fascism.
This is just what you cannot get. It's really quite intuitive, but not only do you not get it, you do not even try to refute it or explain how the power of the rich would be stopped in Libertarianism. I think the readers can see that, and they can see the typical rhetoric of Libertarians and TEA Party is just another attempt to justify the tyranny of wealth in this country.
I'm not quite sure why you think I'm incapable of debate ... I think it's because I refuse to accept your shaky framework of logic that goes in circles.
Thus the usefulness of libertarianism is to lure unsuspecting youth into a "cool" form of political rebeliousness, while the true aims of those who control the movement, the corporate funded think-tanks etc., are to establish their own hegemony.
False, libertarianism is in the way to stop it; I already refuted the tired old "elites/corporations/rich want libertarianism" argument in this thread:To add some specifics, corporations rely on the government for subsidies, protection against competition, and protection from trespass lawsuits because of their pollution: all of which is illegal according to the principles of libertarianism.
I'm not quite sure why you think I'm incapable of debate ... I think it's because I refuse to accept your shaky framework of logic that goes in circles.
No, the reason is because you don’t debate, i.e. for the most part you don’t offer logical arguments to refute what I’m saying. Instead, you rely on assertions ("The idea you are trying to prove that minimum wage is not a positive thing for people is like a Confederate soldier talking about how blacks were better off under slavery or women are better off without the vote. It's fully idiotic. "), changing the subject (e.g. the Feb 28, 2013, 1:42pm EST comment), ad hominem (e.g. "You're an idiot"), etc.
How very true. The Dems need to be more adept at telling their side. Sigh.

 Thanks for sharing with Truth or Consequences at the Triple Name Club.
There is no Left ... get real, there is no left at all.
Who talks about this is Richard D. Wolff, the guy who did the documentary "Capitalism Hits The Fan". Also he gave a great interview in the last Bill Moyer's Show.
The democrats are the cheering squad for false hope,
and all because no politician can say not to money, at
least not and remain a politician.
We have bought into that only a certain number of "winners' by
no real standard should own and run everything, and the media
buttresses that daily.
Thousands of years of attempts have shown that it's impossible to effectively regulate the use of money. First there's the process of coming up with regulations. That process is run by those with lots of money. (One can use money to influence the behavior of others.) Then there's the creation of an enforcement organization. For some reason, that organization can be corrupted by those with money. Then there's the punishment of those who violate the regulations. (Note, it's always punishments that are used to get people to obey, never rewards.) The organization that does the punishing is also corrupted by those with money using money.
In short, money is uncontrollable. Even those who have lots of money have grave difficulties preventing it's theft and misuse. Every institution from government to church to business to family has problems controlling its money.
Oh Larry, you're so negative some times ... thousands of years of experience "had" shown that human beings would never fly, or go to the moon - and in fact, we do regulation money is such ways as we can and powers will allow. A lot of things are changing, most significantly the sophistication of the average person - though it is still pretty low people are starting to wise up to the need to regular the rich and powerful, and then there is technology which now can track any economic transaction on the planet if things we set up right.
It money was uncontrollable as you say it would not be useful for people, and it is very useful, money is a great tool, and we could find out how great by using it to model the economy and find trouble spots.
Money is a great and useful tool, just as fire is a great and useful tool. But, like fire, it can also be a tragedy and a curse.
In what material way are things changing about the problems money causes and makes possible? Does the average person have the knowledge to protect himself in the marketplace, especially the marketplace of banking, finance, stock markets, and insurance? I think not. Yes we have a need to regulate the rich and powerful. How can that be done? How do we get laws or other regulations created to limit the harm done by the rich and powerful? Where is the countervailing economic or political force to overcome the control wealth has over legislation, enforcement, and the courts?
Money uncontrolled is physical objects and representations of physical objects. Money is useful to individuals to achieve their ends. But those ends are sought within a context shaped by the nature of our money. A context which makes people enemies, rivals, competitors in a no holds barred confusion of contests. Money is useful to individuals to the point that people die for lack of sufficient money. But for the economy, for the nation, for the society and its institutions money is terribly dangerous. Empires rise and fall and always due to money.
We do use money to model the economy. It doesn't work.
The nature of our money which you talk about so often, is that you dollars and mine are the same as a drug dealer's ... meaning that once someone has money the "state" information about where it came from and what it did are gone. Technology and transparency could change that.
I would think you have thought about that quite a bit and I'm a little surprised that you would ask about it. Empires rise and fall due to people, whether they had money or not or before there was money there is the innate original sin of corruption of people, read about the apple in Genesis! ;-)
Empires rise by paying soldiers. Empires fall because those soldiers cannot be paid.
You can say it's due to people but I remind you that it is people in the context of a physical object money economy. If you change that context by changing the nature of the money they use you will change the resultant behavior.
People can be corrupted without money being involved but it is much less common and does not scale well without money. In other words, the nature of our money makes the corruption of human beings much easier and much more frequent.
Larry, that's super-simplisitic and not true.
It's simple and true. Please give me an example of any empire that did not pay its soldiers. Any time and any place will do so long as you provide references.
Salt is a commodity money. That's one form of physical object money. It was only the early Roman culture that used salt. By the time Rome began to conquer its neighbors, it was using coins.
People can grab money as we know it and work with that money. But using that form of money, a physical object money, has huge consequences.
---------
Soldiers and their families have been quite insecure historically. That is, their families have been quite vulnerable and they, themselves, have been quite insecure even ignoring the risks of war.
Here endeth the rant. It is formulated at a very late hour. It is representative of my own poverty and bruised feelings. It is open to, but not really susceptible to, any form of analysis. I may change my mind in the morning.
“We must not indulge in unfavorable views of mankind, since by doing it we make bad men believe they are no worse than others, and we teach the good that they are good in vain.”
~ Walter Winchell
"Benghazi" has just become a GOP propaganda code word.
No occurrence tests a president more than an unplanned event where he has direct decision-making and time-critical supervisory responsibilities. Likewise such an event is the ideal vehicle for the American people to observe their president perform and to determine his prowess and capabilities in a non-choreographed circumstance. The events in Benghazi constituted such a set of events and the willingness of Obama and his administration (including Rice) to act in a totally non-transparent fashion as regards HIS specific actions, words, decisions during the sequence of events etc. is not above questioning. Obama has answered no such questions and lied consistently about a "youtuve" video to distract the country with an election coming up. Where are teh statements from the 30 or so staff that was rescued from the consulate? Why haven't we heard a peep from them?
That such a cover-up would occur just prior to a close election in order to protect the president, his words, actions, and/or denials of actions is staggering.
Ravi Zacharias once said " A true defense of any claim [in this case that the administration and the President's behavior as regards Benghazi has been proper, transparent, and without political motives] must also deal with the evidences that challenge or contradict it. In other words, truth is not only a matter of offense, in that it makes certain assertions. It is also a matter of defense, in that it must be able to make a cogent and sensible response to the counterpoints that are raised." This has not happened.
zzzzzzz, is that the best you can do looking at all the problems in government. At least when Democrats do question the President there is a legitimate point to it, Republicans just do it because the sun is shining ... or not.
I wonder how our Presidents feel on those off-occasions when something brings to their minds their responsibility to the people and they think about that honestly if only for a second?
The president himself is a Wall Street type. We need representatives in Washington who care about the middle class voters who put them in office.
democrats mislead about what they are going to do when they are elected.
Those of us who know our history know that the deficit went up the most under Republicans presidents d Ronald Reagan and George Dubya Bush - Now the Republicans try very hard to keep the President from solving the problems they created.
We need a president and a congress that understands the frustrations and the trials of the middle class. The 98 percent of us who could lose our jobs tomorrow and becomde homeless need safety nets like Unemployment Insurance and Social Security.
I am a director for a small cooperative grocery. One of the other directors has gotten into open-book financial management. Others at the store thought that staff in general would not care about tracking leading indicators of store health. It turns out, they are interested. There seems to be increasing understanding that not knowing what is going on is more risky than taking the trouble to understand what it takes to have a viable business that serves enough customers to keep going.
Most huge businesses do not want open-book anything, with the exception of Mondragon in Spain and Semco in Brazil. Anyway, these are the only exceptions I know of, although Gar Alporowitz (I may not have spelled this right, but a search will probably get you there anyway) and others say that cooperative ownership is growing in successful small and medium-sized businesses in the U.S. truthout has reported on this in more detail.
Bob's Red Mill is an example of a successful Oregon company that the founders are passing to workers.
I think U.S. people, in substantial numbers, may be ignoring news sources that are the equivalent of entertainment wrestling.
Who wants to put up with name-calling that does not get into the nitty-gritty of empowerment and substantive change? I don't--I can say that for myself.
Everybody has their own little spin on things, which is human nature, but you listen to a broad spectrum of people, you get a reasonably clear picture of the world.
"Oh, you can't trust the media these days" has some truth to it but it's also a bit self-serving, I think, an excuse for filtering out anything that doesn't fit the preferred narrative.
http://www.capitalinstitute.org/conversation/braintrust/gar-alperovitz
A friend of mine, with whom I have been involved in fighting subsidized sprayng of herbicides in a marine environment, knows him and recommended his work. So far, I have followed references to him on truthout and not so much in depth.
In response to several comments, the public at large may find out over the next few weeks or months whether the government is "the problem," or whether it is a vital necessity.
The issue, of course, is the degree of government. Today, given the extent of unemployment and underemployment (new job creation has barely kept up with the growth of the labor force over the past year - the best year yet since 2007 - according to the Labor Dept. data), this is hardly the time to institute procedures that would lead to throwing more people out of work.
The far right wing that controls the GOP is not blind, it's just selfish and greedy (two characteristics that have served it well so far)...
The issue is put well by the Libertarians, they say they think government is too big and the problem, but that is a think tranparent excuse, what happens when we make government too small to do anything but run to catch up with money and the powerful people and corporations with it is to move governmental power and what should be democratic or at the least representational of the people to all the structure that have no democracy in them - that is, the corporations.
Not only is this not on man one vote, it is more one dollar one vote but in these interstitial spaces in our society between our free time as citizens and our work time we are neutralized politically ... that is, the Libertarians liars have moved government functions to places where citizens cannot exercise any democracy or demand any representation, and this is not the defacto social and economic system in the world because the governments are so small for the most part they cannot take back control of the corporations because the corporations hold them hostage ... just like Stalin starved our Ukraine and his own state of Georgia, we now have people who have wedged themselves so deeply and monopolistically into the economy that the economy has turned the government into something unrecognizable or that should be unrecognizable to Americans.
The entire issue is basically that of "divide and conquer polarization" ... a Three part Dialectic where the third part, the real puppet master controllers, hide from us "two parts" and direct us one against the other, keeping us in conflict to the degree that we never look "above" as to who is really calling the shots of "both sides", forever directing our thinking and actions down a path that best serves ONLY the 3rd part doing the controlling.
Now were one to come to this realization, they would be called a "conspiracy theorist" and be loudly denounced by those who have been indoctrinated to believe that such things only take place in the tin-foil hat covered minds of the paranoid and delusional ...
Thus everyone "takes a side" (called dualism, and that being often based upon fear of "the other") ...
I used to do pretty much the same thing ... until I discovered the Truth of how that works, that discovery coming from a "Spiritual Awakening" to Generic Truth that is "Cosmic Based" and related to "Trinity" where the 3rd Aspect mentioned is NOT HIDDEN and does not try to control the other "Two Aspects" as do our hidden controllers ...
I have researched deeply into the neutrality of Philosophy and Metaphysics in my attempt to "put a face on" that which lies behind our "worldly institutions of control" ...
The History of such is much longer than the "accepted" history provided by our "governments" (institutions) and our "religious" branches of the same.
When one has a "relationship with" that which is more eternal than a simple life on planet earth, they have a lot more interest in and conviction for, the concepts involved, those concepts being "relatively" transcendent to worldly considerations ... such folks have ever more "motivation" to live their lives serving their anticipated future "spiritual outcomes" ...
When we have been indoctrinated (brainwashed) into such "dualisms" (+/-), we will seldom understand nor allow the Spiritual Truth of Trinity (+=-) where the 3rd aspect, the (=) is connective love (spirit) rather than divisive (/) (fear) ...
The very best single source that I have come across, lays it all out from the very beginning of our time, historically, and "names" all of the "players", that which is needed to understand the true relationships which have, and continue to, determined why we think as we do, and consequently act accordingly, blaming the "other side" rather than the 3rd aspect ... and thus never appreciating the REAL 3rd Aspect of connective Spirit.
Read HERE with an open mind and see just what I mean ... you will find BLAME in spades, most of which comes from dualistic ignorance of the true meanings of Spiritual Considerations.
(+/-)<(+=-) ... IMnsHO and E.
Americans have yet to decide what the "good of the nation" is ... and that is mostly because of the right wing who uses the money of the plutocratic elite to take over key industries like the media and them shove ideas down our throats, or subvert education and then forbid teachers to teach kids how to think.
You seem to forget that most of the active things that are big issues in how we got to this mess had mostly to do with Republicans, starting with Reagan and his record deficits.
It really bothers me to always hear ... and its always from the right-leaning folks about how the country is messed up because of both parties, but when it comes down to their criticisms they seem to forget the Republican mistakes.
But I do agree that to fix the country we should not be directed by people, or parties, or money, but by facts and numbers and basic American values. We have a pretty good set of goals when Roosevelt was President, and now ... surprise, the Republican condemn Roosevelt every chance they get, ironically and laughably while talking up Reagan.
I am guessing that you have not read or do not remember my words on my posts. You do not hear me bragging about the right, nor do I overlook their horrible mistakes. I bash George Bush more than the left does. You seem to present the Republicans as all being exactly alike with no chance of independent thought. That is neither realistic or true.