"He was an actor of genius. There was no more overwhelming actor on the stage, in the motion pictures, nor even in the pulpit. He would whirl arms, bang tables, glare from mad eyes, vomit Biblical wrath from a gaping mouth; but he would also coo like a nursing mother, beseech like an aching lover, and in between tricks would coldly and almost contemptuously jab his crowds with figures and facts -- figures and facts that were inescapable even when, as often happened, they were entirely incorrect." ~ Sinclair Lewis, in his novel "It Can't Happen Here"

In It Can't Happen Here, Lewis was describing the charismatic politician Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, who poses as a populist, then once elected president turns the United States into a fascist dictatorship, aided by an angry, unknowing electorate and a paramilitary group called the Minute Men.

Sound familiar?  Think Glenn Beck.

Bill Moyer's Journal blogger Michael Winship goes on ...

In its despair and confusion, a large segment of the American populace is prepared to believe anything it's told, in part because we are a country less and less educated, increasingly unable to tell fact from fiction because we are so unschooled in basic essential knowledge about America and the world. ...

The Pew Research Center survey earlier this month reports "nearly one-in-five Americans (18%) now say Obama is a Muslim, up from 11% in March 2009. Only about one-third of adults (34%) say Obama is a Christian, down sharply from 48% in 2009.

Shocking, but true.  An ignorant populace is a nation in peril.

Read Winship's article.

Finally ... the Obama administration lays out exactly the sort of economic recovery plan which American citizens have been clamoring for since this recession began.  Rather than blindly offering blank checks to banks which use the funds to enrich their executives and stockholders instead of making loans to needy homeowners, it's simply common sense to directly fund the sort of infrastructure projects which create and sustain good paying middle-class jobs.

We all know that our highways, bridges, railroads, and airports are falling apart.  Drive down any seconary road in the nation and try to avoid the potholes.  As you drive under bridges, notice their crumbling concrete and rusting trusses.  Read daily about airport congestion, deadly plane crashes, and "near misses" caused by outdated air traffic-control technology.  So why not fix this ailing national infrastructure by providing jobs to those who rebuild it?  What could be more obvious? 

This sort of national infrastructure package has been done before and history tells us that it works.  Roosevelt did it in 1934, and Eisenhower did it in 1956.  Both were resounding successes.  Now it's our turn, and it can work again, if only Congressional wimps and naysayers get out of the way.  Obama promised just this sort of national improvement, and he's prepared to make it happen.  Let's get behind him to see this through.

OK ... now that we're (finally) doing the right thing by getting the hell out of Iraq, let's extend that sanity to Afghanistan.  We should never have been in either place, so to stop pouring more billions and American lives down yet another rat hole is sensible, prudent, and simple common sense.  We've been there and done that, so let's leave ASAP before we do even more damage.

Still unconvinced?  Take a look at this video, then visit "Rethink Afghanistan" for common-sense facts.

Congratulations to us all on the overturning of Prop 8!

But here's something to consider. Remember laughing when you heard about the Republicans wanting to repeal the 14th Amendment? The Right's attack on the 14th Ammendment has nothing to do with immigration. That's a smoke screen designed to keep public attention off the real agenda.

Section 1. of the 14th Amendment contains, among other things, this language: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

This includes what we commonly know as the "due process" and "equal protection" clauses of the Constitution. These are FUNDAMENTALS.

My suspicion is the Republicans are more interested in getting rid of the "due process" and "Equal Protection" clauses than "anchor babies," and hope to do so while the public is distracted by the illegal immigration issue.

By getting rid of these two cornerstones of civil rights the Right wipes out Roe v. Wade, Gay Marriage, and everything else they hate. In the past three days 90 of the 198 Republicans in the House – 45-percent – have signed on as co-sponsors of a bill to repeal the 14th Amendment.

 

This is not something to be taken lightly. We need to prepare for a major fight and I doubt anyone is paying much attention.

Perhaps senators and representatives from areas of our great nation which have nothing whatever to do with the District of Columbia are finally learning to keep their noses and hands out of local issues.  Maybe.

For once, congressional busybodies have not meddled in the District of Columbia's local affairs, and today, medical marijuana became legal in DC.

A billion here, a billion there ... pretty soon we're talking real money ... as we foolishly continue to pour countless wealth down the rat holes of Iraq and Afghanistan.
   
Audit: US can't account for $8.7B in Iraqi fund

This rational response to the tired old shibboleth "The government can't do anything right" has been circulating The Net recently, and apparently always without attribution.  If anybody knows who actually wrote this, please let me know ... I'd like to shake his/her hand.

This morning I was awakened by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the U.S. Department of Energy.

I then took a shower in the clean water provided by a municipal water utility.

After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC-regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like, using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

I watched this while eating my breakfast of U.S. Department of Agriculture-inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time, as regulated by the U.S. Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank.

On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the U.S. Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and Fire Marshal’s inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.

And then I log on to the Internet — which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration — and post on Freerepublic.com and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can’t do anything right.

Not entirely unexpected behavior, when the gap between the richest and the rest has becomes so vast that the highest percentile can barely see us, even when they stand on top of their wallets for a better view. And not surprising at a time when the Supreme Court, through the Citizens United decision and other rulings, has determined that wealthy corporations are people, too, with license to run roughshod (albeit in very nice shoes) over the democratic process, freely spending their fortunes on candidates who will do their bidding, all in the name of the First Amendment right to free speech.

At the top of the "Republican aligned" list is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has committed $75 million to the midterms, more than twice what they spent on federal elections just two years ago.

A profile of Chamber president and CEO Thomas J. Donahue in the current issue of Washington Monthly notes that while 96 percent of the Chamber's membership is small businesses with fewer than 100 employees, "it is also beholden to a cadre of multinationals whose interests are often inimical to those of small business. In 2008, a third of its revenues came from just nineteen companies."

Ah yes ... free speech for corporations, ensuring the very best government money can buy.