Imprisonment. Plague-infected. Inglorious Rebellion squashed by Demonic Forces... sounds like a book for teens, doesn't it? Plenty of characters, lots of special effects and gruesomeness.

Yet it is all real. "De-facto" seems a lot like "choice," but forced by authority-power presence, isn't it? "De-jure" racist decisions held enslavement and Jim Crow in power for a century - way past when its illegality was acknowledged and decried in the... Segregated North.

At what point do politicians respond to the intelligence and promise of civilization - instead of cultural fear-mongering?

The modern prison of America persists in every ghetto and distressed area that is not reached by media exposure and structure for decency within communities. Integrating poor workers has advanced to fact now, when there are no good jobs.

The conscience of society must be force-driven by the media! Let no stone - or any Rodney King - go unreported. Prisoners are the embodiment of being outcast in an Apartheid that abandons survivors of poverty, racism and socio-mental disability.

These "facts" characterize the phenomenon better than attempts to install fairness or civility upon a condemned community... and when reporters truly understand the depths of corruption in this system, the depravity of inhumane treatment is exposed.

Civilized leaders, however, must then act on this holocaust. Will our leaders rise to this crisis?

Nickels and dimes... people don't have jobs, job security, a plan for social security to survive, proper healthcare in a broke nation that is ruled by one-tenth of a percent of people and their corporate families. Why should the presidency be any different? America's GDP will be $20 TRILLION soon!

Unfortunately, America is about business and prosperity, not equality, civil rights or a classless society. If class war emerges out of healthcare, then so be it. Sooner or later, the American "exception" has to deal with world problems and trends, including WalMart imports, cheap labor and abandoned poor people as global terrorism and the climate heat up.

If you really believe this media cycle can hide such enormous forces under the arguments about healthcare reform, then the election of a democrat, an African-American no less, will have the same impact as re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Bush & Co. left the nation with unbelievably huge problems that have been festering since the industrial revolution.

The U.S. desperately needs an intelligent, cool diplomat in The White House, not a fool. Obama has exactly what the states are going to need to deal with pandemic, poverty and war - with the emergence of growing powers and falling middle-class incomes. As alternative energy and revitalized community displace hard-sell corporate domination of the national agenda, compromises with the big guys who own and control things will have to be made. Ideologues beware: Life boats will be filled quickly.

Yes. Local is better. Washington has overgrown with weeds that cannot be removed by... Weed-worshippers!

What will The People do?? WE will boycott, change habits and generally rely upon the federal govt. for more and more - as income, jobs, housing, healthcare, etc. continue shrinking.

The Alternative: Food costs too much, too dangerous, whatever -results in growing veggies at home. Great Impact on market!!

Car becomes a commodity - no longer status vehicle (punny) but means to end (payments); mortgage too much - so add people or rent part of space to others, or simply rent or build yer own.

Yes, a movement is underway because people (80%) are becoming poorer instead of financially stable.

History records in times of economic distress, that different behaviors emerge. Why wouldn't that happen here? It already has. Can The President overcome Congress to direct an agenda that thwarts the greed of status quo-er's? He doesn't have to - enough people are growing a movement that will determine markets in the end anyway.

It happens in China - a dictatorship that murders people for crimes - without fair trials. If it can happen there, it will definitely happen here - a corporate dictatorship that steals from people: that has only tended to destroy poor minorities. The discrimination in impoverishment, evaporation of privilege for Whites, absence of congressional effectiveness in the face of doom for Americans and the rise of new media like this that propels ideas thru a global network until it results in some action... is all we need for real change.

Maybe.