What would cause a person like Nancy Pelosi or Jay Rockefeller, supposedly members of the "loyal opposition", to march in lockstep with the authoritarian Bush Junta's attacks on the Constitution? Here are a few possibilities:

a) Co-option: they are simply in a privileged position (on the payroll), and don't want to rock the boat;

b) Threats: to destroy someone in a deliberately toxic environment, when the most minor of sins is endlessly a amplified, is easy for the vicious scum in the shadows. Who knows if actual physical threats are involved? Consider the anthrax mailed to prominent Democrats: US government- or contractor-sourced anthrax. Do you think they got the message?

c) Showtime: people like Pelosi and Reed are just hired public faces putting on a show to baffle the masses while the real business goes on in the shadows.

d) Interest: Pelosi and Reed represent the interests of a very small group of "people in law", and actual citizes can hang.

I think it's probably a combination. Only one solution, however: T'row the bums out! They are Quislings, Judas's, vendus, and wholly unworthy of respect let alone positions of public trust.

The same one GW was reading this morning when he said the biggest threat facing the incoming President is international terrorism.

More of the Fucking same. Aren't you glad you voted for a motto wielded by an ambitious opportunist?

Off with their heads, said the Red Queen. He was right. The Evil Empire has another salesman, with a brown face this time.

just like Leni Reifenstahl. That he actually believes his propaganda is irrelevent.

I have heard that the passive submission of the Jewish populations of Europe to the humiliations, indignities, dispossessions, displacements, imprisonments, exploitations, and mechanised mass murders inflicted upon them by the Nazis was a conscious choice, encouraged and justified by rabbinical teachings. I wonder how true this is?

Because the lesson of the Holocaust that the Jewish State of Israel has clearly learned is that passive submission to genocide is a bad strategy.

So why do they expect the filistina to follow that strategy and submit to invasion and humiliation and displacement and murder?

And why does Israel expect that becoming their evil enemy is anything but evil?

Wow! Who's apple needs polishing to get that gig?

Consider this: Were GW Bush the "godfather" of an organized crime family, how successful has his run been?

1) He made all his friends richer;

2) He OWNS the law enforcement apparatus - so his enemies are harassed and marginalized;

3) He's increased the payroll for his soldiers with more and better weapons and intelligence;

4) Even though he's had to surrender his territory, he's left it in a destroyed and useless state. WHatever the new Don does, it will be hard to maintain power because GW still controls much of the apparatus;

5) He owns much of the media, who obediently puff him up and mock his enemies.

Sick Family. Led by a sick addicted authoritarian criminal. Enabled by prostitutes and thieves. Fed by dupes and gluttons.

I can't believe this country ever had a revolution - what a bunch of credulous gluttonous juveniles. Devo.

What if everyone stopped supporting the control apparatus? Abdicated, as it were. Don't buy their shit, don't pay their taxes, don't watch their propaganda?

The revolution is a personal matter. And it can only succeed as such.

The depression may help the process, I think.

The hippies were, and remain, right.

Why let the evil ones make YOU despair? This is their aim.

Keep dancing.

"a few random "hippies"..pulling out of the system" doesn't begin to describe what is coming. If you can't support your family within your local community resources, you will be lost.

I agree - organize. But organizing on a "National" level perpetuates the evil. The USA is many things, but it is NOT a community. It will destroy itself. And in the meantime I will not support it, but work for real community.

I am in the Eye of God; I am part of God, and God is part of me. I can be true only to that.

Excuse me if I'm not all weepy and weak at the knees. Obama, in his opening address, said that "we are at war" against the terrorists, and lauded the military for defending our freedom at "...Lexington....Khe Sanh..."

Khe Sanh? A battlefield in yet another US imperial invasion, which, like Iraq and Afghanistan, was doomed to failure?

Gregory is a paid shill for the evil fuckers who enrich themselves by blowing up brown babies and women. The same guys who own the US Government.

Meet the new Boss.

Same as the Old Boss.

I was a delegate for Obama in my county caucus. On a purely symbolic level, his election, IMHO, is a good thing.

But when he drops an approving reference to a battle in Vietnam in his first speech, am I supposed to swallow my disgust and anger?

It's not cynical to call people on their shit. Sorry if if sprayed your rose-colored glasses.

Just dismayed by President Obama's approving reference to Khe Sanh. It was there for a reason - does anyone doubt that his speech was reviewed word by word for days?

SO what is the reason?

My take is it's code for business as usual in the Military-Industrial complex.

And secondarily a sop to those who still believe that invading Vietnam was somehow a noble cause.

In any case, it's not a good sign, IMHO. And I find it hard to cheer for yet more homages to militaristic imperialism, whoever is mouthing them.

"Christians, Jews, Muslims, and non-believers" (quoting from memory)

I admit to being uncomfortable with this construction also.

Is a Buddhist a non-believer? A Wiccan? A Zoroastrian? A Hindu?

Non-monotheists need not apply?

Odin help me! Om Shivaya!

Just saying....