Or we will end the ability of the planet to support other than a remnant human population.

The oil economy is evil. No other way to describe it - around it are arrayed every sin - greed, arrogance, envy, selfishness, ignorance, murder, duplicity, and so on.

Consider Dick Cheney - is he not the face of the petroleum economy? Does he not embody all the sins of it?

I'm getting ready so my family has a fighting chance to survive the inevitable fall of this unholy death worshipping ideology.

Thanks, Glenn, for adding more evidence to support the obvious conclusion: the Government of the USA is a democracy in name and propaganda only, controlled in fact by powerful corporate interests of and for themselves: Wall Street, Big Oil, Big Pharma, and so on.

What is a citizen to do? Abdicate! Settle your money transactions in real money - GOLD. (official money is being devalued and destroyed on a massive scale). Pay as little federal tax as possiblem just like the moneyed elite - take your income in capital gains and dividends - 15% tax and no FICA or FICM. Or - reduce your income and live deliberately poor and avoid tax that way.

The beast must be starved.

How about - acting with courage, honor, and honesty in your doings? Including doing your best to serve in your job of public service - isn't this a higher calling than serving greed and duplicity and arrogance like the moneylenders?

Individuals can and do make a difference. What profiteth it a man if he gains the whole world but loses his immortal soul?

You say: "May I use an alternative currency (as opposed to the worthless Federal Reserve Notes) in a voluntary, mutual economic association without fear of retribution from the State mafia in this "capitalist" system you decry?

(The answer is no.)"

I respectfully disagree. Keep your "money" minimized and hold real assets that have value in use. And where you need a portable and liquid store of value, use gold. It's been money forever and holds its real value. I hate to break it to you, but the USD will only continue to decline since it is controlled by corruption.

But keep your money in gold, only selling enough to settle your debts with specious specie.

I'm not advocating the destruction of the money system - just using it to your own advantage. The Gold standard will never be the basis for official money again - but that doesn't mean it's not still a real standard. And it's available to all, truly democratic.

Martin Luther King said:

"Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right."

Mr. Todd, it seems, represents cowardice, expediency, and vanity rather well. Of course, it's unlikely he'll be assassinated for taking a stand on anything other than self-advancement. (greed, that other sin.....)

And why are the police allowed to be so disrespectful to citizens?

To serve and protect? More like to bully and browbeat.

All coordinated, enabled, funded, and directed by the utterly corrupt predatory federal government.

With no accountability. Like a banana "republic".

Cheney was setting precedent for his vision of a future police state ruled by the military. The future appears to be now - and our great savior Obama another put-up job - putting a kinder gentler face on the real machinery of government, which continues regardless of which group of prostitutes controls the congress.

What a contemptible rabble of brainwashed dupes, Americans.

The Federal Reserve is owned and controlled by the Banks, not by the Federal Government. (This is highly unusual - most central banks are owned by national governments). So we have privatized the levers of monetary regulation of our economy - they are in the same hands that created the crisis we are living through.

It seems to me passing strange that the Federal Government's response to this catastrophic failure, the result of greed and self-dealing unrestrained, is to bestow MORE regulatory power on the Federal Reserve rather than curtailing or nationalizing it.

Unless the Federal Government itself is controlled by these same interests. Then the attacks on an upright ethical regulator like Neil Barofsky can be seen as part of this continuing conspiracy to concentrate power and appropriate public treasure into private hands.

And wrap it all up in secret so the plebes can't see it happening.

I suppose I should have known but it still hurts to see deception and corruption on such a scale continuing under Obama - in whom so many foolishly invested hope and who is now clearly on the payroll also.

This seems to be the preferred tactic of the right - accuse the left of doing exactly what they are doing. In this case, authoritarians accusing their enemies of being authoritarians.

And it's really no surprise that the corporate media is complicit - fascism is after all the political alliance of government and corporate interests, supported by an aggrieved uneducated lower middle class. The corporate media's key role is to propagandize its dupes. In this case aided and abetted by an authoritarian christianist movement and its doctrinal literalism and absolutism.

Limbaugh and his ilk are as depraved and evil and perform exactly the same function as Goebbels for their masters. Scum. Traitors. To call them prostitutes is to besmirch the oldest profession.

Well on the way......and the techniques of control are much much more sophisticated and powerful than they were then.

Obama like FDR? More like Kerenski.......