The major problem with "changing" America really boils down to money.

Example: If the Big 3 auto makers basically refuse to build alt-fuel cars (and no hybirds and E85 cars don't count!) then surely 7 billion could go into small start up auto makers marketing dozens of alt-fuel design cars.

Instead of one car company being relied on to build what we need, Like Ford, we'll have dozens and dozens of smaller start ups building all electric or all hydrogen or all bio-diesel or all air-powered (yes, kids, there really really is a car that is powered by AIR. Never heard of it? Not surprising considering no one ackowledges life outside our shores. But to learn more about the air-powered car that GM and Ford themselves will never build just Google "air car")

The real problem is that we've adopted a modified Soviet-style system to our auto production with the three big auto makers representing the pseudo-state controlled manufacturers. If the state controlled auto makers (here represented as Ford and GM) refuse to make a car that DOESN'T pump out 80 billion tons of cancer causing emissions a year --- then you're out of luck, ain't ya?

What Branson's donation will do is allow dozens of start up alt-fuel car makers to put their products on the market which in and of itself won't change the world but it will SCARE Ford and GM into action and they will (kicking and screaming, of course) start making REAL alt-fuel cars just so they don't lose the market to the start-ups!

No, Ford and GM will never ever willingly (keyword) make a true alt-fuel car like all-electric or all bio-diesel unless we put the free-market gun to their heads. And since these companies currently have a pseudo-monoploy they really don't feel any pressure to do anything. Even if Japan keeps kicking their butt, they still have so much market share and profit that they really don't feel the need to do anything.

Hopefully these new start-ups will finally, finally scare them into getting off their butts and doing the right thing!

Who wants free money?

Wow. That was easy. I get up in front of a crowd, claim I'll reduce your tax rate to practically zero and -viola!- I just got 101% of the vote! Where'd that extra one percent come from? My good friends at Diebold who rigged, er, I mean to say "helped" voters cast their votes for the "correct" cadidate.

When I'm in the South I'll go on at length about welfare reform and ask, in somber tones, if it's really fair that drug addicted child rapists get $2500, no, make that $5,000 a week in welfare checks while honest white folk, er, I mean to say, good Christian Southerns are going broke paying taxes? Is that fair my white, over taxed brothers and sisters??

"When I'm elected President I'll reform welfare so those coloreds, er, I mean so those lazy bums of all races (wink, wink)and drug addicts will be forced to get one of the millions of high paying jobs that exist all around us! And I'll lower all your taxes!"

Yeah.

Playing the race card in the South and promising free money to the poor really takes a political genius.

Those tactics surely t'ain't never been tried before in this country, now have they?

Um, no.

If the terrorist (otherwise known as anyone non-whites and non-christians) captured a US general --- would the US Army be broken within 3 - 6 months?

Would we be forced to surrender within a year?

No?

Well, certainly 99% of our critical missions in Iraq would have to br scrubbed and, in fact, we'd be forced to pull out of the region entirely at leat temporarily, right?

NO! And why is that?

Capturing A SINGLE high ranking member of any group doesn't really "break" that group.

What does work?

Infiltration. Knowing the enemeies movements and plans as they occur every day, every hour. Spies and infiltration are the only tools that work over the long hual.

Capturing a single general or even 15 idividual members of any group is, for the most part, worthless in the long term because the Hydra just replaces them, changes all the locations, changes all the cell phone numbers and changes all their plans.

However, by inflitration and spying we'll always know what they will do.

Gosh, I figured that out and I'm not even the Secratary of Defense!

Why can't those Bush Admin morons reverse the spending priorities? Instead of spending, oh, 100 billion burning kids and old men in Iraq with cigars screaming, "Where's Osama!?!?" why not spend a few bucks inflitrating ACTUAL terror cells and getting ACTUAL information?

Republicans rig votes.

It's that simple. And yet Salon right along with every single new outlet in america refuses to cover that story. And by covering it -- I mean putting a huge spotlight on the voting process AS IT OCCURS to counteract the Republican vote rigging. Does Salon (or any news org) plan on putting video cameras at every major voting station and video taping every single voter that gets turned away or handed a essentially worhtless "provisional" ballot for the purpose of ensuring those votes are counted? Wouldn't video cameras deter or scare 99% of Repubs out of attempting to vote rig? It would, but will any news media actually do this?

Nope. Too much work. Too much effort. Easier to sit on their asses, do nothing and then "report" on the vote rigging of '06 several months after Katherin Harris gets elected.

What, pray tell, are the 25 steps Democrats have taken to ENSURE that another 200,000 vote won't "magically" disappear?

What's that?

Nothing?

They've done literally ZERO to ensure that the Republicans won't magically vanish another 200,000 votes?

Exactly. Dems deserve to lose.