Give it up....the "left of the left" doesn't have a party representing it's reform related goals. The establishment won the election, using Obama to masquerade a fake agenda of "change".

You continue to aptly describe the problem but your column today has a whining tone. I predict the great work of Jane and FDL and the grassroots fund raising will come to naught.

There are two choices remaining, both desperate, but this is a desperate situation. Ridiculous right wing, buriness owned Obama, complicit enabbler of torture and imperialism, so eager and so quick to trash his own presidential oath to protect the consitution, must be met head on, with an unrelenting NO!!!!! Extreme, disruptive peaceful civil disobedience or....???? because now it is confirmed, by your own analysis, and description, day after day, that elections and other participation in the political process isn't going to effect meaningful change. US style corporatism has failed....time to take to the streets, chained to each other, lying down in intersections in DC and in other cities until they drag us away.... Repeat until business is disrupted to the point where the system breaks down.... Insanity? Your column tofay describes insanity. Obama has made his choice, he works against the majority of the citizens,

system has been accurately described in Glenn's columns of the past year, don't you understanc? This is over....the bloodsuckers have sucked the American working person dry, and now they are feeding on the carcass...i.e., the ability of the government to create money out of thin air and still have it represent some level of purchasing power. The system has to be attacked and brought down, peacefully and resolutely in the streets, day after day, into the indefinite future.

You asked, "how long is the leash, does it ever run out?"

The answer is....37 long years after what you recognize; that there is only ONE PARTY, putting on a puppet show for the sheeple, the people were warned in no uncetain terms, yet Obama was still able to shill votes last fall with cheap platitudes, after doing a 180 on FISA "reform" and on telecom "amnesty".

"I've just come across my "State of the Union" as of 1972. Apparently, I gave it fifteen times across the country, ending with Susskind's program.....

...In 1972, I begin: "According to the polls, our second principal concern today is the breakdown of law and order." (What, I wonder, was the first? Let's hope it was the pointless, seven-year--at that point--war in Southeast Asia.) I noted that to those die-hard conservatives, "law and order" is usually a code phrase meaning "get the blacks." While, to what anorexic, vacant-eyed blonde women on TV now describe as the "liberal elite," we were pushing the careful--that is, slow--elimination of poverty. Anything more substantive would have been regarded as communism, put forward by dupes. But then, I say very mildly, we have only one political party in the United States, the Property Party, with two right wings, Republican and Democrat. Since I tended to speak to conservative audiences in such civilized places as Medford, Oregon; Parkersburg,West Virginia; and Longview, Washington, there are, predictably, a few gasps at this rejection of so much received opinion. There are also quite a few nods from interested citizens who find it difficult at election time to tell the parties apart. Was it in pristine Medford that I actually saw the nodding Ralph Nader whom I was, to his horror, to run for President that year in Esquire? Inspired by the nods, I start to geld the lily, as the late Sam Goldwyn used to say. The Republicans are often more doctrinaire than the Democrats, who are willing to make small--very small--adjustments where the poor and black are concerned while giving aid and comfort to the anti-imperialists. Yes, I was already characterizing our crazed adventure in Vietnam as imperial, instead of yet another proof of our irrepressible, invincible altruism, ever eager to bring light to those who dwell in darkness.

I should note that in the thirty-two years since this particular state of the union, our political vocabulary has been turned upside down. Although the secret core to each presidential election is who can express his hatred of African-Americans most subtly (to which today can be added Latinos and "elite liberals," a fantasy category associated with working film actors who have won Academy Awards), and, of course, this season it's the marriage-minded so-called gays. So-called because there is no such human or mammal category (sex is a continuum) except in the great hollow pumpkin head of that gambling dude who has anointed himself the nation's moralist-in-chief, William "Bell Fruit" Bennett."

"...it will be difficult to comprehend what happened in the Bush era -- and especially how we blithely started a devastating war over complete fiction, while simultaneously instituting a criminal torture regime and breaking whatever laws we wanted. But far more remarkable still will be the fact that, other than a handful of low-level sacrificial lambs, those responsible -- both in politics and the establishment media -- not only suffered no consequences, but continued to wield exactly the same power, with exactly the same level of pompous self-regard, as they did before all of that happened. ..."

And then omit posting your opinion of what we should demand since the current president is now obviously failing to investigate the crimes, to the point that he is obstructing any effort to hold anyone of any stature, accountable?

Isn't calling for commencement of an impeachment investigation of Obama for, at the least, abandoning the oath he took to preserve and to protect the Constitution, now overdue? Or, is your concern that you would be regarded as an leftist extremist, keeping you silent on the matter of holding Obama accountable for his failure to perform his obligations as the natiton's chief law enforcement officer?