go way beyond FISA and wire tapping? When the law is deliberately ignored just because you are president, then there is no limit to the president's authority. We know this is how the Busheviks's operate, but having this in their words should be very useful and significant.

Benito '08? What you been smokin', dude? Quick, get the frogs out of your pot!

and LWM has too much patience...

-- Anonymust

I get a different vibe from tales. I think I see where he's coming from, and perhaps some misperceptions he has about 2004. This debate about virtue and tactics, fair and foul and the high road, low road and middle road never goes anywhere here and never even happens on the other team. That's all I'll say about that.

Don't you just love the sound of that?

She - Digby - posted the following about the Right Wing mouths speaking in sync about the "questionable Intelligence" brought out from the NIE report by the Intelligence Community. Even though it is on a slightly different topic, her conclusion could be the same conclusion one might come to in the importance in pointing out the difference between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. The Republican power structure is the worst thing going in America, and so, as it stands, they must be defeated and removed from power and not permitted to gain more power. The dishonesty is so deep that it cannot be tolerated.

In this case it's patently obvious to anyone who's given even a perfunctory look at this, that the bloodthirsty neoconservatives have a track record over 30 years of exaggerating threats. It's what they do. Iraq was the first big time shooting war they actually achieved --- and look what happened. The intelligence services are far from perfect, and their assessments are hardly holy writ, but the neocons are completely and wholly lacking in credibility and honesty. They should never be taken seriously by anyone again.--Digby

http://tinyurl.com/2vam9b

I know. I was surprised when I wrote that, too, but I think it's true, especially when it comes to holding down some of these sub-threads to the Reality of the earth plane.

I can't quite put my finger on it, but I have noticed something different about the overall tone in your posts.

It's one that's been mentioned here many times, but it can always stand being repeated. Corrupt institutions are as much the result of neglect as usurpation. If we want them to serve the purposes for which many of them were originally designed, we have to participate in them. It would also work to abandon them for others which serve those purposes better.

Which you choose depends upon the circumstances. A school or a church is easier to replace than a labor union or a central banking system, just to give an oversimplified example. If enough people with a clear vision of what they want are both willing and able to invest the necessary effort, it's my belief that any institution can be either rejuvenated or supplanted.

Politically speaking, of course, this means that enough people have to see the need. That's why old Marxists used to worry endlessly about how to create pre-revolutionary conditions, and spent interminable, impenetrably tedious hours discussing cadres. Since we're the Nike generation, we tend to think that we can just do it. The truth is, as usual, is both more arduous and less predictable, but if we don't just do it, it won't ever get done.

But like many of those who hang out at this blog, people who are involved in taking back and remaking the Democratic Party are looking at a generation-long struggle -- or perhaps longer. For every success, there are two or three set backs, and what happens at the local level never seems to make much of an impression on those at the top of the hierarchy, almost all of whom are fully dedicated to supporting the status quo.

But yet, you just seemed to argue for a form of incrementalism, or against the shock doctrine of pushing us further right and over the cliff. Can't the country experience a shock by going too fast or too far in either direction you can move the Overton Window? I do think we're past the braking stage and should be going in reverse by now, slowly. Democracy did put the brakes on Hugo, for better or worse.

But at least the effort is being made in the Democratic Party.

Yes. Such as it is and you can't please everyone.

4) My position is and has been that once we finally recognize that the institutions we rely on have failed fundamentally to protect the Constitution and to serve the People, then we will be able to build on a different or better foundation. So long as we try to make these failed institutions "work", I think we're in for nothing but disappointment. They are failed institutions. They don't work. They can't be made to work by all the hammering and tinkering going on.

Which institutions are you referring to?

Apropos of alpha males, and base jumping, check this!

http://www.biertijd.com/mediaplayer/?itemid=4262

I can't quite put my finger on it, but I have noticed something different about the overall tone in your posts.

-- Anonymust

“Which is why they keep telling us to sit down and shut up.”

“My position is and has been that once we finally recognize that the institutions we rely on have failed fundamentally to protect the Constitution and to serve the People, then we will be able to build on a different or better foundation. So long as we try to make these failed institutions "work", I think we're in for nothing but disappointment.”

Senators Whitehouse, Durbin, Feingold, Biden and many others are not telling us to sit down and shut up. I don’t see us at the point of no return although I would like to see some major system fixes.

It’s easier to say everything is broke than it is to talk about system solutions and eventually make them happen. Many of us have said many times that the public is not facing a substantial enough crisis to recognize the danger they are in. They do understand lying and corruption when the case is clear enough. They would understand that the president and vice president should be impeached if the Dems started the process and over time made the case clear.

But therein lies the rub. The Dems don’t want to screw up their excellent election opportunities for 2008 and they know that the case for a successful impeachment would not be anywhere near settled before the election.

You and others seem to say that the Repugs and Dems are so corrupted that nothing substantial will ever happen. I don’t see us beyond the possibility of heading in the other direction. So I think our efforts would be best employed by incrementally chipping away or tossing pebble by pebble as GG and other bloggers are so capable of doing.

I learn from your posts and thinking, but will refuse to succumb to virtual hopelessness.