Welcome back.

What a somber note to end the year with! But perhaps 2008 is the year to start turning some of this around. We can hope.

It's great that this is being talked about but what do we do about it? Where do we go? The Democrats are as entrenched in this as the Republicans, or will be once they are in power. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. How do we unwashed masses bring the establishment to be responsible and accountable to us? I don't have any answers nor have I seen any out there.

One more "that" than necessary

Only now that the prospect has emerged -- however small and remote it is -- that there appears to be some rumblings of dissatisfaction among the masses over the deep corruption pervading every pore of our establishment are they now decreeing that we need Harmony and Bipartisan Cooperation

This will be an interesting thread.

It is especially appropriate that you mentioned Nixon at the end of your post. Just imagine a time when nearly all the top men in the White House actually ended up in jail; the only person to get off scot free was Nixon himself. And that pardon landed Ford an early and ignominious retirement.

Imagine Fox News dismissing Watergate as "a desperate witch hunt against a popular President," and a "mean-spirited vendetta by a far-left" Washington Post. Would that there was still such a thing as the Washington Post.

We've definitely come a long way, baby.

If we could bring back a little of the 70's, I'd even wear those clothes again.

Oh my

Life has passed me by

The country I was brought up in

Fell apart and died

Oh no

Love's no longer there

Cold wind blew away the sun

That used to warm the air

Lowdown

Ooo! Feelin' pretty bad

Feelin' like I lost the best friend

That I ever had

Lowdown

Ooo! Got to find a way

Got to make the people see

The way I feel today

-Peter Cetera

I didn't finish the article because I got to this: "the already fierce controversy over whether the Bush administration authorized torture," and wrote a letter to the public editor to point out that there is no controversy among the reality-based, only for the MSM and Bush sychophants (sorry to be redundant).

that everybody, powerful or powerless alike sees themselves as inherently good.

Naturally, our establishment sees itself as Good, and thus, whatever their most powerful leaders do -- even when illegal -- is never really bad.

The problem is that the levers of power represented by the media are so brazenly complicit in the process of comforting the comfortable and afflicting the aflicted that the whole process of holding people accountable has become contaminated.

In the Soviet Union (we were taught) the press was wholly owned by the government so the actual workings of Government were hidden from the People. In America, by way of contrast, the Government is wholly owned by the press, hence the natural transparency that allows Government to be.....oh wait!

There is not a lot stopping them from coming and getting you and there is revolution in this post.

I think that Glenn and Digby are just catching up in their analyses and realizations to where I believed the country sank long ago.

But in terms of who will save the country, I don't think that we the people have the financial and military resources to mount an effective expulsion of the fascists and the Republican party (which I deem the center of US fascism and the hideout of the corporatists). We certainly do not have a critical mass of elected representatives who are protecting and defending the Constitution and who are responsive to the will of we the people.

However, and I tremble at even writing this, after having ruminated on retired military leader comments and statements, I am beginning to wonder if the disaffected military isn't already putting up a wall of increasingly passive resistance and, if they perceive a grave internal threat, might not act.

One example of this was documented at this post:

http://tousall.blogspot.com/2007/10/it-takes-network-to-defeat-network.html

I also wonder at what other countries are planning and plotting as they watch our ever-perilous foreign debt, outsourcing of jobs and raw materials, import/export ratio flipping, and descent of the US population's health, reliable housing, transportation, food supply and energy - the essential quality of life indicators.

Beyond cheap real estate, do these countries view the US as becoming an entity that is seen as a rogue nuclear weapons state? If so, what are they planning to do to protect themselves from the US? What are they planning to do to influence policy and government in the US?

It's time to bury the assumption that the US is an untouchable sole superpower. That hegemony is outdated.

We now are a largely disenfranchised people, at the mercy of military/industrial/fossil fuel production corporatists, and it's this base which controls every aspect of our daily lives from government to the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the shelters in which we abide.

We are no longer a nation which respects the rule of law. Those laws are used almost exclusively now to control, subdue and render us impotent and irrelevant except to serve as serfs and consumers by which to benefit the corporatists.

An active resistance is imperative, and as I have written in previous comments, the biggest functions we can serve are as voters and news mongers.

Digby's paraphrasing of the R gasbags:

Democrats need to extend the hand of conciliation and move to meet them in the middle...

I would rephrase for us:

Democrats need to extend the middle finger...

I think we will see more and more of the "bipartisanship" banter as the year progresses, because as more and more people begin to really pay attention to the political scene, the Republicans will lose even more support. It's unbelievable to me that the projected head-to-head match-ups on the presidential level are still close. Given that none of the R's (except Paul) are distancing themselves from the Bush policy and legal atrocities, the R's each should poll no better than 28% in a head-to-head with a Dem. As more attention is paid, I don't see how the numbers can't trend that way.

Not that they will use it, but the proper framing for this should be to use W's version of bipartisanship. Dems should invite R's to the meetings, tell them how it's going to go down and then criticize them relentlessly for any departure, however small, from the Dem gameplan. Oh well, at least we can dream.