The Manchurian Candidate happened...
According to a new Pew Research Center survey, "The recession has directly hit more than half of the nation’s working adults, pushing them into unemployment, pay cuts, reduced hours at work or part-time jobs." Close to half of the survey’s respondents said, “they are in worse financial shape as a result of the downturn, which destroyed 20 percent of Americans’ wealth.” Meanwhile, Republicans are obstructing any attempts whatsoever to aid Americans in crisis, whether it be mortgage help or unemployment, and both Democrats and Republicans are joined in fearing to take on the multinational monopolies that have paid off politicians for three decades to get huge tax breaks for companies moving jobs from America to China and to destroy all the protectionist tariff and other measures this country has historically had since 1793 to keep manufacturing of everything from jeans to machine tools here in America. As a result, we don't make much here anymore other than weaponry, and since the beginning of Reaganonomics have gone from being the world's largest creditor to the world's largest debtor, the world's largest manufacturer of consumer goods to the world's largest importer of them. Reaganomics, Clintonomics, and Friedman's flat-earth economics have turned America into the world's largest third-world country, while at the same time China continues to protect its markets and has a growing economy and industrial base. It's almost like The Manchurian Candidate happened, his name was Ronald Reagan, and nobody has had the courage since 1988 to turn us away from his insane tax and trade policies.
Comments
Thom mentioned how half assed this financial reform bill is.
It reminded me of how half assed the health insurance reform bill is.
And that reminded me of how half assed this president is.
But I depress myself.
To the unemployed therepist.
You are the fourth therapist I have heard from who has been financially ruined.
My family USED to be professional too, we are ruined. We are scratching by in the country, can't afford to go to town for a damn movie.
At least we aren't homeless, like we became when Reagan was Prezidunce.
My question to you and all other professionals. WHERE WERE YOU ALL THESE YEARS?
WHERE WERE YOU when I was holding activist meetings in the ladies bathroom at work because it was the only place in the building not on camera, while our bosses held republican PAC meetings in the dining room, telling everyone who didn't ante up they would not have promotions or raises?
WHERE WERE YOU when we were boycotting PAY TV, the disseminater of propaganda?
WHERE WERE YOU while we have been out here trying to wake the nation up?
WHERE WERE YOU?
Thom
Will you shut the hell up about gun control? If a democrat wants to lose and election then the best way to accomplish a loss is to propose gun control legislation. Gun control is never gonna happen.
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
If anything "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms" implies that we should have our own tanks and grenade launchers so as to be properly armed against potential military threats. When it was written the colonists had comparable weaponry to their enemies. Now we don't. A better reading of it would have the citizenry much more heavily armed.
Now shut your blowhole about it before some democrat politician loses an election because he or she listened to you.
Another gun freak. It seems they are more concerned about gun control than losing their businesses and jobs. But small minds never cease to amaze me. They think they can fight the military with small arms and take back the country, which is ridiculous when you think about it. These people in DC would start changing their tune if we moved to the streets in peaceful protest against the banksters. Arming ourselves is not the issue, but expressing ourselves in mass is.
Congratulations on being chosen as member of the day Lisa! Your reply to Thom @ #1 so eloquently stated the angst of millions of self-aware US citizens. Computer (professional) jobs, manufacturing (union blue collar) jobs and even administrative/call center jobs have all gone offshore. Where I am now is a shadow of where I thought I might be 15 years ago when I had a new engineering degree and years of computer experience.
Conservative Dan Gainor said on today's show that we don't need regulation because enlightened self-interest and outrage should work. He was definitely 'right' and strangely he was almost correct: It is increasingly clear that enlightened self-interest and outrage will be required to get enough people out 'takin it to the streets' and into the polling booths for US to win effective regulation of the banks, big oil and all the other out of control mega-corporations. We need to look south - past the Deep South - South of the Border to see how the forces of fear and reaction can be defeated here and now by Americans - a majority of South Americans in a majority of South America have elected leftist governments that declare and act for theircommon people.
My parents raised 2 children from 1948 to 1972 on a single income. Both were born in 1920 and survived the Great Depression. My dad was a Navy lifer from 1940-1960. My mom was a Roosevelt Democrat and had a business degree, but quit working in 1948 to be a stay-at-home mother. My dad served a term as union president in the 60s as a postal clerk, but was a staunch Orange County, CA John Wayne-loving Republican. Both died just before retirement in 1975. My work ethic came from this background and I worked from 1966, all through high school and college, until being disabled from osteoarthritis in 2009. In 1972, Nixon put a freeze on wages that paralyzed the working class, who were at least making a livable single income-per-family wage. When I started driving a truck back then, 90% of us were card-carrying teamsters at $13.25/hour. Much frustration and stress was a result over that decade, not only as a union organizer, but watching deregulation put unqualified drivers behind the wheels of unsafe vehicles. After working at $14.50 for 8 years for a non-union company in 1995, my employer sold the business to a company who offered to keep us on at $11/hour. At that time, 90% of drivers were non-union, thanks to Ronnie Raygun's union busting policies. Wages have not increased when compared to corporate profit level. In the past year, my household income has gone from 60K/year to 14K/year now that my wife's unemployment ceased a few days ago. Our retirement home had to be sold to pay off enormous medical bills and since our meager income is still 12 dollars per year above poverty level in California, we don't qualify for free MediCal. Instead, we have a $2800 per month deductable that does NOT cover prescriptions, thanks to our new state contract with WellPointe/Blue Shield. As a life-long NRA member, I want to keep my 2nd amendment rights so that I may limp my way to Sacramento and shoot the Guvahnator right between his beady little eyes. This is impossible now, though. I had to sell all of my guns to buy groceries and pay the rent !!!
I sympathize with your thoughts and feelings. I wanted to move to Sweden in 1980, when I saw that the Reagan Reaction was happening against the postmodern advances we had made in the 60s and 70s, and even the New Deal and the T.R. Progressive era, but I hoped it wouldn't work out as badly as it has at this point. I hope they enjoy the planet they're ruining, one reason for which is that they lack (haven't grown into) ecological awareness which often brings on understanding of pluralistic (our interdependent) unity and a planetary awareness.
The most generous (and Buddhist-like) explanation one can give to their actions is that it's over their heads. (I'm thinking of BP now, but one can apply it to the last 30 years of leadership in the U.S.) Of course, fear in the form of greed, rather than unity-vision-logic which accompanies Love cannot be marked off the slate of their sins (sins meaning missing the mark.)
Yes, the corporate plutocracy is winning most battles against the people at this point.
A variant on FDR:
Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear. -Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate (1872-1970)
dan4liberty
Why don't you piss off? I never stated my opinion on gun ownership. I just gave a different reading of it and pointed out the fact that this is a losing issue for democrats. Neither gun ownership nor laws against it will tip the balance of power in this country. It is a red herring issue and thom's coverage of it is nothing but a distraction from real issues. And that tags him as a phony progressive ie; false opposition designed to co-opt the progressive movement and channel that energy into something less threatening to the multi-nationals. Of course it doesn't help that he simul-casts with a jackass like alex jones either.
Reagon Democrats- As Lyndon Johnson said when he signed the Equal rights Act, and I paraphase We just lost the south for the next 100 years. All the turmoil and riots etc. scared the hell out of a group of reactionaries country wide, both Democrats and Republicans but southern reactionary Democrats in particular.
Losing is a better teacher than winning. When Nixon got slaughtered by Kennedy in the first televised presidential election debate a hot lightbulb went off the Republican heirarchy's collective heads. And now we can look back on 30 years of Reagonomics and GOP control of our hearts and minds through the wonders of TV and radio. Their biggest victory, maybe it's just a conspiracy, is in cowing the Democrats. Amazing bit of brainwashing.
The country is just plain scared of it's own shadow. Some of us wonder whether fascism is here. In the standing definition maybe not but we have truly been subverted.
We won't change a damn thing until we all pull ourselves up and hit the streets. Only massive demonstrations will change anything and these demonstrations have to include a broad philosophical base not just the left, not just the right but all those who want to rid ourselves of the Corporatists, the Totalitarianists, the subverters of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Now my Congressman is telling me we can't "afford" Social Security." If that is so, how can we afford military pensions and our 2010 military spending of one trillion dollars?
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Why aren't more Americans outraged at this "Shock and Awe" takeover. That is the question I have. I am an or used to be upper middle class professional family, we are hearing more stories here in the trenches of people losing their jobs, barely hanging in there, and the prices of things aren't going down either. As a therapist, I am dependent on people with decent jobs having income to be in their comfort zone to pay me. I have never been so slow, I feel like I am on a sinking ship. Are we in denial? After all Reagan was an actor, it seems he will play his role eternally - inspiring this country to continue to buy his modern day message of prosperity when behind the curtain it reeks of burn, "rape" and pillage, will this become in History a modern day version of the Dark Ages? I worked really hard to become a professional, dedicated to helping people, years of education and sacrifice. If this is where it ends so be it, but what a waste. I voted and believed in Bill Clinton, he sold us out, and now they in Washington are finishing the job. Hope they enjoy the planet. Thanks for your summary of what my family knew since the 70s. Regan ruined California, and now it has spread to ruin the world. I am really scared and afraid that we are at the end of the greatest experiment attempted, after 8000 years of terror. Everything I have learned about trauma is proving true, it just endlessly repeats itself.