WW: Exactly! --- They keep forgetting that they left a shambles. Now they blame Obama for not cleaning up after them fast enough. (while they gridlock the gov.) You think they're used to their black help not being so uppity that they would actually live in the Massa's House?

The Social Security trust fund is pretty much all that remains to steal from the working class...In addition, the Fascist hogs also want the working class to pay for their god damn oil wars with "our" bond money.....which is another motivation for repeating over and over again that the fund is broke.

I'll say this about the Fascist Corpse Media Weapon ....all earning a living as participants in this mass dissemination of lies, collectively are ripping the heart and soul out of our democracy and their paychecks and hands are stained with the blood of the working class. We're all going to go down together.....both the Foxmerized and the enlightened. The barbarians have already crossed the Danube and seized power....only the names have changed....instead of names like Attila and Alaric we have names like Koch and Murdoch!

We really have few choices, but I'm sticking with satellite. At least I can access FSTV.

Hey, bigger is better right? Wait a minute...

Thank you, Mark. I keep pointing out the true source of the problem behind the increased migration of undocumented workers in this country, seemingly to no avail. Some people just want to blame the victims of bad trade policies rather than the politicians responsible for those policies. It really sickens me. But let's face it; it's so much easier to dump on the most powerless, vulnerable people in society who lack the means to fight back.

And why aren't these same complainers bitching about employers who persist in exploiting undocumented workers, profiting from a bad situation?! Seems to me that illegal employers are the problem more than illegal workers. Thom Hartmann has also made this point, hundreds of times. But as usual, scapegoating prevails nonstop while emotion trumps logic. Oh well... - AIW

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren would be a dream ticket in '16! Eight years for Bernie and then eight years for Warren as president might be enough to get the U.S. straightened out (with a functional Congress) after over thirty years of Republican malfeasance.

I wasn't witness to it but it was reportedly pretty instant and such breakage doesn't heal without bones being set properly first. And the woman (Santeria is not a modern, patriarchal religion) used no surgical instruments but did a lot of "ritualistic nonsense". This would be in line with the reports of anthropologists who study and observe faith healing in technologically primitive cultures.

Of course there is never a shortage of charlatans and frauds, anywhere, to opportunize on anything, but that's irrelevant to what we're talking about.

I suggest you read about the work of George Gallup jr., the statistician and son of the founder of Gallup, inc., the polling and demographic research firm, studying the near death experience or the work of hypnotherapists on past life regression or the documentation of Edgar Cayce's clairevoyance or the work of anthropologists in the study of religious practices and spiritualism in technologically primitive cultures.

Part of the problem is that when working class people move into the middle class they more or less naturally, without any help, tend to stop thinking of themselves as "working people". Now they are home owners, property owners, sometimes landlords, owners of income properties. Often they start small businesses, bars, restaurants, etc. and become employers. They invest in the stock market.

Pat Brown, Governor Jerry Brown's father and previous governor of California, in a book about Ronald Reagan, back when Reagan was running for governor in that state, wrote that the Democratic Party was a victim of its own success. It moved the working class out of povrty, brought the United States out of the Great Depression and built the care free, opulent society and the opulent blue collar middle class. What happens when people start making money? As my friend who made $50,000 a year as a Teamster truck driver and who invests in the stock market said, "They start buying stock and voting Republican.".

Saul Alinsky described this phenomenon as he observed it in the poor stockyards laborers he organized. Initially they were poor, beat down, kicked around, had low self esteem and little sense of entitlement or of their ability to improve their lot. They crafted a manifesto for their new organization. In it they declared that all men are brothers regardless of race, color, creed or social economic status.
Then what happened was that they won. They gained power, got a better deal and moved into a new little subdivision in Bridgeport, a neighborhood right next door to but a step or half a step above the Back of the Yards neighborhood where they started. They, all 200 or so of them, moved right next door to each other in the new subdivision of nice, new, lower middle class houses in two rows on the same block. No sooner had that happenned than they started talking about, "We don't want 'these people' or 'those kinda people' coming around or moving into the neighborhood.
A similar thing happened with the radicals of the '60s. When they were students it was easy and fun to figure out and point out what was wrong with society and what needed to be changed. Then they graduated, started making money and suddenly had a lot invested in the status quo, and so, they started humming the bourgeois tune.

By the way Nora, great post! Right on, sister. I made a similar argument on another blog months ago; one that followed an article about the Zimmerman trial. That blog was full of ignorant white trash posting dumb-ass, broad-stroke comments about blacks. For me it was a rude, sobering glimpse at the racism that prevails in America to this day, which I found very disheartening. The condescension, mean-spiritedness and crudeness of those posts horrified me; a virtual tidal wave of stupidity and ugliness. I can only argue with these nitwits for so long before a sense of futility sets in; then I've gotta bail, if only to preserve my sanity. "Stupid is as stupid does", as ole Forrest Gump used to say.

Sure made me appreciate the general caliber of participants here! Most people posting on Thom's blog have way more on the ball than the vast majority of other blogs I've seen. You, Nora, make an excellent example of this disparity. It's why I've kept coming back here. I don't tend to last long on other blogs; I burn out on them very quickly. - Alice I.W.

Loremaster: Although you did finish up your comments with "on topic" view points...You did add to the trolling with your comment about Haiti. That's kind of like accusing, then doing what you accuse others of doing, then ducking yourself. ie: "Regardless, many have travelled to Haiti and found many things science can not prove to be True!"

Like what? Voodoo? Dead chicken rituals? Zombies? Science cannot prove or disprove ridiculous superstitious beliefs. Like, you cannot prove or disprove the existance of God, or Satan, or Demons, or Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny if people are bent on believing those things despite all the Scientific evidence that detracts from them. Superstitious beliefs are not 'falsifiable'. There is no way to convince people, who persist in these superstitious beliefs, that their beliefs are not true, ie: based in reality, no matter what scientific evidence is presented that would disprove those beliefs.