historywriter ~ Points well taken. I'd like to see the PBS series of which you speak. Could you post the name, please?

As far as the Constitution is concerned you are right in that we must modify it to keep up with progress. However, I disagree about ever making any modification of The Bill of Rights. That part of the Constitution should be literally set in stone. Political Dogma if you will. It is the very foundation of our Democracy and without it our Federation has no meaning. It is the strength of our country and our people. Look at what happened when modification was made that altered the way The Bill of Rights applied to African Americans--A Civil War. A national disaster of epic proportions within less than a century of Modern Democracy. Today we have a plethora of illegal, unconstitutional modifications such as The Patriot Act; which, in and of itself, if unchecked, will destroy the Federation from the inside. it is essential that we remember that everything that makes our nation superior to any other comes from The Bill Of Rights. Without it we are a third world nation--and a very annoying one at that!

Finally, it was I and not Palindromedary that mentioned the gross grammar errors Thom's show posted last Tuesday. Here is a copy of my blog entry from that day quoting those errors:

Thom? wrote ~

"...the Dreamers, who were came to our country as children. "

"...let's fix out broken legal immigration system,"

By the way, I just noticed someone fixed these mistakes. Bless Thom's heart, maybe he does read his own blog.

Remember, that's 44% of the people who answered the poll (a self-selected set). The current population of the US is 315 million. In 2011, a Gallup poll numbered U. S. Republicans as 27% of voters. That's all Republicans, and the party contains some very diverse factions. The poll showed 40% of American voters identifying as independents.

In January 2013, the Pew Research Center measured the Republican party's favorability ratings as 33%, and Republican approval of their leadership as 25%. In February, a follow-up poll showed that 65% of independent voters viewed the Republican party as "out of touch with the American people".

I don't think we're in much danger of revolution after all...

Really? Spelling errors and grammatical mistakes? Point them out to us.

Do you think Thom Hartmann's many books are ghost written?

I wonder why people throw out speculative rumors as though they are true. I guess because they have no facts.

Outback & DAnnemarc..#34, #35, #36: Yes, I agree except I'd even go further to say that as I've heard so many others say...like Michael Hudson, Chris Hedges, and even Jeremy Scahill...that had Obama lost, the ruling elite with their puppet Republican President, would not have been able to get away with everything they have gotten away with under Obama.

I believe that the ruling elite knew this and actually supported Obama. Obama was the popular slick tongued devil that was actually backed by the ruling elite as a way to sneak in everything they wanted with very little opposition from Democrats.

They knew that there would be a natural tendency for Democrats to back a Democrat President...even if he is not acting very much like a liberal Democrat. The Democrat Congressmen don't want him to fail...because it would make the whole Democrat party look bad. But, it looks like the whole Democrat party looks bad anyway.

If a Republican had taken the Presidency...most of the Democrats would all be in opposition to every one of those Republican bills especially their attacks on Social Security and Medicare. The Democrats would have howled bloody murder. But with a "Democrat" turn-coat President there is not very much real opposition...just enough to make some constituents think, maybe, that it is still worthwhile to vote Democrat the next time around...but not enough to effectively stop the ruling elite from taking all they want.

Gary the Gun Nut: I think your position on "regulation" is flawed. If, by ANTICIPATING the illegal use of firearms either in-state or across state lines the federal government is preemptively restricting access to those individuals that, in its estimation (subject to some criteria that can only be guessed at when you take the long view) then it's violating the Constitution. What about the rights of all those individuals that might be arbitrarily excluded? Do you actually believe that our government is above this? And if it isn't, what is its underlying motive? Concern for the welfare of those injured or killed as a result of gun violence? Our government displays its compassion and concern for the sanctity of life every day in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

And as an aside to the "history writer", when I said in an earlier post that Obama was using every trick in the book to ram through his agenda of more stringent gun controls I was referring to his playing on the big public outpouring of sympathy for the children of Newtown, attending funerals, crying big crocodile tears, while his Vahrmacht continues to pour the equivalent of napalm on "brown children" in places far out of view.

But back to why your logic is flawed. An exact parallel exists in connection with the First Amendment. As you seem to be pretty familiar with the Constitution, I probably don't need to point out the fact that your freedom of speech cannot be abridged through "prior restraint". You can be drawn and quartered for a lot of things (a growing list it would seem - in the near future possibly even my present criticism of the Administration) by the Sedition Act, but the Constitution guarantees your right to say what you have to say. You cannot be preemptively cut off .... yet.

Naturally, yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater or opening up with an assault rifle in that same venue is and should be considered a felony. Likewise, restricting the sale of firearms to people with demonstrated serious mental issues and or criminal records, or children for that matter, only makes sense. But the legal system in this country is structured on the notion that an individual is innocent until "proven guilty". When you forget that principle, my friend, you are standing on a very slippery slope, whether you're a "gun nut" or not.

I realize how ironic and confusing it may seem to many that in one post I attack slavery and in another I defend the actions of the descendants of slave owners. Please bare in mind that I only seek what is moral, legal and right. Just because a group in history has been on the wrong side of the law doesn't mean that they can never be on the right side of the law. I am not prejudiced in any way concerning the law or what is in the best interest of this country. I stand by my opinions. I'm sorry for any confusion.

Loren Bliss ~ Concerning a pure theocracy in the South and mid-states, I don't see that happening. For a theocracy to flourish it has to be accepted by the vast majority. The current fundamentalist influences in these areas are so laced with hypocrisy and hatred I don't see the vast multitude of any major region embracing it long enough for it to develop into a theocracy. If I'm wrong, I don't see that theocracy lasting very long. Eventually, it would become very hateful to the people.

Loren Bliss

I find your comments interesting, provocative and scary. But you do toss out two somewhat optimistic possibilities--one on feminism and Gaia (despite some obvious contradictions such as our own Michelle Bachman) i think we'd have a much better country and world if women had at least half the power of men. The other is the possible reversability of climate change.

Keep writing.

Loren Bliss ~ Quite a thoughtful analysis from a non prophet. Kudos to you. Especially that section about global warming and the potential for the eruption of Yosemite.

Let me begin by saying I too am no prophet. However, I do believe the song, "Throwing Stones," was written by a Great Prophet. It would be worth it to check it out. If I'm right, the 1% and many, many others are goners. The future will be a better place to live... eventually. Here's the link again:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WninWFtO0Gg

I see seven primary econo-political, geopolitical and environmental trends in the Americas today. In Latin America there is a profound shift toward an as-yet unnamed socialism based on workers' and peasants' cooperatives that will eventually lead to proclamation of a new manifesto or a modified version of the original Communist Manifesto calling for local self-governance, the disolving of national boundaries, trans-national socioeconomic union and then, inevitably, to defensive military action against El Norte. In North America there are six trends in three pairs of antitheticals. One set of antitheticals is the secularism of the coastal regions and Canada versus the incipient theocracy of the South and the midlands. While the One Percent's preference is obviously theocracy, the forces of secularism and/or unapologetic Gaian paganism are strong enough in the coastal cities to mount an effective resistance, hence in the interest of profit the corporations will have to adopt at least the pretense of tolerance outside the officially Christian domains. The second pair of antitheticals is the accelerating passage toward zero-tolerance tyranny manifest in the total surveillance state versus the accelerating passage toward entropy manifest in the ongoing and soon-to-be-total collapse of infrastructure both political and physical. However this conflict is resolved, it will be the ruin of the federal union as we know it. The fifth North American trend is the One Percent's effort to convert the 99 Percent to "human capital" in the original sense -- that is, from a workforce to slave labor. Even if that is largely successful -- and I believe it will be (the reason now at age 73 I celebrate the fact my one child did not survive beyond his mother's womb) -- the unmitigated horrors of life under slavery will nevertheless produce a people with strong basic survival skills, especially for living off the land, witness, for example the British Isles after the withdrawal of the Roman Legions. The counter-trend is the tendency of the One Percent to abandon North America entirely -- to seek greener pastures overseas amongst peoples who are easier to exploit and enslave. The seventh trend is the wild card: the fury of Gaia or Mother Nature. Eruption of the super-volcano heating up under Yellowstone could be as destructive to the United States as the eruption of Calliste (Thera) was in 1650 BCE to the global trading commonwealth that for a thousand years had been based on Crete. More superstorms of the Katrina/Sandy class will destroy more cities -- and as we see in New Orleans and New York, the One Percent has no intention of paying the costs of full recovery. These results of terminal climate change will undoubtedly wreak havoc. Based on history (and if indeed any humans at all survive), societies will be radically transformed. The more high-tech the technology, the more fragile it is; hence no surveillance state (or any other human construct) can ultimately withstand the forces of Nature.

Which means the great fear that is now driving the One Percent to ever-intensified tyranny -- the terror of losing control -- is almost certain to be fulfilled. What comes after that -- again note the example of post-Roman Europe -- will largely be determined by the societies that were there before the collapse. The human tendency is toward restoration -- note how efforts to restore the Roman Empire shape European politics to this day. Given that tendency, I see post-apocalyptic North America and Latin America each taking shape much as I described. As to a timeline, my sense is probably 50 years to total North American collapse and political contraction into smaller units (though Mother Nature could certainly accelerate that process), probably another 50 years to evolve the socioeconomic systems I described. And -- yes -- there are two hopeful elements implicit in this. One is that in the wake of Gaia's revenge, the god of Judaism, Christianity and Islam will be the god who failed, which portends an eventual end to Abrahamic theocracy. Conversely, the rise of feminism and environmentalism presage a new, Earth-centered religion a key purpose of which will be nurturing human sustainability. Indeed the Gaia Hypothesis -- essentially that Earth (and by implication the entire cosmos) is alive, conscious and self-regulating -- scientifically restates what was the core principle of all religions until the advent of the anti-Nature, anti-woman male super-gods mandated the imposition of patriarchy about 5000 years ago. And global warming may not continue indefinitely. When I studied geology in the 1970s, there was a computer model of the oceanic currents based on several million years of geological history that postulated once polar ice melt has raised the seas to a certain level, the currents (the Gulf Stream, the Japan Current etc.) will reverse, bringing cold air from the poles toward the equator -- starting the earth toward another ice age.

This is, of course, a gross oversimplification of a very complex estimate of probabilities, something I have been thinking about for nearly 50 years. Amongst its early influences were Ehrlich's The Population Bomb, Gastil's Cultural Regions of the United States, and Vacca's The Coming Dark Age, not to mention the experience of being two cars into the 14th Street Station on the Eighth Avenue IND when the still-unexplained blackout of 1965 hit the Northeast. After about an hour we passengers organized our own escape; I will never forget climbing from the Stygian darkness of the subway into a Manhattan illuminated only by a preternaturally brilliant full moon. The sense of witnessing prophecy -- of seeing the City as it will look a few hundred years from now -- literally stood my hair on end, as remembering it will still sometimes do even now.

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