He is on our side, if he wants to give more, there is nothing stopping him or any well off American. Even if they confiscate all the wealth in America from tax payees, it will not be enough. Money is a drug for politicians, left and right. The citizens must decide if they want a freedom based capitalist country or a sudo socialist European style life. Tough choice, easy for small populations, almost impossiblenfor 300 million. It would take a dictatorship or kinder gentler hugo Chavez. Won't happen in the USA. Break the states up into small democracy.....maybe the yet to be born will make that happen. Utopia is a myth. Take us back to 1950 , that is America. I wish things were different, all we can do is take care of our family collectives when the shitnhits the fan. My goal, live off the land and off the grid. 20 acres, my own water, garden, cattle and guns.

Peace

Will they listen to Warren Buffett? Of course not, they'll listen to the money pouring into their re-election campaign warchests.

@ Palindromedary This short article is about the fact that Warren Buffett expressed his belief that: “While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks." and “My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It's time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.". It seems to me that he is on your / our side in this regard.

People like Warren Buffet must realize that wealth really has no meaning if they have to live in a junk yard. And a junk yard is what the world is becoming and most of us are merely scavengers...soon to be ruthless cutthroats in order to survive. The police won't save you...that's socialism...they laid off all of the police! Of course, the rich will hire their own police protection from private protection agencies...like Blackwater. Just like in Iraq...they'll blast away first and ignore questions later.

The middle class was supposed to be the buffer, the infrastructure that made the civilization run smoothly..and a realistic goal for many of the poor who could make it if they worked hard enough...but that is being eroded by the decadence of the capitalist maggots feeding off the last morsels of a decaying and failing system.

The idiot lip-flappers on CNBC, defenders of the bubbles, Obama's icons, are so comical to watch as their bullish rhetoric sh!t piles come tumbling down and they have to resort to face-saving language like "market corrections"...yeah, right! So funny! They remind me of people at a Las Vegas casino placing bets on their favorite crap table or roulette wheel numbers. There used to be some real products behind those numbers which made it a lot less like gambling. But with the way the economy has devolved with the Republican way of doing business...scrapping manufacturing for the FIRE (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) economy and betting big time in derivatives and junk mortgages instead of investments in capital equipment and employees to make things in America, they chose to bet on bubbles. And when the bubbles popped they bailed out the big time gamblers who created the bubbles. Brooksley Born, Elizabeth Warren, Michael Hudson (the economist), Joseph Stiglitz, and many others were right all along. They were marginalized by the criminal schemers and their puppet politicians and now we suffer a broken empire run by criminals.

But one very important question needs to be answered...when will someone steal that stupid piece of metal in the shape of Ferdinand the bull on Wall Street...or at least remove his ba!!s so he doesn't cause any more damage to the world? They already spawned the worlds greatest idiots like Greenspan, Rubin, Summers, and other supply-side goons and ghouls.

Dang it anyway

Better than Barney and Betty 1961. But I think no matter who is voted into the presidency...they will also be "abducted" by the same "aliens". Although, I do believe that both Bernie and Betty have the right attitudes and beliefs. Yes, I'd vote for them in an instant. But, like Obama, they would be fighting an overwhelming force. But we must keep trying.

Thom has interviewed Peter Ferrara numerous times over the past 1 1/2 years, and the screaming rage on the part of Mr. Ferrara, typically in the middle of each interview, has become a predictable highlight of the interviews. In some cases Peter has called Thom names and told him to shut up. It's both a) appaling and b) amusing, that a) an official spokesperson could act with such immaturity and b) that Thom reacts with complete professionality and patience (well, except for the one time he hung up on Peter). It's obvious that Mr. Ferrara is intimidated by Thom's vast knowledge of both history and politics, and so when Thom stops Peter to question his rambling ideological monologue, Peter gets increasingly agitated. You see, Peter doesn't want the audience to hear Thom's responses, which are basically filling in the other half of Peter's half-truths. For example, Peter will cite some IRS data that support his argument, then Thom will have to stop or even mute Peter to cite some additional data from that originate from that exact same source, then Peter will dismiss Thom's data as fantasyland. I sometimes wonder why Mr Ferrara keeps rerturning to the show, but he does, and he sure does make for an interesting interview.

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren

Bernie and Betty, 2012

All political party systems are needed to maintain democracy.

One party system is good because if the right party is in power, things can get done. If it exists too long, the party could gain absolute power, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Multi-party system is good because it allows diverse viewpoints in government. If it exists too long, with no centralization of power within a single party things can't get done.

A two-party system is good because it is a hybrid between a dominating one-party system and the political instability of a multi-party system. But if it exists too long, as it has in the United States, it creates an either/or fallacy. Out of all the complex economic and social issues facing this country, only two options are present-either Democrat or Republican(there are many more than two choices possible).Unfortunately, our two-party system is divided into two sides, both Democrats and Republicans at this point aren't for the American people, they are for the interests of their own party and paychecks(I personally believe the president should be independent, so he or she can better serve the interests of the nation rather than that of his or her own political party).

It's the Democrat's fault for compromisng too much, the Republican's fault for not compromising at all, the President's fault for caving in and not standing up for progressive ideas(caved on tax cuts, caved on same-sex marriage, caved on healthcare reform, caved on the budget deficit reduction deal, which really isn't a deal if the Republicans got 95% of what they wanted),

but most importantly, it is the american voter's fault for voting into power these dumb f*cks in the first place.

I agree that the government is far too much in the pockets of the corporations. Somehow we need to get back our country from the corporatists. If we could get the corporations out of government we would be far better off and actually be represented again. Like one of you said, shock and awe is bringing us down. Grover Norquist is getting his dream come true so isThe Chicago School of Economics. Norquist's dream of drowning big government in a bathtub is also drowning the middle class and the poor along with it, and sucking everything down an open drain. Our country needs it's dignity back and we need jobs here. It has gone so much further than even Thom wrote about in his book, Screwed. What is really scary too is that this is spreading all over the world.

http://gowans.wordpress.com/2009/08/06/overthrow-inc-peter-ackerman%E2%8...

Read it all or at least skip down to the heading "Who Is Peter Ackerman?" and the Conclusion.

You want to know what is really happening with these so-called "Non-Violent Resistance" (NVR) movements....so-called regime changes...and who is behind them. Is it really that the people, all of a sudden, gets sparked and ticked off over being exploited by ruthless "dictators" without any help or intervention from the U.S.? Or...who ya gonna call...ghost busters....you call people like Peter Ackerman...founder of the Americans Elect group that may very well influence the outcome of the next President of the U.S. And he is not a liberal or a progressive but a very wealthy conservative who is sneaky enough to get people to believe he is progressive or liberal. And although most people would agree that they are not sorry to see such dictators fall and be put into cages, as is Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, one has to wonder to what extent the US is playing a regime change role in it all. And how much is that same group of covert operatives, using high and mighty sounding names like International Center For Non-Violent Conflict and posing as liberal or progressive organizations when they are actually working for the neoliberals and neocons in a New World Order, playing in the overthrow (or attempted overthrow) of other countries? Wow, what a gig!!...instead of wasting soldiers and money in weapons and destruction of property and people...and earning the hatred and distrust of their people....all they have to do is to foment and fund and instigate internal uprisings...gaining the praise of the people in the US(aren't we beneficent...you can love us now..we aren't killing anyone anymore)...and all the while overthrowing, controlling, and stealing the resources through their own fashioned neoliberal, but useful-idiot puppet governments that will end up starving the people even more than with the dictators. They were all our dictators once until they started playing hardball....time for overthrow!

But then we did this in 1953 in Iran with Mossadegh didn't we! And in 1973 Chile. And in the "people power" movement in the Philippines? And... And...

1.What was the real budget deficit that Bush left for Obama?

2.Please explain why trickle down economics has never worked in the past but will work now.

3.How could any Republican refuse to work with Obama to remove tax subsidies to companies exporting jobs overseas and give these same subsidies to American companies who hire new American workers?

4.What plan do Republicans have other than cutting corporate taxes that will create new jobs sufficient to lower unemployment by at least 2 percentage points?

5.When will Republicans learn from the past and understand that allowing corporate America to self regulate always produces catastrophe?

6.When do you plan to let the American people know that you intend to privitize Social Security, Medicare, education, prisons, the Post Office, etc?

7.Explain to the American people why your privitization plans won't reduce the number of jobs for them?

8.is it possible for Republicans to admit that what is good for Corporate America is not necessarily good for the American people.

9.Do Republicans really intend to force our children to support their parents in the future when Social Security and Medicare as we know them will no longer be there?

10.What are you going to tell the American people in 3 or 4 years after they have followed the advice of the federal government to go back to school to retrain and no jobs will be available when they do so?