Tale of Two Candidates, Desperately Needing Each Other

Sir...What choice???...
The only choice is no choice, no alternative, not the other guy, not worser, but worse... Like the old song said: rejoice, rejoice, you have no choice... And we do not... The parties have set themselves up in power... Where are they written into the constitution??? They have done it without our consent, out of our need for some voice, any voice in our affairs, out of our need for unity against unity...
What the parties add in difficulty to the process of self government exactly equals what they take from the process which is access and influence over your own representative, who should, by the way, be representing far fewer, but now represents vast numbers from districts deliberately divided to deny great numbers any representation at all... An Author was just on your news hour decrying how many of what he called clients the democrat party was representing... What choice have they???...
When at most two class, control the republican party and that party stands in defense of the privilage those two classes alone enjoy, and it stands against all others who do not enjoy the privilages of those two classes, then the clients of the democrat party have no choice what so ever but to bind their desparate interests together out of necessity...We cannot reconcile any rational definition of democracy- which should include both the defense of the whole society, and the defense of the individual against society- with these parties... We deal with the parties because we are given no choice, and because we have no choice we must accept them even when they forever let us down...Together they cannot even have a rational conversation about the problems that confront us...We are supposed to have faith in them, but they have no faith in the people's ability to decide, and if deciding wrong to correct their decisions...
It does not matter what they call themselves... The republicans are aimed both barrels at the republic, and the democrats are the enemies of democracy... Justice finds them both unnecessary and an impediment to our survival...If we cannot learn to talk to each other directly through our government without these parties garbling up everything we try to say, then we are done and finished, and only time uncertain keeps us from our fate...
Thanks...Sweeney

An article that actually portrays the election as it is. Good. Not only are these 2 guys equally terrible, they are also equal. They support many of the same policies that have de-railed this country in the first place. On this site, you have Simon making up lies about how Obama is not power hungry. Then you have Limbaugh who is so excited that Ryan is a "real reformer". Ha. What really makes me laugh is when people say that Ryan resembles a Libertarian. I won't even get into that lie. My point is, props to Mark for actually giving us some straight talk.

Wow you people see it so differently then I do. I know the pundits both left & right keep repeating the GOP talking point "no president has been re-elected with unemployment over 8%" but they totally ignore the FACT that NO president has faced an economic collapse like this since the great depression. And do NOT tell me Reagan faced similar, the economy he inherited was caused by the Fed by jacked up interest rates. It was 18% to buy a house in 1980!! They lowered em around 6 percentage points & there you go. This is COMPLETELY different, its based on consumer debt that was created by the housing value collapse.
And guess what??? FDR -the only president to face similar - WAS re-elected with unemployment higher than 8% 4 times.... Negative NINE GDP, job losses of over 800k in the month Obama took office. It WAS an economic collapse. The economy lost $10 Trillion in wealth the average American lost $100K in wealth that is 40% of their wealth. We had an economy that was being driven by the consumer spending brought on by rising home values. Like I said NO president in our livetime has faced a mess like this. And top that off with the FACT, not blame, FACT that when Obama took the oath we ALREADY had $10.6 Trillion debt and 2 wars going on. Why thats even worse than what FDR faced. IMHO this man has done an AMAZING job. And top that off with the fact that he passed ObamaCares that finally finally finally after 100s of years of trying gives regular working stiffs like me a Health Care safety net. Yea Yea Yea I know it was not the "liberal single payer dream" but dang it the security will give to regular hard workign people is beyond my wildest dreams.

yeah, we see things differently because we're not Obama-bots like yourself. We elected Obama to repeal the Bush atrocities and set the country right again. But instead Obama has doubled down on Bush's policies. Debt has gone up. Instead of repealing the Patriot act, Obama passed the NDAA, which is worse. The CBO reported that the "We can't afford this act" will cost over twice as much as originally projected and is already causing doctors to quit and prices to rise. When you turn off MSNBC and look at the real word, its easy to see why no one wants to re-elect Obama, but rather just wants to keep Mittens out of the oval office.

Ah Chris, the debt went up because we just went thru the worst recession since the great depression. We lost 8 million jobs most of them in the last half of 2008 and 1st half of 2009 before his policies even had a chance to completely kick in. That alone means lower means higher deficit since a surge in unemployed automatically brings with it less revenue and more expenses like unemployment insurance. In every single recession the government takes in less and puts out more so no matter who would have been in office we would have seen most of that uptick in spending. And I'll remind that the GOP had their own stimulus bill which was just slightly smaller than the one passed by the Democrats but which cost more over the long haul because it consisted, surprise surprise of permanent lower taxes for the wealthy & corporations. BTW at the time the prevailing view of most economists was that stimulus was needed to prevent a full blown depression and fast.
The CBO point is also a lying GOP talking point. Read the report or check a fact checker, what you are pointing out is an apples/oranges comparison that plays with the number of years included inthe estimate. In an apples to apples comparison the cost of ObamaCare actually went down per the CBO. And FYI for me personally (and millions of other Americans I suspect) the NDAA is a non-issue as is the Patriot Act, I happen to believe a Presidents 1st job is to keep the American people safe.
Im struck by your name calling. You dont EVEN know me. But go ahead & name call I'll just accept that you are too small minded a person to believe its possible for anyone to have a different point of view from yourself let alone to have the capabliity to listen to a different point of view. Go ahead & pretend that I've been "brainwashed" by MSNBC or Obama if it thats the only way you can accept that someone sees something differently than you or has different priorities.... Fact is I dont even have cable but from your tone I'd guess facts dont matter....

Re: Sue Barnhart;... I am certain that people seek high office to be the masters of their fate, but no one could follow Mr. Bush the lesser into office and be anything but the prisoner of reality... One man looking at the national debt as a cash cow for his class, who counts the moral costs of war against the possibility of political gain will never do anything but destroy the office and make it useless to the next one in line...
If you are not afraid of chinese arithmatic, of running up the debt, there is a lot of good one can do for the country, like fighting necessary wars without taxing people into panic, or priming the economic pump... Once that golden egg laying goose is etted there will be no eggs forthcoming...Deficit spending has been misused and abused as it was by the Confederates; to avoid taxing the very people who expect to gain from government.

Governments have destroyed themselves with debt, and in fact, our whole society is having the life sucked out of it with debt... If you were to give every responsible person a hundred dollars, ninty would go to pay down debt... When people see their neighbors lives buried and swept away under an avalanche of debt, their confidence in the economy and in government is going to wane, and justly so...The ability to use the national debt to restore confidence in the economy has gone with the waste of it to directly inflate the accounts of the rich who do not even have to hire us to put us under an obligation to pay back what we never had the opportunity to accept...


The mind set of the rich in their wars of choice, and avoidance of taxation, in their reliance upon the national debt to capitalize their empire is of a gang of parasites... Not one of them thinks the drop of blood they take out of a government they dispise, and the people they hate will kill it... They run up the debt, and expect the democrats to pay off the debt with the demand that we sacrifice... Such sacrifice cost Mr. Clinton his congress, and for what??? So that Mr. Bush could then come along and start a war the people had to pay for and fight, when 95% of the cost never left America...
It was stupid to fight the wars we did, and we fought them stupidly...Our puppet government will follow us from Afghanistan made wealthy on our blood... The taliban will grow stronger and hate us all the more...And the office of the presidency has nothing to work with either to ramp up the war or to prime the economy... If the president disengages and leaves precipitously, then the zone will be seen as surrendered, and it will be an albatrose hung on the neck of Mr. Obama... The only party that can get us out without the howl of demagoges is the republicans, and collectively they do not have the will...
To the rich the republicans represent, the national military is the strong right arm of their interests... They cannot be blind to the cost and who must pay it, but they certainly seem blind to the depth of frustrations of the people that they manipulate, who are continually asked to sacrifice, and who never enjoy the feast...
You have to understand that the rich hate Keynes... The debt is there for the rich to use, and for the people to pay... The idea that the government should help people out of depression and offer anodine for their real, grievous wounds is one the rich dispise...
Does the government not understand that depression is the time when losers are liquidated and the successful prosper??? If the big fish must gobble up little fish in a frenzie before the government comes to their rescue, it takes all the fun out of the pain... Using funny money to start a war is one thing... Using funny money to prolong the agony of those the rich want ruined anyway is a waste...
The rich are doing what those in power always do, and that is to count on the power of their institutions to the point of their destruction.... They think their money will hold value while they make it worthless... They think law will have respect while they clearly manipulate it for their gain... They expect because of the mountain of debt the government carries, that the people will once more answer the call for sacrifice, not realizing that the people have no more family farms to feed them, no savings measured against debt, no jobs offering any sort of future, and only more and more insecurity...
Can the government say: we are in the same boat as you castaways??? The debt they have burdend the people with they accepted so they could be elected, so they would not have to tax those who supported their election, so they would not have to bring down the economy by balancing their books...Only those who took the money can pay it back... America is broke, bankrupt, and that is the international cue for revolution...Look at history... National bankruptcy is the proximate cause of revolution, and the people have only one thing left to sell to settle the national debt, and that is our civil rights and our entitlement to the support of the commonwealth...
Thanks...Sweeney

Re: James A, Sweeney The rich are the problem is a marxist theory that spawns socialism as step one in nationalizing private industry and descends into communism where the people in charge are well-off and everyone else is equally poor. Sweeney must think that he is one of the "chosen ones" when in actuality he just one of the useful idiots.

Sue you have just as many excuses as Obama does. So you think its a non issue that the president can and has now killed American citizens overseas and can now imprison them at home without trial. Do you know about Obamas kill list and how many innocent people he's killed abroad to kill suspected terrorists? Obama promised that his stimulus package would reduce unemployment to less than 8 percent. Failed. Have his policies had a chance to kick in now? Where are the results? As Mark points out, over half Americas think we're on the wrong track. Back when Obama was a congressman he called raising the debt ceiling irresonsible, yet has done it numerous times in office. He also said it was wrong to saddle future generations with debt. 5 trillion more dollars in debt, he failed on that too. But I'm sure you have canned excuses for those points too. After all, Obama can't do anything wrong.

Re: David Henricks... Forgive me for taking so long to answer you... While the rich do not help because they are so blind, they are a symptom more than a cause... The real problem is that forms get old, and people see fit to help themselves at the expense of their societies, and without moral restraint followed up by physical action (law ) if necessary; individuals can be the destruction of their societies and all they have gained through them...
Who was the richest man in Rome, in Greece, in Russia, in France all becomes moot the moment they take too much out of their socieites and their societies have to begin again without them...Who would not choose to be rich among poor people, and what sort of angel does not envy their immorality, as it is -to feed off ones equals...To me, that one that has their wealth out of intelligence, hard work and invention should be able to keep it, and that thought would protect much wealth, including my own...It does no good to keep such wealth hereditary, or to even give it free protection... Yes; wealth should have protection, but as in the Fuller court of the turn of the last century, that class was demanding the protection of society and denying the right of society to tax them to pay for it... If wealth is not returned to the commonwealth in some fashion, and if wealth does not pay for the extra protection it receives from society, then government only exists to make the poor pay for protection the rich receive; and it does not matter what ideological reasoning the rich use, and in the fuller court it was Social Darwinism, and Laisez Faire Economics; for in the end such societies destroy themselves...

People can adapt to almost any situation... A free people were reduced to serfs in Europe by people who made themselves lords... The stituation would have continued on indefinetely without intervention, and the fact is that kings wishing to be monarchs weakened the whole ruling class, and warfare soon showed the weakness of Feudal arrangements and economies... There are many among us who admire kings, and would make us a Feudal Society once again, but such societies were never so much trashed by revolution as over thrown by invasion...

Lords did not make their societies strong, but took the wealth and strength out of society, and then kept it from evolving in any sensible fashion...Still, the cities and commerce grew, and were better able to defend themselves, and so came in time to own the whole societies they once served...Change is life; and when the rich want all the wealth, though it is natural, and want to protect the wealth of their whole class while the working class defends them, and see that wealth forever perpetuated in their children while the children of the poor inherit only poverty, they are demanding revolution, and invasion...

Changing forms is the story of all human progress... Jefferson talked about forms in the Declaration...But the constitution was not written to further revolution, but to end revolution...And in impowering the rich against the poor it recreated Europe and its feudal classes in our society... And if you call me a Marxist I may agree that I understand Marxism, and do not have it second hand...You would not even exist without socialism, because we are yet socialistic, and all primitive societies are socialist...
There is simply no way people can deal with a want of technology and a poverty of resources but to share, and to govern for equality... We all came out of socialism, and it is the rich who are teaching socialism better than any socialist because they are forcing us to share what remains of our limited resources so that we can survive at all...The more of the commonwealth they privatize the more we must socialize the rest... How long will it be before we look at this class above us as our enemies and put them out of the picture...
I do not blame the rich for acting in ways completely natural to them... I do not blame the poor for trying to tolerate it...Societies all die from the same illness... When forms no longer serve their populations, but the population is forced to serve the form, the society weakens and dies and is replaced...The rich take their conception of welfare out of the weakness and pain of the poor... They never leave off looking with envy at the rights and wealth of the poor... They want all, and to have all is their destruction...
No one can prevent it, and they have no formal consciousness, and cannot even be aware that they have crossed the line... They cannot dare acknowledge that the poor and the government have contributed to their wealth and made it possible... It is an afront, and an injury; and to teach them the basis of economics would destroy them and make them once again human...
Economy means house management, and we refuse to manage our economy as every primitive savage would find essential... It is because our technology creates such vast wealth with only a fraction of labor that we feel we can set enterprise free of restraints...These rich people have this country, and want the world, and to own that world they must risk war, and leverage the whole of our commonwealth on their hare brained schemes...Our economy does not support us... We support our economy and give our lives to it -for little in return... This is why everyone is angry... They see their lives decending down the toilet of reality, and cannot fetch them back... The harder they work the less they have...
I do not think of socialism as ideal... How can an economy of necessity ever be thought ideal...But if we will not manage our house, our society, our economy, our own individual behavior we will all be suffering the socialism of necessity within a hundred years, and it will be terrible...

And before I sign off... I have always been useful, and have never been an idiot... I made my income and my wealth by my usefulness... An idiot in the classic sense is one aloof from politics, and this has never been me... Socrates was called an Idiota... But the Platonic justification for wealth having political power is alive today and while it is successful and accepted, we will suffer ever more poverty and degradation as a people, and so I will never be an Idiota...I will not see my society follow the great civilizations of the past into the g rave of history without trying to change its course... WE know how societies fail... People fail their forms, their forms fail all the people, and the whole society is conquered if it cannot re-form itself... An unchanged people cannot change their society... I am a changed man...I am ready for change...
Thanks...Sweeney

Re: Chris McCoy... We reached the point long ago when presidents were no longer the masters of events, and became their slaves... There is still room for some one like Mr. Bush the lesser to muck things up by deciding without thinking; but no thoughtful president will ever simply act, unless we should elect a revolutionary and that would be a short presidency...
If you accept as a predicate for your actions the preservation of the staus quo ante, your hands will ever be tied to the situation you see, and only a pardigm shift would free such people... The government should have let the banks fail...Now they are tied to that class, supporting them with deficits, depending upon the rich for their support when they will always bet first on the party of the rich... Let the houses fall together... Our government/economy is not a dying man.. It is a corpse that would not even be that without all the maggots holding holding hands...
The problems of the government are nothing... The problems of the economy are nothing... The problems of the people are nothing... The cure to the problems of either of these groups is the destruction of one or both of the other groups... If they cannot fix their problems a little at a time the whole mess will be fixed at once...The fix is the problem...
Thanks...Sweeney

Sweeny are you trying to say that the president just does whatever he wants and does not act in the best interest of the people? If that is what you're saying than I agree with you. And this has been going on for a very long time. But what if we elected someone outside the box? Outside the 2 party system. Its never happened before and thats the kind of change I think it would take to turn things around. You have some good insights on how bad the corruption had gotten. At least I think you do. Its hard to figure out your comments. And don't take that as an insult, its not.

Re: Chris McCoy... No thoughtful reasoning intelligent president will ever see his options as other than in a maze of pitfalls... You have to be the most gullible, trusting, naive yokel to step into that office, put the congress in a box because you can, and go to war because they allow you too having no political option besides political suicide to stop you because of a wave of patriotism sans reason...
It is not the job of presidents to over estimate the people's ability to do -on borrowed money... It is the job of the president to tell the people the limits of the country's ability, and to improve our ability rather than inflate it...
We are in no shape to war... Democracies are defensive forms of social organization, and they begin to break down in offense... We first need something to defend, and for most people that is their hopelessness and misery, and then we need the unity to work together, and that has been spent so that one part of the population can feed on the other half...
Perfect union was one of the ideas for which this country was formed, and those who said that union was only between the states, and not between the citizens have used their institutions and aims to turn this place into a sort of old testament hell...If there is some good reason political power rests upon each half of the population hating the other half, I would be happy to hear it...Other wise, we have exported all our capital, and have for long been importing much of out products, and we can offer no physical or moral defense of this land worthy of a democracy...
Chris; it was the parties that limited the number of representatives in the house which should grow with the population and be responsive to them... It is for that want of democratic control of government that presidents have gained power -by default and this situation has been growing since Lincoln... The less democracy we have the more we need an elected tyrant, but with the whole society so mismanaged and at odd, a president can no longer be the president of all the people...
As much as Mr. Obama has tried to appeal to the right, and lead from the center he has not gained a single vote, and he has lost many... People need change, and a man elected promising change had better at least try to deliver... The need of re-election ought to be damned... If you want to save the country be prepared to be a one term president, and make it good...
The parties say: Don't rock the boat... We need a successful presidency... It is more likely to be a failed presidency playing cautious... If you want cautious, consider Lincoln... He knew the South wanted war, and refused to give them a reason knowing with out reason and in spite of reason they would go to war, and then unity would not have to be bought with a pack of lies... Nations fight war, and divided we fall...We are never going to have unity without equality.... We will never have unity without opportunity, and we will never have unity without justice for all...
Freedom is expensive but it beats the hell out of tyranny for cost...As long a government is divided because the people are divided, the president will act with all the authority he is allowed, but if he is smart he will please those who elected him, and if he is not he will try to please everyone...
If a president was good, and learned, and understanding in the sense that Lincoln was, he would take us back to the Declaration of Independence as the model of good government, ask the people if we still stand for liberty, and if so, then demand a complete overhaul of the government and constitution... Technically, if class warfare is disregarded, we are at peace... Why can we not have a national conversation about what we want from our government, and the government, if it be we; of what is possible for us to deliver...
There will always be those who feed off the body politic... If we were strong we could resist them; but we are weak and divided, and we are in very grave danger with our military exhausted and productive capacity gone... Those who hate this people and what we stand for don't care that they live among us... They would die to see us dead... You cannot hate democracy without hating people, and I am content to hear everyone's mind if given the opportunity to change their opinion... Give people democracy, or better, let them snatch it out of the mouth of Plutocracy...
Thanks... Sweeney

I support people's right to religious freedom.
And this is not a slam against Mormon's, I have no problem with Mormon's practicing their faith as they see fit. Additionally the Mormon's I have known in my life were good people.
But, and this is a big but, the question that I feel that needs to be asked, and is too often in this election dismissed is not whether we are headed in the right direction, but rather is the American public ready to vote for, and inaugurate, a man who does not believe in Jesus, or God, as defined in the King James Bible ?
Because Mormon's do not. And if Romney is elected it will be the first time we have ever, in the history of our country been able to say that about a sitting president.
And when you bring this up people say "oh, it doesn't matter." Or "well, the same things came up regarding Kennedy when he ran."
But the comparison fails, it is not the same thing. Mormons are guided by a group of human elders who believe they are inspired with the power of divinity. They believe that they themselves are the mouthpieces of Christ on earth. In an interview with the president of the church the reporter asked him point blank: "If there was a revelation from the elders would Romney, as a Mormon be bound by it?" His response was "absolutely."
Kennedy and the Church of Rome were not at all the same thing.
But time and time again I hear the issue get swept under the table and I want to yell, do you understand that this has never happened before !? Mitt Romney does not believe in the Bible alone, but as an adjunct to The Book of Mormon. And he does not believe in God, nor Jesus, and his faiths veneration of the Angel Moroni is on it's face an abomination before God.
Period.
And no one claims to care, it's a non-issue they say. I don't understand how that can be possible.

Re: rojo;... The Mormans like most of us worship money, and for that we sacrifice and deny ourselves, and expect others to sacrifice for, and deny themselves...Christianity is in the following of Jesus as difficult and demanding as being a Muslim, and it would leave little time for politics, which is only right since to trust in God is to trust in God, and to fear God is to fear God and not fear death or our fellow human beings...We only care about these temporal matters because we do not care for our God, or for those who teach us of God- only to reveal better their hypocracy...As Jesus advised: Do as they say, and not as they do...
I only follow Jesus as far as he was funny, and he was a hoot... Can you imagine giving your pants to someone who sues you for you tunic??? Those people we doomed, and like all the old testament prophets, he realized how useless was form without relationship... The people had nothing...They would use the excuse of an offering in the temple to deny the needs of their own parents... They were legalistic and bickering, and could not take the lesson- often given in their history about simply loving God and their fellow man... Who needs a sect, or an denomination for that???...
Just love one another... Forget all the formality without meaning, and love God by loving your fellows... Rough... And there sat Jeruselem like a big fat golden plum, unable to defend itself, asking to have its wealth taken and its people dispersed... So much wealth the people could have used- taken and wasted to keep the rich rich for another day in the business of God...
A religion is a search for God, and a church is a search for money, and enough is never enough... Our temples in this land are our great banks and wall street... That is where our widow's mites are laid out for us to adore; and Mormony is no different, and certainly no better...You will never be a Mormon without paying for the privilage, and then you tap into the the financial resources of a giant... No; they do not worship Jesus, and neither do most Chrisitians... Come to think of it; I do not either... I try with a small t, to follow his words and works...
We can only live in one world at a time... And the world Jesus recommended for his followers is not one to love... He promised to break all familial relationships, and let the dead bury the dead... He did not offer people justice on this earth, but justice beyond... He said all were blessed, and if this is true, what common fact unites us but this shared life which we should help each other through...And I will tell you right off that I live in this world and love it, and if I want nothing better than justice there are many evil things I will not do for a good thing... As churches go, mine leaves a lot to be desired; but at least it is not Mormony...
Thanks...Sweeney