are you smarter than a. . . or as smart as a. . . ?

[stellanoir]

Marty Kaplan wrote an article on Huff Post entitled "Are you smarter than a Neocon?"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marty-kaplan/are-you-smarter-than-a-ne_b_43682.html

This was a comment in response to his article that I thought was worthy of discussion.

"Are You As Smart As a Progressive?

True or False.

1. The war cartels, in combination with the oil cartel, are so powerful that they can engineer wars for their own profit;

2. The Republican party is best categorized not as "conservative" or "religious," etc., but as "cartelist" and "plutocratic";

3. At least half of the "Democratic" party is equally cartelist;

4. The first appointed "President" in this country turned out to be a traitor who led us to our deaths on a lie to profit the cartels;

5. Congress, by refusing to impeach the President and to try him for treason, has demonstrated its complicity in his crimes;

6. The Plutocratic-Republicans act with unanimity in support of plutocratic measures because they are all plutocrats;

7. the "Democrats" do not act as a party at all, because their party is composed of two camps: Half of "Democrats" vote with the Plutocratic-Republicans on the matters of most import to the cartels and the supply-side ultra-rich; the other half ought to leave the party and call themselves Progressives;

8. We live in a time of plutocratic crisis that will determine the fate of our democracy; if a "Democratic" Congress continues to countenance the President's crimes then all three branches acknowledge the supremacy of the cartels;

9. This crisis was prefigured by the Reagan Administration, close-following on the heels of the Nixon Administration; both regimes pointed to an increasing incremental threat from the war cartels, with which the fossil fuel cartels, other cartels and the supply-side ultra-rich have joined to shape our domestic & foreign policy through an informal Plutocratic Ascendancy; while their presidents have more & more brazenly disdained the principles of democracy & the rule of law & Constitution;

10. The for-profit media, political "experts," columnists, "journalists," & commentators are paid shills who treat us like children, pretending that we must inhabit a dialectic of "liberal" and "conservative" "social values" while the cartelists & ultra-rich conduct a one-sided economic war against the AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS."
By: DocTwain on March 19, 2007 at 01:59am

[NMMNG]

1. All true n/t

[bleever]

2. That's a pretty concise history lesson.

Recommended.

[stellanoir]

3. I thought so as well

Thanks for the rec.

I think he really nailed it totally.

[stellanoir]

4. The poster from Huff Post just commented again. . .

He is so succinct. . .

"We could easily address this problem (not global warming, but societal unwillingness to deal with it) by acknowledging the existence of industrial cartels and recognizing that the primary political dialectic for decades now has not been liberal/conservative but democratic/plutocratic.

Honest leaders who actually spoke the truth and educated the citizenry about this problem could easily unite the middle class and engineer a paradigm shift in which we systematically stood up to the cartels (war, fossil fuels, health insurance, etc.) and regained control of our own political system.

We could have publicly funded elections and Instant Runoff Voting and an actual democracy.

We could even have solar panels on the White House roof.

Instead, the best lack all conviction, and the cartels promulgate lies with passionate intensity.

A paradigm shift is possible.
We can even try the President for treason.

Your pessimism, David, redounds to the benefit of the cartels.

When will a leader, or even an "expert" commentator, stand up and admit that responsibility that comes with freedom, and acknowledge that we CAN defeat the cartels, and even have a duty to defeat them?"
By: DocTwain on March 19, 2007 at 05:32pm