Sometimes I seriously doubt if some on DU even know the basics of our political system

and the way the government works.

Helpful tip: The people and the government are not the same, and "We the People" only elect a small number of federal officials (537-the President, Vice President, and the Congress) out of several million people who work for the government. And of those 536, exactly two of them are accountable to ALL of the voters, once every four years. And half the population doesn't bother, for whatever reason, to participate in electing the head of state AND government of the most powerful country in the world. This, of course, is without mentioning the role of the Electoral College, congressional gerrymandering, unequal representation in the Senate, the role of the Supreme Court and all the other parts of the judicial system, concerns over federalism and states rights and local control, the role of the mass media, the role of money in politics, and so many other factors that make enacting a progressive/left-wing/liberal agenda-even if it's popular with the public, as you and others have noted-so damn difficult.

I understand your frustration-really, I do. I share many of your concerns, believe me. But that doesn't mean we can ignore the reality of how our political system works.

The idea that the owning class shares *any* of the class interests of the rest of us....

...should immediately be put to rest.

To anyone who thinks that the rich care about you, other than the profit they can squeeze out of your labor and your soul:

The joke is on you.

K&R for Noam Chomsky.

Found an ancestor of mine from 12th century Scotland

On my maternal grandfather's side.

http://www.clanmacfarlanegenealogy.info/genealogy/TNGWebsite/getperson.php?personID=I4265&tree=CC

1 - William came to Scotland with King David I some time before 1128.

2 - Legend has it that the first Graham was one Gramus who forced a breach in the Roman Antonine wall known as Graeme's Dyke in 420 A.D. However, historians generally believe that the Grahams were of Norman descent. The first record of the name was William de Graham who received the lands of Aberdeen and Dalkeith from David 1 in 1127. From him descend all the Grahams of Montrose. They became numerous in Liddesdale and the Borders and later obtained lands in Strathearn and Lower Perthshi re, the area with which the clan is now associated. The main line of Graham chiefs were long and loyal supporters of the Scottish cause.

Another account of the clan...
The surname Graeme, or Graham, is said to be derived from the Gaelic word grumach, applied to a person of a stern countenance and manner. It may possibly, however, be connected with the British word grym, signifying strength, seen in grime's dyke, erroneously called Graham's dyke, the name popularly given to the wall of Antoninus, from an absurd fable of Fordun and Boece, that one Greme, traditionally said to have giverned Scotland during the minority of the fabulous Eugene the Second, broke through the mightly rampart erected by the Romans between the rivers Forth and Clyde. It is unfortunate for this fiction that the first authenticated person who bore the name in North Britain was Sir William de Graeme (the undoubted ancestor of the Dukes of Montrose and all "the gallant Grahams" in this country), who came to Scotland in the reign of David the First, from whom he received the lands of Abercorn and Dalkeith, and witnessed the charter of that monarch to the monks of the abbey of Holyrood in 1128. In Gaelic grim means war, battle. Anciently, the word Grimesdike was applied to trenches, roads and boundaries and was not confined to Scotland.