I can no longer remain silent.The time has come to piss everybody off.

[12string]

I will admit that I will feel better with a democrat in the white house.Unfortunately,that small measure of comfort stems not from a feeling of hope for a brighter future rather than distant memories of the promise of that brighter future. I remember John Kennedy and the positive direction this country seemed to be heading. Though Kennedy was assassinated and Johnson escalated our involvement in Viet Nam,at least he carried on with pushing landmark civil rights legislation.At least something positive was happening.Then came Nixon,more escalation,and Watergate.Well the American people having had a butt full of war and Nixon put an end to both.Yep,something positive once again. Here is where I'm afraid that I am going to upset a lot of people,but it must be said.You Hillbama,Obillary folks are quite delusional if you think either one of them gives any hope for that brighter future we Americans use to know was a birthright.They both talk endlessly of change while actually offering none.Our last best chance for change was the 2006 elections.Change was mandated but not forthcoming.It has become painfully clear that the two party system has morphed into a single corporate party system and all the sound bites in the world are not going to remedy the situation. I have three sons,ages 22,23,&24 so I hope that five years from now I can enjoy being ridiculed as an idiot naysayer and am proved to be wrong.I just don't feel that blissfully ignorant.Sad to say.

[crispini]

1. Oh, gawd, I hate this whole "the two parties are the same thing" bullshit.

Two words: PRESIDENT GORE.

Sounds pretty nice right now doesn't it?

[yardwork]

6. I didn't read the OP that way.

I reread it after reading your post and still don't see the kinds of statements that I decried in 2000 - that Gore and Bush were the same.

Instead, I think that the OP is noting sadly that our system has been coopted by corporatists, to the point where "real change" is almost impossible.

I agree. The Democrats are better than the Republicans but neither party is addressing the real, serious issues facing the country: the environmental crisis, the lack of healthcare, the seemingly never-ending military disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan, the abridgement of rights I would never have imagined would be denied to Americans, and the use of psy-ops to frighten people into going along with all this.

The media reports nothing of substance, hiding the real truth behind fluff and lies. It's a sorry state of affairs. I will vote for the Democrat in November but it's hard for me to think of hope or change.

[Booster]

11. You didn't notice that Gore lost and the fact that the Dems in

Wash DC didn't get behind him had a lot to do with it?

[DaLittle Kitty]

24. This OP'er Speaks THE TRUTH! It IS "The $Money Party$ People! Pull Yer Noggins Outa The Sand...

and WAKE UP! Both HillBill and Obama Are bought Paid For and Controlled By CORPORATE AMERICA! Wall Street and Nuclear Power industry are just two... The MOB Mentality of the Obamaites and The HillBots to vote on skin color or skirt wearing rather than on issue positions and integrity to carry through is astounding. Somany are so Completely blind and imperceptive that it is scary. This is how the world deteriorates and how world wars have started because of mind-boggling following behavior by the masses..

[DaDooRonRon]

31. Two more words

DEMOCRATIC MAJORITY.

We seem to have one.

Anything change??

Gore is what might have been (through your rose colored glasses), the Congress is what is.

[Birthmark]

2. Couldn't agree with you more...

...on all points, including hoping to be ridiculed one day for being wrong. I don't think that you (we) are wrong, though.

[THUNDER HANDS]

3. did you do that on your typewriter?

that was anoying to read.

[Wickerman]

4. Scintillating

And what, pray tell, would you offer up as an alternative?

Like H. Ross Perot, I'm all ears.

[DaDooRonRon]

30. The true question is not what the OP would offer as an alternative,

but what would you?

As we know, the OP can not offer any solutions that fall outside of what is "permissible" discussion here lest he/she be banned for not following the rules.

If indeed you truly want an answer, and are not being either flip or disingenuous, then allowing the free flow of any and all PROGRESSIVE solutions would bring many answers to the front.

You may not like them, but they're out there.

[Wickerman]

33. You, my friend, are wrong

If the OP, and by extension, also you, do not offer viable solutions to the problems of today, then you are simply wasting time. If you are so passionate that simply posting the solutions here would get one banned, then you're wastage your time and mine. Carping and bitching without offering solutions is NOT a viable option - it's simply divisive.

Whatever your solution may be I hope you are doing more to act on it than simply bitching about the problem on websites that you philisophically disagree with.

[yeswecan08]

5. Use your head and think clearly -- Your choice is Obama

[griffi94]

7. hahahahahaha

hahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahaha
sorry......hahahahahaha

[Booster]

8. I got to admit that I agree with you. The Dems in Wash DC have

more or less proved your point. It's not that they don't have spines; it's not in the best interest of the corporations who heap big money on them for them to do the will of we, the people. They huff and puff, then drag their feet til they think we've forgotten about the issue, and it works. We have extremely short memory spans (about a minute and a half on most issues. Depressing, isn't it?

[Pyrzqxgl]

9. You're not pissing me off pal

some of the other Democrats talked about taking on the corporate system but they are
fallen by the wayside (so to speak). I'm so tired of voting for a Democrat just because
he's not a Republican. I haven't voted for a Democrat I respected since George McGovern.

[DS1]

10. I know blissfully ignorant, and you, sir, are no blissfully ignorant

[mrreowwr_kittty]

12. Why do so many newbies use the plain text format?

Is it some involuntary thing or do they actually go to the trouble to click on it? :shrug:

[terrya]

13. I felt that way in 2000.

I honestly did. I felt there wasn't a damn bit of difference between the parties. Gore/Bush...eh. Same thing.

And then I voted for Ralph Nader. And then Bush was installed in the White House. And then I realize I was a complete asshole for thinking that there wasn't a damn bit of difference between the two.

You're definitely entitled to your opinion.

[suston96]

14. I have been around the block a few times.....

I have heard presidential candidates promise change with lots of inspiration and hope.

Change? Mostly small change. I grew up in the depression and was promised that nothing like that would ever happen again. Yeah, right. Then came WWII - the war to end all wars. You got it - wars kept right on coming. And they are still here.

Homeless people, crappy jobs for way too many people, sick people who get lousy care because they cannot afford better care - and so on.

All the time being promised - I mean, inspired by presidential candidates that change would come and being told to just have hope for the future. So here it is, the future and well, more promises - I mean inspiration for change, if only we continue to have hope.

Well, I am running out of time. I am really old. But you guys, you young ones. You keep hoping for change and of course, inspiration. Maybe you will get lucky.

[The River]

15. I Was Around Then Too

I moved to DC a year after he took office.
My school was a few blocks from the WH. I'd catch a glimpse
of JFK from time to time. I remember the America he talked about.
The future he offered America died with him in Dallas.

Every 4 years since I go and vote for hope and change
and every 4 years I get less of either.

Another generation, full of hope, who want a better future,
are about to start learning a very unpleasant lesson about
how things really work in Corporate America.

[cloudythescribbler]

16. Problem is you need BOTH a reformer in the WH AND majority in Congress

and then of course there's the "magic 60" in Congress, and the need to confront filibusters (which the Clinton Administration COULD have been MUCH more effective at, but wasn't).

But yes, we have a government that goes to war fast and makes reforms only very slowly, and ESPECIALLY on Greenhouse emissions, that needs to URGENTLY be challenged.

[LWolf]

17. It doesn't piss me off.

Of course, I don't view either HRC or Obama as bringers of hope, change, or health. :shrug:

[LucyParsons]

18. Also no pissed off

rec'd, in fact

[mzmolly]

19. How'd this philosophy work out for you in 2000?

Not "generally supportive" of Democrats, apparently.

[ananda]

20. I HEAR YOU!

Looking at what happened with Exxon and Venezuela..
and with the Senate caving to Bushinc and telecoms..

I have to ask.. do megacorporations from the USA
own the world?!!!!

[Hannah Bell]

40. Yes.

How can anyone believe otherwise, looking at the evidence?

[ElboRuum]

21. I'd like to say I'm pissed off at you for stating this...

...but I'm not... so I won't.

What you have to understand, that might offer up some perspective, is that it took nearly 30 years of cultivating policies and propagandizing attitudes to devalue Americans as a whole, reduce their rights, and make moot their political power by right-wing authoritarians aided by a coterie of disenfranchised authoritarian wanna-bes, just to get to this point in time.

It will take at least that long to return to anywhere near the sort of political environment that existed before Ronald Reagan, and even then, we will all have the ability to look back and be sorrowed by the loss of progress those 30 years could have represented.

The American people, as much as those with vision and purpose and the will to act upon it may be chagrined by the fact, are inertial both in their thinking and their feeling. They don't like to be jolted to and fro from one sociological reality to another. Why do you think that only the most rabidly radical conservative fringe elements in our country still view Bush with any real respect? His administration pretty much took a country that was progressing forward at a pretty decent pace and threw it into reverse suddenly, demolishing the transmission in the process, souring the populace with a major shift in sociological reality. Now, we've gone backwards at a breakneck pace, and slamming the transmission back into forward again without slowing the country down a bit first isn't the answer.

The candidates we have are, truly, not as liberal as we'd like, granted. They're not anywhere as progressive as we'd like. Also, granted. But maybe they are only a short-term interim part of a movement that's far more vast. Increasingly progressive their successors will most likely be (why am I talking like Yoda?). If we can just get this country lurching in the right direction after four years, and moving at school zone speeds by the end of eight, I could be very pleased with that result.

Who knows, maybe when I'm 70, roughly 30 years from now, I'll be able to see similarity with the country I knew when I was 7.

[Snarkoleptic]

22. It's always better to be pissed-off than pissed-on.

I am hopeful for the future.
When Dems. control both houses and the WH, perhaps Nancy and Harry will begin using the powder they've been so carefully keeping dry.

[mike_c]

23. agreed, 100 percent....

K&R

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

25. Paging Ralph Nader,

White courtesy telephone, please.

[Xenotime]

26. Now you are just talking like a pug.

[SoxFan]

27. The Audacity of Mope

Go away and be a bitter old prune somewhere else. We've got a country to turn around.

[NashVegas]

28. A Former Chief Counsel for Corrections Corp of America In Hearings for a Federal Bench Seat

http://tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080213/NEWS03/802130434

I'm sorry so many people are giving you shit for making this thread.

[cooolandrew]

29. Barack has brought new people into the process thr future lies with them.

[demokatgurrl]

32. I THINK I agree with you....

not that the two parties are the same, because I believe the current crop of Repugs is inherently evil, while Dems for the most part do not have evil intent, they can just be stupid, easily intimidated (don't want to look unpatriotic), easily led, afraid to take a stand. And what we have now- two de facto DLCers vying for the nomination, is a result. Edwards could never win in this climate, let alone Kucinich or Gravel, who represent, to quote my erstwhile hero Howard Dean, "the Democratic wing of the Democratic party".

And what the fuck happened to Howard Dean? Once a champion, now he's busy disenfranchising voters.


Sad, sad, sad.

[TexasObserver]

34. Pure, 100% horseshit.

[blondeatlast]

35. Post a flamer. Run and leave the easily led bruised and scratched. Repeat.

OP: you are an asshole. That is all.

[amandabeech]

36. I agree with you.

Neither of these candidates will really change things. Oh, there'll be a little cut and paste around the edges, but not much more. There will be a change of tone and better judges, better efforts on the environment and, I hope, internal spying. There will little change on the economic front. In fact, many DU'ers seem to like rapacious, globalized capitalism, or at least think that there is no alternative to it, so I see little push for change there.

Things simply are not bad enough for enough people who vote to make real change. This is not 1860. This is not 1932. This is not 1940. It isn't even 1968. This won't be a major "change" election, although I'm sure that lots of folks will think so.

That said, I wish the country good luck, because no matter who is elected, we are going to need it.

[Vinca]

37. So what's your solution 12string?

Your perfect candidate isn't going to come out of the sky on a flaming pie. We've got 2 decent candidates to choose from. Neither has been president before so there's no evidence it will be business as usual. I think your remark is unfair to both camps.

[lunatica]

38. We're headed towards another revolution

It will happen over a period of years or even decades if it's a peaceful one. The Democrats, simply because of our policies and ideology will be the party that enables that revolution. It is a change that was beginning to happen under Bill Clinton and would have continued with Al Gore if he had been the President, but as we can clearly see the Republicans only want to go back to the supremacy mentality of the Cold War which they are doing their best to re-create.

We may go through a mini dark age where life turns bleak for Americans, but the tide will turn eventually. It always does and that's when the real evolutionary strides happen. Remember that a great majority of us lived through the civil rights revolution which, just as one example, abolished all the discriminatory laws against blacks in the South. I imagine something as entrenched as the Southern culture of discrimination must have seemed impossible to change in the beginning when white men ran and owned everything just like corporations do now. But it changed and that revolution changed everything else about the country and though it may seem we are going too slowly there is no arguing that we are nonetheless still evolving.

[blindpig]

39. ya didn't piss me off

I've been pissed off for a long time now.

What gets me is all of these Edwards supporters. Their man was saying some things that needed to be said, he was the closest thing to a man of the people in this hideous charade, many swore it was him or nothing. Yet as soon as he folded the bulk of his supporters immediately bail for one of the two business candidates, perhaps with some faux dramatics. Jesus, whatever happened to conviction? Ya'll better just stick with sports if all ya want to do is pick a winner.

[Az_lefty]

41. Obama has the ability to rally the American people around a plan that makes sense...

and force Congress to move on it. Hillary doesn't have this ability or support. She'll get embroiled in a cat fight and nothing will change.