Reporting for duty, sir.

“….This has nothing and everything to do with the current administration there, but to my mind it has to do with global business. Too long to go into all that.

You aren’t the only ones who want their country back. I know this will get EPU’d, but I had to just vent, ok?

And I’m too old, and it is hot and humid and so am grouchy and trying to take the mind off the heat-and we had to heat until June 12th up to when we had 9 degree Celsius nights, and then it went up to 37 degrees C overnight, and stayed there. Humid. Nasty. We don’t have air-conditioning because till about ten years ago, we only had two weeks of hot weather in August, and a floor fan would do. But in 2003 We went dry from March to October. Must be the global non-warming… And every year gets worse. So to speak.

I KNOW you have a precarious situation there. If you can get that fixed. start looking around. We need help too, to correct what your govrenment has done. Whatever it is, it is spreading.

Whatever, hopeless … and EPU’d”

RenB – I could not agree with you more about the central role of multinational corporations (and the economic system they designed for their enrichment, neoliberal economic policies) in the destruction of our representative government. Corporate power and corporate capital were at the core of the GOP’s purchase of jurists, legisaltures, state houses, and the white house – all under the cover of an immense and sustained propaganda campaign conducted through the Scarfe-Mellon-etc funded network of spin tanks and wingnut welfare trusts.

And even with all that and three decades of manipulating social issues voters (religious fundamentalists) who returned to electoral politics at the behest of Reagan’s ad men, the wingers are losing.

The great project to impose “free market” (corporate tyranny) values on Iraq – first under Garner, then the proconsuls sent to replace him – the Iraq project is a ruin.

The corportations have been trying to re-write national and local laws to allow full corporate dominion since the MAI was rejected in Paris in the 1990’s.

The current round of WTO negotiations – the Doha round – has been staggering in the post Seattle world, and is so behind schedule that it is not expected to cough up corporate-friendly rules before the expiration of the US Congress’s “fast-track” pre-approval of trade deals.

Over a decade of polling indicates American voters’values on economic, environmental, and foreign policy issues are far more progressive than the narrow range of pro-corporate views provided by their purported representatives.

And now the wheels have come off in Iraq, the military-industrial complex is on the short end of a host of criminal investigations into years of fraudulent procurement, and the religious fundamentalists in the US are increasingly derided for their hypocrisy and hatred.

Endless rises in the cost of energy and three decades of stagnant earning power for middle -income wage earners – coupled with the deflation of the housing bubble have put the lie to the Rethugs’ trickle-down claims.

Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld’d willingess to sacrifice the lives and operatonal capacity of the US Armed Forces on the altar of their ideologies has demoralized and divided the officer corps, as well as draining the residual loyalty military family voters hold for the President. Bush’s transparent destuction of VA beenfits and services has only accelerated this process.

Private jet vacations to golf meccas and sex tourism destinations aren’t mainstream even in San Francisco and West LA.

And the whole media freak show of Coulter / Frist / Limbaugh / Rev. Robertson / Ralph Reed/ Norquist still seems to attract viewers – but just cause people slow down to look at the wrecks on the freeway shoulder doesn’t mean they’ll pull over to join in the mayhem.

This morning even National Pentagon Radio is covering the debut of a physician’s scholarly book on the US military’s torture doctors – and their criminal complicity in homicide.

I’ll always be shamed to have colleagues who participate in war crimes – and a president, vice presdient, and secretary of defense and Joint Chiefs who forswore their oaths to uphold the Constitution in order to unleash torture.

But the digust these men have earned from the entire planet for Abu Gharaib and Guantanamo has defeated the largest military machine in the history of our planet.

The disgust and hatred the MAI/WTO/IMF earned around the world for their corporate masters has stopped these efforts.

And the disgust Americans have for the corporate servants who have occupied the Congress is so great that one influential blogger sparked a campaign which will deny a three-term US Senator the opportunity to seek re-election as his party’s nominee.

I think the critical mass of discomfort (from economic decline), disgust (at the personal and financial depravity of Republican buisiness and political leaders), and dissipation (of the ruling coalition as the religious conservatives and corporate radicals fight over the spoils) is already opening the space for change.

William Greider looks at the collapse and the opportunity therein with a breadth and eloquence I could never hope to match.

I still believe that the corporations’ decades long effort to discredit representative government has gone a bridge too far. Citizens in the EU and the US have had a taste of life under corporate rule – and they hate it.

It has nothing to do with actually winning elections. It has everything to do with money to the “advisors.” The “advisors” couldn’t give a tinker’s damn whether or not the Democratic candidates win–as long as they get their cut of the campaign contributions.

I appreciate their effort, but the original was much better.