DS, I have to admit that I read much of your post with interest - enjoyment, even - much to my surprise - but then came the inevitable concluding paragraphs.

What is alternately intriguing, stupefyingly boring and infuriating to me is how you manage to subvert your obvious intelligence and writing ability by bending, molding and forcing all the ideas, sources and philosophies you encounter into supporting one or another of 2 hackneyed and paranoid conclusions:
A. Obama = Fraud
B. USA = Doomed to Eternal Damnation

To your credit, you have given us at least a few days vacation from A. That leaves your current favorite, B. Don't you ever feel like poking your head up out of that mental gopher hole? You may be an old dog, but couldn't you please try some new tricks?

Gideon checked out, and he left it no doubt
to help with good David's revival.

anyone else think david made k. marx look like that snow monster in that stop-action animation of rudolph? the one with the berle ives, banjo playing snowman? and the young elf who wants to be a dentist? island of misfit toys? you know the one. the red-headed prospector named cornelius?

just to be clear, i'm not referring to the ice monster who learns to walk in the stop-action animation which features a young, red-headed kris kringle and the burger meister meister burger. that monster looks nothing like k. marx. just to be clear. if i was hard pressed to match that monster up with an historical figure i'd have to go with an older andrew jackson. but only by default, really.

It appears David, that your thoughtful consideration of what might prove to be the fatal contradictions of capitalism is far too scary for the 100% American crowd assembled here to heckle you. They actually believe all that ideological nonsense about capital and markets that is the orthodox dogma of US economic thinking. Whatever real substance that might have been there previously is now nearly irrelevant but it is going to take quite a while for most of these folks to actually figure this out. The nonidealogical adults in the room, on the other hand, might think you're on to something.

I don't think there's any doubt that we are, at minimum, living through the greatest failure of capitalism in our lifetimes and certainly the greatest since the crash of 29 and subsequent depression. The lessons of that former era were either forgotten, disbelieved, or abandoned to a great degree since about 1980 and led directly to our current catastrophic situation.

The basic lesson of the great depression is simply that capitalism just cannot control or regulate itself. Government must regulate the impulse of the businessmen/women to succumb to unrestrained greed and thus wreck our economic ship. That's precisely what we've seen happen here in America. Of course, it gets a whole lot more complicated because so many other nations foolishly adopted our way of doing business and bought into all the phony baloney Wall Street was selling worldwide. Now, instead of just the US economy being sick, the entire world economy has also fallen seriously ill.

Personally, I think the big contradiction that is likely to bring the whole system forever to it's knees is the countervailing forces of greed among various wealthy and powerful interests who do not recognize that if they don't cooperate now we may lose the system entirely. Sadly for them, their uncontrollable greed will not allow them to recognize this reality and they will go on jockeying for position and advantage while literally cutting their own economic throats. The thing is, the US population is so cowed and tame that even if the entire system comes crashing down, the people will not even think of a fundamental restructuring of the economy. They will only pine away for the old days without realizing that even now, as I write this, the old days are gone and will never return.

I probably am missing the boat here but I was raised by two hopeless drunks. We were taught that what happens in vegas stays in vegas. The worst government on earth was run by Chinese communists. Because they taught the children to inform on their parents to the authorities. The thought still makes me laugh.

The NRA won the gun battle. That geni is out of the bottle and the best you can do is attempt regulation. Although sometimes I think liberals should start arming themselves and attack the NRA headquarters with their own weapons.

Globalization is the geni that is out of the bottle.
I press the wrong button on my Yahoo mail and half an hour later I get a call from India rerouted through New Jersey.

There is not a corporation that is not subsidized in some manner by the government. Not in this country, not in Europe and not in Asia.

We are a socialist nation and the issue is whether elections matter and whether income disparity can somehow be evened out. Can the children of 90% of American households be put on a more equal footing with the other 10%.

Can shareholders get access to courts and put a lid on management's ability to pay its upper tier large percentages of corporate gross?

Should someone who works 40 hours a week as a cashier in a grocery store really suffer so much because a system does not recognize his or her worth?

Can somebody who took down half a billion dollars in salary and benefits be said to have EARNED that money?

It takes leadership.

And it takes propaganda.

The dark side has won the leadership role and the propaganda wars.

It is so bad, and things so unfair that any change for the better will seem like a revolution.