Democrats will have their backsides kicked hard this election because they bent over and started wincing in pain two years ago, apparently feeling that being kicked will be less painful than the hard work it takes to move society ahead. Meanwhile, Republicans have taken old themes (“StepNFetchit to Foreign Kings”, “Money is The God of Our Society”, and “Endless War and Torture”) and repackaged them, marketing them fearlessly and fearsomely as “The Way We Were.”

As someone who grew up in the shadow of the Vietnam war, I would like progressives to recognize that scripture is a record of our earliest efforts at sociology. I have found that religion has a face and two butt cheeks. The face sees a vision thousands of years ahead, things that could happen that would benefit humanity more than we can imagine. The left cheek, on the other hand, moons us, saying we should be different from those around us in ways that don’t make a difference, and be self-righteous about it. The right cheek also moons us, saying we can be as dreadful as every one else is, or even worse, and be completely self-righteous about it.

The right has become master of the two butt cheeks, and is mooning us for all they are worth.

We have to stand up for the thousand year vision of peace, justice and freedom, or we will lose our country and all that it stands for. It won’t be easy, with two cheeks of religion against us, but it has to be done!

There’s no doubt that Dick Cheney and his friends are willing to do most anything to drag us a few thousand years into the past.

The right has a powerful bait and switch going. Their appeal for a return to older behavior patterns is well thought out, and unified.

We’ve got to realize that there’s little comfort in knowing that we’re right, if we just stand by and let them do what they want. Dick wants us and all we stand for thrown in the path of the juggernaut of history repeated, not learned.

The three right wing themes I cited above can be turned back on the right wing, because they are fundamentally against American values, and go against our spiritual history.

There’s no doubt that the right will fight for their illusions with everything they have got. Our opposition must be determined to be heard, and unified around goals of peace, justice, and freedom.

Above all, we must communicate the vision that our problems are caused by the mistakes we make, and that our hope lies in rejecting the failed gods of selfishness, greed, and murder, and remembering our traditional American and Vermont values.

…Brian Dubie was in the Adirondacks having dinner with people like GW Bush, who dragged us 5,000 years into the past. The Republican Party remains deeply confused about American values.

Does Brian Dubie really want to lead us to more hand-holding with and dancing for foreign kings? Leadership is critical in these times, but not leadership that’s confused about the right direction!

Republicanism is a form of government, but the Republicans that Brian Dubie dined with have confused it with totalitarianism, the most UnAmerican form of government.

When no one has market power, free markets are the most efficient way to allocate goods and services. In their confusion, Republicans have forgotten the first phrase of that cornerstone of market theory.

Anyone who knows what a free market is knows that GW Bush was never a free market guy. Does that mean that the Republican Party was confused about free markets, or does it mean that they knew, but didn’t tell us?

Jesus spoke truth to power, but Brian Dubie’s confusion makes his christianity a submissive servant when faced with older values and gods which all modern religions reject.

Judaism and Christianity are religions which attempt to empower average people and build wealth, but Brian Dubie’s friends have confused it with the worship of money, which leaves us fighting more and more over less and less.

Republicans’ confusion has meant Iraqification of American government and society. Our soldiers, under fire from Iraq’s secret groups, try to bring Iraq’s politics out into the light, but Brian Dubie’s friends live by subverting openness and disguising their intent.

These eight sound bites could have been out there as a quick response to Brian Dubie’s post-primary remarks about Democrats being confused. What was out there instead?

Peter Shumlin was on the Mark Johnson show on Thursday, on the defensive, saying that Dems aren’t confused, and had great candidates. Callers said that the Democrats have no leader, unlike the Republicans. Shumlin didn’t bring up the direction of Republican leadership.

I want to see a fight for our basic values, with two or more sides that bring issues and ideas into the open. I haven’t seen a desire on the part of any of the Democratic candidates to talk about American values. That’s why I haven’t considered contributing to the GMD fund for the governor’s race.

It’s clear that Republicans secretly believe that the left is right, but to keep their privileged position, Republicans are willing to do wrong. That’s why they knowingly blow such a smokescreen over everything they do!

But, do the Democrats secretly believe that the Republicans are right on American values? Is that why there is no public fight from them, on these basic issues?

What irony! The two parties each secretly believe that the other is right, but each blows a smokescreen to allow them to each follow their own individual self-interest, which in the long run, takes them to the same place!

I propose that, instead of raising funds to promote individual candidates, Green Mountain Daily should raise funds to promote basic American values!

While we have many views on many issues, there are self evident truths that we can all agree on. On these truths, we can sound a positive note, while condemning falsehood.

How can we do this? One way is to work on sound bites, post them as such, let people vote on them, and fund the winners. Ideally, votes should be public, to protect the integrity of the process.

Please, let’s have a discussion on this!

Why the deafening silence from the left on the stock market chaos?

The sudden drop in market prices looks to me like someone manipulating prices.

Who are the culprits?

The list is practically endless. There are the usual market players in the US: Goldman Sachs, etc., who have proven that they like markets they can manipulate. There are any number of similar groups throughout the capitalist world. Then, there are the Chinese, who may be testing their ability to control markets other than their own.

If there’s one thing that the science of economics has proven, it’s that free markets remain free only through eternal vigilance of those who value freedom. Those who rely on the markets for wealth don’t like freedom at all!

Meanwhile, in the NYT on May 8, M. Durbin reveals that he doesn’t believe free markets should be free! And, he helps develop high speed trading systems! Take a look at this guy! http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05…

Often, when an exchange operator receives an investor order and finds that another exchange has a better price, it will “flash” the order to a few select traders in its exchange a split second before sending it to market, giving those traders an opportunity to improve their price, too.

Two paragraphs later:

We don’t allow trading based on private knowledge of pending business deals or court rulings, and we shouldn’t allow it in high-frequency trading, either.

But, he also says:

But that doesn’t mean we should ban flashing all together.

And:

When used properly, flashing ensures that investors trade at the best available prices.

And:

Because a great number of trades go through middlemen, regulators have no easy way of even knowing who the high-frequency traders are. With millions of trades made every day, this administrative hurdle means traders are essentially anonymous to regulators.

M Durbin, who develops trading systems, thinks insider knowledge is a good thing! But, he starts the article:

We don’t know all the details about the drop, but it was almost certainly the result of computer or human error in a high-speed trading program.

M. DURBIN, HOW THE HELL CAN YOU BE ALMOST CERTAIN THE MARKET DROP IS NOT THE RESULT OF MANIPULATION WHEN YOU KNOW INSIDERS MANIPULATE THE MARKET EVERY DAY?

And, what the hell’s the difference between a few cronies exchanging info for their (and/or their clients’) profit, and the Chinese government putting 1000 people on the job of exchanging info for the profit of the Chinese government? How will you detect their manipulation when you’ve developed a system with manipulation built in from the ground up?

M Durbin would probably spout the right wing line, “Gummints shouldn’t screw people. People should screw people. And, corporations are people, too!”

I tried to post this as a comment on Emerson Lynn’s column about Burton, and got the message “We cannot accept this” when I tried to post it!

The cornerstone of free market theory is that “When no one has market power, free markets are the most efficient way to allocate goods and services.”

China has never been free market! A Chinese elite manipulates any market they have access to, for Chinese gain! That’s been obvious for over half a century. For instance, the Chinese government has manipulated the world market for rare earth metals critical in electronics, and in electrical generation, so that China controls 90% of supply. Now, they banned export of those metals, to force manufacturing away from the USA, to China.  

That’s not free market!!!!!! You bait and switch to defraud your own country!

The real problem is that you,  Bush & Co. have 5 years less math education on average than do Chinese in comparable positions, and so you don’t even understand the game! The Chinese elite has used you help them manipulate currency, commodities and working conditions to their advantage, leaving America deep in debt to China!

Your “free market” PR sounds great until I remember the photo ops Bush kindly put on whitehouse.gov, which can be summed up “house servant to a foreign king.”

When I stop to think that this doesn’t follow Republican or Democratic principles, that leads me to the realization that Bush never believed in free market principles either, and that you “free market” people knew it all along.

Next realization is that you have adopted the same relationship to China that Bush has had with the family Saud! You offer yourselves as house servants to foreigners, while we become the field slaves!

You have no wealth building skills to offer! You can only imitate your Chinese masters and demand that we pollute more, earn less, and give up our security!!!!!!

So with your help, we are gaining the lead in the race to the bottom, nosing ahead of China, and miles ahead of Austria.

Meanwhile, Austria concentrates on keeping Austrians educated, healthy, well rested, employed and prosperous, and doesn’t hesitate to offer companies incentives to keep people working.

Health care reform opponents have a strategy:  

Let a reform plan pass, but make sure that there is no effective cost containment.  Let the Sickness for Profit system continue to rape and pillage, and reinvest some of the profits in a marketing program to demonize all real reform efforts.  

It’s the strategy that brought us the Medicare prescription drug legislation, which is projected to go bankrupt. It’s the strategy that was used to cut taxes going into war, and disguise the war deficits, passing war costs on to future generations.

In short, their strategy is, and has been, to get Americans to finance America’s effort to win the race to the bottom, and to provide others with the knowledge to keep us there!

What’s our strategy going to be????

For at least three thousand years, it’s been known that a society that values profit above all will consume itself from the inside, until nothing is left but a hollow shell, which collapses and dies.  

We have been in an uphill fight for a generation, because we have allowed avarice to be trumpeted as a basic American value, when history shows that avarice is self destructive.

America was founded to give Americans a bigger voice in their government!  It’s about liberty and justice for all, not about profits for a favored few!

What the hell was he doing from 2003 thtu 2008, while the Taliban was rebuilding?  

In Afghanistan, he was just sitting on his ass, taking up space, pissing away the good will of the Afghans, and making today’s problems there inevitable!!!

In Iraq, he was pissing away 2 trillion dollars of our money, to get his buddies access to hundreds of billions of dollars worth of oil!!!

In the big picture, he was making the world a safe place for Bush to hold hands with foreign kings, while the rest of the world began to loathe America!  

Today, his buddies (Halliburton) have emigrated to Dubai, so they don’t have to pay the bill when it comes due.  

Today, Cheney has an exit strategy: pin the blame for his evil and incompetence on someone else, and duck responsibility!!

Cheney’s Republican “individual responsibility” has all the characteristics of an erection, and none of those of a backbone!  It’s rigid and inflexible in its boasting and posturing, but now that there’s work to be done, it’s shriveling up, making itself as small as possible, and has no intention of taking its share of the load.  

On the other side, we haven’t been as strong as we should be, but we are flexible enough to deal with reality, and we will shoulder the load, because we’re stuck with it.  

But, we should be shouting, “Are you too weak to carry your share, or just too lazy?”, until that’s the only question on the table.

The unmistakable direction of social progress has been LEFT, for several thousand years.  But, today's left has forgotten that it's the signposts that everyone sees and follows, allowing the right to reverse the signage, and turn America completely around. 

So, President Bush, having made his fortune using the power of government, felt completely comfortable holding hands with a king whose 14th century behavior brought us 9-11-2001. 

WHAT WE NEED TO REALIZE IS THAT BUSH GAVE US THE PERFECT SYMBOL TO GET EVERYONE TO CHANGE THE SIGNAGE BACK!

We need to hold up the picture of Bush and Abdullah, and shout, “Never Again!“, until all Democrats say, “We made a huge mistake, and it must not happen again,” and until Republicans can only say, “We made a huge mistake, but…”

Once people realize that it was the right who made us insecure, they will begin to realize that it was the right who screwed up the markets, and who created the deficits.  But, as long as the right is perceived as making us secure, we will have an uphill battle on everything else!