YES!!! And there are myriad other significant things around this old planet pushing toward the tipping point of a complete breakdown in WORLD economy (how is Obama stuck w/the Euro mess and other things world wide?) that stunts any headway in both Agri and Mfg jobs and things that allow us to feel, no, BE secure on this earth... Our most urgent problem is WHO GETS WHAT SHARE OF THE FINITE AMOUNT OF FRESH WATER...?

I agree with your sentiment but contextually you're talking individual security to WORLD security--not even apples and oranges but rocks and continents... And the answer to the guns is complex requiring multi-answers to arrive at an acceptable small book to cover all the rights, Constitutional and otherwise...

Ohhh boy, here we go again. I'll bet your one of those Principled Liberals who voted fo Ralph Nader in 2000 and then spent the next 8 years whining about Bush/Cheney who won because the Left didn't get out the vote for Al Gore.

It's much easier if the LEFT got together and

1) destroy the Republican Corporate Ho Party by voting AGAINST THEM (vote FOR Democrats)

2) once we get rid of the GOP then Progressives, Liberals, Independents and disgruntled Republicans do a hostile take over of the Democratic Party and get the US government back in the business of working for the best interests of the American PEOPLE (Corproations are NOT people)

3) demand ethics, responsibility and accountability spoact.blogspot.com

Isn't it lovely to see progressives self police as they dutifully march off to slaughter in the face of the titanic threats of Climate change and consolidation of the reigns of power under the ruling plutocracy.

We all have heard the arguments about the two party system before, but never have we been faced with the dire consequences of relying on the milquetoast policies that this system promotes. DC elites- both GOP and Dems- don't want any unpredictable forces taking aggressive approaches to social problems. It is laughable to hear "progressives" echo Limbaugh's label of Obama as a representative of the left. Under his watch, oil drilling in the US has dramatically increased, not decreased. Under his watch he has established the precedent for GOP presidents to use drones to kill opponents of authoritarian regimes, and block any oversight or moves from congress to check his roll as assassin in chief. Under his watch, he had the opportunity to break up the Wall Street firms when it was possible in 2008. He took the safe, middle of the road choice. It's in his DNA. He is a moderate unwilling to take bold steps necessary to confront the monumental challenges to the global climate and to the US middle class.

Both the GOP and Dems deal with the spoiler candidates. It's not like they don't understand exactly the consequences. Nader and Perot voters are the "screw you, we will take you down for not listening to us" vote. Were it not for Perot, Clinton may well not have been elected. So the GOP and Dem elites maintain their status quo power by cowing any true reformers to self police. Here is how the crowd is led to slaughter and accept the idiotic status quo regarding Climate change, Wall Street and the NRA:

"Sit down and shut up or we will have Romney, and an even more right wing Supreme court". That gets most rational progressives sitting down pretty rapidly. And the progressive voices are effectively silenced by the milquetoasts.

Ranked choice voting is the alternative to this insanity.

The immediate criticism is, Sit down and shut up. It will never happen. The votes needed would have to come from people who got where they are today because of the two party system.

It's like listening to Fareed Zakaria condescend to his audience as he does to the Maldives ex-president: "It's a laudable goal [dealing with climate change], but it will never happen. India and China have significant populations in poverty and will never sacrifice growth."

Self checkmate for democracy in America. Self checkmate for humanity's response to Climate Change.

It's the triumph of self interested actions.

@SpoAct:

I'll bet your one of those Principled Liberals who voted fo Ralph Nader in 2000 and then spent the next 8 years whining about Bush/Cheney who won because the Left didn't get out the vote for Al Gore.

First of all, I am not a liberal. Liberals are centre-right. I am a left-winger.

Second, I am a German. So, I vote for the German Left Party.

Third, the reason why Bush/Cheney won the 2000 election was not because Ralph Nader got too MANY votes, but because he got too FEW votes. Stop voting for Democrats, aka Republicans Lite. Start voting for actual left-wingers.

It's much easier if the LEFT got together and [...] vote FOR Democrats

The Dems are not a left party. At best, they are centre-right and only if you disregard the implementation of indefinite detention and all the targeted killings, which count as right-wing extremist.

@JohnMesserly:

Isn't it lovely to see progressives self police

Yeah, that's totally strange. What's wrong with interviewing Jill Stein and informing the MSNBC viewers about her existence? Voters deserve to know the alternatives before casting their vote. SpoAct totally sounds like a Republican: "Don't educate the people or they might vote for someone else!"

Dorothea, they have had Buddy Roemer on, so I don't see why not. Maddow certainly has given lots and lots of air time to Ron Paul and the distance of probability of his becoming President is nearly as great as Jill Stein's. It might be nice to have a panel of people like Stein, Naomi Klein, Goodman and Vanden Heuvel to give people a kind of Whitman's chocolates impression of the range of thinking on the real left that is hardly ever comes up in polite conversation within the mass media echo chamber. Actually, I can think of more varied panels- maybe a left politician from Europe would be excellent to give American progressives an idea of how conservative they actually are.

Anyway, I'd like to point out that my criticisms of Obama may have left some with a mistaken impression. While I recognize Obama to not be aligned with many of the ideals I hold dear, I do not check my brains at the door of the polling place. I recognize the spoiler effect and it is imperative that the GOP be denied the White House while they are binge drinking from the oligarchic well. I am an engineer and I operate within constraints to achieve the maximal good I can from a given situation. This however does not constrain my degrees of freedom. I am also an idealist who refuses to be herded to slaughter, so I am also willing to take big risks to defeat the slaughterhouse’s system. There are things that sympathetic voters can do which are virtually cost free. Many voters reading this are in a state that is comfortably in the Obama or Romney column. Obama was born in my state and since it is not possible my state will go for Romney, I will be participating in vote swapping with someone from a battleground state who will vote for Obama in their state. This means I will likely be voting for Stein in exchange for a vote for Obama where it will count. There are benefits to diversity of opinion and political power in performing this service. Besides demonstrating resolve on the true left of Obama, this may get the Green party up to 5% of the vote and have the practical benefit of qualifying them for presidential matching funds in the next election. The Green party candidate in 2008 only received 161K votes just (0.26%). If you a voter in Alabama or Hawaii and were to the left of Obama, a vote for Obama robbed the Greens of cash that Stein could have used this election. Similarly, the Greens ought to be focusing on these tactics to achieve 5% so that they have some capital for 2016 advertising.

Certainly this is a bit of a tactical side battle and I do think that the strategic path to third party viability must be more sophisticated about the practical machinations of politics in the US.

I am convinced that any real challenge to the US two party system will require substantial direct democracy power. I personally favor a direct democracy constitutional amendment. This is still a substantial challenge, but it is as plausible as an amendment to outlaw alcohol in the US. As Amy Goodman pointed out, some possibilities such as Occupy Wall Street emerge suddenly and unpredictably. The roll of activists on the left is to create a fertile environment for such powerful movements, and to be prepared to capitalize on the opportunities when they appear. For example, say citizens on both the left and right become utterly fed up with DC inaction and insist lawmakers pass and ratify an amendment allowing national electronic initiatives. Many forms would be acceptable to me, but just to illustrate, say the amendment was similar to a California initiative, but the legal equivalent to a bill passing both the Senate and House. There would have to be some unique features so that weaknesses of initiative measures such as in California would be avoided:

1. May not be amended by Congress without 2/3 vote for 5 years.
2. Initiiatives must be revenue neutral (within 2 billion dollars) as scored by CBO, or the initiative will be ineligible to appear on the ballot. This means that tax reduction measures must specify which programs are to be cut. Similarly, measures proposing new spending must specify sources of revenue to cover costs of the program.
3. Electronic voting on eligible initiatives shall be no less frequent than once per month. There shall be a tax of $30 on all voters not participating in the direct democracy votes.
4. Initiatives with less than 2/3 vote may be vetoed by the President.
5. Amendments to the constitution may be ratified by state constitutions or by direct vote of citizens of the state.

It might be nice to have a panel of people like Stein, Naomi Klein, Goodman and Vanden Heuvel to give people a kind of Whitman's chocolates impression of the range of thinking on the real left that is hardly ever comes up in polite conversation within the mass media echo chamber.

Yeah, that would be great.

Actually, I can think of more varied panels- maybe a left politician from Europe would be excellent to give American progressives an idea of how conservative they actually are.

Yeah. When Mr Hayes said in the show that businesses are not required to give their employees paid sick leave, I was pretty shocked. In Germany, we have six weeks per year of paid sick leave. After these six weeks, the employees receive sick pay by the statutory health insurance.

de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entgeltfortzahlung_im_Krankheitsfall

Obama was born in my state

Oh, you are from Kenya? Good for you.

I will be participating in vote swapping with someone from a battleground state who will vote for Obama in their state.

Vote swapping? What's that? Are you serious? Sounds kinda like fraud to me.

By the way, is that you in the photo or John Fugelsang?

In response to a previous post (which oddly had no reply button) - If every left wing American joined a party to represent them that was outside of the Democratic Party they would lose every election. We basically have a two party system in the U.S. that is a coalition of groups with some overlap in goals. If the leftwing and rightwing libertarians formed their own party then you might have a chance against the two existing parties but there would be little overlap in goals of that party. Sadly at this time almost all of America is right of center. Oh, and Liberal in the U.S. by the by is not a party - it is a word meaning open minded with progressive ideas - at one time you could belong to any party and still be a liberal.

politicalcompass.org

@ Dee Kat:

Liberal in the U.S. by the by is not a party

Of course, I know that. In Western Europe, all parties that have the word "liberal" in their name are centre-right. That's why the word is usually associated with centre-right. A little while ago, I read a book about the experiences of an American in Germany. The guy wrote that whenever he told Germans that he’s a "liberal", they laughed at him. This confused him, until he learnt that in Germany the term means right-leaning, not left-leaning.

Thanks a lot for the link. I did the test. As I expected it, I am a left-libertarian.

Economic Left/Right: -7.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.62

The International Chart is very interesting.

@ JohnMesserly:

I just rediscoverd this video: "Democrats Are the New Republicans"

youtube.com/watch?v=4Jc4U4ugi_4

Also, if you are not a PEP, you'll probably enjoy this video: "Yo Mama So Zionist"

youtube.com/watch?v=dAeOkdB2cl8

Vote swapping was ruled constitutional exercise of free speech. Here is a WP link that gives more background on it.

The Icon picture next to my name is me. I pretty much look the same though I currently have a moustache which I grew as an experiment while my wife was off in NZ with my two eldest girls. I personally hate it, and I can't imagine why anyone could stand a moustache scratching across their skin.

The left-right spectrum is so coarse though. You can find people in the midwest saying pretty radical populist things about the wealthy, but then they will turn around and say something hard core reactionary about abortion or gay rights. Even on theory what does it tell you- What kind of socialism does a person favor? If you do not favor party bosses, does that make you less Left? I am an IWW kind of guy, but it seems one polar measurements are far too insufficient- maybe a half dozen of dimensions would do better.

With direct democracy voting for measures ourselves, I think we could do a lot better that relying exclusively on intermediary representatives. It is true that the quality of policy will suffer, but which is better, technocratically excellent policy created by vested interests or sloppy amateur policy created by the electorate?

That's right, penalise success and reward failure.

Think that works?

Look at the country of Greece, not what you would call an economic power house.

Cuba, one more socialist success story, they have that awesome 1940's electrical power grid, cool 1950's car's, the government owns every thing.

There's nothing I enjoy more than a Sunday morning, a cup of Kona coffee and a liberal that can't make it in the real world. Life is good for the greedy.....How's yours going?

Of course life is good for the greedy, if you happen to be among the greedy in the 1%. But the economic forces do not favor the middle class. Our GDP growth has been progressing along at a healthy clip, yet none of that percentage growth has flowed to the middle class. Instead, middle class wages have declined. Do you believe this is because 99% of Americans are not sufficiently greedy?

The reality is that most of US labor is now tradable, and the profit motive driving market efficiency means that US labor cannot compete with billions of of competing laborers in India and China.

Here's the macro problem. We are a consumer economy and it is dependent on a US middle class with sufficient purchasing power to buy the goods that these US companies are producing. The funeral of each middle class job in America means the funeral of US consumer purchasing power, and the resulting funeral of our consumer economy.

"How's yours going?"

Same place as yours. It's called market failure.

Non responsive.

The 1% have an untenable position. If you disagree, state why and be prepared to back up your statements with citations.

But if you would rather blow away your morning sipping coffee and indulging yourself in idle fantasies, then by all means.

It would be hazardous to make assumptions correlating political positions with economic status. The social darwinian philosophy you are espousing is not correlated with wealth. It's actually a sloppy, self congratulatory delusion, and there are many datapoints which blow away this fairy tale. Consider Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet, Zuckerberg, Bill Gates....

It is abundantly clear by whom.

don't shop at Walmart, don't buy foreign cars, buy American

This idea that businesses creates jobs is stupid...

So a person invests in a company, opens the doors and hires 100 people.

Next, when you go to work and get paid a wage you do not have any investment in the company.

Look at it like this: let's say you get paid $100 pre day, now yoiu go to work give your boss $100, the company made money and your boss gives you back your $100 + the $100 in pay.

The next day you do the same thing, but the company took a $10 loss, so your boss give you back your $100 and only $90 in pay.

When you use your money to buy stocks & bonds & investments, your money works for you, when you get paid a wage you work for your money.

So the only way you can make money in investments is the investments have to grow in value.

That is why the tax % rate is lower for capital gains and dividends.

Furthermore anyone can buy stocks & bonds and take advantage of these wealth building tools.

Why is it stupid? Do you understand that being an expert on weather has nothing to do with being an expert on climate?

Even Exxon's CEO admits that science is that climate change is real. Yet only 19 percent of meteorologists accept the established science that human activity is driving climate change. This seems confusing to many people because they regard weather and climate as synonyms.

I'm simply saying you are mistaken about the some foundational concepts. It is as if you just said someone who is an expert on biology is necessarily equipped to render authoritative opinions on chemistry. This is not intended to be insulting or patronizing. Really, you are mistaken on a point of fact. Read up on the subject, and I think you will see what I am saying is true.

If you click on a contributor's name, you will be taken to a page where in the upper right hand corner you will find an ignore button.

Many threads have been made tedious by thread crap. Expect this to get more intense as we get closer to November.

What ignore feature does is to negate this tactic used on BBSs to silence opposition. You will find the thread restored to normal minus the noise from those uninterested in dialog.

What will be interesting will be when Ralston Purina and Archer Daniels Midland start getting pissed off about their low crop yields and their idle farm equipment.

Of course, by the time they are really feeling it, it will be too late to do anything to remedy their situation.