Democrat Base Discovers Both Parties are “Elites”

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Remove the Blinders, Dems; Both Congressional Parties Are Elites

Years ago Buffy Sainte Marie reminded us that “if the Bad guys don’t get you, the good guys will.” referring to Senator Bill Bradley’s initial attempts to help restore the Black Hills to the Sioux tribes, and his eventual withdrawal of his bill under minimal pressure.

It’s becoming more evident daily that there aren’t many Good Guys left working for us in Washington, and that the Democratic Big Tent brought in more neo-Liberal Money Junkies than most Dems would like to acknowledge.  Democrats Good, Republicans Bad themes are still far too ubiquitous across the ‘liberal’ blogosphere and other media.

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A lot of people think that Obama is a bad poker player, but they miss the point. He’s not playing with his money, he’s playing with YOUR money. You are the weak hand at the table, he’s colluding with the other players.” [snip]  (bold mine)

GeorgeWashington’s blog yesterday repeated Bernanke’s statement that the Fed will not help failing states and cities with loans, while continuing to throw massive amounts of money at the Big Banks, both overtly and covertly.  The list and amounts add up to an obscenity.

Off-Beat Fun: Miss Arkansas Yodeling Ventriloquist

Offbeat Fun

Miss Arkansas Alyse Eady fulfilled all of our Miss America Pageant dreams on Saturday night by performing a ventriloquism act during the talent portion of the show. But instead of it being a series of “dummy, no you're the dummy” jokes, there was singing, yodeling and double the dolls. Eady was ultimately named the first runner-up, winning $25,000.

WATCH

Worth a Look: The Age of American Unreason

04 Education, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, InfoOps (IO), Methods & Process, Misinformation & Propaganda, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Real Time
Amazon Page

Combining historical analysis with contemporary observation, Susan Jacoby dissects a culture at odds with America’s heritage of Enlightenment reason and with modern knowledge and science. With mordant wit, the author offers an unsparing indictment of the ways in which dumbness has been defined downward throughout American society. America’s endemic anti-intellectual tendencies have been exacerbated by a new species of semiconscious anti-rationalism, feeding on and fed by a popular culture of video images and unremitting noise that leaves no room for contemplation or logic.

Finally, the author argues that anti-rational government is not the product of a Machiavellian plot by “Washington” but is the inevitable result of “an overarching crisis of memory and knowledge” that has left many ordinary citizens and their elected representatives without the intellectual tools needed for sound public decision-making. The real question is not why politicians have lied to the public but why the public was so receptive and so passive when it heard the lies. At this crucial political juncture, The Age of American Unreason challenges Americans to face the painful truth about what our descent into intellectual laziness and our flight from reason have cost us as individuals and as a nation.  [Emphasis added.]

Search: “participatory budgeting”

Advanced Cyber/IO, Budgets & Funding, Collective Intelligence, Collective Intelligence, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), Methods & Process, Mobile, Peace Intelligence, Searches

Review: Participatory Budgeting (Public Sector Governance)

Review: The Porto Alegre Alternative–Direct Democracy in Action

Journal: “Expert Judgement” vs. Public Intelligence

Journal: GroupOn’s Potential Part II

Reference: Changing the Game II

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Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Positive)

Tunesia–Angry Connected Young People

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence, Reform

People power goes techie, ousts Tunisian dictator

Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:25:00 01/16/2011

Seeds of protest

The antigovernment protests began a month ago when a college-educated street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi in the small town of Sidi Bouzid burned himself to death in despair at the frustration and joblessness confronting many educated young people here. But the protests he inspired quickly evolved from bread-and-butter issues to demands for an assault on the perceived corruption and self-enrichment of the ruling family.

The protesters, led at first by unemployed college graduates like Bouazizi and later joined by workers and young professionals, found grist for the complaints in leaked cables from the US Embassy in Tunisia, released by WikiLeaks, which detailed the self-dealing and excess of the president’s family. And the protesters relied heavily on social media websites like Facebook and Twitter to circulate videos of each demonstration and issue calls for the next one.

Read full article….

See Also:

TUNISIA: The First WikiLeaks Revolution?

Review: SMS Uprising: Mobile Activism in Africa

23 Worst Tyrants/Dictators (Yes, there’s more than 23) and Oops, there’s Saudi Arabia..

Review: Breaking the Real Axis of Evil–How to Oust the World’s Last Dictators by 2025

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