REBLOG: Ten ways Americans have lost their freedom

This is the sort of blog post I always wanted to write - but which I never get to because of time.  Like so many of you, I suffer from, and battle against these losses of freedom.  And it is those losses that drive me ever left-ward in my political views:

On issue after issue, the wishes of most Americans are ignored or marginalized by the nation’s political and media elite. Views that are held by most Republicans – and in some cases even by most Tea Party members – are dismissed as “extreme” inside the Beltway. While 75 percent of most Americans and 76 percent of Tea Party supporters opposed Social Security cuts to balance the budget, leaders in both political parties were meeting to negotiate those cuts. (They were scuttled by a fallout between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner; similar cuts were being negotiated between Speaker Newt Gingrich and President Bill Clinton when the Monica Lewinsky scandal erupted.)

Most Americans want tighter control on US banks, and that’s considered politically impossible. They want much higher taxes for millionaires, which is also dismissed. Meanwhile, the nation continues to pursue policies that benefit the most unpopular institutions in the nation, according to that Gallup poll: big corporations, HMOs, and Wall Street banks. The only thing on Gallup’s list that’s more unpopular than these three institutions? Congress.

Read more at Salon:  Ten ways Americans have lost their freedom

Talk About the South: Dayne Sherman's Blog: An Open Letter to Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal

As both an ex-pat Louisianian, and former fellow middle school student of the current Governor (he was a year ahead of me) I have watched in deep shame and horror what has been done to my home in the name of Republican orthodoxy.  Dayne Sherman's recent blog brings it all home . . .

Talk About the South: Dayne Sherman's Blog: An Open Letter to Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal: Bobby, Can You Hear Me in the Bunker? By Dayne Sherman Talk About the South Column Published in the Hammond, Louisiana, Daily Star ...

REBLOG - Five ways privatization is ruining America

Like so many myths in today's society, the full damage from privatization may be decades in coming - if a full accounting can ever be rendered.  It is a sad sad thing that we as a society so willingly underfund our public institutions, an then so easily succumb to the modern schills who have turned selling snake oil into depriving us of our public institutions.  Read more here:

Five ways privatization is ruining America

ConfirmationBias in the Republican Party - how granting the vote to all is taking it away from the military!

From the other side of the aisle, a good short look at how confirmation bias is making it harder and harder to talk about important policy issues from a factual basis.  That, as our esteemed author notes, makes ranting in order.

That, perhaps, is the most frustrating thing of all.  And why?  Because this isn’t just confirmation bias anymore.  Confirmation bias means you miss some things, that you filter what you see.  But this is different. This is willfully choosing to ignore a fact that disproves a particular belief you have. Hell, I wasn’t asking her to change her vote.  I don’t even WANT her to change her vote! I just want her—and everyone—to argue from a place of logic, to recognize that we live in a world of grey, a world filled with agenda and spin and naked attempts at persuasion, a world that is actually trying to make us ignore the facts.

- Chasing Glenn Beck - We, the Sheeple....