Boulder was awfully nice – very lively, lots of brew pubs and coffee houses, a college town with a very liberal atmosphere. There are lots of PhD’s there, along with entrepreneurs and authors, scientists and green companies. It suited me fine, but in the end we decided that we wanted to be off the hot prairie and up in the mountains. (Not to mention that housing costs are astronomical there.)
I’ve been following the news and blogs and stuff, and nothing has changed. I’ve got to remember that if things change, it is only to get worse. There have always been crazies about, ever since the discovery of the New World. Europe routinely sent their sent their malcontents and religious cults this way. But these days, with the Tea Parties and people like Beck and Palin and O’Donnell held in high esteem, it seems as though Ladybug is right: We are circling the drain. These people are not just politically extreme. They are very stupid. And yet, stupidity automatically garners 30% in the polls.
But I suppose people have always said that. Maybe the only difference now is that I am sixty, and noticing the craziness more.
But I’ll carry on. I’ve been doing this for four years now, and enjoy it as much as in the beginning. And my arch-nemeses, the Democratic Party, has never offered such a large target as it does now. Obama has gone all Clinton* on us, and the usual suspects are digging deep into their imaginations for reasons to continue to believe.
This is our one-party-with-two-right-wings system at work. The reason why they don’t want other parties in the debates is because their presence highlights how little difference there is between them.
Circling the drain, indeed.
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*Remembering Bill Clinton: Another post, some time. But could a Republican do more harm to this country than did Bubba? But he is more popular now than Obama.
Piece of Mindful 
Green rocks, donkey socks. Coming to a theatre near you.
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your arch-nemeses is the democratic party? to me that seems a little too limiting. what i choose to focus on is the corporate take-over of the state and our cultural reluctance to do anything about it.
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…which leads right to the heart of the problem, Democrats in denial about their party, and their “leaders.” Half of voters have given up. Will those in denial join them on the sidelines, or create something new, non-corporate for people? Greece and France are doing something at least as we snooze.
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Americans scoff at the French as they take to the streets in protest without realizing that such acts are a manifestation of organized popular power, which is why their lives our better than ours.
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the problem with democrats is they are much less likely to see the necessity of abandoning the two party system so they cling desperately to it despite mounting evidence that working within the system gets them nowhere.
the reason i think they find it so difficult is because we do truly need a government of the people to keep the profit-at-all-costs private sector from degrading our environment and exploiting the workforce.
at some point, though, the sheer scope of the corruption will necessitate a broad awakening among the general population for alternatives outside the THIS or THAT dichotomy that keeps us entrenched in camp blue and camp red.
check out collapse party manifesto for one stark alternative to our two party paralysis.
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Interesting website.
Any non-RD party movement necessarily has to start at the bottom
badand build, and despite Nader, the Greens are indeed doing that, as are libertarians and others. But the ultimate reason why we only have two parties is that it is financially impossible for a nascent movement to compete with the entrenched interests. And they want it that way, and want to keep it that way.That’s why I tend to favor putting energy into working for fusion or instant runoff voting or other systems of counting the votes. But it can only really work at the local and state level, as federal elections are set in the constitution. The biggest anachronism there is the makeup of the senate, with vastly disproportionate districts getting two senators each, thus theoretically allowing a mere 9.7% of the population to to control 40 seats in the senate, enough to block all legislation under current rules.
It’s a huge design flaw.
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