So, is this the election that will prove to even those who prefer to keep their heads in the sand lest they have to start to think, and act, that our so-called “two-party” “democracy” is a mask for the hegemony of the .001%?
P.S. Seems to me that, since Citizens United, every headline should read, “So-and-so BUYS Maine, Iowa, Illinois, Massachusetts, etc. etc. I.e., not “wins,” an election, but BUYs it. Because that is what it is.
P.P.S. Love her energy.
3 thoughts on “Rachel Maddow investigates the latest fishy Romney "win" in Maine”
Your statement, “…those who prefer to keep their heads in the sand lest they have to start to think, and act, that our so-called “two-party” “democracy” is a mask for the hegemony of the .001%?” caused me to reflect. In all the years I’ve been old enough to participate in Presidential elections, I’d say this is one that offers the greatest difference and polar opposites in terms of candidates, philosophies and parties. Most definitively. One candidate and his party wants to go forward while the other wants to turn back. One candidate is a champion of reform and change while the ones in the other party seek to serve the deeply vested and entrenched interests of their wealthiest supporters and dead industries that threaten our future, economic well-being, and environment. One of the candidates wants to move us further away from ill-conceived wars dictated by profiteers, move away from and having our children in harms way while the other party would prefer to start new conflicts and fight war for “another hundred years.” One of the candidates and his party has pushed for the reform of the financial services industry and to monitor, regulate and safeguard people’s money from wild speculation, fee taking, and risky behavior brought about from over a decade of deregulation while the other party and its candidates want more of the old deregulation and their faux “free-market” crony capitalism that makes government beholden to them and not subject to any regulation. One of the candidates wants to foster investment and growth in new green energy and companies while the other parties candidates are wholly owned by fossil fuel industry and its dogmatic extremist Koch Brothers. One of the candidates wants to appointment Supreme Court justices with a profound understanding of the constitution and the rights of individuals while the other parties candidates see the Supreme Court as an extension of corporate law and the interests of centralized economic power by the .001 percent. And the list goes on and on… Never before have the differences been so large. I want to suggest that we avoid the knee-jerk simplistic analysis of saying there is no difference between the two parties that has lingered for years in America, when this election presents profound differences. Do not minimize them for the sake of the future of the country. There are very dangerous fanatical demagogues on the extreme right with huge financial backing and we must not be lured into false illusions like there is no differences between Obama and the Republicans.
Robb, I very much take your commentary to heart, and a big hug with my thank you! I would agree that Obama’s heart is pointing in the direction we all long to go. To the extent that he is enmeshed in the corruption of politics, which every politician has to buy into in order to get elected, is the extent in which his decisions are part of a fakely polarized two-party system. On the other hand, to the extent that Obama leans in the direction we want to go, I feel profoundly grateful.
More and more lately, in his approach to making decisions, I feel him leaning. I greatly admire this man and any other who dares to remain him or her self in the maelstrom of millions of projections continuously flashed into the face. Can you imagine?
Anyway, something sure seems to be stirring in the “dead” of winter, and as usual, it feels like the a drama connecting the deepest dark with the highest light, inside me. An eternal dance of creation. And even the polarity of politics can be imagined as a dance, and when I do . . . it helps me to not just endure the illusion, but to lean the way we want to go in all my actions no matter what the illusion is trying to seduce me to believe.
Tomorrow I sit at the the Tenth Amendment table at the Winter Farmer’s Market from 10 to 11 AM. This petition, an initiative to put a resolution before the city council, is fired by a woman even older than I. Tomi was Bloomington’s Mayor from 1983 to 1995.
An elder at the helm. We’re in good hands.
why vote or donate to anybody other than romney when it is obvious that romney has been set up/rigged to win?. ron paul, newt and santorum know this and are using us to make money.