Today's Stories

December 23, 2008

Michael Yates
The Tombstone Economy

December 22, 2008

Pam Martens
Madoff's Money Trail Leads to Washington

Gary Leupp
Base Alienation: Obama's Team of Rivals

Mike Whitney
Bail Out the Economy? More Pay is the Only Way

Karl Grossman
Lost in Space: NASA at 50

Niall Meehan
Conor Cruise O'Brien: Historian, Politician, Censor

Steve Conn
Where Would Larry Summers Dump the Guantanamo Mess?

Uri Avnery
Israeli Elections: Spot the Difference

Corey D. B. Walker
The Politics of Freedom

David Swanson
The Purloined Constitution

Worthy Group of the Day
Socialist Worker

December 19 - 21, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
An Ethnic Cleansing in America

Jeffrey St. Clair
Salazar and the Tragedy of the Common Ground

Paul Craig Roberts
Country Without Mercy

Patrick Cockburn
The Baathist "Coup Plot"

Felice Pace
Green Myopia: Obama's Appointments Reveal What's Wrong with the Environmental Movement

Diane Farsetta
The Pentagon's PR Slush Fund

George Ciccariello-Maher
By the Time I Get to Arizona: ICE Raids and Resistance in Flagstaff

Eric Bergoust
Extinct Lifestyles: Redefining Prosperity

Marjorie Cohn
Torture Without Regrets: Cheney's Unrepentent Confession

Stan Cox
Clothes and Commentaries That Don't Fit

Michael Donnelly
Clinton III: Continuity We Can Believe In

Robert Weissman
The Auto Bailout

Ralph Nader
Excluded Democracy: Scholastic and the Two Party System

Alan Farago
Shock and Awe Economics

Sam Smith
Not All Public Work is the Same

Timothy G. Hermach
What Happened on the Way to the Inauguration?

Seth Sandronsky
Who's Not Getting By and Why

Rannie Amiri
All Quiet on the Gazan Shore

David Yearsley
Bach as Jihadi

Martha Rosenberg
Wyeth's Pay-to-Play

Dave Lindorff
White House Lied About Iraqi Yellowcake Buy (But That's Not the Biggest Scandal)

Christopher Brauchli
Weekend at Bernie's: the Confinement of Mr. Madoff

Missy Beattie
President Meathead

Richard Rhames
Corporatizing the Kids

Stephen Martin
Full-Spectrum Dominance of the Big Lie

Paul Krassner
Milk and Twinkies

Lorenzo Wolff
Does Coldplay Give a Shit Anymore?

Poets' Basement
Kathwari, Halling and Payne

Worthy Group of the Weekend
Heartwood

December 18, 2008

Phillip Doe
The Man in the Hat: Salazar and the Status Quo

Ronnie Cummins
Vilsack: Another Shill for Monsanto

Jesse Sharkey
No School Left Unsold: Arne Duncan's Privatization Agenda

Saul Landau
Postcard from Venezuela

Peter Morici
What's Next for the Fed?

Dave Lindorff
Prosecuting Bush and Cheney for Torture

Panos Petrou
Days of Rage in Greece

Jeff Cohen /
Norman Solomon
The 2008 P.U.-litzer Prizes: the Stinkiest Media Performances of the Year

Worthy Group of the Day
Organic Consumer Alliance

December 17, 2008

Peter Lee
Pushing Pakistan Over the Edge

Conn Hallinan
Angels and Demons in Mumbai

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Fatal Flaw

Jeff Halper
Obama and the Israel-Palestine Conflict

Alan Farago
The Audacity of Parkland

Peter Morici
The Big Hole

Norm Kent
Obama Lights Up

Col. Douglas MacGregor
The Price of Expediency

Margaret Kimberley
Blacks and Gay Rights

Ron Jacobs
The Myth of the Good Guy: Waiting on a President to Do the Right Thing

Worthy Group of the Day
Campaign to End the Death Penalty

December 16, 2008

Vicente Navarro
A Forgotten Genocide: the Case of Spain

Patrick Cockburn
Each Shoe was Worth a Thousand Words

Thomas Michael Power
Back to the Pump: an Economic and Environmental Dead End

Jason Hribal
Orangutans, Resistance and the Zoo: the Story of Ken Allen and Kumang

Farzana Versey
Straw Warriors and the Pantomime of Patriotism

Wajahat Ali /
Ahmed Rashid
Indian Muslims: Defining Their Loyalty

Mats Svensson
The Order to Destroy has been Given

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Mumbai Terror's Afghan Roots

David Macaray
Workplace Violence and Termination Etiquette

Howard Lisnoff
Left Control of Academia? The Case of William Felkner

Worthy Group of the Day
AWR: the Last, Best Hope for Saving the Big Wild

December 15, 2008

Andy Worthington
Hit Me Baby One More Time: a History of Music Torture in War on Terror

Franklin Lamb
Why Hezbollah Stiffed Carter

Karl Grossman
Dr. Chu's Nuclear Prescription

Brian Cloughley
Land of the Free (To Torture and Imprison Without Trial)

Mary Lynn Cramer
Stiglitz's Foolishly Flawed Morality

Steve Early
From Nicky Pockets to Blago: Why Pay-to-Play is Bad for Labor

Thomas Christie
Pentagon Train Wreck Awaits Obama

Ken Paff
Remembering Ron Carey: a Great Labor Leader

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
What is India to Do?

Dave Lindorff
A Hero of Our Time: Muntadar al-Zaidi

Alan Farago
The Artless Dodger

Worthy Group of the Day
Davis-Putter Scholarship Fund

December 12 / 14, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Hail to Chicago, Beacon of American Values

Michael Hudson /
Jeffrey Sommers
The End of the Washington Consensus

David Price
The Leaky Ship of Human Terrain Systems

Jeffrey St. Clair
Nukes Up the Hudson

Frank Barat
An Israeli in Gaza: an Interview with Jeff Halper

John Ross
Writing a Thesis in Blood

Binoy Kampmark
Humanitarian Imperialism: Obama and the Genocide Task Force

David Macaray
Killing the Auto Bailout: a Dagger to the Heart of Organized Labor

Ralph Nader
Antidotes to Plunder: a Holiday Reading List

Eamonn Fingleton
Whatever Happened to Iris Chang?

Lawrence Velvel
Why Blagojevich Might Be Acquitted

Behzad Yaghmaian
The Housing Crisis: a Timebomb China Can't Defuse

Sam Husseini
Putting the Pro in Protest

Tom Barry
Incentives to Detain: How Immigrants Drive Prison Profits

Howard Lisnoff
Why I Went to Jail

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Immigration Problem

Raj Patel
The WTO and Other Fairy Tales

Ron Jacobs
The Manufacturing of History

Paul Watson
Risky Business Down Under

David Yearsley
They Also Serve Who Only Pull or Tread

Lorenzo Wolff
So You Want Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star...

Kim Nicolini
Finally, a Vampire Movie You Can Sink Your Teeth Into

Susie Day
Proposition 1984: the Problem with Heterosexuals

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Lerch and Crete

Worthy Group of the Weekend
Energy Justice

December 11, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Total Defeat for U.S. in Iraq

P. Sainath
After Mumbai

Vicken Cheterian
The Zarqawi Generation

Ray McGovern
Will Obama Buy Torture-Lite?

Dedrick Muhammad
Post-Racial Racism at the Post: the Undying Obsession with Black Family Values

Lee Sustar
Victory at Republic

Peter Morici
The Big Drag

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Must They Hate Us So?

George Wuerthner
Another Subsidy to Big Timber?

Christopher Brauchli
Mr. Berg's Strange Obsession

Worthy Group of the Day
Animal Balance

December 10, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Whose Interests Will Shape Obama's Change?

Mary Lynn Cramer
The Multi-Trillion Dollar Question

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Nuclear Weapons Obsolescence

Joshua Frank
Breaking the Stranglehold on Middle East News Coverage

Jack Ely
Stop Sobbing About Free Music Downloads: a Message to the Music Industry from the Lead Singer of the Kingsmen

Steve Conn
An Obama Public Works Program?

Lee Sustar
Republic Workers Target Bank of America

Glen Ford
The Die is Cast

Stephen Lendman
The Persecution of Syed Fahad Hashmi

Nadia Hijab
The Face of America

Dave Lindorff
We All Need a Union

Website of the Day
This One's For You, Senator Dodd

December 9, 2008

Mike Whitney
Card Check

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Us vs. Them

Ghada Karmi
The UN Resolution That Time Forgot

Dave Lindorff
A Car Dealer Explains Why the Bailout is a Raw Deal

Steve Breyman
Notes on a Green Economy: Managing Stuff in the 21st Century

Lee Sustar /
Nicole Colson
Raising the Stakes at Republic

Rev. William E. Alberts
God of Our Fathers

Martha Rosenberg
Bill Richardson: Secretary of Bloodsports

Sam Husseini
How Holbrooke Lied His Way Into a War

David Macaray
The UAW in Peril

Website of the Day
This Toxic Life

December 8, 2008

Steve Early
Is Obama Backing Off a Crucial Pledge to Labor?

Michael Hudson
Obama's Favoritism: Wall Street, Not the Auto Industry

Patrick Cockburn
Talking to a Lashkar Militant

Diane Farsetta
An Officer and a Conflicted Man: McCaffery, the Pentagon and Fleishman-Hillard

Paul Craig Roberts
Chapters in Imperial Hypocrisy

Daniel Gross
The Chicago Sit-Down Strike

Saul Landau
To Bail or Not to Bail?

Harvey Wasserman
Why John Bryson is Unfit for Energy Secretary

Mike Ferner
The New Generation of "Non-Lethal" Weapons

Norman Solomon
The Silent Winter of Escalation

David Michael Green
The Other Foot

Website of the Day
The Remains of Detroit

December 5 / 7, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Honeymoans From the Left

Brian Cloughley
Shambles in Afghanistan

Paul Craig Roberts
Muslim Revolution: How Washington Arrogance Helped Drive the Mumbai Attacks

Liaquat Ali Khan
Mumbai and the Kashmir Tinderbox

Farzana Versey
Mumbai's Charge of the Lightweight Brigade

Peter Lee
Pakistan Nears the Breaking Point

Peter Morici
Slouching Toward a Depression?

Ralph Nader /
Toby Heaps
Junk Cap-and-Trade

Yinon Cohen /
Neve Gordon
Obama Could End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Will He Meet the Challenge?

Wajahat Ali
Perverse Justice: the Holy Land Foundation Convictions

Johnny Barber
Aswad's Story: Illegal Detention and the Declaration of Human Rights

Alan Farago
Fallout from the Pass-Through Economy

Jeremy Scahill
Obama Doesn't Plan to End Occupation of Iraq

Mike Whitney
Powergrab in Ottawa

Ranjit Hoskote
Jahiliyya Versus Jihad

Carl Finamore
Thank God I'm an Atheist! (Or Boy is Bill O'Reilly in for a Big Surprise)

Marjorie Cohn
Obama and Women's Rights

Norm Kent
Tommy Chong, the Unanticipated Warrior

Missy Beattie
What Lies Ahead

Binoy Kampmark
Committing Suicide On-Line: the Briggs Case

David Macaray
The Best and the Brightest Redux: Too Many Brains, Not Enough Humility

Nancy Stohlman
Relational Activism

Ron Jacobs
Irreverent Politics Then and Now

David Yearsley
Thematics From the Golden Past

Lorenzo Wolff
Troubled Songs of Home and War

Poets' Basement
Orloski: The Door Opener

Website of the Weekend
In Prison My Whole Life

December 4, 2008

Ece Temelkuran
Inside the Ergenekon Case

Ralph Nader
Turning Crisis into Opportunity: Who Will Seize the Moment?

Harry Browne
The Bush-Obama National Security Strategy

Eamonn Fingleton
The American Car Industry: a Riposte to the Knockers

Conn Hallinan
The Syria Attack

Mike Whitney
Fiasco in Somalia: Another CIA Cock-Up

Stewart J. Lawrence
Obama and Latinos: Richardson, Alone, is Not Enough

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Message to Obama: Stop Killing Afghanis

Karyn Strickler
Show Us the Green, Before We Show You the Money

Jennifer Matsui
Obama-Cola: the Great National Temperance Beverage

Website of the Day
"He Ain't Got Laid in a Month of Sundays..."

December 3, 2008

Andrew Cockburn
What's Wrong with the U.S. Military

Sheldon Rampton
Mormon Homophobia: Up Close and Personal

Robert Weissman
Nationalize GM

Yifat Susskind
From Mumbai to Washington

William Blum
The Obama Bummer: Vote First, Ask Questions Later

Alan Singer
The Ghost of the Defunct Economist

David Macaray
Trampled Under Foot at Wal-Mart

Martha Rosenberg
Born With a Statin Deficiency? Line Forms to the Left!

Mats Svensson
The Crimes Have No Period of Limitations

Website of the Day
Why Bill Richardson's Nomination Should be Opposed

December 2, 2008

Jeremy Scahill
Obama's Kettle of Hawks

Paul Craig Roberts
The New Arms Race

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
The Mumbai Terror Attacks: Is Pakistan to Blame?

Sarah Anderson /
John Cavanagh
Skewed Priorities: How the Bailout Dwarfs Spending on Other Global Crises

William Blum
The Mythology of the War on Terrorism

John Ross
Mexico's Drug War Goes Down in Flames

Dave Lindorff
A Tale of Two Terror Attacks

Nicola Nasser
A Peace Process That Makes Peace Impossible

Steve Conn
Operation Redskin Removal

Robert Bryce
Coal Hard Facts

Website of the Day
Country, Funk, Soul

December 1, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
From Baghdad to Mumbai, by Way of Pakistan

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
Obama's Economic Team: Records of Failure

Vijay Prashad
The Fires in South Asia

Deepak Tripathi
Obama's Foreign Crises

Joshua Frank
Madam Secretary Clinton and the Middle East

P. Sainath
The Unlikely Martyrdom of Free Market Jihad

Alan Farago
The Right's War on Regulators

Binoy Kampmark
Sydney's Ball and Chain

Chris Genovali
Silent Fall

David Michael Green
Hope You Die Before You Get Old

Stephen Martin
The Chinese are Coming, the Chinese are Coming!

Website of the Day
Robert Rubin: Coward, Liar or Both?

November 28-30, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Time of Trouble

Mike Whitney
The Obama "Dream Team": Rubin Clones and Other Fakers

Ted Honderich
What is the Meaning of Obama's Election?

Tom Kerr
Preserving Filthy Lucre (Or Becoming My Dad)

Mike Ely
The Conquest of New England

David Yearsley
Hymns of the Conquest

Deepak Tripathi
Uproar in Police-State Britain

Sonja Karkar
Gaza's Death Throes

Ramzy Baroud
Salvation in a News Broadcast

Robert Weitzel
Israel's Settlement on Capitol Hill

Robert Roth
Can We Create a Movement for Change?

Carlos Fierro
Obama and the End of Racism?

David Macaray
How to Kill a Union

David Rosen
A New Sexual Agenda

James Cockcroft
Indigenous People Rising

Stan Cox
The Most Disappointing Gift

Steve Conn
Talking Turkey About College Basketball

Stephen Martin
The Electromagnetic Pulse and Economic Warfare

Richard Rhames
Busty Bimbettes, Bombs and Brand Obama

Kim Nicolini
Women as Products and Cannibalistic Achievers

Lorenzo Wolff
A Battle Cry for the Confused and Vulnerable

Poets' Basement
Woods, Harrison and Corseri

December 23, 2008

Now Do You Get It?

Hey, Reagan Democrats!

By DAVID MICHAEL GREEN

Sometime in the future...

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, if you’ll just follow me over in this direction, I’d like to show you one of our rarest and most reviled species here at The Human Zoo – it’s the proverbial ‘Reagan Democrat’.

“Most of your younger visitors here at the Zoo have no idea what a Reagan Democrat could be, so I always like to take the time to explain it to them.  Indeed, most of them don’t even know what Reagan was, except that they keep hearing the people who wrecked Old America talk about this wrinkled prune faced guy with the Gumby hair as if he were some sort of deity.  I get a lot of questions about how someone could actually have done things that don’t sound even remotely plausible, but I generally leave that for the historians to explain, other than to remind people that injecting religious dogma into politics doesn’t just mean stupidity only when it comes to policies related to sexuality, war, taxation, the economy or the environment.

“But already I digress...  The Reagan Democrat (technically, Imbecelicus politici) was always the strangest and most contemptuous of species from the habitat of American politics, as you’ve perhaps already heard.  Try to imagine another example from the animal kingdom that could be so readily counted upon to bring harm upon itself and others.  There are some of course, but usually they are simply ignorant animals, often with very limited cranial capacity.

“The Reagan Democrat, on the other hand, was simply obnoxiously greedy, and took great pains to aggregate to itself as much stuff as was possible, including even meaningless psychological affirmations of its existential worth.  It wasn’t very long, of course, before another animal in the jungle noticed this tendency, and established a parasitic relationship with the Reagan Democrat.  These others were known as The Wealthy (Plutocratus illegitimi), and they got very rich – though they could still never seem to achieve happiness – by exploiting the opportunities provided to them by the Reagan Democrat.  A very mean-spirited and deceitful group of marketing gurus like Lee Atwater and Karl Rove were generally the weapon of choice for accomplishing this.

“Anyhow, before we enter the exhibit, perhaps I should stop now and take any questions.  Yes, you, young lady, what can I tell you?”

“Well, sir, you’ve never quite defined what a Reagan Democrat is.  And, especially, why someone associated with Mr. Reagan would be a Democrat.  Wasn’t he from that other party, the, uh..., the... Regressocans?  ...the Degenocrats?”

“Ah, fine questions, indeed, and you’re quite right that I’ve been remiss in not explaining those fundamentals so far.  It’s an occupational hazard, I suppose.  We zoo curators get so caught up in admiring our own erudition that we sometimes we forget to do our jobs properly!

“Speaking of which, where were we...?  Oh, yes, I was going to answer your questions about the meaning of this term.  First of all, let’s get that political party name straight.  Reagan was a Republican.  That’s what makes the creature we’re about to see so interesting.  It came from working class roots, often recently arrived just a generation earlier from some very poor Eastern European country or such.  Its local social unit had only recently been elevated to the middle class, and this achievement had everything to do with the progressive policies the Democratic Party.  For the first time ever, and because of these policies, it had a good job, a house in the suburbs, two cars, and it could send its offspring to institutions of higher education which had previously been reserved exclusively for elites, as represented by Mr. Reagan’s party.

“But it was very, very greedy, and thus differentiated itself off into a new species which was marked by the fact that it could have its underdeveloped psychology readily appealed to for purposes of exploitation by Republican operatives, representing the economic elite species.  In fact, it was actually pretty easy to do.  All they had to do was throw some line about an evil foreign bogeyman down to the Reagan Democrat, or perhaps a story about uppity darker skinned members of the genus, or some televised ruse about how very, very bad people were out to destroy Christmas, the silly religious holiday of yore...  Anything like that would generally work.

“It really didn’t matter very much what ploy was chosen, though the more naked the appeal to greed or vanity, the better.  For instance, a handful of elites could carve out for themselves massive chunks of the commonwealth’s (formerly) common wealth, but as long as they tossed a few pennies in the direction of the Reagan Democrat at the same time, the latter was sure to support what amounted to his or her own financial undoing, every time.  Likewise, since the Reagan Democrat tended to be the most fearful and the most self-loathing of animals in the human sphere, the basest appeals to its vanity could also buy votes en masse, and on the cheap, too.  You just had to make him feel a little bigger than someone else – women, foreigners, brown people, homosexuals – it didn’t really matter.  Then you could get his vote and pick his pocket.”

“Excuse me, sir, but what do you mean by pick his pocket?”

“Ah, yes, well that means that you could go to Washington and make policies that actually hurt the Reagan Democrat, but he would nevertheless support them, because you had fooled him with some sort of ruse, such as those I just mentioned.  Does that make sense?”

“Well, not entirely.  But perhaps if we could actually see one now, it would all become more clear.”

“I thought you’d never ask!  If you’ll just follow me around this corner...  and just down this hall a bit...  turn right here...  no, no – hard right...  once more, please...  And there he is!  We’ve preserved his natural habitat, and you can actually see him in his normal condition right now.  As you may observe first-hand, he is now sound asleep.  One might well note that this is both a literal and metaphorical condition.  See what I mean about curator erudition!  In any case, note the Reagan Democrat in his prime.  He’s about sixty or so, sitting in his comfortable suburban home, leaning back in his recliner chair.  On the side stand are several empty beer cans – nothing fancy, of Coors.  Note also the remains of his meal of chicken wings and potato chips on a plate, sitting next to an array of primitive remote control devices.  He has a football game on the wide-screen television – it appears to be the Pittsburgh Steelers versus the Dallas Cowboys – and he is as pleasantly divorced from reality as any drunken afternoon of passive entertainment provided by organized violence could possibly offer.  Check out the drool oozing down his chin.”

“But is he happy, sir?”

“Well, no, of course not.  I would have thought that would be obvious by the bloated belly, the need to stay drunk, the passive entertainment of the televison set as his best friend, the reveling in organized violence all day long, and the general narcosis of the specimen.  But, in fact, there is more.  He is greedy and selfish and jealous and narcissistic and bitter.  He is a walking demographic for political operatives who see him coming from ten miles away and cater to his every resentment with lies about the reasons for his unhappiness, lies about how to solve his problems, and lies about their actual motivation in seeking his vote.  And, what is more, it works – just about every time.  The Reagan Democrat, in short, is a pathetic sight.  Unfit, unhealthy, unhappy, uncaring, unintelligent and highly unappealing.  Worst of all, a hypocrite.  After decades of being the direct beneficiary of progressive policies made in Washington, he seeks to pull up the ladder behind him, so no one else can use it.  Really, I think we’d all have to agree, this is clearly one of the most disgusting and parasitic creatures of the animal kingdom.  ‘Leeches with legs’, as I like to call them!  Though, really, even that’s far too generous, since leeches don’t have much in the way of other options.”

“Well, what happened to them?  I thought they were extinct...?”

“Almost, but as you can see for yourself, a few rare specimens survive to this day, carefully preserved under highly controlled conditions.  But most of them are long gone now, the victims of natural selection.  That was especially ironic, of course, since one of the fairly tales they were sold – and happily bought – was the dogmatic religious bit about evolutionary theory being false.  Oops!  In any case, they were essentially full participants in their own fleecing, until there was just nothing left anymore.  For three decades they sucked down the mantras of right-wing political propaganda, just as they sucked down their anesthetizing carbonated alcoholic preparations.  For three decades they belched their way into the voting booth to choose Republican candidates who advocated attacking some third world country, or ending affirmative action, or fighting against the secular war on Christmas, or denying food benefits to some poor kid living just two blocks away, or keeping women in their place, or – especially – cutting taxes.

“And for three decades these victorious Republican politicians marched off to Washington, whereupon they played a little at tokenist fulfillment of these campaign promises, but meanwhile set about in great earnestness and energy to do what they had really come to do.  Namely, to fleece the people who had put them there, the Reagan Democrats.  And so they did.  Massively, and continuously.  Until there was nothing left to fleece anymore.

“And thus ends our story, my young friends, and I thank you so much for coming to the Human Zoo today.  I hope you’ve enjoyed your visit!”

“But, excuse me, sir.  One last question, please.  Could they really have been that dumb?  Even after three decades of being ripped-off, did they not ever wise up?”

“Well, I say, you really are quite a smart little whippersnapper, aren’t you, young lady?!  Another very good question.  As a matter of fact, yes, some of them are reported to have begun to figure this out toward the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century.  After all their selfishness, after all their aggressiveness, after all their self-loathing, and even after all their beloved tax cuts, they began to notice that they had not gained an inch in their standard of living from where they had been three decades earlier, when they abandoned the progressive politics that had helped put them in the middle class to begin with, and in fact they discovered that they had lost ground enormously.  Moreover, they noticed that the plutocratic class had become fantastically wealthier during that same time period.  Indeed, in three decades, the richest ten percent of Americans had gone from bringing home about a third of all national income to about half, just like it had been in 1929.

“Oh, and speaking of which, it was a nearly letter-perfect repeat of the Great Depression – complete with Republican governments, massive tax favors for the rich, deregulation, Gilded Age style polarization of wealth, and a devastating global economic implosion – that finally began to awaken many Reagan Democrats from their slumber.  The capper was what the Republicans did in an attempt to ‘bail-out’ the sinking economy.  The very people who had failed to regulate the folks causing the Even Greater Depression of the early twenty-first century now took $700 billion worth of taxpayer money and handed it to those same financial ‘industry’ crooks, without any requirements at all on what they could do with the money, not even restrictions against bonuses or getaways to five-star resorts.  But when the blue collar auto industry wanted just $15 billion to keep millions of middle class jobs afloat, the Republicans wouldn’t give it to them.

“This was altogether just too much, and by this time even acephalic Reagan Democrats began to figure out they’d been duped.  And while many could never admit their stupidity and their greed, some quietly returned to being just regular old Democrats again.

“Indeed, in 2008, not only did many of them vote for a Democrat for president, they even voted for a black Democrat.  Amazing!
“Of course, he did promise them tax cuts...

“Well, anyhow, thank you once again for joining us on the tour here at the Human Zoo.  I hope you’ve enjoyed your stay.

“Please do be careful as you exit.  As always, the way out is to the left.”

David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York.  He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (dmg@regressiveantidote.net), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond.  More of his work can be found at his website, www.regressiveantidote.net

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