Dear Thomas:  I wrote a long reply to your latest comment, but somehow lost it,  and so, rather than attempting to re-construct it from memory,  I'll try to be more concise:

   Almost 250 years ago, the people who invented America added changes to the original  Constitution, which represented progress in the form of the Bill of Rights.

   For the next seventy years, as the Nation expanded, we maintained a status quo, ignoring the question of the Native American, and the fact that in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, we maintained the institution of Slavery; or that we had grabbed a quarter of  the Nation from a fledgling democracy in our Southwestern Mexican War.

  The Civil War brought great, noble and terrible change.  The slaves were freed and made citizens, representing progress, and we took on the form of a real modern nation by preserving the Union. In terms of reaction, however, our next fifty years saw the Native Americans  slaughtered, Corporatism born, the Robber Barons taking control of  Government and the Economy, while the Social Darwinists planned American hegemony and World expansion, culminating in a series of assassinations (or attempted assassinations), the Spanish American War and our involvement in World War I.

   In reaction to consequent  heady, reckless change which brought the progress of women's suffrage and a new sense of freedom and economic license, came the Red Scare, the Rise of Organized Crime, and the Great Depression.  Then, in the face of our most terrible  economic collapse up to then, perhaps for the first and only time since the American Revolution, the people as a whole rejected reaction, the "status quo," and in the form of the New Deal, met our economic, social, and political obligations head-on in a tremendous surge of reform, change and progress, which was interrupted only by World War II.

 [But in all these years, we should remember working people still lived and died in horrendous conditions beyond the growing power of Unions and Government to help them, and that every week from the 1880's until after World War II,  one or more black men were lynched while law enforcement and religious leaders largely looked the other way.] 

   After the War, forces of reaction again began to turn back the clock, and spurred by threats to them of democratic change represented by the GI Bill, the sexual and civil rights revolutions, started to repeal the progress of the New Deal, and to consolidate America's domination  in the World by corruption of the Marshall Plan and other democratic gestures, publicizing   through the new Mass Media a series of "threats," real or imagined:  The Cold War, Communism, our "loss of China, Korea, Sputnik, the new Red Scare, Cuba,  the 1960's Assassinations, Vietnam, drugs, Organized Crime, the Rise of OPEC,  the Evil Empire, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, the Gulf War.

   It all ended in a quiet, catastrophic change of the triumph of Corporatism during the Clinton Administration, the acceptance into our political  process of divisive religious extremism in the face of 9/11, and finally our descent into criminal  and fascist reaction during these last seven years of the Administration of George W. Bush, utilizing the vehicle of The Project for a New American Century.

  At each stage, but with increasing pulse, there have been crises which demanded address: change? progress? 

  We didn't get either.  We got disguised status quo or more reaction. 

   Since World War II, we have had the following threats to the development and maintenance of our democracy: McCarthyism, Assassinations, The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, the War Powers Controversy, Watergate, Iran-Contra, the excesses of "Supply Side Economics," and a series of military interventions largely unsanctioned by Congress, which has led us to the horrible mess we are in.

  Status Quo? Reaction? Change? Progress?

  At this moment, we stand on the edge of economic catastrophe, the exhaustion of our energy resources, military humiliation or nuclear war, the collapse of our Foreign Policy,  the abrogation of our Bill of Rights, environmental degradation on an unparalleled scale, and the acceptance of democratic fascism as our form of government: the End of the Republic.

  Thomas: I, too, praise Obama, but in his "cool," attractive personal  progress, I see virtually nothing to suggest that he is really aware of our situation.  Nor that he has a governmental and economic  "Manhattan Project" which true Conservatives are demanding, or "A New Deal for the 21st Century" that Progressives require.  Without either from Obama (or McCain), it is hard to see how we can muddle through the next  few years, sinking deeper into domestic fascism, mindless consumerism, increasing tribalism and religious cult divisions, and nuclear or environmental disaster -- but we might, and that would be most damning of all.  Because the Armageddon so close to the  Neocons (and the Islamist Extremists) would be insured.

  Calvinism, Capitalism and Fascism Triumphant! 

   It is for that reason, House Judiciary Committee Hearings on Dennis Kucinich's Articles of Impeachment (and subsequent indictments and prosecution of literally hundreds of corrupt officials) is crucially necessary.  Otherwise, Obama will be sabotaged for the next four years by Machiavellian criminals  in place throughout his Administration.  And the disastrous  prologue of the past sixty years will become our grave.

   As for Obama's being a "different kind of politician," he certainly sounds like it in his rhetoric and represents the "new populism" in his fund  raising. [How typically American that we judge him primarily by style and where he gets his money from.  Actually, he is (now) DNC Chairman Howard Dean's candidate, in those regards.] His lack of a big comprehensive plan, and his willingness to back of on FISA and from the gun lobby suggests that he sees no contradiction in taking your 250 bucks and my twenty-five as he accepts hundreds of thousands from the Utilities or the Arms industries.

  The basic status quo may be made to look like change, but even change is not necessarily progress, and Obama, so far, gives no evidence that he really knows, and is prepared to deal with the fact, that we are deeply mired in reactionary quicksand.

    A lot of good, patriotic Americans in the Dakotas or Oklahoma or Georgia, etc, are beginning to get the fix we're in, too.      

  Macresarf1 -- Glenn Anders -- Alex Fraser