Bill Moyers: "This giant of a country is bleeding badly from savage self inflicted wounds"

[kpete]

.....................

Everywhere we went people wanted to talk about America. The Greeks, Sicilians, Sardinians, Tunisians, Algerians, and Spaniards we met, were euphoric - cab drivers, guides, waiters, hotel clerks, bank tellers. They expect miracles from America. Their own economies are imploding: layoffs, budget shortfalls, failing banks, fear spreading among the populace. They want to believe that somehow the long arm of America will pull them back. I tried but I didn't have the heart to tell them just how much trouble their rich Uncle Sam is in.

Maybe I was wrong not to dispel their illusions about America; after all, they live on top of the ruins of long-gone empires, whose rise and fall is a far more familiar and consistent theme of history than democracy's success. I did my best, to say that America is trying very hard right now to put our own house in order.

That self-correcting faculty, even in the darkest hours, is the best thing we have going for us. That and the knowledge that nothing we face in the months ahead is more than was asked of our parents and grand parents in war and depression.

This giant of a country is bleeding badly from savage self inflicted wounds, but what happens next is still our story to write. We can be thankful for that.

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more at:
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/node/24308

[kentuck]

1. I wish they could find a place in this Administration for Bill Moyers.

They could maybe create a new position for him? Something to do with Press Relations?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

4. I'd rather seem him as an independent gadfly.

I think Bill learned his lessons from LBJ about being under someone's direction.

[kenny blankenship]

5. He's not willing to meet Fascism halfway

"too partisan" or some such crap.

[MichiganVote]

2. We have some bums that need to be thrown out on their ear in this country.

Until that is done, and they are living in a hole like Haiti, nothing will change.

[Vincardog]

3. If Obama would back an Independent prosecutor to investigate and where appropriate indict and

prosecute the plague that has been afflicting our country for the last 8 no 30 years
We could begin to redeem ourselves.

I know Obama can't do that yet because the idiot bush would pardon everyone or throw a tantrum but I can wish

[MichiganVote]

7. Obama isn't the Justice Dept. They are the ones who are derelict in their duty.

[truedelphi]

6. SSH! People don't want to think about that.

better to believe that the changing of the guard, the same as the old guard,w ill mean great things - just give it ninety days, or 120 days or

Hey Ask Nancy Pelosi. She will never ahve to make good on any of her pledges, yet still she has power.

[MichiganVote]

8. "People" haven;t wanted to think about it since Nixon. We all have a pill to take

and it won't go down easy. Time to get it over with. It won't get any easier with any other leadership.

[Peace Patriot]

9. "That self-correcting faculty..."

"That self-correcting faculty, even in the darkest hours, is the best thing we have going for us. --Bill Moyers

YES! This is why I rail so against 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting, with the tabulation code owned and controlled by far rightwing corporations, with virtually 100% non-transparency. The tyrants and the oiligarchs and corpo/fascists have devised many methods of controlling 'we, the people,' and looting us blind, but this beats all, as a method of preventing essential reform. We vote against the Iraq War--as we did in 2006--and somehow we end up with a Congress that escalates that war, and lards our war profiteer tyrants with billions more of our tax dollars to keep killing and oppressing Iraqis until they sign the oil contracts, and that furthermore earns a 10% approval rating--worse than Bush's--and that announces itself to the American people and the world with these words: "Impeachment is off the table."

What "table" we do not know. Who sat at it we do not know. Our Constitution was "off the table." Accountability, even for the most heinous crimes, was "off the table."

The genius of democracy is that the people can change the course of the ship of state when it is headed toward disaster. And that is the most serious impact of 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting. It has prevented that course correction until, possibly, too late. It should have occurred in 2004. It did occur in 2004. But that peoples' election revolt was overturned, mainly by the unauditable, unrecountable, electronic voting systems that had been fastracked into place, all over the country, during the 2002 to 2004 period. And that was done with a $3.9 billion electronic voting boondoggle passed by the Anthrax Congress in the same month as the Iraq War Resolution (Oct 02). The two are related. The IWR guaranteed unjust war; the e-voting bill provided the means of shoving the unjust war down the throats of the American people, nearly 60% of whom opposed the war (Feb 03, all polls).

The result of that obstruction of the peoples' will is bankruptcy, and the Financial 9/11 that the Bushwhacks and their pals just pulled off--the final looting.

If someone had deliberately designed the destruction of the United States of America--and I have little doubt that this has been designed--they could not have done a better job, in any direction that you look: the dismantling of our right to vote (our fundamental power as a people), the installation of an idiot puppet as president, the utter contempt of the fuckwads behind Bush for the rule of law and international peace, all our ideals of transparent government, fairness, and human and civil rights, in tatters, all the accomplishments of the great American middle class--our education system, our worker protections, our environmental protections, our emergency services, everything looted and destroyed, our jobs and manufacturing base gone, and our very solvency sold off to the sheiks of Araby and tyrannical Chinese plutocrats.

But there is one thing that is so strong that it could not be permanently damaged, and that is the democratic spirit of the American people--alive and well these days in South America, and finally making a comeback here. Leaders like Obama, with good intentions, but severely hedged round by the global corporate predators who have destroyed our democratic institutions, won't likely be able to deliver serious reform, but the process of reclaiming our democracy has begun in earnest with his campaign for president. It is his supporters that I believe in, and they are much more numerous than the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machine corps and the corpo/fascist press have led us to believe. (They significantly and fraudulently shaved his mandate by at least 10%.) The people have been trying to change course at least since 2004. Bill Moyers is so right that this "is the best thing we have going for us"--but I would call it not so much something we have, as our MEMORY of what democracy is: our ability to change course.

[bertman]

12. Hear!! Hear!! I don't know if I agree with the shaving 10% but the rest I do agree with.

Bill Moyers is a national treasure.

[annabanana]

14. On the nose, as usual Peace Patriot..

This is the "self-correcting" machine that we cannot allow to be inoperative. There is no legitimacy to the government if there is no authenticatable vote.

[BrklynLiberal]

10. Saw that show last night. It was excellent and those were his closing remarks.

His guest was Michael Pollan. He wrote "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and his latest book is "In Defense of Food".

He was brilliant, speaking about how we can be self-sustaining about food and energy, and help save ourselves
from global warming at the same.

[Peace Patriot]

13. His other book, "The Botany of Desire," is one of the best I've ever read.

Brilliant and highly original book for every kind of reader. You don't have to have an interest in plants, botany or science, or any technical knowledge--just love a good writing, thinking and story-telling. What a book! A work of genius! Subject: the relationship of people and plants (tulips, apples, potatoes and marijuana, specifically).

[judasdisney]

11. False Flags trump all healing