I hope everyone got to see Andrew Bacevich - solid conservative(paleo) - explaining the meaning of "we are the change we've been waiting for" on Bill Moyers this weekend.

Though not in so many words, he did so eloquently, declaring our current pass nothing short of  an abdication of civic responsibility resulting in sham democracy.  Powerful stuff Now online

Another impeccably credentialed conservative, Paul Craig Roberts  pretty much agrees

Unless enough Americans can overcome their brainwashed state and the rigged Diebold voting machines, turn out the imbecilic Republicans and hold the neoconservatives accountable for their crimes against humanity, a crazed neocon US government will provoke nuclear war with Russia.

The neoconservatives represent the greatest danger ever faced by the United States and the world. Humanity has no greater enemy.

We are governed by fools
Armed and dangerous

US hypocrisy is nearly as breathtaking as its illusions of hegemony

Blowback From Bear-Baiting by Patrick J. Buchanan

Mikheil Saakashvili's decision to use the opening of the Olympic Games to cover Georgia's invasion of its breakaway province of South Ossetia must rank in stupidity with Gamal Abdel-Nasser's decision to close the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships. American charges of Russian aggression ring hollow. Georgia started this fight – Russia finished it. People who start wars don't get to decide how and when they end. Russia's response was "disproportionate" and "brutal," wailed Bush. True. But did we not authorize Israel to bomb Lebanon for 35 days in response to a border skirmish where several Israel soldiers were killed and two captured? Was that not many times more "disproportionate"?

Many Religious Voters Favor Obama, Poll FindsUS News

The political times, however, could be changing. A study released this week by the Barna Group, a Christian research and consulting firm based in Ventura, Calif., finds that Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, currently enjoys the support of more faith-driven voters, including Christians, than his Republican rival.

The poll, which shows Obama ahead of McCain 43 percent to 34 percent among likely voters, also finds Obama leading in 18 of 19 different religious faith communities defined by the survey's strict standards. McCain leads in only one--evangelicals. In that category, however, the Republican has a huge lead, 61 to 17.

The Barna poll uses unusual methodology. Many pollsters take voters at their word when they say they are evangelical Christians, but the Barna survey is unusually specific about its categorizations. It asks voters a battery of nine questions about their religious beliefs--whether, for example, they think the Bible is accurate in everything it teaches, and whether they feel a personal responsibility to share their beliefs about Christ with non-Christians. Only when all nine questions are answered affirmatively are voters categorized as "evangelical."

This significantly reduces the survey's estimate of the total number of evangelical voters. By Barna's estimate, only 8 percent of U.S. voters are truly evangelical. "That is a much smaller group than you might think," says George Barna, the poll's director.

Immanuel Wallerstein back in 2002 wrote an OpEd in the Los Angeles Times, followed by a piece in Foreign Policy (The Eagle Has Crash Landed)  positing that an invasion of Iraq would mark the end of US hegemony. He was largely greeted with howls from the Indispensable Nationalists and Neocons (Some even argued that there was no such thing even as the Pentagon strategic planning had undertaken an historical study of how hegemony might be extended!)


Well events in Georgia and indeed over the past five years across the globe have proved the case. The McChickenHawks have come home to roost

Next President Will Find US Decline Difficult to Reverse (Financial Times)