The printed page conveys information and commitment, and requires active involvement. Television conveys emotion and experience, and it's very limited in what it can do logically. It's an existential experience - there and then gone.

I like what I do and keep thinking the best is yet to come.

When the public loses faith in democracy's ability to solve the problems it has created for itself, the game's almost over. And I think we are this close to losing democracy to the mercenary class.

Fate handed Barack Obama the best of all political gifts - a dyspeptic, surly, spiteful opposition on the one hand and very unpopular financiers on the other - and he wouldn't come out punching, name names, or go for the jugular. It was as if while getting mugged by guys with brass knuckles, he turned the other cheek. He even jeopardized his pledge to preserve women's rights under Roe v. Wade in order to get a health care bill written by the corporate lapdog Max Baucus and the gang of revolving door mercenaries he hired to write a bill friendly to industry.

We seem to prefer a comfortable lie to the uncomfortable truth. We punish those who point out reality, and reward those who provide us with the comfort of illusion. Reality is fearsome .. but experience tells us that more fearsome yet is evading it.

Lyndon Johnson believed the poor deserved a better life than the economy was providing them. He thought private power and greed had to be checked by a vibrant democracy.

Ideas are great arrows, but there has to be a bow.