America's corporate and political elites now form a regime of their own and they're privatizing democracy. All the benefits - the tax cuts, policies and rewards flow in one direction: up.

Fox News and Rush Limbaugh have raised ignorance to ideology and stupefied an entire political party. No more roguish and rowdy band of predators ever did more to demean and despoil the democracy on whose carcass they feed.

In one way or another, this is the oldest story in America: the struggle to determine whether “we, the people” is a moral compact embedded in a political contract or merely a charade masquerading as piety and manipulated by the powerful and privileged to sustain their own way of life at the expense of others.

Barack Obama strikes me as a man of strong principles and weak convictions - the kind of guy who would rather teach constitutional law than practice it, or who'd rather watch the match alone on TV than arm-wrestle his opponents.

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.

Scientists investigate that which already is; Engineers create that which has never been. Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.

Why is the country not having this conversation, the kind of conversation that requires the politicians who are responsible for the war to be specific to the concerns of the American people.