Silence is not an effective political strategy, and what we do if we silence the public interest, which is so hard to hear anyway, is that we silence ourselves and then we do not have a democracy.

We, the people, gave the marching orders to our democratically-elected officials and instructed them. We wanted out of Vietnam and we got out of Vietnam. We wanted women's right to choose and we got women's right to choose. We got the EPA, we got the Clean Air Act, Water Act, we got rights for workers in the workplace to be protected from dangers. We accomplished pretty much all of what we wanted when we had the courage of our convictions. That is the missing ingredient.

I don't know if I ever mentioned back in 2002 we fought our way into a governor's debate in Massachusetts where, you know, this was televised and I articulated our usual agenda: cut the military, put the dollars into true security here at home, provide healthcare as a human right, raise wages which needed to be living wages, green our energy system, equal marriage? - we were the only ones talking about it back in 2002.

If we are going to save our hides, we need to start with democracy.

It's not a matter of just what we don't like and who we are most afraid of. We need an affirmative agenda if we're going to move forward as a democracy.

What happened in Cuba, just to cut to the chase, their death rate from diabetes went down 50%, their death rate from heart attacks and stroke went down approximately 30% and all-cause mortality went down 18% while they adhered to the system. Then they opened up their pipeline again from Venezuela, and their health improvements went away.

The recent AP poll that came out last month said that approximately 90% of the American people felt that the two-party system was failing us in the presidential election.