The thing about democracy is it provides a very wide avenue to manipulation and the only thing to police this is a voting public that has the ability to identify when something is wrong. How can they do this when you have think tanks dreaming up new ways to confuse them and influence them to narrow their view to only be as wide as their short term personal agenda? 

Actually “democracy” the way it was laid out by our “forefathers” does not really provide all that wide an avenue to manipulation.  Maybe the think tanks have made a living out of fudging the words, but that only makes it okay if you and I AND those DUTY BOUND (oath taken) “elders” and Congress and the fackin’ Senate (like a dirty word anymore) mix and match the shitstorms to suit a falsehood (red & blue, left & right, their guys & ours, this agenda and that, one conglomerate vs. the other, they are both turds (& I don’t like using the word turd…just rubs me the wrong way…but I racked my brain for a better word to no avail) that can only float until the flush.  If there is not an eventual flush then whatever human Renaissance could occur (instead of more and more and more and more of this cynical predatory game of catch me fuck me, can’t catch me fuck you, deregulated theft on the take, huge money moving monstrosity to distraction & destruction is bound to continue.  & if it does than the whole experiment was a lie, all this has been for naught. 

& it’s pitiful because it doesn’t have to be this way.  The rich can be rolling in riches and the middle can be at the parks with their families or out sailing the boat when not getting their hands & minds dirty with earth and motion and construction and the customer and the books; and the poor can have full bellies, something to labor on, and a framed shelter with heat and a door & a bus ride to a good school; & the elderly and fixed can kick up their feet and watch the game on TV without worrying about another unmanageable 10% increase in their basic cost of living; & we can mostly all afford to drive a good car that gets around on good fuel; and the beaches can stay free (except in Ocean City New Jersey, the pigs); & the maids can clean-up, and the pickers can still pick, and the packers can pack & the stackers stack; the salespeople can still sell, the directors direct, and the singer-songwriters can still move us with ditties on guitar; & the waiters wait, and the chasers chase, but no takers take while the bakers bake; and the farmers can farm and the strippers can strip and the bartenders (mostly girls now ~ interesting paradigm) can, well…tend bar and be interesting to try to pick up on while listening to the sob-sob philosophizers; & bankers can still suck ass and CEOs can still retire rich, but only if they do a lick o good ~~  just not so freaking ludicrously rich that there’s only a sliver o pie left for my sweet ol’ mama and her kids and their kids and ………  oh, what the hell…………………………..piss it all away guys ...............hey, why not, it was only a miracle to begin with.........

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...alright, not to change the subject…but so’s we can fit a little happy time into this jive that derides the second greatest lie ever told, let me temporarily redirect this excellent effort by Reg to make a tangible point and my…well, more loose rattling caboose of a noisemaker muse…

Howabout a little o that ol’steerage rag  ~  Cheers!  Sláinte!  ...Can I have this dance, m'lady

Gaelic Storm • Strawberry Beds 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F80gVoTlhg8

(couldn’t find a video for) South Australia b’ there’s I’ll Tell me Ma 

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ41EO1XnAo&feature=related

& The One  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuRjO8WbgT8  &

another they call Heart of the Ocean from the Herding Cats album

craic • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUM7deQN9Cg&feature=related • @l : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrZUHFNcx8o&feature=related