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Barack Obama Seemed To Think He Could Win Over His Enemies. He Certainly Seemed To Believe Too Much In His Own Powers Of Persuasion. One Thing's For Sure - He Misunderstood The Nature Of His Adversaries.

-Bill Moyers

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Barack Obama Seemed To

Bill Moyers

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Barack Obama Seemed To Think He Could Win Over His Enemies. He Certainly Seemed To Believe Too Much In His Own Powers Of Persuasion. One Thing's For Sure - He Misunderstood The Nature Of His Adversaries.

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In Tracking Down And Eliminating Terrorists, We Need To Change Our Metaphor From A "war On Terror" - Exactly What, Pray Tell, Is That? - To The Mind-set Of Interpol Tracking Down Master Criminals Through Intense Global Cooperation Among Nations, Or The Fbi Stalking The Mafia, Or Local Police Determined To Quell Street Gangs Without Leveling The Entire Neighborhood In The Process.

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Barack Obama Seemed To Think He Could Win Over His Enemies. He Certainly Seemed To Believe Too Much In His Own Powers Of Persuasion. One Thing's For Sure - He Misunderstood The Nature Of His Adversaries.

Our Media And Political System Has Turned Into A Mutual Protection Racket.

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There's Hardly A More Bitter Pill To Take Than When A President Disappoints The People Who Most Believed In Him.

Empty Your Knapsack Of All Adjectives, Adverbs And Clauses That Slo Your Stride And Weaken Your Pace. Travel Light. Remember The Most Memorable Sentences In The English Language Are Also The Shortest: "the King Is Dead" And "jesus Wept."

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Charity Is Commendable; Everyone Should Be Charitable. But Justice Aims To Create A Social Order In Which, If Individuals Choose Not To Be Charitable, People Still Don't Go Hungry, Unschooled Or Sick Without Care. Charity Depends On The Vicissitudes Of Whim And Personal Wealth; Justice Depends On Commitment Instead Of Circumstance.

The Most Encouraging Sign Is That 71 Percent Of The Public Believe The System Is Profoundly Corrupted By The Power Of Money. Ninety-six Percent Of The People Believe It's "important" That We Reduce The Influence Of Money. Yet 91 Percent Think It's "not Likely" That Its Influence Will Be Lessened. Think About That: People Know What's Right To Do Yet Don't Think It Can Or Will Be Done.

President Bush, Whose Scorn For Journalists Is Balanced By A Soft Spot In His Heart For The Conglomerates They Work For, Threatens To Veto The Senate Action. Keep In Mind That When The Public Was Asked To Submit Comments To The Fcc About Consolidation, Only One Percent Approved It. The President May Not Be Listening, But The Senate Is, And The Public Won This Round. The House Has A Similar Resolution Under Consideration.

I've Always Thought The American Eagle Needed A Left Wing And A Right Wing. The Right Wing Would See To It That Economic Interests Had Their Legitimate Concerns Addressed. The Left Wing Would See To It That Ordinary People Were Included In The Bargain. Both Would Keep The Great Bird On Course. But With Two Right Wings Or Two Left Wings, It's No Longer An Eagle And It's Going To Crash.

The Thing About War Is That Once It's Triggered, It Is Unyielding In Its Appetite. And The More It Consumes And Gorges, The More It Wants.

The Massive Upward Distribution Of Wealth Engineered By Our Political Class Over The Last Few Decades Has Solidified The Plutocratic Control Of The Rule-making Machinery In Washington And State Capitals.

Distribution Of Wealth

What We Need Is What The Ancient Israelites Called Hochma - The Science Of The Heart...the Capacity To See, To Feel, And Then To Act As If The Future Depended On You. Believe Me, It Does.

Hyperbole Was To Lyndon Johnson What Oxygen Is To Life.

Democracy May Not Prove In The Long Run To Be As Efficient As Other Forms Of Government, But It Has One Saving Grace: It Allows Us To Know And Say That It Isn't.

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.

Creativity Is Piercing The Mundane To Find The Marvelous.

I'm The Front Man, I'm The Man On Camera, But There's A Whole Team Beyond Me.

Our Economy Is A Plantation Run For The Aristocrats - The Ceos, Hedge Funds, Private Equity Firms - While The Field Hands Are Left With The Scraps.

There Are Honest Journalists Like There Are Honest Politicians - They Stay Bought.

They're Counting On Your Patriotism To Distract You From Their Plunder. They're Counting On You To Be Standing At Attention With Your Hand Over Your Heart, Pledging Allegiance To The Flag, While They Pick Your Pocket!

A Journalist Is Basically A Chronicler, Not An Interpreter Of Events. Where Else In Society Do You Have The License To Eavesdrop On So Many Different Conversations As You Have In Journalism? Where Else Can You Delve Into The Life Of Our Times?

An Unconscious People, An Indoctrinated People, A People Fed Only Partisan Information And Opinion That Confirm Their Own Bias, A People Made Morbidly Obese In Mind And Spirit By The Junk Food Of Propaganda Is Less Inclined To Put Up A Fight, Ask Questions And Be Skeptical. And Just As A Democracy Can Die Of Too Many Lies, That Kind Of Orthodoxy Can Kill Us, Too.

Charity Provides Crumbs From The Table; Justice Offers A Place At The Table.

Reagan's Story Of Freedom Superficially Alludes To The Founding Fathers, But Its Substance Comes From The Gilded Age, Devised By Apologists For The Robber Barons. It Is Posed Abstractly As The Freedom Of The Individual From Government Control A Jeffersonian Ideal At The Roots Of Our Bill Of Rights, To Be Sure. But What It Meant In Politics A Century Later, And Still Means Today, Is The Freedom To Accumulate Wealth Without Social Or Democratic Responsibilities And License To Buy The Political System Right Out From Everyone Else.

You Can't Have A People's Democracy As Long As Corporations Are Considered People.

Democracy Doesn't Begin At The Top; It Begins At The Bottom, When Flesh-and-blood Human Beings Fight To Rekindle What Arlo Guthrie Calls 'the Patriot's Dream.

On The Eve Of The Election Last Month My Wife Judith And I Were Driving Home Late In The Afternoon And Turned On The Radio For The Traffic And Weather. What We Instantly Got Was A Freak Show Of Political Pornography: Lies, Distortions, And Half-truths - Half-truths Being Perhaps The Blackest Of All Lies. They Paraded Before Us As Informed Opinion.

Conservatives Or Better, Pro-corporate Apologists Hijacked The Vocabulary Of Jeffersonian Liberalism And Turned Words Like "progress," "opportunity," And "individualism" Into Tools For Making The Plunder Of America Sound Like Divine Right. This "degenerate And Unlovely Age," As One Historian Calls It, Exists In The Mind Of Karl Rove The Reputed Brain Of George W. Bush As The Seminal Age Of Inspiration For Politics And Governance Of America Today.

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.

Big Money And Big Business, Corporations And Commerce, Are Again The Undisputed Overlords Of Politics And Government. The White House, The Congress And, Increasingly, The Judiciary, Reflect Their Interests. We Appear To Have A Government Run By Remote Control From The U.s. Chamber Of Commerce, The National Association Of Manufacturers And The American Petroleum Institute. To Hell With Everyone Else.

I Hear An Almost Inaudible But Pervasive Discontent With The Price We Pay For Our Current Materialism. And I Hear A Fluttering Of Hope That There Might Be More To Life Than Bread And Circuses.

We Have Got To Nurture The Spirit Of Independent Journalism In This Country, Or We'll Not Save Capitalism From Its Own Excesses, And We'll Not Save Democracy From Its Own Inertia.

Democracy Only Works When We Claim It As Our Own.

Beauty Is An Expression Of That Rapture Of Being Alive.

In Marriage, Everyday You Love,and Everyday You Forgive.it Is An Ongoing Sacrament, Love And Forgiveness

Democracy Works When People Claim It As Their Own

Jon Stewart Is A Remarkable Satirist And Parodist In The Vein Of Mark Twain, Because Jon Stewart Understands What Mark Twain Knew, Which Is That The Truth Goes Down More Easily In A Democracy When It's Marinated In Humor.

Journalism's Been A Continuing Course In Adult Education For Me.

I Like What I Do And Keep Thinking The Best Is Yet To Come.

Best Is Yet To Come

Having Lost Faith In All Else, Zealots Have Nothing Left But A Holy Cause To Please A Warrior God. They Win If We Become Holy Warriors, Too; If We Kill The Innocent As They Do; Strike First At Those Who Had Not Struck Us; Allow Our Leaders To Use The Fear Of Terrorism To Make Us Afraid Of The Truth; Cease To Think And Reason Together, Allowing Others To Tell What's In God's Mind.

Plutocracy Too Long Tolerated Leaves Democracy On The Auction Block, Subject To The Highest Bidder.

Sure Enough, As Merger Has Followed Merger, Journalism Has Been Driven Further Down The Hierarchy Of Values In The Huge Conglomerates That Dominate What We See, Read And Hear. And To Feed The Profit Margins Journalism Has Been Directed To Other Priorities Than "the News We Need To Know To Keep Our Freedoms"

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