Too a degree, yes.  There is a sense of change - and the tenor and topics on Moyers last night went straight for the kill - there is no longer a need to wrap it up in careful metaphors.  The administration is crooked, as crooked as any in history and worse.
But who knows what these evildoers will do next as their misdeeds are exposed to an ever wider public.

It was such a pleasure to watch two adults discuss current affairs without bombast or rancor.  The children that are currently running our world were discussed by adults for a change.  I was in Clinton's corner because he was a change from the Reagan Bush madness but he was toxic to labor and many of the original Democratic principles.   For the first time in a long time I feel some hope.  A tiny spark lit by Jon and Bill.

Yes.

Everyone should be appalled at the waste of human lives, the huge waste of money to aggressively make war, the disregard for our "Planet Earth", the chasm between rich and poor.

I am a baby boomer and we saw the futility of trying to intervene in another nation's civil affairs.

Now we have squandered the 'goodwill' in the eyes of the rest of the world.

Instead of dealing with problems, we allowed them to take a backseat to protecting the expansion of global capitalism.

The present administration has changed to rules of politics and it is ugly.

Lots of us are ashamed of what our country stands for now and we will resist, we will vote, we will blog, and we will take a stand for all people to enjoy the freedoms that our country was founded upon.

I'm hopeful that there are still some strong voices telling the obvious truths about what America has come to. Moyers and Stuart are virtually alone in the telling among the major media, but better than none.

There is such vast wrongness in the USA today that it's hard to see how anything but radical change in most of our institutions -- electoral, judicial, economic for starters -- can get us back to even a minimal enabling of America's ideals about freedom and democracy. Still, big change is not necessarily gradual, but sometimes comes all at once and irrevocably -- witness the Soviet Union or US civil rights law.

The question, and Greenwald's imagery, reminds me of the Leonard Cohen song from 15 years ago:

It's coming through a hole in the air,
from those nights in Tiananmen Square.
It's coming from the feel
that this ain't exactly real,
or it's real, but it ain't exactly there.
From the wars against disorder,
from the sirens night and day,
from the fires of the homeless,
from the ashes of the gay:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It's coming through a crack in the wall;
on a visionary flood of alcohol;
from the staggering account
of the Sermon on the Mount
which I don't pretend to understand at all.
It's coming from the silence
on the dock of the bay,
from the brave, the bold, the battered
heart of Chevrolet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming from the sorrow in the street,
the holy places where the races meet;
from the homicidal bitchin'
that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat.
From the wells of disappointment
where the women kneel to pray
for the grace of God in the desert here
and the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.


FDR's response to progressive demands: "I agree. Now go out and make me do it."

Nezua over at "The Unapologetic Mexican" has a great diary up this week titled Lets Have Nexus.

On this question, he quotes from Derrick Jensen's book "The Culture of Make Believe" to point out that the root of most of what ails us is our sense of entitlement. Then, Jensen goes on to say the following, which I think captures both the hope and the hate that seem to be increasing in our world:

From the perspective of those who are entitled, the problems begin when those they despise do not go along with--and have the power and wherewithal to not go along with--the perceived entitlement.... Several times I have commented that hatred felt long and deeply enough no longer feels like hatred, but more like tradition, economics, religion, what have you. It is when those traditions are challenged, when the entitlement is threatened, when the masks of religion, economics, and so on are pulled away that hate transforms from its more seemingly sophisticated, "normal," chronic state--where those exploited are looked down upon, or despised--to a more acute and obvious manifestation. Hate becomes more perceptible when it is no longer normalized.

Another way to say all of this is that if the rhetoric of superiority works to maintain the entitlement, hatred and direct physical force remains underground. But when that rhetoric begins to fail, force and hatred waits in the wings, ready to explode.

Doesn't information itself have a liberal bias? Steven Colbert

Do you mean "hopeful" as when we all waited for Fitzgerald to indict Karl Rove?   Or, before the 2004 election Kerry dive -- despite promising he'd wait...and sending John out to reassure everyone he wood wait....this time....till the votes were all counted?

Do you mean hopeful that we haven't already bombed Iran?

Hopeful that Rove/Cheney/Bush have lost their powers of intimidation, dirty tricks, and thuggery?

Not when "impeachment is off the table" and the AIPAC-supporting Levin/Harman/et al do what they do....say what they say....Levin: we WILL fund them, PERIOD."  

Watch the June 4 AIPAC trial coming up.   See if the first amendment survives.....and we haven't bombed Iran for distraction.

Then I'll be hopeful.

Yup.

The Information Age (That's us, folks.)...pretty much unregulated so far...is building up a head of steam and doing its job.

TV becomes more and more the exclusive provenence of the inane.

Newpaper circulation is falling precipitously.

And there is indeed a consensus building.

Soon we shall see the naked fist come out of its velvet glove.

Domestically.

Out of sheer necessity.

And THEN the shit shall hit the fan.

About to be indicted, impeached, run out of town, tarred and feathered, shipped off to the Hague? Whatever? They cannot allow that.

Watch.

Unless....

Unless the fix is in SO deep that they can reasonably assume that they will be pardoned.

Absolved of all their crimes.

"For the good of the country."

At which point...we have some MORE work to do.

Before the next administration shuts us down.

Watch.

AG

Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.-Mae West

Culturally, I am reticent to embrace the end of our latest "Gilded Age".
Technologically, however, I feel that the Internets are as big a shift as the Print Revolution in the 15th Century.
TV and Radio were just reading copy over the airwaves (IMHO), not a dramatic shift in form. It remained unidirectional. The tubes, in contast, allow for mass and almost instantaneous feedback.
Not to mention the growing body of reference material available online.
Toffler must be so proud (yes I checked Wikipedia to see if he was still alive).

"Coach Leary, walking on water wasn't built in a day" -Kerouac

Anybody need to get a little "Righteous Rage" out? Stop by for a quick rant 'n' roll. All liberal truth-seekers welcome..."DaddyVsBonzo.blogspot.com


"We're in the middle of a fucking reptile zoo! And they're giving booze to these goddamn things!"-H.S.T.

Hopeful? Yes, because there is a real sense of change in the wind.  The (most welcome) re-entry of Moyers on the scene portends a hopeful return of PBS as a factual reporting entity.  Jon Stewart is the return of definitive, political satire, but via a more modern medium.  But perhaps Marshall is the greatest sign of how profound the change is and can be.  I feel his combination of investigative journalism, collaborative blog research and now vblogging (while still in it's infancy) mark the death of the TV news departments - both the majors and cable.
If we really think about it, TV news coverage reached it's nadir between Cronkite's condemnation of Vietnam and CNN's coverage of Gulf War I.  And it has fallen precipitously ever since.  The print media suffers the same, save for those smart enough to use the internet.  And while print is the far more analytical of the two it's lack of timeliness and loses all but the most rabid reader.  The "Beltway Crowd" fills the ranks of these two dinosaurs.  And now everyone appears to see how far they have sunk - far enough to be as deluded as Bush and Cheney.    

Arthur Gilroy,
     I'm sure it was in the works for the naked fist to come out of the velvet glove when the time was right. But somehow, and fortunately for us, the time was never right. It wasn't so much a velvet glove anyway. It was more like cheating, sneaking, bamboozling, etc. -- all the certain sign of cowards. Since November 2006 the time is getting less and less right for them. If they ever try to pull out the naked fist they are going to find out just how naked it really is. Kind of like in The Emperor's New Clothes. You can just see their power oozing away by the day.     Of course they are long accustomed to calling all the shots and pulling all the strings, so they don't realize just how fast this is happening and how little they can really do about it. Like their ridiculous lackeys the mainstream media, who still think they have influence when in reality they have made themselves a pompous irrelevancy.
     So yes, I am guardedly hopeful. My biggest fear has always been that the loyal opposition might cave, as they continually did when the Repugs controlled everything. However, I don't really think that's going to happen. Reid, Waxman, Leahy, Conyers, Pelosi, Murtha -- they're not perfect, but they are definitely on a roll, they know they're in the right and they have the support of the American people. They are uncovering a degree of corruption that is astonishing even to those of us who always knew these guys were corrupt. I'm hoping they know this is not like Iran-Contra, they've got to destroy these bastards once and for all.

There is something in the air--a whiff of sanity--that is teasing the sense and senses of people so long mesmerized by the shiny gaudy baubles strung up by this administration and their confounded press zombies.  Without Josh Marshall's dogged investigation there would be no hearings on the US attorneys. Without Stewart's and Colbert's political cartoon editorializing too many of us would think we were alone in our in our fight to stay out of the grid. Every time Jon rubs his eyes and shakes his head in utter disbelief at a clip of stentorian nonsense I am reassured I am not the insane one. When I follow Josh Marshall's investigators I know that the truth still can be uncovered--and that there are people willing to do so.

The mighty chorus of the Righteous Right has lead the parade for so long aided and abetted by the oh-so-clever Imuses of the airwaves we haven't heard a discussion like Bill and Jon had Friday night for decades.  Talking Point Television Wars have all but replaced analysis and critical thinking, but the expansion of the US attorney's story from the blogs into the MSM and into congressional investigations makes me believe we have crossed some Rubicon of false rhetoric. The popularity of Stewart and Colbert and the keen awareness of the listeners drawn to their shows reassure me there are people who are managing to seek out the truth and find it. Lazy reporters are being embarrassed. The Administration is being unmasked. I feel not unlike a seeker in the video games my children once favored: I am in an endless series of caves filled with dangerous opponents but here and there I find a weapon or magic ring to vanquish evil.


katjam

 WE are changing.

The Politicans and the System and the Media AREN'T.

And when we change enough to actually force the political system work for US instead of politicans and special interest....then I will have hope.

I don't know how long that will be....we have 3000 dead American, 30,000 wounded and 600,000 dead Iraqi REASONS to have overthrown our entire system by now....maybe it will take a million more reasons to get from changing to actually doing something.