Kennedy (bit of Right Wing talking point there...)

First: On general principles (and relating to Golden Age nostalgia), the US was formed by slave-holding, land-owning gentry white men, and we've struggled with that devil over our shoulder for the entire 237 since our founding. That said, there are worst times and better times, and the mid-50s through the 70s may have been our best times.

To the point that things were all good until Kennedy cut taxes on the wealthy? that is a bit of a Right-Wing trope trotted out to demonstrate that the (failed/failing) Supply-Side concept actually started with a Democrat many revere as transformative. I grant he did propose legislation (passed after he was killed) that dropped rates on those with annual earnings above $400,000 from 91% (Put in place by the Republican President Eisenhower) — to 70%...

As Slate's writer David Greenberg said of that cut, &quot It was) hardly the mark of a future Club for Growth member." (Greenberg writes a fine analysis piece at Slate on the whole topic @ http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history_lesson/2004/01/tax_cuts_in_camelot.html .)

In that article, Greenberg notes that:

Oh, maybe

• The Declaration of Independence

• The Constitution

• About any speech by Teddy Roosevelt about fighting inequality, such as:

Inequality, by any other name, smells...

I don't get your point. Even if that the bottom 99% are not faring so well is a fallacious meme, and that it should be, more correctly, the bottom 80% — are you suggesting this is better?

First reaction: For all the number salad you toss out there that this is so, I can point to a plethora of data that refute the parsing. I find it helpful to visit http://inequality.org/ frequently to remind myself exactly how tilted the economic reality has become, in this country and globally.

As an example, I find this:

Agreed. The Corporazis have been playing a long game (decades long)...

...and only a few have recently awoken to the fact.

When Reagan said, "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem," many folks responded, "Hell yeah!" — and failed to think about what he was actually telling us. He had just committed the unpardonable political sin of speaking honestly, but wrapped in a nice, shiny rhetorical populist bow to defeat critical thought. That was his primary talent.

Oh, yeah: That was his first inaugural address in 1981.

So, what was the honesty-leakage? We are the government, right? In short, he was telling us democracy is the problem. We can't solve our own problems. United we stand does not work, in his world view.

And his means to ''solve" this problem? Rob from the 98-99% and give to the elite plutocrats. Trickle-Down Theory. Voodoo Economics. Poppy Bush could have said, "Read his lips" — but he had already been sucked to the dark side.

32 years ago.

Of course, the planning for this long "game" (war against democracy) started even further back, with telltales showing up under Nixon, and a few even further back than that with the philosophies espoused by the Family (read Jeff Sharlet sometime for a good scare; http://www.jeffsharlet.com/). That could stretch this back to the late 40s, after WWII.

In terms of the Matrix mythos: It's time to choose the red or blue pill.

On most points, I agree...but there would have been a price for going over

First — yes. Absolutely. This is no way to govern. More on this later.

Second, the cost to going over the cliff: Roughly 2 million unemployed would have had their relief checks cut off starting today. Though estimates I've seen vary quite a bit, and it wouldn't have pulled the drain plug all at once, that's something in the ballpark of $70,000,000 that would not be funneled into grocery stores and/or to utilities in one month. And people would have grown hungry or cold in that time.

That's a cost.

Back to the governance problem:

In shorthand, I call all Rethugs and Blue Dog DINOs Corporazis, and they are economic terrorists intent on destroying democracy. They are waging war against our methods of governance and, until we who are not Corporazis recognize their intent (waging war), we cannot prevail. You have to name a thing before you can gain control over it.

From a past voice, we hear this perspective:

“We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”

–Louis Brandeis
U.S. Supreme Court Justice (1856-1941)