Vanity Fair Poll Shows Most Americans Remain Brainwashed Idiots

"America has become amnesiac - a country in which forms of historical, political, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but celebrated. The United States has degenerated into a social order that is awash in public stupidity and views critical thought as both a liability and a threat"- blogger writing on SmirkingChimp last July

"It is a fact that every democracy that's existed  has committed suicide." - John Adams


The recent Vanity Fair poll results on ethics, disclosed this morning on CBS Early Show, is enough to drive the true citizen into permanent depression. In one poll question, to do with Edward Snowden's ethics in disclosing NSA surveillance overreach, 54 percent asserted he was in the wrong, only 27 percent that he was right to do so. Meanwhile, even more atrocious, nearly one fifth of respondents (19%) said they "had never heard of Edward Snowden". That means a total of 54% + 19% = 73% of those polled are either dolts or brainwashed morons. That's essentially three-fourths of all Americans, assuming this sample is in any way representative, which I believe (from past polls) it is.

The VF hack who released the results on the air said it showed "Americans' opinions had evolved from when they first thought he was a hero."

No, that's not it at all. It shows these fools have been brainwashed by the steady,  anti-Snowden media portrayals and drumbeat! And the people were too damned dumb to see through it, and how their minds were being manipulated. Worse, a fifth of the morons were so detached from their responsibilities as citizens - to protect their 4th amendment rights - they didn't even know who Snowden was.  It boggles the rational mind to comprehend how a people who once valued liberty and had enough education to see through vapid media PR, now can't tell their asses from holes in the ground

Sickening! Do the people of this nation even deserve their civil liberties? I doubt it.

If we take common sense for granted in this sampled population (and that is not a foregone conclusion by any means) then one would expect people who are reasonably educated to be aware that their privacy rights are bound up intimately with their 4th amendment rights - to be free of lawless search and seizure. As I noted in previous blogs to do with this issue, while the specific right to privacy isn’t specifically listed in the Constitution,  the Founders understood that as time went on new rights would emerge which they might not be able to think of (e.g. to health care), hence bundled these into the unenumerated rights under the 9th amendment..

We also expect them to be informed enough to grasp the extent of NSA's unconstitutional mass data collection. And hence to realize that if NSA can snatch their email address books, Google searches and content, web browsing histories, Twitter messages, and cell phone calls as well as all telephone call logs, they are in the condition described by Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch, who described the NSA programs to the Guardian thusly:

"The Snowden revelations have made clear that there has been an intrusion on our right to privacy of unprecedented scope, yet the government is dismissing any complaints about our right to privacy as irrelevant."

Roth said: "I used to be a prosecutor – I used to put pen registers on people's phones, collecting the numbers that you dial – but I had to manually compile the numbers. It was very labor intensive, and hence self-limiting. Today, the computer can piece together your entire personal life in a matter of seconds."

These damned "Americans" who polled against Snowden make me want to puke. I also know they'd make my Revolutionary War ancestor Conrad Brumbaugh puke, and believe he'd wasted his blood fighting for independence and liberty. Why do it for a bunch of ninnies, sissies and parasites who'd give their freedom away for a song, just to feel "safe"?  They are a waste of space and remind me of the "good Germans" who looked the other way as their friends and neighbors were trotted into camps for criticizing Hitler, the Third Reich or harboring Jews. Those "good Germans", after WWII. had to be dragged into the concentration camps to be shown first hand what their passive compliance engendered during Hitler's reign.

So really, Americans ought to be getting on their damned knees and THANKING Snowden for revealing what he has about the disgusting trampling of their 4th amendment rights.

Sadly, this farce shows how easily people in this country can be led by the nose, and I warrant it's mainly because they don't read enough. They don't read history, don't read economics or politics, or even the news. They certainly don't go to the next level in separating what's sold them via PR, from facts. No, it's easier to stay mired in the vapid, solipsistic virtual "friend" world of Facebook, or Twitter.

They remind me of the same buffoons and passive nincompoops who willingly allowed their polling to be gamed and "moved" via media propaganda back in 2003 - ultimately allowing Bush Jr. to launch the Iraq War, and our congress critters to meekly agree (so terrified were they of the polling).

These "Americans" are a disgrace, and don't warrant the appellation of citizen!

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/tom-engelhardt/57357/the-fourth-branch-the-rise-to-power-of-the-national-security-state

Tom Perkins: Another Whiny, Rich Capitalist With His Head Up His Ass

It would seem that a normally functioning rich (upper 1/2 of 1/2 of 1/2 percent)  guy, in the wake of how these assholes helped cause the 2008 financial meltdown, would shut the fuck up and certainly keep a low profile. But no, it appears some are too brain dead to know that and enter now Tom Perkins  - a billionaire venture capitalist-  pontificating in a letter to The Wall Street Journal in which he wrote of 'parallels' between the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany and what he describes as the "progressive war on the American one percent".

Can anyone seriously believe this?  Does this elitist jerk off even know about the treatment of the Jews in Nazi Germany? Well, if he did, he wouldn't even remotely think of making such an insane analogy. And yet we know the Right does this all the time, whether out of reaching for the most outrageous comparisons they can find to tear down those who hold them up to moral scrutiny, or because they themselves know it's a lie - but figure there are enough dunderheads out there (who lack an informed knowledge of history) to accept the analogy. (Look no further than the 61% of Americans who actually believe Edward Snowden ought to be brought to trial.)

Let me deliver an image for this rich rat fucker and his entitled Neolib, market exploiting pals to show how the Jews were treated in Nazi Germany. It is an image of dead, gassed bodies piled up outside of the concentration camp known as Mauthausen.    The photograph was made by Russian soldiers - who came upon the grisly scene- in May of 1945.   

Perkins and his pallies may wish to know WHO was responsible for this ghastly scene, emblematic of the annihilation of 6 million people. He may be amazed, because he's obviously ignorant, that it in large measure was facilitated by rich business men and venture capitalists like himself!

Ian Kershaw in his masterpiece ‘Hitler Nemesis’, observes,  p. xxxiii):

“Leaders of big business, though often harboring private concerns about current difficulties and looming future problems for the economy, for their part were grateful to Hitler for the destruction of the left-wing parties and trade unions. They were again ‘masters in the house’ in their dealings with their work force”

This was in reference to Hitler dispatching his S.A. thugs to beat and kill Socialists (the REAL ones, not the fake named "National Socialists") as well as communists and labor leaders. This was in addition to his reign of terror against Jews which saw them first labeled using yellow stars (sewn on to their clothing) with the word 'Jude', then deprived of their businesses (having them seized), then their homes - as they were dispatched to the concentration camps. (Buchenwald, Auschwitz, Treblinka, Mauthausen, etc.)

THIS is why the German capitalists, such as Krupp, Volkswagen, I.G. Farben (infamous for later manufacturing the Zyklon B gas used in the gas chambers) etc. threw their lot behind him and provided the political ballast, without which he could never have become 'Der Fuehrer'.  They even helped design the gas chambers for maximum efficiency.

Of course, the rich, entitled swine like Perkins don't wish to hear this, but that is history. Anyone can check it out if they have a mind too, and aren't brainwashed by the Neoliberal capitalist corporate media imps.   As Dieter,a  former Wehrmacht soldier put it, when I met him and two other former Wehrmacht in May, 1985:

"It was disgusting how far the big businessmen went to support Hitler! Had it not been for them I doubt he'd ever have been Chancellor or even gotten 15% of the vote in the 1932 elections.

Incredibly, Perkins was educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, disclosing that even a degree from the vaunted Ivy League can turn out worthless if one lets his mind go to seed.  Money --- well, all the money in the world is useless if one's psychological foundation is undermined by untruth, PR and bollocks. 

The dope concludes his letter by warning of a "very dangerous drift in our American thinking," before adding to that:  "Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendent 'progressive' radicalism unthinkable now?"  (Kristallnacht, also known as the Night of Broken Glass, saw a series of coordinated attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany in November 1938.The attacks were carried out by Sturmabteilung  (S.A.)forces and non-Jewish civilians and were ignored by the German authorities. 91 Jews were killed and around 30,000 were arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps.)

Again, the leap to comparing Kristallnacht administered by Nazi thugs to what progressives might to do Perkins and his rich elites is so absurd as to be barely worth dignifying by response. One need only consider here how Perkins' security state allies came down on Occupy Wall Street back in 2011, even to the extent of aiming rifles at them in Houston! See e.g.http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1494

This alone shows who holds the reins of power in this society, and it ain't OWS or any of its progressive allies! The notion that those (like OWS)  who've been smacked down by the U.S. national security state can just rise up under some powerful liberal "Fuehrer" to take out Perkins and his entitled elites is so laughable and pathetic as to rival the worst of the 'Dumb and Dumber' movies. In fact, I'd rate it as a qualifier to put anyone who opines it in an institution with thorazine and ECT administered thrice daily.


Others who've been exposed to Perkins' codswallop have described the businessman as a "rich idiot" and condemned the WSJ for printing the letter.  (Given the other tripe and trash they've published over the last few years, especially since Murdoch gained control, I'm not surprised at anything that appears in it anymore.)

New York Times writer Steven Greenhouse tweeted: 'As someone who lost numerous relatives to the Nazi gas chambers, I find statements like this revolting & inexplicable.'

They're "explicable" all right. They are coming from a rat who realizes most people are on to him and his entitled little rich fucks, bathing in their $65,000 copper tubs e.g.

And being able to hop off to St. Kitts every weekend for 18 holes while their wives get rose wine wraps as they gobble their $25,000 apiece Frrrozen Haute Chocolates  - - as millions of American kids starve because Rich-protecting Reepos have cut food stamps and unemployment benefits.

Oh, and why those cuts? So the Reepos can lighten the tax load on the rich entitled elites and gob-smacked global capitalists and hedge funders, and also cushion the military from having any significant cuts.


Let's understand, as Ian Kershaw and Konrad Heiden ('Hitler') document, that Hitler saved his most ferocious attacks for German Marxists, Communists and Socialists - who he automatically consigned to "racial traitors, non-German, non-Aryan". (In most of Hitler's writings he asserts Marxists are Jews based on the fact Karl Marx, author of Das Kapital, was a Jew.)   In one of his worst tirades, a radio speech on October 15, 1933 (from Konrad Heiden's book) Hitler shouted:

These ruinous and inferior characters have succeeded in arousing a world psychosis

This was tied to those he perceived as "Jews" in the American press, working in league with communists and Socialists in Europe to spread rumors about Hitler and demonize him. What happened is that the Jews - like ALL Socialists, Communists, and Marxists- were dispossessed of their worldly goods and bank accounts. By 1936 virtually no German Jew (just as no German Socialist, or Marxist) could own a business, or even own a personal bank account. Worse, if sighted on the streets they risked terrible beatings by gangs of S.S. thugs. Communists were often killed on sight.

If I have any fear-  any at all in this matter - it's that Perkins and HIS lot will invest hundreds of millions in the construction of mammoth concentration camps somewhere out of sight, and then pile PROGRESSIVES who criticize the rich into them, herd them into giant gas chambers  - and eliminate them with Sarin.

Maybe Perkins in his mind knows that's his ultimate plan, so wants to fob the paranoia onto the Left to disarm the stupid people in our midst, of which there are many.

A Visit To A Beautiful, Schizoid (and Forgetful) German Twin-Town

                   Rudolph Hess and Hitler inspect at the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch

                         One of the posters announcing the 1936 Winter Games.

Arriving in the Bavarian Alps twinned villages of Garmisch-Partenkirchen from Munich, we beheld very little immigrant upheaval or in fact, immigrant presence. What we did see - from our hotel in Partenkirchen (http://www.hotel-schatten.de/ ), was a beautiful alpine scene of a bucolic, friendly village set amidst the grandeur of majestic mountains - including the Zugspitze, Germany's tallest peak.

We spent five days here, enjoying the incredible scenery and in the company of our German friends, Reinhart and Elli.  Assorted trips included forays not only to Zugspitze (which took some two hours to ascend, including via train, bus then cable car) but the roaring (actually defeaning) gorge known as "Partnachklamm" and hikes through the town centers of Partenkirchen and Garmisch. (Reinhart and Elli stayed in the Bavaria Hotel of Garmisch)

First, some basics - including of geography. Although mistakenly called "Garmisch" - or more commonly people carelessly referring to "going to Garmisch", there are actually two separate village entities: Garmisch and Partenkirchen. However, the two became yoked together in history as "Garmisch-Partenkirchen" once the bidding for the 1936 Winter Olympics arrived. This was because adequate facilities were needed, so Hitler decided to forcibly create one single site entity in order to provide the adequate resources, housing, etc. After this was done, and the Games awarded by the Olympic committee, construction began and ski jumps, skating rinks etc were completed. Then there appeared the many posters heralding the Games. (Which for reasons I will go into became known as the "Nazi Olympics" and also set up a propaganda preview for the more famous 1936 Summer Berlin Olympics- with which most Americans are familiar- perhaps because of sprinter Jesse Owens.)

At the "Gipfel" restaurant at the summit of Zugspitze, Reinhart, Elli, Janice and I sat down with a Bavarian couple - Heinrich and Maria. Over Lowenbrau and Schweinebraten (with red cabbage) we chatted for nearly an hour and at some point the conversation turned to the dark history of Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Heinrich, whose father was involved in the Winter Games preparation, told us the villages were ferociously anti-Semitic even before Hitler forced the towns together for the Olympics. Signs rudely declaring "NO JEWS!" or "Jews Not Allowed!' were everywhere. It was only after the games were awarded that Hitler ordered all the signs be removed, lest the world receive a bad opinion of Germany and the Olympics' twin villages, and villagers.

To see  more image from these Olympics go to: http://www.olympic.org/garmisch-partenkirchen-1936-winter-olympics

Despite such attempts at trickery and propaganda, we learned from separate sources that Western journalists at the time did detect troop movements near Garmisch. Worse, Hitler had actually been photographed in February, 1936 inspecting a troop contingent in Garmisch. Heinrich informed us that despite this the level, intensity of anti-Semitic vitriol was barely recognized.  Indeed, he observed that for a long time the twin villages hostility had seen Jews leaving the region in droves so that few remained by the time of the Winter Games. Those that did remain kept a low profile.

Most irritating, to him: the memory of those times had been sanitized and wiped away over successive generations. In the first generation after the games, when he would express brief interest in how they were conducted and whether there was any Nazi influence, he was informed curtly: 'Nein! They were just games! Games! That's all!"  Over the next generations they became a "great Olympics" but all connections to Hitler or the Nazis were dissolved.

Today, no one wants to talk about Hitler, the treatment of the Jews in the twin villages, or the hostility experienced before and after the Olympics.  Heinrich did recount one incident in which a determined tourist - staying at a Gasthof- did manage somehow to excavate an old "NO JEWS!" sign from an attic some years ago. But so far as he could tell, that was the only evidence there'd ever been any anti-Semitism in the region.

For our part, in our separate comings and goings or with Reinhart, we found the townspeople of both villages to be friendly and hospitable, but were warned by Reinhart not to bring up the 1936 Olympics. This despite the fact Reinhart actually drove us past the still extant ski jump used then, as well as some of the Olympic buildings. (In effect, the towns sought to embrace the Winter Olympic Games of '36, but not the other political baggage attached to them- truly schizoid!)

When I asked Reinhart if any Jews remained anywhere in this region he replied he "didn't think so". His best guess is that most left long before the Olympics commenced.

Observing scenery in various places of interest, and even the restaurants, one might well see why. At each place or venue we beheld large, adorned crucifixes displayed on foyer walls or in dining areas. Even the summit of Zugspitze itself featured an immense cross of "the Savior crucified" (in Reinhart's words).  Well, ask yourself how might you feel if you were a Jew frequenting these places, establishments on encountering a large cross - many up to 3' long- with a bloodied Christ image hung from it - red paint generously applied to each nail wound.

Sensibly, if you were also aware of the "Christ-killer" meme replete in the German Völkisch tradition (which also gave rise to the Passion Play at Oberammagau) you'd be horrified. In effect, you'd be faced with constant reminders of your "role" in the slaying of Christianity's founder at every turn. Well, why would you need to put up a swastika in that case?

Sadly, those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it, to paraphrase George Santayana. The fact here is that the residents of Garmisch-Partenkirchen if they do have any knowledge of what transpired more than 77 years ago, don't wish it bruited about and they certainly won't repeat it.

That was fine with us, since we enjoyed our time there anyway, both the splendid scenery and the people. We only wished that when we did our various strolls around the twin villages we'd have seen slightly fewer large crosses hanging with bloodied Christs suspended on them! A hundred crosses in each town might be ok, but a thousand? Perhaps overkill! Or still transmitting too powerful a subliminal message to certain others.

What Are The New German Nazis Really Up To?

Nazi Beate Zschäpe as she appeared in a Munich court three weeks ago. She’s charged with butchering eight Turkish immigrants and a Greek, in a case that’s dredged up all the old Nazi horrors.

In 1985, two former Wehrmacht soldiers confided to me that they feared the Nazi horrors in Germany, during the Third Reich, had not been killed by time but had only gone 'underground'. Not long after we arrived in Munich for a stay in Germany we were reminded of this in a case that made national headlines. For unbeknownst to Germans, a number of immigrants - nine to be exact- had been murdered over 13 years in acts originally assigned to run- of- the- mill killers - but only recently exposed as being perpetrated by a National Socialist Undergound (NSU).

As we know, those of us who pay attention to history, "National Socialism" was spawned under Hitler’s NSDAP (National Socialist German Worker's party) which was in reality the farthest thing from being socialist. Indeed.. they would regularly beat Marxists, real socialists, or any people deemed leftists on the streets while holding up signs that read: “Tot dem Marxem” (Death to Marxists). They were also known for a venomous xenophobia - fearing any "foreigners" who might seed their alien customs and even foods into Germany.

Evidently it is this fanatic xenophobia that has reared it's head once more. At the center of it all, and dubbed the "Nazi Bride" by German media,  is  Beate Zschäpe, 38, charged with killing eight men of Turkish descent, a man of Greek descent and a policewoman. Also charged with carrying out two bombings and belonging to a terrorist group. They were described in one issue of Die Welt (May 14)  as "Rechts-Terroristen" or Right wing terrorists.


Zschäpe will be tried with four men who are charged with supporting the three-member group (Wolfgang Heer, Wolfgang Stahl and Anja Sturm) , which called itself the National Socialist Underground, or N.S.U., a play on the name for Hitler’s National Socialist Party, better known as the Nazis.

The case, to be sure,  has shaken the country’s security services - obviously as they'd been more focused on Islamic terrorists - as our own gov't has- and ignored the Right Wing variants. The case has also confronted Germans with uncomfortable questions about prejudice against the immigrants who make up an increasingly large part of society. (Turks now make up nearly 3 million of the German populace and one can find their shops and people congregating on nearly ever street corner in Munich).


The trial, was expected to last more than a year, and will be closely watched by the Turks and other immigrants who call Germany home. Many of the country’s partners abroad are also following it as a test of the Germans’ ability to come to terms with their modern multicultural identity. But it is also a test of coming to grips with the country's Nazi past, as Reinhart pointed out.  Mehmet Daimagüler, a lawyer representing several of the victims’ survivors, who are allowed to take part in the trial as co-plaintiffs, compared its political importance beyond the courtroom with the Allies’ prosecution of Nazis in 1945 and 1946 in the occupied German city of Nuremberg.

Six of the killings occurred between 2000 and 2006 and were initially known as the “döner murders,” a reference to the Turkish kebabs sold in stands across Germany, a tag that some found to be demeaning. The policewoman was killed in 2007.

For years, investigators suspected the killings were connected to organized crime. Only after two members of the neo-Nazi organization, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt, killed themselves as police officers closed in on them after a bank robbery in 2011 did evidence — including video that spliced together bloody photographs of the victims taken at the crime scenes — emerge that led the authorities to focus on far-right hate groups.

On Monday, May 13, moments after the trial’s opening formalities, the presiding judge, Manfred Götzl, called a recess after Ms. Zschäpe’s lawyers challenged his neutrality on the grounds that he required her lawyers to go through security, arguing it was “open discrimination” against the defense.  The delay - according to Die Welt:

"...will entail an additional burden for the relatives of the victims. They had emotionally prepared themselves for the trial and now face organizational challenges: They will have to cancel their travel arrangements, reschedule their requested leave from work"

Meanwhile, Germans of all classes are being forced to face a past they thought had already been reformed and properly reconstructed. Amazingly also, the term in the press "NSU Prozess" has come to mean two things depending on who is doing the explaining. To the German media and most of the cognoscenti it has come to mean the judicial process of putting Zschäpe and the other co-conspirators on trial. However, Reinhart had a different take:

He explained to us that to these N.S.U. members and their supporters (which he estimated numbered far more than the press had portrayed) the "process" lay in the intent of the group - which was to eliminate all foreign immigrants living in Germany. Reinhart explained that to these neo-Nazi types Hitler was still the Fuhrer and they admired him as a dictator - also that he had no use for those who threatened German integrity. Thus, they clambored for a "strong hand' to return Germany to Germans and this group promised to do it in its "process".

For sure, the antipathy felt on the street for Turks was raw, open. Even our friends - in moments of excitement- let their guard down and referred to the unwillingness of most to learn the language and hence better themselves, and also for the men to "do nothing but congregate on street corners" - but "live off the hard work of the women".  From what we saw - even given the limited time there, this was apparent, but again we couldn't possibly see more than a small fraction while we were in Munich, for example. (We did enjoy the döner kebabs eaten from one Turkish shop near our hotel in Munich.)

What we learned is that in many ways the German problem with its influx with immigrants - especially on the Right, parallels similar problems in the U.S. One hopes that both countries can soon come to terms with them, as opposed to allowing their respective immigrant issues to fester, which bodes ill for both nations.

Sandra Fluke Warns of a Dire Future if We Make a GOOP Choice

Though her speech last night was short, it was elegant and to the point. In her soft, melliflous voice Ms. Sandra Fluke presented perhaps one of the most powerful cases for voting all Democratic - by showing us the future we confront if the Romney-Ryan Nazis grab power. Indeed, I had to go back to Robert Payne's book, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, to see how close Sandra's forecasts were to what the Third Reich actually did. This was particularly in terms of limiting reproductive choice, including outlawing of abortion and all contraception.

Payne also noted that one of the Reich's first steps on ascending to power was to ban all pornography, every last bit. Up until then, the Weimar Republic had produced some of the most varied and diverse material ever seen in Europe or anywhere. But as sex therapist author Betty Dodson noted in her previous book, all authoritarian regimes and especially those prone to butchery, know and understand that porn is amongst the most "transgressive" forms of expression there is. Hence, it had to be rendered verboten.

I already noted in a previous blog how the Romney -Ryan Robber baron gangsters, or "the American First Reich", plan to do the same by wasting a half trillion for a crusade. See, e.g.http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/09/hide-your-porn-romney-gop-plan-fierce.html

Sandra Fluke, meanwhile, articulately warned of the ferocious war on women everywhere that will erupt if the Romney Zombies get in. In Sandra's unforgettable words:

"Warnings of that future are not distractions. They’re not imagined. That future could be real."

As she elaborated, making the hair on the back of my neck stand up:

"In that America, your new president could be a man who stands by when a public figure tries to silence a private citizen with hateful slurs. Who won’t stand up to the slurs, or to any of the extreme, bigoted voices in his own party. "

She's referencing the coward rat Romney, who said - after Lush Rimbaugh used vile slurs to describe Sandra, "Those are not exactly the words I'd have used".

Oh really, Rat? What....you'd have used a more "refined" alternative? The coward Romney – as Rachel Maddow noted in a segment 2 weeks ago, also waited at least 36 hours (and after most other repups had weighed in) before offering a negative opinion on Todd Akins “legitimate rape” comment. Only then did the Mormon weasel proclaim it was “objectionable”. What we can conclude is that no such waffling weasel has any business being leader of the country, no matter how loudly his peanut gallery screams for him to do so.

Back to Sandra's stirring warning of a dark, dire future should American voters make the wrong choice:

"It would be an America in which you have a new vice president who co-sponsored a bill that would allow pregnant women to die preventable deaths in our emergency rooms. An America in which states humiliate women by forcing us to endure invasive ultrasounds we don’t want and our doctors say we don’t need. An America in which access to birth control is controlled by people who will never use it; in which politicians redefine rape so survivors are victimized all over again; in which someone decides which domestic violence victims deserve help, and which don’t. We know what this America would look like. In a few short months, it’s the America we could be. But it’s not the America we should be. It’s not who we are."

You're right, Sandra! It is the America we could be in, no longer America but Amerikka - the land dominated by a New Reich. Robber barons who fly the $ sign as opposed to swastikas, but who do the same thing. (In Nazi Germany, as Payne also observed, the second thing the Nazis outlawed was any form of birth control. You had to make babies for the state or face the camps)

Sandra continued, counterpoising the dark future with a much brighter one:

"We’ve also seen another future we could choose. First of all, we’d have the right to choose. It’s an America in which no one can charge us more than men for the exact same health insurance; in which no one can deny us affordable access to the cancer screenings that could save our lives; in which we decide when to start our families. An America in which our president, when he hears a young woman has been verbally attacked, thinks of his daughters—not his delegates or donors—and stands with all women. And strangers come together, reach out and lift her up. And then, instead of trying to silence her, you invite me here—and give me a microphone—to amplify our voice. That’s the difference."

Indeed! This is the America we who are sane want. The future we want, and try to project beyond the vicious efforts of the liars and brigands to deflect it by disinformation. But will it happen? It depends on the outcome on Nov. 6th.

Ms. Fluke concluded her speech:

"Over the last six months, I’ve seen what these two futures look like. And six months from now, we’ll all be living in one, or the other. But only one. A country where our president either has our back or turns his back; a country that honors our foremothers by moving us forward, or one that forces our generation to re-fight the battles they already won; a country where we mean it when we talk about personal freedom, or one where that freedom doesn’t apply to our bodies and our voices."

Well put. If in fact parallel universes exist, it is perhaps indisputable that in one of them the future portended by Mitt Romney and his Robber Barons and antisexual goons will materialize. The future of tens of millions of kids in rags, begging for food on street corners, as their parents have food stamps and their Medicaid cut. Meanwhile, rich buggers get double their old Bush tax cuts. And the military is fueled with $2 trillion in order to start a new war with Iran.

But in another parallel universe, Obama and Joe Biden are re-elected. Steps are taken to continue to improve the job situation, even as more resources are brought to bear. By 2014 Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is in full swing with millions added, children no longer denied care because of pre-existing conditions, and seniors not having to choose between food and meds owing to the 'donut hole'. At the same time, 22 million more people now have health coverage they lacked before.

Which parallel universe will ours track into by the end of November 6th? We had better hope it's the latter!