Oh, spare it. He has defended, entrenched, and EXPANDED all the most malignant aspects

of the Bush corporate agenda *since Day One.* He has defended and accelerated the continued looting of the nation by oligarchs. Inequality is expanding. Careers are replaced by low-paying jobs. Virtually all new wealth is now going to the top One Percent.

It was a restructuring, not a recovery. And this administration has been complicit.

What you just repeated is corporate propaganda. And not just corporate propaganda, but absurd, blatantly and brazenly untrue corporate propaganda. It is the equivalent of Orwell's "2+2=5." It is flatly and glaringly inconsistent with reality.

It's gotta really suck when your *entire,* handpicked administration goes rogue and spends YEARS working aggressively, consistently, and proactively against all of your most cherished goals.

Ohhhh, 'But it's obstruction!' will be the predictable reply. But that's nonsense, too. In fact, Obama has been SO deeply and existentially obstructed that his administration's own record looks like this:

The record shows aggressive, proactive pursuit of a corporate agenda,
(This list does not show a president trying to enact a liberal agenda and being obstructed. No, it shows him aggressively and proactively implementing policies for the banks and corporations at the expense of the 99 percent.)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3202395

CUT THE CRAP! Your Month in Review from the most "progressive" administration ever.
Whoa! More proactive corporatism!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025006297

Just a Republican thing, huh? Assaulting the Constitution itself
("Good god. I can't stop!&quot
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5554112

Study: Obama's "Trade" Deal (TPP) Would Mean a Pay Cut for 90% of U.S. Workers
("A Republican is making me do it?!&quot
http://citizen.typepad.com/eyesontrade/2013/09/the-verdict-is-in-the-trans-pacific-partnership-tpp-a-sweeping-free-trade-deal-under-negotiation-with-11-pacific-rim-coun.html

Obama’s Latest Betrayal of America and Americans in Favor of the Big Banks: TISA
("Oh, shit. Here I go again!&quot
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/06/26/1309671/--Obama-s-Latest-Betrayal-of-America-and-Americans-in-Favor-of-the-Big-Banks-TISA-by-Bill-Black

Bombing Syria: The next step in the PNAC playbook, remember?
("They're Democratic peace bombs: TOTALLY different!&quot
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025520459

The "Justice" Department under Obama
("Please, Mr. Holder! Stop! Stop!&quot
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025587151
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025586874

After the financial looting of 2008, Obama twists arms for FURTHER deregulation of Wall Street
through Cromnibus
("Just because we deliberately opened the door even wider doesn't mean the robbers will come back!&quot
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025944988

Look at the OFFERS.
("God I hate when this happens!&quot
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022060108

Why the incessant repetition of a talking point that is so obviously, even brazenly, inconsisent with reality? Why pretend that this president has not been a diligent, highly effective corporate Trojan horse for Wall Street?

Because it's propaganda. A drumbeat of the absurd: "2+2=5." We are to overlook the obvious elephant in the room, the deluge of corporate money that drives these vicious, antidemocratic, looting, and warmongering policies in both parties. We are to ignore the agreement of the parties on virtually every single economic, war, and police state issue important to the One Percent:

Red vs. Blue = Oligarchy Theater for the masses.

Mass spying on Americans? Both parties support it.
Handing the internet to corporations? Both parties support it.
Austerity for the masses? Both parties support it.
Cutting social safety nets? Both parties support it.
Corporatists in the cabinet? Both parties support it.
Tolling our interstate highways? Both parties support it.
Corporate education policy? Both parties support it.
Bank bailouts? Both parties support it.
Ignoring the trillions stashed overseas? Both parties support it.
Trans-Pacific Job/Wage Killing Secret Agreement? Both parties support it.
TISA corporate overlord agreement? Both parties support it.
Drilling and fracking? Both parties support it.
Wars on medical marijuana instead of corrupt banks? Both parties support it.
Deregulation of the food industry? Both parties support it.
GMO's? Both parties support it.
Privatization of the TVA? Both parties support it.
Immunity for telecoms? Both parties support it.
"Looking forward" and letting war criminals off the hook? Both parties support it.
Deciding torturers are patriots? Both parties support it.
Militarized police and assaults on protesters? Both parties support it.
Indefinite detention? Both parties support it.
Drone wars and kill lists? Both parties support it.
Targeting of journalists and whistleblowers? Both parties support it.
Private prisons replacing public prisons? Both parties support it.
Unions? Both parties view them with contempt.
Trillion dollar increase in nuclear weapons. Both parties support it.
New war in Iraq. Both parties support it.
New war in Syria. Both parties support it.
Carpet bombing of captive population in Gaza. Both parties support it.
Selling off swaths of the Gulf of Mexico for drilling? Both parties support it.
Drilling along the Atlantic Coast? Both parties support it.

Neocons and neolibs sure have a lot in common. So much in common that they almost seem like the very same people:

When the DLC connections to the Koch Bros. became well known, they just rebranded the infiltration
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4165556

When you hear "Third Way", think INVESTMENT BANKERS
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024127432

GOP Donors and K Street Fuel Third Way’s Advice for the Democratic Party
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101680116

The Rightwing Koch Brothers fund the DLC
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x498414

Same companies behind the GOP are behind the DLC
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1481121

No, because it's PROFITABLE and sustains the illusion of democracy.

This question in the OP is always the weak "trump card" attempted in the corporate talking points to deny that we are an oligarchy now rather than a democracy.

We are supposed to scratch our chins and nod wisely and conclude that these corporations wouldn't do something silly like WASTE all this money on donating to campaigns if the two candidates didn't really offer a substantive choice!

What a crock. What an absurd argument....for one simple reason. It tries to suggest that the oligarchs LOSE money through their donations, when actually they are profiting beyond their wildest dreams. Here was my response the FIRST time this poster attempted this argument. Actually, the entire thread is worth reading, because it exposes the "obstructionism" and "lesser-of-two-evils" deceptions that the corporate talking points use to manipulate us into voting for our own destruction by Wall Street-funded corporate predators: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026197237

Why would corporations spend all this money on campaigns?
ARE YOU SERIOUSLY TRYING TO ARGUE THAT THEY LOSE MONEY BY DOING IT?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6197863

SERIOUSLY? Because that's perhaps the most absurd spin I've heard all day. Look at this chart posted by Teamster Jeff re: our economic "recovery." Note the circled red numbers. These are the donors you speak of.

Reality Check
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026192719

The illusion of democracy must be maintained.

And you've got to hand it to our .1 percent. They are nothing if not forward-thinking and creative. What can you do, when you dismantle a 240-year-old representative system of government from the inside and replace it with oligarchy and even nascent fascism? What do you do with the shell of that system? The elections? The parties?

We have a *corporate oligarchy* focused on profit, so the solution should not be surprising: Don't throw away the shell, the outward trappings, of democracy. Keep it, because it's USEFUL.

1. It's USEFUL because it sustains the illusion of democracy.

2. And it's USEFUL because it's PROFITABLE.

Hence what we have seen done to our democratic process. Our presidential elections have been turned into an obscene, hyped, massively profitable corporate pageant, a sports event that, as the Princeton study showed, has virtually *nothing* to do with the actual direction of policy or of governance in this country anymore. It is the illusion of democracy, in which the people's voices have no real impact.

We have TWO Superbowls in this country now...two major, vapid, nationally hyped and advertised sporting events in which the people are urged to take a side and mindlessly cheer for their side to win. And from which the media oligarchs, the political oligarchs, and the banking oligarchs profit BILLIONS.

And the oligarchs are buying up new private islands with the profits from it all.

Of course it has. We are treated like blithering idiots

with the attention spans of gnats.

We are fed this corporate swill of apologistic talking points that bear no resemblance to the reality we observe with our own eyes and live every single day. The drumbeat of 2+2=5 intones from the telescreens and then is repeated like a drumbeat.

Like in Groundhog Day, we're expected to retain no memory or awareness of the relentless, horrifying pattern of betrayals unfolding before us, day after day after day after day after day. Each betrayal is presented as an aberration, a "special circumstance," or perhaps gazillion-dimensional chess on our behalf, that we couldn't possibly understand.

We are merely to smile and treat each one, again and again and again, as merely an aberration. We are to drift from betrayal to betrayal in hypnotic belief that our corporate Democrats share the same heartfelt principles and policy goals we do...even though their actions repeatedly, relentlessly pursue the opposite....

....And even though the elephant of corporate money pouring into Washington is big as life, leathery and stinking, right in front of us. Even though a Princeton study has verified what our experience tells us...that we don't have democracy anymore. We have corrupt oligarchy with a propaganda machine. Even Jimmy Carter agrees we don't have a democracy anymore.

War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
Drone Murders are Legal, Ethical and Wise
Chained CPI is Superlative and Protects the Poor
Obama put Social Security Cuts on the table because he Opposes them.

There's a reason all of this is happening. The culprit is no mystery: the deluge of corporate money and influence that has hijacked our elections, both parties, and the media. It is rotting Washington to the core and destroying this country.

Bernie is right. We need a political revolution. And the first step of a political revolution is to reject and correct the talking points, the propaganda, wherever they are repeated.

It is DANGEROUS to be a real journalist - or a whistleblower who talks to a journalist - today.

Barret Brown was just sentenced for his part in disclosing the goverment sponsorship of the propaganda state
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6193809

Petition Calls On Obama Stop Intimidation Of Journalists And Whistleblowers
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025509395

Why Is President Obama Keeping a Journalist in Prison in Yemen
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023300531

James Clapper Calls Journalists "Criminal Accomplices" -
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017174990

Reporters without Borders: 'Security interests threaten press freedom'
http://www.democraticunderground.com/11333723

US Plummets In Press Freedom Rankings
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024487392

Obama's escalating war on Freedom of the Press
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023314296

Risen Case: War on Journalism coming to a head
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101699216

Government Surveillance Is Crippling Press Freedoms, Report Shows
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023902153

Mission Creep: When Everything is Terrorism
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023279560

US Uses Espionage Act To Convict Manning Using Words Added In 1990: "with a computer"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023375845

Fed Court: Just changed interpretation of Espionage Act to cover leaks that are NOT Harmful To USA
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023365713

NY Times: White House Uses Espionage Act to Silence Employees, Press
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101616764

Obama Has Charged More Under Espionage Act Than All Other Presidents Combined
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023080388

Govt's slimy tactics to silence journalism: Claim to establish "protections" for whistleblowers, when what you are actually doing is creating categories through which you can exclude from protection those you don't want to protect.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023708417
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4976955
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4976082
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4976955

The Obama administration/DOJ war on whistleblowers, federal unions
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5586389

Watergate whistleblower Daniel Ellsburg: Snowden would not get a fair trial today, was right to flee US
http://www.democraticunderground.com/11784497
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023198130

Bradley Birkenfeld, UBS Whistleblower, Finds Himself in Federal Prison
http://www.cnbc.com//id/41257962

Obama taps "cognitive infiltrator" Cass Sunstein for Committee to create "trust" in NSA:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023512796

Editor of major German newspaper says he planted stories for CIA
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026163872

Salon: Obama confidant’s spine-chilling proposal: Cass Sunstein wants the government to "cognitively infiltrate" anti-government groups
http://www.salon.com/2010/01/15/sunstein_2/

The US government's online campaigns of disinformation, manipulation, and smear.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024560097

Snowden: ‘Training Guide’ for GCHQ, NSA Agents Infiltrating and Disrupting Alternative Media Online
http://21stcenturywire.com/2014/02/25/snowden-training-guide-for-gchq-nsa-agents-infiltrating-and-disrupting-alternative-media-online/

The influx of corporate propaganda-spouting posters is blatant and unnatural.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3189367

Propaganda Ban Repealed As Government Made News Floods U.S.
http://news.firedoglake.com/2013/07/15/propoganda-ban-repealed-as-government-made-news-floods-u-s/

U.S. Repeals Propaganda Ban, Spreads Government-Made News To Americans
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023262111

The goal of the propaganda assaults across the internet is not to convince anyone of anything.*
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023359801

The government figured out sockpuppet management but not "persona management."
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023358242

The Gentleman's Guide To Forum Spies (spooks, feds, etc.)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4159454

Seventeen techniques for truth suppression.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4249741

Just do some Googling on astroturfing - big organizations have some sophisticated tools.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=1208351

This is police state. And, yes, it will make protest a felony.

Every protester threatened with arrest who sits down...

We live in a vile, dishonest, magnificently funded propaganda state,

John Kiriakou is not broken. He's a hero.

It is our purchased government and our corrupt politicians, who defend the torture state and persecute whistleblowers, who are deeply broken and corrupt.

Actually, I consider what you do here

to be beneath contempt.

You are smart enough to be *effective* working on the side of democracy, ethical government, and humanity. Unless it's all part of the persona, your comments about your family and your dogs suggest that there was once some moral core there. I could even believe that you were initially drawn to the Democratic Party because of genuinely believing in what it used to stand for.

But, somewhere along the way, you sold out. You participate in this ugly online manipulation, swarming with other members of the corporate defense brigade to distort, drown out or drive away voices of human beings who are trying to correct the sewer of corporate corruption our government has become. Your words are mean and dishonest, as exemplified by the the absurdity above where you pretended not to comprehend in order to accuse someone of talking about Hillary's sex life. That's low. That's the behavior of a corrupt, morally bankrupt political machine. And you participate in it every day here.

And we get more bloody war for profit, more dead children and despair, more corporatizing the hell out of everything, more hungry schoolkids and homeless seniors, and the trading of our democratic systems for investor state courts and surveillance machines and "Kill Lists" and secret laws and secret courts and private prison industries.

You had a choice, and you chose the side of those who are literally corrupting our democratic system to the point that we may not get it back. You chose the system that manipulates the public with online propaganda rather than representing them, and that relentlessly defends this march into what is literally becoming fascism. That's millions of human lives, millions of futures, for your little paycheck. I couldn't do that type of work. I could not look at my family or at myself in the mirror and choose to participate.

So, no. It wasn't a compliment.

I call that, "The Call to Stupid,"

and it's probably one of the most pathetic and transparent tactics of the PR defense brigade. I honestly feel embarrassed for them whenever they use it, because it HAS to have come from a binder somewhere.

Yes, MineralMan, who is clearly capable of stringing together words to create prose at *at least* an introductory college level, is nevertheless pretending to be so stupid that he took that literally and was unable to comprehend what you meant.

This is the level of idiocy, smear, and sheer juvenile manipulativeness and dishonesty we now face as a matter of course in the sink of propaganda our political gathering places have become. This is the level of contempt with which our corporate political parties now view us, and this is how stupid they are, to think that this is how stupid we are.

Predictable personal attacks. Predictable defensive PR response when

Insincere, massively publicized speeches about reining in military power, followed immediately by huge escalations in military power, a new war in Syria, a new war in Iraq, carpet bombing of captive populations in Gaza, a continuation of the unconscionable droning of civilians in multiple countries with which we are not at war, and a new TRILLION DOLLAR ramp-up of nuclear weapons...That's not acceptable.

Lying, manipulative claims to care about the environment, while selling off expanses of the Gulf of Mexico for drilling, opening the Atlantic Coast for drilling, relentless support for fracking, and defense of the most environmentally predatory "free trade" agreements in this nation's history.....That's not acceptable.

Shameless, lying speeches extolling the government's transparency and protection of whistleblowers and respect for journalism, when we have all seen the treatment of Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden by this administration, and when we have all witnessed the outrageous targeting of investigative journalists through abuse of the Espionage Act....That's not acceptable.

Disgusting claims to represent the interests of the 99 percent, while stuffing the cabinet with predatory corporatists, signing cuts in aid for the poor and disabled repeatedly, putting SS on the table as a "greater evil" to justify the imposition of austerity greater even that that Paul Ryan initially requested, giving nauseating speeches about the need to eat our peas while repeating Republican LIES tying SS to the defiicit, personally lobbying to gain settlements for criminal bankers, and then unconscionably lobbying for the criminal CRONYBUS to even further deregulate banks and allow the looting of America to happen again.....That's not acceptable.

We are fed on slick PR and orchestrated lies as standard MO of our government now.