“Reaganomics”, the name for President Ronald Reagan’s supply-side economics, basically deregulated corporations and granted tax cuts for the rich.

The rest of the country suffered and still suffers. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs; millions are threatened with loss of their homes; millions have seen their retirement funds melt before their eyes; millions are threatened with loss of health care. As Americans on Main Street are being devastated, executives of bailed out banks continued to receive billions in bonuses.

The working class is in a state of paralysis today. Corporate America has smashed the unions, bought out Congress and the Executive Branch and rules supreme. President Barack Obama, a creature of the corporate oligarchy, carries out their orders. His betrayal of the people who elected him is painfully obvious.

But the country is in a fragile state. With two senseless and futile wars sapping our treasure and human resources for more than seven years and other wars continually threatening, the ruling elite faces an economic collapse.

Turning the nation into a militarized state seems the only way to keep it going.

With that famous phrase “military-industrial complex”, used for the first time on January 17, 1961, President Eisenhower warned, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist…”

Capitalism is, again, facing its eternal contradiction.

The beetle, not much bigger than a bedbug, is native to the West and has always been known as a tree killer. For centuries it has killed a few diseased trees here, a patch of trees there, but never before has it caused destruction on the scale being seen today.

U.S. Forest Service scientist Jesse Logan and other forest researchers have discovered that the beetles are responding to higher average temperatures by breeding almost nonstop. They are no longer being held in balance by the lower winter temperatures that once prevailed.

The death of so many trees, which imperils the habitat of animals and threatens catastrophic forest fires, is further evidence that the planet is warming at an alarming rate. Appearing on a National Public Radio show this week, Logan said the warming is not part of a natural cycle, as many climate-change deniers insist. “It is directly our actions that are taking these forests out,” Logan said.

Scientists around the world agree with Logan: Human activity, principally the burning of fossil fuels for energy, is responsible for rapidly accelerating warming. Worldwide consequences include the melting of polar ice and weird weather, including shorter springs and extended summers that cause droughts.

That is why Congress is nearing debate on a climate-change bill that would cap the emissions of greenhouse gases from American industries and set goals for converting to non-emitting power sources such as solar and wind. Greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, trap heat in the atmosphere that would otherwise escape harmlessly into space.

It is imperative to pass this bill so more and bigger changes in energy production can start immediately. Those who deny the urgency should take a drive through the West.

What is it about democracy you don’t understand my “knowledgeable” and self-righteous friend?

Except that maybe, as a right-winger and being much closer to fascism than I am, you don’t think we have or should have democracy? The main problem now is that we really don’t, and should. I think even Pauly Boy and Neil believe in “democracy”, as I do. Please enlighten one so dull as me about your opinion about that. On that note, wasn’t it democracy Bush kept talking about all those 8 years and how he ws going to bring that uniquely American invention to other countries, etc. etc.?? At least as an excuse for his wars, anyway, I’m not sure he really meant it for real.