"Palme D'Or" for Mike Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11&

[Chaerophon]

What made Reagan great was that he made difficult decisions for a well stated reason and then faced down his opposition from his moral high ground.

What made Reagan great was that he got shot at the right time to force his budget vote through Congress and set off the downward spiral of democracy and social welfare in your country, and abroad. I agree, the world became a less democratic place the day that Reagan died. Of course, that was only because the media's subsequent elevation of his character and ideals to the level of an FDR or Jefferson solidified him in the American pantheon alongside other such truer champions of a more authentic and substantive democracy. There's was a democracy that was centered on people rather than economic principles made law. Reagan's major contribution was the creation of a self-serving and functionally unsound ethos of "personal responsibility" that elevated supply-side economics as a matter of principled self-interest. Of course, it was, in fact, exactly the opposite for 90% of the population.

Here is where I depart from both major parties -- except that both have now adopted an understanding of supply side economics and an appreciation for letting Alan Greenspan run the economy. We had three major blows to the US economy almost simultaneously, first the tech bubble (another deceptive phrase, I would call it scam) was stretched well beyond rational, second we had 9/11 hit Wall-street and then third, due to the resulting downturn, it was revealed that numerous high level firms and executives had cooked their books. So, who would have looked good in this economic situation?

Try looking, first, at the general trend since the inception of 'supply-side', neoliberal monetarist economic policies in America. Stagnating real wages, structural unemployment, and a general deficit of democracy. After all, Alan Greenspan is now "running" the economy according to economic "law", so where's the room for dissent, or even mere questioning of the viability of economic scientism? Real democracy is open to the subjection of popular 'truths' to scrutiny. Media and dominant elites hold monetarism and neoliberal globalization as foregone, historical conclusions, and are not mindful of the fact that such ideologies are, rather, one point of view, and the result of human agency.

The old free-market "diminishing returns" formula hasn't really worked out in peripheral countries, has it? The disparity in wealth between North and South has increased by nearly a factor of two, to about 74:1 (if memory serves), since the early 1990's, and, to step out of your upper-middle class "spending my money" perspective, that does matter.

BTW, did you just call KERRY an errand boy?!? Good God.