How many protested in Egypt? A million? 1/80th of the country and the President steps down?

[newtothegame]

Why can't we get those kinds of results when we protest here?

[Taverner]

1. Because we never asked Bush the lesser to step down

Maybe he would've if we only asked.

[Tom Rinaldo]

2. It wasn't exactly a Sunday Rally

Hundreds died and they defied the government for weeks, 24 hours a day. If 30 million Americans acted that way it would get interesting here also

[Posteritatis]

37. Yep, people forget that this wasn't just a few days of sloganeering

A one or two day, vaguely celebratory protest march with a controlled location and detailed itinerary doesn't cut it. The Egyptians went way past that this month.

[L. Coyote]

3. More than FIVE MILLION, at the very least

There are only about 30 million adults that might participate, after you discount children and elderly!

[yawnmaster]

4. I don't want my government officials selected or unselected by protest...

I want them selected and unselected by federal, state, and local elections, as we have now.
Protests are important, in this country, to influence our elected officials at the federal, state and local level.

[JackRiddler]

6. Guess what, US elections ended in 2000.

And if you think having one that isn't fixed fixes the problem, although no one was ever prosecuted and the election theft was never properly exposed, then you've made a decisive mistake already.

[WhiteTara]

12. name the last untainted election?

I watched it in our state last year and now we have fat white men who hate women "representing" us in DC.

[yawnmaster]

24. I suspect they may actually represent the population of your state, at the very least...

they represent the majority of each electoral district.

[WhiteTara]

40. they may

mostly uninformed, politically naive country folk.

[yawnmaster]

50. Shall there be a test for voters, that before they vote they can show that they are...

informed and politically savy? (and live in the city??)

[cali]

31. funny, we elect bernie sanders and pat leahy

maybe it's the electorate in your state.

[WhiteTara]

38. it is. Blanche used to be our senator

and she cheated in the primary. Now we have Boozeman a red faced, pot bellied, white middle aged repuke as our senator when we could have had Bill White who was working hard for health care.

We also have a puke for a house critter

[GSLevel9]

5. let's be real...

This is a 51-49 nation, give or take.

10 million tea partiers in DC couldn't make Obama resign. And like it or not... our Presidents DO follow our own national laws. We have checks and balances to counter bad Presidents.

And we mostly have free and open elections and the opportubity to throw the bums out every 2-4 years.

[bobbolink]

8. "We have checks and balances to counter bad Presidents. "

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

If you totally ignore the Constitution, then maybe you have a point.
:rofl: :rofl::rofl: :rofl::rofl: :rofl::rofl: :rofl::rofl: :rofl::rofl: :rofl:
:rofl: :rofl::rofl: :rofl::rofl: :rofl::rofl: :rofl::rofl: :rofl::rofl: :rofl:

[GSLevel9]

13. seriously...

we do. Let's just pretend that tomorrow Obama ordered the 1st Cavalry from Ft. Hood to take the State House in Austin.

What would happen, theoretically?

Would the 1st Cavalry be on the 35 South in AFV's and Trucks heading for Austin?

No.

How many checks and or balances are there that would prevent this? Probably dozens.

[bobbolink]

15. Seriously? Your beloved checks and balances sure stopped * from stealing two elections, didn't

they?

It sure kept * from carrying out an illegal war, didn't it?

Denial may make life easier, but it doesn't wipe out the reality.

[yawnmaster]

20. as was mentioned earlier by someone. * may have stole elections, but he didn't have to steal much...

the nation was close to 50 50.
I don't want mob rule. It may seem like the easy way but its not democratic.

[bobbolink]

34. So, a little bit of theft is Ok.

At what point *do* the checks and balances click in, then?

[yawnmaster]

43. Checks and balances are there so if the electorate does make a mistake or if elections are stolen...

there is the ability to attenuate the errors.

[metapunditedgy]

21. Actually, we were 70-30 on issues like the public option and lots of other stuff

that got swept under the bus.

Dirty secret: lots of Americans, regardless of party, want real change. And we're not getting it.

[yawnmaster]

23. then elect reps that represent you. eom

[metapunditedgy]

25. Which is exactly what we did with Obama. Whose fault is it if he didn't follow through? n/t

[yawnmaster]

26. ours. and we have elections every 4 years for president. Every two years for reps.

support the checks and balances. Our reps are the ones who should be making the laws.
I don't want a supremely powerful president. I want that power shared by him, the two houses and the courts.

[metapunditedgy]

29. And what do we do if the candidates lie to us and the media supports them? n/t

[yawnmaster]

30. get to know them better next time. throw them out in two years at the next election...

and protest them to make your message clear to the public.

[metapunditedgy]

42. You think I should invite the candidates over for dinner and administer a polygraph?

When someone is anointed by a party and the media fails to do real journalism, how can individual voters find out if candidates are lying?

[yawnmaster]

46. work for the candidates, yes meet them. Especially locally, as you get...

higher in the political food chain it is harder to meet an individual politician.
ie city council - easy to actually talk to - potus - near impossible.

But yes, you can find out details of your congressional representative if you put a bit of work into it.

[metapunditedgy]

54. But how does that work for the majority of voters? (The people who cast 99% of the votes?)

The media tell them that "Candidate X LOVES babies!" How the heck are they going to know if that is true?

50 million voters should not have to get to know a politician personally to tell if he's lying or not. It's not possible, and it's not something our system should tolerate anyway. (cf. Egypt)

[newtothegame]

32. Don't want to hijack my own thread, but it's our fault. Candidate Obama's record...

included nothing that would have made us think he was going to be progressive. We designated him as such on our own. Was and is he a Democrat? Yes. Was he as likely to get us into new wars as Bush? Of course not.

But we can't seriously accuse him of not "following through" because there was no evidence he was a progressive in the first place. And if there were such evidence, where would we find it? The guy was in the Senate for what, 700 days before hitting the campaign trail? January 2005-February 2007.

We became so enthralled by him that we created a candidate that never was.

[metapunditedgy]

44. LOL: "And if there were such evidence, where would we find it?"

How about:
- Repeal the Bush tax cuts for higher incomes
- Phase out exemptions and deductions for higher earners
- Forbid companies in bankruptcy from giving executives bonuses
- Allow workers to claim more in unpaid wages and benefits in bankruptcy court
- Allow imported prescription drugs
- Mandate insurance coverage of autism treatment
- Centralize ethics and lobbying information for voters
- Tougher rules against revolving door for lobbyists and former officials
- Urge states to treat same-sex couples with full equality in their family and adoption laws
- Allow bankruptcy judges to modify terms of a home mortgage
- Require plug-in fleet at the White House
- Negotiate health care reform in public sessions televised on C-SPAN
- Create a public option health plan for a new National Health Insurance Exchange.
- Introduce a comprehensive immigration bill in the first year


For starters...

[newtothegame]

55. Those are promises, not evidence. If we voted in a guy on promises alone we're the sad ones, not him

[metapunditedgy]

56. You're saying that voters who believe liberal promises are "sad?" Gullible maybe?

Sounds like the system is pretty hostile to the voters. (Promises are not evidence?)

Do you have anything to say about politicians who break their promises? Or is it just the voters who are to blame?

[newtothegame]

57. Politicians have been lying since politics existed? Why did voters convince themselves 2008...

was different? After thousands of years of lying politicians, we decided this one was telling the truth? Because he was popular? :shrug:

Bu*h was popular with his base but that didn't stop him from being a lying sack of shit.

[metapunditedgy]

58. If Bush was a lying sack of shit, we should start by blaming him for lying to us, no?

Voters should be smart, but I don't blame people for believing lies that are sold to them by an entire political/media apparatus.

[Brickbat]

7. Because our protests are by permit and once the three hours is up we go home.

[Earth_First]

10. Or the thugs march in at 2:59:59 and order a "cease and disperse" n/t

[WhiteTara]

9. we don't stand our ground. We protest for a day

maybe have a day of congressional work and then we go home. We need to heed the lesson...perseverance furthers. We need to come to stay until our demands are met. I say let's end the wars and get some butter back on the table. In the spring, when the flowers are in bloom. Non violence and don't stand down. Defend if attacked, but remember that we are all one.

Our unions are so shattered it may be hard, but we do have twitter and facebook. The question remains, do we have will?

[Brickbat]

14. The phrase you used -- "until our demands are met" -- caught my eye. It's the reason I've always

hated the phrase "speak truth to power" -- modern protests are so focused on "being heard" and "getting a message out" and "speaking truth to power" that the protesters never think about GRABBING the power, BEING the power, and making things happen instead of hoping to be "heard" and "getting a message across."

[yawnmaster]

22. In this country, if a protest group grabs power by taking over and elected office,

it will not be long lived as you will find a larger power of citizens ousting them, myself included.

In this country, successful protests have influenced our elected officials, and there are plenty of examples.

An unelected mob grabbing power from a duly elected official will not have my support.

Being heard and getting a message across is how this country is meant to work.

[Brickbat]

27. It probably wasn't clear from my post, although by responding to an OP about it it can certainly be

misconstrued -- but I was not talking about leadership change. I was talking policy change.

[xchrom]

11. that was probably cairo alone.

the protests in suez, alexandria and other places were also large.

we have had significant protests here and changed things -- viet nam, civil rights, and really you can count significant union strikes of the past.

[Posteritatis]

39. There were noises about up to 20M in the streets planned today

I don't know if they got to (or near) that point nationwide, but half that would be thoroughly believable and that would still be one in eight of the population.

[politicat]

16. Because Egypt has 40 mil in an area the size of Maryland.

Egypt itself is large, but most of the population lives in the Nile River Valley, which is only about 15,000 square miles. The metro Cairo area has about 17 million people, and even if you have to walk, you can get from one end of the metro area to the other in a long day of hiking. (But they have a decent metro, too).

Compact geography marks mass movements a lot easier. Mass movements in the US get diluted because those of us in "flyover states" can't just hop a city bus and be in D.C. in a few hours, even if we have nothing to lose and everything to gain by doing so. The MSM doesn't cover nationwide protests even if they are happening all over the country at the same time. (there were major protests about the Iraq war in 2003-4.) They cover maybe D.C., New York and LA. Chicago if we're lucky, Denver? Never.

It also helps to have a very young, largely unemployed and well educated population. The US is aging, and while we're less employed than we should be, we're more employed than Egypt's population. We also have not had a major spike in food prices. When a loaf of cheap bread reaches $10 and apples go for $3 each, we'll see effective protests.

[rurallib]

17. we got a skewed vision because only Cairo was covered

Sounded like Alexandria and Port Said were quite active also.

[sufrommich]

18. Because the vast majority of Americans don't want a revolution?

Sometimes the most obvious answer is also the right one.

[yawnmaster]

28. Many are impatient and revolution seems to show results. It definitely is immediate change...

The problem with a government that can make fast changes is that it also has instability.
I'd rather have my government be "over damped" than oscillate, in control theory terms.

People need patience, I believe.

[cherokeeprogressive]

33. Ding Ding! A Winnah! n/t

[damntexdem]

19. Actually, 1/80 th is quite a large proportion to be demonstrating.

Let's see 4 million turn out to protest in DC.

[Viking12]

51. Exactly. Given the length of the protests, it took major support from a broad spectrum of the popula

[JI7]

35. these posts are so ignorant

[yawnmaster]

47. your post makes it so obvious!

once again sarcasm

[Zax2me]

36. Because Obama isn't near the dictator evil tyrant they had?

Just a guess...

[KharmaTrain]

41. The Country Was Shut Down...

Many people didn't work and the country was parlyized. The tourists, a million of them, took off putting a real hurt on the economy. If Americans could create that kind of economic damage, you sure would get a lot of attention. Sadly our unions rarely organize together and it's led to them being marginalized. Imagine a national strike...the economy brought to a halt...then do it for a week and then a month. Unfortunately there's no leadership in that direction...people have their pet special interests and only give lip service to others.

[Scruffy1]

49. You are so right.

Back in the sixties most of the protestors, including yours truly, had no clear agenda except to end the war. Some of the deluded still think they had some impact even though the protests started up in about 1965 and the war continued until 1973. The lesson I learned from that is that the real problems in America are systemic and without a broad enough coalition to actually threaten the status quo demonstrations are a waste of time as far as changing things goes.
The reason I regularly attend protest and marches is that they help grow dissident groups through publicity and social
networking.

[KharmaTrain]

53. We've Been Divided And Conquered

Sadly I can't think of the last labor strike that had a real national impact...similar to the steel workers strikes of a century ago or the coal miners or teamsters...unions that could call upon millions in their own ranks and depend on solidarity from other unions. In another thread there's a food fight going on about the NFL strike and how no one should care about millionaires vs. billionaires without understanding this is yet another attempt to minimalize and isolate the union movement. Many aren't interested in unions cause they haven't accomplished much in the past 30 years. If we ever needed a strong union movement, the time is now.

I'm also a kid of the 60s and attended my share of rallies. We sure were naive in thinking we could bring big changes, but we did in incrimental levels...in areas of civil rights, sexual equality and the environment...all part of what we were demonstrating about. But it didn't happen over night and it can be said while we've come a long way, there's an even further distance to go.

I try to remain upbeat but the realist in me says our nation has become so stuck on selfish that we lack the urgency and desperation we've seen on the streets of Cairo.

Cheers...

[hugo_from_TN]

45. If a couple million teabaggers march on Washington

should Obama step down? Is that the way you think the country should be run?

[yawnmaster]

48. no!! some here appear to want that kind of action though...

protests should be able to affect policy, but if it causes a coup we are in trouble.

[MzShellG]

52. Americans want instant gratification....

Other than the civil rights movement, when have Americans protested for 3 weeks straight? Results like this take hard work, blood, sweat, and tears. But how many are willing in these times to take such a big stand for something we strongly believe in?