Obama's Brownie.

“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”

Over time, this longer quote came to be paraphrased and misquoted, most commonly in the form “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”

In the column, Mencken continued his thoughts about the public’s choices in reading matter and politicians by adding:

“The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is a folly.”

Looking around at the media and political landscape today, Mencken’s opinion might be deemed more prescient than ever.

http://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2011/09/no-one-ever-went-broke-underestimating.html

Emphasis added.

I have been advocating Publicly Funded Elections (PFEs) well before Bernie started his run for POTUS. The root cause of most of the serious problems we face can be traced to the oligarchs buying our politicians. They write the laws! They appoint the judicial branch that's not elected. The ones elected are bribed the same as the politicians. They own all of the media and use it to spew propaganda!

Bernie is fighting to change all of that! It's a tall order that many don't understand, or its just so unbelievable many think it cannot be true, but it is true! When I see some ignorant person spout off on TV about Muslims, or Black Lives Matter or some such, I used to get angry, now just sad. I now view them as victims of the propaganda machine. The more alarming thing to me is that it's not just the Fox Bots that are falling for this crap, Democrats that believe Hillary is going to do anything to change this in any significant way are victims as well. Many should know better!

Our society has been breaking down. People my age and older know this because we have seen the deteriorization over a longer period of time. There was never a perfect period in American history, but our government institutions have never done a worse job than now.

Bernie gives me hope that we can turn this around. It will not be easy, it will take time, and it most certainly take a whole lot of us standing right behind him to force the monied interests to heal! When Bernie speaks of a "Political Revolution," it is because these interest run and control our government through their ownership of our politicians. By fighting for and achieving PFEs we strike at the root of their control, it's that fragile! That is why you will NEVER hear Hillary endorse PFEs!

News is entertainment. This is the lesson of the television age.

Similarly, the "big news" in a major metropolitan area on a network news program yesterday was the firing of a football coach. Really?

-- Mal

keep us safe" from terrorism (solely defined as of Muslim origin) as a way to distract us from dangers that are far greater and closer to home...like lead poisoning or flooding or gun violence. Not to mention other issues like cost-prohibitive higher education, stagnant wages, expensive health care, crumbling infrastructure etc etc etc.

That's a feature, not a bug, of a political system focused on the needs of corporations and not citizens.