Playwright Lillian Hellman said: “I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions.” The statement was in a letter to the House Un-American Activities Committee. The year was 1952. We tell ourselves that the McCarthy era was vastly different than our own -- but what about the political fashions of 2010? This year’s fashions cut mean figures on Washington’s runways. Conformities lie, and people die.

While the escalating disaster of war in Afghanistan keeps setting deadly blazes, the few anti-war voices on Capitol Hill usually sound like people whispering “Fire!”

In 2010, this is what the warfare state looks like: a largely numbed state, mainlining anesthetics that induce routine torpor. In that context, the conformity of mild dissent is apt to be mistaken for outspoken moral acuity.

On the back of an envelope, or anywhere else, check this math:

$1,000,000 x 100,000 = $100,000,000,000

In round flat numbers, that’s the cost of deploying 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan for one year -- $100 billion. The initial “cost” includes none of the human consequences.

I'm not a big fan of post-partisan America, a notion that seems to amount to running the government through two political parties but taking care that one of them not perform in any significant way better than the other one. But I am a fan of the idea, which nobody ever seems to consider, of actually disempowering parties.

That idea has a precedent in the first dozen years or so of our republic whose Constitution never planned for party rule, although nonpartisanship would obviously have to look very different today. I suspect we could imagine ways of making party-free government work if we tried. At the moment, however, Americans' political thinking is so party-saturated, that any talk of opposing parties is met with the question "Which one?" or with the statement "Yeah, I'm for a third party too!"

Read the following blog post by John Caruso titled We've tried nothing, and we're all out of ideas

"John Feffer bewails the lack of any alternative to the Democratic Party:

Playwright Lillian Hellman said: “I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions.”

The statement was in a letter to the House Un-American Activities Committee. The year was 1952. We tell ourselves that the McCarthy era was vastly different than our own -- but what about the political fashions of 2010?

This year’s fashions cut mean figures on Washington’s runways. Conformities lie, and people die.

While the escalating disaster of war in Afghanistan keeps setting deadly blazes, the few anti-war voices on Capitol Hill usually sound like people whispering “Fire!”

In 2010, this is what the warfare state looks like: a largely numbed state, mainlining anesthetics that induce routine torpor. In that context, the conformity of mild dissent is apt to be mistaken for outspoken moral acuity.

On the back of an envelope, or anywhere else, check this math:

$1,000,000 x 100,000 = $100,000,000,000

Everything you're reading about torture lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee getting off the hook is wrong. They are not torture lawyers, they are not off the hook, there never was any hook, they may not be lawyers for long, impeachment and indictment are on the agenda, and you have a role to play.

"I'm tired of rallies---I want to FIGHT!" So said Tim Burga, Operations Director of the Ohio AFL-CIO, addressing the hundreds who'd braved the cold, this past Saturday, to attend a "Pass It Now" rally for health care reform at the SEIU, Local 1199 hall in Columbus, Ohio.

There was a sense of real urgency in the hall, as speaker after speaker pounded on the point that, as Brian Rothenberg of Progress Ohio stated; "We now have 6 weeks to win the fight our people have been fighting since the Truman administration---Health Care for all!"

Becky Williams, President of SEIU, 1199, was interrupted by loud cheers as she led off the rally, telling the crowd;

"We have three things to tell the administration and the majority in congress; (1) we worked for and voted for change last year. That means actually changing what was there when you got there. (2) We need for you to lead with courage, not be intimidated by Fox News and Teabaggers, and (3) don’t be fooled by lies! If you do these things," she said, "we'll be with you, and the 66% of Americans who, according to polls are demanding that Health Care Reform be passed."