Reposted from The Democratic Underground

If you had told me ten years ago that… the U.S. would be accused of torture, that there would be photographic proof of such torture, and that a former U.S. president would flat out admit in writing that he had sanctioned such torture… a Democratic president would insist upon massive tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, but not on extended unemployment benefits for people who had been out of work for more than 99 weeks… twenty-two states would be considering measures that would intentionally substantially DECREASE the number of eligible voters… public education funding would be eviscerated in virtually every U.S. state with still no mention of a possible tax increase for the wealthy or for corporations… a sitting state governor would get caught on tape admitting that he had "thought about" planting troublemakers into a peaceful rally in order to sway public sentiment against the protesters, and he would be DEFENDED by his party… blatant, provable, and egregious voting "anomalies" would be found, proven, and acknowledged, but the results of that election(s) would be allowed to stand… a Democratic president and congress would usher through a massive giveaway to health insurance companies without so much as an OPTION for people to use a publicly funded program, and call it "REFORM"… a U.S. citizen would be incarcerated without charge, would be tortured during that incarceration, and would be demonized by a Democratic administration for many months, for the "crime" of making the public aware of, at the very least, a massive mistake by the U.S. military… our teachers, cops, firefighters and nurses would be villanized during a state "budget battle", and those doing the villanizing would WIN… I would not have believed you. The new "normal" sucks. This was powerful enough that I reposted the entire thing from here.  Think about it and then think about how we got here, who is responsible and how we can wade out of this mess.  Please