I earlier posted that paralysis can lead to the breakup of a nation or increased authoritarianism. There is one other path, rarely taken, but highly successful: a constitutional convention. The French have done it, as have the people of the USA under the Articles of Confederation.

But what to include in a possible new suite of amendments or a rewrite of the constitution?

Eliminate corporate personhood. Corporations are not people, and that doctrine was based upon perjury.
Eliminate corporate donations to candidates, parties, and advertising. They’re not people, so they should not have civil rights or civil liberties.
Eliminate the electoral college. Elect the president with a national vote. This reduces federalism, but it makes individual votes matter more.
Stipulate that corporate directors have a duty to community that supercedes fiduciary duties: the corporation needs to be the servant of society, not the master.
Allow for federal and state money to support religious schools’ education activities, as is done in India. That will keep the anti-science fundamentalism from imposing their will on science education in the USA.
Specify rights and clarify them, as is done in the Swiss constitution.
Limit the ability of the government to tax and spend. Emergency allowances have to be watched carefully, as well. The Swiss constitution places a limit on the power to tax. We have to have provisions to require the government to pay back what it owes when times are good so that it can be ready to deal with bad times when they hit.

That’s a start, but it can give us a renewed hope for the future. A new set of rules gives us a fresh start. They can be corrupted in the future, but that process takes time. This also sets the precedent to reset the system periodically in order to give the nation a new lease. My ideas are not entirely new: some are as old as Jefferson and Locke.

When nations arrive at a state of paralysis, they do not recover their former resilience. Instead, they endure shocks that produce undemocratic or hyperdemocratic results.

China, Russia, and Cambodia went Communist. They lacked a developed industrial base, so peasant uprisings behind Communist vanguards succeeded in taking over the apparatus of state. Russia later endured a second paralysis after its Communist period and went Fascist under Putin – after fracturing into 15 nations. China is enduring paralysis right now, but I cannot determine if it will go Fascist or break apart into smaller units. I should note that Communism is not an option for a developed nation. The big threat to developed democratic and liberal ideals are national dissolutions or fascist movements. India has a decent shot at going Communist because of its massive rural population. China, too, could have a second Communist revolution. Russia won’t be going back to Communism: it’s too industrialized.

Mexico in 1910 went in a leftist direction, not entirely Communist. In the 1990s, paralysis gave Mexico a rightward shift that was incomplete: drug lords have now fractured the Mexican state.

Weimar Germany, postwar Italy, and 1930s Spain endured paralysis that produced fascist states.

Yugoslavia’s paralysis produced a fractured state, as did Czechoslovakia.

Iran’s paralysis under the Shah led to a fascist-religious state under the Ayatollahs. It is enduring another round of paralysis. Arab states emerging from recent revolutions are also leaning towards fascist-religious states after paralyzing secular fascism. Syria is fractured and Lebanon perennially fractures under the stress of paralysis.

Japan’s paralysis in the 1930s gave them militaristic fascism. They are also enduring another phase of paralysis.

European nations and the USA are also in paralysis, to one degree or another. Spain and Italy look set to fly apart: Greece is capable of anything. Other nations’ situations are developing.

So, whither the USA? Fascism or dissolution? I think the lessons of 1861-1865 are clear and that dissolution is not a viable scenario, except in the case of an extreme sequence of events. Fascism is already nascent, with interest groups exerting influence on both the major parties favorable towards a fascist setup. The Tea Party is a vanguard of American fascism – it truly is, even though not all Tea Party supporters are fascists – and the rest of the Republicans are impotent in opposing their influence. By turn, the radical elements in the GOP produce a more radicalized Democrat party, which compounds the paralysis of government.

That paralysis is ultimately to the benefit only of Fascist movements.

40 Republican senators blocked the passage of a bill that would have given job training benefits to veterans. The bill would have cost $1 billion over five years to help those that put their lives at risk for the benefit of Koch Industries, Bechtel, Halliburton, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and other great über-rich American corporations.

How can only 40 senators block a bill, when it takes 51 to vote it down? Easy. They threaten a filibuster. It takes 61 votes to halt a filibuster, and 100-40=60. The same Republicans that will go ape if one so much as points a finger at a defense cut decided a mere billion dollars over five years is too much for the people that have done their duty.

Disgusting. These Republicans are War Pigs, to borrow a line from Black Sabbath. Here are the names of the War Pigs, the men that worship the God of War, but desecrate the soldiers returning home:
Alexander (R-TN)
Ayotte (R-NH)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Blunt (R-MO)
Boozman (R-AR)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coats (R-IN)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Enzi (R-WY)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Hatch (R-UT)
Hoeven (R-ND)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johanns (R-NE)
Johnson (R-WI)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Lee (R-UT)
Lugar (R-IN)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Moran (R-KS)
Paul (R-KY)
Portman (R-OH)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Rubio (R-FL)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Thune (R-SD)
Toomey (R-PA)
Vitter (R-LA)
Wicker (R-MS)

Only two had to switch their vote for cloture, and the bill would have passed. Their protests that it would not have worked are asinine. The bill itself was revenue-neutral. The GOP Senate leadership ran away from reporters wanting answers about this. Cowards. Ungrateful, slimy, reprobate COWARDS. They can’t stand up to banks or major defense contractors, but it’s easy for them to crush a few little veterans, coming home from wars they voted for.

No wonder Colin Powell endorsed Obama. General Powell cares about the veterans.

And if any Republican wants to step up and try to defend his party’s stance on veterans, feel free to do so, but I’m going to revile you if you try and defend outright moral cowardice. You’ve got freedom of speech, and so do I. Don’t try and offer some bland qualification for the bill: that’s party spew, and you know it. The truth is simple: There is a Gang of Forty Thieves in the GOP senate caucus, and they’ve stolen from our soldiers. Shame on them and shame on those who stand with them and shame on those who buy their votes.

First, there was that GOP guy in Missouri with his “legitimate rape” thinking. Now there’s a GOP guy in Indiana with “it’s something God intended.” One guy might – might – be an isolated incident. Two guys start to form a pattern.

Little quips about Big Bird, binders, and bayonets are par for the course in politics. Trying to find some way to justify rapes, no matter how finely worded those justifications may be, are beyond the pale. Here in North Texas, a state race is hinging on how one candidate rejected legislation that would increase prosecution against rapists. Guess what party he’s a member of? Like I said, a pattern.

This is not a time for GOP people to react with indignation that all Republicans are being tarred with the same brush. This is a time for the GOP to put its house in order. Romney still presents a sane view on rape: he’s against it and he does not oppose abortion in the case of rape. He won’t win Democrat votes with that stance, but at least he won’t turn the USA into a bizarre theocracy with his views.

I find it ironic that the people most likely to fling poo at Romney for being “part of a cult” are also those most likely to themselves be part of a misogynistic cult that has hijacked a good part of the Republican party. There are crazed demagogues in the Democrat party, but at least they hold the view that women are equal to men as far as rights and liberties go. The GOP used to be a party that tried to claim that it was tough on crime. A fine stance, in my view.

But being tough on crime except rape? Unacceptable to me and any other sane person, in or out of the GOP.

So Fox News decided to re-air an old video of Obama making an accusation that the aid in the wake of Katrina may have been tainted by racism. I think he has a valid point. Areas of public housing that were untouched by floods got condemned… and they just so happened to be on prime property between the commercial sector and Bourbon Street. Watch all of Greg Palast’s “From Big Easy to Big Empty” for all kinds of details in that regard. Palast does his homework right, and the story he uncovers is shocking and disgusting. Full video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkpv6rpJEI8&feature=relmfu

The refineries got saved, all right – and Greg Palast got fined for filming the refinery for his documentary under the PATRIOT Act – and so did the downtown areas. The aid for the poor blacks of New Orleans, though, did not rebuild their homes. It did not rebuild their lives. They got stuck in concentration camps with daily trips to a nearby Wal-Mart, and little else.

And why was Katrina such a disaster? Let me steal a bit of the thunder from that Palast report to say that the person that tossed the LSU evacuation plan aside and put in her own total lack of a plan was a major Bush campaign donor. She had zero experience in emergency response planning, but she wrote a big check to Bush and that was good enough. In return, she got a $500,000 contract to sit on her thumbs and hope no hurricane happened. That’s a real good return on investment, by the way… And after her gross criminal negligence that resulted in people having to watch the water go past their noses… that resulted in preventable deaths of fellow Americans… she faced zero criminal charges. In fact, she wrote another check and got another $500,000 government contract: to investigate her own negligence.

Bush had a history of helping his cronies duck responsibility. This is one of those stories. If those poor blacks voted Republican, they wouldn’t have drowned in a Bush administration, I can guarantee you that much.