Only 25% Of Americans Think Nation Is Headed In the Right Direction.

An unnecessary war that won't end. Gas prices at $3.30. Food prices up. Health care costs have gone through the roof. The electric company just wrote a letter telling my wife and me that electric rates are going up. More and more people are worried about their jobs. Incomes are flat. Education expenses soaring. A department of justice poorly led by a serial liar who thinks that torturing prisoners is morally defensible, and that spying on Americans without warrant is Constitutional. A President who doesn't seem competent to organize a two car parade, yet is somehow able to bully the Congress at will. Oh, did I mention the optional war that has turned into a death trap for thousands and a money pit that will take generations to pay off. We still haven't caught Osama Bin Ladin.

Is it any wonder that according to a recent AP-Ipsos poll

Only 25 percent of those surveyed say things in the U.S. are going in the right direction, according to an AP-Ipsos poll this month. That is about the lowest level of satisfaction detected since the survey started in December 2003. . . .

Asked in April why they felt things were veering in the wrong direction, one-third overall volunteered the war and one-fourth blamed poor leadership.

Nine percent faulted the economy, 8 percent a loss of moral values and 5 percent gasoline prices.

"We need to get out of war, get our economy back up, quit spending money outside of America and bring it here," said Democrat Lisa Pollard, 45, an insurance company analyst in Arlington, Texas.

And the poll was taken in April, before gas prices soared like a John Ashcroft eagle. The poll found similar numbers across all demographic groups with white males slightly more optimistic than minorities and women.

Only 25% think America is headed in the right direction. Why don't we pull over and look at a map?

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Is American empire the end of American Democracy?

One of the wonderful things about the Internet is the ability to link to the works of importance. Chalmers Johnson has posted an essay entitled Can We End the American Empire Before It Ends Us? It begins

In politics, as in medicine, a cure based on a false diagnosis is almost always worthless, often worsening the condition that is supposed to be healed. The United States, today, suffers from a plethora of public ills. Most of them can be traced to the militarism and imperialism that have led to the near-collapse of our Constitutional system of checks and balances. Unfortunately, none of the remedies proposed so far by American politicians or analysts addresses the root causes of the problem.

and ends

When Ronald Reagan coined the phrase "evil empire," he was referring to the Soviet Union, and I basically agreed with him that the USSR needed to be contained and checkmated. But today it is the U.S. that is widely perceived as an evil empire and world forces are gathering to stop us. The Bush administration insists that if we leave Iraq our enemies will "win" or -- even more improbably -- "follow us home." I believe that, if we leave Iraq and our other imperial enclaves, we can regain the moral high ground and disavow the need for a foreign policy based on preventive war. I also believe that unless we follow this path, we will lose our democracy and then it will not matter much what else we lose. In the immortal words of Pogo, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

In between is a list of reforms that should form the basis of our national conversation for years to come. Do yourself a favor and read the entire essay. You will be glad you did.

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