Coming soon to an arrogant government very near you: Fiscal Armageddon

Hate to say we told you so, and it gives us no joy being right, but we did and we are.

p m carpenter's commentary: Coming soon to an arrogant government very near you: Fiscal Armageddon:

The president's nearly $3 trillion, 2008 budget proposal reads like a happy 'how-to' manual for what Chalmers Johnson, the East Asian historian and thoughtful author of the eye-opening 'Blowback' series, unhappily surveys:

We are on the brink of losing our democracy for the sake of keeping our empire. Once a nation starts down that path, the dynamics that apply to all empires come into play -- isolation, overstretch, the uniting of local and global forces opposed to imperialism, and in the end bankruptcy.

Add to that mixture an unhealthy dose of plutocratic protectionism, and you can see that we're no longer merely on the brink: We have done toppled over. Indeed, Republican apostate Kevin Phillips, in works such as American Theocracy and Wealth and Democracy, forcefully argues that our system of governance is already a de-facto plutocracy -- yesterday's democracy is just that: yesterday.