Power is Taken

There's a crazy load of news today:

- Legendary, historically pivotal Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman (b.1918) dies at age 89.

- The vacation home of Sen. Theodore Fulton "Ted" Stevens (R-AK, b.1923), at age 83 the longest-serving Republican in the Senate, is raided by the FBI looking for corrupt links to the Alaskan oil business.

- Ground-breaking late night talk show host Tom Snyder (b.1936) dies of leukemia at age 71 in San Francisco.

- Brand new Chief Justice John Glover Roberts Jr. (b.1955) has his second publicly known seizure while on at his summer home in Maine.

- The move to impeach Attorney General Albert Gonzales (b. 1955) begins, not appearing to having been initiated by the leadership, but rather Congressman Jay Inslee (D-WA). It is no longer inconceivable that he could be impeached. As of tomorrow, it will be underway.

Is there any hope for the current generation, i.e. those leaders born in the 1950's?

The only Presidential candidate in the Democratic Party that is strictly about speaking truth to power is Senator John Edwards (b. 1953), and there's video of him doing twice, publicly, this past week.

He did it first at the CNN YouTube debate. He said the words regular American need to hear:

If you listen to these questions, they all have exactly the same thing, which is how do we bring about big change? And I think that’s a fundamental threshold question. And the question is: Do you believe that compromise, triangulation will bring about big change? I don’t.

I think the people who are powerful in Washington -- big insurance companies, big drug companies, big oil companies -- they are not going to negotiate. They are not going to give away their power. The only way that they are going to give away their power is if we take it away from them.

He did it again, with some added kick, in a smalltown gathering in New Hampshire:

I believe America needs change in the worst kind of way. And I don't mean little change, I mean big change. And I don't believe that change is going to come from negotiation and compromise. I think there are powerful interests in Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C. is broken. It does not work. The entire system is rigged, and it's rigged against you...the insurance companies to drug companies to oil companies, those people run this country now...

I think you've got to take them on and beat them, I don't think you can sit at a table and negotiate with them. The idea that they're going to voluntarily give up their power, that's a fantasy, and that will never happen.

And we will never be able to have universal health care, be able to change the way we use energy and tackle global warming. The big issues that face this country. They are standing in between and the change that we need. It's that simple.

Be still my heart. Truth, so rare, so liberating.

What is there to really disagree with in here? Of course, he's right! Power never yields just because you wish it would, that it would make great sacrifices to take care of you. It only yields when forced to. And the corporate powers he speaks of are some of the richest in the span of human history.

Is it any wonder that the media just wants you to think about haircuts? They may not be scared of Edwards yet, but they're clearly invested in stopping him. And well they should be.

More here.