James Madison's Bad Dream

This from one of the two most important documents ever written:

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince or foreign State.

And this from Bill Moyers:

Watching these people work is a study of the inner circle at the top of American politics. The journalist Sidney Blumenthal, writing on Salon.com, reminds us of the relationship between the Armstrong dynasty and the Bush family and its retainers. Armstrong's father invested in Rove's political consulting firm that managed George W. Bush's election as governor of Texas and as president. Her mother, Anne Armstrong, is a longtime Republican activist and donor. Ronald Reagan appointed her to the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board after her tenure as Ambassador to the United Kingdom under President Ford, whose chief of staff was a young Dick Cheney. Anne Armstrong served on the board of directors of Halliburton that hired Cheney to run the company. Her daughter, Katherine Armstrong, host of the hunting party, was once a lobbyist for the powerful Houston law firm founded by the family of James A. Baker III, who was chief of staff to Reagan, Secretary of State under the first George Bush, and the man designated by the Bush family to make sure the younger Bush was named President in 2000 despite having lost the popular vote. According to Blumenthal, one of her more recent lobbying jobs was with a large construction firm with contracts in Iraq.

It is a Dick Cheney world out there - a world where politicians and lobbyists hunt together, dine together, drink together, play together, pray together and prey together, all the while carving up the world according to their own interests.
(emphasis added)

We have to face it, we have an aristocracy in America. We have a nobility. We have a president who is in the White House because his father was there. We have a president whose administration approved a deal with the United Arab Emirates with whom his brother is working a multimillion dollar contract. We have a corrupt legislative brance (c.f. Abramoff). We have a Supreme Court that is now dominated by idealogues from this privileged class. One that almost assuredly will overturn Roe vs. Wade which is supported by the majority of the American People.

We are in deep trouble.

(read the whole Bill Moyers, it is excellent. Tip of the hat to ALS)