I'm not talking about a conspiracy, Ron. Not at all. I'm just talking about how people in the most influential positions in a system (in any country) act in order to perpetuate the system. They form an "in group" of their peers and their friends in business, and that in group is connected with lobbying, funding, media, and government at the levels where control can be reasonably well maintained most of the time...primarily through careful use of the mass media to shape public opinion.

Every now and then something slips through their net or they miscalculate a drastic shift in the public mood...and their plans go awry.

It's just special interests looking after themselves. That's not a conspiracy, it's business as usual.

My use of the term "the ruling classes" may have been quite misleading and inflammatory. I didn't mean ALL the people who earn money above a certain income level. I meant those people who are already positioned in the strongest way at the top of major corporations, communications systems, media, banks, the military, and government, and who are usually descended from similar people who went before them......and they are all people who make a lot of money. That doesn't mean that ALL people who make a lot of money are guilty of some heinous conspiracy against the public! It just means that traditional bases of power in any country work to perpetuate themselves. Not conspiracy, Ron....sheer bloody self-interest!

In so doing, they are usually fairly adept at winnowing out troublesome radicals like Kucinich or Ron Paul from rising high enough to rock the boat too much...and they find unfair ways of doing it.

This is so in Mexico, for instance, (where a small number of very wealthy families pretty much own the country and have ever since its independence) and it's true in the USA also, but in a much more complex way than in Mexico. The Bushes and the Clintons are two of the families who belong in the elite I am referring to. Kissinger is a member of that elite. The Rockefellers and the Kennedys belong to it as well. Most of the most successful and famous politicians in American history are and were members of that elite. They all know each other. They went to the same schools (in most cases). They hang out at the same prestigious places amongst the same company. They very rarely let someone who might truly change things slip through the net.

It's not just an American problem. It's a problem in just about every society on Earth. It's the maintenance of OLD power structures. And it has been so for the last few thousand years, because THAT's how established power perpetuates itself...through a select club or in group of rich and powerful who are accustomed to wielding power and are usually (though not always) born into it.

That's not a conspiracy, Ron....but it is a disease afflicting our societies, and it needs a radical cure.

As Texas Guest said, we live in a Corporatocracy....the corporation being the most pervasive and powerful means, at present, of controlling and monopolizing the movement of money, goods, and services around the world.

It's serfs and robber barons. 99% of us are included among the serfs.

Kucinich and Ron Paul both voted against the Iraq War from the beginning. They are both totally opposed to it, and they say they would bring the troops home without delay. That's why they are being marginalized by the $ySStem and its media, because those in charge of it have no intention of ending the USA's military adventures in the Middle East, in my opinion. That goes for Democrats and Republicans both.

I like Obama a lot, and I would like to think that he would extricate the USA from its foreign wars...but would he really? (shrug) I have no idea.

I believe Kucinich and Ron Paul would end the foreign wars. I think the $ySStem believes they would too. That means they are not going to get too far at all if the ruling $ySStem can do anything whatsoever about it...and again, that's not exactly a conspiracy...it's simply the aggressive maintenance of self-interest on the part of an establishment that has a program in motion and does not want anyone to stop their program. Think of the military contracts that are at stake! Think of the developers and oil companies who are tied into working in the war zone. Think of all the "special contractors" (mercenaries) who would lose their lucrative contracts if the USA stopped fighting in those countries.

Billions and billions of dollars are at stake, Ron. That's what it's all about. That's always what it's all about. Not anyone's freedom, not any grand moral or political principles, not for democracy, not for anything else but money. Big money. In this case, blood money.