In lieu of wealth, McSame's spreading something else around

I was listening to last night's Real Time With Bill Maher this morning, and I heard some pretty sage words from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) (at right) that really struck me. We've been hearing all sorts of rhetoric from the McCain camp about Obama's comment that he intends to "spread the wealth around," which has been stoking up people's prejudices and hatred toward the lower class since those words came out of his mouth.

Actually the hatred in this country toward those less advantaged is nothing new; it's been happening for decades now, since at least 1980, and actually even longer. Of course, the right is willfully and forcefully aided in no small part in spreading this hatred by the hatemongers on right-wing talk radio and TV: Sean Hannity, Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, etc.

What gets pathetically little coverage in the media, and quite frankly what the Obama campaign should be doing a better job of articulating, is just how spectacular the chasm is between America's wealthiest and poorest, and how this democracy-threatening trend has spiraled out of control during the Bush administration.

Take it away, Bernie:

We don't talk about it terribly often, something they don't talk about in Congress and certainly in the corporate media - that the wealthiest 1 percent in America earn more income than the bottom 50 percent. The top 1 percent own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. We have by far, more inequality in terms of wealth and income than any other major country on earth. We have the highest rate of childhood poverty and more billionaires [than any other country] and I don't think that's what our forefathers intended.

Truer words have never been spoken by a politician in my lifetime.

What Sanders had to say is beyond inconvenient for Republicans and their many right-wing enablers - the right has successfully used Karl Rove wedge issues like gay rights, abortion, gun control, RELIGION, immigration (the '08 campaign's #1 wedge issue) and xenophobia to distract people who really need economic relief from nearly 30 years of Reaganomics, which has bankrupted our treasury and worked to destroy the middle class in this country.

We (and by "we," I mean the middle and lower classes of America) are never going to take our country back until we stopped being duped by politicians who really don't have our best interests at heart.

Incidentally, Sen. Bernie Sanders appears on Thom Hartmann's radio show on Air America Radio every Friday for a one-hour Brunch With Bernie segment, and it's excellent. I'm never going to live in Vermont (too cold for me), but I wish I could cast a vote for Sanders, and I hope more like him get elected to the U.S. Congress.