B’Man’s 2012 US Presidential Election Forecast Dream (Nightmare)

Having been paying attention to the reTHUGlican Party Primaries (and “debates”), it becomes clear that Ron Paul could very well be the nominee. This will be argued by many Republicans, most suggesting there is no way the party will nominate him. But I disagree. I believe that there will come a groundswell change in opinion. The Party will see that the population, as a whole, will be very attracted to the stump rhetoric that Paul uses (and not another single reTHUGlican will touch).

Understanding that Newt will flip-flop on any subject, over virtually any pol result (or money offered) or maybe which wife he has, to hear him say this tells me a lot (this begins at the 7m30s point where Ron Paul is explaining why his age won’t matter and Newt’s endorsement):

(Sorry, it would not allow me to cue the video to the 7m30s spot)

If you watched the entire video, you can see that Newt shows Paul favor a few times (and so does Mitt, for that matter). I can see many people on the stage beginning to undersand that the old man is on to something and they will begin the change of their rhetoric to match his in some ways. Count all the times that Paul gets nods, smiles and agreements from his adversaries. Just look at the pic in the video for an example. This happened often.

On the “other side”, obviously, Obama lies as usual (and often):

It was typical Obama, taking credit for what should be condemned. He’s a fraud, a crime boss, a war criminal multiple times over, a moral coward, and serial liar.

True. True. And true. Ad Infinitum.

People know it, too (Jimmy Carter being the one that saved him from the lowest ratings of any POTUS in their third year). Even tho he did get a slight blip in ratings after the SOTU address, he has started to decline again.

So, let’s dream, shall we?

As we drift off into our chemtrail induced nightmare, we think of an election where we have a sitting president, ratings declining (even with any possible false flag event, war or travesty he can use to raise stats just before the election) against this old man who keeps saying all the right things. This could be the ultimate battle royale between R’s and D’s. The establishment will know this and use it to their advantage.

AND…

Think of the TEE VEE!

Imagine the battle between “good and evil”… “big government” versus “small government”… “truth” versus “lies”. Can your mind’s eye see VP candidate Newt Gingrich fighting hard to destroy the adversary’s second round by exposing his record, while the saintly Ron Paul continues the rhetoric… swaying the gullible people into cutting their own throats.

President Obama cannot overcome all the distortions and lies the teleprompter caused for him. The law suits and obstruction charges cannot be ignored and the spectacle causes the last straw to break the Donkey’s back and we see a new (but very, VERY old) POTUS with Newt as VP, eagerly licking his baby eating chops. Then, dream that the chemically induced dementia (or heart attack) rids the Establishment of Paul and we get what they want anyway.

(It’s only a dream, right?)

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2012: The Year Of Paulsterity

I listened in to the last Raw Dawg Buffalo Radio Show on Thursday night. I had spent a couple of hours reviewing information I was gathering for this post… a post to explain just what I believe will happen as TPTB mind-muck all us rednecks with their dazzling bullshit into accepting the harsh austerity coming in the next year or two.

The first thing that stood out was the fact that most, if not all, the call-ins were pro-Paul (and likely members of the PPPP page of Facebook that I referenced a while back). This is the page that Kelso and Yancey started, in which Ron Paul is the main object of discussion. I was asked to join and did, knowing full well that my opinion would not be welcomed and that since I knew quite a few of the posters there, I also knew their modus operandi when it comes to debate. I did it to be part of an experiment that I knew up front would be bad for me… but I did it anyway.

I was immediately met with obfuscation, mis-direction, dead-end points, straw men arguments, and then the onslaught of the Rothbard Freaks who apparently haven’t enough brain cells to realize that this planet (nor the USA) can ever be that Idyllic Place they (and their freak leader, Rothbard) seem to think we live in. I tried to explain to them at the time that Paul is the “Austerity Bait and Switch” to the previous POTUS fools we have endured over the past several decades or more. I tried to show them that Paul’s platform will be hijacked, if they can’t squash him outright in the prelims. I tried to show that TPTB are not afraid of a Paul’s presidency, for it will play right into the meme. As a matter of fact, I would not be at all surprised to find out that Paul is THEIR man all along.

Why would I feel that, since so many seemingly smart people have totally swallowed the “Change” portion of his platform (they all want to bring us “change”, don’t they?). Why is it that these smart people, many I respect for their thinking ability, can be so gullible and sycophantic? How can these smart people (smarter than I) fall for ANOTHER “sElection” within the corrupt two-party system? How can these same smart people dog the bogusly single-minded, faux two party monstrosity and STILL believe that a solution could EVER come from that very system they disdain so much?

I didn’t want to call in to the show, for I felt I would be met with a knee-jerk negative reaction and that these “smart people” would not want to discuss or even entertain the facts I had to present. So, I fed some detail to Sista GP and Jackson Douglas via the chat window and hoped it would get some discussion as I listened in.

Man o man, did the fireworks light up the sky on the last show (from what I had heard, this was the best show I had ever been a part of or had ever heard on that channel).

To get the details, I cannot recommend enough to listen to this Guns and Butter Interview with Webster G Tarpley:

Critique Of Ron Paul’s Austerity Plan

Mr Tarpley evaluates Paul’s “Plan To Restore America” and does some math. It is here where the “smart people” on the show started to see where this old dumb-ass redneck might be on to something after-all (altho Kelso did his best to simply poo-poo the entire argument, by saying the numbers were off… its Paul’s numbers… heh).

In a nut-shell, Paul’s plan intends to cut $1TRILLION is spending. He tells us about how we need to cut the military and stop “policing the world” (which, of course, I agree with). We need to stop the illegal wars (duh?). We need to cut ALL foreign aid, including (and I applaud) aid to Israel.

Sounds good, huh?

But let’s discuss the OTHER things Paul wants to cut and compare some numbers so that you will understand precisely where I am coming from in my open disdain for the Paul platform (this was initially not the case… I actually liked most of his platform, until I get the numbers). To me, it is not the dollar amount that is the most critical for this explanation, but for us to look at the percentages of cuts to the social network, and THEN compare that to the overall dollar amount.

Cuts:

15% from military

40% from SCHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program)… insurance for poor kids

35% Medicaid ($276B to be cut by$95B)

63% cut to FoodStamps (cut $53B from the $83B line item)

(I broke this down for the listeners… assuming 50,000,000 Americans on food stamps equals $180/month/person… to be cut to $60/month/person… equals $15/week/person)

Do I have to ask you if you believe (even for a second) that you could feed yourself or child for $15/week?

Paul’s Plan Caters To The Rich and to speculators… kills off poor folk

Paul wants to keep the Bush Tax Cuts

Abolish Capital gains

Abolish Estate Tax

Cut corporate taxes from an estimated 35% (that many never pay to begin with) to 15%

Wants to entice corporations to “come back to America” and will not tax for their foreign profits

(All the above will NOT help a single poor person/family I know. It is simply tax relief for the rich and corporations, but not for individuals)

Cut Foreign Aid

We might initially all applaud the tactic of stopping ALL foreign aid, especially when it is related to continuing the support of the murderous apartheid Israel. But what if you knew that America provides about 57% of the aid that goes to feed starving children in the world? Is it the sign of a “Christian Nation” when we starve the children that need the help, when we are spending arguably $1TRILLION/year in military alone? Can we not see the ludicrousness in spending all that money to maim and kill innocent children and THEN to also take away what little support we offer for the starving and sick ones?

Deregulation/Privatization

We have gone thru a few decades of continual deregulation and privatization. To a point now that we are experiencing the repercussions of those decisions. Paul would have us believe that we need to dismantle even MORE regulations. To free up these criminal assholes to steal even MORE of your money.

It is the deregulation that led to this very financial crash and your newest Hopey Changer wants MORE.

Libertarian Versus Progressive

One of my favorite “progressive” writers is Stephen Lendman. He wrote an excellent piece today that delves into this very subject. Please read:

Ron Paul’s Anti-Progressive Agenda

That is an excellent article and approaches some of the same details I wrote of here.

Sure, he keeps talking about abolishing or reigning in The Fed. But in my opinion, The Fed is on its last legs, anyway. The entire system is being brought to a crash, after they squeeze as much out of it as they can. I have no doubt that ending The Fed could very well be part of the overall New World Order Agenda.

And don’t you worry your little self over those poor bankers who will seemingly take a hit when The Fed goes down and is replaced by some international banking cartel. Believe me, they will be eating just fine as you and your children suffer what could culminate in this.

A Bushie equals an Obama Maniac equals a Paul Bot.

’nuff said.

Let’s make a deal… let’s decide we are going to do things differently. Let’s decide that we cannot trust the reTHUGlican and demoRAT Parties. Let us never allow a R or D to be elected in office again. Something different is needed and us doing the same old same old is a sure sign we have become insane as a country.

You want something different, right? Some change?

How about you and I grow us some “Big Balls” and send these maniacs packing?

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What exactly are we doing??

I don’t pretend to understand Afghanistan, but I do know it’s a big, poor, backward Islamic country in Central Asia with all sorts of warring factions that have been at it for decades, or even centuries. I know that American soldiers have been fighting there for eight years and that the situation is still a huge mess.
And now President Barack Obama, after sending 21,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan in March, is set to announce next week that he’s going to send over another 30,000 or so, which will bring the total number of US troops in that big, poor, backward, bewildering, violent Islamic country to about 100,000.
I don’t know much about Afghanistan, but I’m pretty familiar with America, familiar enough to know that America is not up for this. I don’t know if it’s possible to pacify Afghanistan – or Pakistan, Iraq, Iran or anyplace else in the region. I don’t know if this can be done even with millions of American troops fighting for 100 years.
But I do know, as I think everyone knows or should know, that America is not ready to fight Islamism like it fought Nazism and Communism, which means that in its wars in the Middle East, America is destined to lose. The only question is how long these futile adventures will last.
Actually, America fought one war in the Middle East that was not seemingly futile, not at all – the one in 1991 against Iraq. That was a “necessary war,” to use Obama’s term for the mess in Afghanistan. Back then, Saddam Hussein invaded an American-allied country, he electrified the entire Middle East, he was bidding for control, direct or indirect, over two-thirds of the world’s oil – he had to be stopped and turned back.
So president George H.W. Bush set a very clear, reasonable goal – forcing Saddam out of Kuwait – then sent half a million soldiers to do the job, accomplished it in six weeks with minimal allied casualties, then brought the troops home, leaving Saddam and Saddamism in ruins. That was a so called “good war.” But Afghanistan? After 9/11, the Americans should have retaliated by carpet bombing select areas of that country, killing tens of thousands of people, terrorists and civilians both, to let al-Qaida, the Taliban and everyone in the Islamic world know that there is a terrible price to pay for attacking America and killing 3,000 innocents.
Instead, America decided to “transform” the region. The result is that another 5,000 Americans have been killed, soldiers this time, bombs are still going off every which way in Iraq, and now a new president, this one a liberal Democrat, not a Republican neocon, is driving deeper and deeper into Afghanistan.
And what about Pakistan? And Iran? Are they next? “All options are on the table,” says Obama.
AMERICA’S PROBLEM is that it still wants to be a military superpower but is no longer willing to pay the price in blood and money, so it tries to do it on the cheap and as painlessly as possible, and winds up fighting endless wars with impossible goals in distant, hellish places.
If the US were serious about taking on a military challenge of this scope, it would reinstate the draft. This isn’t Grenada they’re dealing with, this is an enemy with outposts across the Middle East, and parts of Africa too. And the US means to go to war against this enemy with a volunteer army that’s drawn from less than 1 percent of American families!
“The problem in this country with this issue [of Afghanistan],” said Democratic Congressman David Obey, “is that the only people who have to sacrifice are military families, and they’ve had to go to the well again and again and again and again, and everybody else is blithely unaffected by the war.”
The American people won’t stand for a military draft; it’s a taboo subject . They won’t even stand for a war tax; that’s another taboo. But neither will they stand for the idea that America is not a military superpower anymore. And nobody in that country, not even the messiah of change, has the guts to tell them that they can’t have it both ways.
So the US pretends it can fight World War III like Grenada, its army is so far beyond overextended that there isn’t a word for it, the country spends more and more billions of dollars that it doesn’t have, and this has been going on now for almost a decade.
At this point, is anybody confident that if and when the US gets out of Iraq, after all these years of horror and devastation, it will leave behind a stable, decent, more or less pro-American country?
Is anybody confident of such a happy end to the war in Afghanistan?
I don’t think so. I think if America knew right after 9/11 what it knows now, there is no way on earth it would have started these wars.
But now Obama wants more – not because he believes he can salvage the situation in Afghanistan, but because he’s afraid of what will happen if he abandons it to the likes of al-Qaida and the Taliban. Which is a very legitimate worry. I worry about that too.
But the only way the US can salvage Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Pakistan, or Iran, or any country in the Muslim world, is to fight like it fought every other major war in its history – with a draft, with war taxes, with a clear, reasonable goal and the readiness to pursue it to the end.
Is America up for that today? No, it’s not, I’m happy to say, because, like I said, even millions of American soldiers fighting for 100 years might not be enough to neutralize the threat of Islamism.
It’s fight or flight, which means the only choice left is flight. The US is not a military superpower anymore, and it’s just hurting itself and a lot of other people by pretending.
The time has come for America to wrap up these endless, failed third world wars.
It’s not going to be easy. And the worst part is that after Obama deepens America’s commitment with 30,000 new soldiers, getting out is going to be even harder.

JP/LARRY DERFNER

The Bush Doctrine (Obama’s Directive?)

h/t to ThinkProgress for this article that EJ Dionne penned at the Washington Post. Makes sense.

So are we getting that “change” we had “hope” for, yet?

Obama’s Bush Doctrine

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

In electing Barack Obama, the country traded the foreign policy of the second President Bush for the foreign policy of the first President Bush.

That is the meaning of Obama’s apparent decision to keep Robert Gates on as defense secretary and also to select Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.

With strong ties to the military and a carefully cultivated image of tough-mindedness, Clinton will protect the incoming president’s back from those on the right ready to pounce at any sign of what they see as weakness.

As for Gates, Obama has found the ideal figure to help him organize his planned withdrawal from Iraq, and to bless it.

What’s most striking about Obama’s approach to foreign policy is that he is less an idealist than a realist who would advance American interests by diplomacy, by working to improve the country’s image abroad, and by using military force prudently and cautiously.

This sounds a lot like the foreign policy of George H.W. Bush, and it makes perfect sense that Obama has had conversations with the senior Bush’s closest foreign policy adviser, Brent Scowcroft. Obama has drawn counsel from many in Scowcroft’s circle, and Gates himself was deputy national security adviser under Scowcroft.

The truth about Obama’s worldview was hidden in plain sight in his most politically consequential foreign policy speech. Antiwar Democrats cheered Obama for addressing a rally against the Iraq war in Chicago’s Federal Plaza on Oct. 2, 2002. His opposition to the war was a major asset in his nomination struggle with Clinton…

There was nothing “hidden in plain sight”. It was out in the open, all along (which gives Obama the right to say he didn’t lie). But there was a huge group pf people who were so anti-Iraq war that they were willing to listen to the anti-Iraq War rhetoric Obama used to defeat Clinton in the Primary and somehow close their ears and minds to the real militaristic agenda that Obama wants to continue.

And this isn’t just about pitting the “anti-war” folks against the “war” folks. I am not anti-war, but I am anti-criminal activity especially when it the criminals are the ones that control this country. I cannot stand the hypocrisy of it and even less, I cannot condone killing and maiming so many other people for these criminal reasons.

…In fact, Obama sounded a great deal like — Brent Scowcroft. In a widely noted 2002 op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, published six weeks before Obama gave his speech, Scowcroft warned that an invasion of Iraq “very likely would have to be followed by a large-scale, long-term military occupation.” Going to Iraq, Scowcroft said, would “divert us for some indefinite period from our war on terrorism,” and it could “destabilize Arab regimes in the region,” “stifle any cooperation on terrorism” and “even swell the ranks of the terrorists.” Clinton, who once said that “we have to be both internationalists and realists,” is a natural fit with the new Obama-Scowcroft-Gates establishment. In explaining the appeal of Clinton, a senior Obama adviser recently spoke several times of the president-elect’s respect for her “toughness” and described the practical reasons for choosing a figure who would have instant credibility around the world…

And yes, militarily, President Clinton was basically a continuance of Papa Bush’s policy. The big difference is that Papa Bush and Willy knew not to be as brazen about their actions. They had differing styles, but the policy continued and even got worse under Clinton. When Baby Bush createdfound his opportunity (911) to become brazen (harboring an astonishing 90%+ Approval rating… I can say I was part of those pesky 10%ers) he went fucking nuts.

…Obama’s national security choices are already causing grumbling from parts of the antiwar left, even if Obama made clear six years ago that while he was with them on Iraq, he was not one of them.

Ironically, Obama is likely to show more fidelity to George H.W. Bush’s approach to foreign affairs than did the former president’s own son. That’s change, maybe even change we can believe in, but it’s not the change so many expected

I agree, not many “expected” this kind of “change”, but that simply shows their blindness and readiness to follow any perceived Savior without even listening to what their Messiah is saying.

I knew that Barack Obama was not on the up in up when he flip-flopped on his Palestinian stance and became the Zionist regime’s bag man. The day I saw for myself that AIPAC owned him, I knew he had been bought. Since then, there have been countless issues in which the illusion was forced into the light, yet reality was never absorbed by his followers… the “Progressives”.

Yeah, right.

Sheople is more like it.

More Roaches Come Out Of Hiding: Robert Scheer Scrambles In The Light

Robert Scheer is a man whom I respect and have quoted here on several occasions. However, when he began jumping on the Obama bandwagon and began the offensive towards Ralph Nader regarding this subject, I knew that he, too, had drank the Messiah koolaid. Now, we have him coming out and almost admitting he made a mistake and at the very least does hold claim that he wanted to challenge Ralph to a debate over the issue of the bail out and Mr Obama’s stance.

Now we see what Ralph (and I) have been saying for so long to be absolute truth and now the roaches are running wild that the light has been turned on. From The Nation:

Return of the Wall Street Hustlers

by Robert Scheer

Maybe Ralph Nader was right in predicting that the same Wall Street hustlers would have a lock on our government no matter which major party won the election. I hate to admit it, since it wasn’t that long ago that I heatedly challenged Nader in a debate on this very point.

But how else is one to respond to Barack Obama’s picking the very folks who helped get us into this financial mess to now lead us out of it? Watching the president-elect’s Monday introduction of his economic team, my brother-in-law Pete said, “You can see the feathers coming out of their mouths” as the foxes were once again put in charge of the henhouse. He didn’t have time to expound on his point, having to get ready to go sort mail in his job at the post office, but he showed me a statement from Citigroup showing that the interest rate on Pete the Postal Worker’s credit card was 28.9 percent, an amount that all major religions would justly condemn as usurious.

Let me tell you how one should respond. You respond the same way you would if you happened to see a man break your neighbor’s window and begin hauling shit out of the house. Call the law, make a fuss, stop them with your own might, if needed. But DON’T allow them to continue stealing the man blind.

…Why then has he appointed the very people responsible for this disaster to now make it all better? Why not ask him? Heck, yes, it is time for the many of us who responded to his e-mails during the campaign to now challenge our e-mail buddy as to why he suddenly acts as if the interests of Wall Street and Main Street are one and the same.

You think, Robert? But before I let you go, answer me this? Where the hell have you been this entire run-up to the election? I’m sure that being on the Obama bus caused you to not see or hear this coming from a mile away, right? Sorry, dude. It ain’t that easy when you have such a large microphone. Get real. Admit you were and are wrong, then use that loud assed microphone to change it.

Mine just has a peep coming from it, but I have never stopped warning people. Maybe you should join those who were right all along?

B’Man’s Hypocrite Watch: The Obama Apologists As They Make Excuses

I have a lot of respect for certain progressive blogs and what they stood for (at least initially). But, there is no doubt that many of these well known sources fell quickly for the Obama rhetoric and basically made the bed they now are making us all sleep in. What upsets me is to watch these very same “progressive” entities back track and make excuses for Mr Obama… to the point of blaming the followers of those very blogs for not understanding what Barack was telling them. One, (a favorite of mine) Glenn Greenwald put up a post where he quotes various sources from these well known blogs and seems to be saying that Americans fell for their own imagined policy ideologies and that Barack Obama never said or mean the innuendo that got him elected by the Progressive movement in America.

From Glenn Greenwald:

Progressive complaints about Obama’s appointments

I’ve been genuinely mystified by the disappointment and surprise being expressed by many liberals over the fact that Obama’s most significant appointments thus far are composed of pure Beltway establishment figures drawn from the center-right of the Democratic Party and, probably once he names his Defense Secretary and CIA Director, even from the Bush administration — but not from the Left.\

Let me take a stab, here Glenn. Are you truly “mystified” that the progressives that were instrumental in electing Mr Obama are now upset that they are seeing the truth in “the most liberal Senator’s” stances? Are you truly baffled by what is evidently a mass illusion that Obama played off of, if his campaign wasn’t directly complicit in the hoodwinking of the Progressive Movement? The fact is that this Progressive (me) saw this long ago and has been shouting at the top of my lungs that people were hoodwinked by rhetoric.

What angers me most is that those whom I respected the most (you, in particular) didn’t raise any objections or even act as if there was something amiss. You, Glenn, have fed the monster as much as anyone has from your silence. So, for you to speak about it now has ZERO credibility and for you to blame Progressives is ludicrous and an assault on people like me.

The fact is that I called it long ago and the powerful bloggers missed the damned boat and are now swimming desperately to try and protect their little kingdom of followers. In this, I am totally disappointed in Digby as a source to explain:

None of them are liberals, but then Obama said repeatedly that he wasn’t ideological, that he cared about “what works.” I don’t know why people didn’t believe that. He’s a technocrat who wants to “solve problems” and “change politics.”  The first may actually end up producing the kind of ideological shift liberals desire simply because of the dire set of circumstances greeting the new administration. (Hooray for the new depression!) The second was always an empty fantasy — politics is just another word for human nature, and that hasn’t changed since we were dancing around the fire outside our caves.

Yeah, right. The man played us for chumps. Admit it and hold his fucking feet to the fire. The last thing we need is a technocrat who will continue the stupidest and most dangerous imperialistic strategy that has ever hijacked America. What we need is a TOTAL change from the same old white man Elitist power mongering. Unfortunately, the black man you elected works for them and it is high time you admit it. THEN and only then, can we move forward.

But you aren’t finished, Glenn. You just come out and say it:

So many progressives were misled about what Obama is and what he believes.  But it wasn’t Obama who misled them.  It was their own desires, their eagerness to see what they wanted to see rather than what reality offered.

Early on in the primary cycle, Markos Moultisas — in a post I recall vividly though can’t find — wisely urged that progressives refrain from endorsing or supporting any of the Democratic candidates unless they work for that support, make promises and concessions important to the progressive agenda, etc., lest progressives’ support end up being taken for granted.  But that advice was largely ignored.  For whatever reasons, highly influential progressive factions committed themselves early, loyally and enthusiastically to Obama even though he never even courted that support, let alone made commitments to secure it.

Bullshit, Dude. I call MAJOR bullshit. I listened to the man’s every speech and word. He knew precisely what he was doing by leading Progressives to believe that he was their man. This is the same with every god damned election and you know it. You are no fool, Glenn.

As for kos, you couldn’t have quoted a more unreliable source. Markos cares about power and his kingdom. He does not give two shits about the progressive Movement and his posts are clear indicators of such. His advice was ignored because look where he is now. The entire kos group was for Barack Obama long ago, including the little prick, Markos. How many times must one read how he belittled the very most progressive candidates running, insisting Barack is progressive and leaving the true progressives out to fend for themselves. How NONE of these power bloggers were outraged at the exclusion of the real Progressive voices in America from the debates.

Sorry, Glenn, but kos is the worst source to use to bolster your claim.

That may have been perfectly justified — by pragmatic calculations regarding electability, by excitement over his personality and charisma, by the belief that he was comparatively superior to the alternatives.  Still, the fact remains that progressives, throughout the year, largely lent Obama their loyal support in exchange for very little.  He never pretended that he wanted to implement or advance a progressive agenda.  And he certainly never did anything to suggest he would oppose or undermine the Democratic establishment that has exerted power in the party over the last two decades.

I can agree with the statement that Barack Obama never did “say” the things that Progressives took for granted. But, the liberal blogoshere jumped right in the defending of him… belittling the true progressives… causing the liberal world to fall for a bunch of fluffy bullshit. So, you are correct, he didn’t say it, but the mouthpieces you are quoting were all over the dude and making sure the meme was continued, true or not.

I saw it. I bitched here and at their sites (the ones I wanted to sign up for) and have been complaining about what we were electing all along. But did you? Did any of the progressive blogs that you now quote?

NO. THEY DID NOT.

It goes without saying that there will be Obama policies, both in the foreign policy and domestic realms, that are vastly superior to what we’ve seen the last eight years and to what we would have seen had McCain/Palin won.  And as the second-tier positions begin to fill out, there will probably be a handful of appointees who progressives consider to be one of their own.  And as Digby points out, the magnitude of the financial crisis may compel him to embrace policies that are deemed to be quite progressive (from massive stimulus packages and government intervention in the economy to a diminution of our foreign adventurism).

Really. It goes without saying? I call Bullshit, again, Glenn. What gives you the idea things will be “vastly superior” to what we had the last 8 years? Is it Barack’s Senatorial voting record? For I would gladly point out the consistency with voting FOR Bush’s wants and desires. Please take a little time at your blog to explain how it is so obvious by linking to the votes the man made as a Senator:

The point isn’t that this reality should just be passively accepted and nothing done about it.  The point is that for anything to be done about it, the reality needs to be accepted.  The campaign we began earlier this year with Accountability Now and are now vigorously developing and pursuing — to devote all resources and energies to defeating incumbents in primary challenges — is grounded in the premise that one’s political beliefs and principles will be ignored until there is a price to pay for ignoring them. Democrats don’t perceive there is a price to pay for ignoring progressives, and so they do. That isn’t surprising. What would be surprising is if, under those circumstances, anything else happened.

The point should be that many of you power bloggers are a part of the reason Barack Obama was elected as POTUS. It is because of the huge online influence of you people, ignoring the “centrist” reality of Obama and painting him as a liberal and progressive, when he is really neither. Maybe “Accountability Now” should have held this man “accountable” and offered truth to what his positions really is. But did you?

The answer is NO. You DID NOT.

What you DID Do is play the same old Two Party Paradigm game where we, as Americans, lose and the elite win. You, Jane Hamsher, Markos, John Amato, etc, etc, etc played right into the fucked up game. You fell for it just like the rest of the brainwashed bunch of Americans that were willing to elect personality and the “hope” for something different when, in fact, every bit of evidence showed this to be a falsehood. The evidence shows that we are heading for the same shit, just a little more suave delivery.

Good for you.

If you so desire to read the original article, go here.

Now They Are Seeing The Truth? A Little Late Now, Dumbass.

I still have several friends who are touting the new president and posting shit about him with abandon. They seem like they have seen Christ, Himself. But, even within the same posts, I see where the Savior has lied to get where he is and these posters seem totally oblivious to his flip-flopping -or- since he is the Messiah, they don’t care.

Let me tell you, all you Obama-ites, this man is NOT what you think he is. It is obvious and has been obvious since he started the run. He is no progressive and certainly not liberal and if you are and you voted for the man, then you voted for an illusion.

I will sit back and watch as those who fought most desperately for him, defending him against “me” (a realist, apparently) and my “unfair” attacks against the man (altho, I have only pointed out the hypocrisy and blindness of him and his followers). That hurts and no one likes to have their stupid ass brainwashing illuminated for the world to see. To make it worse, we have people like Markos attacking the people who were right about the issues, even though their man did not get elected, and it is obvious that the entire kos sheople group has become Obama Maniacs, even though the site was started under rationale to fight against wars and lies by the POTUS. Its the same for the fine people at Crooks and Liars. To be able to hob nob and rub elbows with the Elite, Amato and Moulaitas have succombed to the lies and bullshit.

I read this article from SFGate this morning and it reassures me that within a few months to a year, I will be perfectly able to say, “I told you so.”

Somehow there is no gratification in that, since most people are too far gone to even realize what the man has been saying is AGAINST their interests. Mostly because he was a black man… different than the power structure you are used to, but still beholden to the very same power structure.

I hold you Obama sheople accountable for the “change” that will NOT happen. You and your “hope” is full of shit.

Obama picks foxes to guard henhouse

By Robert Scheer

Maybe Ralph Nader was right in predicting that the same Wall Street hustlers would have a lock on our government no matter which major party won the election. I hate to admit it, since it wasn’t that long ago that I heatedly challenged Nader in a debate on this very point.

But how else is one to respond to Barack Obama’s picking the very folks who helped get us into this financial mess to now lead us out of it? Watching the president-elect’s Monday introduction of his economic team, my brother-in-law Pete said, “You can see the feathers coming out of their mouths” as the foxes were once again put in charge of the henhouse. He didn’t have time to expound on his point, having to get ready to go sort mail in his job at the post office, but he showed me a statement from Citigroup showing that the interest rate on Pete the Postal Worker’s credit card was 28.9 percent, an amount that all major religions would justly condemn as usurious.

Moments earlier, Obama had put his seal of approval on the Citigroup bailout, which his new economic team, led by protégés of Citigroup Executive Committee Chairman Robert Rubin, enthusiastically endorsed. A bailout that brings to $45 billion the taxpayer money thrown at Citigroup and the guarantee of $306 billion for the bank’s “toxic securities” that would have been illegal if not for changes in the law that Citigroup secured with the decisive help of Rubin and Lawrence Summers, the man who replaced him as Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration.

As Summers stayed on to ensure passage of deregulatory laws that enabled enormous banking greed, Rubin was rewarded with a $15 million-a-year executive position at Citigroup, a job that only got more lucrative as the bank went from one disaster, beginning with its involvement with Enron in which Rubin played an active role, to its huge role in the mortgage debacle. It is widely acknowledged that Citigroup fell victim to a merger mania, which Rubin and Summers made legal during their tenure at Treasury.

Yet despite that dismal record of dismantling sound regulation, Summers has been picked by Obama to be the top White House economic adviser and another Rubin disciple, Timothy Geithner, is the new Treasury secretary. Geithner, thanks in part to the strong recommendation of Rubin, had been appointed chairman of the New York Federal Reserve Bank after working for Rubin and Summers during the Clinton years. Once at the New York Fed, he was the main government official charged with regulating Citigroup, a task at which he obviously failed. Yet over the weekend, it was Geithner who hammered out the Citigroup bailout deal with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and a very actively involved Rubin.

As the Washington Post reported, Paulson had indicated last week that no further bailouts were planned before the new administration took office until “Rubin, an old colleague from Goldman Sachs, told Paulson in phone calls that the government had to act.” Rubin conceded in an interview with the Post that he had played a key role in the politics of the bailout.

This outrageous conflict of interest in which Rubin gets to exploit his ties to both the outgoing and incoming administrations was best described by Washington Post writer Steven Pearlstein: “The ultimate irony, of course, is that just as Rubin and Co. at Citi were being bailed out by the Bush Administration, President-elect Barack Obama was getting set to announce a new economic team drawn almost entirely from Rubin acolytes.”

As opposed to the far tougher deal negotiated on the bailout of AIG, the arrangement with Citigroup leaves the executives, including Rubin, who brought Citigroup to the brink of ruin, still in charge. Nor is there any guarantee of the value of the mortgage bundles that taxpayers will be guaranteeing. That is because, as candidate Obama clearly stated in his major economics address back in March, the deregulation pushed though during the Clinton years ended transparency in banking.

Why then has he appointed the very people responsible for this disaster to now make it all better? Why not ask him? Heck, yes, it is time for the many of us who responded to his e-mails during the campaign to now challenge our e-mail buddy as to why he suddenly acts as if the interests of Wall Street and Main Street are one and the same.

E-mail: rscheer@truthdig.com

Oh please, Robert. The answer is that he duped you all, even though he was saying it all along. The “Progressives” that got him elected have become complacent and stupid, nor have they been paying attention.

Change? Please Point Out The Truth In The Obama Rhetoric

People are hearing me spout off about the lack of change and the hoodwinking the Elite have perpetrated on us again. Many probably think I am just anti-Obama or racist or whatever. Nothing could be further from the truth. I ‘hope’ something good comes, but I would be a damned liar if I said that the things done and people appointed make me feel like any “change” is coming. Even Clinton’s foreign policy team asked the question and the said, “”This isn’t lightly flavored with Clintons. This is all Clintons, all the time.”

Boys and girls enamored with Barack Obama. This is my point. This isn’t anti-Obama, but anti-System. Obama IS the system. You have been duped to believe the “change” montra through his immaculate speech and way he carries himself. He is an impressive individual, I agree.

However, he is owned and you were duped. The most important things that NEED changing are not likely to happen and then, within two years (longer for the truly intoxicated) you will see it and then we go again to the elections where the reTHUGlican Party is re-made and they force another ownned clown down your throats.

I’m headed out the door for a long day of travel, but you really need to read this Jeremy Scahill article I saw at Alternet this morning for a pretty good run-down of the “change” (or lack of) we have coming.

The bamboozlement continues:

This is Change? 20 Hawks, Clintonites and Neocons to Watch for in Obama’s White House

By Jeremy Scahill, AlterNet.

U.S. policy is not about one individual, and no matter how much faith people place in President-elect Barack Obama, the policies he enacts will be fruit of a tree with many roots. Among them: his personal politics and views, the disastrous realities his administration will inherit, and, of course, unpredictable future crises. But the best immediate indicator of what an Obama administration might look like can be found in the people he surrounds himself with and who he appoints to his Cabinet. And, frankly, when it comes to foreign policy, it is not looking good.

Obama has a momentous opportunity to do what he repeatedly promised over the course of his campaign: bring actual change. But the more we learn about who Obama is considering for top positions in his administration, the more his inner circle resembles a staff reunion of President Bill Clinton’s White House. Although Obama brought some progressives on board early in his campaign, his foreign policy team is now dominated by the hawkish, old-guard Democrats of the 1990s. This has been particularly true since Hillary Clinton conceded defeat in the Democratic primary, freeing many of her top advisors to join Obama’s team.

“What happened to all this talk about change?” a member of the Clinton foreign policy team recently asked the Washington Post. “This isn’t lightly flavored with Clintons. This is all Clintons, all the time.”

Amid the euphoria over Obama’s election and the end of the Bush era, it is critical to recall what 1990s U.S. foreign policy actually looked like. Bill Clinton’s  boiled down to a one-two punch from the hidden hand of the free market, backed up by the iron fist of U.S. militarism. Clinton took office and almost immediately bombed Iraq (ostensibly in retaliation for an alleged plot by Saddam Hussein to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush). He presided over a ruthless regime of economic sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and under the guise of the so-called No-Fly Zones in northern and southern Iraq, authorized the longest sustained U.S. bombing campaign since Vietnam.

Under Clinton, Yugoslavia was bombed and dismantled as part of what Noam Chomsky described as the “New Military Humanism.” Sudan and Afghanistan were attacked, Haiti was destabilized and “free trade” deals like the North America Free Trade Agreement and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade radically escalated the spread of corporate-dominated globalization that hurt U.S. workers and devastated developing countries. Clinton accelerated the militarization of the so-called War on Drugs in Central and Latin America and supported privatization of U.S. military operations, giving lucrative contracts to Halliburton and other war contractors. Meanwhile, U.S. weapons sales to countries like Turkey and Indonesia aided genocidal campaigns against the Kurds and the East Timorese.

The prospect of Obama’s foreign policy being, at least in part, an extension of the Clinton Doctrine is real. Even more disturbing, several of the individuals at the center of Obama’s transition and emerging foreign policy teams were top players in creating and implementing foreign policies that would pave the way for projects eventually carried out under the Bush/Cheney administration. With their assistance, Obama has already charted out several hawkish stances. Among them:

– His plan to escalate the war in Afghanistan;

– An Iraq plan that could turn into a downsized and rebranded occupation that keeps U.S. forces in Iraq for the foreseeable future;

– His labeling of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a “terrorist organization;”

– His pledge to use unilateral force inside of Pakistan to defend U.S. interests;

– His position, presented before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), that Jerusalem “must remain undivided” — a remark that infuriated Palestinian officials and which he later attempted to reframe;

– His plan to continue the War on Drugs, a backdoor U.S. counterinsurgency campaign in Central and Latin America;

– His refusal to “rule out” using Blackwater and other armed private forces in U.S. war zones, despite previously introducing legislation to regulate these companies and bring them under U.S. law.

Obama did not arrive at these positions in a vacuum. They were carefully crafted in consultation with his foreign policy team. While the verdict is still out on a few people, many members of his inner foreign policy circle — including some who have received or are bound to receive Cabinet posts — supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Some promoted the myth that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. A few have worked with the neoconservative Project for the New American Century, whose radical agenda was adopted by the Bush/Cheney administration. And most have proven track records of supporting or implementing militaristic, offensive U.S. foreign policy. “After a masterful campaign, Barack Obama seems headed toward some fateful mistakes as he assembles his administration by heeding the advice of Washington’s Democratic insider community, a collective group that represents little ‘change you can believe in,’” notes veteran journalist Robert Parry, the former Associated Press and Newsweek reporter who broke many of the stories in the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s…

Read the entire article here. Call me when you wake up and finally get pissed that they fucked your mind AGAIN.

Obama Wins: America Has Been Snookered Again

Is it true that no one remembered Ralph Nader or any of the third party candidates yesterday or could it be that the corporate MSM and the Corporately funded and dictatorial presidential debate committee basically kept the entire third party candidates out of the light of day? With 22 months of constant 2 Party brainwashing, I am not surprised that Ralph Nader didn’t achieve many votes (he got mine and my wife’s and several people around here).

This is my bitch. The only way to turn it around is for people like me (and I had hoped a few other rednecks) to get as verbal as I did to overcome the absolutely, purposeful silence the Big Money media clowns and elite made happen.

Surely you understand this very simple notion.

Even in my minor way, locally, I proved it. When I approach people, asking them what they need and desire for their lives as a Tennessean (and a few others) they always tell me… then I can show them the issues that all three were addressing and in each and every instance, Nader would have been the pick.

However, without very loud (and rich) voices helping me I can only reach so many people.

The fact is the the corporations own and run this country, including the media and people’s minds. You may not agree, but there is nothing else that can explain why so many people feel like they do in that video posted here yesterday. It takes a brain-washing to make people believe that bullshit they were spouting.

There are “hopes” that Obama will be the best president we have ever seen?

lol

That takes an awful lot of “hope” in lieu of the things the man has said out of his own mouth. No, I’m not talking about the fuzzy warm nothingness of “hope” and “change”. I am talking about the real issues facing us. Most importantly the very basis for all the problems we have, our Imperialism. He will continue that and so the demise will continue. It is this very point that people lost sight of and it is this point that will likely cause the continued ruination of our wonderful country.

Like I have said countless times, Obama was a shoo in. It was always meant to be. McCain is an ignorant old flip-flopping, war-mongering, Bush-esque liar that no one in their right mind would want to elect, especially after picking Palin. Obama has been groomed for this position and if Americans were stupid enough, McCain would do. It is my opinion that Obama was the pick from the beginning (or Clinton, neither would be different except for owning a pussy).

The people in this country are so ignorant to truth.

We are so pissed off after 8 years of the neocon bullshit that either would beat out the neocon McCain (he ain’t no ‘Maverick”). But “they” knew this all along.

We are ready for “change” and the MSM gave us the image of it. Will Obama now change and do the shit that is truly needed? That, I doubt very seriously, but I will say it is possible. The difference with Nader is that he has spent 40 years getting shit done. He said very plainly and openly what he wanted to achieve, without the little fluffy bullshit words. And ending the Empire is Number 1.

But mark my words (and I have been right many more times in my life than wrong), the Empire will continue. The Corporate control will continue. We will not have Universal healthcare, unless it is ramrodded through Congress, for Obama is too much a corporate shill to endorse it (can’t give up that Insurance money). But you know that ain’t gonna happen, either.

Best president. Yeah, I “hope” so, but I sure as hell won’t hold my breath.

Hope Springs Eternal- But Not When Reality Consumes It Daily

During your visit to Israel.. you scheduled a mere 45 minutes of your time for Palestinians’

By Ralph Nader

Dear Senator Obama:

In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words “hope and change,” “change and hope” have been your trademark declarations. Yet there is an asymmetry between those objectives and your political character that succumbs to contrary centers of power that want not “hope and change” but the continuation of the power-entrenched status quo.

Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart. Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you are their man?

To advance change and hope, the presidential persona requires character, courage, integrity‹not expediency, accommodation and short-range opportunism. Take, for example, your transformation from an articulate defender of Palestinian rights in Chicago before your run for the U.S. Senate to an acolyte, a dittoman for the hard-line AIPAC lobby, which bolsters the militaristic oppression, occupation, blockage, colonization and land-water seizures over the years of the Palestinian peoples and their shrunken territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Eric Alterman summarized numerous polls in a December 2007 issue of The Nation magazine showing that AIPAC policies are opposed by a majority of Jewish-Americans.

You know quite well that only when the U.S. Government supports the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, that years ago worked out a detailed two-state solution (which is supported by a majority of Israelis and Palestinians), will there be a chance for a peaceful resolution of this 60-year plus conflict. Yet you align yourself with the hard-liners, so much so that in your infamous, demeaning speech to the AIPAC convention right after you gained the nomination of the Democratic Party, you supported an undivided Jerusalem, and opposed negotiations with Hamas, the elected government in Gaza. Once again, you ignored the will of the Israeli people who, in a March 1, 2008 poll by the respected newspaper Haaretz, showed that 64% of Israelis favored direct negotiations with Hamas. Siding with the AIPAC hard-liners is what one of the many leading Palestinians advocating dialogue and peace with the Israeli people was describing when he wrote Anti-semitism today is the persecution of Palestinian society by the Israeli state.

During your visit to Israel this summer, you scheduled a mere 45 minutes of your time for Palestinians with no news conference, and no visit to Palestinian refugee camps that would have focused the media on the brutalization of the Palestinians. Your trip supported the illegal, cruel blockade of Gaza in defiance of international law and the United Nations charter. You focused on southern Israeli casualties which during the past year have totaled one civilian casualty to every 400 Palestinian casualties on the Gaza side. Instead of a statesmanship that decried all violence and its replacement with acceptance of the Arab League’s 2002 proposal to permit a viable Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in return for full economic and diplomatic relations between Arab countries and Israel, you played the role of a cheap politician, leaving the area and Palestinians with the feeling of much shock and little awe.

David Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, described your trip succinctly: There was almost a willful display of indifference to the fact that there are two narratives here. This could serve him well as a candidate, but not as a President.

Palestinian American commentator, Ali Abunimah, noted that Obama did not utter a single criticism of Israel, of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians. …Even the Bush administration recently criticized Israeli’s use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians [see www.atfl.org for elaboration]. But Obama defended Israeli’s assault on Lebanon as an exercise of its legitimate right to defend itself.

In numerous columns Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, strongly criticized the Israeli government’s assault on civilians in Gaza, including attacks on the heart of a crowded refugee camps with horrible bloodshed in early 2008.

Israeli writer and peace advocate, Uri Avnery, described Obama’s appearance before AIPAC as one that broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning, adding that Obama is prepared to sacrifice the most basic American interests. After all, the US has a vital interest in achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace that will allow it to find ways to the hearts of the Arab masses from Iraq to Morocco. Obama has harmed his image in the Muslim world and mortgaged his future, if and when he is elected president, he said, adding, “Of one thing I am certain: Obama’s declarations at the AIPAC conference are very, very bad for peace. And what is bad for peace is bad for Israel, bad for the world and bad for the Palestinian people.

A further illustration of your deficiency of character is the way you turned your back on the Muslim-Americans in this country. You refused to send surrogates to speak to voters at their events. Having visited numerous churches and synagogues, you refused to visit a single Mosque in America. Even George W. Bush visited the Grand Mosque in Washington D.C. after 9/11 to express proper sentiments of tolerance before a frightened major religious group of innocents.

Although the New York Times published a major article on June 24, 2008 titled ‘Muslim Voters Detect a Snub from Obama’ (by Andrea Elliott), citing examples of your aversion to these Americans who come from all walks of life, who serve in the armed forces and who work to live the American dream. Three days earlier the International Herald Tribune published an article by Roger Cohen titled ‘Why Obama Should Visit a Mosque.’ None of these comments and reports change your political bigotry against Muslim-Americans, even though your father was a Muslim from Kenya.

Perhaps nothing illustrated your utter lack of political courage or even the mildest version of this trait than your surrendering to demands of the hard-liners to prohibit former president Jimmy Carter from speaking at the Democratic National Convention. This is a tradition for former presidents and one accorded in prime time to Bill Clinton this year.

Here was a President who negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt, but his recent book pressing the dominant Israeli superpower to avoid Apartheid of the Palestinians and make peace was all that it took to sideline him. Instead of an important address to the nation by Jimmy Carter on this critical international problem, he was relegated to a stroll across the stage to ‘tumultuous applause,’ following a showing of a film about the Carter Center’s post-Katrina work. Shame on you, Barack Obama!

But then your shameful behavior has extended to many other areas of American life. (See the factual analysis by my running mate, Matt Gonzalez, on www.votenader.org). You have turned your back on the 100-million poor Americans composed of poor whites, African-Americans, and Latinos. You always mention helping the ‘middle class’ but you omit, repeatedly, mention of the ‘poor’ in America.

Should you be elected President, it must be more than an unprecedented upward career move following a brilliantly unprincipled campaign that spoke ‘change’ yet demonstrated actual obeisance to the concentration power of the ‘corporate supremacists.’ It must be about shifting the power from the few to the many. It must be a White House presided over by a black man who does not turn his back on the downtrodden here and abroad but challenges the forces of greed, dictatorial control of labor, consumers and taxpayers, and the militarization of foreign policy. It must be a White House that is transforming of American politics‹opening it up to the public funding of elections (through voluntary approaches)‹and allowing smaller candidates to have a chance to be heard on debates and in the fullness of their now restricted civil liberties. Call it a competitive democracy.

Your presidential campaign again and again has demonstrated cowardly stands. “Hope” some say springs eternal. But not when “reality” consumes it daily.

Sincerely,

Ralph Nader

How President John McCain Became President

How we got George Bush

It’s no secret – the election was a fraud

George Bush has shredded the Constitution; bankrupted the country; blackened our reputation as a people; and lied us into an illegal, immoral, self-destructive military operation in Iraq.

And he was never elected president.

Not in 2000. Not in 2004.

And the news media, Congress, and the Democratic Party have never even attempted to do anything about it.

If you’re living in America, that’s the kind of country you’re living in now.

It’s not a question of when or if we’ll lose our democracy, it’s been gone a long time. The only question is what we’re going to do to get it back.

h/t BrassCheckTV

I don’t believe it really matters which of the Big Two win, the result is basically the same. More military, more war, more Imperialism, more Big Money control. But, I also believe that this man that testified knows what he is talking about and that hsi story has been totally squashed.

That tells me that the Dems are complicit. If so, it truly doesn’t matter who wins next week.

40 years… and still protesting the same friggin’ things!!

 

Speak Your Peace

In 1968, people were willing to take to the streets to tell the country’s leaders, and Presidential candidates, how they felt about the war in Vietnam, civil rights and other key issues. Now, it’s time to channel that same spirit of activism and “Speak Your Peace” by voicing your opinion on the issues that are most important to you, getting those around you to register to vote, advocating for voter protection initiatives and most importantly, exercising your right to vote this Nov. 4th and in every election!!

http://prod.takepart.com/social_network/action/chicago10/

The Documentary Chicago 10 is well worth the watching– I saw it on PBS Independent Lens. Powerful… and memorable, moving… and looking at times I lived through.

 

Surely your out after strike 4… right?

 Strike four for Palin on V.P. description

[there is a video of this entire thing but I can't get it uploaded...hint B'man]

The governor is still clueless about what the vice president does

CAMPAIGN COMMENT

By Keith Olbermann

Anchor, ‘Countdown’ msnbc.com updated 5:12 p.m. ET, Tues., Oct. 21, 2008

 

 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/27313586#27313586

I suggested last night that until the election, we could very easily wind up doing a Special Comment here every show.

It was in turn suggested to me that while events may warrant them, this would certainly render that word “Special” for two weeks anyway inoperative.

Good point. So tonight, as promised, a Campaign Comment on the continuing adventures of Governor Sarah Palin in the big leagues or “Are You Smarter Than A Third Grader.”

Q: Finally governor we’ve been trying to engage some local grade schoolers for the last few elections. We do a feature called ‘questions from the third grade.’ Brandon Garcia wants to know, “What does the Vice President do?”

PALIN: Aw, that’s something that Piper would ask me, as a second grader, also. That’s a great question, Brandon, and a Vice President has a really great job, because not only are they there to support the President agenda, they’re like a team member, the teammate to that President. But also, they’re in charge of the United States Senate, so if they want to they can really get in there with the Senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom. And it’s a great job and I look forward to having that job.

Oh! I’m so sorry, Governor! The correct answer can be found in the Constitution of the United States.

Article One, Section Three— “The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.” So, the Vice President is not in charge of Jack, Governor, let alone in charge of the Senate. And you are not smarter than a third-grader.

On the one level it is hilarious and entertaining that the Republican nominee cannot correctly answer the question “What Does The Vice President Do?” I mean, that first reference to the Vice President comes not 600 words into the Constitution. And the other meaty references are pretty simple:

Article Two, Section One —”In case of the removal of the President from Office, or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President.”

There’s the 20th Amendment— you’re done on January 20th and the 25th Amendment —if the President’s incapacitated, you’re the acting Pres. It’s so simple, really, one could memorize those four points pretty easily wouldn’t take long.

Brandon Garcia could do it in the third grade. So, on the one level, this is pretty damn silly. The Sarah Palin material, as Tina Fey might be able to say, just writes itself. As it does, it makes stupid mistakes, but it still writes itself.

Except there are two very serious aspects to this. Governor, do you really think you’d be “in charge of the United States Senate?” Do you really want to suggest that you think if you “want to” you “can really get in there with the Senators and make a lot of good policy changes?”

We’re just wrapping up eight years of a Vice President who had no clue what his damned job consisted of, couldn’t even correctly find his governmental branch with both hands.

The last thing anybody in this country wants, Republican or Democrat, is another Buccaneer in there, making it up as they go along, and, in your case, presuming you can stride in to the Senate and change policy if you want to! Besides which, Governor, exactly how on earth could you not have the correct answer by now?

It’s not like this is the first time you’ve been asked about the Vice Presidency and gone all Miss South Carolina on us.

 

LARRY KUDLOW: Is this police-flap state investigation going to disqualify you from becoming Senator McCain’s vice presidential candidate?

PALIN: As for that VP talk all the time, I’ll tell you, I still can’t answer that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the VP does every day? I’m used to being very productive and working real hard in an administration. We want to make sure that that VP slot would be a fruitful type of position, especially for Alaskans and for the things that we’re trying to accomplish up here for the rest of the U.S., before I can even start addressing that question.

That was on the 31st of July on CNBC, Governor. Even giving you the biggest benefit of the doubt, that your later claim that that was just a lame attempt at a joke you couldn’t come up with the correct job description on the second try? What am I saying? The third try!

 

GWEN IFILL (OCTOBER 2, 2008): Governor, you said in July that someone would have to explain to you exactly what it is the vice president does every day.

PALIN: In my comment there, it was a lame attempt at a joke and yours was a lame attempt at a joke, too, I guess, because nobody got it…Of course we know what a vice president does. And that’s not only to preside over the Senate and will take that position very seriously also. I’m thankful that the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president if that vice president so chose to exert it in working with the Senate and making sure that we are supportive of the president’s policies and making sure too that our president understands what our strengths are.

No! No, Governor, the Constitution does not allow “a bit more authority” “if the vice president so chose to exert it in working with the Senate…” You would not be some kind of Senatorial Hall Monitor. You would not be a Veto, or a Censor, or a Balance.

And even if you think you would somehow obtain those powers from somebody, don’t pretend the Constitution will give them to you!

PALIN: That thankfully, our founders were wise enough to say, we have this position and it’s Constitutional. Vice presidents will be able to be not only the position flexible, but it’s going to be sort of those other duties as assigned by the president. It’s a simple thing. I don’t think that was a gaff at all in stating what the truth is. And that is we’ve got flexibility in the position. The president will be directing in a lot of respects what the vice president does. The vice president, of course, is not a member—or a part of the legislative branch, except to oversee the Senate. That alone provides a tremendous amount of flexibility and authority if that vice president so chose to use it.

You’re wrong! You’ve memorized everything else, Governor. You couldn’t memorize the job description in three months? Four tries? I mean, I’d like my President and Vice President to have memorized the Constitution, and abide by it. Or at least, I’d like them to know more about the Constitution than I do. Or than Brandon Garcia does. Maybe I’m raising the bar too high but at least wait until you achieve office before trying to seize power extra-Constitutionally!

“The founders” were not George Bush and Dick Cheney! Gimme something to work with here, Governor or go home! And don’t forget to take your lovely parting gifts with you. Including the Home Version of The Vice President Game.

 

 

Shall we oust the electorial college?

“In 2000, Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore, seen here campaigning in Miami Beach, won more votes nationwide than his opponent, George W. Bush.”

MIT: 10/08

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Is the Electoral College, America’s quirky system of choosing its presidents, on its way to extinction?

Americans do not vote directly for president. They vote for slates of electors in each state.

Collectively, the electors are called the Electoral College. Each state gets a number of electors equal to its membership in the House and Senate. (The District of Columbia gets three.)

Minnesota, for instance, gets 10 electors. If Republican candidate John McCain wins the most votes in Minnesota on Nov. 4, the slate of 10 Minnesota McCain electors is chosen.

All but two states (Maine and Nebraska) use the winner-take-all system. This means that the candidate who gets the most popular votes in a state gets all of its electoral votes.

The next president will be the candidate who gets at least 270 of the total 538 electors.

The system can be idiosyncratic. Four times in the nation’s history, the winner of the largest number of popular votes did not win the largest number of electoral votes, and therefore did not become president.

It happened in 2000, when Al Gore got more popular votes, but lost the election to George W. Bush.

It also happened in:

1824, when popular vote winner Andrew Jackson lost the presidency to John Quincy Adams.

1876, when Samuel Tilden lost to Rutherford B. Hayes.

And 1888, when Grover Cleveland lost to Benjamin Harrison.

A relic of the early republic
The system is a relic of the early days of the republic when electors were supposed to be independent agents exercising their judgment in choosing a presidential candidate from a list of several contenders.

Today, electors are party loyalists who almost always vote for their party’s nominee.

On Friday, a group of legal scholars, political scientists, and systems specialists gathered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a conference on the Electoral College. Their focus? How to better engineer the system.

Scrapping the electoral vote system would likely require a constitutional amendment since the Constitution itself created the electoral system (Article II, section 1).

But a group called National Popular Vote says it has found another way.

So far, it has persuaded four Democratic-controlled legislatures (in Maryland, Illinois, Hawaii, and New Jersey) to pass a law which commits those states to give their electoral votes to whomever wins the national popular vote.

The accord takes effect once states with a combined 270 electoral votes agree to it.

The states would pledge to award their electoral votes to the popular vote winner even if he or she had not been the majority choice in their state.

Take Maryland as an example. Say 80 percent of voters in that state cast their ballots for the Democratic presidential candidate. But if a Republican candidate wins the national popular vote, under the state law, Maryland’s 10 electoral votes would go to that candidate.

She stands before the powder keg with a match,,,

Chicago Sun-Times 10/08

Sarah’s Silent says much!

‘South Pacific” is a morality play for our time. Sarah Palin is the Ensign Nellie Forbush — an All-American girl as racist, this time a racist with her eye on the White House. She can stir up crowds to shout “Kill him!” at the mention of the presidential candidate of the other party a couple of weeks before the national election.

In the restaurant, before I walked over to the theater, all the conversations were about the election — New Yorkers speak loudly in their noisy city for fear they will not be heard. The common opinion was that they didn’t know enough about Barack Obama to make a decision about him — as if there were not two books about his life. That plea implies that they don’t know enough about him to accept his strange name or his skin color. It is, of course, impossible that they could ever know enough. He isn’t one of us.

It is all part of a plan cooked up by John McCain to turn the major issue in the election from the economy to the character of the Democratic candidate. At this stage of the contest, I don’t think “kitchen-sink strategy” (as in “we’ll throw the kitchen sink at him”) will change the outcome of the election. I don’t believe the polls that suggest a possible Obama landslide. Playing the race card explicitly merely guarantees what I have thought from the beginning — racism in this country precludes the possibility of a sepia-colored man becoming president. However, the last-ditch attack on him guarantees that McCain and Palin will be blamed as the candidates who were content to hear crowds calling for the death of Obama. Their silence regarding standing before people calling for the ‘death, lynching…of ”… and the calling Obama a “traitor”– tells much about them both internally.

Ensign Nellie Forbush (the incomparable Kelli O’Hara) finds redemption at the end of South Pacific. She turns to her true love and escapes the obligation to wait for the enchanted evening on which he might suddenly might appear across a crowded room. For Sarah Palin, such an easy escape hardly seems possible. How can she ever justify silence when she heard a cry for lynching? To provoke a racist– to allow the flame to be fanned– to be a part of what all America fears down deep because of the underbelly of our Nation, there are no words for her. No, none at all.

McCain increasingly acts like an angry, befuddled cancer survivor and treats his rival like a field n—– who is just barely human. He does not talk to him, will not shake hands with him, will not even look at him, walks behind him when he is speaking to distract the audience. Obama’s languid, legs-crossed security on the bar stool must infuriate McCain all the more. Who does he think he is? He has no right to run for president and McCain does. Has not he served his country all his life? Has not he traveled the whole world? Has not he been involved in every major event of the last four decades? Does he not know everyone who is worth knowing? And what does his rival have to offer besides intolerable arrogance? Black skin and glib language? Is not Obama the one who is playing the race card? Therefore he must be exposed as what he is — a pushy fellow with a glib tongue who has no right to challenge a great American like John McCain.

McCain has little time left. He has been been cheated in other elections. Troubled and distracted, he has forgotten his strong words about honor. When one is faced with a shallow man who is running on the basis of his skin color, one can hardly worry about personal honor.

Now the furies are gathering.