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November follies - 2008
The Aftermath: begins a mere day after. See Obama
picks pro-Israel hardliner for top post
We deal here mostly with the good-cop half of THE
WAR PARTY. Because dem followers are hooked on the D party,
like domestic abuse victims or druggies. We encourage
you to read up on those selected by the media and the party
apparatus to 'represent the people' [so say corporate-owned
party bosses and talking heads].
In order: General commentary |
on Hillary Clinton |
on Barak Obama |
on John MaCain | on Green Party
- The Debate in Nashville
- Imbecilic Tedium
"...[Obama] has no detectable commitment to change and no new ideas. Neither does McCain. Yet the post-debate panelists mostly claimed the Town Hall Meeting an absorbing affair, rich in content."
[How anyone can stomoach this is beyond me.]
- Black
Friday October 5, 2008: Dems murder The Great Society
"This was the largest single act of class warfare in
the modern history of this country" ~Dennis Kucinich
- Election
Madness, by Howard Zinn
"...Let's remember that even when there is a
"better" candidate (yes, better Roosevelt than
Hoover, better anyone than George Bush), that difference
will not mean anything unless the power of the people
asserts itself in ways that the occupant of the White
House will find it dangerous to ignore. ..."
- Atrocity-Linked U.S. Officials Advising Democratic, GOP Presidential
Frontrunners
Democracy Now!
Independent journalist Allan Nairn and American Conservative correspondent Kelley Beaucar Vlahos discuss a little-addressed facet of the 2008 campaign: many of the top advisers to leading presidential candidates are ex-U.S. officials involved in atrocities around the world
...
- AIPAC
control of congress - watch the excellent video
- The illusion of choice in US
elections: Does it herald the dissolution of these United States of America?
Mazin Qumsiyeh
"The 2008 presidential elections were likened to the World Wrestling Federation matches: take time and energy but obviously fixed/staged. A more apt analogy would go beyond these elections: the whole political system in the US is a theater play with predictable script but different actors. Yet, the damage caused by elected officials is getting so severe that another four years may finish off the experiment that is otherwise known as the USA (whether those are of a Clinton, McCain, Obama, or Romney administration).
Candidates of both parties are allowed to advance to final rounds whether in congressional or presidential elections only if they are cleared by the real powers to be. This is evident from issues they can and cannot tackle.
...
- Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early
!!!
- An
Election Without Meaning
We must face the fact that the US government’s primary
mission is to protect the wealthy and insure capital
expansion worldwide. The US military—spending more than
the rest of the militaries of the world combined—is the
muscle behind this protect-capital-at-all-costs agenda,
and will be used against the American people if deemed
necessary to support the mission. ...
- Why do McCain, Obama and Clinton Want a Bigger Military?
Institute for Public Accuracy
"Obama and Clinton have both talked about cutting some wasteful systems but both have also talked about increasing the size of the military -- a far more costly endeavor. So any of those savings will be dwarfed by troop increases. Obama wants to increase the size of the military by about 90,000 troops. McCain wants 150,000 additional troops."
...
- Ali
Abunimah discusses US presidential candidates
Democracy Now
"Democracy Now! took a look at where the Republican and Democratic presidential contenders stand on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
... [Ali on Obama:] I don't know if they've been asked in a debate, but whenever they have been asked, they have all gone out of their way to express full support for what Israel is doing. Barack Obama is not distinguished from the rest of the pack, except by for how far he has moved to try to appease AIPAC and pro-Israel movements.
... [Ali on Clinton:] You'll remember, when she spoke in the 1990s in favor of a Palestinian state, since then she has become one of the most anti-Palestinian hawks.
..."
- Hot Democratic Properties
Counter Punch
"If Hillary wins the nomination Republicans will once again plow through the vast acreage of questionable deals and evasive responses developed by the Clintons down the years, the latest ones, such as Bill's financial cavortings with the Canadian mining entrepreneur, still as fragrant as freshly turned manure.
Barack Obama has already felt the hot breath of investigators for his property deal in 2005 on the south side of Chicago. ... In 2005 Obama bought a Georgian mansion in Chicago's elite Kenwood neighborhood. He paid $1.65 million for it. The same day Rita Rezko, the wife of Chicago property operator Antoin "Tony" Rezko, bought the adjacent undeveloped lot, which had once been part of the mansion's garden. Rezko paid $650,000 for the parcel which at present can only be accessed from the Obama property and which Obama's garden crew has been keeping tidy. Obama got his house for $300,000 under the asking price. Rezko paid full asking price. Later, Obama bought a sixth of Rezko's parcel for $100,000.
..."
- Questions They Weren't Asked
- The Great Clinton-Obama Debate
Counter Punch
[how we wish]
"Senator Clinton, in all your previous debates, you have not criticized the bloated military budget.The Soviet Union is gone. Yet military spending now consumes half of the federal government's operating expenditures.
"What would you do to reduce the tens of billions of wasted dollars and eliminate redundant weapons systems?
...
Senator Obama, you have taught Constitutional law. Has President Bush violated the Constitution, federal statutes and international treaties during his two terms of office? If so, please elaborate and tell the American people what you think should be done about holding the self-described "responsibility" President accountable under the impeachment authority of Congress and other laws of the land?"
...
"Senator Obama, you have often spoken about your health insurance plan as a way to reduce costs. Yet you do not discuss three major cost reduction opportunities. The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, estimates that ten per cent of the entire health expenditures in this country go down the drain due to computerized billing fraud and abuse. This year, that amounts to $220 billion.
...
- The Awful Truth About Hillary,
Barack, John ... and Whitewash
Alter Net
The Pentagon's most likely next target is Iran.
Hillary Clinton says "no option can be taken off the table."
Barack Obama says that the Iranian government is "a threat to all of us" and "we should take no option, including military action, off the table."
John Edwards says, "Under no circumstances can Iran be allowed to have nuclear weapons." And: "We need to keep all options on the table."
...
- Election Madness
The Progressive
"Historically, government, whether in the hands of Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals, has failed its responsibilities, until forced to by direct action: sit-ins and Freedom Rides for the rights of black people, strikes and boycotts for the rights of workers, mutinies and desertions of soldiers in order to stop a war. Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens.
...
- Traffic
Jam on the Highway to Hell
What Really Happened
"We've had enough. We not only agree with Vonnegut, but with Lee Iacocca, who pulls no punches in his April 2007 book, "Where Have All the Leaders Gone?" Iacocca asks, "Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, 'Stay the course.' Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!"
... They [Democrats] knew they were elected to stop the madness, to stem the onslaught of tyranny and to protect and defend the Constitution, but chose instead to fall on their knees before those who scorned them, threatened them, or perhaps offered them a "piece of the action." By choosing to suspend, rather than defend, the Constitution, they are guilty of high crimes.
...
- The Left and the Elections
- Buck the Circus!
Counter Punch
"Every four years we are treated to watching the presidential election circus pass through town. Of late, though, the circus has been getting embarrassingly less meaningful yet more raucous.
In the absence of an immediate and ready-made exit from the current barbarity, we seem willing to throw in our lot with the devil itself if it was suggested/hinted/said that the 'war on terror' would come to an immediate end, if the devil got into the White House.
The first rule of politics, much like most things in life, is this: to get thing done, you got to do it yourself! The enemy's institutions, such as the Democratic or Republican parties, cannot be 'infiltrated' and 'changed from within'. As if! True Leftists are not in demand in those institutions. The only reason they would take us in would be to destroy our platforms and ideas.
...
- Howard Zinn, to a reporter after the taping of A
People's History of the United States, based on his
book of the same name.
'When somebody says to me, "I read your book. Who do you want to be president?" Well, first of all, my heart sinks.
This person read my book and this person doesn't understand what it means! The whole point of the book is, the real important thing is not who sits in the White House but who's picketing the White House."
- Crash
and Burn: The State of Bush’s Union Circles the
Drain
danielpwelch.com
"Better…or worse? Many Americans desperately want
to believe that their choice is a real one, and that the
differences between the candidates are stark enough to
care about. In a discussion with a college friend who
hotly disputed my somewhat irreverent notion that Clinton
and Obama were "twin cheeks on the same fat corporate
ass," ...
- Clinton
threatens to 'obliterate' Iran if Israel attacked
Pro-Zionist that she is
Clinton took her hawkish line in an interview with ABC
television, when she was asked what she would do as
president if the Islamic Republic were to launch a nuclear
strike on Israel.
"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the
president, we will attack Iran," Clinton said.
"In the next 10 years, during which they might
foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would
be able to totally obliterate them."
- Some Questions for "Feminists for Clinton"
-
Is There Really Any Difference Between Hillary and Condoleezza?
"Several noted feminists have been using their mailing lists to get out the vote for Hillary Clinton. This is my response to them.
...Does it not matter to you that having turned over 4 million Iraqis - yes mostly women and children into refugees in a war she supported, she stands ready to do that to Iranian women and children?
Does sisterhood have such a thin veneer that all of those Iraqi lives are forgetten in order to have a woman in the White House?
"
- Why Hillary Clinton’s Iraq Vote Does Matter
Information Clearing House
"There have been many tragic consequences of the war for which Senator Clinton and others who made it possible should be held accountable: the deaths of thousands of American soldiers and the tens of thousands permanently wounded; the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed; the hundreds of billions of dollars drained from our national treasury; the social, economic and environmental damage inflicted upon Iraq; the misallocation of human and material resources away from real strategic threats; and, the resulting growth in Islamic extremism and anti-Americanism which will threaten our national security for decades to come .
More importantly, however, is what the decision says about Hillary Clinton’s world view:
...
- Open
letter to Barack, from George Cappaccio (KUDOS!)
- Open
letter to Barack, from Ralph Nader
- The
Ballot or the Bullet Revisited, see the video at
ALDUHURU
- More Muscular Interventionism
- The Foreign Policy of Barack Obama by Jeff Taylor
-
An
Open Letter to Michael Moore on Obama - A Polemic
Devoid of Politics
"... The only clearly identifiable "movement' of
this sort that I can discern in Obama's camp is made up of
the major corporate interests that have flooded his
campaign with big bucks, and whose interests he faithfully
promotes in his political program--right down to the
private insurance companies who take center stage in his
awful health-care plan--the very insurance companies your
skewer so effectively in your film--but to whom you give a
free pass in your support for their captive, Barack Obama.
"
- Why
Wall St is Betting Millions on Obama
For this article, you must be a subscriber to Counter
Punch; highly recommended
In part 2 of her investigation, market veteran Pam Martens traces the money big Wall Street players are sluicing into Obama's war chest and exactly why they are investing big-time in the "campaign for change". Plus more on the "No federal lobbyists on my team"
fraud.
- The
Obama Bubble: Why Wall Street Needs a Presidential Brand
"... We are asked to believe that those white
executives at all the biggest Wall Street firms now want a
black populist president because they crave a level
playing field for theAmerican people."
"The 2008 Obama presidential run may be the
most slickly orchestrated marketing machine in memory.
That's not a good thing. Marketing is about creating
emotional, even irrational bonds between your product and
your target audience."
- Obama’s Money Cartel
How he’s fronted for the most vicious firms on Wall Street
- The Politics of the Smooth Mood:
Obamarama
By RALPH NADER
"... Guy number two-"You don't seem to have any rough edges, Barack."
Obama-"It's all about the mood, dude."
The crowd was getting agitated and the questions came faster and faster.
..."
- Why There's No Hope for
Change
MoveOn's Obama Endorsement
By JOSHUA FRANK
"...How could any critic of the war machine support a candidate like Barack Obama? MoveOn has quite a long history of supporting Democratic candidates, despite said politician's allegiance to the Bush doctrine -- so their support of Obama doesn't come as much of a surprise. But even CODEPINK stalwarts like Jodie Evans and Nancy Kricorian (the latter runs the popular ListenHillary.org) have endorsed Obama for president.
Perhaps betrayal is contagious. ..."
- More Muscular Interventionism
The Foreign Policy of Barack Obama
- 3/19/08 Obama's Message: Whose Cheering?
Obama's eloquent speech was just what his masters need: a
Black man down with the folks, connected to Black
nationalism 'transcending' a radical vision to unite all
under the white supremacist american flag's expanding
empire.
- Remarks of Senator Barack Obama
at AIPAC conference, Mar 2, '07
Mindfully / obama.senate
"Our job is to rebuild the road to real peace and lasting security throughout the region.
That effort begins with a clear and strong commitment to the security of Israel, our strongest ally in the region and its only established democracy. That has been my starting point and that always will be my starting point.
... And I can tell you that as a candidate for the president of the United States and as a president of the United States, I vow to work as diligently and as consistently and as determinedly as possible with AIPAC and with the Great State of Israel to bring that vision about.
...
- Obama’s
White Male Voters: Do They Hear Something Blacks Don’t?
Black Agenda Report
"No need for Obama to promise the hood a damn thing, except that he'll cut a dashing figure in the Oval Office and make the homefolks proud that he's there, symbolically representing them.
...
The white liberal/left, ineffectual and geographically scattered, are drawn irresistibly to the Black man who regales them with sweet nothings - literally, nothing in the way of the concrete policies for peace and social justice they claim to champion. His presence in their midst is enough. Besides, Obama is someone who is "capable of forging a progressive majority," they say.
That's a strange concept, since Obama doesn't act like a progressive, or claim to be one. But he has no problem with folks gathering around him. He's a real party guy.
...
- The limit of Obama's imagination
Al-Ahram
At a time when Obama's moral voice was most needed, the reach of his wings proved to be cautiously perforated on an AIPAC line, writes Hamid Dabashi*
- The “Best Face” For Imperialism
Rev Com
In an article in the December issue of The Atlantic, commentator Andrew Sullivan argues that Barack Obama should be the next president of the United States. (“Goodbye to All That: Why Obama Matters,” December 2007). Sullivan writes that a (ruling class) “consensus” agenda for endless war and increased repression will be in effect regardless of who is president. He challenges the reader to pick who could best implement all this in the face of global isolation and profound domestic alienation. And, in the process, he sheds light on the real role of elections in this society.
- Holding Barack Obama Accountable
Black Agenda Report
Whether it is truly possible to hold elected officials accountable in a political system where big money, big media, big corporations and the very rich call all the shots is uncertain. But we have tried and will keep trying. So will others. The stakes are too high not to.
- The Obama Craze: Count Me Out
Beyond Chron
"Like most, I know he gave a stirring speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. I know he defeated Alan Keyes in the Illinois Senate race; although it wasn’t much of a contest (Keyes was living in Maryland when he announced). Recently, I started looking into Obama’s voting record, and I’m afraid to say I’m not just uninspired: I’m downright fearful. Here's why:
...
- Barak
Obama - White Power in Black Face
Youtube video
Chairman Omali speaks on the current crisis of US
Imperialism and the Presidential elections. The Chairman
explains how Barack Obama's run for US presidency is
essentially another case of White Power in Black Face.
- Obama’s Sub-Prime Conflict
by Dennis Bernstein
"The uninsured depositors were dealt another blow
recently when the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a lower
court decision to put any recovered money toward the debt
that the bank owners owe the federal government before the
depositors get anything.
But this seven-year-old bank failure has relevance in
another way today, since the chair of Superior’s board
for five years was Penny Pritzker, a member of one of
America’s richest families and the current Finance Chair
for the presidential campaign of Barack Obama, the same
candidate who has lashed out against predatory lending.
...
- John
McCain is Dr. Strangelove
A video short by Robert Greenwald
- The Madness of John McCain
Information Clearing House
During the 1990s, he earned the attention and adulation of the media by supporting a war most journalists approved of and doing so more consistently and vociferously than even the Clinton administration. He’s pursuing the same strategy now that we’re in Iraq. While the media has largely turned against this particular war, McCain’s criticism of Donald Rumsfeld and the Bush administration’s handling of the war has won him plaudits and given him credit as the “real” author of the surge.
-
Elaine Brown Withdraws from Green Party Presidential Race
Elaine Brown
"In effect, the present Green Party leadership promotes a kinder,
gentler capitalism, a moderated racism, an environmentally-sustainable
globalism, which I cannot support. They are dedicated to the underside
of the Party’s platform, which falls short of repudiating the capitalist
state, source of all the social ills the Party would address. They
equivocate by promoting “an economic alternative to corporate capitalism
and a socialist state,” advocate a “re-formulation” of the IMF,NAFTA,
so forth, and advance the institution of “stakeholder capitalism.” ...
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