Oh Bush! Obama! Oh, my.

Speaking of hubris...

Nah, I'm just dazzled by your brilliance, and sympathise with the torture you must feel at having drag your massive intellect among so many naïve Lilliputians.

The end?  I didn't start reading it.   I give bafflegab like that a pass at every opportunity.

The author is more than worthy of attention for his impeccable tracking of geopolitics and NATO: There is no better.

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/

evidently some are more 'imperfect' and 'beastly' than others:

Barack Obama: Israel's Lawyer

http://mondoweiss.net/2010/10/barack-obama-israels-lawyer.html

"We recognize the special nature of the [South African] state. It is a state for the [white] people

 We recognize the special nature of the [Northern Irish] state. It is a state for the [Protestant] people.

"Would Obama align himself with the moral argument underpinning either of these assertions? One would hope not. Then why is it somehow permissable to endorse the same position when it comes to Israel?"

I would not even try to "support" the Democratic Party's position in the Levant, or attempt to explain why/how a decent AfricanAmerican  U.S.president today finds himself trapped in this position.  I say trapped because I liked to think that he could bring about change. 

I know...how naive can I get, eh?   But compared to the racist thugs that wait in the wings, down there, he seemed worth a shot at it.  And I still don't see a viable hope for an alternative.  Not in such an atmosphere of greed and ignorance and want. One begins to see how some societies rotted out at the core, back in the 30's.

Yep, and that may just be the theme of Tony Judt's Ill Fares the Land, which I picked up from the library today. He'd been recommended to me by someone...perhaps it was Alien?

Anyway, this NY University professor and director of the Remarque Institute, which he founded, advocates for democratic socialism and a cautionary approach to progressive change: "Incremental improvements upon unsatisfactory circumstances are the best that we can hope for, and probably all we should seek," the new reader is informed.

"Others have spent the last three decades methodically unraveling and destabilizing them: this should make us much angrier than we are. It aought also to worry us, if only on prudential grounds: why have we been in such a hurry to tear down the dikes laboriously set in place by our predecessors? Are we so sure that there are no floods to come?"

I hope that he brings sufficient economic evidence to his work.  His concern for "the last three decades" is a good start.

If I didn't know better I'd swear NDP was a Republican or a tea bagger...

Quote:

"Friends, it's very simple: if you support Barack Obama and the Democrats--even if reluctantly, even if you're being all sophisticatedly super-savvy and blogospherically strategic about it, playing the 'long game' or eleven-dimensional chess or what have you-- you are supporting the outright murder of innocent people who have never done anything against you or yours.

While the subject matter is different, the economy and home security vs world affairs policy, this is the same play on emotions they are using right now down here.  

The irony of it all is you now have the anti war/anti USA crowd in the same boat as the tea baggers and the Republicans... the Love Boat it is not.

Bec.De.Corbin wrote:

If I didn't know better I'd swear NDP was a Republican or a tea bagger...

none of the three

As the NYTimes continuously makes clear, Obama is the one to fear (confirming NDPP's obsessive concerns) :

From an Oct. 20 column by John Broder:

"Those who support the Tea Party movement are considerably more dubious about the existence and effects of global warming than the American public at large, according to a New York Times/CBS News Poll conducted this month. The survey found that only 14 percent of Tea Party supporters said that global warming is an environmental problem that is having an effect now, while 49 percent of the rest of the public believes that it is. More than half of Tea Party supporters said that global warming would have no serious effect at any time in the future, while only 15 percent of other Americans share that view, the poll found.

And 8 percent of Tea Party adherents volunteered that they did not believe global warming exists at all, while only 1 percent of other respondents agreed.

Those views in general align with those of the fossil fuel industries, which have for decades waged a concerted campaign to raise doubts about the science of global warming and to undermine policies devised to address it.

They have created and lavishly financed institutes to produce anti-global-warming studies, paid for rallies and Web sites to question the science, and generated scores of economic analyses that purport to show that policies to reduce emissions of climate-altering gases will have a devastating effect on jobs and the overall economy.

Their views are spread by a number of widely followed conservative opinion leaders, including Mr. Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, George Will and Sarah Palin, who oppose government programs to address climate change and who question the credibility and motives of the scientists who have raised alarms about it.

Groups that help support Tea Party candidates include climate change skepticism in their core message. Americans for Prosperity, a group founded and largely financed by oil industry interests, has sponsored what it calls a Regulation Reality Tour to stir up opposition to climate change legislation and federal regulation of carbon emissions. Its Tea Party talking points describe a cap-and-trade system to reduce carbon emissions as "the largest excise tax in history."

FreedomWorks, another group supported by the oil industry, helps organize Tea Party rallies and distributes fliers urging opposition to federal climate policy, which it calls a "power grab."

"Any effort to make electricity and fuel more expensive or to cap or regulate CO2 will only exacerbate an already critical situation and cause tremendous economic damage," FreedomWorks says on its Web site.

The oil, coal and utility industries have collectively spent $500 million just since the beginning of 2009 to lobby against legislation to address climate change and to defeat candidates, like Mr. Hill, who support it, according to a new analysis from the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a left-leaning advocacy group in Washington.

Their message appears to have fallen on receptive ears. Of the 20 Republican Senate candidates in contested races, 19 question the science of global warming and oppose any comprehensive legislation to deal with it, according to a National Journal survey.

The only exception is Mark Steven Kirk, the Republican Senate nominee in Illinois..."

As another prescient poster noted in early August in this thread: "Palin isn't running for anything so she'll be no closer to the levers of power in December than she is now. In fact, her popularity outside of a small circle of rabid idiots isn't that great. She has enough of a following to sell books and earn speaking fees but she won't be winning any presidential nominations any time soon because the Republicans know she can't win a general election."

Yes sir, know the enemy...

Quote:

But if you choose to see this as another fairytale – of how one man who seemed like a Good Prince turned out to be a Traitor – you will miss the point, and the real need for change. This is not primary a question of individual failings, but of the endemic corruption at the core of American politics. The facts are not hidden. If you want to run for national office in the US, you have to raise huge sums of money from corporations and very rich people to pay for the adverts and the mailings that get you on the ballot and into office. These corporations will only give you money if you persuade them that you will serve their interests once you are in power. If you say instead that you want to prevent anything destructive they are doing to ordinary people, or tax and regulate them, you will get no money, and can’t run.

...In the Land of the Fee, Obama was brought to power by the “donations” – actually investments – of Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, IBM, Morgan Stanley, General Electric, and others. So it is unsurprising that his Presidency has largely served their interests, which are very different from our interests. His first act after the election was to appoint an economics team headed by the people who caused the crash: the Clinton-era deregulators and the former heads of Goldman. They proceeded to ensure that any reregulation to prevent another crash was gutted, while the bankers’ bonuses continued to flow.

The Real Reason Obama Has Let Us All Down

I don't know about that title, since I didn't expect much, for the reasons given in the passage I quoted.  Nevertheless, the passage does cut to the core of the problem with modern electoral politics.

Quote:

Contrary to the glib stereotype, Americans aren’t stupid, and they can see what is happening: a recent CNN poll found 60 percent of Americans said Obama “has paid more attention to the problems faced by banks and other financial institutions than to the problems faced by middle class Americans.” They’re right. It’s not that they want him to be “more liberal” or “more conservative”: few think in these terms. No. They are asking – is my job more secure? Is my home more secure? Is my healthcare more affordable? And the answer is no, not really. They know the people who caused the crash are fatter than ever, while the people who had nothing to do with it take the pain, and Obama is left calling this farce progress.  In the absence of a liberal populism that would have actually fixed these problems, all the oxygen goes to the fake populism of the Tea Party. US politics has ended up as a battle between the mostly corrupt and the entirely corrupt.

Can you name this individual-at-fault to whom you allude?  And who is behind this plot you mention?  Inquiring slackers' minds need to know.

While Counterpunch readers can make observations about  personal hygiene, conservatives, private money and the chamber of commerce really dirty-up the election campaign :

From a NYTimes editorial:

October 26, 2010

Secret Money in Iowa

Bruce Braley, a Democrat from northeastern Iowa, has been a popular two-term congressman and seemed likely to have an easy re-election until the huge cash mudslide of 2010. The Republican Party had largely left him alone, but then a secretive group called the American Future Fund began spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on distortion-heavy attack ads.

Mr. Braley is now struggling to maintain his lead against a Republican challenger, Benjamin Lange, who is running on a familiar program of smaller government and opposition to the health care law, the stimulus and growing federal spending. Mr. Braley has disclosed all of the donors behind his ads and his campaign; Mr. Lange generally will not discuss his independent support.

Mr. Braley has shown admirable political courage throughout the race, staunchly defending his support for health care reform, the stimulus and the Bush-era bank bailout. Each will benefit the country over time, he said. "I'm going to stand my ground and won't be intimidated," he told a local radio station a few weeks ago.

That position stood him well in the relatively liberal 1st District of Iowa until he became a target of the American Future Fund, one of several conservative groups spending millions of dollars to defeat Democrats while promising their donors anonymity.

As The Times reported recently, the American Future Fund was started with money from Bruce Rastetter, an ethanol company executive. Mr. Braley supports ethanol tax credits - a favorite in Iowa. Mr. Rastetter, who is pushing to defeat several Democrats on the House energy and agriculture committees, has not explained his political goals.

The fund, based in Iowa, has spent at least $574,000 to run a series of anti-Braley ads. One that is particularly pernicious shows images of the ruined World Trade Center and then intones, "Incredibly, Bruce Braley supports building a mosque at ground zero." Actually, Mr. Braley has never said that, stating only that the matter should be left to New Yorkers.

Another implies that Mr. Braley supports a middle-class tax increase because he voted to adjourn the House at a time when some Republicans had proposed cutting income taxes on everyone. In fact, Mr. Braley supports extending the Bush-era tax cuts for the middle class, while letting them expire for families making $250,000 or more to avoid adding $700 billion to the deficit.

Mr. Braley has also been the subject of $250,000 worth of attack ads by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which also has not disclosed its contributors."

But, back to hand-washing...

How We Got Here
By ROSS DOUTHAT
For nearly two decades, America turned steadily more liberal. But that changed abruptly when President Obama took office.
(For all those interested in the Center for American Progress' view of history...which seems an acceptable perspective for those who choose to ignore the political-economy and the intelligent quotient at play in the Land of the Free. The leftish liberal on display in this thread...or liberalish left. Anyway, the Johnny one-notes with the power of broadband and little else.

Marjorie Cohn: Let's Rally to Restore Peace

http://www.marjoriecohn.com/2010/10/lets-rally-to-restore-peace.html

"It's time to put the wars back on the national agenda. We cannot rely on Obama to end the wars. It's up to us...'

US rep.: Estate tax rise has some planning death

Quote:

CHEYENNE, Wyo.—U.S. Rep. Cynthia Lummis says some of her Wyoming constituents are so worried about the reinstatement of federal estate taxes that they plan to discontinue dialysis and other life-extending medical treatments so they can die before Dec. 31.

Lummis, a Republican who holds her state's lone seat in the House, declined to name any of the people who have made the comments.

But she said many ranchers and farmers in the state would rather pass along their businesses -- "their life's work" -- to their children and grandchildren than see the federal government take a large chunk.

George Victor,

As usual Paul Krugman nails it. Thanks for posting that.

Deliberate Evil: The American Strategy of Seeding Civil War  -  by Chris Floyd

http://chris-floyd.com/articles/1/latest-news/2043-deliberate-evil-the-a...

"remember that the president's own party that you are being urged to 'save' at the polls today have, of their own free will taken the promulgators of this evil strategy and placed them in charge of yet another brutal and aggressive occupation of foreign lands...

This is precisely what you are voting for, if you vote Democrat--or Republican, for that matter - today."

Any Hope I Had In The Ballot Box Bringing Change in Afghanistan is Gone  -  by Malalai Joya

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/nov/02/hope-ball...

"Obama promised 'hope' and 'change', but Afghans have seen only change for the worse. Here he is now seen as a 'second Bush'...we neither need nor want NATO's occupying forces.."

Obama's Greatest Betrayal: The Coming Sellout to the Super Rich..  by Michael Hudson

http://www.counterpunch.org/hudson11152010.html

"Obama seems to be campaigning for his own defeat! We are dealing with shameless demagogy, The financial end-time has arrived.."

American Hypocrisy  - by Paul Craig Roberts

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21922

"In his criminality, Obama has actually surpassed Bush. Bush is the president of extra-judicial torture, extra-judicial detention, extra-judicial spying and invasion of privacy, but Obama has one-upped Bush. Obama is the president of extra-judicial murder.."

The Fire Next TIme: End Game For the Elite's One Way Class War - by Chris Floyd

http://chris-floyd.com/articles/1-latest-news/2056-the-fire-next-time-en...

"Barack Obama is already one of the most right-wing presidents we've ever had, building upon and expanding virtually every pernicious policy of his oligarchic predecessor. But as Hudson warns us, we ain't seen nothing yet..."

Analysis: US carrier visit a dilemma for China

excerpt: BEIJING -- This weekend's arrival of a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Yellow Sea poses a dilemma for Beijing: Should it protest angrily and aggravate ties with Washington, or quietly accept the presence of a key symbol of American military pre-eminence off Chinese shores?

Hope, Real Hope, is About Doing Something - by Chris Hedges

http://www.countercurrents.org/hedges291110.htm

"Hope knows that unless we physically defy government control we are complicit in the violence of the state. All who resist keep hope alive. All who succumb to fear, despair and apathy become enemies of hope. They become in their passivity, agents of injustice."

'Why Aren't You Dead Yet?'The Enlightened War Policies of the Peace Laureate

http://www.chris-floyd.com/articles/1-latest-news/2058-qwhy-arent-you-de...

"The picture emerging from this pointillist approach is grim: not only are American forces dropping more bombs and killing more civilians, they are increasingly dismissing all reports of collateral carnage as 'Taliban trickery'.."

You're so fixated on making excuses for Obama that you ignore the fact that [b]he was actually elected[/b] by a majority of those "racist" kooks you keep yammering on about. So don't try to tell us that America is full of backward yokels who will never support any reform of health care, serious action on climate change, withdrawal from Afghanistan, or shutting down Guantanamo Bay.

Obama's election proved you wrong. And his continuation of the Bush agenda has proved that the majority of voters who hoped that electing him would lead to real change were also wrong.

The first step towards real change is admitting that much. You have yet to take even that baby step, so it hardly lies in your mouth to accuse Obama's critics of being blind to political realities.

Quote:

Assange was asked by Time Magazine what his "moral calculus" was to justify publishing the leaks. Don't you love that? No one asked George Bush or Dick Cheney that question. No one would dare ask the Liars of the Century about their moral calculus, even today, as they run around the world hawking their books and making millions off of ‘memoirs' absolutely riddled with new lies covering up the old ones. No one even asks the timid-as-a-snowflake Barack Obama where he gets off tripling the forces in Afghanistan in support of a regime that - thanks to WikiLeaks - we now know that he knows is thoroughly corrupt and utterly undemocratic. But Assange, whose great crime is exposing truth, gets the dubious morality treatment from Time, that great bastion of hard-hitting independent journalism.

What WikiLeaks Really Reveals