Progressive Magazine Questions Obama’s Love of the So-Called “Free Market”
By Deb Cupples on June 17, 2008 at 4:08 PM in Barack Obama, Current Affairs, Economy
I get nervous when politicians lead cheers for the so-called "Free Market," because the phrase is nothing more than a euphemistic slogan that actually means "government should let big corporate players do whatever they want."
That said, Naomi Klein at The Nation wrote this last week:
"Barack Obama waited just three days after Hillary Clinton pulled out of the race to declare, on CNBC, "Look. I am a pro-growth, free-market guy. I love the market."
Oh, dear. President Bush and Vice President Cheney love the "free market," too: so much so that after Enron’s Ken Lay (may he rest in peace) begged the Bush Administration to let "free market" forces resolve California’s energy crisis, the Administration refused to intervene at a crucial time. This inaction left Californians paying triple what they had been paying for electricity, while companies like Enron and Dynegy cashed in.
Given some of Sen. Obama’s campaign statements — and some of the advisers he has chosen to give his ears to — I’m not surprised that he loves the so-called "Free Market."
Neither is economist Paul Krugman, who commented:
"Look, Obama didn’t pose as a Nation-type progressive, then turn on his allies after the race was won. Throughout the campaign he was slightly less progressive than Hillary Clinton on domestic issues — and more than slightly on health care. If people like Ms. Klein are shocked, shocked that he isn’t the candidate of their fantasies, they have nobody but themselves to blame."
Super-blogger Anglachel concurred but put it differently:
"Hundreds of bloggers typed their fingers to the bone explaining that you [progressive Obama supporters] were projecting your fantasies onto this cypher, pointing out his economic team is not very progressive, that his major donors are all Wall Street financial people, and that he never met an economic measure favorable to the middle class that he didn’t want to compromise on. You got snookered by your own irrational fantasies."
Back in December, democrats marveled over how lucky they were to have two great candidates (Hillary and Barack), either of whom they could vote for while sporting a big smile.
Now, Sen. Obama is unequivocally praising the so-called "Free market"?
I can hear the defense already: "Obama is just playing to Independents and Republicans, so he can get elected — he doesn’t really mean it. And McCain praised Bush’s corporate tax cuts a few months ago."
Anyone using that logic should be able to similarly apply it to McCain. It would go something like this:
"McCain was just playing to the Republican base during the primaries: he didn’t really mean it. He did, after all, raise hell and vote against Bush’s corporate tax cuts when it mattered — knowing he would take political heat."
The upshot: both candidates have, at some point, either flip-flopped or misrepresented themselves regarding the "Free Market" love fest.
Frankly, I don’t support McCain, but I’m also having trouble supporting Obama. That’s Obama’s fault.
I wouldn’t have trouble supporting Obama if he had consistently (and sincerely) taken stands against those Republican ideas (like so-called "Free Market" theories) that have wreaked such havoc on our nation. He didn’t take such stands.
Given the strikes against him from a progressive point of view (like his fighting to cut Florida’s primary vote in half and his back-door taking of cash from lobbyists and corporations), Obama needs to do better if he wants to maintain progressive support.
I shouldn’t have to hold my nose when I vote in November. I need both hands free to bubble in the circles on my ballot.
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Another bullshitter with a piece of paper that says HARVARD on it….another asshole with a wife who doesn’t particularly want to “be there”…another idiot who is fact-free and fact challenged….
Good grief.
He’s BUSH with a tan and slightly better teleprompter skills!
And for that, dummies CHEER.
If the webmaster reads this,
please put a link to the Anglachel blog in the blogroll in the right hand column. Thx!
ACTION ALERT!! Contact Naomi Klein through her assistant and ask her to investigate Obama’s links to the Bush Admin and Iraqi money men. Klein has considerable influence in progressive circles and could do a lot of good.
debra@naomiklein.org
For more on the Bush/Iraq War/organized angle, I’ve posted an article you can read by clicking on my screen name.
Penny Pritzker, a member of one of America’s richest families and the current finance chair for the presidential campaign of Barack Obama, was the chair of Chicago-based Superior Bank’s board for five years. Superior Bank went belly up in 2001 with over $1 billion in insured and uninsured deposits; 1,406 depositors lost much of their life savings. This collapse came amid harsh criticism of how Superior’s owners promoted sub-prime home mortgages.
On Nov. 1 [2002] the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. pointed the finger at Ernst & Young, Superior’s auditor, in a fraud suit filed in federal court here. But that action comes two months after a group of Superior depositors accused the bank’s owners and directors, including two members of the Pritzker family, of racketeering, claiming they lined their pockets with money looted from Superior savings accounts.
Superior, a suburban Chicago savings and loan, collapsed in early 2001 under the weight of half a billion dollars in subprime loan defaults and improper accounting that had overstated the thrift’s assets by $420 million.
http://www.theobamafile.com/ObamaAdvisers.htm
And the Pritzker’s were fined $460 million and haven’t paid a cent yet, maybe another Bambi get off free deal like Rezko is waiting on?
This guy must be Teflon. Absolutely amazing.
oh NO DOUBT at all on that brother!
Thanks for the Pritzker note, HARP, very informative re: Obama’s subprime nostrums.
As for Klein, does anyone really believe she didn’t know this stuff BEFORE HRC was out?
Gee what a surprise considering his top ten contributors are wall streeters, credit card companies and sub prime pigs.
I knew he was a fraud when he voted NO to a 30 percent cap on credit card interest. He said he voted No because the cap was too ‘high’. So, apparently NO CAP is better than 30 percent. This guy is a pig in the poke. he didn’t give his first big economy speech on Wall Street for nothing. I wouldn’t be in the SLIGHTEST surprised if he had plans to privatize social security.
I never thought a Democrat could make the GOP look appealing but Obama has managed to do that. For the first time if Obama is the nominee I will vote for a Republican for president.
For the first time in my adult life I am proud of the Republican party…
Just kidding, LOL.
Me too… proud of the Republican Party for the first time in my adult life.. and I am not kidding!
I know it is getting bad now
I was for drilling offshore this morning if the states want it
and me an NRDC member and everything…
this is great counterculture recruitment drive stuff for the GOP boy
I wouldn’t be surprised if he planned on diverting money for the social security program to his REPARATION program
Is this the Reparations program that is supposedly going to Africa or to AA’s here in the States?
Reparations going to Wall Street, and Tony Rezko type slime.
From what I understand both. John Conyers will be getting Obama to sign that as soon as he takes office. It’s waiting on him. By the way have you seen this before?http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2008/01/obama-file-4-obama-was-endorsed-by-far.html
Yes it is corporation reparations, for the SS contribs they made
they want it back and Barry is their guy….
And That is why I will never vote Obama.
He is Pro-Globalization Pro- Free Markets -
Has never cared about the poor or middleclass.
And anyone who thinks he will make changes to Nafta is just plain dreaming !
Jeffrey Liebman Of Harvard, Top Economics Advisor To Obama, Wants To Privatize Social Security. I guess the Democrats will be FOR IT now when they opposed it with Bush?
http://www.rense.com/general80/d2es.htm
We need to really speak up about this one. Ditto for eliminating pension plans.
This is a very, very dangerous move.
Obama’s duplicity in making frequent contradictory and uniformed statements is highlighted in this article. The claim that Obama makes about himself as being a new kind of candidate falls flat when he resorts to the worst political practices of the past.
Michelle Malkin on Obama supporters:
… I’m starting to wonder whether the people that are paying attention to this guy are burning out on new revelations of terrorists, extremists, tyrants, socialists, and their advocates answering his altar call.
… Yeah, we get it. People who want to see America humbled and defeated reliably and continually advocate Obama.
… Hey, maybe they’re wrong about him. Maybe they’re just crazy. But I think that sort of dismissal underestimates their intelligence.
… Me, I think there’s something about Obama that draws the support of elements who want to see America fail. Some are serious threats, some are not. But shouldn’t we as a nation be figuring out what that something is?
I have to agree. I’m really starting to suspect that those who still support Obama honestly want to see the fall of our nation. They are in fact anti-American.
You are an idiot! His policies are quite liberal. He had the most liberal rating of any senator. Facts don’t concern you guys. All you have is your racist beliefs.
okay so this means you PUMA folks can stop calling obama supporters marxists now, right?
I don’t call Obama supporters that and I could care less what they are called. I will never vote for Obama.
Just because Bambi flopped today? Nahhhhhhhh Tomorrow he will flip again, that is the Obama way
Why? Obama’s capital gains tax doubling is sold to his dumb followers as a “wealth redistribution scheme.” All the evil hedge fund managers will give their ill-gotten gains to the federal government and Obama, like a modern day Lenin in Robbin Hood green tights, will shower money onto the proletariat or middle class. It will be like Christ’s loaves and fishes.
But does this mean you guys will quit saying bitter, gun-toting, bible-thumping rednecks are not voting against their economic best interests if they see this Obama guy is a phony?
Obama wants to be a homey not a phony, you not get the memo?
He’s all over the place, but it’s forming a pattern of a very unattractive candidate:
- foreign policy: too passive
- domestic policy: too corporate
- ideology: too Marxist
What a wonderful combination.
Sounds like that lovable “compassionate conservative” George W. Bush. Bet his dumb “passive” foreign policy gets us into another war.
Right, but this time it might actually be on our soil.
Neocon ‘free market” is called fascism, and Obama endorses it, more cash for the Prescott Bush’s of the world.
People! Give me something here!
Communism is nothing more than centralized capitalism. Look how well party members in communist regimes live compared to the poverty and lack of democracy suffered by the people.
Sounds a bit like some of these limousine liberals who love Obama…and Chavez..and Castro…and Ortega, etc.
Well, sort of true but I still see Obama as a crony or mercenary.
However, take this definition of MARXIST written by J. R. Saul from his book “The Doubter’s Companion”:
MARXIST: The only serious functioning Marxists left in the West are the senior management of large, usually transnational corporations. The only serious Marxist thinkers are Neo-conservative.
Marxism is primarily an analysis of how society works — or rather, how it must work. This dialectic is based upon the struggle of the classes and the battle of the unregulated marketplace in which the strongest win. It is marketplace which cannot be tempered, according to Marx. It must and will run free and so function as a battleground between those who have power and those who don’t. The marketplace will seek to maximize profits even if this is to the disadvantage of most. Profits and power are the truth of the economic struggle and economic determinism will decide the social structure.
Most functioning Marxists had stopped believing this sort of stuff by the end of the Second World War. The had come around to the ideology of stable bureaucratic management. In that they resembled the technocrats of Western governmental and corporate bureaucracies.
But these Western corporate managers and their academic acolytes were in fact thrown into a state of confusion by the collapse of 1929. It seemed as if the pure capitalist analysis, of which they were the official inheritors, had failed An unrestricted marketplace had let not to ongoing growth and prosperity, but to total economic collapse. The ideology of a natural and general equilibrium produced by competition had been given its chance and had self-destructed for all to see and suffer the consequences.
A good thirty-five years passed before the corporate leaders were able to erase from their own memory and from that of the public this failure. They then rediscovered with a virginal ideologic enthusiasm the virtues of the unregulated market.
This time they were supported by an intellectually sophisticated explanation for the dialectic provided by a group of economists centred at the Chicago School. They were able to dispense with the idea that public institutions could achieve social stability, protect the weak or encourage a wider distribution of wealth. Their new argument would have made Marx proud. It was not that they did not wish to help the weak or promote fairness. It was the natural rules of the marketplace — the dialectic — which made the class struggle inevitable.
The only disagreement between the Neo-conservatives and Marx is over who wins the battle in the end. This is a small detail. Far more important is their agreement that society must function as a wide-open struggle.
Some people are surprised that Marxism should have reemerged on the Right. However, ideas, once launched, become public property. And they often reappear in several disguises before discovering their true form.
“That’s not the market that I knew….”
So I say don’t hold your nose and vote for this guy in November-go in and vote for all the democrats on the ballot except the presidential race. Either leave it blank or write in Hillary if you have that opportunity. Lets not leave the DNC in the dark about why their golden boy lost.
Just don’t vote for Pelosi if she is on the ticket in your area……lol
Or Robert Wexler, and Kerry.
I will not vote for any dem who enabled this poser to snatch the nomination.
And I will vote McCain in November. A vote for McCain is a vote AGAINST Obama.
THIS was on http://www.chiagoagainstobama.com…it will tell you what Obama really feels about the people
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGxzqwRJUzM
Is Obama a far-leftist radical Marxist?
Is he a free-market tool of Wall Street?
Who IS this guy?
Do we want to take a chance on someone we know so little about?
I think the answer to the last question is HELL NO!!!
I sure can’t answer your questions.
One thing’s for sure: Obama is the most divisive Democrat EVER!
Obama’s trying to start a civil war, it’s how he wins — right before he has to fix the vote totals, just like in the old days…
You know, we could put an end to all this nonsense at the Convention by nominating Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as the Dem Candidate for President of the United States.
Just look at the slime that is oozing out of the nobama train wreck…it’s a l o n g
way to the convention.
Will Obama divert moneys from the social security program to his REPARATION program?
Anyone see the Daily Show last night? Hysterical and Dead-on: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/17/jon-stewart-mocks-media-f_n_107539.html
Troll please go home after all its getting late.
Here I thought John Stewart had moved on from BJ jokes and appallingly ass-kissing statements from a supposedly liberal political comedian.
Want to know why I’ll never vote for Obama Daniel? It’s because of you!
Stick around and convince a few more people.
Why does Stewart shout so much? Is he trying to hide the fact he isn’t all that funny?
Jon Stewart is no paragon of virtue.
He is but playing to his young audience.
Stewart is not in the business of telling the truth.
Very witty quote from Krugman. As for Klein, she just figured this out?
Another of Obama’s Chicago fans is 39-year-old billionaire Kenneth Griffin, CEO of the hedge fund Citadel Investment Group. Griffin, who gave the maximum allowable donation to Obama, is something of a poster boy for an unbalanced economy. He got married at Versailles and had the after-party at Marie Antoinette’s vacation spot (Cirque du Soleil performed)–and he is one of the staunchest opponents of closing the hedge-fund tax loophole. While Obama talks about toughening trade rules with China, Griffin has been bending the few barriers that do exist. Despite sanctions prohibiting the sale of police equipment to China, Citadel has been pouring money into controversial China-based security companies that are putting the local population under unprecedented levels of surveillance.
Wow, that whole business scene, between Washingtn and Wall Street, I read this, and I get the feeling one little stick pulled out, and the whole thing falls.
A kids board game, right?
“Snakes and Ladders” Ha ha.
It’s not like he was praising Reagan at any time - or was he?
“Reagan first appears in Obama’s book on page 31
From that page alone and the beginning of page 32:
“That Reagan’s message found such a receptive audience spoke not only to his skills as a communicator; it also spoke to the failures of liberal government, during a period of economic stagnation, to give middle-class voters any sense that it was fighting for them. For the fact was government at every level had become to cavalier about spending taxpayer money. Too often bureaucracies were oblivious to the cost of their mandates. A lot of liberal rhetoric did seem to value rights and entitlements over duties and responsibilities. Reagan may have exagerrated the sins of the welfare state, and certainly liberals were right to complain that his domestic policies tilted heavily toward elites, with corporate raiders making tidy profits throughout the eighties while unions were busted and the income for the average working stiff flatlined.
Nevertheless, by promising to side with those who worked hard, obeyed the law, cared for their families, loved their country, Reagan offered Americans a sense of common purpose that liberals seemed no longer able to muster.”
Obama also talks about Reagan on pages 31-33, 36, 43, 147, 156-58, 181-82, 201, 209, 288-289, 293.
Another classic from Obama in his book. Pages 156-57
“The conservative revolution Reagan helped usher in gained traction because Reagan’s central insight–that the liberal welfare state had grown complacent and overly bureaucratic, with Democratic policy makers more obsessed with slicing the economic pie than with growing he pie–contained a good deal of truth.”
Obama backer Chris Dodd’s culture of corruption
Sen Nelson, too, is implicated, part of a special “friends of countrywide,” given deals on their house loans.
This connects back to Jim Johnson, too.
Great article that I found on Obama’s mom. Some of this was also mentioned in Wikipedia about her but has since been removed, I wonder why.
Stanley Ann Dunham Obana Soetoro (November 29, 1942 - November 7, 1995), known as Ann Dunham and/or Stanley Ann Dunham, was an American anthropologist, left-wing social activist, and the mother of Senator Barack Obama.
When Ann Dunham arrived in Hawaii, she was a full-fledged radical leftist and practitioner of critical theory.
During Obama’s campaign for the 2008 presidential election he has portrayed his mother as just an ordinary conservative girl from Kansas; however in reality she was a radical leftist and cultural Marxist. She lived in the Seattle area, spending her teenage years in Seattle coffee shops with other young radical leftists. Obama claims his mother’s family were conservative Methodists or Baptists from Kansas. Not true in any way. His mother’s parents were members of a left-wing Unitarian church near Seattle. The church located in Bellevue, Washington was knicknamed ‘the little red church,’ because of its leftist leanings.
The school Ann attended, Mercer Island High School, was a hotbed of pro-Marxist radical teachers. John Stenhouse, board member, told the House Un-American Activities Subcommittee that he had been a member of staff. Two teachers at this school, Val Foubert and Jim Wichterman, both Frankfurt School style Marxists, taught a critical theory curriculum to students which included; rejection of societal norms, attacks on Christianity, the traditional family, and assigned readings by Karl Marx. The hallway between Foubert’s and Wichterman classrooms was sometimes called ‘anarchy ally.’
Dunham has been described by her friends as ‘a fellow traveler… meaning a communist/socialist sympathizer.
In an interview, Barack Obama referred to his mother as ‘the dominant figure in my formative years… The values she taught me continue to be my touchstone when it comes to how I go about the world of politics.’
On his campaign trail, practically none of Obama’s descriptions of his family history, environment, his developmental years, schooling and/or his parents are anywhere near truth or historical, verifiable fact.
Here is the link to the full story:
http://thetruthseeker.co.uk/print.asp?ID=8776
Great find Boxermum!
Those you see following the Obamessiah are not Democrats, though the species may try to look similar. They are in fact nothing but JACKASSES!
P.U.M.A.
[...] 17, 2008 · No Comments Naomi Klein discovers B0 was not all she imagined him to [...]
Shame about Enron, and Lay, wasn’t it?
Took how long for them to fall, about, what, three weeks?
So now Obama is being supported by a terrorist (donated $2300 to his campaign)
And… I think Obama picked up one of Hillary’s ex-staffers.
From - http://www.obama-wire.com/
Hamas has a PAC?
But yesterday you said he was a Marxist:
http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/06/16/tom-delay-obama-presidency-would-be-a-big-gift-for-the-gop/
From the Obamessiah, himself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI77cU3jsFs
Naomi never “dreamt” about Obama. As an Anti-Capitalist, like myself (or at least a Keynesian Democratic Socialist) she had no illusions, and was merely pointing out what she has long pointed out, as has the Left (to be differentiated from adoring liberals) never had illusions, but strongly backed Obama for symbolic purposes and to gain influence. The funny thing is that as usual, this site criticizes Obama from both his left and his right. The criticisms from the Left - like the above post, are great. The ones from the right make no sense unless the left critiques are insincere, and vice versa. I believe many of the left critiques are sincere, but for reasons of attracting and maintaining an audience, the right critiques are thrown out as a bone. Pretty pathetic.
To wit - For people complain in the same thread as a post complaining about Obama’s love of capitalism, to complain that he and his wife may be Marxists is pathological. It would be great if he, like Paul Krugman (who is openly influenced by Marx) and any progressive economist, had some more of Karl Marx in him.
Over-regulating is not capitalism or practicing free markets. It is perverting socialism to scam working class Americans and return favors for influential businessmen.
Hey, if Naomi couldn’t read B0’s book about his Reagan worship, even reading the Nation, her own publication would have given her a clue
http://edgeoforever.wordpress.com/2008/06/17/shocked-i-tell-ya-b0-is-for-the-free-market/
When did Naomi Klein ever suggest that Obama was anything at all beyond a normal bourgeois politician? The only thing I remember her writing about Obama at all was criticizing him for his responses to Muslimbaiting, saying that he is enabling Islamophobia by ostentatiously presenting his Christianity, thus giving the underlying point that there is something wrong with Islam.
Obama is a bourgeois politician. I’d rather see him elected, but please, don’t tar the Left with the same brush as middle class liberals.
The Left should be tarred *and* feathered.
To add to my last post- Naomi Klein never wrote adulatory things about Obama. As well, to make it clear, Paul Krugman and most progressive economists have some influence from Marx. So stop with your uneducated redbaiting. We all agree that the Soviet Union was a terrible place, OK? But Marxism and Marxist-Leninism are two different beasts, as are Lenininism and Stalinism. Most of the great economic programs that liberals - including most of you I presume - back, were pushed first by Marxists. Marxists practically designed the New Deal. Krugman is influenced by Marx, as I said, Bernie Sanders is a Marxist.
Read the guy, for once, as opposed to raising him up as a boogie man.
I have read Marx and must disagree with your argument that the New Deal was essentially Marxist. In many ways it was a reaction against the radical ideas of Socialist and Marxist groups that were gaining power during the early depression era.
Marxism is an idea that works well on paper but always fails when put into practice. It naively relies on the good intentions of those in charge.
Just a note of clarification to other readers (who could probable give a shit about the difference between “Marxist” and “Marx”.)
Marx was a philosopher (hence ulahane’s note that Marxism works well on paper). Though ulahane should have actually wrote “Communism” because that is what Marx actually theorized about).
Either way, like capitalism, most economic experiments work well on paper. Too bad about the people who blindly trust their GOV to make theory and reality congruent.
Kerala, governed by Marxists, is the most egalitarian part of India.
Then move to Kerala.
Love it or leave it, right?
The New Deal was NOT essentially Marxist…though it was influenced by Marxism, and specifically New Deal economists were either Marxists are strong sympathizers with his economic analysis if not his revolutionary creed.
This site tends toward a wide range of conspiracy theories — the Bilderbeg group is often on the top of their list. Republicans nor democrats are immune to the influence and power of the Bilderberg group. Think Independent when you switch your party affiliation.
“Rockefeller, TLC-Bilderberg Boss Nye Stump For Obama”
http://www.redicecreations.com/article.php?id=3212
YOU call them “conspiracy theories” informed people call them ” rich men’s plans.”
They Do think differently, what do you call stealing elections, or even asymmetrical war?
Do you read?
Conspiracy?
Get into the 21st century here, d0od.
As an aside (and I apologize if I sounded brusque, that was not my intent), I worry less about groups like Bilderberg, and more about some kook general in the Pentagon…
Should have wrote “conspiracy theories”. I will forgive you need to be an asshole.
I don’t care what you think, all said, my state of mind is not dependent upon your grace.
Is it a civil war yet?
LOL
Again, you are forgiven, Dave. God told me to tell you that.
The Bilderberg conferences are covered by the media every year. Most recently, it was in DC, and the year before it was held at the Ritz-Carlton in Istanbul. It is an invitation-only conference of around 130 guests, most of whom are persons of influence in the fields of business, media and politics. How is that far-fetched, that the wealthy and powerful would meet with intent to preserve and expand their resources?
Hope Floats, I should have typed “conspiracy theories”. I have seen so many dogged on this site about digging deeper into the issues that this GE is bringing up for all of us.
Read my post below about the rumor that Obama attended the Bilderberg meeting this year.
I can see that this post is going to bring the latte wingnuts out in force. Don’t miss the point, folks. Even you don’t seem to be clear on what Obama stands for, so why would you vote for him?
He’s all about the money and the power, and nothing more.
Latte wingnuts is an apt characterization, differentiated from their right wing brothers and sisters.
If you would have read the article that I linked too you would know that the topic of politicians being in the pockets of money IS what is being discussed here.
We’re not speaking of the same thing, I guess.
My apologies.
Dave, my comment was a response to “NY still loves Hillary”. I think you and I are on the same page.
Personally, I was referring to the Marx vs. Marxist vs. Communist vs. Marxist-Leninist argument. Those that refer to Obama as a Marxist are referring to his Black Liberation Theology. That doesn’t put him above taking money from anyone and everyone. I agree that he has and will continue to do so, then throw each and every one of them under the bus. He has no loyalty to anyone except himself, but I hope he is messing with the Bilderberg/Trilateral Commission crowd because they don’t like the bus, and they have the power to hunt him down.
Sorry I went to get a latte. (That was a funny.)
He actually is involved with Bilderberg, which means the DNC is as well.
There is rumor that he went to the annual meeting of Bilderberg in June in VA this year — the day that he was missing in action — when he ditched his press corp and got on the other plane.
What is Obama’s relationship to Le Cercle?
Auchi, Soros, and Brzezinski are all members.
It becomes a problem when a supposed peace candidate talks about bombing Pakistan, and he has Brezinski, the CFR founder, and Rockefeller entrenched in his campaign. Corrupt businessmen are as bad as terrorists and Dr. Strangelove advisers. There is a lot of oil up for grabs in the Middle east and in Central Asia right now.
Is he a 33 degree Mason? (a joke - many Masonci brethren, such as Salvador Allende have done great work)
You folks are getting loopy. You don’t need a conspiracy theory to explain the relationship between ruler and ruled in the USA. Capitalism - abstracted from the minute differences- the capitalist class - needs America to maintain global prestige, and is pushing someone (Obama) who is right out of a PR agency’s design for maintaining American and dollar hegemony in the world system.
Doesn’t that makes him a Manchurian candidate?
Also your point about “class” needs to be discussed more. As long as people focus as race and gender, we all miss the point that class is the oppressor.
Society is primarily, in the last instance, structured by class struggle. But gender and racial oppression are parts of class struggle - you won’t solve either of them in a society based on class - (ie ruling class uses very real issues like gender, race, etc. to divide working class)
You people are loopy. There is no grand scheme of class oppression. Politics is simply one hand washing the other. Obama said he would invade Pakistan. That is Obama’s adviser Zbig, an infamous Cold War hawk who has managed to re-invent himself in the eyes of some dupes by opposing the Iraq adventure, mainly because it is bad for imperialism.
Senator Jay Rockefeller and Trilateral / Bilderberger boss Joseph Nye are also actively campaigning for Obama. Nye is the theoretician of “soft power,” a new form of imperialist aggression based on economic warfare, subversion, deception, and people power coups. They want Obama to mobilize soft power to give a face lift to US imperialism.
Brzezinski’s goal is confrontation with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the main world center for resistance to US-UK global domination.
Anti-war activists are still fixated on Iran, but not Brzezinski is not - his target is China, TWENTY times bigger than Iran, with ICBMs ready to launch, followed by Russia, the world’s biggest nuclear power. Such confused activists need to focus on stopping the next war - the final global showdown with Pakistan, China, and Russia. Brzezinski created Islamofascism, so the muhajideen would fight the Soviets. He has always had it out for Russia.
Anticommunist sentiment and Carter’s Afghanistan. Brzezinski in bed with the right-wing, “Freedom House” (”America House”, get it?!) Anthony Lake. Azer Commerce (ie OIL). In the mid and late 1990s you could track all three of them to one place. What do Charlie Wilson, Brzezinski and Azerbaijan have in common? Afghan Mujahideen. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.
Here is the story of the founding of the Trilateral Commission, its stated purpose and an interview with Brzezinski where he admits more or less what I’ve just said:
In 1970, Brzezinski also proposed new ideas in his new book Between two Ages [1] where he explained that the moment to balance world power had arrived and it had to be in the hands of a new global political order based on a trilateral economic tie between Japan, Europe and the U.S. The revolution in production techniques and the transformation of the heavy industry into electronics had to cause a disruption of political systems and a new generation of power elites. David Rockefeller, excited about these concepts, hired him to create the Trilateral Commission and appointed him director. The commission was officially established in 1973 and gathered important personalities related to world trade, the international banking system, governors and the big European, Japanese and American media.
When the first oil crisis took place, the main concern of these world finance masters was to get rid of the foreign debt of developing countries by strengthening the role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It was also about strengthening and extending U.S.’s hegemony - by that time vulnerable due to its military defeat in Viet Nam- in every geographical boundary of the Eurasian continent where they were very influential after WWII
This mission, if analyzed from an outsider’s point of view, depicts Brzezinski as a peace advocate, a man in favor of multilateral relations and diminishing world tension (Cold War) and -to the eyes of the extreme right- as a man inspired by Marxism.
The best to be done in order to implement the plans of the Trilateral Commission was to make one of its members the President of the United States.
http://www.voltairenet.org/article30038.html
Why didn’t you mention the Illuminati? I mean all that proves is is the old addage - think tanks think tanks.
Well, gee whitakers, you mean he was *winking* about NAFTA after all?
*heh
Ok I have 3 youtube video ideas Pro McCain if any one here is creative enough.
1. The first video should be of Obama getting up in the middle of the night trying to figure out what button to push and remembering back to that day in the senate when he pushed the wrong button that cast the single vote against a ban on human cloning on 2/24/2000 (his reason in the media was “I pressed the wrong button.”
2. The 2nd video skit could be of BO and MO sitting in church and you see BO has an hearing device behind his ear as he’s listening to bidders on who will donate to his campaign and what he can do for them i.e. help them get re-elected by eliminating their opponents.
3. The 3rd video could pick up that sexual ad campaign where the girl sees McCain’s picture and claims to only date democrats. It could show the guy in the video dreaming back to that night and telling what a night mare it was that he almost hooked up with a kool-aid drinker and it could show the girl with a big kool-aid mustache etc…….
Why don’t you go to the McCain site with this? Some of us have not drank the MCCain kool-aid either.
I guess none of this really matters …. none of it.
According to Kerry he is going to be great president because he is a black man. Kerry also picked John McCain to be his running mate.. his first choice… John said no.
He picked Edwards after Edwards spoke at the annual meeting of Bilderberg. Obviously he impressed the big pockets.
I got news for ya darlin’ if you were stung by Enron…you need to understand GE…GE is behind the cap and trade where Enron used to be….
So better call Nancy “Stretch” Pelosi and let her know…cuz, GE owns the NBC and MSNBC that are in the bag for Mr. Obama….
Maybe that’s what “free market” he’s for. You think you’re paying out the ying yang now…just wait until the radical libs get that cap-n-trade…it will increase the prices of EVERYTHING.
Comapanies don’t EAT the costs that government puts on them by regulation honey, THEY PASS THAT COST ON TO YOU AND ME.
Mostly, I find his remarks funny. How often at HUFFPO did an Obamabot hollar NAFTA, like it was some kind of rallying cry.
Oh, they are about to eat their words. On the war, on free market trade…..
the idiots.
I forgot to reply to you above “wink”. Your point is so well taken.
Ken Lay–May he rest in peace?
Really?
Are you serious?
A: The body is fertilizer and if anything he’ll reincarnate as a lower lifeform for being such a gluttant.
Ken and the many futures market energy traders, colluding with other members of the Power Industries deserve shallow graves in Death Valley.
Obama started out as the Corporate Conservative candidate. Only finding no choice but to swing to the left a bit to compete with his two rivals, Hillary and John Edwards. That is why his NAFTA talk was JUST “campaign rhetoric”/ He gave his pre Presidential interview to Harpers, Barack Obama Inc, where he bragged he was a “blank slate” and allowed others to form their own opinion about him. He liked leading the voters on to think he was more Progressive, even though if you looked, his policies were not. Come on, he was bragging about Reagan, trashing Demsie Bill, Al, and JK and has said he is open to even privatizing school. HELLOOOO?
And before it was time for him to switch to a more “populist theme“, he was in New Hampshire bragging about FREE TRADE.
For us who actually pay attention to what one does and says, you know, the REALITY WORLD, this isn’t a surpise.
Here is a video of him in New Hampshire, he even goes much further. He “believes in Free Trade and isn’t worried about american workers competing for jobs
http://youtube.com/watch?v=nTfJmz3GWeE
I feel like Brad Pitt in the movie Fight Club, when he is bending over with his ass in the air, making a gyrating motion and says, “this is us”.
yeah. Or maybe another movie that comes to mind. DOG DAY AFTERNOON, where Al Pacino asks for a kiss and replies “I like being kissed when I’m getting f@cked“
I like yours better.
Read up on his economic advisers. Google is our friend. LOL
Partially privatize social security.
High health care cost is a good thing because it drives 30 percent of our GNP.
So how are we going to keep social security and get universal health care with those two key positions on economic policy?
Stop paying 45 cents on the dollar to the defense department.
oh yes, Austan Goolsbee, besides Rubin (from Rubinomics) is a real gem.
Privatize school and privatize social security.
So, if McCain said privatizing social security is off limits, that should win over many.
Here is a really good read from a local <a href=”http://mybluecountry.googlepages.com/”paper in pdf.
Sorr, this link should work.
of article, here
I agree — the evidence about him being a free-marketer was all over the place. I mean, if someone is a darling of the U of Chicago law and economics crowd, then they can’t be anything but a free-marketer who is worried about the intrusive effects of goverment regulation.
Remember the sneering at mortgage regulation? Remember tearing Hillary down re the gas tax issue? Remember that panel of ‘150 expert economists’? Remember only wanting to get kids insured? This is not progressive stuff, guys, and it is one of the many big reasons I did everything I could to support Hillary and oppose Obama.
Will the US wake up from its delusions in time?
Or do we now live in a delusional culture?
We are coming out of our delusions after the propping up of Bush and now the coup of BO. Getting off our addiction to the mainstream media is working. The sleeping lioness is waking up.
Obama stands for whatever people with money want him to stand for.
DoroB: yours is a succinct and apt comment. I’ll only add that he does so for reasons of self-aggrandizement…his career has been about ambition and self-promotion, not about helping others (Hillary’s whole career has been about helping others…what a travesty that America has missed a great opportunity to elect this astoundingly accomplished woman to the WH).
Earlier today there was a blog about his engagement in his church and with his mentors for 20 years, what we have heard so much about.
I realized today that the BO clan knew everything about Black Liberation Theology was going to come out. It has been the old pay no attention to the man…to divert us from looking at who propped him up.
We would all scream, “Marxist” “Marxist”, when what we need to scream is “Capitalist Pig”!
I’ve been on about this since I first heard the guy was from the Chicago School. I mean, come on… is this a surprise? He’s hinted at this for the entire campaign. As a liberal, I couldn’t figure out what was so liberal about this guy. Austan Goolsbee, people!!! His chief economic advisor!
I’ve thought ALL along that Obama was way more Reagan trickle-down Friedmanite than anyone was willing to acknowledge. I have never figured out why people thought Obama was so leftist. The only thing leftist about him is the fact that he knew he could get the Dems to back him if he pretended to be a “progressive” and he likes to hang out with radicals — they make him look cool to young kids and they have helped him get ahead in his career. But his policies strike me as same old market loving crap.
On a similar note, he’s such an arrogant guy who knows so little about checks and balances, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he didn’t believe in the same unitary executive theory as Bush and company.Just wait. John Yoo will be Obama’s next advisor and he’ll just claim it’s “reaching across the aisle.”