To the Corporatist NON Coverage of the Edwards Campaign to finally "Take Hold" and for John Edwards to be FORCED FROM THE RACE...
and the Concocted lies and misrepresentation that was the very well organized campaign of the Corporatist Pundits against his candidacy... Solomon, Krauthammer, Mariucci are just some of the names we can recall... others include some familiar names... The host of ABC's Sunday Morning is certainly one, and the Wolfster from CNN is yet another...
So here we have it... This McCain thing looks nice... but it will quickly blow over... and we are still stuck... and the Corporatists remain ... FIRMLY IN CONTROL!
"The C O R P O R A T I S T S" ... That C O N T R O L OUR GOVERNMENT AND POLITICAL SYSTEM... ARE... HOME FREE and IN THE Clear... Free from the VERY PALPABLE THREAT
That
WAS...
John Edwards' Populist Campaign To Restore "The POWER To The PEOPLE!"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/15/AR2008021502962.html The Obama Mystery
By David Ignatius
Sunday, February 17, 2008; B07
"Why is the press going so easy on Barack Obama?" asks a prominent Democratic Party strategist, echoing a criticism frequently made by the Clinton campaign. It's a fair question, and now that Obama appears to be the front-runner in terms of his delegate count, he deserves a closer look, especially from people like me who have written positively about him.
The reason to look closely now, quite simply, is to avoid buyer's remorse later.
WHAT ABOUT THE BUYERS' REMORSE FROM DEMOCRATS??? YOU BASTARD... THIS STORY SHOULD HAVE BEEN P R I N T E D... THREE FUCKING MONTHS AGO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Obama is a phenomenon in American politics -- a candidate who has ignited an enthusiasm among young people that I haven't seen in decades. He promises a nation in which, as his supporters chant, "race doesn't matter." And for a world that is dangerously alienated from American leadership, he offers a new face that could dispel negative assumptions about America -- and in that sense boost the nation's standing and security.
But these are symbolic qualities. What Obama would actually do as president remains a mystery in too many areas. Before he completes what increasingly looks like a march to the Democratic nomination, Obama needs to clarify more clearly what lies behind the beguiling banner marked "change." :eyes: Is this FUCKING KLOWN OF A JOURNALIST ( I use the term "journalist" LOOSELY... Is this KLOWN TRYING TO SAVE HILLBILL'S BACON???? Sure sounds like it to me.... :think:
Let's start with Obama's economic policies. Like all the major candidates, he has a Web site brimming with plans and proposals. But it has been hard to tell how these different strands come together. Is Obama a "New Democrat," in the tradition of Bill Clinton, who would look skeptically at traditional welfare programs? Is he a neo-populist, in the style of his former rival John Edwards, (OBAMA CERTAINLY HAS COPIED... errr Plagiarized... errr emulated John Edwards ... @ EVERY juncture throughout this campaign...WHY STOP NOW?) ...who would make job protection and tax equity his top domestic priorities?
Or is he a technocrat, whose economic answers wouldn't be all that different from those of Hillary Clinton?
Answer... :wtf: Who ever he needs to be on any given day?
This IS a little bit late to be finding out now what should have been publicized MONTHS ago... IF WE HAD A TRULY HONEST AND FORTHRIGHT FIFTH ESTATE IN THIS COUNTRY... :bounce:
WHICH WE CERTAINLY DO NOT!!!! This IS... 21st Century FASCIST AMERICA!
I'm still puzzled about where to locate Obama on this policy map. Until the past few weeks, I would have put him somewhere between "New Democrat" and "technocrat." But as he reaches for votes in big industrial states, Obama has been sounding more like Edwards. He proposed a middle-class tax cut a few months ago that would provide a credit of up to $1,000 per family. That's a big policy change that deserves real debate.
Obama added more Edwardsian flourishes in a speech Wednesday at an auto plant in Wisconsin. He called for a $150 billion program to develop "green collar" jobs and new energy sources. Meanwhile, to fix all the highways and bridges of our automotive society, he proposed a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank that would spend $60 billion over 10 years. Obama should be pressed on whether these big programs are affordable for an economy that appears to be in a tailspin.
Foreign policy is the area on which Obama has been longest on rhetoric and shortest on details. I've always liked his line about Iraq, that "we have to be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in." And when I asked Obama last summer what this might mean in practice, he talked about the need for a residual force in and around Iraq and for a gradual, measured pace of troop withdrawals. But in recent months, his tone has suggested a speedier and more decisive departure from Iraq. I fear that Obama is creating public expectations for a quick solution in Iraq that cannot responsibly be achieved.
With any candidate, there's always a question about the quality of his advisers. Hillary comes prepackaged as Clinton II, with a retinue of aides-in-waiting that is at once her strength and disadvantage. Obama's advisers are a mixed group, but I hear some complaints from policy analysts. One of his leading foreign policy gurus, Anthony Lake, was widely criticized as national security adviser in the first Clinton administration. His role does not reassure people who wonder what substance lies behind the "change" mantra.
To understand why Obama needs tougher scrutiny now, we need only recall his political avatar, President John F. Kennedy. Like Obama, JFK had served a relatively short time in the Senate without compiling a significant legislative record. He was young and charismatic, but uncertain in his foreign and domestic policies, and during his first 18 months JFK was often rebuffed at home and abroad. The CIA suckered him into a half-baked invasion of Cuba. And Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev concluded after an initial meeting that Kennedy was so weak and uncertain that he could be pushed around -- a judgment that led to the Cuban missile crisis.
Obama's inexperience is not a fatal flaw, but it's a real issue. He should use the rest of this campaign to give voters a clearer picture of how he would govern -- not in style but in substance.
]
http://www.sptimes.com/2008/02/20/Opinion/Obama_talks_change_bu.shtml
tampabay.com
Obama talks change but offers none
By Robert J. Samuelson, Washington Post Writers Group
Published February 20, 2008
WASHINGTON
It's hard not to be dazzled by Barack Obama. At the 2004 Democratic convention, he visited with Newsweek reporters and editors, including me. I came away deeply impressed by his intelligence, his forceful language and his apparent willingness to take positions that seemed to rise above narrow partisanship. Obama has become the Democratic presidential front-runner, precisely because countless millions have formed a similar opinion.
It is, I now think, mistaken.
As a journalist, I harbor serious doubt about each of the likely nominees. But with Sens. Hillary Clinton and John McCain, I feel that I'm dealing with known quantities. They've been in the public arena for years; their views, values and temperaments have received enormous scrutiny. By contrast, newcomer Obama is largely a stage presence defined mostly by his powerful rhetoric. The trouble, at least for me, is the huge and deceptive gap between his captivating oratory and his actual views.
The subtext of Obama's campaign is that his own life narrative - to become the first African-American president, a huge milestone in the nation's journey from slavery - can serve as a metaphor for other political stalemates. Great impasses can be broken with sufficient good will, intelligence and energy. "It's not about rich versus poor; young versus old; and it is not about black versus white," he says. Along with millions of others, I find this a powerful appeal.
But on inspection, the metaphor is a mirage. READ THAT AGAIN..... A MIRAGE!!!! :think: Substance... The HARD Stuff... WHERE IS IT? WHERE WAS IT?
ANSWER... IT NEVER WAS.....
Repudiating racism is not a magic cure-all for the nation's ills.
It requires independent ideas, and Obama has few. :think:
If you examine his agenda, it is completely ordinary, highly partisan, not candid and mostly unresponsive to many pressing national problems.
*****:bounce:POINTS WHICH I HAVE MADE REPEATEDLY IN THIS FORUM... WHEN THE RACE STILL OFFERED ALTERNATIVES TO CHOOSE FROM... i.e., John Edwards!:bounce:
By Obama's own moral standards, Obama fails. Americans "are tired of hearing promises made and 10-point plans proposed in the heat of a campaign only to have nothing change," he recently said. Shortly thereafter, he outlined an economic plan of at least 12 points that, among other things, would:
- Provide a $1,000 tax cut for most two-earner families ($500 for singles).
- Create a $4,000 refundable tuition tax credit for every year of college.
- Expand the child care tax credit for people earning less than $50,000 and "double spending on quality afterschool programs."
- Enact an "energy plan" that would invest $150-billion in 10 years to create a "green energy sector."
Whatever one thinks of these ideas, they're standard goodie-bag politics: something for everyone.
They're so similar to many Clinton proposals that her campaign put out a news release accusing him of plagiarizing. With existing budget deficits and the costs of Obama's "universal health plan," the odds of enacting his full package are slim. BTW Obama's so-called Health plan IS... Decidedly... "UN- Universal"!
A favorite Obama line is that he will tell "the American people not just what they want to hear, but what we need to know." Well, he hasn't so far.
Consider the retiring baby boomers. A truth-telling Obama might say: "Spending for retirees - mainly Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid - is already nearly half the federal budget. Unless we curb these rising costs, we will crush our children with higher taxes. Reflecting longer life expectancies, we should gradually raise the eligibility ages for these programs and trim benefits for wealthier retirees. Both Democrats and Republicans are to blame for inaction.
Waiting longer will only worsen the problem."
Instead, Obama pledges not to raise the retirement age and to "protect Social Security benefits for current and future beneficiaries." This isn't "change"; it's sanctification of the status quo.
He would also exempt all retirees making less than $50,000 annually from income tax. By his math, that would provide average tax relief of $1,400 to 7-million retirees - shifting more of the tax burden onto younger workers. READ THAT KIDZZZZ... YOUNGER WORKERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Obama's main proposal for Social Security is to raise the payroll tax beyond the present $102,000 ceiling.
Political candidates routinely indulge in exaggeration, pandering and inconsistency. Clinton and McCain do.
:bounce: The reason for holding Obama to a higher standard is that it's his standard and also his campaign's central theme. :bounce:
He has run on the vague promise of "change," but on issue after issue - immigration, the economy, global warming - he has offered boilerplate policies that evade the underlying causes of the stalemates. These issues remain contentious because they involve real conflicts or differences of opinion. "WHERE'S THE B E E F?" To coin a phrase from the past w/ political implications.... :think: AHhhhh But NOW... It IS TOOOOOO LATE... Just as I predicted in This IS... Corporatist Nation 1 and 2!
The contrast between his broad rhetoric and his narrow agenda is stark, and yet the press corps - preoccupied with the political "horse race" - has treated his invocation of "change" as a serious idea rather than a shallow campaign slogan.
(A WEAK EXCUSE FOR THE PURPOSEFULLY MANUFACTURED EFFORT BY THE CORPORATE PRESS TO IGNORE AND SINK ALL OTHER COMPETITORS... especially and UNIQUELY SO... John Edwards!)
He (Obama), seems to have hypnotized much of the media and the public with his eloquence and the symbolism of his life story. The result is a mass delusion that Obama is forthrightly engaging the nation's major problems when, so far, he isn't. :bounce: :argh: :rofl:
I ONLY wish people would have thought about this when something could still have been done about this...
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