2008 Election

good cop, bad cop

The 2008 "election" is a choice between the Rockefeller Republicans and the neo-cons, between the Council on Foreign Relations (Obama / Biden) and the American Enterprise Institute (McCain), between the old guard of foreign policy and the crazies. We need better choices than that if we are going to be able to use some of the rest of the oil for relocalization, renewable energy and "power down" strategies to mitigate the end of the age of oil.

www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080822.wcoessay0823/
BNStory/specialComment/home

Pointless party conventions in the U.S.
Damage control is the best the Democrats and the Republicans can aim for in Denver and St. Paul
DAVID SHRIBMAN
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
August 23, 2008 at 12:00 AM EDT

this year's conventions will be choreographed with precision. No opportunities for mischief. No margin for error. No unscripted moments. The Beijing Olympics, organized by Communists who believe in centralized planning, have provided more occasions for spontaneity. And at least in Beijing, no one has known in advance who would win.

www.prorev.com/#apart
How to Tell Obama and Clinton Apart

from the Progressive Review, Washington, D.C. www.prorev.com

How Clinton and Obama are alike

• Their positions are often barely distinguishable from that of the Republicans
• They have built their campaigns around genetic identity rather than on political principles and issues.
• "I would be stunned to find an anti-business [Supreme Court] appointee from either of them," Cass Sunstein, who is a constitutional adviser to Obama, told me. "There's not a strong interest on the part of Obama or Clinton in demonizing business, and you wouldn't expect to see that in their Supreme Court nominees."
  -- Jeffrey Rosen, NY Times
• They take multiple positions on individual issues such as NAFTA
• They have produced no interesting new ideas nor promised to fight for any important new programs
• They have offered no good idea about how to handle the current economic crisis
• They have gone about their campaigns as though they were leading a cult rather than a political movement
• Clinton hangs out with a covert group of right wing GOP Christians; Obama would name some of them to his cabinet.
• They have similar voting records with Progressive Punch ranking Obama 24th and Clinton 19th in Senate
• The both dissed Nader for daring to run for president again
• Obama wrote that conservatives and Bill Clinton were right to destroy social welfare, Clinton supported her husband's program
• Hillary Clinton comes in at 38th and Obama at 48th in the ranking of the League of Conservation Voters
• Both have hawkish foreign policy advisors involved in past US misdeeds and failures
• Both support Israeli aggression and apartheid. Obama has deserted previous support for two-state solution to Mid East situation
• Both have voted numerous times to continue funding the war
• Both support nuclear power
• Both support war on drugs
• Both support Real ID
• Both support No Child Left Behind
• Both supported crack-cocaine sentence disparity
• Both oppose single payer healthcare
• Both support USA PATRIOT Act
• Both support the death penalty
• Both have no clear plan to leave Iraq and Afghanistan
• Both support charter schools
• Both support federally funded ethanol

How Clinton and Obama are different

• Clinton would continue the 28 year old Reagan - Bush - Clinton - Bush era; Obama would probably end it.
• While both have misled voters, Clinton has by far the worst record, witness the cattle futures, Whitewater, travel office and similar scandals as well as the fact that five of her fundraisers have been convicted of, or pleaded no contest to, crimes and one fled the country after being indicted on charges related to raising money.
• While they both have had seamy friends, so far only one has surfaced for Obama - Rezko - as opposed to a lengthy list for Clinton that begins with three close business partners who ended up in prison.
• Obama, unlike Clinton, has never been almost indicted.
• Obama, unlike Clinton, has never been mentioned 35 times in a criminal indictment.
• Obama, unlike Clinton, has been involved in a resort land scam with in which about half the purchases, many of them seniors, lost their property.
• Obama, unlike Clinton, is not currently being sued in a case involving an allegedly massive misreporting of campaign contributions.
• Obama, unlike Clinton, did not support the appointment of the now indicted Bernie Kerick to be head of Homeland Security
• Obama would be good at international negotiations; foreign leaders wouldn't know whether to trust Clinton.
• Obama is not married to Bill Clinton
• Obama has revealed his tax returns; Clinton hasn't [in April 2008, the Clintons revealed their tax returns showing they earned over $100 million after they left the White House]
• Clinton thinks McCain would be better qualified for the White House than Obama; Obama would rather have Clinton than McCain
• The Clinton administration, according to an HRC ad, wouldn't answer an emergency White House call until the sixth ring; the Obama administration, it is implied, would wait for the seventh.
• Obama voted against immunity for telecoms' illegal spying on Americans; Clinton didn't show up for the vote.
• Obama has inspired a lot of young and minority voters to get involved in politics; Clinton has relied upon a traditional and aging constituency.
• Obama favored cluster bomb ban in civilian areas; Clinton opposed the ban
• Obama says "everything is on the table" with Social Security. Clinton seems slightly more supportive of the classic Democratic program
• Obama opposed putting heating fuel assistance for low income in stimulus bill; Clinton supported it

Obama also . . .

• Promises not to sign a trade bill without environmental and labor protections.
• Helped fight for restoration of habeas corpus at Gitmo.
• Aggressively opposed impeachment action against Bush.
• Wouldn't have photo taken with San Francisco mayor because he was afraid it would seem that he supported gay marriage
• Opposes lowering the drinking age to 18
• Supported restricting damage awards in medical malpractices suits
• Supported making it harder to file class action suits in state courts
• Misled on extent on lobbyist support
• Called the late Paul Wellstone "something of a gadfly"
• Voted for a business-friendly "tort reform" bill
• Voted for a nuclear energy bill that included money for bunker buster bombs and full funding for Yucca Mountain.
• Won't rule out first strike nuclear attack on Iran
• Received $708,000 from medical and insurance interests between 2001 and 2006
• Went to Connecticut to support Joe Lieberman in the primary against Ned Lamont
• Refuses to take a position on the anti-constitutional Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act
• Called Pakistan "the right battlefield ... in the war on terrorism." Threatened to invade Pakistan
• Sounds sort of like Tony Robbins
• Uses various evangelical cons to win supporters
• Has not revealed his proposed policies in many areas and where he has they primarily consist of minor alterations in the status quo
• Voted against a 30% interest rate cap on credit cards
• Opposed the war as a state senator, is less certain as a federal one and has voted for full funding of it
• Wrote critically in his books of the New Deal and the New Left while praising Bill Clinton

Clinton also . . .

• Favors healthcare individual mandates that would help insurance companies and banks but not citizens
• Has the most number of foreign lobbyist contributors
• Is even more popular with Pentagon contractors than McCain
• Is most popular with K Street lobbyists
• Is only First Lady to come under criminal investigation
• Has received the most funds from oil industry
• Has received the most funds from health industry
• Gave most number of evasive answers (250) to congressional inquiries
• Submitted the largest false campaign finance report

MSNBC has a fancy webpage with slick graphics and video clips of each candidate on the issues at
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21116732/

www.democracynow.org/2008/1/3/vote_for_change_atrocity_linked_us
January 03, 2008
Vote for Change? Atrocity-Linked U.S. Officials Advising Democratic, GOP Presidential Frontrunners
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.

AMY GOODMAN: Are you saying that there’s no difference between these candidates?
ALLAN NAIRN: Well, fundamentally, there’s no difference on the basic principle of, are you against the killing of civilians and are you willing to enforce the murder laws. If we were willing to enforce the murder laws, the headquarters of each of these candidates could be raided, and various advisers and many candidates could be hauled away by the cops, because they have backed various actions that, under established principles like the Nuremberg Principles, like the principles set up in the Rwanda tribunals, the Bosnia tribunals, things that are unacceptable, like aggressive war, like the killing of civilians for political purposes. So, in a basic sense, there is no choice.
But there is a difference in this sense: the US is so vastly powerful, the US influences and has the potential to end so many millions of lives around the world, that if, let’s say, you have two candidates that are 99% the same--there’s only 1% difference between them--if you’re talking about decisions that affect a million lives--1% of a million is 10,000--that’s 10,000 lives. So, even though it’s a bitter choice, if you choose the one who is going to kill 10,000 fewer people, well, then you’ve saved 10,000 lives. We shouldn’t be limited to that choice. It’s unacceptable. And Americans should start to realize that it’s unacceptable.

www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7766
2008 presidential charade promises deepening of government criminality and expansion of war
by Larry Chin
Global Research, January 10, 2008
Online Journal

Every election in modern US history has been a criminal manipulation, choreographed and rigged by political elites and performed by hand-picked elite puppets, each backed by their teams of corrupt war criminals, intelligence/security “advisors” and think tank assets. The 2008 affair will be no different.

It is time once again to dispel the mass insanity and unfounded hopes as another fresh election hell ensues. There will be no savior, no end to the continuing world crisis, and absolutely no “change."

The monsters behind each candidate

As the American public once again gets swept up into another beyond, ridiculous carnival over which “presidential personality” is most “likeable," which preselected puppet makes a better speech, etc., there is little or no attention paid to the individuals behind each candidate; the forces that are pulling the strings, and actually setting the geopolitical agenda.

The Washington Post has provided a complete list of each puppet’s respective “masters," which must be studied line by line:

The War Over The Wonks: A list of national security and foreign policy advisors to the leading presidential candidates from both parties

This list holds the key to the central issue: war.

As the names reveal, every major candidate (the favored puppets with any real chance of being selected) fronts for agendas set by current and former neoconservative and neoliberal “security” officers and politicos, members of the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations, and apparatuses such as the Heritage Foundation, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Brookings Institution, AIPAC, the Hoover Institution, the American Enterprise Institute, and others.

Some of the most nightmarish individuals who walk the earth today can be found behind the candidates, as follows:

John McCain

Henry Kissinger
Richard Armitage, former deputy secretary of state, covert operative and lifelong Bush ally
Robert “Bud” McFarlane, Reagan/Bush national security adviser, Iran, Contra
William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard (neocon)
Alexander Haig, Reagan/Bush secretary of state
George Shultz, Reagan/Bush secretary of state, Hoover Institution, Bechtel
Brent Scowcroft, Ford, George H.W. Bush national security adviser
James Woolsey, former CIA director
Lawrence Eagleburger, George H.W. Bush secretary of state
William Ball, Reagan administration Navy secretary
Colin Powell

Barack Obama

Zbigniew Brzezinski
Anthony Lake, Clinton administration national security adviser
Sarah Sewall, Clinton administration deputy secretary of defense, counter, insurgency czar
Richard Clarke, Clinton and Bush administration counter, terrorism czar
Susan Rice, Clinton administration Africa specialist and NSC member, Brookings
Bruce Riedel, former CIA officer, NSC Near East and Asian affairs, Brookings

Hillary Clinton

Bill Clinton
Madeline Albright, Clinton administration secretary of state
Sandy Berger, Clinton administration national security adviser
Richard Holbrooke, Clinton administration UN ambassador
Gen. Wesley Clark, Clinton era Kosovo commander
Leslie Gelb, Council on Foreign Relations, former State and Defense Department official
Martin Indyk, Clinton administration Israel ambassador, Brookings
Strobe Talbott, Clinton administration deputy secretary of state, co, creator of Caspian oil “6+2” group, Brookings
Jeffrey Smith, former CIA general counsel

Rudy Giuliani

Kim Holmes, former George W. Bush assistant secretary of state, Heritage Foundation
Louis Freeh, former FBI director
Stephen Yates, former deputy assistant to Dick Cheney
Norman Podhoretz, Hudson Institute (neocon)
Kenneth Weinstein, Hudson Institute
Numerous individuals connected to the neocon Hoover Institution and Heritage Foundation

Mike Huckabee

Huckabee has been secretive about his team. Among the names floated so far:

Ed Rollins, Republican operative
Frank Gaffney, neocon
John Bolton, George W. Bush U.N. ambassador (as of this writing, Bolton’s participation is a strong rumor)

John Edwards

Edwards boasts a large team of career military/intelligence officers, most of whom are “rank and file." Among the more notable names:

Barry Blechman, Jimmy Carter assistant director of US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, founder and chairman of the Henry L. Stimson Center
Irving Blickstein, former assistant deputy chief of Naval operations, RAND Corporation

Mitt Romney

Cofer Black, former CIA and George W. Bush state department counter terrorism officer, vice president of Blackwater USA
Alberto Cardenas, lobbyist and former chairman of Florida Republican party
Roger Noriega, George W. Bush assistant secretary for Western hemisphere affairs
Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R, Mich.), ranking member, House Intelligence Committee