This isn't news, it's unvarnished opinion, and half-assed opinion at that...

yeah, yeah, yeah... so my last post was december 13... deal with it...

this isn't a news story... it's pure, unadulterated manipulation and the so-called "journalist" who wrote it should be banned from news media for life... the title and the lead are both dripping with innuendo and condescension so thick it could be used as window caulk...

so	UNDERSTANDING BERNIE’S STRANGE ALLURE BY MICHAEL TOMASKY

Why Sanders draws the crowds, excites the base, polls relatively well—and still won’t make much of an impact in 2016. i don't happen to think bernie's "allure" is in the least bit strange nor do i think he's not having an impact... what's happening is that he's touching a chord with the american people that has desperately needed touching for many long years and that's scaring the ever-loving shit out of our ruling elites...

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Obama traveled West on Sunday in search of campaign funds and an energized base

he can say whatever he wants to whomever he wants... he can reach out to his "base," he can reach out to minorities, he can blast republicans, he can preach populism, he can claim solidarity with labor and the working class... it makes no difference... it's all just words and i no longer pay any attention to his words... the best campaigning the man could possibly do would be to take strong action to back up those words... sadly, the only strong actions i've seen so far are totally aligned with the banksters, wall street and the military-corporate-industrial complex...

from the hill (emphases added)...

President Obama traveled West on Sunday in search of campaign funds and an energized base.

With the third-quarter filing deadline looming this week, the president was attending seven fundraisers Sunday in Seattle and San Jose, Calif., blasting Republicans at every step.

[...]

Despite the projected confidence of campaign officials like David Axelrod who said recently that Obama does not have a problem with his base, Obama acknowledged at stops Sunday that "a lot of people are discouraged and a lot of people are disillusioned."

"I need you guys to shake off any doldrums,” Obama said. “I need you to decide right here and right now, talk to your friends and neighbors and coworkers and tell them, ‘You know what? We're not finished yet.’"

“The New York Times” reported Sunday that the Obama reelection campaign will target minorities and other key elements of Obama's base to make up for a loss of white voters who came out for Obama in 2008.

Obama warned the crowd that in 2012, the Republican "alternative I think is an approach to government that would fundamentally cripple America in meeting the challenges of the 21st Century."

furthermore, don't try to convince me that the republicans are the "enemy"... the democrats are as complicit - if not more so - in the disaster that my country has come to represent as any republican... both parties are merely convenient distractions from the systematic looting of global resources (note that i said "global") being perpetrated by our super-rich elites, the same people who buy the offices for the "elected" officials who work solely for their interests... until i see serious action to change THAT, no amount of populist rhetoric is going to win my heart...

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Why Obama keeps Geithner and why he's calling for a tax on millionaires... (Cue the progressive music) [UPDATE]

there's a lot of s*** hitting the fan with the publication of ron suskind's new book, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President... i've been reading various reviews and analyses but leave it to glenn to hit the nail on the head...

Geithner wasn't chosen and hasn't remained despite being "associated with the deregulatory policies of the past" and despite being the bankers' "man in Washington." He is empowered precisely because of those facts, as was pointed out even before Obama's inauguration. That Geithner and Summers were empowered after enabling the financial crisis through Wall Street subservience isn't a mystery; it's the explanation (And just by the way, replacing the word "despite" with the phrase "because of" is -- in general -- one of the most valuable tools for translating Washington propaganda into reality; here is an excellent example showing how that works, from the first paragraph of a New York Times article two weeks ago:

Documents found at the abandoned office of Libya’s former spymaster appear to provide new details of the close relations the Central Intelligence Agency shared with the Libyan intelligence service -- most notably suggesting that the Americans sent terrorism suspects at least eight times for questioning in Libya despite that country's reputation for torture.

Note how the paragraph instantly transforms from misleading nonsense into obvious truth simply by changing "despite" to "because of"; this repeatedly is an effective instrument for deciphering propaganda -- e.g., the U.S. continues to brutalize people in the Muslim world "despite" the fact that doing so produces more Terrorism and thus ensures Endless War.)

glenn also refers to the same matt taibbi piece i referenced in an earlier post...

I remember following Obama on the campaign trail and hearing all sorts of promises before union-heavy crowds. He said he would raise the minimum wage every year; he said he would fight free-trade agreements. He also talked about repealing the Bush tax cuts and ending tax breaks for companies that move jobs overseas.

It's not just that he hasn't done those things. The more important thing is that the people he's surrounded himself with are not labor people, but stooges from Wall Street.

glenn continues...

That's why -- after 2 1/2 years -- we suddenly see an outburst of "fighting for jobs" and, now, a call to raise taxes on the rich. He does that precisely because everyone -- especially the rich -- knows it will not and cannot happen. We're now formally in (re-)election season, so it's time again to haul out the progressive music. ... [N]one of this presages an actual change in how the government functions or, especially, on whose behalf it labors. That's precisely why he feels free to advocate such things without alienating his funding base. It's still the government of Tim Geithner and his bosses/owners; election season (combined with rising elite fear of social unrest) just requires a bit more pretense to obscure that fact.

glenn concludes his post with this all-too-sadly-true cartoon...



[UPDATE and BUMPED]

check out this reuters headline...

Obama deficit plan aimed at Democratic base

[...]

"I will not support any plan that puts all the burden on closing our deficit on ordinary Americans," Obama said. "We are not going to have a one-sided deal that hurts the folks who are most vulnerable."

With polls showing most Americans unhappy with his economic leadership, Obama's re-election hopes could hinge on his ability to convince voters that Republicans represent the rich, not the middle class. That was the main theme of his remarks on Monday, in which he repeatedly said all Americans must pay their "fair share" of taxes.

so, what am i supposed to do now...? after falling in love, accepting a proposal for marriage only to find that i hooked up with a spouse-beater and then taking my licks until i finally decided to leave the two-faced creep, do i now convince myself that it was all a misunderstanding and meekly return home...?

words ain't gonna bring me back, sweetie... trust me...

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A Tahrir Square for the USA or you can't beat somebody with nobody

if this is the sobering reality...

noam chomsky...

The comic opera in Washington this summer, which disgusts the country and bewilders the world, may have no analogue in the annals of parliamentary democracy.

The spectacle is even coming to frighten the sponsors of the charade. Corporate power is now concerned that the extremists they helped put in office may in fact bring down the edifice on which their own wealth and privilege relies, the powerful nanny state that caters to their interests.

Corporate power’s ascendancy over politics and society—by now mostly financial—has reached the point that both political organizations, which at this stage barely resemble traditional parties, are far to the right of the population on the major issues under debate.

the london riots...

the scene on the ground...

A police station disemboweled, a double-decker bus reduced to a smoking carcass, shops pillaged, buildings razed by flames -- London's Tottenham quarter resembled a war zone Sunday following overnight riots.

and a bit of background...

Those condemning the events of the past couple of nights in north London and elsewhere would do well to take a step back and consider the bigger picture: a country in which the richest 10% are now 100 times better off than the poorest, where consumerism predicated on personal debt has been pushed for years as the solution to a faltering economy, and where, according to the OECD, social mhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifobility is worse than any other developed country.

given all that and a whole lot more, do we leave the holder of the most powerful office in the world unchallenged...?

tavis smiley...

I don’t think the President would be hurt, necessarily—the country certainly would not be hurt—by a primary challenge that would refocus him on what really matters. It would refocus him on what’s happening to too many people in this country. It would refocus him on a more progressive agenda. But having said that, I think if the race were held today, the President still wins. You can’t beat somebody with nobody, and I don’t see who the somebody is that can beat the President.

hey... i don't have any better answer... four more years of the obama that has emerged from the 2008 election is a pretty grim prospect to me right now... if we assume political business as usual (meaning no populist revolution intervening), i think SOMEBODY with the real milk of human kindness running in his or her veins needs to stand up and give our bogus hopey-changey president a run for his money... however, given the hammer lock the super-rich elites have on our failed two-party system, i'm afraid i just don't see it happening... what we really need, i'm afraid, IS that populist uprising, a tahrir square for the u.s.a...

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Americans: Better to let the rich keep their money than to have it benefit economic and social inferiors

a remarkably thoughtful piece from the guardian's peter wilby on why there isn't more populist anger over the obscene amounts of money and power accruing to our super-rich elites...

Between 1996-7 and 2007-8, the earnings of someone in the middle of the income distribution rose (1997 prices) from £16,000 to £17,100 - barely £100, or less than 0.7% a year. Even the increase for those quite near the top of the income scale, better off than 90% of their fellow citizens, was unspectacular. Their inflation-discounted pay crept up from £36,700 to £41,500, or less than £450 (1.2%) a year. The top 0.1% scooped the jackpot. They got a £19,000 pay rise every year, taking their incomes to £538,600, a gain of 67% over 11 years. The commission gives no figures for the top 0.01%, but we can be confident they did even better and dramatically so.

That is the most important point about what has happened to incomes in Britain and America during the neoliberal era: the very rich are soaring ahead, leaving behind not only manual workers - now a diminishing minority - but also the middle-class masses, including doctors, teachers, academics, solicitors, architects, Whitehall civil servants and, indeed, many CEOs who don't run FTSE 100 companies, to say nothing of the marketing, purchasing, personnel, sales and production executives below them. That is why, over the past decade, some of the most anguished cries about high incomes and inequality have appeared in the Telegraph and Mail.

The commission describes levels of top pay as an instance of "market failure" because most arguments used to defend it just don't stack up. For example, despite claims that pay levels are dictated by global competition, the majority of FTSE 100 CEOs are British, promoted from within their companies. Only one CEO has been poached in the past five years - by a British rival. But top pay also suggests political failure, particularly on the left. To put it crudely, why can't leftwing parties harness middle-class anger against the super-rich? Surveys show a substantial majority of the electorate agree that differences in income are too large and that ordinary people don't get a fair share. Only one in eight disagree. Why is this so difficult to translate into a political programme that could command mass support?

One reason why the working classes so often disappointed the left was that, having little daily contact with the rich and little knowledge of how they lived, they simply didn't think about inequality much, or regard the wealthy as direct competitors for resources. As the sociologist Garry Runciman observed: "Envy is a difficult emotion to sustain across a broad social distance." Nearly 50 years ago he found manual workers were less likely than non-manual workers to think other people were "noticeably better off". Even now most Britons underestimate the rewards of bankers and executives. Top pay has reached such levels that, rather like interstellar distances, what the figures mean is hard to grasp.

But the gap between the richest 1% or 2% and everybody else in the top 20% or 30% is now so great and growing so rapidly that, one might reasonably think, it should change the terms of political trade. The income distance may be huge but the social distance is not. Those in the top 2% and the next 28% have often been to the same schools and universities. More important, they compete for scarce resources: places in fee-charging schools, houses in the best areas, high-end personal services. The super-rich have provoked raging inflation in the prices of these goods. Many of the not-so-rich were born into the professional classes and high expectations. Now, to their surprise, they find themselves struggling. In income distribution, their interests are closer to those of the mass of the population than to people they once saw as their peers.

They are not, however, imminently likely to join a crusade for equality. This generation of the middle classes has internalised the values of individualist aspiration, as zealously propagated by Tony Blair as by Margaret Thatcher. It does not look to the application of social justice to improve its lot. It expects to rely on its own efforts to get ahead and, crucially, to maintain its position.

As psychologists will tell you, fear of loss is more powerful than the prospect of gain. The struggling middle classes look down more anxiously than they look up, particularly in recession and sluggish recovery. Polls show they dislike high income inequalities but are lukewarm about redistribution. They worry that they are unlikely to benefit and may even lose from it; and worse still, those below them will be pulled up sufficiently to threaten their status. This is exactly the mindset in the US, where individualist values are more deeply embedded. Americans accepted tax cuts for the rich with equanimity. Better to let the rich keep their money, they calculated, than to have it benefit economic and social inferiors.

and to those who say there's no class system operating in the united states, what are you guys smoking...?

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Cornel West on Obama: I was completely wrong

chris hedges quoting obama campaign worker and princeton university professor cornel west on west's serious disillusionment and 180-degree u-turn after obama was elected...

“When you look at a society you look at it through the lens of the least of these, the weak and the vulnerable; you are committed to loving them first, not exclusively, but first, and therefore giving them priority,” says West, the Class of 1943 University Professor of African American Studies and Religion at Princeton University. “And even at this moment, when the empire is in deep decline, the culture is in deep decay, the political system is broken, where nearly everyone is up for sale, you say all I have is the subversive memory of those who came before, personal integrity, trying to live a decent life, and a willingness to live and die for the love of folk who are catching hell. This means civil disobedience, going to jail, supporting progressive forums of social unrest if they in fact awaken the conscience, whatever conscience is left, of the nation. And that’s where I find myself now.”

“I have to take some responsibility,” he admits of his support for Obama as we sit in his book-lined office. “I could have been reading into it more than was there."

"I was thinking maybe he has at least some progressive populist instincts that could become more manifest after the cautious policies of being a senator and working with [Sen. Joe] Lieberman as his mentor,” he says. “But it became very clear when I looked at the neoliberal economic team. The first announcement of Summers and Geithner I went ballistic. I said, ‘Oh, my God, I have really been misled at a very deep level.’ And the same is true for Dennis Ross and the other neo-imperial elites. I said, ‘I have been thoroughly misled, all this populist language is just a facade. I was under the impression that he might bring in the voices of brother Joseph Stiglitz and brother Paul Krugman. I figured, OK, given the structure of constraints of the capitalist democratic procedure that’s probably the best he could do. But at least he would have some voices concerned about working people, dealing with issues of jobs and downsizing and banks, some semblance of democratic accountability for Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats who are just running amuck. I was completely wrong.”

and, if the above isn't a sad enough indictment, here's what west says obama COULD be doing but has chosen not to...

“Can you imagine if Barack Obama had taken office and deliberately educated and taught the American people about the nature of the financial catastrophe and what greed was really taking place?” West asks. “If he had told us what kind of mechanisms of accountability needed to be in place, if he had focused on homeowners rather than investment banks for bailouts and engaged in massive job creation he could have nipped in the bud the right-wing populism of the tea party folk. The tea party folk are right when they say the government is corrupt. It is corrupt. Big business and banks have taken over government and corrupted it in deep ways.

“We have got to attempt to tell the truth, and that truth is painful,” he says.

like west, i thought i was voting for a man who would do what, in west's dream, obama would be doing right now... but no... the nightmare of untrammeled greed, led by those whose only imperatives are money and power and gaining more of same through the endless pursuit of endless war and corporate thievery, continues unabated...

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The Founding Fathers deeply feared popular democracy ... They rigged the system to favor the elite from the start

again, nothing we don't know but it never hurts to be reminded...

chris hedges...

The liberal class has busied itself with the toothless pursuits of inclusiveness, multiculturalism, identity politics and tolerance—a word Martin Luther King never used—and forgotten about justice. It naively sought to placate ideological and corporate forces bent on the destruction of the democratic state. The liberal class, like the misguided democrats in the former Yugoslavia or the hapless aristocrats in the Weimar Republic, invited the wolf into the henhouse. The liberal class forgot that, as Karl Popper wrote in “The Open Society and Its Enemies,” “If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.”

[...]

American democracy arose because those consciously locked out of the system put their bodies on the line and demanded justice. The exclusion of the poor and the working class from the systems of power in this country was deliberate. The Founding Fathers deeply feared popular democracy. They rigged the system to favor the elite from the start, something that has been largely whitewashed in public schools and by a corporate media that has effectively substituted myth for history. Europe’s poor, fleeing to America from squalid slums and workhouses in the 17th and 18th centuries, were viewed by the privileged as commodities to exploit. Slaves, Native Americans, indentured servants, women, and men without property were not represented at the Constitutional Conventions. And American history, as Howard Zinn illustrated in “The People’s History of the United States,” is one long fight by the marginalized and disenfranchised for dignity and freedom. Those who fought understood the innate cruelty of capitalism.

in his article, hedges details the many instances in u.s. history where those who fought for workers' rights paid with their lives as their efforts were forcefully resisted by those serving the super-rich elites of the day... it's history worth reading - and remembering...

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Obama stirs from his stupor and slaps Geithner's hand

and about fucking time too...

President Obama vowed to try to stop the faltering insurance giant American International Group from paying out hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses to executives, as the administration scrambled to avert a populist backlash against banks and Wall Street that could complicate Mr. Obama’s economic recovery agenda.

“In the last six months, A.I.G. has received substantial sums from the U.S. Treasury,” Mr. Obama said. He added that he had asked Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner “to use that leverage and pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses and make the American taxpayers whole.”

"populist backlash" is putting it mildly... i think obama had a vision of people with torches, rakes, and hoes storming the white house... also, "trying to stop" ain't good enough... in 12-step language, "trying" is "lying"...

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Here's what Argentina's doing to help ITS auto industry

interesting, no...?

Gov’t cranks out cut-rate car loans
3.1 billion pesos earmarked for first-time new car buyers

The government jump-started Argentina’s sputtering auto industry yesterday providing details of a 3.1 billion peso boost with cut-rate loans for first-time new car buyers.

Production Minister Deborah Giorgi said that six automakers will each offer two models selling for 31,000 pesos or less for people buying a new car for the first time.

The companies will have to promise to shun layoffs and hold down profit margins on cars sold under the programme. Buyers can choose a pre-savings plan under which delivery times are determined by lottery or they can contract low-interest financing. Payments are supposed to range around 800 pesos a month.

The programme affects vehicles sold by local branches of Renault, Peugeot Citroën, Ford, General Motors, Fiat and Volkswagen.

whether this makes more sense than a direct auto industry bailout, i'm not economically savvy enough to say, but i can say this... it's clearly more aimed at directly helping the average citizen rather than the fat-cats who are already grossly overpaid...

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Corporatocracy: talking the talk but will they walk it too?

yeah, yeah, yeah...

Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama intensified their populist appeals on Monday, responding to widespread economic anxiety and pushing the Democratic Party further from the business-friendly posture once championed by Bill Clinton.

Senator Barack Obama at a rally at Youngstown State University in Ohio. “We now have greater income inequality than any time since the Great Depression,” he said at another event in Ohio.

Mrs. Clinton, speaking on the eve of the Wisconsin primary but looking forward to primaries in Ohio and Texas on March 4, issued a 12-page compendium of her economic policies that emphasizes programs aiding families stressed by high oil prices, home foreclosures, costly student loans and soaring health care premiums.

In public appearances here and in her economic booklet, she took aim at hedge fund managers, oil company profits, drug company subsidies and trade agreements that she says encourage companies to export jobs.

[...]

Campaigning in Ohio before flying to Wisconsin for an election-eve rally, Mr. Obama said the wealthy had “made out like bandits” under the Bush administration and called for an end to tax breaks for companies that move jobs overseas.

“In the last year alone,” Mr. Obama said, “93 plants have closed in this state. And yet, year after year, politicians in Washington sign trade agreements that are riddled with perks for big corporations but have absolutely no protections for American workers. It’s bad for our economy; it’s bad for our country.”

gee, it sure SOUNDS good, doesn't it...? but, before we get all cranked up about hillary and barack challenging our monied elites, let's re-visit a partial list of their advisors, shall we...? (oh, and btw, i can't let that "business-friendly" crap stand, unless "business-friendly" is taken to mean government and business feasting at an enormous banquet table on the spoils of war and the pound of flesh contributed by every citizen who didn't receive the engraved invitation to the party...)

from my post of 12 january, courtesy of the washington post...

Hillary Clinton

Madeleine K. Albright, President Clinton’s secretary of state and now chairperson of the National Democratic Institute, foreign policy adviser
Samuel R. Berger, President Clinton’s national security adviser and now a principal at business consultancy Stonebridge, foreign policy adviser
Lt. Gen. Daniel William Christman, a former West Point superintendent and now senior vice president for international affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, foreign policy adviser
Gen. Wesley K. Clark, President Clinton’s Kosovo commander and now a Democratic fundraiser, endorsed Sen. Clinton Sept. 15
John H. Dalton, President Clinton’s Navy secretary and now president of the Financial Services Roundtable’s Housing Policy Council, veterans and military retirees for Hillary
Lee Feinstein, a deputy in President Clinton’s State Department, national security coordinator
Leslie H. Gelb; president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, a former New York Times correspondent and a former State and Defense Department official, informal adviser
Richard C. Holbrooke, President Clinton’s UN ambassador and broker of the Dayton Peace Accords (and now a Washington Post columnist), foreign policy adviser
Martin S. Indyk, President Clinton’s ambassador to Israel and now director of Brookings’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy, foreign policy adviser
Gen. John M. ("Jack") Keane, a former Army vice chief of staff who co-crafted the Iraq "surge" and is now a military analyst (sometimes for ABC news), military issues adviser
Lt. Gen. Claudia J. Kennedy, former deputy chief of staff for intelligence, veterans and military retirees for Hillary
Lt. Gen. Donald L. Kerrick, President Clinton’s deputy national security adviser, organizes meetings of retired officers
Col. Andrew F. Krepinevich, president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, briefed Hillary Clinton as well as Sen. John McCain and Gov. Bill Richardson
Vali Nasr, Naval Postgraduate School professor, Middle East adviser
Michael O'Hanlon, Brookings senior fellow and former Congressional Budget Office defense and foreign policy analyst, supporter
Rep. (and retired Vice Adm.) Joseph Sestak, veterans and military retirees for Hillary
Andrew Shapiro, Sen. Clinton’s Senate foreign policy staffer
Jeffrey H. Smith, former CIA general counsel and now a partner leading the public policy and government contracts group of law firm Arnold & Porter, national security adviser
Strobe Talbott, Brookings president, informal adviser
Togo D. West, President Clinton’s secretary for veterans affairs and former secretary of the Army, veterans and military retirees for Hillary
Former Amb. Joseph C. Wilson IV, the half of the Plamegate couple who criticized the administration for using questionable evidence to promote the Iraq war, endorsed Sen. Clinton July 16

Barack Obama

Former Amb. Jeffrey Bader, President Clinton’s National Security Council Asia specialist and now head of Brookings’s China center, national security adviser
Mark Brzezinski, President Clinton’s National Security Council Southeast Europe specialist and now a partner at law firm McGuireWoods, national security adviser
Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s national security adviser and now a Center for Strategic and International Studies counselor and trustee and frequent guest on PBS’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, foreign policy adviser
Richard A. Clarke, President Clinton and President George W. Bush’s counterterrorism czar and now head of Good Harbor Consulting and an ABC News contributor, sometimes Obama adviser
Gregory B. Craig, State Department director of policy planning under President Clinton and now a partner at law firm Williams & Connolly, foreign policy adviser
Roger W. Cressey, former National Security Council counterterrorism staffer and now Good Harbor Consulting president and NBC News consultant, has advised Obama but says not exclusive
Ivo H. Daalder, National Security Council director for European affairs during President Clinton’s administration and now a Brookings senior fellow, foreign policy adviser
Richard Danzig, President Clinton’s Navy secretary and now a Center for Strategic and International Analysis fellow, national security adviser
Philip H. Gordon, President Clinton’s National Security Council staffer for Europe and now a Brookings senior fellow, national security adviser
Maj. Gen. J. (Jonathan) Scott Gration, a 32-year Air Force veteran and now CEO of Africa anti-poverty effort Millennium Villages, national security adviser and surrogate
Lawrence J. Korb, assistant secretary of defense from 1981-1985 and now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, informal foreign policy adviser
W. Anthony Lake, President Clinton’s national security adviser and now a professor at Georgetown’s school of foreign service, foreign policy adviser
James M. Ludes, former defense and foreign policy adviser to Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and now executive director of the American Security Project, national security adviser
Robert Malley, President Clinton’s Middle East envoy and now International Crisis Group’s Middle East and North Africa program director, national security adviser
Gen. Merrill A. ("Tony") McPeak, former Air Force chief of staff and now a business consultant, national security adviser
Denis McDonough, Center for American Progress senior fellow and former policy adviser to then-Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle, foreign policy coordinator
Samantha Power, Harvard-based human rights scholar and Pulitzer Prize winning writer, foreign policy adviser
Susan E. Rice, President Clinton’s Africa specialist at the State Department and National Security Council and now a Brookings senior fellow, foreign policy adviser
Bruce O. Riedel, former CIA officer and National Security Council staffer for Near East and Asian affairs and now a Brookings senior fellow, national security adviser
Dennis B. Ross, President Clinton’s Middle East negotiator and now a Washington Institute for Near East Policy fellow, Middle East adviser
Sarah Sewall, deputy assistant secretary of defense for peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance during President Clinton’s administration and now director of Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, national security adviser
Daniel B. Shapiro, National Security Council director for legislative affairs during President Clinton’s administration and now a lobbyist with Timmons & Company, Middle East adviser
Mona Sutphen, former aide to President Clinton’s National Security adviser Samuel R. Berger and to United Nations ambassador Bill Richardson and now managing director of business consultancy Stonebridge, national security adviser

after you've digested that list, tell me if a single goddam thing is going to change if either of those two gets elected...

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Millions of children are being raised on prejudice and disinformation

aw, geeeez... more bullshit from foreign policy... check this out...

the title...

Europe’s Philosophy of Failure

now, for the meat...

In France and Germany, students are being forced to undergo a dangerous indoctrination. Taught that economic principles such as capitalism, free markets, and entrepreneurship are savage, unhealthy, and immoral, these children are raised on a diet of prejudice and bias. Rooting it out may determine whether Europe’s economies prosper or continue to be left behind.

Millions of children are being raised on prejudice and disinformation. Educated in schools that teach a skewed ideology, they are exposed to a dogma that runs counter to core beliefs shared by many other Western countries. They study from textbooks filled with a doctrine of dissent, which they learn to recite as they prepare to attend many of the better universities in the world. Extracting these children from the jaws of bias could mean the difference between world prosperity and menacing global rifts. And doing so will not be easy. But not because these children are found in the madrasas of Pakistan or the state-controlled schools of Saudi Arabia. They are not. Rather, they live in two of the world’s great democracies—France and Germany.

oh, my stars and garters... shocking... just SHOCKING...! "savage..." "unhealthy..." "immoral..." they certainly COULDN'T be talking about capitalism, free markets, and entrepreneurship...! oh, but wait...! yes, they ARE...! france and germany are DARING to challenge THE RELIGION OF CAPITALISM... how terribly cheeky of them...

The deep anti-market bias that French and Germans continue to teach challenges the conventional wisdom that it’s just a matter of time, thanks to the pressures of globalization, before much of the world agrees upon a supposedly “Western” model of free-market capitalism. Politicians in democracies cannot long fight the preferences of the majority of their constituents. So this bias will likely continue to circumscribe both European elections and policy outcomes. A likely alternative scenario may be that the changes wrought by globalization will awaken deeply held resentment against capitalism and, in many countries from Europe to Latin America, provide a fertile ground for populists and demagogues, a trend that is already manifesting itself in the sudden rise of many leftist movements today.

well, we CERTAINLY can't tolerate POPULISM, now, can we...?

i don't know about you, but i find this little screed terribly naive... by choosing to completely overlook the ravages caused by globalization, the breathtaking exploitation of people and resources wrought by capitalism, and the global financial chaos we are experiencing right at this moment from free and unregulated financial markets, the author is revealing himself as nothing more than a public relations shill for the global super-rich... like they need another apologist... i say, "bloody good for france and germany for trying to inject a little truth into their school curriculums..." it's a novel idea, but, who knows, it might catch on...

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John Pilger's "War on Democracy"

all ten parts are available on youtube... this is part one...

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