Paul_GA - I wasn’t aware that my recent post “condemned” capitalism.  However, I find some of the system’s over-riding principles to be misguided.  Foreinstance, people will pursue their own self-interest and that will work out well for everybody.  I doubt that the victims of Bernie would agree with that principle.

Some describe capitalism as “creative destruction.” I would prefer a system described as creative construction.

Adam Smith, the ‘inventor’ of laissez-faire, toward the end of his life condemned his ‘invention.’

Recognizing that as practiced his system would result in some becoming very rich while some would become very poor, he assumed that a ‘natural’ human characteristic was a built-in care and concern for the less fortunate which would result in the rich ‘taking care of’ the poor. Realizing that his assumption was dead wrong, he even went so far as to recommend that his entire life’s work be tossed in the trash.

The thing is, though, you can’t fool an HONEST man….even once.  The assigned place of those few such Persons, if any, as may still remain in ‘politics’ (and The-Media, for that matter) is on the outside looking frustrated.

There was never any more chance that Barack Obama was going to actually DO any of the things William Pfaff goes-on about here, than there was that Bill Clinton was NOT going to sign-off on NAFTA….or that Woodrow Wilson would “keep us out of war,” to put the ‘book-ends’ on only one shelf’s-worth of presidential perfidy.  Meanwhile, theamericanpeople are like a bunch of six-year-olds who’ve been CONned into ‘taking-the-field’ (eCONomically and otherwise) against the “global” equivalent of this weekend’s NFL ProBowl-ers….in a ‘winner-take-all,’ losers- get-shit (literally) CONtest for the fate of the world.

So the current figurehead occupant of the Oval Office is supposed to do exactly WHAT, about that?

HokaHey!

Begging your pardon, Felicity, but read on: “Capitalism should not be condemned, since we haven’t had capitalism. A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank. It’s not capitalism when the system is plagued with incomprehensible rules regarding mergers, acquisitions, and stock sales, along with wage controls, price controls, protectionism, corporate subsidies, international management of trade, complex and punishing corporate taxes, privileged government contracts to the military-industrial complex, and a foreign policy controlled by corporate interests and overseas investments. Add to this centralized federal mismanagement of farming, education, medicine, insurance, banking and welfare. This is not capitalism!” ~ Ron Paul

What passes for “capitalism” nowadays ought to be termed “mercantilism”, defined thusly by Murray Rothbard—“Mercantilism is a system of statism which employs economic fallacy to build up a structure of imperial state power, as well as special subsidy and monopolistic privilege to individuals or groups favored by the state.”

“Laissez-faire” capitalism is the only true capitalism, as I see it.

We’ve been practicing neo-liberalism (inperialism) for years.  Neo-liberal globalization is capital (large corps and financial and non-financial) using governments and especially leadership of US government to make it easier to exploit the world’s resources and its people.  Capitalism, ideally, needs to be able to sell where and when, to invest where and when, to move money and products in and out of countries and to repatriate profits at will.

Obama is a capitalist. In case anyone missed it, he has said so many times.

Samson - You truly hit the nail on the head with regard to the way in which the Media “frames” the current president. Why is it that he is uber-analysed in a way that the last administration never was (and still isn’t?)?

There isn’t a nano-second that goes by when I’m not hearing something negative about his policies, choice of clothes, being too eloquent, being too intellectual, being too friendly with this or that special interest group.

Where was all this concern over the last incompetent, one whose foreign policy was an utter and total disaster that we will be paying for for generations?

Truthdig, HP, NPR and others that are supposedly “liberal” have done nothing more than follow in lock-step with FOX and all the other alleged news agencies in grinding away, 24/7 every problem that ever occurred in modern history and pinning it on the Obama administration.

Certainly, he is not perfect, has made mistakes and is under a great deal of pressure to get things done; however, far less emphasis should be spent in him and more Media time and money spent on the hard job (you know WORK) of dissecting the opposition that has come up with no solutions, no good ideas and who would have us back to the Bush days of spending every last cent of the treasury on the military.

This economy produces mainly hi-tech stuff:  electronic devices, electronic information/ entertainment. elecronic machinery including war-stuff, electronic research, and energy technologies. These are the present essential engines—not production of food, clothing and shelter or infrastructure or the arts.
  Every one of these hi-tech sectors depends upon endless wars so that they can continue producing and so that their corporations and agencies can make a profit and employ tens of thousands of people as workers and soldiers. Without the military/ industrial complex, Wall Street would fade away and there would be no (or far fewer) jobs. 
  To change this situation is a huge reorganization, but vitally necessary.  (Eisenhour saw this coming, and if we had paid attention then, the change would have been easier.
  If we don’t admit these basic facts and haven’t got the nerve or brains to make the change to a more peaceful, humane economy, things will continue to decline, and sooner or later all of us might be living in Potemkin villages, stoked on compulsory Prozac just to get through the day.
  The future of our children is at stake.

I love this constant assumption that Obama has been ‘duped’.  This is a part of the constant propaganda thread that dates well back into the last election that says that Obama is somehow much more progressive and leftist than he’s ever shown or said.

There’s this constant effort to promote an imaginary Obama who really doesn’t want to do this, but is somehow being tricked or forced into taking actions he doesn’t agree with.  There’s never been any evidence to support this myth.  But its been constantly promoted.

This was the refrain in the last election.  That Obama was really a secret leftist that was going to implement all of our dreams once elected, only he had to talk like a right-wing Republican to get elected.

Now that line of spin has morphed into Obama really being a closet leftist who unfortunately holds this powerless office called the ‘President’ where he can’t really do anything.

Of course, to believe this, you have to disbelieve all of the previous propaganda about how all-powerful Bush and Cheney were.  Remember the ‘imperial president’, or the ‘unitary executive’ or how Dick Cheney was secretly ruling the world from the office of the VP.

The key is simple.  Watch what they do.  Then, give them credit for what they do.  Don’t listen to the words.  You don’t figure out a magic trick by listening to the magicians distracting patter, or by staring at the pretty girl on the stage.

Watch what they do.  Then, assume that they are doing what they really want to do.

Obama is commander in chief.  He could end these wars with the stroke of a pen.  Politically, it would be very popular to bring the troops home and to quit wasting billions on unpopular wars.  Obama’s rating points would soar the day he did this.

He clearly does not want to do this.  Give him credit for taking the positions of continuing and escalating these wars.  But, don’t try to tell me that he’s been ‘duped’.

Every day, people shuttle in and out of Obama’s office, calling him “Mister President”, licking his boots and flattering him non-stop.  Some of these people are military, their chests covered in fruit salad and bright, shiny medals.  Obama watches video of himself during the ‘08 campaign.  He checks out his Nobel Peace Prize medal, putting it on and preening in front of the mirror when he knows no one is watching.  He goes on “60 Minutes” and tells everyone he was not elected president to do the bidding of fat cat bankers and expects everyone to believe him.

Now . . . does anybody truly believe that this lying, betraying, obviously incompetent and cowardly fool is going to accomplish anything constructive for the nation, even if he wanted to?

Are all of you “Obama critics” historically and intellectually impaired?

There will never be “peace” between the land stealing Israelis and their avenging neighbors. What makes you think anything short of cutting off the flow of American Tax dollars and support for both sides will stop the conflict?

The “peace process” surrounding Israel is baloney.

Obama was duped by his outdated worldview.  A new foreign policy era dawned when GW Bush groveled to China on 8-8-08 and the Russians rolled their tanks into Georgia.

Since Potsdam, we have squandered our imperial wealth with CIA soaked regime changes around the world.  Since the war on poverty was declared, we have leveraged our foreign influence with intergenerational debt.

We are no longer a world class power.  No matter how much Obama negotiates, bows and gives speeches about a post Christian, multi-cultural America, the world sees us for what we are; an imploding foreign power.

Rather than “duped,” I would suggest Obama is overwhelmed — and has been since well before he took office.  He lacks the qualities he pretended to have: those of one who would change.  He is no Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  He is no Martin Luther King, Jr..  He is the second coming of Clinton. 

But fuck Obama.  Let’s hear it for Americans more broadly: one of the most delusional, parasitic, self-absorbed and politically ignorant populations ever to disgrace democracy.  U.S.A.!  U.S.A.!  U.S.A.! 

Empires that fail, fall, and that is what the American Empire is doing.  As it is neither beautiful nor benevolent, its fall will be ugly and malevolent.  All that remains is to see how much more misery, pain and death it will inflict on itself and the rest of the world before it is forced to its knees.

As I see it, Obama’s big mistake was to focus on health-care reform to the exclusion of foreign policy—in particular, ending the wars, ending the military-industrial complex, ending the whole stupid fiction of a declining empire as somehow still as big, strong, and able to kick international butts as effectively (itself a myth) as it ever was.

We can have guns or butter—we can’t have BOTH, because we can’t possibly afford both. I’d sooner have the butter than the guns.

Part 2.

Quote: President Obama’s failure has astonished the international public and left in despair those Americans who can scarcely believe that a whole year has been irresponsibly wasted.

This statement is grossly distorted.  This is a decades-long, if not thousands of years long stupidity FUELED by religious BELIEF strung together with shreds of sensibility and at the same time state interests.  A year…  I don’t sense (although I admit I can’t recall) that Pres., nor candidate Obama claiming that this could be rectified in a year.

Quote: By now, there is little or no hope of recovering that promise of national and international reform that had pervaded Western society a year ago, thanks to Obama, persuading a Nobel Peace Prize committee, dizzied by Obama glamour, to award him its prize even as he escalated the most senseless yet of America’s unsuccessful wars in Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.

By then, in Gen. McChrystal’s version, U.S military pressure will have brought the enemy to the negotiating table. Gen. Petraeus spoke of Taliban defections and of signs of openness to reconciliation. (The Hamid Karzai government has thus far rejected such overtures because it is content to have American forces in Kabul to defend the large U.S. bases that it is convinced constitute Washington’s ultimate reason for having occupied Afghanistan and created a client government. Both, it believes, must logically be permanently protected.)

Firstly, define “national and international reform” if you would.  Secondly, you claim that Karzai is “convinced” that forces in Afghanistan are there to protect only U.S. bases.  I disagree.  Additionally, you claim that, the Nobel Prize Committee was “dizzied by Obama glamour”.  Absolutely not.  Look… plausibly it could be argued that a political motive was there but “dizzied by Obama glamour”....?  No.

Quote: Both generals’ statements rest on the implicit assumption that the Taliban will lose the war.  A similar opinion comes from a Pakistani expert on the Taliban, Ahmed Rashid, writing in the New York Review of Books, who says that the Taliban may be ready to talk now because they feel at their strongest, and should profit from this opportunity.

You don’t say…. U.S. top generals and a Pakistani expert believe the U.S. will win this war…. and it’s stupid to think otherwise because…. because… Could you run that by me again?

I’m sorry Mr. Pfaff, I find your article specious at best.  But there is one thing upon which we can all agree…. we need to find better ways to snuff out extremism without snuffing out free speech.  We need to become better at stopping the war before it starts.

Sane people hate war, even when they fight them.

Part 1.

Re: Mr. Pfaff

Quote: The anniversary of Barack Obama’s first unofficial State of the Union address has nearly arrived with his administration’s record widely criticized by his own supporters as one of unexpected ineptitude and political incompetence, in astonishing contrast with the foresight, innovation and ability displayed during his campaign for the presidency.

Well, ...that’s ONE man’s opinion interlaced with the proverbial adjectives. 

Quote: The fatal complacency of the Obama White House and Democratic Party leadership concerning last week’s Massachusetts senatorial election outcome, together with that upset’s probable consequences for health insurance reform legislation, produced a drama in which the president has never seemed a player. He has seemed to have never himself known the reforms he actually wanted, leaving it to Congress and the lobbies to fight over whatever legislation they, undirected, might be able to produce.

Come again.  The “complacency”....?  How’s that Mr. Pfaff.  I have NOT witnessed complacency.  Some corruption…to be sure, complete and utter disdain for the people’s interests on the repub side, while some on the dem side… sure, but “complacency”..... surely you jest.

Quote: In foreign relations, the president recently told Time magazine that he “overestimated our ability to persuade (Israelis and Palestinians to agree to ‘meaningful conversation’) when their politics ran contrary to that.”

This astounding statement by a president of the United States, after nearly 40 years of futile U.S. efforts to convince Israelis and Palestinians to agree—from the time of Henry Kissinger’s “shuttle diplomacy” in the 1970s to the useless 2009 missions to Palestinians and Israelis by George Mitchell—alone disqualifies President Obama as a maker of American Middle Eastern policy.

It “disqualifies” him….?  It does nothing of the kind.  I find your accusation/summation short-sighted. 

Quote: When he took office, there can hardly have been any American holder of public office who did not understand that the United States had either to tell the Palestinians to give up the two-state solution (and prepare for emigration or apartheid), or to inform Benjamin Netanyahu that it was all over for the settlements, and that if he wished to continue to be Washington’s best friend he must sign, on the spot, that long-negotiated two-state draft agreement whose conditions everyone by now knows by heart.

Regarding the bolded portion, are you claiming that the U.S. and by extension Pres. Obama ought to simply dictate to these TWO SOVEREIGN NATIONS exactly what they will do, when they will do it and how they will do it?  That’s an incredibly IMPERIALISTIC stance.  Is this what you are admonishing?  Am I understanding your correctly, if you’re stance is different… please explain.

That aside, my conjecture would be that we missed the most PLAUSIBLE opportunity for any type of negotiation/reconciliation during 2008.