Why I Like Obama

[steviedresses]

Someone asked Obama about people who hate him... "Comes with the job..." (or something like that)

While I don't agree with alot of his politics I do appreciate his straight forward talking. Can't help but like the guy. (Even if you do think he is the second coming of Karl Marx.)

[jimbobw2]

Someone asked Obama about people who hate him... "Comes with the job..." (or something like that)

While I don't agree with alot of his politics I do appreciate his straight forward talking. Can't help but like the guy. (Even if you do think he is the second coming of Karl Marx.)

drugs

[bartholomeus]

Someone asked Obama about people who hate him... "Comes with the job..." (or something like that)

While I don't agree with alot of his politics I do appreciate his straight forward talking. Can't help but like the guy. (Even if you do think he is the second coming of Karl Marx.)

second coming of karl marx?lol.... :roll:

[Coroner]

Comparing Obama with Karl Marx shows pretty much how ignorant and uninformed many Americans are. The best example is the health care debate. 40 million Americans cannot afford a health insurance and one million is marching in the streets against any move forward to help those people. I´ve been following these events in the press and on TV. How many African Americans were among those "protesters"? I couldn´t see one but they were probably a few. We have a public health care system in Austria and it´s not even close to socialism. Unfortunately, Austria is a very conservative country (unlike Germany). George Bush fucked you up and Obama has to clean the shit now. It´s too much work for 10 months and it´s hard for him to make the "change" happen due to Republican sabotage, obstruction and conservative media propaganda.

[EZWind]

amen my friend, you have nailed it squarely on the head

Comparing Obama with Karl Marx shows pretty much how ignorant and uninformed many Americans are.

...and far too easily manipulated



The best example is the health care debate. 40 million Americans cannot afford a health insurance

and even those that can are often denied coverage when it comes time to collect on a claim. Over 100 Americans are dying every single day because of this and it's a downright rotten lowdown dirty shame.
And you also couldn't be more right on about...



George Bush fucked you up and Obama has to clean the shit now.

....and he's being stymied every step of the way by the right wing in Congress which is totally in the pocket of the pharmaceutical/insurance machine. These tea bagger protests and rallies are not the grass roots uprisings of the common man that they would have us believe but are in fact organized and funded by tools of the drug/insurance cartel such as Americans for Prosperity, whose sole purpose is to scare the shit out of everyone w/ talk of death panels and comparing our President to Hitler and even Pol Pot fer crissakes. Most of these clowns pissing and moaning about "I want my America back" aren't worried about health care anyway...the're just pissed because there's a Black Guy in the White House.



...and it´s hard for him to make the "change" happen due to Republican sabotage, obstruction and conservative media propaganda.

yep...Rupert Murdoch and Rush Limbaugh are the Devil incarnate. If a properly informed electorate is the cornerstone of an effective democracy, we've definitely got an uphill battle on our hands. Hopefully, with reporters like Rachel Maddow telling it like it really is, sanity will prevail.

btw...was lucky enough to visit Austria back in '85 and fell in love w/ the place...esp. Wien. Hope to be able to return someday, if I can stay away from Amsterdam

[hippifried]

If you ain't goosesteppin' down the boulevard, you might as well be carrying a hammer & sickle. Call a taxidermist & a voodoo master. We're gonna exhume Joe McCarthy & come after all you reds. Damn! This whole board is pink! We're Doomed! DOOMED! They're gonna just take over without firing a shot! Aaaargh!

[Rogers]

If you ain't goosesteppin' down the boulevard, you might as well be carrying a hammer & sickle. Call a taxidermist & a voodoo master. We're gonna exhume Joe McCarthy & come after all you reds. Damn! This whole board is pink! We're Doomed! DOOMED! They're gonna just take over without firing a shot! Aaaargh!

Head for the hills, they're coming for us all!!!

Chinese Paratroopers in California?
http://www.tldm.org/news4/chineseinvasion.htm

Except for the 5th. Columnists of course, whoever they are? :P Quite a few "reptilian brains" are probably twitching after reading that no doubt.

[EZWind]

If you ain't goosesteppin' down the boulevard, you might as well be carrying a hammer & sickle. Aaaargh!

hmm..Nazis and Commies eh?...wait a minit...ya left out Genghis Khan and Torquemada



Damn! This whole board is pink! We're Doomed! Aaaargh!

we're not responsible for the color scheme on this thing here

okay.sure, free market capitalism is a great thing...ya set up a company and get it up and running. If ya take in more money than ya pay out to produce your product ya make a nice profit for yourself. Can't argue w/ that... nothing wrong there if you're making cars or computers or chocolate chip cookies.

With these insurance weasels however, they're paying out ridiculously exorbitant salaries based on obscene profits generated by denying people coverage. This results in bankruptcy for far too many working families, not to mention over 40,000 deaths every year. Sorry, but there's something about that which just seems very wrong to me.
Not quite sure how that makes me a Nazi or Communist, but if that's the case, I'm happy to disappoint you.

[paulgutierrez]

Comparing Obama with Karl Marx shows pretty much how ignorant and uninformed many Americans are. The best example is the health care debate. 40 million Americans cannot afford a health insurance and one million is marching in the streets against any move forward to help those people. I´ve been following these events in the press and on TV. How many African Americans were among those "protesters"? I couldn´t see one but they were probably a few. We have a public health care system in Austria and it´s not even close to socialism. Unfortunately, Austria is a very conservative country (unlike Germany). George Bush fucked you up and Obama has to clean the shit now. It´s too much work for 10 months and it´s hard for him to make the "change" happen due to Republican sabotage, obstruction and conservative media propaganda.

Yeah, a better comparison is Trotsky or the Labour Party. Still socialists all the same. Obama has done and attempted much more than just universal healthcare. Nationalizing industries, cap and tax, and appointing leftist radical czars just to name a few things. He supports the redistribution of wealth. He also has a chip on his shoulder. If you read his book 'Dreams from My Father' you can even hear him going off on white people. He's also apart of Reverend Wright's church, the guy who espouses "Black Liberation Theology" which Pope Benedict blasted for being Marxism dressed up to look like Christianity. Obama even has affiliations with left wing terrorists, and supports groups like ACORN. Seriously, what more is it going to take to convince people? Are people just blind?

If you don't think Obama reeks of marxism then it is you who is ignorant, uninformed, AND easily manipulated. You sound like you know absolutely nothing about economics, which is a shame because the Austrian school of economic thought is simply the best there is.

And to the OP I don't about you but I can't stand him. He's the kind of guy that can look you in the face and shamelessly lie his ass off without flinching. But of course he needs his teleprompter or he'll be stuttering like a motherfucker.

[hippifried]

But of course he needs his teleprompter or he'll be stuttering like a motherfucker.Hm. Sounds like Reagan.

No industries have been nationalized, cap & trade has been used in this country for over 35 years (a Nixon initiative) without ill effect, a "czar" (another Nixon term) is merely a coordinator between overlapping departments, & economic theology (including the Austrian school of makinshitup) is pretty much bullshit across the board.

You don't know what you're talking about.

[q1a2z3]

If you ain't goosesteppin' down the boulevard, you might as well be carrying a hammer & sickle. Call a taxidermist & a voodoo master. We're gonna exhume Joe McCarthy & come after all you reds. Damn! This whole board is pink! We're Doomed! DOOMED! They're gonna just take over without firing a shot! Aaaargh!

Joe McCarthy was correct in his assessment of Hollywood. Too bad he didn't get the reds deported from America. Communists and socialists need to be deported from America to Europe where they can continue to expand the paradise already created there.

Communists and socialists are not interested in people succeeding in life and learning to do for one's self. They in turn want to make everyone poor.

Thank God for EMP!

[EZWind]

..... you can even hear him going off on white people. He's also apart of Reverend Wright's church, the guy who espouses "Black Liberation Theology" which Pope Benedict blasted for being Marxism dressed up to look like Christianity. Obama even has affiliations with left wing terrorists, and supports groups like ACORN. Seriously, what more is it going to take to convince people?

sounds to me like you've been enjoying the Kool-Aid being served up there by Sarah Palin and the Fox "news" channel


.....He's the kind of guy that can look you in the face and shamelessly lie his ass off without flinching. But of course he needs his teleprompter or he'll be stuttering like a motherfucker.

that right there is the very definition of a Politician. Nixon, Regan, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were far worse offenders in that regard.
And, it's a safe bet they ALL read from notes, as does just about every public speaker anywhere

[paulgutierrez]

..... you can even hear him going off on white people. He's also apart of Reverend Wright's church, the guy who espouses "Black Liberation Theology" which Pope Benedict blasted for being Marxism dressed up to look like Christianity. Obama even has affiliations with left wing terrorists, and supports groups like ACORN. Seriously, what more is it going to take to convince people?

sounds to me like you've been enjoying the Kool-Aid being served up there by Sarah Palin and the Fox "news" channel

Oh snap, the Fox News argument. How'd you conjure that one, o wizard of imagination?

I would love to see you try to disprove any of the facts I've stated.


Hm. Sounds like Reagan.

No industries have been nationalized, cap & trade has been used in this country for over 35 years (a Nixon initiative) without ill effect, a "czar" (another Nixon term) is merely a coordinator between overlapping departments, & economic theology (including the Austrian school of makinshitup) is pretty much bullshit across the board.

You don't know what you're talking about.
Really? You dare say that when Obama is the de facto head of GM? Obama's cap and tax plan is a road to disaster. Nixon, was a disaster. He instituted wage and price controls, accepted war defeat, established COLAs, and greatly expanded bureacracy. Not to mention he took us off the gold standard. You're an idiot if you think bringing up the left-wing decisions (idiocy) of past "republicans" justifies anything Obama is doing. Czars are executive branch officials that run and organize, and are not elected, but appointed, and don't even need Senate approval. How ineffectual you perceive them to be does not change the fact that Obama appointed them. His nepotism towards these radicals simply reveal his true nature.

As for your thoughts on economics, I am now entirely certain that you are an idiot. You are completely unqualified to even have an opinion on this. Go away.

[q1a2z3]

..... you can even hear him going off on white people. He's also apart of Reverend Wright's church, the guy who espouses "Black Liberation Theology" which Pope Benedict blasted for being Marxism dressed up to look like Christianity. Obama even has affiliations with left wing terrorists, and supports groups like ACORN. Seriously, what more is it going to take to convince people?

sounds to me like you've been enjoying the Kool-Aid being served up there by Sarah Palin and the Fox "news" channel

Oh snap, the Fox News argument. How'd you conjure that one, o wizard of imagination?

I would love to see you try to disprove any of the facts I've stated.


Hm. Sounds like Reagan.

No industries have been nationalized, cap & trade has been used in this country for over 35 years (a Nixon initiative) without ill effect, a "czar" (another Nixon term) is merely a coordinator between overlapping departments, & economic theology (including the Austrian school of makinshitup) is pretty much bullshit across the board.

You don't know what you're talking about.
Really? You dare say that when Obama is the de facto head of GM? Obama's cap and tax plan is a road to disaster. Nixon, was a disaster. He instituted wage and price controls, accepted war defeat, established COLAs, and greatly expanded bureacracy. Not to mention he took us off the gold standard. You're an idiot if you think bringing up the left-wing decisions (idiocy) of past "republicans" justifies anything Obama is doing. Czars are executive branch officials that run and organize, and are not elected, but appointed, and don't even need Senate approval. How ineffectual you perceive them to be does not change the fact that Obama appointed them. His nepotism towards these radicals simply reveal his true nature.

As for your thoughts on economics, I am now entirely certain that you are an idiot. You are completely unqualified to even have an opinion on this. Go away.



Dude!

After being on the Federal Government for many years you learn fast that the power of purse is KING!

The Executive Branch is composed of many departments and they get budgets. Some get distributed budgets all the way down to offices of 10 people and across the several states. The owners of these budgets can tell a czar to GTFO! The department Secretaries were signed off on by the Senate. They are the President's Cabinet.

There is nothing in the Constitution to prevent the Congress from setting up departments that have zero input from the President - any President.


All czars can do is use the executive washroom, draw a salary, and play yes man for the President. They are nothing more than tattle-tales for the President. Nixon wanted to destroy the State Department for their "stability policy." It doesn't matter if some dictator in the world was eating children as long as his government was stable the State Department was happy.


The real test would be for a Department Secretary were to be pressured by the President to let a czar to be the decision maker, would Congress go to war with the President over it? My guess is yes they would since this would erode the power of the Senate.

Yes there are many dumb asses getting a pay check working for the first Affirmative Action President as a czar.

[hippifried]

Hm. Sounds like Reagan.

No industries have been nationalized, cap & trade has been used in this country for over 35 years (a Nixon initiative) without ill effect, a "czar" (another Nixon term) is merely a coordinator between overlapping departments, & economic theology (including the Austrian school of makinshitup) is pretty much bullshit across the board.

You don't know what you're talking about.
Really? You dare say that when Obama is the de facto head of GM? Obama's cap and tax plan is a road to disaster. Nixon, was a disaster. He instituted wage and price controls, accepted war defeat, established COLAs, and greatly expanded bureacracy. Not to mention he took us off the gold standard. You're an idiot if you think bringing up the left-wing decisions (idiocy) of past "republicans" justifies anything Obama is doing. Czars are executive branch officials that run and organize, and are not elected, but appointed, and don't even need Senate approval. How ineffectual you perceive them to be does not change the fact that Obama appointed them. His nepotism towards these radicals simply reveal his true nature.

As for your thoughts on economics, I am now entirely certain that you are an idiot. You are completely unqualified to even have an opinion on this. Go away.
Obama's not running GM. Neither is Treasury. TARP was a Bush initiative, passed before Obama took office. Bush added the big 3 to the list. GMAC is a lender. GM's out of chaptr 11 now, & didn't have to go chapter 7. That means only 24,000 direct US employees lost their jobs, instead of 90,000.

Nixon was a disaster, but "cap & trade" worked. That's why we have scrubbers in just about all the coal fired power plants in the US. We're no longer killing the forests of North America, & none of the doom & gloom scenarios, which are the same ones being touted today, came to fruition. There's no reason to think it'll happen this time either. It's just a lot of hot air. You don't know what you're talking about.

Everybody in the exdecutive branch, other than the President & Vice President, are appointed to their positions. They all answer, directly or indirectly, to the President. Out of the entire federal government, there's only 537 elected positions. All but 2 are members of Congress. The "czars, as you like to call them (sounds commie, don't it), are hired to impliment specific tasks or Presidential policies. Many of the departments have overlapping jurisdictions. That's been a problem since the founding. The "czar" works with the various departments, bureaus, & agencies that have jurisdictional authority in the particular task he/she is working on, & makes sure they're on the same page & not working at cross purposes. It's called "organization". There's no nepotism involved. You don't know what you're talking about.

Now I need to requote this, because you're partially correct & it's a little off topic.

Nixon, was a disaster. He instituted wage and price controls, accepted war defeat, established COLAs, and greatly expanded bureacracy. Not to mention he took us off the gold standard. You're an idiot if you think bringing up the left-wing decisions (idiocy) of past "republicans" justifies anything Obama is doing.Ah yes, the Greenspan plan. That's what wage controls were called at the time. There weren't any price controls. I was one of the millions who got really bent when my contractual raise was disallowed. As it got worse, the term "stagflation" was coined. Had to have a word. Nobody'd ever seen runaway inflation coupled with rising unemployment & an unaffected stock market. Of course all that was a stop-gap attempt to curb the effects of the "Nixon shock" a couple of years earlier. The "gold standard" was a myth. What Nixon did was unpeg the dollar, float it on the currency speculation market, unilaterally withdraw from the Bretton Woods agreement, & end the stable postwar boom. He was following the "Austrian school" dogma that markets will stabilize currency values. They can't. Money is traded like a commodity, but there's no "up" in the currency speculation market. Ever. Supply & demand has no meaning when there's nothing to guage value by. There's no exchange medium, because you're trading money. What do you use for money when you're buying & selling money? It's just pari-mutuel wagering on the rate of decline. Those international currency speculators are setting the value of the world's exchange mediums, including the dollar. Inflation is just a loss of purchasing power. We're still dealing with the inflationary spiral that Nixon caused by his arbitrary action. Anybody who tells you there's no inflation is full of shit, & hasn't tried to buy anything lately. Same goes for the 80s, when the Reagan administration claimed they had it under control. Even a target 2% rate compounds. The dollar buys less than 10% of the goods & services it did at the time of the shock. Want to stop all this horseshit? Just fix the exchange rates by pegging the world's currencies to each other. Gold isn't necessary. Put the currency speculators out of business. Money's not a commodity. It's the exchange medium. It's what we use to value everything else agaist each other.

"Accepted war defeat"? Pfffftt! The war in VietNam was never winable. Nobody knew what they were doing. We had no goal. There was no clearly defined enemy. Hell, there were no friendlies. We had to import police in Saigon from Hong Kong & Taiwan. There were a few collaborators, but these people had been fighting against foreign occupation for way over a century. They weren't about to stop just because a new set of foreigners tried to continue the occupation. They took their country back. Economic theology & western ideology had nothing to do with it. BTW: Gerald Ford was President when we finally tailassed out of there.

COLAs are a reaction to inflation. They don't cause it. Income is behind the curve on the spiral. Always is. They can't catch up.

There's been bureaucracy as long as there's been governance. Somebody has to handle the details.


If you're going to complain, at least make an effort to know how things actually work. Ideological philosophy rarely, if ever, works in reality.

[q1a2z3]

Hm. Sounds like Reagan.

No industries have been nationalized, cap & trade has been used in this country for over 35 years (a Nixon initiative) without ill effect, a "czar" (another Nixon term) is merely a coordinator between overlapping departments, & economic theology (including the Austrian school of makinshitup) is pretty much bullshit across the board.

You don't know what you're talking about.
Really? You dare say that when Obama is the de facto head of GM? Obama's cap and tax plan is a road to disaster. Nixon, was a disaster. He instituted wage and price controls, accepted war defeat, established COLAs, and greatly expanded bureacracy. Not to mention he took us off the gold standard. You're an idiot if you think bringing up the left-wing decisions (idiocy) of past "republicans" justifies anything Obama is doing. Czars are executive branch officials that run and organize, and are not elected, but appointed, and don't even need Senate approval. How ineffectual you perceive them to be does not change the fact that Obama appointed them. His nepotism towards these radicals simply reveal his true nature.

As for your thoughts on economics, I am now entirely certain that you are an idiot. You are completely unqualified to even have an opinion on this. Go away.
Obama's not running GM. Neither is Treasury. TARP was a Bush initiative, passed before Obama took office. Bush added the big 3 to the list. GMAC is a lender. GM's out of chaptr 11 now, & didn't have to go chapter 7. That means only 24,000 direct US employees lost their jobs, instead of 90,000.

Nixon was a disaster, but "cap & trade" worked. That's why we have scrubbers in just about all the coal fired power plants in the US. We're no longer killing the forests of North America, & none of the doom & gloom scenarios, which are the same ones being touted today, came to fruition. There's no reason to think it'll happen this time either. It's just a lot of hot air. You don't know what you're talking about.

Everybody in the exdecutive branch, other than the President & Vice President, are appointed to their positions. They all answer, directly or indirectly, to the President. Out of the entire federal government, there's only 537 elected positions. All but 2 are members of Congress. The "czars, as you like to call them (sounds commie, don't it), are hired to impliment specific tasks or Presidential policies. Many of the departments have overlapping jurisdictions. That's been a problem since the founding. The "czar" works with the various departments, bureaus, & agencies that have jurisdictional authority in the particular task he/she is working on, & makes sure they're on the same page & not working at cross purposes. It's called "organization". There's no nepotism involved. You don't know what you're talking about.

Now I need to requote this, because you're partially correct & it's a little off topic.

Nixon, was a disaster. He instituted wage and price controls, accepted war defeat, established COLAs, and greatly expanded bureacracy. Not to mention he took us off the gold standard. You're an idiot if you think bringing up the left-wing decisions (idiocy) of past "republicans" justifies anything Obama is doing.Ah yes, the Greenspan plan. That's what wage controls were called at the time. There weren't any price controls. I was one of the millions who got really bent when my contractual raise was disallowed. As it got worse, the term "stagflation" was coined. Had to have a word. Nobody'd ever seen runaway inflation coupled with rising unemployment & an unaffected stock market. Of course all that was a stop-gap attempt to curb the effects of the "Nixon shock" a couple of years earlier. The "gold standard" was a myth. What Nixon did was unpeg the dollar, float it on the currency speculation market, unilaterally withdraw from the Bretton Woods agreement, & end the stable postwar boom. He was following the "Austrian school" dogma that markets will stabilize currency values. They can't. Money is traded like a commodity, but there's no "up" in the currency speculation market. Ever. Supply & demand has no meaning when there's nothing to guage value by. There's no exchange medium, because you're trading money. What do you use for money when you're buying & selling money? It's just pari-mutuel wagering on the rate of decline. Those international currency speculators are setting the value of the world's exchange mediums, including the dollar. Inflation is just a loss of purchasing power. We're still dealing with the inflationary spiral that Nixon caused by his arbitrary action. Anybody who tells you there's no inflation is full of shit, & hasn't tried to buy anything lately. Same goes for the 80s, when the Reagan administration claimed they had it under control. Even a target 2% rate compounds. The dollar buys less than 10% of the goods & services it did at the time of the shock. Want to stop all this horseshit? Just fix the exchange rates by pegging the world's currencies to each other. Gold isn't necessary. Put the currency speculators out of business. Money's not a commodity. It's the exchange medium. It's what we use to value everything else agaist each other.

"Accepted war defeat"? Pfffftt! The war in VietNam was never winable. Nobody knew what they were doing. We had no goal. There was no clearly defined enemy. Hell, there were no friendlies. We had to import police in Saigon from Hong Kong & Taiwan. There were a few collaborators, but these people had been fighting against foreign occupation for way over a century. They weren't about to stop just because a new set of foreigners tried to continue the occupation. They took their country back. Economic theology & western ideology had nothing to do with it. BTW: Gerald Ford was President when we finally tailassed out of there.

COLAs are a reaction to inflation. They don't cause it. Income is behind the curve on the spiral. Always is. They can't catch up.

There's been bureaucracy as long as there's been governance. Somebody has to handle the details.


If you're going to complain, at least make an effort to know how things actually work. Ideological philosophy rarely, if ever, works in reality.


We could have bombed North Vietnam into oblivion. Maybe drop a nuke on them.

Looking back at U.S. resolve in the face of war it's a shame Patton wasn't President instead of FDR. The real enemy (i.e. Soviets and Chicoms) could have been nuked. Cutting Stalin and Mao short would have been great. We could have teamed up with the Japs and the Germans (not the left-wing socialist NAZI) and cleaned up the planet in a few years.




Ho Chi Minh just wanted the French to GTFO! I don't blame him. Unfortunately he went commie.

[Ben]

Someone asked Obama about people who hate him... "Comes with the job..." (or something like that)

While I don't agree with alot of his politics I do appreciate his straight forward talking. Can't help but like the guy. (Even if you do think he is the second coming of Karl Marx.)

(Even if you do think he is the second coming of Karl Marx.)[/quote]

He is FAR FROM being a socialist... I mean, a democratic (small d) socialist.

-------------------------------------------------------------

What we mean by socialism

Ian Steinman spoke out about the meaning of socialism and the struggle to achieve it at a meeting titled "Socialism: What it is and why we need it" sponsored by the International Socialist Organization in Santa Cruz, Calif.

October 29, 2009

Turmoil in the financial markets

AS MANY of you have no doubt witnessed, the word "socialism" has returned to the forefront of the American political debate. Newsweek had a front cover declaring "We Are All Socialists," the Nation magazine had a forum on what socialism is today, and even the New York Times had a discussion on the meaning of the word.

Socialism, depending on who you're talking to, can mean anything from the bureaucratic dictatorship of the Soviet Union, to the social reforms of Western Europe, to even, in the case of people like those in Glenn Beck's "9/12" movement, a guttural curse word to be spat at every policy deviating slightly from the reactionary cesspool from which they emerged.

What I, an actual living socialist, will advance tonight as socialism differs fundamentally from all of these, and is the definition of socialism which stands in the revolutionary, self-emancipatory tradition of Marxism--a tradition which takes as it's foundation that it is those who work and produce and farm and create who are responsible for all the wealth in the world, and that it is they, not an elite of the super-rich or a bureaucratic clique, that have the right and power to take and manage the world's resources in society's interests.

However, this idea--that people should be able to come together to democratically decide their future as a community, as a county, city, nation and ultimately species--one which seems on the surface so self-evident, is one which is completely at odds with the capitalist system under which we live today.

DESCRIBING CAPITALISM to us today can seem almost like describing water to fish--it so permeates our existence as to be almost invisible and is presupposed in every dominant form of discourse. Yet this was not always so. Capitalism is, in fact, a relatively recent phenomenon in the scope of human history.

Capitalism was born in fits of world-shaking violence out of the old feudal society. It emerged on a foundation of the extermination of aboriginal lives and cultures the world over.

As the Spanish galleons hauled off the gold of two ravaged continents, capitalism was beginning to crawl forth from the womb. As millions of African slaves, ripped from their families, were made to suffer unspeakable indignities, as they shed their blood and tears and anguish, capitalism drank deep its violent sustenance and grew. As nations from Egypt to India to China were exploited under the yoke of European colonialism, capitalism took its first steps and prepared for the epoch of its reign.

With the blood money of countless atrocities, the accumulated misery of most of the world's population, were built the looms and engines and factories which would constitute private property. Industrialization, then in its ruthless efficiency, swept away all the old modes of production, the small farmers and the artisans, building from their expropriation a growing class of those left with nothing to sell but their labor--their time, in essence, their very lives--for nothing more than the ability to continue living, a working class living in a condition of wage slavery.

Capitalism is, in essence, this relationship--this process in which the vast majority of the human race is compelled in order to maintain their existence to sign over control of how, and for what, their existence counts to an elite of owners.

Yet even this is not the full extent of capitalism's tyranny over humanity, for even the capitalists do not have control over what they do.

There can be no appeal to their individual generosity or humanity, because every concession they make to any value besides the bottom line is something which strengthens their competition, which makes them less able to invest or pay off shareholders, and which buries them beneath the weight of the marketplace. What they have, workers produce, and what they pay workers, how they organize the factory, and how many workers they hire is all determined by the dictatorship of the market.

We live under capitalism in an absurd condition, under which in the name of "liberty" and "freedom," we spend most of our lives subjected to the boss' dictatorship in the workplace, in which the bosses are subjected to the dictatorship of the market, in which in sum, humanity is subjected to the yoke of the inhumane, in which the Frankenstein of the market let loose by our accumulated suffering rules over us all and restrains us from achieving any measure of genuine freedom.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

SOCIALISM IS the reasonable and necessary answer to this absurdity.

Throughout history, capitalism, through its basic inhumanity and through the economic crises which are endemic to it, has bred resistance to the system spearheaded by the working class, which is simultaneously both the most exploited and potentially the most powerful force in society.

It is through the strikes and protests--through the shutdown of factories or ports or university campuses--that labor is able to wring concessions from capital. It was by fighting and not by begging, through mass protests and general strikes which shook the system, that we won the weekend, the 40-hour work week, and all the benefits of the New Deal.

Yet although these reforms are important and valuable, they do not provide a lasting solution to the problem. Though concessions may be made here and there, as a whole, any protest which does not threaten the system, does not plan to go beyond it, will ultimately be rendered helpless, and the reforms which they won will slowly but surely be taken back.

The past 30 years have been a perfect example of this--though worker productivity has soared and the economy has grown, real wages have actually decreased, and the average person is worse off now than they were in the 1970s.

Today, a 40-hour workweek seems like a dream to many Americans forced to work multiple full-time jobs, and every attempt to organize a union or fight for better wages is met with the threat of outsourcing or liquidation.

Reforms on a local, individual scale are harder than ever to achieve and hold, the scope of what common sense will deem possible is being increasingly reduced to where a decent existence becomes an impossible demand. And it is when the people's demands go beyond the reforms that the establishment deems acceptable, when what is humanly necessary goes beyond what business is willing to concede, that the real struggle emerges.

There have been many times in history when this struggle has broken out in ways which shook the world and forced the world's rich to hold their collective breath. In 1871, the Paris Commune rose up as the first democratic workers' government in history, and gave one tremendous historical example of what is possible, before it was crushed by the French and Prussian armies.

In Russia in 1917, for a few short years, the soviets--Russian for councils--ruled and began to sweep away all of capitalism's refuse, beginning to abolish sexism, racism and homophobia in ways which, a hundred years on, we have not achieved under capitalist democracy. This revolution, too, was strangled, from without, by more than a dozen invading armies, including the United States, and from within by a growing new bureaucratic class.

Other glimpses of revolution occurred in Germany in 1919, France in 1968, Iran in 1979 and Poland in 1980. In all of these, a new power emerged to challenge the old state in the form of workers' councils--bodies of elected, recallable workers' delegates who began to take control of the industries, the productive forces of our society and run them democratically.

These workers' councils are a genuine participatory democracy, in which all delegates are accountable to those they represent and actually have the power to shape society and human destiny. It is not merely another form of democracy, but a qualitatively different organization of the state, in which the dictatorship of the minority in the interest of capital is finally supplanted by the rule of the majority in the interests of humanity.

They are powerful examples of what is possible, and ones in the face of which the old state inevitably vacillates between extreme violence and resignation to defeat, attempting to exterminate them by force, and failing that, being rendered impotent with the knowledge that the consent of the governed has abandoned them--that a new power has arisen, that a truly mass revolution has begun to cast them and all their petty ideological illusions into the same refuse pile into which they cast the kings and queens of old.

Workers' councils are the real embryo of a socialist society. Socialism exists only in the mass uprising and seizure of power by the working class, for the working class, on a world scale--one which renders the attempts of a minority to institute counter-revolution like those forced on all previous revolutions impossible.

Everything else, the parodies of Marxism-Leninism that exist in China and North Korea, the attempts of a select elite to conspiratorially institute utopian society from above, the attempts to expand the revolution by the bayonets of an army or the attempts to lobby bought-off legislatures in the name of a working class that is left passive--these are all dead ends which have not and cannot emancipate humanity from the chains which bind it.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

YOU MAY say, and you would be justified in doing so, that this all sounds very good, but the reality we are presented with makes this all seem so unrealistic in the face of present conditions, class consciousness and struggle that is nowhere near these levels. There certainly aren't any workers' councils forming today, and so many previous struggles against the state have ended in defeat that we should expect a similar fate for future ones.

And you would in some ways be right, if we were to confine ourselves to passively waiting for spontaneous action--if we were to act as mere observers waiting for our specific theoretical predictions to be proven true, we would be waiting forever.

Yet we are not here having this meeting so a few more can become enlightened about the inevitable. We are here because to bring about this new form of society, we need to build the kind of organization that can act to make revolutionary situations a reality and that can provide the leadership in them to push the struggle forward to victory.

Every supposedly spontaneous action is in reality the culmination of years of built-up grievances, agitation and propaganda, of small struggles here and there providing examples of the way forward. An earthquake does not occur out of nowhere--it is the product of years, decades of stress, building and building until finally a small movement sets loose world-shaking consequences. Similarly, in every great spontaneous upheaval of the masses, the patient work of organized socialists working within the movement for years played an essential role in bringing it about.

As we enter a new age of crisis and turbulence, we will need this kind of organization more than ever.

We need an organization that unites militants from across different arenas of struggle, union work, LGBT rights, antiwar organizing, immigrants rights--the whole spectrum of struggles against injustice which face working-class people.

We need an organization in which these people come together to critically examine their experiences--to compare and contrast and vigorously debate how to move things forward, how to mobilize people around immediate demands and unify the struggles in ways which point out the contradictions and injustices inherent to the system as a whole.

Only an organization which is welded together by vigorous democratic debate and unified dedication to action can provide a strong enough challenge to capitalism to achieve real gains and ultimate victory for the working class.

This is the organization that we in the ISO are seeking to build, and one which if you share our vision of what a just society needs to look like, you should join us in building.

Socialism is, in summary, a system and an idea that takes as its foundation that people should be able to democratically come together to determine how and for what people work--to meet human needs and structure our resources and our society in such a way as to allow for every individual to reach their real potential. It is people coming together to take back their lives from the inhumane forces which control them.

The Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky put it best when he said: "The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarized as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces--in nature, in society, in man himself."

Everywhere around us, we see the havoc blind forces are wreaking on our educations, our health, our livelihoods, and the havoc they wreak through the whole world with wars and starvation and exploitation. The question I pose to you is this: Will you take action and step up to the historic task of building the organizations and movements that will make that next great victory of consciousness and triumph of human potential over human misery a reality?

[hippifried]

Karl Marx was a crackpot. But then again, so were Adam Smith, Friedrich Neitzche, Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco, Ayn Rand, John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman, & Ronald Reagan.

Socialism is merely people pooling resources to accomplish tasks that wouldn't get done without cooperation. Capitalism is just a form of that. The idea that these are diametrically opposed concepts is nothing but a bunch of memetic nonsense perpetrated by liars & fools.

[EZWind]

..... you can even hear him going off on white people. He's also apart of Reverend Wright's church, the guy who espouses "Black Liberation Theology" which Pope Benedict blasted for being Marxism dressed up to look like Christianity. Obama even has affiliations with left wing terrorists, and supports groups like ACORN. Seriously, what more is it going to take to convince people?

sounds to me like you've been enjoying the Kool-Aid being served up there by Sarah Palin and the Fox "news" channel

Oh snap, the Fox News argument. How'd you conjure that one, o wizard of imagination?


...well, probably because you're parroting back the same bullshit I hear them spouting under the guise of objective journalism


I would love to see you try to disprove any of the facts I've stated.

...facts? Maybe in YOUR warped parallel dimension...not in any rational universe.

" ...a part of Reverend Wright's church" ? Which part might that be? They weren't exactly formulating ecumenical policy for the archdiocese , the Obama's were members of the congregation at a Catholic church on Sundays where some crazed preacher was pontificating a bunch of bullshit inanities. BFD. This happens regularly in just about every Synagogue, Mosque and Church on the planet. Obama didn't say those things, Wright did...and he was publicly chastized for it by Obama for his incendiary comments and they stopped attending services there.

"...palling around with terrorists" ? Sorry, Sarah Jr. Forty years ago, this guy was a member of some radical domestic group. Obama was eight years old at the time. Ten years ago, Ayers was a professor of education in Chicago and served on a school board with Obama which was funded by one of Ronald Reagan's ambassadors and close friend. Other members of this board included the Presidents of the University of Illinois and Northwestern University...prominent republicans, and the president of the republican leaning Chicago Tribune. Hardly a bunch of radical left-wing commie pinko nazis. Obama has roundly condemned Ayers's actions...he was not involved in the campaign nor is he a part of the White House staff or connected with the administration in any way whatsoever.

...as for ACORN, they're the big bad boogie man for the right because they register working class, lower income voters who tend to vote against republicans. They paid some people to collect signatures, some of which turned out to be bogus, which ACORN duly notified to the election board. No votes were cast by any unqualified registrants. Obama had absolutely nothing to do with any of that. He WAS involved in working for the Motor Voter Law, along with the US Dept of Justice and ACORN,which allows voters to register through the DMV. This doesn't even remotely constitute "support of groups like ACORN"



Hm. Sounds like Reagan. No industries have been nationalized, etc, yada yada....You don't know what you're talking about.
Really? You dare say that when blah blah blah.... I am now entirely certain that you are an idiot. You are completely unqualified to even have an opinion on this. Go away.

..in closing, if I may paraphrase your reply to hippiefried, ...Right back atcha, dude. I am now entirely certain that you are an idiot. You are completely unqualified to even have an opinion on this. Go away.

[beandip]

Obama: Change u can bereave in.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/09/world/main5592551.shtml

Lyin' sack of shit.

Winner if the Nobel Peace prize.

Too fuckin' funny.

[arnie666]

Being from the UK when Barack Obama came on the scene I was initally quite taken with him. I was never a fan of John Mcain, he was too old and too me a plastic conservative. I couldn't see the republican base getting behind such a person.

My mind was further made up in the presidential debates when Obama ran rings around him in my opinion. Mcain came off as old and cranky, he also had the handicap when speaking about the issues of being from the same party as the shaved chimp . Obama I also felt could perhaps heal some of the racial wounds and bring all kinds of people together. As the campaign wore on however I became increasingly concerned.I began thinking are these the best candidates America can put forward to be essentially leader of the world?

Sarah Palin was despite her faults a breath of fresh air , she wasn't cut from the same cloth as the rest, a woman with similar political views as my own, and not afraid to take on her own party. I do think she made a mistake running as Mcains VP , Mcain was a sinking ship from the start and when the economy tanked, well... I also don't think she was ready for a presidential role and is an illustration of the Mcain's poor decision making. But really the media really did show it's disgusting impartial colours over her. She had and perhaps still has a bright future.

But what we have now in Obama ,is a gaffe prone, continuation in many ways of the Bush administration.With added political correctness and limp wristed behaviour you get from the left. i feel sadness towards all the poor blacks in the states that saw such hope in him. I'll be real with you Obama deep down is embarassed by people like you.He has nothing in common with you and wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire.Look at how he handled the shootings at Fort Hood... it was so similar to Bush in the kiddie chair on 9/11 it's unreal. I heard many say who is advising Obama about that Press conference when he has to speak to the American people about the worst terrorist attack on a US army base in living memory? To me it is moot anyone unless they were completely thick or just unfeeling would have handled it better. But will the media go for Obama like they did for Bush over being a complete cock? I doubt it.

Yes, hope and change......

[hippifried]

First of all, let's clear up Sarah Palin. Politically, she's done. She has support from some factions of the tea baggers, on ideology alone, but that's it. There was no unprovoked attack on her by the media. She wasn't knowlegable about how the federal government actually works & she was politically naive. The media just put a spotlight on her. That's their job. There's only 2 people in the United States who are elected nationally. She was running for the #2 spot. She's not coming back as anything but a novelty.

Now, "political correctness": I can't for the life of me understand this particular gripe. I can't pinpoint an exact timeline, but I first started hearing this creep into the language back in the '80s. Somehow, people have convinced themselves that being rash & rude is some kind of attribute. Personally, I prefer honest & careful rhetoric over rabble-rousing for the sake of political one-upmanship. For example: What "terrorist" attack at Ft Hood? So far, everything points to a disgruntled employee taking guns to work & shooting the place up. The same thing happened the next day in Orlando. It's a strange phenomenon going on in the US, but it has nothing to do with "terrorism", a term which denotes political motivation & usually conspiracy. There's no evidence of any of that here.What's the difference between this & the Orlando shooting, the day trader a few years back, the guy who shot up the McDonalds, Virginia Tech, or even Columbine? Because he happens to be Muslim? There's no reason for anybody, especially the President, to start jumping to memetic conclusions right out of the gate. The FBI's on it. The military is too incompetent to deal. There's nothing for the President to "handle".

& that brings us back to President Obama. What gaffs? In speech or policy? Of course it's a continuation of the last administration. The government is a continuum. The President isn't a king or a prime minister. He's the chief executive, executing the laws of the land. He can neither make or negate law. He can't overturn an act of Congress or a ruling by the Supreme Court. Expectations don't necessarily follow reality. President Obama walked into a mess. 2 ongoing wars, a huge debt, rising unemployment, recession, & a financial collapse. He never told anybody that things would change overnight. He told everyone that the unemployment numbers would continue to rise for a year or more. He told everyone that the economic stimulous would take 18 to 24 months to see the effects. The TARP was already in place before he took office. He's had to adjust his time projections for different things a few times, but that should have been expected. He's got better information now, & situations are always in flux.

As to his "blackness": He is not part of the black American ex-slave sub-culture. Never was, He did, however, marry into it & has the advantage of not being treated as "white" in his dealings with black people. He grew up in middle class white suburbia, in Hawaii, in the '70s, & attended a racially mixed parochial school. He's racially mixed, & I imagine he has a much broader perspective on racial differences, similarities, & tensions than most people regardless of their race. He's never been directly affected by Jim Crowe. He's the first post baby boom modern era President. As far as I can tell, he's blind to race & religion as factors in human character & competence, & he's doesn't seem to be overly affected by rigid ideology. He's pragmatic. The craziness & red baiting of the cold war & the silliness of race based hatred are foreign concepts to him.

As an American, all I can really expect from my President is that he/she be at least as smart as me, & preferably smarter. I've got that now. President Obama is a bit too conservative for my particular taste, but I can live with conservative. I'm pushing 60, & this is the closest I've seen to a liberal in the Whitehouse. I'm real tired of reactionary. I don't expect radical change. Incremental is fine.

Oh, one more thing. When President Bush heard about the plane crash on 9/11/01, nobody knew it was an attack. The flight patterns that day hadn't been analyzed yet & the second crash hadn't happened. He did the right thing. He didn't panic. He took a couple of minutes to finish what he was doing with the children, who didn't need to be panicked either. Then he devoted his time to finding out what was going on. It's a bogus complaint. Like I said, I'm real tired of reactionay.

[beandip]

Obama.....I like the fact that he's a lying sack of shit.

Give him enough rope and he'll hang himself.


read this:

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE5AM3E520091125?sp=true


watch this:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LsSppYxSHk&feature=player_embedded

[q1a2z3]

First of all, let's clear up Sarah Palin. Politically, she's done. She has support from some factions of the tea baggers, on ideology alone, but that's it. There was no unprovoked attack on her by the media. She wasn't knowlegable about how the federal government actually works & she was politically naive. The media just put a spotlight on her. That's their job. There's only 2 people in the United States who are elected nationally. She was running for the #2 spot. She's not coming back as anything but a novelty.

Now, "political correctness": I can't for the life of me understand this particular gripe. I can't pinpoint an exact timeline, but I first started hearing this creep into the language back in the '80s. Somehow, people have convinced themselves that being rash & rude is some kind of attribute. Personally, I prefer honest & careful rhetoric over rabble-rousing for the sake of political one-upmanship. For example: What "terrorist" attack at Ft Hood? So far, everything points to a disgruntled employee taking guns to work & shooting the place up. The same thing happened the next day in Orlando. It's a strange phenomenon going on in the US, but it has nothing to do with "terrorism", a term which denotes political motivation & usually conspiracy. There's no evidence of any of that here.What's the difference between this & the Orlando shooting, the day trader a few years back, the guy who shot up the McDonalds, Virginia Tech, or even Columbine? Because he happens to be Muslim? There's no reason for anybody, especially the President, to start jumping to memetic conclusions right out of the gate. The FBI's on it. The military is too incompetent to deal. There's nothing for the President to "handle".

& that brings us back to President Obama. What gaffs? In speech or policy? Of course it's a continuation of the last administration. The government is a continuum. The President isn't a king or a prime minister. He's the chief executive, executing the laws of the land. He can neither make or negate law. He can't overturn an act of Congress or a ruling by the Supreme Court. Expectations don't necessarily follow reality. President Obama walked into a mess. 2 ongoing wars, a huge debt, rising unemployment, recession, & a financial collapse. He never told anybody that things would change overnight. He told everyone that the unemployment numbers would continue to rise for a year or more. He told everyone that the economic stimulous would take 18 to 24 months to see the effects. The TARP was already in place before he took office. He's had to adjust his time projections for different things a few times, but that should have been expected. He's got better information now, & situations are always in flux.

As to his "blackness": He is not part of the black American ex-slave sub-culture. Never was, He did, however, marry into it & has the advantage of not being treated as "white" in his dealings with black people. He grew up in middle class white suburbia, in Hawaii, in the '70s, & attended a racially mixed parochial school. He's racially mixed, & I imagine he has a much broader perspective on racial differences, similarities, & tensions than most people regardless of their race. He's never been directly affected by Jim Crowe. He's the first post baby boom modern era President. As far as I can tell, he's blind to race & religion as factors in human character & competence, & he's doesn't seem to be overly affected by rigid ideology. He's pragmatic. The craziness & red baiting of the cold war & the silliness of race based hatred are foreign concepts to him.

As an American, all I can really expect from my President is that he/she be at least as smart as me, & preferably smarter. I've got that now. President Obama is a bit too conservative for my particular taste, but I can live with conservative. I'm pushing 60, & this is the closest I've seen to a liberal in the Whitehouse. I'm real tired of reactionary. I don't expect radical change. Incremental is fine.

Oh, one more thing. When President Bush heard about the plane crash on 9/11/01, nobody knew it was an attack. The flight patterns that day hadn't been analyzed yet & the second crash hadn't happened. He did the right thing. He didn't panic. He took a couple of minutes to finish what he was doing with the children, who didn't need to be panicked either. Then he devoted his time to finding out what was going on. It's a bogus complaint. Like I said, I'm real tired of reactionay.


Dude!
You are the tea bagging expert!

[pantybulge69]

amen my friend, you have nailed it squarely on the head

Comparing Obama with Karl Marx shows pretty much how ignorant and uninformed many Americans are.

...and far too easily manipulated



The best example is the health care debate. 40 million Americans cannot afford a health insurance

and even those that can are often denied coverage when it comes time to collect on a claim. Over 100 Americans are dying every single day because of this and it's a downright rotten lowdown dirty shame.
And you also couldn't be more right on about...



George Bush fucked you up and Obama has to clean the shit now.

....and he's being stymied every step of the way by the right wing in Congress which is totally in the pocket of the pharmaceutical/insurance machine. These tea bagger protests and rallies are not the grass roots uprisings of the common man that they would have us believe but are in fact organized and funded by tools of the drug/insurance cartel such as Americans for Prosperity, whose sole purpose is to scare the shit out of everyone w/ talk of death panels and comparing our President to Hitler and even Pol Pot fer crissakes. Most of these clowns pissing and moaning about "I want my America back" aren't worried about health care anyway...the're just pissed because there's a Black Guy in the White House.



...and it´s hard for him to make the "change" happen due to Republican sabotage, obstruction and conservative media propaganda.

yep...Rupert Murdoch and Rush Limbaugh are the Devil incarnate. If a properly informed electorate is the cornerstone of an effective democracy, we've definitely got an uphill battle on our hands. Hopefully, with reporters like Rachel Maddow telling it like it really is, sanity will prevail.

btw...was lucky enough to visit Austria back in '85 and fell in love w/ the place...esp. Wien. Hope to be able to return someday, if I can stay away from Amsterdam

+1 .........

[q1a2z3]

amen my friend, you have nailed it squarely on the head

Comparing Obama with Karl Marx shows pretty much how ignorant and uninformed many Americans are.

...and far too easily manipulated



The best example is the health care debate. 40 million Americans cannot afford a health insurance

and even those that can are often denied coverage when it comes time to collect on a claim. Over 100 Americans are dying every single day because of this and it's a downright rotten lowdown dirty shame.
And you also couldn't be more right on about...



George Bush fucked you up and Obama has to clean the shit now.

....and he's being stymied every step of the way by the right wing in Congress which is totally in the pocket of the pharmaceutical/insurance machine. These tea bagger protests and rallies are not the grass roots uprisings of the common man that they would have us believe but are in fact organized and funded by tools of the drug/insurance cartel such as Americans for Prosperity, whose sole purpose is to scare the shit out of everyone w/ talk of death panels and comparing our President to Hitler and even Pol Pot fer crissakes. Most of these clowns pissing and moaning about "I want my America back" aren't worried about health care anyway...the're just pissed because there's a Black Guy in the White House.



...and it´s hard for him to make the "change" happen due to Republican sabotage, obstruction and conservative media propaganda.

yep...Rupert Murdoch and Rush Limbaugh are the Devil incarnate. If a properly informed electorate is the cornerstone of an effective democracy, we've definitely got an uphill battle on our hands. Hopefully, with reporters like Rachel Maddow telling it like it really is, sanity will prevail.

btw...was lucky enough to visit Austria back in '85 and fell in love w/ the place...esp. Wien. Hope to be able to return someday, if I can stay away from Amsterdam

+1 .........


There as always been a "black guy" in the White House. There has never been anything wrong with that. All conservatives are concerned about is that the janitors, butlers, bathroom attendants, and kitchen help were infinity more competent to be President than obama. Race is not an issue it's whether someone is a MOONBAT!!! obama is a MOONBAT.

He may be clean and articulate (with a teleprompter) but he is not presidential material.

[buckjohnson]

Obama is smart, jive, and cool like dat.. That is why I like him and respect him.

[Amsterdamage]

yeah me too. coz it's not like he is in charge of anything at all what so sever. but he has a cool factor like that other shill had, Billyboy Clinton

[traLika]

Thank fuck 'Dubyer' isn't in charge any more! :)

[Ben]

Someone asked Obama about people who hate him... "Comes with the job..." (or something like that)

While I don't agree with alot of his politics I do appreciate his straight forward talking. Can't help but like the guy. (Even if you do think he is the second coming of Karl Marx.)

Obama is the furthest thing from actual socialism. (Actual socialism is about the workers controlling the means of production. Socialism is antithetical to state power, to centralized power.) Well, maybe socialism for the super-rich... and capitalism for the rest. Gore Vidal pointed out: it's socialism for the super-rich and free enterprise for everyone else.
Glenn Greenwald excoriates the Obama presidency: "How can an administration represented by Tim Geithner and Larry Summers -- and which specializes in an endless stream of secret deals with corporate lobbyists (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/13/internal-memo-confirms-bi_n_258285.html) and sustains itself with Wall Street funding (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/business/14schumer.html) -- possibly maintain any pretense of populist support or changing how Washington works? It can't."