Also, I was very surprised (pleasantly) that she was so gracious in apparent defeat. The handshake at the end, and the statement that she would be OK with whatever happened ... I don't know, I got the sense that maybe she's not going to try to split the party apart and fight for Michigan, superdelegates, etc. after all. Her whole manner in the debate was much more conciliatory than I'd expected and I think that's great news for the party's chances in the general election. She came across as a class act and I think she's going to be one heck of a Senate majority leader.

ZiggyTosh:

Also, I was very surprised (pleasantly) that she was so gracious in apparent defeat. The handshake at the end, and the statement that she would be OK with whatever happened ... I don't know, I got the sense that maybe she's not going to try to split the party apart and fight for Michigan, superdelegates, etc. after all. Her whole manner in the debate was much more conciliatory than I'd expected and I think that's great news for the party's chances in the general election. She came across as a class act and I think she's going to be one heck of a Senate majority leader.

Oh, never mind.

Mercadia, Arashi,

I'm not giving up on HC yet.

I do see the emotions running very high, on both sides. I see Obama's supporters taking HC supporters' votes for granted. I see a lot of HC supporters sitting out. It is just very difficult to vote for someone who you think is vacuous when there is someone whom you believe to be serious, capable, hard-working, and brillinat. I also see some of them voting for McCain because he does have some of the qualities of experience, sincerity, grounded in reality that HC has. He has said the very words that HC have been saying, that he doesn't want to be some supernatural savior, he just wants to be a normal human being trying to do his best and with integrity. Heck, they're friends.

ZiggyTosh:

ZiggyTosh:

Also, I was very surprised (pleasantly) that she was so gracious in apparent defeat. The handshake at the end, and the statement that she would be OK with whatever happened ... I don't know, I got the sense that maybe she's not going to try to split the party apart and fight for Michigan, superdelegates, etc. after all. Her whole manner in the debate was much more conciliatory than I'd expected and I think that's great news for the party's chances in the general election. She came across as a class act and I think she's going to be one heck of a Senate majority leader.

Oh, never mind.

The New Republic did an interesting article on this issue:

<link>

It is the Clinton supporters who over and over say they will refuse to vote for Obama if Clinton does not win the nomination.

It is the Clinton supporters who accuse everyone who does not support their candidate without question of being a woman hating sexist. Hell they accuse women who don't like Hillary of being sexist.

If Clinto would use aim half of her animosity at the republicans instead of her fellow Democrats she would do herslef and the country a huge favor.

Unless of course she is simply trying to help season the probable Democratic nominee by giving him a rough time.

The mood of the Republic is restive. Candidates with integrity and an honorable process to achieve the best candidate is on the minds of the electorate. I believe it outranks the economy because most who are concerned about the economy are even more concerned about "the crooks who run it" (not my words but the words of many with whom I speak). Obama has sponsored legislation (still in committee) to put a cap on executive compensation--something that has been needed for a very long time to stop the hemorrhaging of profits to the CEO's and their lieutenants. These profits are needed to pay workers here and pensioners who are relying on the stock holdings of their pension trusts to fund their retirements. Japanese CEO's do nicely on ten times what their lowest paid employee receives (for example, if a janitor makes $40,000 per year--wages are high in Japan---then the CEO makes $400,000). It is obscene that executives are able to make thousands of times what their lowest paid workers receive and often the difference between declaring a profit or a loss is the amount paid out to the piggies in the executive suite. Is the president of GM going to work for a dollar this year as an acknowledgment that he and his cronies are largely responsible for taking GM to the brink of bankruptcy? I think not. They collect their hundreds of millions of dollars whether the corporations that have been entrusted to their care, profit or languish. The problem has been allowed to fester over the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush years. This is a wealthy nation--there should never be such a thing as the "working poor." Those who passionately desire justice will join with President Obama in his efforts.

NickD:

It is the Clinton supporters who over and over say they will refuse to vote for Obama if Clinton does not win the nomination.It is the Clinton supporters who accuse everyone who does not support their candidate without question of being a woman hating sexist. Hell they accuse women who don't like Hillary of being sexist.If Clinto would use aim half of her animosity at the republicans instead of her fellow Democrats she would do herslef and the country a huge favor.Unless of course she is simply trying to help season the probable Democratic nominee by giving him a rough time.

Not all Clinton detrators are sexist, but it seems that many are. And it seems as if many Obama supporters (including women) can't just support Obama without making very personal attacks on Clinton. Not just attacks about her policies or her campaign, which are justified and part of politics, but very personal attacks that are unwarranted. And many of those personal attacks are just either outwardly sexist or based on unfair double standards. It's not that Obama supporters are sexist people, but I think they really support their candidate and are taking low blows and easy shots. It does make it harder for me to vote for him in the general, not because I don't like him, but because I feel as if I would be condoning that kind of behavior, and I think it's inexcusable.

Here's a New York Times article, written by a very intelligent man, that analyzes what I'm talking about: <link>

I also don't agree that what Clinton is doing in her campaign, poking holes in Obama's ethos and strategy, can be deemed as animosity. That's just politics, that's her job, that's what she's supposed to do. Some of it, like Bill Clinton's tactless comments in South Carolina, were just bone-headed, but Hillary has played it pretty well. If she was campaigning againt the Republicans, she would do the same. Obama may have to do it as well, but, because his campaign is based around such a popular message, he might not have to.

And she's barely skimmed Obama with a playing card compared to the number that the Republicans might try to do on him in the general election. According to MSNBC, the Republicans are "chomping at the bit" to run against him. It was frightening because that makes me wonder exactly what they plan to do to him. But Clinton is inhibited by the fact that she is loyal to the Democratic party, and to attack him in any real way might hinder his ability to win in the general, and as a party, we can't have that.

Woofer:

The mood of the Republic is restive. Candidates with integrity and an honorable process to achieve the best candidate is on the minds of the electorate. I believe it outranks the economy because most who are concerned about the economy are even more concerned about "the crooks who run it" (not my words but the words of many with whom I speak). Obama has sponsored legislation (still in committee) to put a cap on executive compensation--something that has been needed for a very long time to stop the hemorrhaging of profits to the CEO's and their lieutenants. These profits are needed to pay workers here and pensioners who are relying on the stock holdings of their pension trusts to fund their retirements. Japanese CEO's do nicely on ten times what their lowest paid employee receives (for example, if a janitor makes $40,000 per year--wages are high in Japan---then the CEO makes $400,000). It is obscene that executives are able to make thousands of times what their lowest paid workers receive and often the difference between declaring a profit or a loss is the amount paid out to the piggies in the executive suite. Is the president of GM going to work for a dollar this year as an acknowledgment that he and his cronies are largely responsible for taking GM to the brink of bankruptcy? I think not. They collect their hundreds of millions of dollars whether the corporations that have been entrusted to their care, profit or languish. The problem has been allowed to fester over the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush years. This is a wealthy nation--there should never be such a thing as the "working poor." Those who passionately desire justice will join with President Obama in his efforts.

From everything I've read in the papers and in magazines and while watching the news, economy concerns refer to the subprime housing crisis (which we've probaby already discussed), the impending recession (or current recession depending on who you ask), the tenuous job market, the soaring deficit, the fear of inflation, and the declining value of the dollar (which is currently around .68 of its value). It was interesting because, over Christmas, Europeans were flocking to New York to buy up our products because they were so cheap. They were also buying up real estate here, but because of the housing crisis and sagging economy, they've stopped.

It is true that everything you cite is of immediate concern, but there are longer-term structural problems that need to be addressed. Sort of like the difference between a fad and a trend. We careen from economic crisis to economic crisis--- first it was the S&Ls and then it was the dotcom bubble and now the subprime mess. These are the fads but the trends are not even noticed because they are only rarely questioned. Because we don't even see them, they are never addressed. They would require political solutions and in our current polarized condition, we impasse. What is needed is someone with the vision, insight and political intelligence to move beyond the impasse and lead us by appealing to our sense of justice. I believe that person is Barack Obama--someone who is uniquely gifted to lead--his type doesn't come around very often. He understands the following:

That we really must do something about the Federal Reserve system--it has made a huge amount of money for an elite group of dynastic families (check into the history of it going back as early as the "Greenback Dollar" controversy of the Lincoln administration--some say it was why Lincoln was killed), Ron Paul (an intelligent insightful man but he does not gain much of a following because he is lacking in leadership skills) harps on this issue and he is right. He is depicted as an amusing nut by those who understand how dangerous his message is. He has a lot on the history of the Federal Reserve on his website.

War is an especially lucrative endeavor for the elites. It is too complex and long to go into here but the Federal Reserve system, because it has been given the privilege of issuing our money (instead of the government issuing money directly) is a tool used by the elites to extract money out of our economy--they will always take more than they put back--the system is set up that way. Oh, they will flood us with currency at times in order to juice the economy for political ends (and sometimes they miscalculate and Democrats gain control of the government for a time) but it is a game where the house always ultimately wins and the house is the Federal Reserve system. The Republicans used to be fiscally conservative but lately they have borrowed so much money that there is a very real danger that very soon, our entire yearly tax take will go just to pay the interest on our loans. Taxes will either have to be raised precipitously or we will have to default. Then all h*** will break loose. We are exporting our inflation to other countries at present (they experience it as deflation and there is nothing they can do about it), That is one of the reasons why we are not looked on with fondness by the rest of the world.

Another problem under our present economic system is that war is extremely profitable for certain individuals (that is why Eisenhower warned us to beware of the military-industrial complex in his farewell address.) Halliburton (Dick Cheney's old company) has made an enormous amount of money out of the Iraq war. That is why those who represent the MI complex speak of us being at war somewhere in the world for at least 100 years. It is too profitable to abandon--meanwhile our brave young men and women bleed in foreign lands.

So, let's see, so far we have the Robber Barons, the Banking Vultures and the War Profiteers--I could go on but you can see what we are up against. These are just some of the major underlying structural economic defects that an immoral society spawns. When respect, honor, justice and integrity (which most of this nation used to be on board for) any economic system would work--when these things are absent, no economic system will work. At the turn of the 20th century, sweatshops and child labor were the rule, making huge profits for those willing to exploit the workers. But gradually, a consensus was reached that these conditions were immoral and laws were made to curb the practices. American multi-national corporations are following the same immoral practices in developing countries all over the world, while workers here are laid off. We could be making laws to curb these practices but it seems to have escaped the attention of Congress except for a few hardy souls like Barack Obama. But it is very difficult because those who are profiting by the status quo can buy just about as much influence as they need to achieve their goals. What are their goals you might ask? Google "The American Century" and this will tell you who some of the players are and what they want.

I do believe I discovered The American Century right before the Iraq war. Appalling.

In terns of the economy, it seems like we need to focus on damage control for awhile, and then, when that is under some type of control, we can take aim at some of the larger structural problems (perhaps during re-election). I am very interested in the candidate who will take the reigns and put things back in order, and then achieve our loftier goals. I think the first year for Obama is going to be very important in terms of policy, because the issues I mentioned are pressing and immediate (i.e. you have to put out the fire before you can rebuild your house). I don't quite agree that his immediate economic plans are the best (not offering a moratorium seems kind of heartless), but they might be the best in the long term, and he has the rhetorical skill to keep people happy for awhile. So we'll see!

Sorry, its late--I'm bleary-eyed. Google "Project for a New American Century"--not just "American Century."

No I know who you mean--the neocon group.

It's just odd because, and I don't mean to be skeptical, but this is a group of very strong and influential people with a very specific worldview and no ethical principles. Aren't we nervous that they are going to eat Obama alive?

The first thing that needs to happen is that some of the perpetrators need to be convicted of fraud. Many of them understood quite well that they were defrauding those who bought their crummy paper (that is if they haven't stashed themselves and their cash under an assumed name in the Cayman Islands). This may seem like an irrelevancy but it is an important part of restoring confidence in the government's will and ability to deal with the crises. The fire needs to be stopped before it spreads any further.

On the matter of a moratorium on foreclosures--that is already happening at the judicial level (a judge in Cleveland has ruled that a bank cannot foreclose on a property until they have proof that they own it. Often the ABCP--stands for Asset-Backed Commercial Paper--changed hands so many times that no one is quite sure who is holding the title. Frequently, the origninal mortgager is out of business by now and the title was never transferred.) Hopefully, this type of judicial activism will spread. There will be howls from those holding the paper but a deal can be brokered if they see that they don't have much of a choice but to go along. We should note that a lot of this was caused by the Fed precipitously increasing real interest rates a couple of years ago because our government was borrowing so much money (to finance the War among other things) that inflation was a looming specter. Understand that central bankers everywhere are paranoid about inflation getting away from them. A little inflation works for them--a lot is deadly.

Politicians start threatening to bust up their nice little monopoly when they screw up badly. The Great Depression was largely the fault of the Federal Reserve system. There had been short-lived panics before the Federal Reserve system was put in place but the prolonged depression came about because they fought so hard against the inflation of the 20's that the bank and stock market failures of 1929 tipped the country into a deflationary recession/depression. A wry joke that they told during the depression was, "When your neighbor is out of work, its a recession, when you are out of work, its a depression." When a recession goes into a feedback loop--which is what happened during the Great Depression--it is called a depression. It was only the inflationary forces of WWII that counteracted the deflationary forces, and brought the country (indeed the whole world) out of the depression. So far, there have only been pockets of deflation. Japan for example, has been in and out and back into deflationary feedback loops since the early 90's--because their central bank was determined to take some of the inflationary speculation out of their stock and real estate markets. I think their interest rates are about a half per cent and still business expansion is greatly smaller than it had been through the 1980's. In 2006, the Japanese government announced that their share of aggregate world income had fallen below 10%--the lowest in 24 years. This is how economies shrink and produce poverty for those unfortunate enough to be at the bottom.

Money is a commodity that greases the wheels of commerce and commerce feeds us all whether we like it or not. The Communists were quite stupid for not understanding the need for a market economy. But Bush's so-called "compassionate capitalism" is a sick joke. When he wages needless wars people starve--it is as simple as that. When guns are purchased, someone goes without butter. There is only so much money in circulation at any time--when it is spent on destructive purposes, it cannot be spent on constructive purposes. Famine always rides with war. But then we are all to blame. If we spent what we spend on cosmetics and movies feeding the hungry, we could go a long way toward alleviating world hunger.

Ultimately, the answer for some of our economic problems is for the government to issue its own currency. Baron Rothschilde (the banker's banker of Europe) once said, "Let me issue a nations currency and I care not who makes its laws." How long are we going to allow the Money Masters to own us? Our present system has been used to concentrate an increasingly greater amount of wealth in the hands of a few. The United States with only 4% of the world's population has over 50% of its wealth. And a tiny minority of Americans own that wealth. (It is not well known that Americans own a majority of the stock in the world's stock markets--since WWII) The Owners will use every means at their disposal to prevent any redistribution of that wealth. I wonder though, if they don't tire of having to hide behind their perimeter walls in their exclusive enclaves? I read a report from the World Economic Summit in Davos, Switzerland. They said the security was quite intense. Our Nobel Laureate, Al Gore was there, by the way. I think he's sold us a bill of goods--many climate scientists say that much of his stuff is totally inaccurate. One has to wonder if Kyoto is just another ploy to siphon off more money for the elites. The UN oil for food program made a number of people at the UN very wealthy. I hope we are not going to be foolish enough to purchase "carbon credits" from the developing world. That will just feed the coffers of pigs (like Indonesia's past dictator Suharto) who will undoubtedly have to give something to their masters in return (while they send out their death squads on their own people and starve them into submission).

Well, this rant has gone on long enough.

mercadia:

No I know who you mean--the neocon group.

It's just odd because, and I don't mean to be skeptical, but this is a group of very strong and influential people with a very specific worldview and no ethical principles. Aren't we nervous that they are going to eat Obama alive?

Well, they can't fight us all. If we make ourselves knowledgeable and get networks of support going, they can't back us all down--we are in the vast majority. Actually, I believe that many have already seen the handwriting on the wall. People like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are setting up huge charitable trusts. There are elites of the left-persuasion and elites of the right. The ones on the left like Gates and Buffet and George Sorros are smart enough to understand that something needs to change in order to keep the world from plunging into chaos. We will either have peaceful change or we will continue to have violent revolution on all sides. Islamofascists aren't the only ones interested in violent revolution. Ever hear of Chiapas in Mexico? Communism is pretty much now officially over, but that doesn't mean that there won't be those who will be carrying on the fight for economic justice. Barack Obama was exposed to socialism growing up (the neocons will go nuts with this in the general). He is apparently a populist rather than a socialist. He knows what the stakes are. I think the time has come. One evidence of this is that there is a little noticed second populist among the presidential contenders this year--Mike Huckabee.

Ever see a movie called, "Newsies. It is a Disney movie and a musical at that, but it is all about New York newsies fighting against the establishment press for decent wages. It is a true story and is an illustration of populism.

Woofer: I would love to hear your thought on this;

<link>

How do you think each candidate's plan stands in terms of this issue?