President-elect promised change, picking insiders
Nov 20, 7:14 AM (ET)
By KEVIN FREKING
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20081120/D94ILB280.html
WASHINGTON (AP) - President-elect Barack Obama promised the voters change but has started his Cabinet selection process by naming several Washington insiders to top posts.
Obama is enlisting former Senate leader Tom Daschle as his health secretary. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a well-known Washington personality, seemed more likely than ever to be his secretary of state. Clinton is deciding whether to take that post as America's top diplomat, her associates said Wednesday
Obama is ready to announce that his attorney general will be Eric Holder, the Justice Department's No. 2 when Clinton's husband was president. Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, is another veteran of the Clinton White House.
Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano is Obama's primary choice to be secretary of the Homeland Security Department, several news organizations reported Thursday. The New York Times, citing Democrats with knowledge of the process, said Napolitano was about to be offered the job. The Washington Post also reported that she was Obama's choice.
Chicago businesswoman Penny Pritzker, who was national finance chairman for Obama's presidential campaign, is his leading choice for commerce secretary, the Times reported. The newspaper said Pritzker was in the final stages of vetting by Obama's transition team.
Daschle's selection to head the Health and Human Services Department - confirmed Wednesday but not yet announced - isn't at the same level of Cabinet prestige as the top spots at the State and Justice departments. But the health post could be more important in an Obama administration than in some others, making Daschle a key player in helping steer the president-elect's promised health care reforms.
Daschle could push Obama for quick action on health care reform next year, if he follows his own advice.
Daschle said efforts during the Clinton administration, led by Hillary Clinton, took too long and went into too much detail, giving every interest group an opportunity to find something they didn't like about the plan.
"The next president should act immediately to capitalize on the goodwill that greets any incoming administration. If that means attaching a health-care plan to the federal budget, so be it," Daschle wrote in a book he released this year, "Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.""This issue is too important to be stalled by Senate protocol."
The former South Dakota senator's return to the government will be a vindication of sorts. He was the Senate Democratic leader when he was defeated in 2004 by Republican John Thune, who convinced voters back home that Daschle was more concerned with Washington than with them.
In fact, Daschle stayed in the capital city after his defeat, becoming a public policy adviser and member of the legislative and public policy group at the law and lobbying firm Alston & Bird. Daschle isn't registered as a lobbyist. He advises clients on issues including health care, financial services, taxes and trade, according to the firm's Web site.
Health care interests, including CVS Caremark, the National Association for Home Care and Hospice, Abbott Laboratories (ABT) and HealthSouth, are among the firm's lobbying clients.
Daschle's appointment was not formally announced, but Democratic officials said the job was his barring an unforeseen problem as Obama's team reviews his background. One area of review will include the lobbying connections of his wife, Linda Hall Daschle, who has worked mostly on behalf of airline-related companies over the years. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
Republicans sniped at what they saw as an unwelcome trend. Alex Conant, spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said, "Barack Obama is filling his administration with longtime Washington insiders."
The Imperialism You Can Believe In- While Leftists Celebrate “Change,” Obama Appointees Suggest Massive Expansion Of Bush War Doctrine
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, November 20, 2008
http://www.prisonplanet.com/the-imperialism-you-can-believe-in.html
While naive, giddy and myopic establishment leftists have been celebrating the great “change” heralded by the election of Barack Obama, the President elect has been busy appointing people to key positions who advocate the same Neo-Con imperialist foreign policy crafted during eight years of the Bush administration.
The New York Times, widely recognized as the voice of the establishment Democratic left, set the tone of what we can expect from an Obama foreign policy in a lead editorial last Sunday entitled, “A military for a dangerous new world.”
The editorial calls for U.S. military imperialism not to be scaled back under Obama, but to be vastly expanded both in terms of budget and scope.
Iran, China, Somalia, Russia and Pakistan are all listed as potential targets of U.S. military aggression and the paper echoes what Obama himself has said he will implement - an addition of nearly 100,000 more soldiers and marines to American ground forces, bringing the total to 759,000 active duty forces, at a cost of $100 billion dollars over the next six years.
Does this sound like a “change” from the Project For a New American century framework of endless “multi-theatre warfare,” the inspiration for eight years of Bush administration militarism, or an expansion of that very doctrine?
Obama’s announced appointees and those that are expected to follow differ only from their Bush administration contemporaries in proficiency and competence, their zeal for military adventurism is coequal, while others that shaped eight awful years of spying, torture, eviscerations on freedom and unprovoked military attacks on sovereign nations will merely stay on in their roles.
Welcome to the “change that you can believe in”.
Obama’s likely selection of Hillary Clinton for the position of Secretary of State highlights the brazen hypocrisy with which the “change” agenda has begun to be implemented since Obama won the election two and a half weeks ago.
Clinton voted for the invasion of Iraq, a point on which she was attacked by Obama during the phony punch and judy show of the debates. Obama also denounced Clinton for voting in favor of a Senate resolution branding the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. Clinton promised to “obliterate” Iran if it attacked Israel, a mantra echoed by Obama when he assured AIPAC, the notorious Israeli lobby, that military strikes against Iran were very much on the table.
Does this sound like the language of diplomacy or a change from eight years of the Bush doctrine?
Likewise, one of the favorites to become Obama’s Defense Secretary is Michèle A. Flournoy, deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Clinton administration and president of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) think tank.
As Alex Lantier writes, “Members of CNAS, a rather small Washington think tank with a staff of 30 employees founded in 2003 by (John) Podesta and Flournoy, play an outsized role in the Obama transition team.”
“So many CNAS members are likely to join the Obama administration that CNAS officials told the (Wall Street) Journal they were concerned the think tank might fold after Obama’s inauguration.”
CNAS has opposed a set timeline for withdrawal from Iraq, has advocated the deployment of more troops in Afghanistan and has called for U.S. troops to be stationed in Pakistan. CNAS has also urged military spending to be beefed up in order to compete with China’s growing Navy.
“CNAS publications, many of which are publicly available on its web site, make it clear that the Obama administration’s foreign policy will have a thoroughly imperialist character,” notes Lantier.
How does this represent a “change” from eight years of Bush administration foreign policy? How does this represent a shift from a strategy of diplomacy based on intimidation, invasion and occupation?
Obama’s advisors have also been floating the likelihood of Robert Gates remaining as Obama’s Secretary of Defense, so it looks like we’re either going to have a warmonger or a warmonger in the position - what a choice!
The Financial Times reported this week, “President-Elect Barack Obama and Robert Gates are negotiating terms under which the defense secretary would remain as Pentagon chief in the new administration.”
Gates of course has a history of entanglement with the military-industrial complex having pushed for the U.S. bombing of Nicaragua when he was deputy director of the CIA and later being indicted for his involvement in covering up the Iran Contra scandal.
Gates was the primary advocate for the Iraq “surge” which increased the U.S. military presence in the country.
Obama’s decision to appoint Eric Holder as Attorney General caused a flutter of controversy considering Holder’s involvement in ensuring billionaire fugitive investor Marc Rich received a presidential pardon at the end of Bill Clinton’s term, but the real dirt on Holder is far more shocking.
After leaving the Clinton administration, Holder, who played a key role in the 2005 re-authorization of the Patriot Act, which Obama voted for, set up the legal and lobbying firm of Covington & Burling. The firm’s most high-profile case was its defense of Chiquita Brands International, Inc, whose executives were facing charges of aiding terrorists for bankrolling and arming right-wing death squads in Colombia.
As Bill Van Auken writes, “Using his longstanding ties at the Justice Department, Holder managed to get Chiquita off the hook with a fine that amounted to 0.55 percent of its annual revenue. This was despite the overwhelming evidence—and the company’s own admission—that it had paid out millions of dollars to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (known by its Spanish acronym AUC), as its gunmen carried out the massacre, assassination, kidnapping and torture of tens of thousands of Colombian workers, peasants, trade union officials and left-wing political activists.”
“Holder’s record is not that of a champion of civil and democratic rights or a defender of the oppressed, but rather a legal servant of the corporations and the state, complicit in their criminality and repression.”
Holder’s law enforcement deputy in the Obama administration is likely to be Robert Mueller, who will remain as FBI Director despite his involvement in the use of National Security Letters to illegally spy on American citizens via the collection of email, telecommunications and financial records.
Obama’s head of the CIA transition team is none other than John Brennan, an aide to former CIA director George Tenet and a key participant in the formulation of policies that led to the torture scandal, extraordinary renditions and secret prisons.
Van Auken notes, “Brennan, like Tenet, deserves to confront a war crimes tribunal, yet he is shaping intelligence policy for Obama.”
“Given these appointments, a report published Monday by the Associated Press that the incoming Obama administration “is unlikely to bring criminal charges against government officials who authorized or engaged in” torture hardly comes as a surprise.”
Then we have Rahm Emanuel, “the enforcer”, and Obama’s new chief of staff.
Emanuel is the son of a member of the Zionist terrorist group Irgun, which was responsible for bombing hotels, marketplaces as well as the infamous Deir Yassin massacre, in which hundreds of Palestinian villagers were slaughtered.
Upon news of his appointment, Emanuel’s father, Dr. Benjamin Emanuel, told the Jerusalem Post, “Obviously he will influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn’t he be? What is he, an Arab? He’s not going to clean the floors of the White House.”
But forget sins of the father, Rahm Emanuel himself is a former Israeli IDF soldier who has a penchant for making death threats against his political enemies while crazily slamming a knife into a dinner table. Sounds like a diplomatic kind of guy.
When Emanuel’s appointment was confirmed, top Israeli newspaper the Maariv Daily hailed the news with the headline, “Our man in the White House.”
Another Israeli news outlet, Y Net, reported, “Emanuel is pro-Israeli, and would not be willing to consider accepting the job unless he was convinced that President-elect Obama is pro-Israel.”
Recall that President elect Barack Obama’s first act of “change” upon winning the Democratic presidential nomination back in June was to don a joint US-Israeli label pin, head on over to AIPAC and prostrate himself in front of the Israeli lobby, vowing to keep military action in mind for Iran and promising to hand over another $30 billion of American taxpayers’ money in military assistance to the Zionist state.
It seems that Obama has already answered the question of whether he can be a more hardcore Israel hard-liner than George W. Bush - ‘yes he can’!
When are left-wing establishment liberals going to overcome their inane idolatry for Obama and realize that the people he is putting into positions of power are the same and in some cases worse than the Neo-Cons who ran eight years of Bush foreign policy?
When are leftists going to get over their petty power trips and understand that the mantra of “change” is a mere illusion to provide left cover for a massive expansion in U.S. imperialism the likes of which the Bush administration could never have accomplished?
When are liberals going to stop behaving like gloating children and understand that Obama’s exalted messiah status and political capital, allied with his publicly stated agenda and the nature and track record of those he has appointed to key positions, is a recipe for a new wave of militarism and an expansion of the pre-emptive Bush foreign policy doctrine that Obama himself campaigned against with his rhetorical and empty promises of “change”?
Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
http://www.infowars.com/?p=5755
The messianic fervor which has preceded Barack Obama’s expected ascension to the White House has alarming implications for freedom and is a painful reminder that most Americans have once again been suckered into believing that the two-party monopoly offers any kind of solution to the crisis that we face.
For eight years during the term of Bill Clinton, Alex Jones was labeled a right-wing fascist for opposing him and for the past near-eight years Jones has been derided as a communist and even an Al-Qaeda member for railing against the Bush administration.
Now even regular readers of our own websites are calling Alex a right-wing racist once again merely for questioning the ascension of the new great leader - Barack Obama.
The messianic complex that has been attached to Obama is truly frightening. Bishops like Cornal Garnett Henning are calling Obama the new “Moses” while his supporters refer to him as “the black Jesus”.
In one You Tube clip, a woman hails Obama’s Godly powers by proclaiming that as soon as he is elected, all her problems will simply disappear, saying that Obama will help her personally almost like Jesus healed the sick and wounded.
The election of a new president should not be a mindless act of idolatry and fanfare, it should be a solemn commitment to find a leader who will follow the Constitution.
But Barack Obama will ride into office with a gigantic approval rating to rival that of Bush after 9/11, along with a complete power monopoly over the executive, the legislative, the judicial as well as widespread media support.
This makes Obama more dangerous than Bush and certainly a damn site more dangerous than a McCain administration, because his policies for at least a year or two will enjoy universal acclaim and voices of dissent will be drowned out by a wave of droning acquiescence.
Obama has all the political capital he needs to implement the terrifying policies that he has already announced and beef the architecture of the police state crafted by Bush.
- The creation of a “civilian national security force” that is “just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as the U.S. military to enforce Obama’s carbon tax scheme and the total regulation and control of the American middle class.
- Obama has talked openly about his intention to bomb Pakistan under the guise of pursuing terrorists, continuing a Bush administration policy of violating the sovereignty of foreign nations.
- The guarantee to “bankrupt” coal power plants, costing millions of American jobs and skyrocketing energy prices.
- Unbridled implementation and expansion of the banker bailout that is hated by the majority of American citizens yet was vigorously promoted by both Obama and McCain. Doling out taxpayer’s money to Wall Street, causing rampant inflation, a lowering in living standards and the destruction of the dollar.
- Obama has rhetorically supported the second amendment and an individual’s right to bear arms, but his actions tell a different story. Obama supports local gun ban laws, including his endorsement of a state ban on the sale and possession of handguns in Illinois.
- Obama grandstands on the notion that he supports environmentalism with his climate change rhetoric, but his intention to extend biofuel subsidies will only accelerate price food costs that have already risen 75 per cent since 2002, causing economic distress and rioting in such countries as Haiti, Egypt, and Somalia, as well as deforestation on a massive scale.
Mark our words - the causes that the liberal left has been fighting for over the last eight years will simply be forgotten just like conservatives were put to sleep when Bush came to power. Obama is the pacifier that the establishment needs to quiet the simmering anger amongst Americans that has been threatening to boil over.
It will no longer be “fashionable” to fight the police state amongst the political left.
Mark our words - there will be no repeal of the Patriot Act, there will be no repeal of the John Warner Defense Authorization Act, there will be no repeal of warrantless secret surveillance of American citizens.
Democratic control of Congress and the Senate since the 2006 elections has achieved nothing in the way of reversing the Bush administration’s assaults on the Constitution, so why should we expect Obama to do anything different?
Obama may eventually withdraw a portion of troops from Iraq but mark our words, they won’t be home long before they are sent off to bomb another broken-backed third world country, this time in the name of a United Nations-backed “humanitarian” war, just as Bill Clinton presided over in Somalia and Serbia with the full support of the establishment political left.
Indeed, Obama’s running mate Joe Biden has already “promised” and “guaranteed” that Obama will be faced with an international crisis that will mandate him to take “unpopular” and “tough” decisions in the context of foreign policy.
Don’t think for a second that our warnings about Obama are an endorsement for John McCain. We have tirelessly attempted to educate Americans about the two party monopoly and the fact that Democrats and Republicans serve the interests of the elite, not the people, and have for at least five decades since Kennedy was killed.
Obama is Coca-Cola and McCain is Pepsi - at the end of the day you’re still drinking the same beverage.
The two-party monopoly offers no solutions for the problems we face, in fact the two-party monopoly that you will be helping to maintain should you vote for either Obama or McCain - is the problem.
Stop falling for the same bait and switch trick again and again every eight years.
When George W. Bush was elected, conservatives were in adulation and awe, confident that after eight years of federal government expansion under Clinton, Bush - complete with slick conservative rhetoric and promises of change - would shrink the size of government and restore dignity to the office of President.
Nearly eight years later and what have we witnessed, a record expansion in the size of government and an almost universal contempt for America around the world.
When Tony Blair swept into power with a landslide in the British general election in 1997, the country breathed a collective sigh of relief that this new young dynamo would put right years of Tory malfeasance and provide the “change” that everyone was crying out for.
When Blair left office in 2007 he had created a Socialist surveillance police state and eliminated a huge popular approval lead the Labour Party had enjoyed over the Tories, leaving most of the public once again to demand Conservative rule.
When are we going to wake up to the fact that voting in the lesser of two evils is not a solution?
When are we going to realize that participating in a rigged system, where our vote means virtually nothing anyway because it is counted by a completely compromised and hackable voting machine, not only fails to address any of our problems, but actually compounds them because of our passive obedience in participating in the phony virtual reality presented to us as “democracy”?
When are we going to realize that by continually electing Democrats and Republicans, we are voting away our own freedom as the march towards a new world order and an American police state proceeds no matter who takes office?
Prison Planet.com and infowars.com are Alex Jones' sites and he like to push the NWO nonsense.
So beware.
Whatever, you can resurrect the NWO topic if you want to get into another debate (please do, looking forward to it). Doesn't change the fact that they're absolutely right concerning Obama.
Whatever, you can resurrect the NWO topic if you want to get into another debate
Hell, I am not going to start that crap again.
Waste of my fucking time and energy.
i thot our president promised change
Big names with a wealth of experience behind to support them are not picking insiders
Picking insiders is something the republicians or the PAP will do
Just look at whos running everything here.. THAT is picking insiders
so.. i guess voting for obama was a mistake huh?
Right, insiders are people who will continue the policies of the previous administration. Which is just what Obama is doing by bringing in people that will expand an imperialistic foreign policy that got so much attention during the Bush years and perpetrate the economic warfare on the American people. Treasury Secretary will be Timothy Geithner, who used to work for the Fed,IMF, (war criminal) Kissinger Associates, the CFR and the BIS- organisations that have "a wealth of experience" in screwing the common people for the profit of corporate criminals.