"There should be no surprise there," -- Noam Chomsky

"Obama said it would send the wrong message to the nation if he stocked his cabinet with newcomers, especially given the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the deepening economic crisis. Veterans, he said, bring the wisdom to help him shape his agenda and the know-how to execute it." [Boston Globe, 2008-11-27]

It certainly would send the wrong message.

Obama is restocking with the same bastards that made all these messes because, exactly as he says, those veterans "bring the wisdom to help him shape his agenda and the know-how to execute it".

"Not only no prosecutions, but no lessons learned, and no reform necessary, because ... its all be so utterly wonderful and success is in the air!" [Wampum, 2008-11-29]

Wisdom indeed.

--

When I read what President-Elect Barack Obama [PEBO] said, I hear "$8 trillion and counting". And when in office, he'll have a Democratic majority to help him wreak more havoc.

I've been silly enough to pay attention to what Obama really has been saying. Not merely "hoping" that somehow a black former community organizer would be somehow better than the usual mob of corporate white thugs just because he's black. OK. We had a historic election. We're beyond skin color now; we have black and white corporate thugs. That's progress.

To bastardize Harry Belafonte talking about war criminal Colin Powell:

CHRIS MILLER CHANNELLING HARRY BELAFONTE: "There's an old saying in the days of slavery, there are those slaves who lived on the plantation, and there were those slaves who lived in the house. You got the privilege of living in the house if you served the master to exactly the way the master intended to have you serve him. That gave you privilege. Colin Powell Barack Obama is permitted to come into the house of the master, as long as he will serve the master according to the master's dictates." [Harry Belafonte on DemocracyNow!, 2006-01-30]

"$8 Trillion and counting."

Big picture, this isn't really something that can be blamed on Obama - he is a creature of the system. Blame the suckers and apologists, the uninformed consumers who bought his oh-so-wonderful Soaring Rhetoric and his retread version of Change. The marketing and advertising firms. The Obama campaign itself.

"There should be no surprise there," Chomsky says:

"Industry spends 100s of millions of dollars to undermine markets. And when they turn to selling a candidate, they do the same thing. They want uninformed consumers to make irrational choices.... That's the nature of an election when it's run by the business world and you'd expect it to be like that... There should be no surprise there." [Noam Chomsky on DemocracyNow!, 2008-11-24]

Hope - unfounded hope - is for suckers.

The next few years are going to really suck. And it will never get any better, but that is a different story.

--

"Impeach who", the manager asked as we chatted after I'd paid her for repairing my air compressor.

"Whoever gets elected," I said. "I'm leaving the sticker on."

"Yeah," she said. "The whole system is broken."

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