Correct on all counts about the interest groups and the media. You still need to look deeper at Barack. He was a complete nobody until THE MEDIA started a "buzz" about him back in 04. This fact had my radar up from the get go. No one can deny that the media pretty much created, and hyped, the Obama candidacy. They chose him as the democratic candidate, as sure as they chose Kerry, by destroying Howard Dean with the bogus "scream". The media and their corporate owners choose all candidates for president by pure madison avenue marketing to an electorate of completely conditioned Pavlov dogs. They needed a loser in 04 because they werent finished robbing the entire nation, so we got kerry to go against Bush and they got another 4 years looting time. In 08 they needed a Dem to win so they could put the blame for all the flaming wreckage they left on the democrats. They are already busy laying this foundation on every "news" outlet. The whole thing is another great big neocon bait and switch, with Barack as the straw man. The story will be the economic failure that is being caused by the same elites on wall street who control the media companies and how all those Dem policies failed because the same wall streeters wont buy stock anymore. Now all we need is another "terror" attack(enter Dick Cheney from stage right-BOO!) and voila!......the permanent republican majority(ie Fascist police state) becomes reality!....welcome to the matrix! People REALLY need to turn off the TV for good!

Mean while Osama bin Laden is apparently still out there, mouthing off. Whats up with that?

Sophie Scholl-The Final Days

The US needs a balanced budget, balanced trade, peaceful relations with all foreign states and a consistently applied rule of law. We have none of these. Neither the dems nor the repubs support any of these.

Excellent piece!!! (Some of the commentary sucks, however.)

OMG he's been in office over FIFTY DAYS and he's a blithering failure. Woe is US, alas and a lack. I read the other day that the WSJ and CNN have declare Obama's first hundred days a failure. Kind of like declaring a team has lost a game in the fifth inning.
There is one thing none of these nay sayers seem cognicent of: This guy knows how to play this game with a subtlety we haven't seen in a long time, maybe never. Yeah he's got a lot of people working against him and not much of a team pulling his way but he has an uncanny ability to say or do the right thing (or not the wrong thing) two moves ahead of his opponents so as to make them fall in line. And it always seems so effortless and uncontrived. He has got grace on the field.
The press and republicans remind me of the kids on the playground who would stand on the side chanting, "jinks, jinks, jinks..." while someone was trying to concentrate on a shot. They just love to proclaim how hopeless it all is. I made the mistake of underestimating Obama during the election. I learned my lesson. This early in the game I'm going to reserve judgement for a few more innings.

"he'll fail, precisely because he's president"

It's more like O'Bama will fail, precisely because he's alone. Because he doesn't have the people behind him, pushing him.

The pundits are leaving the people out of the picture, out of the game, and focusing everyone's attention on this one guy, as if he were a monarch. The elites approve this frame with extreme enthusiasm. So why is Mr. Schechter using it?

If O'Bama is going to be the people's savior, the people have to charge up his savior batteries. Can we get one million people on the mall to charge him up?

"he'll fail, precisely because he's president"

That's a confusing way of stating the truth. The much more straightforward truth is:

O'Bama will fail, precisely because he's alone, i.e. he doesn't have anyone behind him, pushing him.

This is because the pundits are leaving the people out of the picture, out of the game, and focusing everyone's attention on this one guy, as if the government is a monarchy.

If O'Bama is going to be our savior, we have to charge up his savior batteries. Can we get one million USans on the mall to charge him up?

In my opinion, he already has been captured.

1. He campaigned as a progressive during the primaries and then reversed/re-interpreted his words for the general election. Of course, this is an established habit for most candidates, but this contrasts strongly with his rhetoric of change. (I was too young to vote in November, but he lost my hypothetical one after the primaries.)
2. His first few appointments were corrupt officials from the Clinton Administration meant to "supervise" the economy. Apparently, this meant more unpopular and wasteful bailouts, exactly what thousands of people sent angry letters to Paulson and Bush for. Qualified appointees for posts like Freeman were replaced by people considered "balanced" by industry (like Ken Salazar).
3. I just read yesterday (from an AP article) that he's planning a news offensive to paint the Republicans as a "do nothing, obstructionist" party. Of course, the media is systematically biased against the left, economic recovery is usually slow, powerful groups oppose changes to the status quo, and the Republicans are intellectually bankrupt, but Obama's offensive seems exactly like that of a typical politician; admit no error and decry the other party. That's not an honest way to proceed.

Obama needed to fully antagonize the market "leadership". He needed to appoint radicals to immediately clamp down on market excesses as each day's loss represents millions more dollars drained to the likes of AIG. Of course, Fox News would have a month of field days and the Dow might drop even more, but that kind of courage would have inspired the masses. Lost opportunities...

Obama, assuming he's not already bought over, will have to spend months trying to extricate himself from his own indecisiveness. The country doesn't have this time to waste.

Yes and "the falcon can no longer hear the falconer."

What we witness in the commentators in the msm is what Thorstein Veblen referred to as "trained incompetence." The news media stars recognize a merit system that rewards them for dumbing down the truth, and which may severely punish them for failing to obey that system.

Yes Veblen, who also coined the term conspicuous consumption, which explains so well why only 1 million dollars is inadequate for some of our wealthier brethren because it fails to meet their status needs in regard to the Joneses.

http://www.theyorkshirelad.ca/12loweringtheante/loweringtheante.html

We perhaps shouldn't forget that the Obama administration is promising to maintain the $30bn the Bush administration pledged to provide to the Israeli government over ... I think it's the next 10 years, and that ... what ... around 70% or more of this goes into the pockets of the U.S. MIC. The heads and shareholders in that industry have perhaps as much to gain with the resignation of an honest, critical thinking, ... man like Charles Freeman. And among the investors in the MIC there must surely be financial industry corporations, and if not, then certainly their heads and shareholders, if there are shareholders in this industry or sector.

If the above is true, then the Lobby acted publicly, enough anyway, while the heads and shareholders of the MIC and its investors were what? They were silent. They don't need to act in ways that are publicly noticeable; discernable, with enough dots and careful analysis, but not obvious. They work behind closed doors. Conversely, the Lobby is a very public noise machine. Or, from what I've gathered anyway, there's a lot more reporting from various sources on the Lobby, AIPAC et al, than there is on the MIC and financial industry; and the Lobby does speak ..., well, if not right out in public, then still very publicly.

In any case, my conjecture is that while the Lobby appears very powerful, like the most powerful element in Washington politics, maybe there are more powerful "players" and they just don't "play" as publicly as the Lobby does, so it gets most of the attention that goes to Washington politics, when they're corrupt and otherwise wrong anyway.

The Lobby's only powerful because other people make this possible. If members of the body politic of the USA instead chose to stand by the U.S. Constitution and the international laws, etcetera, that the U.S. is co-signatory to, then the Lobby would be what? It'd be weak and many of its highest ranking members might be indicted, tried, and convicted to many years of prison, as that is what they deserve and is what should happen.

A party is not powerful unless others make this possible. I don't perceive the Lobby's power in the ways that people explicitly refer to it; because I [focus] on [individual responsibility]. The Lobby's not powerful. It's Congress and the Senate that are damn weak, corrupt, without real souls.

Also, Ray McGovern, in his article posted here the other day about Charles Freeman needing to resign, McGovern said that the U.S. in I think 1961 strategically needed Israel as a military power, a strategic "battleship", and then the rest of the article is only about the Israel Lobby being responsible for U.S. policy-making when it comes to Israel and whenever its government and supporters want the U.S. to conduct foreign policies that aren't specifically about Israel. What happened to the "battleship" strategy, has it ceased, was it shelved, or what? Well, the battleship ain't just a battleship any longer; it's been made into the 4th or 5th most powerful military on Earth, while Israel remains a small state with a population of around 7mn. A country? As someone posted recently enough, Israel is never referred to as a country; it's always referred to as a 'state'. And the inference was clear enough, that Israel is yet another state of the U.S.A. and therefore its ruling elites.

They have a project and it's called or referred to as, 'full spectrum dominance', and this project's bases very much include conquest and domination with respect to the Earth's profitable energy resources, while the Middle East remains a key region for these reserves. This project can't be accomplished by the U.S.A. alone; it doesn't possess the miltiary capability to accomplish such a project, alone. Hence NATO [and] the strategic super-battleship called the state of Israel are [needed].

Iow, not only the Israel Lobby is interested in the foreign policies of the USA.

Amb. or former Amb. Charles Freeman evidently is an example of a person with real soul and therefore real [mind]. He's evidently honourable with respect to the U.S. Constitution, international laws, ... the U.S. is co-signatory to, and foreign relations, so foreign policies. If enough people in Congress and the Senate were like him, then the Lobby would be pitifully weak and, I'd hope, many of its members incarcerated for a ... very long time; if not for the rest of their damn lives in this world. Hellbent s.o.b.'s!

I appreciated the following article and will include the link in case any readers of this haven't yet read this, for anyone hasn't, then I think they should.

"Freeman Affair Puts Israel Lobby in Spotlight",
by Daniel Luban and Jim Lobe, IPS, Mar 13 2009

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/03/13-8

There must be a lot of whities in the media and the Republican party(and some democrats) who want to see him fail so they can be sure that a black man can never be president again.

If the democrats werent so lame and corrupt, they could probably fight back against the republicans and the media, but they dont.

And Obama, if he isnt corrupt himself, doesnt want to come across as the angry black man. If he really came down hard on israel, you can bet there would be a sudden chorus of "Obama is friends with muslims."

Some images are hard to fight in the media.
Jon Stewart shows how to do it but he's just one voice and not taken seriously.

Was watching a Dracula movie yesterday and it showed these large fruit bats.
They couldnt show a real vampire bat because they are tiny things.

Carnivores tend to be small, and herbivores large, but from the perception of survival of the fittest myths of Nature, the assumption is that meat is strong, vegetation is weak.

Tell that to the gorilla, bull and elephant.

A matador without a sword and all the sticks protruding from the bull's side would have his ass handed to him in a few seconds.

"Don't worry Israel, I tell you we control America."

PM Ariel Sharon. Control.

The US needs to get every American flag in a pile, have NetanYahoo torch it, then we can haul up the STAR OF DAVID in the Halls of Congress, the White House, in our schools, and our children can start reciting the Israeli Pledge of Allegience from grade school on.

Game, Nazis. Sig Heil.
Losers, Gentiles.
Work Shall Make You Free.
Joe.

Excellent.

Though the Internet is our best hope for escaping MSM right wing propaganda, the conservative money-power is all over sites like CD too. Their paid operatives are here and we all know who they are.

Conservatives bombing this site want to make it seem like progressives are wholly against Obama.

But one thing is sure, people can tell the difference between constructive and destructive criticism. Those wanting Obama to fail stick out like a sore thumb.

If nations had parents, both the Amerikan and Israeli parents would be sitting on their respective couches wringing their hands and lamenting, "Our nation is a GOOD boy at heart! But he started hanging around with that damn [insert "Amerika" or "Israel", mutatis mutandis]-- and it's a BAD INFLUENCE!"

But apart from the maliginant symbiosis of the US/Israel hegemony, there's no reason at all to think that Obama took office intending to right the structural wrongs addressed in this article. His actions are those of a man who, at best, hopes to build a more perfect Establishment.

Put another way-- yes, the Permanent Power Structure is postured to stop Obama. But he's not exactly putting up a struggle. In fact, his actions are similar to that of an undercover law enforcement mole or snitch who the cops pretend to arrest and rough up during the big bust, to protect his street cred.

· Yr Obd't Servant

Meanwhile, the debt keeps climbing.

Meanwhile, the Chinese are openly sweating about the trillion dollars in funny money they bought from us.

Meanwhile, the Breaking Point is bearing down on us like a bullet train.

It claimed only 2 percent of the Budget is PORK.

What of all the Military spending ? What of the billions in Tarp bailout money and transfers to Banking institutions?

A billion dollar Nuclear submarine is a bigger waster of money then 10 million to examine tatoo removal.

160 billion to AIG is NOT pork?

This is the same tactic over and over again. Focus the outrage on these smaller spending programs so as to allow those that are TRULY bankrupting America a freedom from proper scrutiny.

the last real president of the united states got his brains splattered all over dealy plaza on national tv

his crimes: ending vietam, declawing the intelligence community and worse of all neutering the fed

the patsy oswald was then denied due process and was executed before he could recount his long and colorful history as a cia agent - not unlike brother saddaaam - in the basement of a police station once again on national tv

now that's power

Why would anyone expect courage from Obama? He dodged and reversed himself during the campaign, voting for telecom immunity, FISA overhaul, etc.

Sioux Rose

I think that the three forces Schecter identifies find power, a supreme power of sorts, in their common cause(s). Thus we might ask ourselves where the interests of Israel, the military-industrial complex, and the banking establishment that for centuries has profited as states had to borrow in order to make war overlap. And just as Luke was guided to take aim at the singular flaw in the "death star," those with the requisite wit and perception must likewise locate the fatal flaw in the alignments (or perhaps alliances) forged between these three bastions of interest. Only then can they be defeated.

Sure, it would help if the airwaves, owned by "the people" actually aired diverse voices and reflected the interests of its true owners. Will that prove the case? Will Internet undo its influence by drawing the crowd elsewhere to find its sources of news and views? Will enough numbers be moved by the tide of Truth to alter the destructive direction too many policies remain entrenched in?

We are at the point of a collapse brought on most by excessive greed left unchecked, cloaked as "business" or the "invisible guiding hand of the marketplace." (Gee, that sounds like an apt definition for a sky god like Mammon and how his operations would go.) If some higher intelligence from a more evolved world is viewing the dramas now taking place on earth, they would be hard-pressed to find a more viable subject for their own cautionary tale then that of deregulating those with the greatest inclination towards greed. Small wonder that they watch how the pyramid engineered by false values and evaluations is now imploding.

Susan Faludi wrote an important book entitled, "Backlash" that looked at the response by the right wing and its operatives to feminism and the growing power and influence of women. A related, perhaps even more sinister form of backlash ocurred after the l960's & l970's when the "hippie" vision of vegetarianism, leaving a small ecological footprint, loving others (even freely), and pursuing peace rather than war began to impact so many millions. These ideals form a direct threat to those who profit from war, usury, a wonton destruction of ecosystems and the NEED to fully utilize fear to turn person on or against person. Now look what we have... fortunately crisis catalzyes the call that real geniuses and visionaries come out of any caves or closets... for them the bell now tolls.

I predict about 50 zionist bashing comments on this post.
v.purto