Acceptable?

one of the architects of financial deregulation that allowed leveraging 35:1 expanded derivatives trading off the books that brought us, in Paul Volcker's words, "The Mother of All Financial Crises"  Paul Volcker is not known to be frivolous.

Put the foxes in with the chickens.

Corptocracy is what Obama is expanding. He will duplicate Bush's disaster.

In these times his focus should be signalling his choice for Secretary of the Treasury and fresh faces, new thinking. We worked hard to have him hand it all back to the Clintons...looks like it's a done deal. And don't dismiss for a moment the thought that the Clintons won't usurp. "we did it this way while sucking all the oxygen.  We'll be asking, "Obama, who?"

This is not an environment in which the Lincoln idea --"team of rivals" will play well.  It's plain dumb.

A horror movie that never ends. It's been 21 months of the great fraud

Well, "You can't vote for war and disown the results"

Clinton as Sec of State sounds like exactly the type of choice he'd make.  According to the Newsweek article he would have had her as a VP selection if the whole "former President hanging around the White House" thing wasn't a really, really bad idea.  It's not like Obama's mindset about foreign policy is all that different from Clinton's either - Obama is not anti-war in principle.  He was only against the Iraq War because it was an obviously stupid idea.  If his words are to be believed (and so far I haven't seen evidence to the contrary) he sees war as a last resort, but that just puts him in line with standard American foreign policy.  "War as a last resort" means "we go to war if diplomacy doesn't get them to give us what we want."  (Bush's extremism was to say "war is our first resort" - the global politics equivalent of "shoot first, loot the bodies, and if you have time, ask some questions".)

Obama never was a Kucinich.  He wasn't even Carter.  He never made any promises to "drain the cesspool of Washington" or "rattle cages" or any of that.  His promises of change were along the lines of "we need competent people to run our Empire" not "we need to end our Imperial ambitions".  For those of us opposed to American expansionism and hegemony, Obama was always the lesser of two evils choice.  (But, I hasten to add, an important distinction.  Because at least Obama wants to put us back on something resembling a global multilateral approach, which at least requires some kind of buy in from the other hegemonic powers before you start mucking with other people's countries.  Not a perfect solution, but so much better than the unilateral approach of Bush/McCain that it's tough to really grasp how much better it really is.)

This is totally unsurprising, btw, not because there are oligarchs who control the levers of power (though that does occur to one degree or another in any democracy), but because the people of the USA LIKE THEIR EMPIRE JUST THE WAY IT IS THANK YOU VERY MUCH.  Those of us who would like to get the fuck out of everyone else's business might not like to believe it, but our fellow Americans LOVE the benefits of having our fingers in the business of every country in the world.  The cheap imports - especially oil.  The false sense of security that comes from being the "most powerful nation on the planet" (which is why the American psyche went crazy on 9/11).  All of it.  

If you ask them point blank whether we should be meddling in other countries or not they tend to say no.  But if you ask them if they enjoy the benefits of being the hegemonic power that we are they tend to say yes.  So there's the tightrope that any principled politician who wants to end the hegemony has to walk - how do you pull us back without losing the benefits that the voters like?  The answer is that you don't - which is a good chunk of the reason that Kucinich is treated like an idiot instead of a real candidate.  It's not just that the press doesn't take him seriously - he could get past that.  It's that his message runs counter to what most people in this country want.

This Guardian scoop may come with Clinton ped. Sid Blumenthal. He's still connected.

Well, "You can't vote for war and disown the results"

Good work.

It's not Hillary to whom I object. It's Bill.

Oh.

Bullshit.

The leftiness soap opera continues.

AG

P.S. Stop reading the goddamned newspapers. You couldn't smell a fix if it showed all up and hot and juicy on your breakfast plate.

Do you really think that Bill's ongoing hustle is going to get in the way?

Please.

THAT'S ONE MAJOR REASON THAT SHE "WOULDN'T BE A BAD" SECRETARY OF STATE!!! (Nice double maybe there, Booman. You cover your ass like a politician.)

She's connected 27 ways to Sunday.

Please.

Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.-Mae West