Waiting for Barack Obama

I'm amazed you're not furious at Obama for all his flip-flopping (Iraq, FISA, public financing, ...), as well as his apparent complicity (if only through silence) in the neocon-AIPAC rush to war with Iran. My current thinking is that the two major parties are so corrupt that responsible Americans must vote for a third party, whether progressive or libertarian, if only to send a warning to the establishment that a revolution is brewing (I hope)!

I'm waiting to see what he does, as opposed to what he says. But you're right, Benjamin, to be concerned.

I really like your site's eclecticism, and I hear a lot of viewpoints I might not agree with but find worth considering.

But in this interview, at least, can't you hear how very over-the-top the fawning over Obama is?

Please regain some objectivity regarding a candidate who has, after all, supported war crimes, mass slaughter and the wholesale trashing of the rule of law – and who promises more of the same if elected.

If you think that, for example, Ralph Nader is much better, you might be interested in reading what this guy says...

Well, on reading your podcast comments George, I went and listened to Obama's speech in Berlin. Had the first ten minutes been in transcript, I would have thought it was Bush delivering it. The "history lesson" as CNN called it afterward was albeit drawing to a point, but had a real air of pretentiousness and was filled with all the classic Bush-like terms of terror, shadow, and progress that I don't think do him any favors. Imagine, telling the Germans how to perceive their own history, and wrapping it in this American black and white perspective. It is hard to preach such things and remain respectful, and his narrative had no room for personal opinion or experience in it. Still, once he got past the idea of talking about this "united world," an idea that should make any non-American nervous coming from a presidential candidate, he did mention some good points, and I was very happy especially for him to bring up nuclear proliferation. Even more so, while lacking any concrete ideas, his portion dedicated to the environment was at least heartening. At the end of the day though, his speech was very predictable, lame even. Nothing new, just another candidate using a foreign stage to talk back the his own people, praising his country of everything but perfection when what I think it needs is some real tough love. I guess no one would vote for a realist, but I have such high hopes of the guy. Can't wait to hear the podcast though, and your thoughts.

Actually, I have read that, as I have read most of the valid as well as invalid criticisms of Nader.

Even without hearing Nader's presumably differing version of those events in your referral, are you seriously suggesting that those accusations rise to the levels of crimes against humanity endorsed and promoted by McCain and Obama (do I need to itemize the carnage)?

I have heard: Nader is an egotist, a bad office manager, has a non-mainstream lifestyle, is too detail oriented, is too controlling, too serious, and on and on and on. These and more have been seriously proposed to me as reasons not to support Nader by persons who support candidates of war, empire, slaughter, torture, the end of rule by law, national and global submission of human needs to the 'needs' of the wealthy, etc.

Nader has lent himself to the public, as he tried to do for the Green Party, as front man for those who want none-of-the-above. To his great credit, he has risked all his well-earned reputation to reinvigorate the public debate.

If the voting public (who would never consider dropping bombs on their own neighborhoods to rip entire families to shredded body parts) wants to continue the pretense that support of charismatic war criminals is the way to 'change,' then Obama is their man.

Hey, comments were hotter than ever today! Let's keep it up.

George, it's fair enough for you to say 'let's see what Obama does'. However, I have joined the increasing chorus of dissenters who feel that the Corporate Duopoly will never change unless we start voting for third parties in significant numbers, if only to shake things up. Clearly, the left is taken for granted by the Dems, so we are impotent.

But thanks for your negative data on Nader. I only shook off my liberal-Democratic torpor recently, so I don't really know Nader that well yet. I say, vote for any third party, progressive, libertarian, but non-Nazi!