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What you should know
about Barack Obama

by Miles Mathis


Webster Tarpley has done a lot of research and presented a strong case against Obama1,2, but his style is too dense for most. He hits too many topics too quickly, assumes too much knowledge from his readers—of fairly difficult and unfamiliar subjects—and refuses to try to simplify things. He will say that world politics and economics and history are not tidy subjects: they require years of study and cannot be vaporized down into easy-digested soundbites. True enough. But a fully functioning democracy must be run from the middle—at least to a much larger extent than it has so far—and for that to happen the argument has to be put in terms that the majority can understand. If you make too many references and mention too many names, most people will simply lock down. This is true even of highly intelligent people. Most highly intelligent people will not know lists of names and facts beyond their areas of expertise. Tarpley’s areas of expertise include history and economics, but the argument must convince even those who know little of either field.

Let me lead by saying that this paper is not being written to convince you to vote for McCain. That is the last thing on my mind. I am writing this to convince you to vote for neither party candidate, since they have both been hand-picked by the powers-that-be—by factions that do not have your interest anywhere in their agendas. You have been groomed to think you have no viable choice outside the two parties, and I am attempting, first of all, to ungroom you.

We have been told that Obama is the candidate of change. Based on what? Based on the fact that Obama puts that slogan on his banners? You can have banners printed that say anything. You yourself could go out tomorrow and have a million banners printed that said you were the lovechild of Michael Jackson and Charles Nelson Riley, but hopefully that doesn’t make it so. Banners and slogans don’t mean anything. Likewise, anyone can give speeches and make claims. After the events of the last 50 years, only the most gullible person would trust a political candidate, from either party. For this reason, we should ignore the sloganeering and the canned speeches and the scripted debates. These speeches and debates are very short on substance and long on airy clichés like “hope” and “change” and “for our children’s futures”, and so forth. We should all be offended by these empty phrases and tugs on our heartstrings. We should be wary of any talk that even approaches the flavor of this political speechifying. We should say, “Enough of that blather already. Anyone can smile and say pretty things and pat babies on their heads. We are past that. We are better than that, frankly. We don’t trust ads and speeches. We don’t trust banners and bumper stickers. We don’t trust the press to ask questions, either, since the press was bought out long ago. We don’t want opinions from editors or academics. We want facts!”

What is more, we want pertinent facts, facts that have not been spun or manufactured. For instance, as one of these primary “facts”, we are told that Obama must be impressive because he graduated from Harvard Law School. But that fact arrives pre-spun. Is Bush impressive because he graduated from Yale? Of course not. I am not claiming that Obama got into Harvard on a quota. I am just pointing out that graduating from Harvard means nothing, in itself. Good people graduate from top schools and bad people graduate from top schools. A diploma is an indication of nothing. Maybe Obama got into and out of Harvard on his own, maybe he didn’t. We have no way of knowing. It doesn’t require a quota system to sully Obama’s diploma. It requires strings being pulled, like they were pulled for Bush. Tarpley proposes that Obama was recruited by Zbigniew Brzezinski* while he was an undergraduate at Columbia3. It is known that the CIA and other intelligence agencies recruit heavily at both Columbia and Harvard, and Brzezinski has taught at both places—he was teaching at Columbia while Obama was there. I am not going to make that argument here. I am just pointing out that unless we know the facts with more detail, a diploma from Harvard could either be good or bad. It could mean Obama is a very smart guy with a lot of initiative. Or it could mean that he is an ambitious little phony with good connections. Given the level of Tarpley’s research, it is difficult to say precisely what Harvard means on Obama’s resume. We have some prima facie indications, of a rather strong nature, but we don’t have any proof. We cannot say for sure that it is a red flag rather than a green flag, but we must be aware that “Harvard”, like "Yale", may be a red flag. Like anywhere else, lots of strange things go on at Harvard and Yale6, and the strange things that go on at Harvard and Yale have greater consequences than most other strange things.

As another primary “fact”, we are told that Obama is impressive because he is a charismatic speaker. But I seem to remember that Hitler was a very charismatic speaker. Obama is often compared to MLK, but MLK is not judged on his charisma, he is judged on the fact that he told the truth in the face of great odds. This is how we should judge a speaker. Not on how he looks in a suit or by how few speaking errors he makes or by how nice his voice sounds, but on the content of his words. I have not noticed that Obama’s words have much content. In fact, he has avoided content like the plague. To curry favor with the broadest range of voters, he, like all other “first-tier” politicians, must avoid content. In modern politics, you only get content in the margins, from marginalized candidates like Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul.

We do not get any real content from speeches or ads, and cannot expect any, so we must go elsewhere. If we cannot get any content from the mainstream media (since the mainstream media has been bought out by the powers-that-be), where can we go? Most people are wary of the alternative media online, and with good reason: it is a mixed bag, difficult to sort through. Someone like Webster Tarpley can sort through it with ease, since he knows enough about the contemporary political world to spot a lie immediately, but most of us can’t do that. You will think this is Catch-22, but it isn’t, since there is a little site online called Thomas**, and Thomas cannot be dismissed by anyone as a conspiracy site or as a nest of cranks. This is because Thomas is the website of Congress. It is a record of all bills and all votes. You don’t have to trust Congress to trust Thomas. You only have to trust that the bills and votes are being reported accurately, and I haven’t heard any evidence they aren’t. Congress may be a nest of villains, but Thomas is one simple way to catch them in their villainy.

The reason Thomas takes us past the Catch-22 in this case is that Obama has been a Senator since 2005. So we can easily fact-check many of his assertions. If he says he is for change, we can go to Thomas and see if any of his votes in the past four sessions have been for change. So let’s do that.

The first thing we notice if we go to Thomas is that Obama began voting in 2005. We are reminded immediately of Obama’s true level of experience. Senators serve for 6 years, but Obama has been a Senator for less than four years. The second thing we notice is that Obama pretty much stopped voting in the summer of 2007. An overview of his voting record shows clearly that he voted for 2.5 years and then began running for President full-time. He didn’t bother to return to the Senate for most votes, even the big important appropriations bills (I will show this in detail below). So Obama’s experience in the Senate consists of 2.5 years of votes. That is astonishing, if you think about it at all. It leads you inexorably to certain questions, the first of which is this one: of all the Senators and Representatives and Governors, why Obama? Why did he think he was qualified to run? Why did he imagine anyone would take him seriously? Even more to the point, why did anyone take him seriously? He had done nothing to distinguish himself as a junior senator from Illinois. He was not a firebrand or a maverick or even an admired speaker. He was not a stand-out in any way. He doesn’t even fill his suit out as well as some, or have hair as memorably coifed as others (the apparent standard of many voters). He did not sponsor any important legislation, not even legislation that failed (as someone like Russ Feingold did). He mainly kept quiet and voted like he was expected to. It all seems rather mysterious, both that he should run, and that he should prevail. Given the small talents he has, and the small experience, we must assume he has some very powerful allies and backers. But why are they backing him? Could it be because he is not a maverick, because he is not a known quantity, and because he does not have any content? I will show that, given the facts, this is a likely scenario. Obama was chosen as Department of Defense candidate #2 precisely because he was so nearly a nothing. The flabbier the balloon, the more you can fill it with any air you like.

To show you exactly how status-quo, how anti-change, Obama was from the start, let us look at the voting record in some detail. In his first year in the Senate, in one of his first major votes, Obama voted for one of the most important bills of 2005, the (HR1268) Supplemental Defense Funds for the War on Terror, which provided funds for the Department of Homeland Security among many other things. Obama also voted for the Bayh amendment to this bill, which added another 213 billion for the procurement of armored vehicles for the army, the Warner Amendment, which added another 288 million for the maintenance of the aircraft carrier USS JFK; and other amendments which added other military pork. Obama claims he wants to end the Iraq War, but from the beginning he voted to fund it in full. As I will show, he never once voted against a military spending bill, or anything related to defense or security.

He voted for the Energy Policy Act of 2005, so if you are not happy with the current energy policy of the United States, do not imagine that Obama will change it. He voted for the Interior and Environment Appropriations that year, so if you are unhappy with the Environmental policy of the United States, do not imagine that Obama will change it. He voted for appropriations for the Department of Homeland Security for 2006 (HR2360), so if you are unhappy with the DHS, do not imagine Obama will change it. He voted for funding of the Justice Department, including all restrictions of that funding, so if you are not happy with the Justice Department (HR2862), do not imagine Obama will change it. He voted for the FDA and Agriculture bill that year, so if you do not like their policies, do not imagine Obama will change them. He voted for the big military appropriations bills of September, October and November of 2005 (HR2528, HR2863 and S1042), so if you are unhappy with the way the military has spent you money, do not imagine Obama will change it. He voted for the Transportation, Treasury and HUD bill of that year (HR3058), so if you are unhappy with the way that treasury and housing have gone lately, do not imagine Obama will change it.

In 2006 he confirmed Robert Gates to be Secretary of Defense; he voted (HR4659) to extend the sunset of the Patriot Act (which means he voted to extend it); he voted to reauthorize the Patriot Act (S2271); he voted to beef up the Patriot Act (HR3199); he voted for the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense and the Global War on Terror; he voted for the Immigration Reform Act (S2611), which basically gives more money and power to the Department of Homeland Security and its secretary Michael Chertoff; he voted for the Defense Authorization Act (S2766), which increased spending for the Iraq War, and the Defense Appropriations Bill, which did the same thing (HR5631); he voted to increase spending for the Department of Homeland Security (HR5441); he voted for the Safe Port Act, which gives more money to the military and the DHS.

About the only good vote of 2006 was Obama’s vote against the Military Commissions Act, which passed anyway by a vote of 65-34. This is the act that nullified habeas corpus and put us all in danger of imprisonment without due process.

In 2007, Obama voted for the first major bill of the session, the ironically titled Honest Leadership and Open Government Act. If you are satisfied by the honesty and openness of your government, then you should definitely vote Obama! That bill worked wonders, didn’t it?

Obama then voted to increase the federal minimum wage. Sounds lovely until you find out that the bill increased it to $7.25, effective this year. That is still at least 50% less than it should be, according to other first-world country wages. Obama claims to be a progressive, interested in change and in fair wages and in lowering the difference between rich and poor, but he gave no speeches on the Senate floor, angry or otherwise, pointing out this fact and demanding that we try to match the fair wages of France or Sweden or Belgium.

He voted for the ADVANCE Democracy Act (S4), an Orwellian title, since it does the opposite. This act ties into the DHS and increases funding for all types of police, military, and covert operations to spy, collect, and share information.

After voting against the joint Congressional Budget in 2005 and 2006, Obama voted for it in 2007, in preparation for his run for the Presidency. Although his record could hardly be called revolutionary in his first two years, he needed to become even more status quo. His votes in the first two years could be seen as a small protest against the “ways and means” of the Congress as it knelt to Bush (a small protest since the Budget passed anyway). But in his third year, Obama became even less interested in change.

He voted for HR1591, which continued funding the Iraq War under the misleading titles “Troop Readiness” and “Iraq Accountability”. American troops are always ready to plunder, with no accountability to anyone.

He voted for the FDA “Revitalization Act”, which confirmed the close partnership between government and big pharma, and their interest in keeping you drugged up and at the mercy of their research, prices, and advertising.

It is at this time that Obama pretty much stopped voting, since he was too busy running for President. [See this partial list of missed votes at the Washington Post]. After less than 2.5 years of voting, Obama found better things to do as an elected representative. He felt that 2.5 years of voting for all military appropriations and Department of Homeland Security Bills and Patriot Acts gave him enough experience to go on TV and make a career out of lying. He DID NOT VOTE on the big Department of Homeland Security bill in 2007, hoping, I suppose, that he could claim to be against it, over his votes for it in 2005 and 2006. He DID NOT VOTE on the Supplemental Appropriations Bill (HR2642), which passed nonetheless and included military appropriations. He DID NOT VOTE on the misnamed Border Act (HR2764), which funded most major governmental agencies, including FDA, Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, and Justice.

He DID NOT VOTE on the Defense Authorization Act for 2008, probably the most important vote of the year. Although it passed by a vote of 92-3, and Obama could not have stopped it, it is beyond cowardly that he should not show up to vote. Biden, Clinton, McCain, and Dodd also DID NOT VOTE. The only NAY votes were Byrd, Feingold, and Coburn.

Obama DID NOT VOTE on HR4093, the appropriations bill for Justice, Commerce, Science, and NASA. He DID NOT VOTE on the Food, Conservation, and Energy bill (HR2419). He DID NOT VOTE on the FDA and Agriculture Appropriations bill.

He DID NOT VOTE on the Feingold Amendment to bring the troops home from Iraq.

In 2008, he did vote for the Feinstein Amendment to provide for review of the FISA court, but it was rejected anyway. [It was Clinton who was NOT VOTING on this important one.] But both Clinton and Obama were NOT VOTING for the FISA bill itself, which passed. They could not have stopped it from passing, but they should have been on record against it.

Obama was also NOT VOTING on the Defense Appropriations Bill for 2009 (S3001), NOT VOTING to override Bush’s veto of Medicare Improvements (HR6331), NOT VOTING on the confirmation of Petraeus and Odierno as Generals, NOT VOTING to override the veto of the Food, Conservation and Energy Act (HR493), NOT VOTING on the Genetic non-discrimination Act for Health Insurance, NOT VOTING on the SAFETEA-LU update (HR1195), NOT VOTING on (S2739) the Natural Resources Act, NOT VOTING on (HR3221) Housing and Economic Recovery Act, NOT VOTING on the Consumer Product Safety Act (HR4040), NOT VOTING on the Indian Health Care Improvement Act (S1200), NOT VOTING on the Economic Stimulus Act (HR5140), and most important of all, NOT VOTING on the National Defense Authorization Act for 2008. That is two major defense appropriations votes he failed to show up for in one year.

About the only thing he bothered to show up to vote for was the (S.Con.Res70) joint congressional budget for 2009, which, as usual, was full of pork.

In conclusion, Obama was not for change in any way shape or form. His voting record never even leaned left of center. If anything it leaned very much to the right, since he voted for the military every single time. His voting record is much like that of McCain, in fact. The most astonishing thing about Obama’s voting record, as you see, is his record of NOT VOTING over the past two years. Obama has almost NO RECORD since 2007. He has been running for President based on a lot of unverifiable claims. He cannot be pinned down, and this is just how he wants it. Since the summer of 2007, he has done almost nothing substantial. Giving speeches is not a substantial thing, since, as I said, anyone can stand up and string together a lot of pretty words. Hitler did that, and we do not give him a lot of credit for it. What we want from leaders is action, and Obama has never been a man of action. In the last two years, he has avoided all action by refusing to vote in the Senate. He has been a man of airy words.

Since 2005, we have been paying Obama a salary as a Senator. That salary is about $170,000. To earn that money, Obama is required to do one thing: vote. That is the only substantive action that Senators make. Speeches are great and grand, but if they don’t lead to a vote they are meaningless. Over the past two years, Obama has basically drawn a $170,000 salary for nothing. If he has not voted, he has not done the job he was hired to do. Normally you don’t give a promotion to someone who has failed to do the job they were initially hired to do. If you pay a yard boy $40 to mow your lawns and he takes your money but fails to mow your lawns, you don’t then hire him to roof your house. It doesn’t matter how many pretty speeches he makes on your front porch, or how good he looks in his sneakers and overalls. If he doesn’t do any work, you tell him to hit the bricks.


In that first section I covered the clearest and easiest and most important evidence against Obama: his voting record. In this section I will cover the next easiest evidence to confirm against Obama: his associates. This evidence is not quite as clearly drawn as Obama’s voting record, but it is much clearer than all the fuzzy mudslinging about his religious beliefs or his heritage or his upbringing. Some of these personal facts may be pertinent in some possible argument, but to me it is best to avoid them. In my opinion, 99% of these personal facts are just brought up to create a diversion. Nobody wants to talk about voting records or real political associations, so they talk about smoking pot or seeing hookers or betting on hamsters or something. Instead, we will take a closer look at Obama’s associates. Since we don’t have a lot of action to go on with Obama, it is very fair that we should look at what his advisors have done in the past.

I will not gloss Tarpley’s comments, although his research in this area is extensive and very damning3; I will try to add some new ones of my own, from my own research. Obama’s premier foreign policy advisor is Zbigniew Brzezinski, a known hawk from the days of Eisenhower and Kennedy. Even Wikipedia, which attempts to whitewash Obama’s relationship with Brzezinski, admits that Brzezinski is considered to be the Democrat’s equivalent of Kissinger—not high praise for anyone desiring fewer bombs in the world. Tarpley believes that Brzezinski (born in Poland) still wants to foment a war with Russia, and recent events in Georgia tend to bear that out; but we need not even theorize that far. Brzezinski’s past is known and it is not difficult to judge. He has admitted to drawing Russia into the war in Afghanistan in the early 80’s, by funding and arming the mujaheddin. In other words, Brzezinski first factionalized and then destroyed a stable Muslim country, simply as a way to weaken Russia. Tarpley says that Brzezinski has 4 or 5 million dead on his hands3, and while I cannot confirm or deny those numbers, it is clear that Brzezinski’s policies, like those of Kissinger, have been policies of worldwide ruination and death.

Another advisor of Obama—this one confirmed by the Council on Foreign Relations website—is Richard Danzig. [I will make these advisors look very bad simply by quoting this CFR website, but understand that the CFR had no intention of allowing such a reading. One of these advisors, Madeleine Albright, is on the CFR Board of Directors, so it is not likely she is intentionally leading with her worst quotes on the site.] Danzig and Obama both like Robert Gates. Danzig: “My personal position is Gates is a very good secretary of defense and would be an even better one in an Obama administration."5 Remember that Obama voted to confirm Gates. This is very clear proof that Obama is not an agent of change. He may not even change the current secretary of defense! This is the Gates who was in the CIA for 26 years, including the director of Central Intelligence under Bush 1. He was deputy director in 1986 and was nominated as director by Reagan in 1987. The nomination was withdrawn due to Gates’ involvement in Iran-Contra. Gates miraculously ducked prosecution by the independent counsel, but his testimony was contradictory and it is surprising he wasn’t at least indicted for perjury. America has a ludicrously short memory, and a scant two years later Gates became CIA director under Bush 1. In this position Gates would be one of the primary architects of both Iraq Wars (the current war simply completes the laundry list of the first war). Since he became Secretary of Defense in 2006, Gates has given no indication that he is against the Iraq War in any way, as would be expected. Given that, it is unclear why Obama would vote to confirm him, or why Obama would consider keeping him on as Secretary of Defense.

But back to Danzig. This is a quote straight from the CFR website: “In his role as bioweapons consultant to the Pentagon, Danzig has warned against several possible scenarios involving terrorist use of biological warfare. In 2004, Danzig said it was becoming increasingly likely that a terrorist group could create biological weapons. ‘It seems likely that, over a period between a few months and a few years, broadly skilled individuals equipped with modest laboratory equipment can develop biological weapons,’ Danzig told the Washington Post. ‘Only a thin wall of terrorist ignorance and inexperience now protects us.’”4

Like experts on both sides of the political fence, Danzig is now mainly used as a source of irrational fear, via unprovable and unlikely assertions. The Democrats have discovered the usefulness of the Republican “terrorist threat” and are playing it up for all it is worth. Nothing keeps the defense budget fat like saying “terrorist” all the time. As a consultant to the Pentagon, we would expect Danzig to be good for business, and his patter here is perfect. He learned his job well as Secretary of the Navy under Clinton, although he didn’t perfect his story until after 911—that propeller of all fake stories.

As I showed above, Obama is also not above leading with the fake terrorist threat in his ads and speeches. So you should ask Obama and Danzig for some white paper or other proof of this threat. I have been studying the various worldwide “terrorist” acts over the past decade, and have yet to see any credible evidence they were perpetrated by Islamofascists or by any other foreigners. In fact, all the most credible evidence points at the CIA and other domestic entities. Congress knows this, since they have been presented with this evidence, but they aren’t doing anything about it. If you want real change, you will have to face this evidence and vote for someone capable of facing it. A junior senator who thinks Robert Gates is doing a good job and who is advised by a bioweapons consultant to the Pentagon is not this someone. No matter what you think of terrorists, that much should be clear.

Another advisor of Obama is Anthony Lake, who was a national security advisor to Clinton. The CFR website4 tells us this: “In a January 2007 Boston Globe op-ed, Lake wrote that the civilian leaders of the war effort have failed to understand that ‘you cannot fix another country's politics and resolve its internal fractures primarily through military means.’” This quote is total misdirection. It sounds logical on a first reading, since it appears to be critical of Bush’s policies and appears to be anti-war. But on a closer look, it makes no sense. What Lake should have said is, “you cannot fix another country’s politics when you invade that country with the intention of factionalizing it.” Or, even more directly, “you cannot fix internal fractures by going into a country and creating internal fractures.” Or, perhaps even more directly, “you cannot fix a country you intend to break. When you go into a country meaning to steal everything you can from it, it is very difficult to paint yourselves as humanitarians. When you kill millions of people, it is even more difficult.” These Democratic advisors, whether from the Clinton administration or not, claim to be against the Iraq War in some fashion, but it is very difficult to tell how they are against it. They will not put anything in the terms into which it begs to be put. What they appear to mean, after all is said and done, is that we need to find a way to spend huge military budgets stealing the natural assets of other countries without looking like such bad guys. We need to rape and pillage the third world with more finesse and humanitarian posturing, hopefully while lowering our carbon footprint. What we really need to do is invade these countries while wearing Chinese military uniforms, so that we can blame it on them.

Another advisor, Susan Rice, says almost the same thing as Lake. “Rice has been a critic of the war in Iraq and she said in September 2007 that the troop surge is not achieving ‘its intended and stated objective of giving the Iraqi political factions the space that is necessary to resolve their political differences.’”4 The obvious problem here is that Rice assumes that is the intended goal, when any sane person would assume the opposite. Neither the war nor the surge were intended to give the Iraqis anything, space or otherwise. You do not invade a country and later increase troop levels in order to help locals resolve their differences. The major problem in Iraq is not local political factions, it is that the country is occupied by a superpower with little or no scruples, a superpower in which a party that supposedly opposes the war can claim to believe that we are there to resolve problems or spread democracy.

As confirmation of this, look at another top advisor of Obama, Madeleine Albright. You will remember that Albright was Secretary of State under Clinton. At CFR4, it says, “However, she noted she ‘personally felt the war was justified’ because of Iraq's decade-long refusal to comply with UN resolutions on weapons of mass destruction. Overall, she believes the United States has lost its moral authority (Reuters) under the Bush administration and the challenge of the next president is in part to ‘restore the goodness of American power.’” Read that very carefully, my friend! According to CFR and Madeleine Albright, Iraq deserved to be invaded because it failed to comply with UN resolutions on weapons of mass destruction, weapons that it did not have! This CFR website apparently has not yet heard that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and that the whole thing was made up from thin air by Bush and the neocons, with the connivance of the Pentagon, no doubt. What is more, according to Albright, the problem is not that we murdered millions of innocent people based on a lie, or that we still won’t admit to the lie, the problem is that we have lost our moral authority. We don’t need to stop lying and murdering innocent people, we just need to find a way to restore the goodness of American power while lying and murdering. One supposes she thinks we might be able to do that by becoming better liars and murderers. CFR is testing that hypothesis by continuing to spread the lie of weapons of mass destruction. It is trying out the trick of saying that Iraq had such weapons, but burying it in a sentence that includes the words “moral authority” and “goodness”. I suggest they graduate to an even more clever trick. How about this sentence: “I love to eat cookies weapons in bed with slanky mass destruction blonde models while getting a foot massage Iraq.” The Kevin Nealon school of foreign affairs.

So this is who Obama is and who he has surrounded himself with. In my opinion, his Congressional record and the record of action of those around him are the two most important facts available to us. They cannot be spun: they are what they are. The information is available to anyone who can do a websearch or who knows where the library is. As a voter, you should know these things. As an Obama voter, you are required to know these things.


We have seen the very limited actions of Obama, via his voting record; and the very extensive actions of his advisors. But even Obama’s words are not what they should be. He talks about change, but his words sound like Republican words to my ears. The similarity is obvious; there is nothing subtle about it. His speeches and debates and TV ads are heavy with warnings about terrorists and Al Qaeda: typical Republican fear-mongering, that is to say, to get you to agree to buy more bombs and fighter jets and to put up with more indignities at the airport and to allow the military to police your towns. This despite the fact that the government has never provided any proof that these terrorists exist at all. Remember how Colin Powell was supposed to provide a white paper about this and that, about why we think Osama bin Laden is the ultimate bad guy, and his links to 911, and the 911 links to Iraq, and so on and so forth? Well, we never got any white papers or any other evidence on any of that; and, guess what, Obama and the Democrats never demanded it. Bush and Powell and Rumsfeld and Cheney and the Pentagon brass made certain claims to Congress and to the American people, most of which turned out to be false, but Obama and Congress have not asked for clarification on the rest. That is to say, not only have they not prosecuted these scoundrels for lying to Congress and the American people, they have continued to believe the liars and all their new lies, without any evidence. Obama has chosen to assume that we are threatened by these terrorists, and to use this to continue to frighten you, but neither he nor you have been shown any evidence. He does not seem concerned about this. Why are you not concerned about this? Why are you not concerned about his lack of concern?

Why do you trust Obama? He has given you lots of reasons to distrust him and very few reasons to trust him, and yet you blithely go on as before. Because he looks like a nice guy, you don’t even bother to fact-check him. You don’t even do the most basic research, like going to Thomas and looking at his votes. How hard is that? If finding out the truth were really so dangerous and difficult, I could understand your inability to face it. But this is the work of one evening. I researched this paper in a matter of hours. This is not wading snowy rivers with George Washington or rotting in jail with Nelson Mandela; this is taking a link and looking at some figures on a page. This is not braving the opinion and invective at infowars.com or 911-Truth; this is browsing senate.gov, with a flag waving over your head and a guarantee of patriotism.

You should not ask how our leaders can be so corrupt, you should ask how you can be so negligent. How can you look at a long line of corruption, and yet trust the next person in that line? How can you know, like you must know, that all first-tier politicians are liars and crooks, and yet refuse to look closely at “your” candidate. Such levels of refusal can only be called pathological.

You will say, “I can’t look closely at Obama, because if I find out you are right, where does that leave me? I already feel very powerless. If you take Obama away from me, I will be without hope of any action.” Not true. With Obama, your power was in your vote. Without Obama, your power is still in your vote, and that power has not diminished one jot. The powers-that-be have convinced you that a third-party vote is a throw-away vote, but that is just propaganda. All votes are equally powerful. A third-party vote has never been a throw-away vote, and as things now stand, a third-party vote is more powerful than ever.

But it is a throw-away vote to vote for either party candidate, since these candidates have been chosen for you. A vote is supposed to be a choice, but your choice has been stolen from you. Both candidates have the seal of approval of the Department of the Defense and the National Security Agency and the CIA and the Council on Foreign Relations and all the other power centers. The novelty of this election is that it doesn’t need to be stolen: both candidates were stolen long before the election. That has been true for a long time, but it is so true now it is not even a secret. If you don’t know it, it is because you aren’t looking very closely. Both candidates are so far from any possible idea of change that it should be a national joke. It takes a mile-high level of presumption and insolence to talk about change while singing the same old song.

The only possibility of change is in the possibility that you may not choose to vote for those they have offered you. If you really value change and desire change, then you cannot vote for the establishment candidates. That should be clear by now. It has certainly never been clearer. It may have been hazy in the past, when the differences were somewhat greater between candidates, but now it could not be more transparent. Never have the two parties had such similar platforms. McCain and Obama couldn’t even find anything to disagree about in the last debate. It was as if they had lost all desire to even manufacture debate. You had two showmen tired of the show, two magicians tired of the act. This is understandable, since they know the debate is a sham. They aren’t speaking to the voters, since the voters have been successfully marginalized. And they aren’t speaking to their handlers anymore either, since the choices have already been made. They were trying to impress the backstage wizards early in this series of shows, but all that is over now. These two have been chosen, and there is really nothing left to debate. At this point, all they need to do is coast. The votes will be delivered on schedule.

Some will say that the difference in abortion positions isn’t manufactured, and that may be true; but the potential difference in outcome is still near zero, and that is because everyone in national government knows that abortion cannot be outlawed in the US, given the current social climate. It would be like bringing back prohibition. If eight years of Bush-Cheney did not lead to an abortion ban, do you really think a McCain presidency would achieve it? Roe v. Wade isn’t a priority for anyone in the Republican party, not even the neo-cons. It is a priority only for a few one-issue feminists who can’t see beyond their own noses. The Republicans bow to the issue occasionally just to make sure of their red states, just as they mention Jesus and family values, but they don’t care a rat’s behind for any of that. Mainly they want to be sure of their military appropriations and their banking monopolies and their other unregulated businesses. Fortunately, this is what the Democrats want, too. The Dems bow to “pro-choice” to make sure of their constituencies, but they know it is really a non-issue. That is why McCain and Obama can’t even manage any heat on the issue anymore. It is a behind-the-scenes joke that abortion continues to make the papers, and now that it is no longer necessary to use it as a manufactured issue to deflect other more central issues, it is dropped. Early on in the primaries, they needed it to throw at Ron Paul, for instance, to keep him from talking about the Federal Reserve. But now that Paul and Kucinich and the dangerous ones are gone, McCain and Obama can sit there at the debate like they are at breakfast at Dennys. The moderator should have let them smoke and drink coffee and nibble at a shortstack.

I would argue that—given the current state of the world—voting for one of the establishment candidates is not just throwing your vote away: it is one of the most pathetic actions in the history of civilization. It is bad enough to be forced into servitude, as billions of people have been in history and as millions still are all over the world; but it is even worse, I would say, to cheerfully vote for the crypto-fascists who run your world, putting bumper stickers on your car for them and passing out fliers for them and putting signs in your yard for them. It is like the Plebeians cheering for Caligula in the Roman Coliseum, as he pretended to wrestle with a drugged lion or fought with a gladiator whose hamstrings had been cut. But it is a propaganda coup beyond even that one, since the Pleb had no source of information. You have the information at your very fingertips, but prefer to look away. You have Constitutional remedies that would take a week to enforce, with no great effort on your part, and yet you will not stir. You will waste time petitioning your representatives to do things you know they will not do, but you will not join your neighbor and do the even simpler thing: vote for someone else! To vote against both establishment candidates, and therefore against the establishment, is fantastically easy, but you prefer to continue to heed the advice of the establishment, even on how to resist it. Is this not a sort of madness?

What will it take before you understand that both parties have been bought? How could the evidence be greater, or clearer? Bush/Cheney have performed an impeachable offense every month on the month for 8 years, in full daylight, thumbing their noses at you, the press, and your representatives; but your representatives have kept impeachment “off the table.” Pelosi, Obama, Biden, Clinton—all have conspired with the Republicans to lie to you and steal what is left of your country out from under you. They have stood on the steps of the Capitol and sung God Bless America while the bombs dropped on innocent heads all over the world, using your tax dollars to do it. The Democrats have stood by mainly silent while the Constitution was torn to bits, article by article. The bankers and other Wall Street conmen have looted the treasury to the tune of 10 trillion dollars; the Pentagon has looted it also, in a similar amount, while not even bothering to keep up the accounting8. Cameras have been installed on every street corner and all the phones have been tapped; people are being tasered to death daily, often simply for asking questions; “free speech zones” are now a common sight outside many events, these zones being ominously surrounded by chainlink fences (when just a few years ago, the entire US was a free speech zone); and the military is now used to search your car without a warrant or probable cause at the airport, at sobriety checkpoints, and in many other manufactured spots. Obama and the Democrats have not campaigned or spoken out against any of this. It has not been a topic of debate. Obama voted for Department of Homeland Security funding at every opportunity, although the DHS is Nazism pure and simple. Your government didn’t even bother to come up with a de-Nazified name. They just assumed you knew nothing of history and wouldn’t realize that Hitler also had a Department of Homeland Security.7 One supposes they will have no problem creating a new department in the near future and calling it the Gestapo. Amerika uber alles!

A vote for Obama will not change any of this. It will only give the powers-that-be more confidence. They will think, “We can do all that we have done for the past 8 years, and the people will still vote for the candidates we choose for them. And we did all this while the evidence against was in plain sight, on a thousand internet sites and a thousand books. Some of these books were best sellers, and it did not matter. We don’t need to control the internet or have book burnings, much less do away with intellectuals like Tarpley and Chomsky. As long as the majority of people do not want to know the truth, and will not act even in small ways when they discover it, we can do whatever we like.”

Yes, the boundaries will actually spread after the next election. Your vote for one of the two establishment candidates—it matters little which one—will be a guarantee of an expansion of fascism. When the slide inevitably continues, you will not be able to say, “At least I voted Democrat.” No, you will get to take credit for the current situation, as the Republican voters do now. It has not discouraged them too much, has it? No doubt you will handle it as well as they have.

I have not been easy on my reader in this paper. I have gone directly at you. But I don’t apologize for it. You have been too easy on yourself. You have looked away too many times. Now is the time for action, while it is still relatively easy. You could still turn things around with just a vote, if you voted in a beeline away from the establishment. A big third party vote in this cycle could have sent a strong message. A huge third party vote could have saved us, by itself. But it looks like that is not going to happen. I see no sign of it. I almost passed on writing this paper, it seemed such a waste of breath. But maybe there is something here that will be just the right flavor for the moment. Maybe some spark lives here. How do I know? Perhaps the door will still be open in two years or four years.

As for myself, I am not waiting. I intend to vote for Cynthia McKinney, Green Party. I have voted for Ralph Nader since 1996, and I don’t regret a single vote. The Democrats' trashing of Nader only confirmed my opinion of them and of him, and I have never once looked back. But Ms. McKinney has spoken out more strongly on the issues I hold most dear. She has shown her fortitude by attacking Donald Rumsfeld on the House floor. And she is the best 911 Truth candidate. All those who have patted themselves on the back for voting for a woman or a black should have more reason to congratulate themselves if they voted for Ms. McKinney, who is both. I have no stake in her femaleness or her race: she is simply the most impressive candidate. She has 1000 times the substance of Obama and 1000 times the honor of Hillary Clinton.

If you have any real desire for change, you must vote third party.

Note: this article was also published by Opednews.com on October 13, 2008.

1http://www.amazon.com/Obama-Postmodern-Webster-Griffin-Tarpley/dp/0930852893/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1223793560&sr=1-1

2http://www.amazon.com/Barack-H-Obama-Unauthorized-Biography/dp/0930852915/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1223869298&sr=1-2

3http://www.deepjournal.nl/p/7/a/en/1497.html

4http://www.cfr.org/publication/16188/

5Associated Press. Robert Burns. October 2, 2008. http://www.bostonherald.com/news/2008/view/2008_10_02_Obama_adviser_suggests_Robert_Gates_as_possible_holdover/

6http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4ZjTotA1VA

7The Reichssicherheitshauptamt, usually translated as the Office of Fatherland Security, but just as easily translated as the Office of Homeland Security. Hitler was fond of both words, and the "Reich" was both fatherland and homeland.

8www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/29/eveningnews/main325985.shtml

*Brzezinski was National Security Advisor to Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981.

**Thomas.loc.gov. Or you can go to senate.gov. The direct link to the vote page is http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/legislative/a_three_sections_with_teasers/votes.htm


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