Instead of giving advice "They should be getting subpoenas"...!!!

So Rubin and Summers are cozied up, tight lipped, protected and rewarded.
This is the change they have been waiting for?
Ha!
Needless to say they are delighted at Huff-Po.
Wonder where Colin Powell will be shut up, cozy and safe, too.

Glen Greenwald:

So many progressives were misled about what Obama is and what he believes. But it wasn't Obama who misled them. It was their own desires, their eagerness to see what they wanted to see rather than what reality offered.

A misleading Media -- who would have thought.

Chomsky is being Chomsky. However the interesting part is Dean Baker the economist he sites. Bakers introduction to his book announces Robert Rubin is a conservative and uses him as an example of the Conservative agenda, ie the rich get richer via government policy. It would be helpful if these guys actually new what they where talking about. Although Rubin Chairs Citi bank he was Clinton's economic advisor this guy is a progressive he's on the lefts side not the Right.

I suspect that if you strip out the political rhetoric and posturing he probably has some good ideas, however not having read into it a great deal I could be grievously mistaken.

Silly me, I was worried that Obama would institute the changes the left was clamoring for. Now I see he just wanted to replace the one behind the wheel of the same ol' powerful machine. Just another politician? I'm not sure I'm relieved but I guess it could be worse.

Just goes to prove as a rather famous president (democrat) once said: You can't please all of the people all of the time. Or in this case, any of the people any of the time.

It would worry me if Noam baby was all happy and excited about the new guy. That would be... bad. And I mean bad in the full Ghost Busters definition of the word.

As it is Noamy is all mad, therefore Obama may only be a disaster of Clintonian proportions. We can live through that.

I hope no one misinterprets those mushroom-shaped clouds forming over the US northeastern and western coastal areas, along with certain large metro areas within the MidWest. Those are just intense clusters of far-left liberal heads exploding in unison.

"But, but you promised...!" BOOM!!!

"But, but you said...!" BOOM!!!

"But, but I voted for you because...!" BOOM!!!

"But, but hope and change were...!" BOOM!!!

"Cleanup in asle 4 of DKOS."

"Cleanup in asle 2 of HuffPost."

"But, but all that record money we donated to...!" KABOOM!!!!!!

It wasn't until after the election when Obama began appointing retread Clintonistas that it occurred to me that I should have seen this coming - because there were no other experienced Democrats for him to appoint. I suspect that I too bought into the total Hope and Change thing - if from the other side of dreading the kind of choices his grassroot supporters expected, and like them, thinking those choices were inevitable.

I still expect that some of the things the Obama Administration will do to be, at best, counter-productive. This is an improvement over expecting that everything they touch to be an utter disaster.

The only ‘change' that will happen on Jan. 21 will be a more articulate public relations director of the US.

Change, as many here have already articulated, is a weasel word that can mean whatever the listener would like it to mean.

The angry left has never been part of what Obama's promise.

They only heard what they wanted to hear.

What I heard, straight from Obama's mouth, was that individual American citizens had to take more responsibility for their actions. That's what he meant when he said his campaign ‘transcended race.'

In other words, his regime would spell the end of the victimization culture and all the negative things that went along with it. Notice how, during the campaign, professional race baiters like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton were quickly marginalized?

Chomsky is correct on one point though. The current financial crisis was caused by the people who will now be in charge.

This is going to be a fun two years watching the loony left's anger and hatred directed at the US president, who promised them nothing like what they imagined.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

What the.... I was assured President Elect Obama was a raving socialist, surrender monkey with black militant sympathies, harbouring a mancrush on William Ayres. I'm gonna need to check my sources.

When you consider the alternative was Bush redux, I think I can manage my disappointment. The right- wing however, must be about as twitchy as Uncle Karl in a room full of boy scouts.

Obama always was going to govern from the middle. He wants to be a success and will be the President of all USians.

Try as I might, I can not find one thing special about Noam Chomsky.

He does not really bring new ideas or new ways to look at things.
He is not witty, nor is he a good orator.

He just complains in a very boring unimaginative way about the USA and Israel.
And he goes on and on like a drone.

Every time I read or listen to something by Noam Chomsky I find it very - VERY - ordinary, and very boring.

I know the left named Chomsky "the intellectual of the century " ( or something like that) but I seriously doubt Chomsky's IQ is higher than Sarah Palin's IQ.

I am not saying this to shock or not even to be funny, but because that is really what I think and feel when I watch/read Chomsky;
he is an ordinary guy with an ordinary IQ.

Can anyone tell me what is so special about Chomsky???

I do not see it.

To me Chomsky is stale white bread in a world of culinary wonders.

Change !?

[ President-elect Barack Obama, naming former Fed chairman Paul Volcker to head a special advisory panel on the financial crisis, promised new approaches to deal with the economic maelstrom.] Globeinvestor

[ Four years into the seven-year Oil-for-Food program, with graft and mismanagement by then rampant, Frechette intervened directly by telephone to stop United Nations auditors from forwarding their investigations to the U.N. Security Council. This detail was buried on page 186 of the 219-page interim report Volcker's Independent Inquiry Committee released Feb. 3.

This decision from within Annan's office left only the Secretariat privy to the specifics of the waste, bungling and contractual breaches detailed by U.N. internal auditors in dozens of damning reports. The extent of what Annan�s office knew was not available either to the Security Council or the public until Congress finally forced the issue and the United Nations produced the reports in conjunction with a Volcker "briefing paper" in January.

For reasons unexplained, Volcker's report did not mention Frechette by name.] sda

http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/001480.html

Obama Names Bill Clinton to Presidential Post

Obama's very first appointment, Rahm Emanuel, sent a strong message that nothing except cosmetic changes are to be expected in American policy in the Middle East. Have a look at Emanuel's bio on Wikipedia - think that American presence in Iraq is defence in depth for Israel (and many other positive things) - and ask yourself what the chances are that Americans are likely to give up their catbird perch in Iraq.

One should also have a look at Emanuel's "Plan for America" - that's where Obama's idea for compulsory nonmilitary service is set out.

This is just what dmorris predicted in a post shortly after the election. The "election" was just window dressing to inaugurate a powerful elite and George Soros is one of those named.

Who'd have thought Obama was the Reagan conservative the left delusionally thought Bush was...

Paul Volker for eco advisor. I can't be happier. Not Reaganesque, the actual guy Reagan had fixing Carter's fricken mess!

Whoopee! I thought we were doomed there for a while. Turns out Obama isn't a turncoat commie, he's a turncoat TO the commies ;) !!!

Is it time for OChimpyJoeHitler yet?

Shaken,

Naw, it'll be McChimpysein O'Hitlerburtonma but you'll have to wait until he keeps his promise to invade the nuclear state of Pakistan to scream "no war for oil" without stopping to consider that Pakistan doesn't have any more than Afghanistan...

Friend of USA:

Aside from the fact that Noam has been the most quoted authors for papers in the Humanities, he has made some major contributions to the world in not simply his mainstream writing.

He's a linguistics expert, quite possibly the "father" of linguistics. Just reading Hegemony or Survival does nothing to understand him, his work, or his talents.

I think his books lately have been more of the stale kind mostly because information has become so easy to access. His views, papers, and books written from the 60's to 90's were expose's on American foreign policy.

Same IQ as Sarah Palin?...you make me depressed about humanity.

And another point on Chomsky:

He never supported Obama. He has stated repeatedly that Obama hasn't presented much policy, that the MSM and the entire election is designed to deceive the public. He simply said that McCain's policies would be more detrimental to the American public than Obama's would be, and since they essentially run a two party system down there, that meant voting for Obama.

Now we know what Biden said folks would be disappointed. I still have a wait & see policy.

For Lee,

I worry not, for I know for a certainty that Barry will prove himself even more inept than Carter. Then the US will remember why they elected Ronnie for eight years.

"...He's a linguistics expert, quite possibly the "father" of linguistics. Just reading Hegemony or Survival does nothing to understand him, his work, or his talents."

---bar_jebus

That is what I don't get, if he is the supreme linguistics expert, then how come some bloggers, never mind some people in comment sections of blogs say more interesting things than he does and say it in more interesting ways than he does?

Watch the video above and please point to me where he speaks like a great mind or a great linguistics expert?

The man is ordinary.

Very ordinary.

Had I not known what Chomsky looks like I would have thought this was a plumber or a janitor speaking about politics.

Sorry but I have had this conversation with other people before and no one can show me what is great about Chomsky.

I'm supposed to read 24 Chomsky books to understand.

That is strange because all I have to do to understand that Mark Steyn, Salim Mansur or Thomas Sowell are great writers and have great minds is read one damn column.

No need for 24 books.

I listen to Chomsky and I shake my head in disbelief;

That is the greatest intellectual of the century?

really???

That is what young people want to become?

Really???

How depressing that a man with an ordinary mind, an ordinary vocabulary( for a linguisitcs expert yes that is an ordinary vocabulary), and ordinary ideas is admired by millions of gullible people who do not know better.

Now that is "change" I can handle!!!

I can just see it now. The Obama administration nominating the next Sec Gen of the UN - You guessed it, Kofi Annan!!!!

me, I'll wait and see what the lad is going to do with this "new/old" crew

are there that few capable dems????

is he being dictated to from behind the scene????

is he honestly trying for s centrist governing position?????

is he that inept that he needs those with proven track records to guide him?????

or is he lulling everyone so that he can sneak "his" policies in the back door un-noticed?????

Alinsky, ayers' roll model, preached such tactics, to use their own rules against them!!!

Kate, you're hilarious in how you always contradict yourself.

One day you'll argue that Obama's a socialist, the next you're saying he's the GOP's best friend. Grow a set and take a position.

Chomsky was right exactly ONE time and then he was only half right Manufacturing Consent .... in which he proposes that the media are inherently biased. That the result is all news reporting and editorial analysis is biased.

Right so far ... then he goes on to claim that all this bias is inherently right wing conservative capitalist etc ......

What a freekin' tool ... I've tried to read other things by the freak .... Chomsky is incapable of clearly putting one though in front of another or connecting them.
Just like he sounds when you hear him .... nonsense droning on and on ... incoherent thoughts coupled by a stream of patter as he attempts to fill the void with nothing but words.

Chomsky is the classic example of a mediocrity attempting to appear intelligent.

Of course his acolytes would tell you that we are just to stupid to understand him.

Ahhhh, the electoral college has yet to convene, and already the leftists are eating their own. He shall usher in the New Regan I say! And make Jimmy Carter look like a leader.

Actually steve I think it's Obama who should be challenged to take a position.
Did Kate say that keeping the Clintonista close means Obama is best friend of the GOP?
Yeah...didn't think so..

How can we be listening to Noam Chomsky? Doesn't he repeatedly claim to be censored?

Have to agree with Friend on Chomsky.Most sports columns are more spellbing than Chomsky.

....for goodness sakes Friend of America, can you be any more ignorant? Linguistics has nothing to do with writing! Linguistics is the study of language and how humans have acquired it, how it developed, how it evolved. It has nothing to do with the subject of how interesting Noam Chomsky is in his writing or his speaking.

"That is strange because all I have to do to understand that Mark Steyn, Salim Mansur or Thomas Sowell are great writers and have great minds is read one damn column."

They're sensationalists. The fact that you can "understand" them in a single column simply shows how much depth they have; i.e. no depth at all. I am not opposed to Steyn, and I don't like the HRC's, but I don't think he's all that constructive.

"How depressing that a man with an ordinary mind, an ordinary vocabulary( for a linguisitcs expert yes that is an ordinary vocabulary), and ordinary ideas is admired by millions of gullible people who do not know better."

Again, I suggest you read some of his earlier books, or any of his academic work. A book published for the public is written in a manner _for_ the public. Of course he's not going to express himself to the masses in a manner in which few can understand. Try reading something academic from him (or academic at all since you seem to have little understanding of much of anything) and you will see my point.

Mr. Chomsky is an intellectual moron and hack -- the kind of person who manages to convince others of mediocre mind that he is a sublime genius par excellence and then rides that unquestioning cult of personality to a fat bank account. He has even done this in the most unimaginative and cliched of ways, by being an "intellectual rebel" ala '60s style "tune in and turn on" guru. In short, a fairly typical academic type in the early 21st century Western world.

As for Mr. Obama -- well, he's a very power hungry politician who wants to...stay in power (imagine). He's been very canny in his ability to woo the public (the same public who finds Noam Chomsky an intellectual titan -- father of linguistics, just how much study of the history of linguistics have you not done in order to come up with that, you lemming?). It remains to be seen what he will do, for good or ill, in order to stay in power. I find him a bit more LBJ/FDRish than JFKish, and don't consider being compared to any of those dead Presidents a penultimate compliment, but time will tell.