POLITICS - Hope...Not!

Alright. So the election is over. Barack Obama is the President-elect. The question is 'now what?'.

Obama's campaign can be summed up in a few things. Primarily in these words - People's HOPE for CHANGE. I hate to point it out. EVERY non-incumbent political candidate runs on change. Everything is the other guys fault. And if you vote for me, we can fix everything. Yes we can!

Pragmatism is what will kill this ticket of hope. Compromise of the ideals that the campaign started with is what will kill hope.

My predictions. I'll take bets on these of any value you care to take. And I'm not the only one saying these things. Add Ralph Nader in this speech, Cynthia McKinney (US Green Party candidate for the 2008 US Presidential election) on Democracy Now!, as well as Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Glenn Loury on Bill Moyers' Journal on PBS:

1) Number of US troops in Iraq will not change in the next two years in any meaningful way.

2) When/if they do change, those troops will be redirected to Afghanistan.

3) The war in Afghanistan will continue to spread in to Pakistan, and Pakistan will continue to disintegrate.

4) I do not know what will happen with Iran. I will tell you that, if the current administration had the manpower, it would have initiated hostilities with Iran. But it is stretched thin between Afghanistan and Iraq. What is hard to say is if the saber rattling that had been done to date will force anyone's hand in future.

5) Those responsible for the mess in Iraq will not be held accountable for their actions. And if you do not set a precedent and punish politicians for behaviour like this (Clinton gets impeached for a fucking blow job, and NOTHING happens to Bush or Cheney over ANY of the SHIT they have done!), then they will keep on doing it.

6) Nothing will change in Israel because the United States' unconditional military and financial support for Israel will continue.

7) The deployment of US military power around the world will not change.

8) The bailout of Wall Street will continue. It will require a little more money here and a little more money there. None of which will achieve the desired result. None of the people who created this Ponzi scheme will be held accountable. Alan Greenspan says "Oops. I was wrong. The invisible hand of the market won't necessarily look after itself". Duh! I've been screaming that to you for years you hack!

9) Unemployment in the US (And around the world) will continue to climb.

10) House foreclosures will continue unabated.

11) The system of funneling wealth upwards will continue and the gap in wealth distribution will continue to widen, and the middle class will continue to be squeezed towards the status of working poor.

12) The US budget and trade deficits will continue to grow. It was funny, I had someone say "The market conditions will help make US exports more competitive". How much does the market have to change to compete with someone earning dollars a day? Who is going to invest in the manufacturing infrastructure in the US? The US doesn't make anything any more.

13) Oil will head back up as OPEC lowers production because they don't like where the price has gone over the past few months, so we'll be back on track for $200 per barrel oil.

14) NOTHING meaningful will be done about climate change, because 1) We will continue to wait for technology that is 20-30 years away from deployment, if it can be developed at all, 2) Over the next 20-30 years, greenhouse gas emissions will continue to RISE. They aren't going to plateau. They aren't going to go down. They will continue to rise, against a backdrop of already emitting too much. Doing what needs to be done to combat climate change is completely incompatible free market capitalism that requires year on year of sustained economic growth, and you're seeing what happens now when it doesn't grow. It collapses. It doesn't run steadily. If you're not making at least 5% compound growth on the year before, you're going backwards.

We needed a revolution. Obama's 53% of the popular vote is not a revolution. It is not a mandate. Obviously it is barely over 50% of the vote. It is historic. It is amazing. I’m much happier with this result than I would have been had McSame been elected. But all that has happened is the coin has clipped. And in two years, when nothing changes, the Republicans will be back for the mid-term elections saying “See! He hasn’t changed anything! Vote for us!”, and the wheel will make another turn.

I've had some people say to me that they are more optimistic, that the people of America are capable of sacrifice. That they are capable of making the fundamental changes necessary to to stop the Titanic from hitting the iceberg. As I've said before, and I'll say again. You've just voted for rearranging the deck chairs. I've said before, something needs to be done, and you've said "We will. We'll vote!". And you've voted. I hope when things don't change, and you don't get the result you wanted, that you will really do something about it next time.