Those who run the country are hard at work selecting the next president. No, I don�t mean the Bush regime -- higher up. No, not Exxon-Mobil or General Dynamics -- higher up than that. That�s right, the big transnational investors who rent our elections with their euphemistic �campaign financing� bribes, often through their corporations, then get the money back for campaign ads on the TV networks they control. They are currently working on a three-option plan to decide who our next president will be.

Option One

Option One is always �get a Republican if you can,� to hold the White House on behalf of corporate greed at any cost to the public interest. Problem is, the current scam is unraveling -- notably the illegal invasion and botched occupation of Iraq. So a little time may have to pass before working the scam again using Republicans.

John McCain is their man to sustain the scam if it is possible. He�s not only behind the war, but for a troop increase. The owners like this because the war has put hundreds of billions more into their �defense� mafia piggy bank from which they make liberal withdrawals. A big takeover of Iraqi oil is also in the works, and there are all those rebuilding projects for more billions, so McCain is Option One.

The downside of Option One is that the peasants have been turned off by the war -- polls show 70 percent oppose McCain�s troop surge. They just voted congressional Republicans out of their majority, and Republicans currently rank lower than whale poop in the polls, so it is not extremely likely that another Republican president can be palmed off on the public without fixing more voting machines in the Land of the Free than even last time. This scam can only go so far.

Option Two

Hence, Option Two, the backup plan, otherwise known as Hillary Rodham Clinton. Hillary has shown the big transnational investors she kisses powerful butt well by her Senate votes, and is willing to tell any lie to win the White House.

For example, on the January 18 PBS NewsHour January she told Gwen Ifil, "You know, for more than a year and a half, I've been in favor of phased redeployment of our troops, bringing them home as quickly as possible."

Finger to the wind, Hillary knows what the people want to hear these days, having seen what just happened to the Republicans for �staying the course� -- clearly her position before this whopper got laid on us unwashed masses.

If she has been in favor of bringing the troops home �as quickly as possible,� why have the women of Code Pink been following her around the country and protesting wherever she appears for not endorsing any withdrawal from Iraq, including a protest at the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) meeting in Colorado last July 23?

Hillary was there because she is in the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, the DLC's leadership. That's why corporate media push her so hard -- she is the primary backup to the Republicans, sharing pretty much their philosophy of corporate greed at any cost to the public interest, though with the softer �I feel your pain� whine of husband Bill, which works so well with many liberal voters.

In August, Hillary's refusal to endorse Congressman Murtha's troop withdrawal plan had him saying, "I'm disappointed." Strange comment about someone who now says she has been for getting the troops out as soon as possible for a year and a half.

After the November election Hillary was asked if she supported Senator McCain's suggestion of a 20,000-troop increase in Iraq and replied, "It depends on what is the mission of those troops. I am not in favor of doing that unless it's part of a larger plan." So Hillary was not, just a few months ago, against a troop �surge� -- an escalation the war.

Hillary will pretty much say whatever it takes for a shot at hubby�s old job of pushing the agenda of Transnationals, Inc., so those who run the planet like a private plantation want Hillary to run Corporate Cops on Call if they can�t get McCain.

Corporate media call Hillary the front-runner, which works well to influence the electorate as they give her endless free publicity to insure she stays that way. My Google of �Hillary front-runner� without the quotes got over a million hits, so corporate media have worked this well.

The downside of Option Two is that few Democrats with their hat in the ring have a record as hawkish as Hillary, voting for the war and every financial appropriation with which to sustain it. Can such a person be crammed down the throats of voters in their antiwar mood? Hillary thinks so. She just announced she�s running to win, and she set records as recently as last year for raising Senate campaign funding.

Option Three

But what if the owners can�t get the masses to hold their noses and vote Republican or Hillary to keep their war going? This is where Barack Obama, or Option Three, comes in.

Obama is being packaged as a peace candidate, even though he has voted for every increase in spending for the Iraq War.

The owners and their corporate media are aware that the public has had enough of war and the scams necessary to perpetuate it. The public has begun to wonder if one �supports the troops,� the favorite corporate media mantra, by sending them to a desert to be shot at and bombed daily. Bin Laden can�t be found in Baghdad, those weapons of mass destruction are mass-gone, and Satan is not shooting stem cells in Sadr City. All that�s left are nebulous terms like �the enemy,� without suggesting the obvious, �are you talking about the Iraqi people, George?�

Obama had the good fortune to arrive in the Senate after the war had already been authorized by his colleagues, so he likes to say he did not vote for it. He wants you to believe he is not enamored of the war and wants out (though not today, nor Tuesday, nor . . . ).

Obama is called a �rock star� in corporate media and hyped as much as anyone after Hillary. I Googled �Obama rock star� without the quotes, and got over 800,000 hits. The only thing he allows us to know about his plan for the future is that he is for a �new kind of politics.� Well, we all want that, don�t we?

The Owner�s Last Option, 2004

Corporate media badly want McCain, front-runner Hillary, or rock star Obama. To show how the scam works, in the last presidential race, a year before the primaries, it was John Kerry whom the corporate media were pushing as the front-runner at this point, echoing around the clock. Like Hillary and Obama, they knew Kerry would sell out the masses on their behalf, because, like them, he had a record. Let�s review it.

Kerry not only voted for the USAPATRIOT Act, but wrote part of it to show his willingness to trash the Constitution and civil rights. The owners like that kind of loyalty to their interests.

Kerry, like his fellow Skull and Bones alumnus Bush, opposed the Kyoto Treaty, which would begin to address global warming. The owners really liked that one.

Unlike Bush, Kerry voted for NAFTA and GATT, locking unfairness for labor and the environment into the future, giving transnational corporations the means with which to overrule democracy around the globe. The owners were delirious about this.

Kerry was not only for staying the course in Iraq, like Bush, but he was for a troop surge in 2004, before the euphemism �surge� became a daily mass media mantra. The owners like that kind of enthusiasm for war.

Millions of us progressives were trampled by herds of those supporting the Kerry disaster. Kerry seemed more interested in raising money from those he served, a $328,479,245 record amount for Democrats, than in having a principle upon which to stand. You only get that kind of money from the owners if you are willing to sell out the public interest on their behalf.

So why all the constant screams of �frontrunner Hillary� and �rock star Obama?� Well, corporate media�s masters of deception have learned that if you echo a name often enough as being popular, eventually these people start to take off in the polls, as citizens hear them again and again. Rock star sounds pretty exciting, after all.

Americans like to vote for a winner. By the time the primaries actually begin next year, corporate media can say Dennis Kucinich, from whom the masses have not heard, is not high enough in the polls to be heard from, and they will have data to show the rock star and the front-runner are popular, so that is why they will be covered. The self-fulfilling prophecy is tried and true -- it worked as recently as the last election for their man Kerry.

An Option Left?

Last time many progressives waited to see what the Greens would do only months before the election, when it is too late to raise funds with which to reach voters. For their patience, they were rewarded with David Cobb, who all but urged them to vote for Kerry in contested states. The Greens, with a beautiful set of values, have since to show they can be trusted to be an opposition party.

Kucinich has taken great risks to his career on behalf of leftist causes going back to his days as mayor of Cleveland. Corporate media see Kucinich as a much feared threat in the way they treat his candidacy. I have read several of their articles discussing Democratic candidates for 2008, in which a dozen or more candidates were listed without the name Kucinich, even though he was an announced candidate and the others were not. They are obviously trying to kill him with silence, a favorite tactic.

Kucinich is the best force within the Democratic Party to push other candidates to the left. Unlike the other Democrats, his health care plan, call for defense cuts, environmental plan and much more are in line with the wishes of the overwhelming majority of citizens, polls tells us, so if he could only be heard, he would win.

Of course, corporate media will not allow him to be heard in their controlled realm. If they must recognize him, they will say he is �out of the mainstream� even though his positions are far more mainstream than those of the other candidates, if one reads the poll numbers about what the majority of citizens actually want from government.

And in his debates with the other Democrats, Kucinich will be heard by audiences across the land. The other Democrats must not be allowed to get away with phony withdrawal plans which go nowhere and allow the war to continue indefinitely. Kucinich�s plan goes for the throat of the war in calling for cutting off all funding except enough to finance a ride home for the troops.

With everyone left of center getting on board the Kucinich bandwagon early, it is possible to raise money on the Internet and go around the corporate media, as Howard Dean did last time. With enough attention to his issues, it is probable to, at the very least, move the Democratic platform to the left, and possible, in a longshot (because of corporate media hostility to one they see as opposing their special interests, Big Oil, the Nuclear Mafia, Polluters Inc., etc.) to win the Democratic nomination.

Kucinich will appeal to those who want the war ended, standing out in the pack. He will also appeal to black voters, important to Democratic primaries. Black Agenda Report�s managing editor, Bruce Dixon, said of Kucinich, �For our money right now, he's the blackest candidate in the ring.�

I sympathize with leftists who are condemning Kucinich with the hope that some sort of leftist unity can be realized at a later date, fearing he might drain that candidate of support. And true, Kucinich did concede to Kerry last time, as many leftists criticize, but I have to conclude it was the honorable thing to do, since he did run as a Democrat. It is not honorable to run as a Democrat, as Joe Lieberman did last year, and after losing the primary follow by running against your own party. Why pretend to be a member?

Like many fellow leftists, I often shudder at the thought of being trapped in what Ralph Nader calls the corporate duopoly, and I understand why many see the Democrats as the enemy. But waiting until 2008 for a Green hope may only find us with another Cobb, this time urging us to vote for Hillary in place of Kerry.

From my conversations with other leftists across the nation, many lost confidence in the Greens last time and bolted for Nader. Some liberal friends still do not talk to me today because I refused to vote for Kerry.

I might still go Green this election if they persuade me that they will oppose Democrats, headed by Hillary/Obama, in search of maintaining a war against the people of Iraq, but until that time I am putting a few bucks into Kucinich to help finance some of what I see as vital opposition within the Democratic Party.

This Kucinich strategy is not one of asking people to marry the guy. I donated a small amount to Kucinich last time to keep a leftist voice in the race -- to push the other Democrats leftward. When he finally conceded, I sent a donation to Nader, so this strategy does not lock a voter into concrete.

Send Kucinich 10 or 25 bucks, the early money will keep him biting at the ankles of the front-runners and rock stars, wearing them down and forcing them to modify their positions away from the transnational investors who rent them. You can always donate more, when things clear up next year, to Kucinich or another candidate.

I hope somebody magnificent comes along next year to champion social justice, peace, human rights and all the rest of it. But the left needs more time for a campaign, as we are not allowed mass media coverage. Greens and other leftists have got to get an earlier start, so that we can contest our differences early and unite behind one progressive, our only real hope for the victory we all want to see some day.

Meanwhile we can�t wait a year to get started, and should get behind Kucinich at least as part of a delaying action. The owners are already organized with a three-option plan and will have most voters locked up by this time next year. The time for opposition is now.