What are your opinions on who's running the show in the US?

[graywarrior]

Is it a pluralistic model (ha ha), or the power elite, or a governing class? Is Obama's presidency based on pluralism? What about his "socialist" ideas making the government more in control and does that make it more a governing class model? I'm so confused.

[av8rdave]

1. It's a secret Madrassa-controlled shadow government, staffed by O's fellow radicals and Kenyans

:sarcasm:

[graywarrior]

17. !

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[saltpoint]

2. I think the Duke La Crosse Team is pulling all the strings from

a dorm basement in Carolina.

Don't ask me how I know this.

[cliffordu]

3. I don't think ANYONE is really in charge.

It appears to be a system that might exist if you had a large bag of starving rats break open in a small room with one ham sandwich in the middle.

[RandomThoughts]

5. Ha! That is too funny. LOL

Hows this, a group is not in charge, an ideology is. Although different ideologies go against that groups ideas.

[graywarrior]

18. OMG, I love that!

[arcadian]

4. Oil company and banking executives.

[Locrian]

6. FIRE

Finance Insurance Real Estate.

We had the agricultural revolution, industrial revolution, now "finance" revolution. All along the way moving from "real" to "fantasy" money. The trillions in play in the FIRE dwarf anything in the industrial. Corporate thinks they can play the game and they are suckers.

The money has been sucked into a fantasy land and we are pretty much hostage to it.

[marions ghost]

10. with significant help from Rupert

Murdoch

[Kalun D]

12. Interconnected

""The trillions in play in the FIRE dwarf anything in the industrial.""

but they're all interconnected.

[TheCowsCameHome]

7. No one that's willing to admit it.

[Kalun D]

8. MIMC

M ilitary
I ndustrial
M edia
C omplex

sort of a variation on Eisenhower's meme. They've bought up all the big media and thus have a lock on "news" that the working class gets to see.

the oil companies, the media conglomerates, big pharma, the health care companies, the insurance companies, the defense corps, the bankers

the bankers are probably the worse, they control the most money

and the Obama admin is married to the bankers, they are thick as thieves literally. Goldman Sachs, arguably the biggest crooks in the recent scandals, and central to all the grief going on right now in Greece, gave $996,000 dollars to the Obama campaign, his 2nd largest contributor. As payoff they got a large chunk of the $700 BILLION thievery that Obama helped push through congress. Better than a pennies on the dollar investment, more like pennies on the $100 dollar.

[BeFree]

11. heh

We have the best democracy money can buy.

[Odin2005]

9. Google "Iron Law of Oligarchy".

All governments (even democracies and absolute monarchies/dicatorships) always "decay" towards a state of oligarchy of some type, be it aristocratic, bureaucratic, plutocratic, or theocratic.

[graywarrior]

22. Thank you, I will!

[housewolf]

13. In terms of foreign policy...

I think it's the NSA in cahoots with the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex. Virtually every president since the advent of the NSA in the 1950's has been subservient to the wants of the NSA.

[SmileyRose]

14. whoever swoops in with biggest bag of money.

At the moment it's multinational insurers with corporate /government names most of us don't know who insure the banks, investment houses and insurance companies who's names we do know.

[Posteritatis]

15. The population, unwittingly, via its consent. (nt)

[Naturalist111]

21. Bullseye!

X

[cutlassmama]

16. Not only the U.S., but the world...Bilderberg, IMF, Goldman-Sachs

[graywarrior]

19. Wow, I am astounded with these responses.

[Naturalist111]

20. Oh geez

My dumb fellow Americans

[Last_Stand]

23. We have a pretend democracy...

that is inching ever closer to outright fascism.

[graywarrior]

24. I'm so disappointed in us