Who better to kick off the weekend than Noam Chomsky, intellectual master (despite his kicking a little too much good-will for Pol Pot), talking about the coming US election and how the current financial crisis affects normal people. For more videos courtesy of The Real News Network, click here.

The first part ((A transcript of the first video is found here.)):

Chomsky talks of how politicians really don't want people to participate, and also of the difference between McCain and Obama.

James Madison, the main framer, his main view, as he expressed at the Constitutional Convention, was that power should be in the hands of the wealth of the nation, the responsible set of men“”men, of course“”who respect the rights of property; and the goal of the government should be to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. And that thesis runs right to the contemporary period.

...which brings Chomsky to answer the question on whether voting for McCain or Obama matters to people and under which rule - conservative or liberal - most of the American population thrives:

Well, I would suggest voting against McCain, which means voting for Obama without illusions, because all the elevated rhetoric about change and hope and so on will dissolve into standard centrist Democratic policies if he takes office. However, there is a difference, and it's been studied quite closely by political scientists. There's a strong difference over time. You don't see it in any particular moment, but over time the general population, the large majority of the population other than the very wealthy, tends to do considerably better under Democratic than under Republican administrations. And the reason is sort of what you said: they reflect different elite constituencies, and the differences are quite striking and very noticeable.

The second part ((A transcript of the second video is found here.)):

Chomsky talks of the financial crisis but what I find is interesting is his thought on the inherent deficits in the American medical systems that has been brought upon by the recent government ((Which makes me think of Michael Moore's "Sicko", where this is dealt with in detail.)):

There's a major crisis coming along which is going to dwarf this one, and that's the growth in medical costs. If you look at the trajectory and extrapolate, extend it, the highly inefficient medical system is going to swamp the federal budget. This is usually described as a benefits system“”you know, medicine, Medicare, and social security“”but that's just a technique to try to destroy social security. In fact, social security's in pretty good shape; it's the health system that's the problem.

As always, enlightening and highly scary, Noam Chomsky's words are most noteworthy.