The point is you can't.
    I know, you can't watch the game without knowing the Players and you can't tell the Players without a program. Well, there won't be one, and that's the point anyway, you're not supposed to be able to watch the game. It's all very secret, as security is a major driving force of socialism...even in Sweden. After twenty years, they're still going through millions and millions of files just to find out who was and was not Stasi in old East Germany. In communist regimes it's the names that don't appear in files that usually run things.
    Let's start from the beginning. How many committed socialists does it take to run a country the size of the US? Probably less than a few thousand. It takes even fewer, as we're seeing now, to actually obtain power. The rest are hirelings or useful idiots.
    In the USSR app 6% of the population were Communist Party members, but over half of those were farmer and industrial workers. Their only party duties were to rat out whispers they picked up on the production lines. Their powers were none, except to vote a member forward to represent them.
    The rest were apparatchiks, people who worked for the state in some capacity, not unlike Federal and State Employees, only in the US they're called a "union". Unlike industrial unions, who still have strong pro-American sentiments among the members, the state employee unions and teachers unions are true apparatchiks and generally hold their positions and their role in government above that of the common weal of the people they serve as laid out in the Constitution. Out here in fly-over country they are also called "skirt unions" They comprise the greatest political weight in American labor today, and decidedly are bent toward socialism. It is their rice bowl.
    It is the world of the apparatchik that people vie for higher and higher positions in government, layer upon layer, thus proving the Peter Principle that in such hierarchies, people tend to move up to their own level of incompetence. For now, and the past forty years or so,  lawyers move up faster in this world, since they wrote the guide lines.
    Thinning the field still further, and highest among the apparatchiks were what the Soviets called the nomenklatura, who were the insiders of their system. Of approx 300 million, we're now down to a few hundred thousand. But even they were not necessarily Players, since apparatchiks and the nomenklatura usually see government as a means to personal ambition, especially when there is little opportunity anywhere else. (You will see this same process; an acceleration of the best, brightest and most ambitious in America moving to the government sector in the coming years. The private sector, especially small business will be marginalized, as it is in say, Kenya.) Behind the ambition of the nomenklatura is a relatively small army of true believers, who move pieces around as on a chess board. They hold the keys to true policy in the country. The rest are just go-fers.
    In global politics, of course, the USSR couldn't keep the US, Britain, France and China, etc from constantly probing into who the real Players in the USSR were. We spent billions trying to find out, just as, after January 20, 2009, France, Britain, Russia and China will beging spending billions trying to find out the same thing about us. You see, the first thing that falls when socialism arises is a curtain. With Russia, Churchill proclaimed it to be iron, but it could also just be a dark bedsheet. That remains to be seen, but in either case, all transparency in government ceases. To the tiniest, lowest appratchik, everyone knows that his rice bowl depends on secrecy. The one true thing we know, though, is that no one inside in the USSR ever knew who the Real Players were. Not even other Players.
    Except, in the USSR we generally knew one sure Player, and that was the head of the Communist Party, who usually also headed the government. He was always elected by the leading party members. Gorbachev ruined everything because arguably, he was not a committed Communist (in our view) but rather a very skilled and able member of the nomenklatura. He was the sucker-fish that escaped the seine net.

    How this will play out in the US is interesting, for we believe that you shouldn't look for the major names in the Democrat Party to be among the leading Players of this new government. We're not even sure Obama is, for there are clearly handlers behind him. He may be The One, driving this engine himself, but he may also be just a Chauncey Gardiner. Time will tell.
    For instance, the Clinton's weren't Players although they would consider this an insult. They were merely very successful members of the nomenklatura, who, like the vast majority of party membership in Russia, chose that track to stardom because for one, it didn't require a whole lot of real work to succeed. They were pursuing their own self interests in a playing field suited for the bright, ingenious and the lazy. Social concerns were the farthest from the minds. But you can also see, the great failing of any hierarchical system, socialism especially, but also big business of late, is the fast track accorded to those who can best fake sincerity to the party line. To the Clinton's, and many senior members of the Democrat Party, leftism has simply been a means to a self-aggrandizing end....a cush life of (sic) "public service" with which they can manage other men's lives and never be held to the same rules they impose on others. The mindset is not that of service, but rather of aristocratic privilege.
   We actually foresee several struggles early on in an Obama administration, both with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, neither of which we believe to be smart enough to be Players. To be sure, we're not sure the Speaker or Senate Leader will ever be Players, but we do know they will be installed by them, so that switcharoo at least would be fun to watch...only, with transparency gone, we'll never know the inside game, which means we don't think there are any real Players inside the mainstream media. News will turn more and more titillating, heavy on the T&A in fact, and less insightful (reading up on some old Pravda rags would help teach you as to what will and will not be "seemly" to print in coming years), the surviving media companies being those who recognize who's filling their rice bowls. They will all be agents of the government, although the shaking out will take a few years. It's the Players who are right now drawing up the X's and O's as to how that will be done.
   We consider some people inside ACORN to be Players. We also consider Bill Ayers to be a Player, but not Wright or Farrakhan. Soros may well be a Player, for this is the sort of rubic's game he likes to play.
   Beyond that, it's a crap shoot. But I'd say, if you want to make some money, set up tontines and start taking bets now as to who will be Players and who will not. Then shoot for a 2075 pay-off date, once the files are thrown open. Somebody's grandkid could be rich.
BChumm