OBAMA/BIDEN

I don’t know, but that name-combo has an eerie sound to it: Obama/Biden, makes it hard not to pronounce mentally Osama Binladen.
Of course, one makes the necessary corrections before uttering the words; no one wants to be accused of trying to smear The One and Only with any form of (misinterpreted)anti-Muslim bias.

But think about it. “Breaking News: Osama Binladen has been arrested”, you cheer, only to see The One and Only in handcuffs. He was finally arrested for corruption in the Rezko scandal! And Biden was arrested for tampering with evidence.

OK,OK. I’m fantasizing here. It’s Saturday morning, time to play!

The (bi-cultural) education of Barack Obama

Is Barack Obama a ‘natural born’ American citizen?

He does not want us to know the answer to this question, that’s why he continues to hide his birth certificate. Nevertheless, this question is relevant when evaluating a candidate for POTUS. National identity is a very personal and emotional aspect of every individual. It conjures topics like patriotism and loyalty to a nation, among other things.The question of Obama’s origins is relevant to our discussion of whether he should be our next president. Unless you don’t mind electing Bozo the Clown for president.

There are two components of Obama’s upbringing that bear relevance to this discussion: language and the acculturation project that his mother had for him when she originally moved to Indonesia. I’m not inventing this. Keep reading, please.

In Dreams From My Father, Obama discloses this part of his upbringing:

“She [his mother] had always encouraged my rapid acculturation in Indonesia.” [All further quotes are from this book.]

What will that entail?  Adopting the culture of a particular nation tends to be an all-encompassing project: you want to be ‘one with them’, you want to speak, write, and think like they do, you want to know their history, develop a deep sense of loyalty for that nation, share in the moral values of that nation. You don’t want to have a joke explained to you; you want to get it the first time you hear it.

The fact is, you can’t seriously or completely acculturate if you don’t adopt the language of the people of that country. We know that, that’s why there’s a strong movement here in the USA promoting English-Only for non-English speaking foreigners living here.

Is it fair to assume that, as a child, Obama learned the language of Indonesia, both written and spoken? Sure. His mother’s plan to acculturate him  could not be conceived without language at the core of it. Did he develop a sense of loyalty for Indonesia? His father was Indonesian and worked there. Thus, his son had to be Indonesian also. That’s natural, isn’t it. Can you think of a man who will not want his son to be like him, sharing his own nationally inherited moral and cultural values? ‘Barry, eat your Burger King” instead of ‘Barry, eat your gado gado’?

Furthermore, as part of the acculturation process, his mother…

“had taught me to disdain the blend of ignorance and arrogance that too often characterized Americans abroad.”

That may sound as a lofty attitude, to disdain arrogance and ignorance. Except that his mother was a leftist, her idea of American “arrogance and ignorance”, as he called it, was one enveloped in political ideals. In other words, she taught him to “disdain” Americans in the same way many Indonesian communists, particularly the poor and working class, thought of Americans.  That’s what little Obama was learning.

Wake up and smell the coffee

Interestingly enough, he says in the book that his mother…

“had arranged from the moment of our arrival to supplement my Indonesian schooling with lessons from a U.S. correspondence course.”

He was in a public school because she didn’t have money to send him to the school for foreign children. His main education was Indonesian,  supplemented by correspondence courses.

And here comes the all important language issue:

“Her efforts now redoubled. Five days a week, she came into my room at four in the morning…and preceded to teach me my English lessons for three hours before I was sent to school and she went to work.”

Her efforts “redoubled” when she “learned the chasm that existed between Americans and Indonesians in that country”, that for him to be only Indonesian would have meant him being just another one in the pool of Indonesian civil servants. That’s when she “redoubled” her efforts to provide him with a bi-cultural/bilingual education.

It is very telling that she had to spend three hours daily teaching him English. Had he been proficient in the language, there wouldn’t have been a need for that strict regiment. Little Obama apparently was not proficient in English. (Neither is this writer, but Obama is the one running for POTUS.)

Obama: our first Bilingual/Bi-cultural President?

BO grew up within a different culture, not an all American culture. It was a culture that saw Americans as aliens and oppressors. As a child, he must have spoken at least two languages, Indonesian and English.

The moral values inculcated to little Obama were not the kind easily forgotten by any child. They were the kind that form and shape a child’s heart content. Obama may want to deny how his mother and father’s  political views about Americans shaped his “disdain” for mainland Americans, but that which is imprisoned in the farthest corners of the heart always finds its way out. The “angry and bitter Americans” [http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/12/politics/main4010972.shtml] and other  verbal blunders in the Obama repertoire are just the tip of his bi-cultural iceberg. Again in his book he says  “…vaguely liberal [his grandparents]…their ideas would never congeal into anything like a firm ideology; in this, too, they were Americans.” His book is peppered with thinly veiled derogatory comments about Americans. These are the same comments you hear from leftists.

There’s nothing wrong with bilingualism. Bilingualism is a problem only for those whose irrational fears of the ‘other’ have being fed by post 9/11  the-world-is-my-enemy-lets-torture-everybody-politics. These fears have proven useful to Bush and Cheney’s totalitarian rule of law. They explain, in part, our search for relief from this oppressive administration.

Obama had the opportunity to dispel some of the fears behind our current xenophobic attitudes but, instead, he chose to feed them by refusing to admit that his upbringing was not initially all American.

Courage is not one of his personality traits.

“One of the luxuries of going to Harvard Law School is it means you can take risks in your life, You can try to do things to improve society and still land on your feet.” [http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2836852]

Aha, Ok.

Obama’s supreme judgment on Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas

This is from Politico.com:
Obama slams Thomas, hugs McCain

“Asked which justice he wouldn’t have nominated to the Supreme Court, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on Saturday night named Justice Clarence Thomas, the court’s only African American.

Obama was asked the provocative question by Pastor Rick Warren, the moderator of the “Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency” at the megachurch Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, which is in Orange County, Calif.

“I don’t think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time, for that elevation, …”

Interesting that phrase, “for that elevation”. Coming from His Highness, who has no work experience to qualify him for POTUS but is about to be named the “official Democratic nominee for POTUS” by trickery and deception, who flip flops more than pancakes in IHOP, who can’t utter a straight sentence without a teleprompter, who is afraid to show his birth certificate to the public…how dare he judge the judge. I’m no fan of Judge Thomas, but, come on!

Plus, why did he focused on the Black Judge? The One and Only just can’t help himself. His contempt for African Americans is boundless. I propose a “popular psychology” analysis of his contempt for African Americans based on his often repeated complain about them: “…the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white.” That portion comes from his DNC speech in 2004 when referring to Africans Americans, the only time in the speech where he talked to them directly. He has repeated that complain on various occasions; it is significant for him in an emotional level. He  mentioned that complain in his fiction book Dreams of My Father.

When the time comes for His Highness to take aim at any politician, if there’s a Black one in the group, that’s the one who gets to be shot at.

It is a mystery to me how African Americans continue to support this con artist despite his not-so-veiled contempt for them.

Obama’s Work Ethics or How to Take the World Without Even Trying

For all of Obama’s call to “work” for a better world, his work habits leave a lot to be desired.

In his fiction book Dreams of My Father he recounts how he got burned out in his community organizing job less than two years on the job:

“I would momentarily forget where I was, my thoughts a numbed reflection of the silence. Marty suggested that I take more time off, build a life for myself away from the job. Without some personal support outside the work, an organizer lost perspective and could quickly burn out. There was something to what he said, for it was true that the people I met on the job were generally much older than me, WITH A SET OF CONCERNS AND DEMANDS THAT CREATED BARRIERS TO FRIENDSHIP.”

Not only he got physical symptoms of burn out, but he ended up thinking of ‘his’ people as unlikable complainers and demanding. Obama’s legendary ‘bus’ has been running since those early days, for he threw ‘his’ people’s “concerns” under it. Our man has this way of talking and writing, he insults people so graciously and with such style: “…with a set of concerns…that created barriers to friendship.”

Obama seems to always get dissatisfied by what he can accomplish at work:

“The election of Harold Washington in Chicago…has put us in the awkward position of administering underfunded systems neither equipped nor eager to address the needs of the urban poor and being forced to compromise their interests to more powerful demands from other sectors.” [Obama in Why Organize? -1990 Illinois Issues]

But then…

“After [Harold] Washington died…in 1987, Obama became disillusioned by the splintering of the coalition that had supported Washington. At that point, Obama says, “I was somewhat disdainful of politics. I was much more interested in mobilizing people to hold politicians accountable.” [Liza Mundy A Series of Fortunate Events - washingtonpost. com]

Organizing ‘unfriendly little people’ was not his ‘thing’. Thus, he quits the job and goes to Africa, where he felt out of place.

He came back to the USA and registered at Harvard’s Law School because he felt he couldn’t contribute any significant changes to society working as a community organizer. He thought that a law degree would be necessary for him to make some significant impact in the lives of “his” people, the same ones that “have a set of concerns and demands that created barriers to friendship.”

He was still at a lose as to what to do with his life, so he wrote a book after graduating.

He started working at the law firm of Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Gallard because he didn’t want to be a court clerk, which would have open doors for him as a judge or better.

But that job at the law firm was unsatisfactory, too. He found that law practice is not enough to make changes in the American heart. He was at the firm only one summer. He went to do political work (voter registration) which is really temporary work, and worked as part-time professor at the Illinois University.

He then runs for the Illinois state senate and wins in 1997. But he wanted more. In 1999, only two years in the state senate, he ran for Congress, and lost.

He got depressed, and according to Abner Mikva, his friend, he was “unusually dispirited…He had been in the senate for four years [sounds like an eternity to Obama]; the pay is very modest. It seems that whatever his ambitions were, there wasn’t going to be a channel for them.” [Liza Mundy A Series of Fortunate Events - washingtonpost.com]

Obama “didn’t want to be a lifer in the state legislature”, in his own words.  “I’M NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO HELP PEOPLE IF I’M STUCK IN THE STATE SENATE FOR 20 YEARS”. [idem]

It was urgent for him to be able to help people. He kept  pushing the bar ever higher. He couldn’t  help the people as a community organizer, as a civil rights lawyer, as a state senator. He had to be in Congress in order to be able to “help the people’.

But he was still a senator in Illinois, he was stuck, what to do: he couldn’t leave his position as a senator for any other ‘civilian’ job because that would have being a move downwards. He can only move  upwards, to Capitol Hill. You see, It was all about POWER, not about money. He could get any excellent paying job he wanted as a civilian. It was not the money: he was after POWER. Money is the reward you enjoy for achieving political power.

Missing from work:

In order to increase his funds for his US senate campaign, he needed more time, his work in the senate was in his way:  “I STARTED ENGAGING IN ELABORATE GAMES OF AVOIDANCE DURING [ILLINOIS STATE SENATE] CALL TIME-FREQUENT BATHROOM BREAKS, EXTENDED COFFEE RUNS.” [ idem] I had to capitalize that sentence, it’s too telling of this man’s persona.

He admitted to being playing hooky but then lied about why he missed the important gun-safety bill vote in the state senate, alleging his daughter was sick while they were in Hawaii. Lies, lies, and more lies.

Liza Mundy says, following the previous quote,”But he steeled himself for the task [fundraising] and learned to set aside “any sense of shame I once had in asking strangers for large sums of money.” I thought he was going to say ‘ashamed of the games I played to avoid doing my senatorial job’. No. He was referring to the shame of having to beg for money to get to Congress.

Now he was running for a  US Senate seat and won. Guess what: that job is not good enough either “to help the people.”

“Obama has been frustrated by what he sees as the Senate’s wasted opportunities.” [The Legend of Barack Obama -washingtonian.com]

And he was unhappy with the Democratic Party, too:

“Advisers say Obama isn’t always comfortable with the party’s talking points, he prefers to discuss issues in his own words, reframing topics as he goes. His adviser, Axelrod says he is a solo act.” [idem]

That’s not good! He is a “solo act”? That means he is in the party as an opportunist, he is not a ‘team member’. Granted, there must be independence of thinking, but his voting record shows lack of discipline and responsibility towards the voters who elected him. He has missed voting at least 277 times. He is in this for Obama, he is on his own. No rules apply to him.

At the end, he decided to run for president. Where will he go after that? That’s the highest political level you can aspire to here in the USA. Well, there are some signs of what his future plans ‘to help the people’ might be.

He isn’t yet the party’s official presidential candidate but he is already talking about his next ‘presidential term’ of 2012. Plus, lets take a look at his speech in Berlin, today, Thursday July 24. There are some interesting signs of his designs for higher levels ‘to help the people’.

He is a politician, so when he talks about “we” he really means ‘me’. He got the American public hooked with his “we are the ones we have been waiting for” where he really meant ‘I’m the one you have being waiting for’.  Now he tells the world that he is the one they have being waiting for.

“People of Berlin – and people of the world – the scale of our challenge is great. The road ahead will be long. But I come before you to say that we are heirs to a struggle for freedom. We are a people of improbable hope. With an eye toward the future, with resolve in our hearts, let us remember this history, and answer our destiny, and remake the world once again.”

When he tells the German people that “we are a people of improbable hope”, he is linking them with him by simply using the word “improbable”. Remember, he used that word in the 2004 DNC speech to refer to his color without having to use the word Black or African American. That expression has become his signature in speeches. He opened today’s speech with it and used it at the end. And because that word has become identified with him,  people feel ‘honored’ to share on that description: they too are “improbable”. “We [you and me] are a people of improbable hope.” You can project your own life there, all of you tribulations, and identify your self as “Obama”.

Kool-Aid any one?

HE is going to remake the world. There’s no we, there’s only ‘I’, Obama. It is the same tone of the primary campaign: ‘I’m here people, no need to fret anymore. I here to save you from yourselves.’

Now it is at a grander scale. What’s beyond the White House? THE WORLD, people, the WORLD. The WH is not going to be enough, either, to help the people. He will need to rule the whole world in order to find satisfaction, and then he will need to be a dictator. That’s the ultimate power. No one would be in his way, he would have total control to “help the people’. His life is an open book when it comes to his never-stopping climb to world domination.

Yeap, it sound melodramatic and far fetch, to say the least. But that’s what people used to say about those criticizing Hitler and Mussolini and Francisco Franco and Pinochet…

So, to sum up: Obama  has a scanty work experience in any field, he gets bored easily, he aims to the stars. He does not follow suggestions, he believes he is above every one. He shows no signs of loyalty to anyone except himself. At every step, where ever he is, that is not enough. And he has the ego to keep moving his ambitions for world wide power:

“Obama says ” there is that ego-driven ambition that I want to be somebody, I want to be in front of the microphone, I want to be in front of the TV, I want to be the most important guy on the committee, I want it to be my bill.” Asked at fund-raisers whether the new role he’s assumed is taking a toll on him, Obama waves it off: “Nah, I’m a thoroughbred.” [ A Series of Fortunate Events]

Resistance is Futile. Long live the King.

Deconstructing Obama

Is Barack Obama a socialist or a “market lover”?

People’s answer will depend on their own political positions, on their own wishes, not on a detached assessment of BO’s words and political actions.

“People don’t come to Obama for what he’s done in the Senate, they come because of what they hope he could be.” [Bruce Reed, president of the Democratic Leadership Council, in "The Radical Roots of Barack Obama" - Rollingstone.com, 2/22/07] [All highlights and italics in this post are mine.]

That’s to his credit. As he said in an interview with Cathleen Falsani (Chicago Sun-Times, 4/2004)…

“The nature of politics, you want to have everybody like you and project the best possible traits onto you. Often that’s by being as vague as possible, or appealing to the lowest common denominators.”

By being as vague as possible, and with the help of the main stream media (MSM), he has turned the USA into a political whirlpool. It’s not the Iraq war or universal health care issues that have us all discombobulated; rather it is ‘will he bring Change (as in good change, how ever you define that) or will he be just another pol’?

That’s what Americans are debating. We are hanging to his every words, with our hands covering our mouths, waiting to exhale: ‘Will he continue the Iraq war or will he pull us out of there? What was that he just said? That’s not what he said the other day!’

But, how do you do a “detached assessment” ‘of BO’s words when the MSM is influencing every ones opinions and silencing those who are critical of Obama’s positions, labeling them as “racist”? Detachment is separation from emotions, which is a very difficult thing to do in this political environment. But I’ll try to do that, be detached. Lets see how well I fare.

Point of clarification: to be detached doesn’t mean not to have a point of view. It simply means to be open to be wrong.

Is BO for BO or is He the Standard Bearer for a Generation?

This question is important because it addresses Obama’s goals, where his loyalties resides.

It would be an injustice to put down any one trying to achieve political heights. That BO is pursuing political greatness is to be commended. What needs to be considered is HOW is he trying to achieve that. We know that politics is the means to achieve power, and that politics is about “pigs eating their bacon”, to steal a line from a George Harrison’s song. Of course, not ALL politicians are pigs. You get my drift, I hope. So why is Obama so intent in getting to the top of political power? Since when he has this burning desire to climb to the top of America’s politics? What is he willing to do to get to ‘the promised land’? How he got so far?

Deconstructing Obama Part 1: In Search of Black Obama

Obama nurtured to be ‘special’

There’s no question about this. He informs us (Dreams of My Father) that he attended the private Punahou Academy in Hawaii where all the Ivy League-bound kids go. This is in a place in which he didn’t suffer the ignominies most mainland Blacks were suffering. He mentioned some instances of racism, but he himself says that he didn’t experience anything like Jim Crow racism. But I’ll get back to racism later.

When you are nurtured to be “special”, your self-esteem and ego are strengthened.  That’s the whole point, isn’t. He was raised to be special, to have that sense of self-importance, to aspire for greatness.

There is a curious comment he makes in “Dreams..”. His mother was lecturing him about him becoming “A good-time Charlie”, that he could get to any school in the country. He writes…

“I looked at her sitting there, so earnest, so certain of her son’s destiny…I suddenly felt like puncturing that certainty of hers, letting her know that her experiment with me had failed.”

I have no answers as to the meaning of that sentence. I just find it interesting.

There have being comments about Obama having expressed at 10 years old his desire to be president. He has not denied this, but says he doesn’t remember.

“Because it makes me feel important. Because I like the applause.”

Obama gets his first involvement with radical Black politics at Occidental College in Los Angeles. There he discovers the power of words, that he likes public speaking, and that “I have no business speaking for black folks”.

“I noticed that people had begun to listen to my opinions. It was a discovery that made me hungry for words.”

And reminiscing about his first public speech ever, for a student’s rally, at his Los Angeles college, against racism in Soweto, he says: “…I really wanted to stay up there, to hear my voice bouncing off the crowd and returning back to me in applause. I had so much left to say.” (All quotes from Dreams of My Father)

“…and test my commitment.”

Then, as a young adult, he is considering his racial loyalties.

“…so wrapped up had i been in my own PERCEIVED injuries, so eager was i to escape the IMAGINED traps that white authority had set for me…Except now I was hearing the same thing from black people I respected, people with more EXCUSES for BITTERNESS than I might ever claim for myself.”

“And if I had come to understand myself as a black American…that understanding remained unanchored to place…What I needed was a community…A place where I could put down stakes and test my commitments.”

From the above one can see that he feels he doesn’t share mainland African Americans’ image of themselves. This point is repeated by him in different parts of the book and is in his conclusion, as stated in the preface to the 2004 edition, which will be quoted later.

“That was my idea of organizing.”

After he had been living in NYC for a while, just before moving to Chicago, he had this dream which images clarified to him what his idea of organizing was:

“They told me…that [Black] communities had to be created,…this community I imagined was still in the making…I believed that it might, over time, admit the uniqueness of my life. That was my idea of organizing. It was a promise of redemption.”

The Redemptive power of community organizing

His reasons for getting involved in ‘community organizing’ were based on self interest, to be accepted, not as a ‘typical’ AA but as a unique Black man. He wanted to be redeemed, but from what? What were his sins? That he doesn’t relate to AAs, that he doesn’t identify as one, that he doesn’t speak to them or for them; for these feelings he was seeking forgiveness and redemption  in the job of organizing the Black “community”.

Or at least that’s what he says in Dreams. There are other reasons why he got involved in the Chicago movement. We’ll see them later.

“Those are a few of my favorite things” – Julie Andrews

When he started his job as community organizer in Chicago, he named these as the things that attracted him to the job:

“Issues, action, power, self-interest. I liked these concepts. They bespoke a certain hardheadedness, a worldly lack of sentiment; politics, not religion.”

Of course, we are all familiar with his preaching-oratorical style of today, his message wrapped with religious signifier. That’s a big departure from the above quote, from “not religion”.

Early on-the-job burnout or Always Dissatisfied

Less than two years on the job he started to feel stressed out from the job.

“I would momentarily forget where I was, my thoughts a numbed reflection of the silence. Marty suggested that I take more time off, build a life for myself away from the job. Without some personal support outside the work, an organizer lost perspective and could quickly burn out. There was something to what he said, for it was true that the people I met on the job were generally much older than me, WITH A SET OF CONCERNS AND DEMANDS THAT CREATED BARRIERS TO FRIENDSHIP.”

The above quote is relevant to his ability to work as POTUS. He is burned out faster than the average organizer, in less than two years. Then he considers the people he’s supposed to be organizing as demanding, he could not relate to their “concerns”, and found them to be unfriendly, unlikable, “a barrier to friendship”.

These are ‘his’ Black folks he is talking about, the very poor and uneducated among them.  That paragraph has more meaning than any one would admit. We can chose to ignore it or we can chose to look at it closely. That’s the choice America has to make.

He eventually leaves the job and goes to Harvard to get his law degree.

He sums up the outcome from his search for “redemption”, the reason that brought him to Chicago to work as an organizer, with these words from the 2004 preface to Dreams:

“I can’t even hold up my experience as being somehow representative of the black American experience…”

“…learning to accept that particular truth – that I can embrace my black brothers and sisters, whether in this country or Africa, and affirm a common destiny without pretending to speak to, or for, all our various struggles – is part of what this book is about.”

He went to the Black community and came out believing that he has not much in common with them, that he can’t even speak to or for them. That explains why he never talks about the “black experience” in public, unless it is to chastise them, as in his Father’s Day speech.

Deconstructing Obama Part 2: Obama Searching for Greatness

The Harvard Experience

Obama entered, in his first year, the competition for the job of editor of Harvard University’s law review Journal,

” …a ticket to a high-powered legal or academic career…There was also a highly secretive process by which a few students were chosen based at least in part on race”. [A Series of Fortunate Events, Wash.Post, Aug.12,2007]

That’s cool, that shows ambition. And the Harvard campus was buzzing at that time over racial issues such as affirmative action, with students demands to have the post of editor of the law journal filled with a minority student. He lucked in. How did he convinced the selecting team to elect him is not known, but his ability to charm a country is known, making it easy to  imagine how he did it.

According to Christopher Edely, Jr., one of his professors at Harvard Law School, “He was almost freakishly self-possesed and centered…it’s conspicuous, it draws attention to itself. He doesn’t strive for an Everyman quality: he is relaxed but never chummy, gracious rather than familiar.” [The Conciliator, The New Yorker, 5/7/2007]

In most of the research done about his Harvard years, there is a persistent line of liberal students complaining about Obama’s close relation  with conservative groups in the university. He was chummy with Federalist Society Members, a conservative group. By creating ‘consensus’ with them he managed to get elected to the journal.  “Obama rewarded the conservatives by appointing several to the masthead of the law review.”[Across the Divide, Newsweek.com Aug. 15/07]

Then there are the complains that he failed to hire Blacks for the journal. But mostly, there is a persistence of comments about his ability to NOT commit to any one political view.

Do you see a pattern there?

Next: Pushing Through and The Charismatic Leader

The Perfect Storm or How Obama is Going to wreck this Country

Barack Obama is seen from extreme point of views by many political commentators who oppose him: he is either an arch liberal, a communist trying to infiltrate our capitalist government, or a sell out to corporate America. Both sides present as proof his voting record at state and U.S. senates.

Both sides are correct.

The reality is that most members of the radical left (Marxists/socialists, Blacks – separatist or not, NOI, labor movement) and many big corporations are in love with BO, and I mean in love.

You are the Sunshine of My Life…

This is Rupert Murdoch gushing over Obama:

“He is a rock star. It’s fantastic. I love what he is saying about education. I don’t think he will win Florida…..but he will win in Ohio and the election. I am anxious to meet him. I want to see if he will walk the walk.” [the Huffington Post]

You are the Mole of My Life…

Frank Chapman, CPUSA supporter, hailing BO’s victory in the Iowa caucuses:

“Obama’s victory was more than a progressive move; it was a dialectical leap ushering in a qualitatively new era of struggle. Marx once compared revolutionary struggle with the work of the mole, who sometimes burrows so far beneath the ground that he leaves no trace of his movement on the surface. This is the old revolutionary “mole”, not only showing his traces on the surface but also breaking through.”

And Joel Wendland writes for Politicalaffairs.net, a Marxist online magazine:

“I am buoyed in my hopes for interpreting Sen. Obama’s words in the most positive way, not by his oratory or his voting record…but by a seemingly minor thing as the title of his most recent book: The Audacity of Hope…Whose side does that sentiment put the junior Senator from Illinois on? Think about it.”

There can be nothing more pathetic than the sight of  the radical left drinking the Obama Kool-Aid. They think he is a modern Lenin (minus the working class ideology, I must add):

“Obama …can answer Lenin’s question, What is to be Done? with the answer that FDR gave when he rallied American workers to win the battle of production during WWII, “It Can be Done because It Must be Done.” [Norman Markowitz, CPUSA, in Political Affairs]

When in the past have Marxists and big corporations agreed so passionately over a presidential candidate?

Barack Obama, the Chameleon

The truth is: Barack Obama is neither a commie nor a capitalist, he is both and none of those things at the same time. He is Barack Obama, a man in search of political power.  BO must be seen within the context of his unfinished search for racial and class self-identity, his constant political permutations, his ability to adapt to the environment and assume the characteristics of that environment. He is not a “mole”, he is a chameleon (ergo, his call for “change”).

Just as his life has been an unfinished struggle to come to terms with his bi-racial reality, his political commitments suffer from the same ‘split personality’. That explains, in part, the bizarre confluence on him of irreconcilable political enemies. He flirts with both the right and the leftists. It is not that he is doing it to win the elections and then become the ‘real progressive’ he is supposed to be, as some bloggers suggest. This is a man with a mission: power, power at any cost.

How did he managed to get so many people hooked in this “change” fantasy?

“BE AS VAGUE AS POSSIBLE”

BO said in an interview with Cathleen Falsani (Chicago Sun-Times, 4/2004) that “The nature of politics, you want to have everybody like you and project the best possible traits onto you. Often that’s by being as vague as possible, or appealing to the lowest common denominators. The more specific and detailed you are on issues as personal and fundamental as your faith the more potentially dangerous it is”

That’s his best tool. He is a blank screen on which you can project your dreams. He provides only a few coded words to guide you and, dutifully, you fill in the blanks with your own dreams. It is a propaganda technique, he sells you his own brand: himself. His charisma is the hook.

In terms of commitments towards Blacks, he made it clear in his fiction book “Dreams of My Father” that he has none with them. That book is his statement to White America of why they shouldn’t fear him. It is an account about how he went to the Black community to find out if he shared a Black experience with them and came out realizing he didn’t.

From the preface to the 2004 edition:

“I can’t even hold up my experience as being somehow representative of the black American experience…”

“learning to accept that particular truth – that I can embrace my black brothers and sisters, whether in this country of Africa, and affirm a common destiny without pretending to speak to, or for, all our various struggles – is part of what this book is about.”

And about commitments:

“Whatever my father might say, I knew it was too late to ever truly claim Africa as my home. And if I had come to understand myself as a black American…that understanding remained  unanchored to place…What I needed was a community…A place where I could put down stakes and test my commitments.”

Some people argue that he failed that test.

How did he test his commitments?

“That Was My Idea of Organizing”

Referring to “images” about the civil rights movement in his dreams:

“Communities [Black] had to be created…This community I imagined was still in the making...I believed that it might, over time, admit the uniqueness of my life. That was my idea of organizing. It was a promise of redemption.”
His idea of organizing was based on selfish needs, a need to be accepted as unique, not as your “typical” African American.

His conclusion about Black Nationalism:

“I wondered whether, for now at least, a black politics that suppressed rage toward whites generally, or one that failed to elevate race loyalty above all else, was a politics inadequate to the task.”
This is his current approach, a race-neutral campaign.

No need to fear him, White America:

“…notions of purity-of race or culture-could no more serve as the basis for the typical black American’s self-esteem than it could for mine. Our sense of wholeness would have to arise from something more fine than the bloodlines we’d inherited.”[He doesn't say what that might be.]

In Harvard he shows the effects of that conclusion, as his peer comments indicates:

“Some of Obama’s peers question the motives of this second-year law student. They find it puzzling that despite Obama’s openly progressive views on social issues, he has also won support from staunch conservatives…criticism from fellow black students for being too conciliatory toward conservatives and not choosing more blacks to other top positions on the law review.”

And to boot, his idea of what Americans are justify his lack of commitment to any ‘ideology’. In “Dreams…”:

“…vaguely liberal, although their [his grandparents] ideas would never congeal into anything like a firm ideology; in this, too, they were American.”

These are not minutiae, these are personality traits that bear, not only on how we perceive him, but on how trust worthy he may be as a politician running to be our Chief Executive making decisions about life and death for the American citizens.

The Seeds of Self-Destruction

Obama’s “coalition of the willing”, as I dub this coalition of extreme right and left wing political elements supporting his bid for POTUS, contains in itself the seeds of self-destruction. Ask yourself, How can the interests of deep pocket capitalists coincide with that of the Marxist left, the black nationalist and separatists, the NOI (Nation Of Islam), and the “organized working class” actively supporting BO? Or this equally interesting question: why do the leftists perceive BO as their ally despite his frequent flip flopping on economical and war issues?

Did BO’s message of hope made Wall Street speculators grow a heart? Contrary to the Marxists fools supporting him, capitalists are NOT attracted to BO’s message of “hope”. Only Obamabots and the Marxist fools believe this Pied Piper’s song of hope.
The only thing that speaks to big businesses is money and power. And Obama, as a member of The Hamilton Project, has guaranteed big businesses that he is there to protect free trade and their interests.

And the left, well, they too are expecting something in return for their support, for example:

“Just wait until we have a Labor Department under President Obama.” shouted Congresswoman Jan Schakwosky in a labor movement’s rally in Chicago in 2007. [New Zeal.com]

“Obama is benefiting from a landslide of black support, built on social credit being extended on campaign promises. The Black Community is like the loving, committed spouse, willing to ignore immediate needs so their partner can conquer the world. But at the end of the day, something must be delivered.” [http://brothers.yourblackworld.com/2008/02/tavis-smileys-haterology-on-barack.html]

What can BO deliver to them?

BO: “Look, I am A Pro-Growth, Free-Market Guy. And I Always Have been. I Love The Market” (cnnmoney.com)

And to prove it, he became a member of the Hamilton Project (THP). But why would the members of THP consider BO as one of them, knowing that he has being involved with leftist up to this day? Because he is part of the Democratic Leadership Council.

If the Chicago organizing movement is cloaked with Marxism, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) is the nemesis of Marxism: they are clearly the radical capitalist’s ideological branch of the party and at the same time their practical tool within the “democratic” party.

BO denies being a member of the DLC, but he can’t deny being  a member of The Hamilton Project. He was invited to be a member of this elitist group, and he accepted:

“But when Roger originally called to invite me, not only to this forum but to invite me to engage in this project, I couldn’t help but think that this was the sort of breath of fresh air that I think this town needs.” That was him addressing The Brookings Institution on April, 2006.

The Hamilton Project was formed  in 2006 by the DLC “to blunt the political demands for protectionism…and the group was willing to take on entrenched Democratic interests such as teaching unions.”[sirotablog]
Politico.com says that the project was created “for softening the impact of globalization without interfering with international trade…with an eye to fiscal austerity and balanced budget”.

A Tiny Revolution.com described them more appropriately: “The members of the advisory council of The Hamilton Project include numerous investment bankers. They’re people who should naturally be Republicans, but just can’t bear having to hang out with Pat Robertson”.

Robert Rubin, one of the main creators of the Hamilton Project, “demanded during the debate over CAFTA that congressional Democrats back off their efforts to include labor, human rights and environmental protections in the pact. [Lou Dobbs, CNN, 3/2005]

It doesn’t get more capitalist than that.

In the words of Politico: “Oh sure, the group [THP] claims it is going to look at critical issues like income inequality – but you can be sure they will look at the issue without looking at issues like “free” trade that are fueling that inequality. Because make no mistake about it – this move today [the creation of the HP] is nothing more than the beginning of a frontal attack by Corporate America on the progressive movement, using the Democratic Party as an all-too-transparent cloak of legitimacy”.

An BO is a willing partner of that plan.

How to Deal with the “Losers”

So what happened? When did BO lost that love for “organizing”, which “teaches as nothing else does the beauty and strength of everyday people”, [BO in “Why Organize“, Illinois Issues] and became in love with the market? When did he stopped seeing the lives of his people as “stories and songs of dashed hopes and powers of endurance” and started seeing them as “losers”?

“Bob and I have had a running debate now for about a year about how do we, in fact, deal with the losers in a globalized economy.” [Sen. Obama at the Brookings Inst conference]

“This is Not a Bloodless process”

BO said in his address to the Brookings Institute mentioned before that the people affected by globalized economy “…believe that this may be the first generation in which their children do worse than they do. Some of that, then, will end up manifesting itself in the sort of nativist sentiment, protectionism, and anti-immigration sentiment that we are debating here in Washington. This is not a bloodless process”.

Funny how BO talks to the public about “unity” and hope and change, but to the big corps he talks about blood and class war.

BO knows that the Hamilton Project policies are going to hurt the “typical” American worker (to use his favorite adverb), he knows that these policies are going to cause violent response from the “losers” in the globalized economy.

BO chose his side in the free trade vs. workers fight: he chose corporate America’s side.

The Perfect Storm

If BO wins the elections, those irreconcilable political forces in his coalition will clash in their effort to control and influence his administration, unleashing a political storm as this country hasn’t seen since the Depression era. The only ones that can take BO to the WH are the big corporations, with their money, their control of the media, the courts and the electoral process. That’s why BO is constantly changing positions, shedding his radical past little by little in order to satisfy his big corporate donors. He knows who are the only ones that can deliver him the goods; and if he wins, a bunch of people in the coalition will have to be cut loose, can you guess who?

But the leftists will not sit down while BO distributes the seats of power to the big corporations. They have worked with him, supported him, lifted him to the senate (state and U.S. senate) and shared in the corruption he was engaged in with Rezko. The corruption that RezkoWatch.com has documented shows that the Chicago leftists are involved in that power and money grabbing frenzy going on over there for decades as much as any right wing pol.

The stormy winds are already starting to blow as the election campaign advances. For starters, on this past June 21, the Washington Post reported that there has been an increase in racist and white supremacy activity; meanwhile the socialist’s Workers World newspaper is talking about standing “ready to defend the Obama campaign against racist attacks and backroom deals to deprive Black people of the democratic right to representation”.

And some of those in the left who supported Obama are starting to wake up from the dream. For instance, www.brother.yourblackbrother.com published an article, after the one mentioned before, called “Barack Obama: the Kunta Kinte of 2008” blasting him for throwing every Black leader under the bus. And Obama’s speech on father’s day didn’t help much, either.

With a Barack Obama presidency, expect only the exacerbation of political divisions, of polarization between class, color and gender interests here in America and worldwide.

BO is the false prophet delivering us the bad gospel.

Part 2:Obama and The Hamilton Project

PART 2: THE HAMILTON PROJECT

“Do deficits matter? They are relevant with respect to interest rates.”

That’s the question with which Robert Rubin opened his presentation on 4/5/2006, the day of the inauguration of The Hamilton Project. That is the question that prompted him to create this project. The Hamilton Project is an organization focused on the interests of the market owners, not on the people of the U.S.A. Capitalism is not interested in ‘patriotism’ unless it has a positive influence on the market.

Barack Obama (BO) is a member of  THP. That defines his class interests and makes him automatically an enemy of the working class. His economical policies are geared to facilitate the smooth development of the global market without the demands of labor and environmental interest groups. And the cost of the change he talks about is going to be laid on the workers’ back. His constants flip-flops always turn against the interests of the working class. These assertions will be elaborated later in this post. For the moment, lets take a look at THP.

The following is a description of the purpose and aims of The Hamilton Project according to its main creator, Robert Rubin. This was taken from THP website. This was their presentation on the inauguration day. [The Brookings Institution: Restoring America’s Promise of Opportunity, Prosperity And Growth, 4/5/06]

The Hamilton Project’s vision:

1. “…a dynamic and robust market-based economy of the U.S…economic activity should be organized around markets”.
Translation: The economic activity of a country should not be based on the interests of the people but on the interest of the market.

2. The function of the government is to provide “the   requisites for economic success”.
Translation: government is a tool of the market, not of the people.

The broad aims:

“Set forth a policy path…at a time when the US is at a true economical crossroads.”
Translation: THP’s work is to be enacted as policy for the next administration. So what BO says in his speeches about the economy should be carefully considered and referenced with THP’s publications, because it will be enacted as economical policy.

Mr. Rubin calls the attention to the Center for American Progress as another group that has “many similarities in terms of our points of view…“ and to the book The Pro-Growth Progressive by Gene Sperling. Reading this book will give you a glimpse of which ideological line THP will follow, since Mr. Rubin used it for his proposals.

Challenges to our country in the global economy:

1. Gradual erosion of our competitive position
2. Adverse effects on our bond markets and currency markets.
Translation: the challenges that America faces are defined as market oriented only, not those faced by the people who suffer the impact of that market. When the Hamilton Project people talk about “our” country they are referring to themselves, the owners of the market, the “free traders”, not the people of this country. Nowhere in this document is a reference to improving the salary or working conditions of the workers “of our country.” Nothing. Only proposals to keep the working class functioning with minimal investment of money from profits derived from the global market.

Origins of these challenges:

These challenges are caused by “Changes in the global economy…”
A) the spread of market-based economics
B) technology
C) globalization

BO‘s “Change” to the rescue:

“It is our view that current policy is on the wrong track on almost every front with respect to meeting the challenges that must be met.”
Translation: they (THP) are calling for “change”. That is the kind of “change” to which BO constantly refers. It is a change to make the market more profitable to the owners of that market. The changes they will impose to the lives of the working class are like the changes in medieval times: to keep the serfs living a little longer to squeeze more blood out of them.

What are the objectives of The Hamilton Project:

1. “Strong growth…”
2. “broad-based participation in growth…”
3. “increased security.”

“Those are values, but they are mutually reinforcing…of the economic growth.” Notice that “broad-based participation in growth” does not mean broad-based sharing in the profits of that growth.

Role of the government:

“Underlying all of this is a strong belief in market-based economics as a central organizing principle of economic activity, but…there is an indispensable role for the government in achieving economic success.
The challenges our country faces:

1. Reestablishing sound fiscal conditions. The present problems in that area are:
A) fiscal imbalances
B) zero personal savings rate
C) high levels of personal debt
D) huge current account deficits – caused by fiscal deficits.
2. Investing in and addressing critical shortfalls in the many requisites for economic success that markets, by their very nature, will not meet and that only government can provide:
…from education infrastructure to energy policy, health care to basic research, and so much else.”

Translation: Clearly, the role of the government is to work in the interest of the market, fill the gaps that they, “by their very nature“, leave empty, i.e providing for the working class that they exploit. They express these goals of the market and the purpose of government in a clear fashion, there is no evil purpose on my interpretation: the market controls the government’s policies in their interest, period.

How is THP a different construct:

“This whole construct [THP] represents dramatic change from the theories that are driving current economic policy…For example, [current] policy efforts are driven by where you start, by your strategic framework. The Hamilton Project’s diametrically different strategic framework would drive policymakers to undertake the enormous task that is involved in putting together policy proposals to address the very substantial issues that our nation today faces…We will be putting forth…policy proposals that are designed to help this process.”
Translation: they will be directing our politicians to enact the policies of THP which will address the interests of the owners of the market. Policies about education, transportation, energy, etc., will be shaped to address the “issues and challenges of this country” as defined by THP.

These are just a few of their favorite things.

More to be discuss on my next post.

Part 1:Obama and The Hamilton Project: he wants workers who lose their jobs to be “less resistant to change “

Here you will read about Obama’s address to The Hamilton Project on inauguration day and an excerpt from an interview with the WSJ where he mentions plans for keeping the work force “more mobile and less resistant to change”; and about the goals of the Hamilton Project as described by Robert Rubin, its creator.  [Pardon any grammatical errors.]

PART 1: Barack Obama Addresses The Hamilton Project:

On the day of the inauguration of The Hamilton Project (THP), BO said the following:

First he opened with a “joke” at the expense of those who demand that the Democratic party stop catering to big corporations at the expense of the working people. Referring to the big business representatives in the audience, he said that this country owes a debt to them because…
“…they helped put us on a path of prosperity that we are still enjoying, despite the best efforts of some.” (Laughter)

Good to know that he is enjoying that prosperity and can laugh at the million of us who are getting poorer and poorer by the minute.

Obama  is a member of THP from the very beginning:

“…Roger…invited me…to engage in this project. I couldn’t help but think that this was the sort of breath of fresh air that I think this town needs.”

Obama is “on the left”, but no need to panic:

“…both sides of the political spectrum have tended to cling to outdated policies…and tired ideologies…For those on the left, and I include myself in that category…”

FDR under the Obama express bus:

Obama then proceeded to criticize FDR’s policies and to praise the policies of the market owners in this administration and to give them his blessing and forgiveness:

The Messiah Forgives You and Blesses you:

“I think there is a market. I think there is a demand for solutions that are practical, based on facts, that are tested, and that require us to think in new ways…A lot of people here today have done that in the administration…they have failed occasionally and have acknowledge those failures and adjusted their views. I think that is the kind of experimentation and attitude that all our policy making has to pursue.”

Well, well, well. He is on the left…sure, sure, but is defending the big corporations. This administration failed occasionally in their economic policies? And when did they acknowledged those failures? When have they adjusted their views?

Obama admits he is a thief, of sorts:

“You have already drawn some of he brightest minds from academia and policy circles…many of them I have stolen ideas from liberally…”

His economic policy ideas are drawn from hardened capitalists. Good for you, Exxon et al.

Obama the Free-Trader and the Losers:

“…most of us in this room are strong free traders…”

“…how do we, in fact, deal with the losers in a globalized economy.”

Well, now it happens that those working Americans that sacrificed their twenty bucks for the “hopefund” for him to defeat Hillary are losers. What happened with the kind loving words he uses in public speeches? When have you heard him referring to his followers as losers? Never. But he calls them so in front of the greedy traders. It’s not a simple word for bettors; loser is a word used in Wall Street and our government to refer to the little people who have to suffer the consequences of traders’ bets on the market.

Not only he thinks we are losers, he thinks there’s going to be blood spilled in the near future:

“This Is Not a Bloodless Process”:

“…there are real consequences to the work that is being done here. There are people …who have seen their jobs eliminated…Some of that, then will end up manifesting itself in the sort of nativist sentiment, protectionism, and anti-immigration sentiment…This is not a bloodless process.”

Of course you NEVER hear him talking in public about blood to be spilled in the war between the classes. That would wake you up, and he needs you sound asleep. He clearly has two sets of speeches, one for his pals, the free traders, and one for the rest of us, the losers.

Keeping the Workforce Mobile: It’s ok to lose jobs:

Obama is a member of The Hamilton Project. These people believe that “rising food prices reduces poverty” (Brookings Inst., Raj M Desai, 7/4/08)  and that high health insurance cost is good for America, and that Wal-Mart is good for American consumers at the cost of exploiting the company’s workers. He spoke to the WSJ on 6/17/08 about reducing corporate tax rates, and said that…

“If we’ve got a winner-take all economy…then our tax policies can help cushion the blow [to the losers] through providing health care. So if people lose their jobs they’re not losing their health care as well. That actually makes for a more flexible work force that makes workers more mobile and less resistant to change.”

Of course people are going to lose their jobs! The changes he talks about are the changes the market owners have in mind which evidently imply a work force that loses jobs but adapt. He is not going to promote the creation of more jobs, he just wants us to be “more mobile” and “less resistant to change”. He says he is advocating a “winner-take all economy” and provides a patch up solution for the ‘inconveniences ‘ of that type of economy: not better salaries and working conditions, but some type of ‘portable‘ health care you can carry with you to your next low paying job, if you are lucky to get one at McDonalds, for example.

Obama is a free trader with all the implications that title carries with it. He is not interested in the little people’s fate. He has being shedding all of his ‘leftist’ ideas and moving in with the free traders. It’s what happens when politicians get closer and closer to power: they get corrupted and all of their noble ideas are thrown under the bus. Just follow Obama’s flip flops if you don’t believe me.

Part 2 will describe the economical ideas of the free traders in the Hamilton Project.