Obama Inc.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

Obama Speaks: "Oh Great White Masters, You Just Haven’t Been Asked to Help America"
by Paul Street
December 11, 2007

I believe all of you are as open and willing to listen as anyone else in America. I believe you care about this country and the future we are leaving to the next generation. I believe your work to be a part of building a stronger, more vibrant, and more just America. I think the problem is that no one has asked you to play a part in the project of American renewal.

- Barack Obama, speaking to the masters of “American” finance capitalism at the headquarters of NASDAQ, Wall Street, New York City, September 17, 2007



For years I labored with the idea of reforming the existing institutions of society, a little change here, a little change there. Now I feel quite differently. I think you’ve got to have a reconstruction of the entire society...a radical redistribution of political and economic power.

- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., May 1967

Obama is deeply conservative.

- Larissa MacFarquhar, “The Conciliator,” The New Yorker. May 2007.

“STANDING UP” AND KNEELING DOWN

Maybe it’s because Barack Obama and his handlers are sensitive to the need to reassure ruling forces that the “first black United States president” will not challenge existing hierarchies. Maybe it’s because he’s bought and paid for by big money (1). Or maybe it’s because he believes in his “deeply conservative” (2) heart that good Americans show deep respect for their socioeconomic masters. Whatever the explanation, I’ve never seen an avowedly “progressive” political candidate more eager than Obama to display his deep willingness to obsequiously kiss the ring of dominant political and economic authority. For someone who is marching across Iowa and New Hampshire calling working- and middle-class American to “get fired up” and “stand up” for democracy (and for him), Obama sure likes to spend a lot of time groveling before supposed white and upper-class superiors.

......

“OUR FREE MARKET SYSTEM”

Equally sickening is Obama’s eagerness to praise the glories of the capitalist system that produces grotesque fortunes at the top of America’s “inherited social order” while tens of millions of Americans go without adequate food, clothing, shelter, and health insurance. One key question addressed in The Audacity of Hope comes straight out of the neoconservative world view Obama was so good at accommodating at Harvard Law: what makes the United States so “exceptionally” wonderful? Obama finds part of the answer to this nationally narcissistic query in the wise and benevolent leadership of the nation’s great white Founders and subsequent supposedly sensible leaders like Harry “Hiroshima” Truman and JFK. But Obama roots the excellence and eminence of America in something deeper than the magnificence of its political elite. He also grounds the United States’ supposed distinctive impressiveness in its “free market” capitalist system and “business culture.”

....

Obama writes about how fortunate poor residents of the United States are compared to wretched “Third World” masses. In the summer of 1966, by contrast, King was most struck by the greater poverty that existed in the U.S compared to other First World states. “Maybe something is wrong with our economic system,” King told an interviewer, observing that (in Garrow’s words) “in democratic socialist societies such as Sweden there was no poverty, no unemployment and no slums” (Garrow 1986, p. 568).

There’s something more than a small empirical contrast between the international poverty comparison made by King the one made by Obama forty years later. The dissimilarity reflects one aspect of the difference between a radical progressive who valued truth and justice over personal advancement (King) and a corporate-imperial faux progressive (Obama) who distorts truth and justice to achieve the power he simultaneously worships and craves.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=90&ItemID=14481

[Bitwit1234]

1. Wall Street???? And they are going to listen to

an American Idol contestant?????????

[Orwellian_Ghost]

2. The birth of a Washington machine

....

Before he addressed the 2004 convention, Obama was virtually unknown nationally, and even in Illinois his was far from a household name. Just four years earlier, he had been defeated by a significant margin when he tried to unseat Chicago-area Congressman Bobby Rush in the Democratic primary. But following the speech, which was universally hailed—even the National Review called it “simple and powerful,” conceding that it had deserved its “rapturous critical reception”—Obama became a national celebrity. Less than two months later, he won election to the Senate with 70 percent of the vote.

If the speech was his debut to the wider American public, he had already undergone an equally successful but much quieter audition with Democratic Party leaders and fund-raisers, without whose support he would surely never have been chosen for such a prominent role at the convention. The early, if not overwhelming, favorite to be the Senate nominee from Illinois had been Dan Hynes, the state comptroller, who had twice won statewide office and had the support of the state’s Democratic machine and labor unions. But by September 2003, six months before the primary, Obama was winning support from not only African Americans but also Chicago’s “Lakefront Liberals” and other progressives. He was still largely unknown in Washington circles, but that changed the following month when Vernon Jordan, the well-known power broker and corporate boardmember who chaired Bill Clinton’s presidential transition team after the 1992 election, placed calls to roughly twenty of his friends and invited them to a fund-raiser at his home.

That event marked his entry into a well-established Washington ritual—the gauntlet of fund-raising parties and meet-and-greets through which potential stars are vetted by fixers, donors, and lobbyists. Gregory Craig, an attorney with Williams & Connolly and a longtime Democratic figure who, as special counsel in the White House, had coordinated Bill Clinton’s impeachment defense, met Obama that night. “I liked his sense of humor and the confidence he had discussing national issues, especially as a state senator,” Craig recalled of the event. “You felt excited to be in his presence.” Another thing that Craig liked about Obama was that he’s not seen as a “polarizer,” like such traditional African-American leaders as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. “He gets respect from his adversaries because of the way he treats them,” Craig said. “He doesn’t try to be all things to all people, but he has a way of taking positions you don’t like without making you angry.”

Word about Obama spread through Washington’s blue-chip law firms, lobby shops, and political offices, and this accelerated after his win in the March primary. Mike Williams, vice president for legislative affairs at The Bond Market Association and a member of an African-American lobbying association, had been following the race in Illinois and was introduced to Obama through acquaintances in Washington who had known him at Harvard Law School. “We represent Wall Street firms,” Williams said in recounting his first conversation with Obama. “A big issue for us since 2000 is predatory lending. He worked on that issue in Illinois; he was the lead sponsor of a bill there. I talked to him about that. He had a different position from ours. There’s a perception out there that the Democrats are anti-business, and I talked to him about that directly. I said, There’s a perception that you’re coming at this from the angle of consumers. He was forthright, which I appreciated. He said, I tried to broker the best deal I could.” Williams still had his differences with Obama, but the conversation convinced him that the two could work together. “He’s not a political novice and he’s smart enough not to say things cast in stone, but you can have a conversation with him,” Williams said. “He’s a straight shooter. As a lobbyist, that’s something you value. You don’t need a yes every time, but you want to be able to count the votes. That’s what we do.”

.....

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2006/11/0081275

[frazzled]

3. Gee, at least he didn't WORK for Wall Street

Get paid half a million from Fortress and then reap another $167,000 back in donations from it. Oh yeah, and he has $16 million of his money invested in it. And, oh yeah, while he worked there they were expanding their interests in the sub-prime predatory lending business, buying Green Tree, etc., which he claimed to be ignorant of (not a very good manager, eh?). And, oh yes, the off-shore tax breaks they had, which are increasing his little nest egg--things he pretends to rail against on the campaign trail.

But it's okay, because he says "corporatist" and "lah" a lot, and that's what counts. Doesn't matter what you do, just pretend and feed the folks the red-meat lingo they want to hear.

In case you are unaware of who this real Wall Street candidate is, his name begins with John and ends with Edwards.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

4. Oh I know

Who you gonna trust?

The hurdles one has to go through to get to the point of being a mega-celebrity political candidate involve selling out and cashing in all through the show.