THE REAL OBAMA

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

MONEY, ECONOMY & LABOR

AUDACITY OF HOPE - "Conservatives and Bill Clinton were right about
welfare"

PAUL STREET - He opposed an amendment to the Bankruptcy Act that would
have capped credit card interest rates at 30 percent.

Obama voted for a business-friendly "tort reform" bill that rolls back
working peoples' ability to obtain reasonable redress and compensation
from misbehaving corporations

THE NATION - John Edwards and Hillary Clinton are pledging substantial
federal resources to stabilize the mortgage market and intervene on
behalf of borrowers. Barack Obama's proposal is tepid by comparison,
short on aggressive government involvement and infused with conservative
rhetoric about fiscal responsibility. As he has done on domestic issues
like healthcare, job creation and energy policy, Obama is staking out a
position to the right of not only populist Edwards but Clinton as well.
. . Though he has been a proponent of mortgage fraud legislation in the
Senate, he has remained silent on further financial regulations. And
much like his broader economic stimulus package, Obama's foreclosure
plan mostly avoids direct government spending in favor of a tax credit
for homeowners, which amounts to about $500 on average, beyond which
only certain borrowers would be eligible for help from an additional
fund. . .

Obama's disappointing foreclosure plan stems from the centrist politics
of his three chief economic advisers and his campaign's ties to Wall
Street institutions opposed to increased financial regulation. David
Cutler and Jeffrey Liebman are both Harvard economists who served in the
Clinton Administration, and they work on market-oriented solutions to
social welfare issues. Cutler advocates improving healthcare through
financial incentives; Liebman, the partial privatization of Social
Security.

Austan Goolsbee, an economist at the University of Chicago who calls
himself a "centrist market economist," has been most directly involved
with crafting Obama's subprime agenda. . . Robert Pollin, an economist
at the University of Massachussets, believes "these three advisers
generally reflect Obama's very moderate economic program, similar to
Clintonism." Wall Street apparently has come to a similar conclusion.
Obama had received nearly $10 million in contributions from the finance,
insurance and real estate sector through October, and he's second among
presidential candidates of either party in money raised from commercial
banks, trailing only Clinton. Goldman Sachs, which made $6 billion from
devalued mortgage securities in the first nine months of 2007, is
Obama's top contributor. When asked if Obama would hold these financial
institutions accountable for losses incurred by homeowners and
investors, his campaign refused to comment.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080211/fraser

PAUL STREET - Obama has lent his support to the aptly named Hamilton
Project, formed by corporate-neoliberal Citigroup chair Robert Rubin and
"other Wall Street Democrats" to counter populist rebellion against
corporatist tendencies within the Democratic Party.

IDEOLOGY

PAUL STREET - Obama was recently hailed as a "Hamiltonian" believer in
"limited government" and "free trade" by Republican New York Times
columnist David Brooks, who praises Obama for having "a mentality formed
by globalization, not the SDS." . . .

POLITICS

PAUL STREET - He had to be shamed off the "New Democrat Directory" of
the corporate-right Democratic Leadership Council by the popular left
black Internet magazine Black Commentator.

He lent his politically influential and financially rewarding assistance
to neoconservative pro-war Senator Joe Lieberman's struggle against the
Democratic antiwar insurgent Ned Lamont. Obama has supported other
"mainstream Democrats" fighting antiwar progressives in primary races

He criticized efforts to enact filibuster proceedings against
reactionary Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.

Obama "dismissively" referred-in a "tone laced with contempt"-to the
late progressive and populist U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone as "something
of a gadfly."

He opposed an amendment to the Bankruptcy Act that would have capped
credit card interest rates at 30 percent.

WASHINGTON TIMES - Barack Obama, the senatorial candidate of 2004, might
have a bone to pick with Barack Obama, the presidential candidate of
2008. Videotapes of debates and speeches that were obtained by The
Washington Times show that Mr. Obama took positions during his Senate
campaign on nearly a half-dozen issues ranging from the Cuba embargo to
health care for illegal aliens that conflict with statements that he has
made during his run for the White House.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Obama voted to make John Negroponte the National Intelligence Director. 


PAUL STREET - He voted for the appointment of the war criminal
Condaleeza Rice to Secretary of State.

He refuses to foreswear the use of first-strike nuclear weapons against
Iran. 

WASHINGTON TIMES - In 2004, Mr. Obama told an audience at Southern
Illinois University, "I think it's time for us to end the embargo with
Cuba. . . It's time for us to acknowledge that that particular policy
has failed." However, he stopped short of calling for an end to the
embargo in a Miami Herald op-ed in August. He said he would rely on
diplomacy, with a message that if a post-Fidel Castro government made
democratic changes, the U.S. "is prepared to take steps to normalize
relations and ease the embargo."

NEDRA PICKLER, ASSOCIATED PRESS - Democratic presidential candidate
Barack Obama said Wednesday that he would possibly send troops into
Pakistan to hunt down terrorists. . .

BUSH REGIME

AP- Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama laid out list of
political shortcomings he sees in the Bush administration but said he
opposes impeachment for either President George W. Bush or Vice
President Dick Cheney. . . "I think you reserve impeachment for grave,
grave breeches, and intentional breeches of the president's authority,"
he said.

HEALTH

PAUL STREET - Obama claims to oppose the introduction of single-payer
national health insurance on the grounds that such a widely supported
social-democratic change would lead to employment difficulties for
workers in the private insurance industry-at places like Kaiser and Blue
Cross Blue Shield. Does Obama support the American scourge of racially
disparate mass incarceration on the grounds that it provides work for
tens of thousands of prison guards?

WASHINGTON TIMES -  Mr. Obama told an AFL-CIO group in June 2003: "I
happen to be a proponent of a single-payer, universal health care plan."
But in a recent debate he said he has never endorsed such a plan.
"Senator Obama has always said that single-payer universal care is a
good idea because it would increase efficiency in the system, but the
problem is that it's not achievable," Mr. Vietor said.

CIVIL LIBERTIES

He voted to confirm Michael Chertoff as head of HSA

PAUL STREET - Obama voted to re-authorize the repressive PATRIOT Act.

He opposed Senator Russ Feingold's (D-WI) move to censure the Bush
administration after the president was found to have illegally
wiretapped U.S. citizens.

WASHINGTON TIMES -  In an October 2003 NAACP debate, Mr. Obama said he
would "vote to abolish" mandatory minimum sentences. "The mandatory
minimums take too much discretion away from judges," he said. Mr. Obama
now says on his web site that he would "immediately review sentences to
see where we can be smarter on crime and reduce the ineffective
warehousing of nonviolent drug offenders."

WHAT OTHERS SAY

WASHINGTON LOBBYIST - Big donors would not be helping out Obama if they
didn't see him as a 鈥榩layer'. . .  What's the dollar value of a
starry-eyed idealist?

ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT

PAUL STREET - Obama assiduously supported the ethanol-promoting
objectives of the Illinois-based firm Archer-Daniels Midland, which has
provided him with private jets on at least two occasions. He has also
defended the interests of Illinois' gigantic electrical firm Exelon,
America's leading nuclear plant operator and a company that has given
more than $74,000 to his campaigns.

NUCLEAR ENERGY

Obama voted for a nuclear energy bill that included money for bunker
buster bombs and full funding for Yucca Mountain.

DALLAS NEWS - Barack Obama says nuclear power should be explored as an
energy option. Hillary Rodham Clinton says she's "agnostic" on whether
more nuclear plants should be built. . . "They've gone from 'no' to
'yes, but,' and some even describe themselves as agnostics, and that's a
big improvement," said Derrick Freeman, senior director of legislative
programs for the Nuclear Energy Institute, which supports the nuclear
industry. . .

SOURCES OF FUNDING

PAUL STREET - His top career sponsors include Goldman Sachs, Exelon (a
leading Midwestern utility and the world's leading nuclear plant
operator), Soros Fund Management, J.P Morgan Chase & Co., a number of
leading corporate law and lobbying firms (including Kirkland & Ellis,
Skadden Arps, and Sidley Austin LLP), top Chicago investment interests
(including Henry Crown & Co and Aerial Capital Management) and the like.


HIS BOOK

PAUL STREET - Obama relates youthful discomfort with his college
roommates' "irresponsible" criticism of "capitalism" and then confesses
respect for Ronald Reagan's supposed success in embodying what Obama
calls "American's longing for order" (p. 31)

Obama commends "the need to raise money from economic elites to finance
elections" for "prevent[ing] Democrats...from straying too far from the
center" and for marginalizing "those within the Democratic Party who
tend toward zealotry" (p. 38) and "radical ideas"

Obama praises fellow centrist Senators John F. Kerry (D-MA) and Hilary
Clinton (D-NY) for "believing in maintaining the superiority of the U.S.
military" and embracing "the virtues of capitalism" (p. 38). He applauds
his "recognizably progressive" Third Way hero Bill Clinton for showing
that "markets and fiscal discipline" and "personal responsibility [are]
needed to combat poverty" (pp. 34-35). 

Obama contends that defense of New Deal and Great Society programs is
contrary to "the changing circumstances of globalization" (p.38).

Obama claims that the 1960s New Left expressed the same self-indulgent
"more absolutism" (pp. 26-33) that animated the New Right.

The American people, Obama argues, harbor only modest expectation of
their government (p.7), reflecting little concern (by Obama's account)
with traditional left goals of social justice and equality.

In Obama's brand of "progressivism," serious concern over the nation's
harsh disparities is consigned to leftist "cranks" and other assorted
"unreasonable zealots" 鈥?people walking in the "absolutist" footsteps
of Marx, the New Left, and (though Obama would never acknowledge this)
the democratic socialist Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Obama praises the United States' founders for "recognize[ing] that there
were seeds of anarchy in the idea of individual freedom, an intoxicating
danger in the idea of equality." If "everybody is truly free, without
the constraints of birth or rank and an inherited social order," Obama
asks, then "how can we ever hope to form a society that coheres?" (pp.
86-87)

The Bush-Cheney gang-bangers are "possessed," Obama says, "of the same
mix of virtues and vices, insecurities and long-buried injuries as the
rest of us."

Obama roots the greatness of America in its "free market" capitalist
system and "business culture."

It is left to alienated carpers, "cranks" and "moral absolutists" of the
"unreasonable" left (Obama's basic understanding of radicals) to observe
the terrible outcomes of "our" distinctively anti-social (and
incidentally heavily state-protected) "market system."

Obama criticizes "left-leaning populists" like "Venezuela's Hugo Chavez"
for daring to think that developing nations "should resist America's
efforts to expand its hegemony" and for trying to "follow their own path
to development." Such dysfunctional "reject[ion] [of] the ideals of free
markets and liberal democracy" will only worsen the situation of the
global poor, Obama claims (p. 315).

THE MESSIAH AND HIS GROUPIES

I've been following politics since I was about 5. I've never seen
anything like this. This is bigger than Kennedy. [Obama] comes along,
and he seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament. - Chris
Matthews

It's almost like the Messiah, you know? - Jan Young

He looked at me, and the look in his eyes was worth 1,000 words - Field
worker

You don't need to debate policy or discuss the day's headlines. You have
a very personal reason for investing your time and energy in this
campaign 鈥?that is the most compelling story you can tell. - Obama
site

The New Kennedy - Morgenpost, Berlin

"Obama's finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don't
even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment,
as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an
instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your
role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over
flesh, over color, over despair. The other great leaders I've heard
guide us towards a better politics, but Obama is, at his best, able to
call us back to our highest selves, to the place where America exists as
a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable
of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence. -
Ezra Klein

When you listen to Barack Obama, when you really hear him, you witness a
very rare thing. You witness a politician who has an ear for eloquence
and a tongue dipped in the unvarnished truth - Oprah Winfrey

HERETICS AND ATHEISTS

OBAMA MESSIAH
http://obamamessiah.blogspot.com/

JOE KLEIN: INSPIRATION VS. SUBSTANCE
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1710721,00.html

GLEN FORD: THE MANIA AND THE MIRAGE
http://www.counterpunch.org/ford01192007.html

BARACK OBAMA IS NOT JESUS
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/05/barack_obama_is_not_jesus/#more


JAKE TAPPER: AND OBAMA WEPT
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/05/barack_obama_is_not_jesus/#more


PAUL STREET  ARTICLES
http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Feb2007/street0207.html
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=12687
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=11936

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||