The “dangerous” new Obama book
That’s the headline of this Politico piece: “The dangerous new Obama book,” referring to David Maraniss’s new biography of Obama, which I discussed here yesterday.
Dangerous? Pul-eeze. The entire Politico article is laughable:
The product of [Maraniss’s] big dig, “Barack Obama: The Story,” seems to be a nuanced, even sympathetic portrayal culled from people who still admire Obama. Yet, make no mistake, this is a dangerous book for Obama, and White House staffers have been fretting about it in a low-grade way for a long, long time ”” in part because it could redefine the self-portrait Obama skillfully created for himself in 1995 with “Dreams from My Father.”
The success of “Dreams” has given Obama nearly complete control of his own life narrative, an appealing tale that has been the foundation of his political success. But Maraniss’s biography threatens that narrative by questioning it: Was Obama’s journey entirely spiritual and intellectual? Or was it also grounded in the lower realms of ambition and calculation?
Do you mean that Obama was actually ambitious? That he thought about his political career and even did some planning? That his head wasn’t in the clouds as he just tried to be all that he could be, spiritually, morally, intellectually?
Does anyone believe this sort of claptrap? Even those who still adore the guy? It’s funny how the premise of the Politico piece fits into the point I made at the end of my earlier post from today, which has to do with the Alice Palmer incident:
[What Obama did to Alice Palmer] was nasty, it was ruthless, it occurred at the beginning of Obama’s career when he was supposedly untested and relatively naive””and he got away with it, because most people haven’t a clue that it occurred, or what it revealed about his most-definitely-not-a-nice-guy character.
Anyone who has studied the bare facts of Obama’s political career—and that must include the folks at Politico—has to have become aware of the fact that Obama was one of the coldest and most calculating politicians right from the get-go. If you’re still unfamiliar with what happened, take a look. This story has been in the public domain for a long, long time, and anyone ignorant of it or unaware of what it indicates is either so negligent that he/she shouldn’t be writing political columns, or is lying.
I discovered the Alice Palmer story quite early on in the 2008 campaign. The incident occurred in 1995 and has never been a secret. Just imagine if George Bush or Mitt Romney had done something similar. Do you think for one minute that the American public wouldn’t be reminded of it over and over, ad nauseum?
Well, just how much danger is actually contains is expressed, unconsciously, in the phrase:
“fretting about it in a low-grade way for a long, long time ”
A fret.
A fret of the low-grade kind.
A fret held in a low-grade way for a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long time…..
Hardly a crisis…. best let it go to waste.
Politico’s
“Or was it also grounded in the lower realms of ambition and calculation?”
Oh the nagging doubt?!?
The Maraniss Vanity Fair piece leaves off with Obama off to Chicago.
Note that in three years time in Chicago Obama finishes his Alinsky/community organizer apprenticeship with the Gamaliel Foundation – in 1988. He then sets out to legitimize himself as future ‘person of influence’ and possible viable socialist candidate; he is baptized a Christian at Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ — in 1988. He enters Harvard Law — in1988.
Here he is at Harvard Law (via Jackie Fuchs/Fox;via Steve Sailer):
*Jackie Fuchs/Fox writes:
When I met Barack Obama, in our first year of law school, he had already put on his big-time politician act. He just didn’t quite have it polished, and he hadn’t figured out that he needed charm and humor to round out the confidence and intelligence. One of our classmates once famously noted that you could judge just how pretentious someone’s remarks in class were by how high they ranked on the “Obamanometer,” a term that lasted far longer than our time at law school. Obama didn’t just share in class – he pontificated. He knew better than everyone else in the room, including the teachers. Or maybe even he knew he didn’t know, but knew that the leader of the free world had to be able to convince others that he did. Looking back now I can see that he had already decided that he was a future president, and he was working hard at filling that suit.
I wonder – was there a moment in his life when he did the presidential equivalent of dying his hair black and putting on a leather jacket? I’m betting there was, but he’d already done it by the time I met him. I’m sure Barack as a child was perfectly ordinary, just like Joan [Jett]* was. Until the moment he decided that he was a star. The Barack with whom I went to school wasn’t the Barack that debuted on the national stage at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, but the president suit was already on, even if it was still too big for him.
In law school the only thing I would have voted for Obama to do would have been to shut up. When he made that speech [2004 Democratic Convention keynote address] almost exactly four years ago, I wanted to vote for him. For something, for anything. Now, as his vision of himself becomes a real possibility, though, I find that he may have filled out that suit all too well. It’s hard to see the humanity underneath. Even the humor feels calculated now. And again, just like with Joan*, I have to wonder – is he so focused on the goal that he has to live that persona every moment of every day?
*entertainment industry lawyer Jackie Fuchs. After graduating summa cum laude from UCLA, she went to Harvard Law School at the same time as Barack Obama. Previously, however, as a teenager under the name Jackie Fox, she had been the bass player in the notorious all girl rock group The Runaways (Joan Jett was rhythm guitarist).
I read the Alice Palmer link and two things stand out, 1) the facts show Obama had knowledge and connections to pull off his maneuver, and 2) the sad fact is that Obama’s maneuver was not uncommon and just one of the nefarious Chicago methods.
I wonder how much the book is a defensive reponse to the vetting the Brietbart blog has been doing.
Politico, let us remember, engineered and orchestrated the slander of Herman Cain.
Jack Cashill has done the yeoman’s work that strips away the fantasy story of Obama’s origins and early life and shows the fraud that Obama is, what a practitioner of the big lie he. It is still incomprehensible to me that no legal move is made about his fraudulent birth certificate. And again, please, the issue isn’t where he was born or any other fact of Obama’s early life. The issue is the authenticity of a document, a document which I can think of no other that is more basic to one’s identity.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/04/the_sea_change_obamas_confirmed_forgeries_are_not_going_away.html
Curtis: if you study Obama’s history it’s clear that one of his early specialties, even before he entered politics, was election law. He didn’t practice law for long and he didn’t have many cases, but the ones he did have centered on election law and voting rights.
So he was very very well-prepared for what he did to Alice Palmer.
Do you mean that Obama was actually ambitious? That he thought about his political career and even did some planning?
I doubt that he thought much about it, since he’s not much of a thinker. Someone in the Party thought about it thoroughly, and planned accordingly. “Barry” just had to show up. Think a Life Teleprompter.
So, this is supposed to be a “dangerous book, ”heh? My guess is that this is just another sleight of hand, a diversion to focus our attention on this particular faux “dangerous book,” and not on a whole host of other things that are a lot more dangerous to Obama & Co. In fact, Obama’s entire life and career are littered with genuinely “dangerous” information that our great MSM has very carefully not seen or touched or, if need be, has trimmed, prettied up, and “transformed,” so as to no longer be dangerous to Obama.
So, for instance, the saintly, put upon Illinois State Senator Alice Palmer was, according to Discover the Networks (see http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/chicago-obama%5B1%5D.pdf and http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2325), on the Executive Board of the U.S. Peace Council, identified in FBI Congressional testimony as a KGB Front Group, and among her many trips to the Soviet Union, she attended the 27th Congress of the Communist Party in Moscow, and came home very favorably impressed, to write an article about her experiences there for the CPUSA’s “People’s Daily World” titled “An Afro-American Journalist in the U.S.S.R.,” etc., etc. Not mentioned in the article cited in this thread was the fact that it was Palmer who put together the little “do” in Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn’s house that launched Obama’s career.
A letter to the CPUSA’s “People’s Weekly World” by another member of the U.S. Peace Council’s Executive Board, Frank Chapman, said of Obama–who had just won the Iowa Democratic caucuses:
“Obama’s victory was more than a progressive move; it was a dialectical leap ushering in a qualitatively new phase 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 there are dozens and dozens of other little pieces of dangerous information–littering the landscape in Obama’s wake–that the MSM has made sure that we have never seen or been privy to.
Occam’s Beard: I’ve heard that theory before, and I know many people subscribe to it.
I disagree, though, although of course I’m not privy to the inner workings of Obama’s mind. But I see him as both being helped by others who saw him as a great candidate, simpatico with their political goals, and as a player in his own right, very ambitious and aware of his own strengths and very skillful at manipulating the electorate and the electoral system to get ahead (the Alice Palmer incident, etc.). I don’t see him as a naive tool at all.
Wolla Dalbo: the fact that Palmer was a leftist is certainly not new. I don’t see how that would reflect poorly on Obama, unless it’s because she was originally his mentor. But we already know he was closely allied to the left at that point in time. No one but the right seems to know—or if they know, to care.
I agree that BHO is not a naive tool. But I suspect there are a lot of people behind the curtain that have been using BHO all along, with his knowing assent. He has achieved his goal as millions accept him as the messiah. Its all down hill from here.
I don’t see him as a naive tool at all.
I don’t think he was a naive tool either, but rather the ambitious but untalented front man for a cadre of leftist ideologues, with whom he entered into a marriage of convenience. His strength is that he’s arguably black, yet doesn’t speak Ebonics, and the Party propeled him onward and upward as a sort of latter-day Sidney Poitier goes to Washington.
Without their downfield blocking, Obama would have attained his true station in life, a concierge at a tony hotel, or perhaps a news reader on local TV.
My impression of Obama is that he isn’t a good enough thinker to have planned his political career by himself and that he just might have been too lazy to do it.
I think his handlers took advantage of his ego, his psychotic need to be adored and basic left wing leanings to set him up as a future candidate and groom him to get to high office. I bet there were plenty of deals where it was “If you do this, it will help your career and we’ll do more to help you with it.”
I love the manufacturing of precision tools and steel parts. I remember I once had a chance to buy a pretty nice lathe for $5,000.00. Should have done it. It’s a great hobby, if nothing else.
Today, you have complex machine centers which combine computers, tool queues, lathes, mills, drills, grinders, and finishers. It you’ve ever seen the protective cover slide over the machine tool and stock part, the cooling oil stream began, and the metal shavings curling off the creation, then you’ve witnessed something most people have not.
Warhol liked this and knew it was art. Too bad this art is not more attractive. It’s this art that makes the drones and high technology MACH 20 aircraft. It this that defines us, the new frontier, and not squabbling over how much money that guys makes should got to me!
Progress and technology does not create itself. How ironic that communists should rebrand themselves as progressives? Progressives in what? Science? Art? Architecture? Engineering? They all suck at it compared to free men.
Remember learning in school about the cotton gin and how that changed society? The Bessemer process? Steam engines? The automobile? Heart transplants? The Internet? Facebook? How many of those singular and powerful inventions and creations come from people like Obama. Huh? How many? Obama is like a Muslim who are parasites and there is no guarantee that parasites don’t win. Because since God gave free will he also gave free consequence!
However, there’s a metastabalizing effect, cause and effect, which G-d (I don’t spell it out to show that G-d may be different than I think he is) built into the human system. Poverty, crime, and sociology degrees (and Islam whilch Hahvard endorces, please don’t buy Israel’s stuff.) inevitably lead to reduction of competive power and loss of nation. Ain’t that the whole idea of Gibbons and the fall of Rome? (And the fall of religion into organized religion? And what is organized religion other than welfare capitalism?)
These are big questions. Questions too big for our tony president. But that doesn’t stop him. He knows no boundaries. He is Prometheus and his rock is reserved for him. Doubt it not. Hubris is the poison of all dragons, and like all dragons, the Obama machine will partake of it, and collapse, leaving a huge mess.
My model is that Obama is the political equivalent of the Monkees. Someone driving the bus just needs to put a face out there, a spokesmodel to make the whole thing work. Didn’t matter who, as long as in return for fame and glory they could sell themselves and play ball with the bus driver.
Obama is opportunistic. He fits the Democrat mold precisely. This seems to be more the rule than the exception for left-wing ideologues. Their principles establish their predisposition or their predisposition establishes their principles. Despite their interminable propensity to denigrate individual dignity, they are favored for their ability to effect select redistribution. Whether in a totalitarian regime, or in a democratic republic, that is sufficient to endear themselves to certain classes of individuals.
I know Prometheus, and Obama is no Prometheus.
Occam’s Beard notes the better myth: the Monkees.
But, and it’s a big but, the Monkees were a lot cuter, nicer, and more talented.
What a great point, Promethea!
Obama is no Titan.
But he thinks he is, and so do other people.
What is that observation of Jesus who said of the foolish people, “they are blind and let them alone, they will fall into a ditch.”
Pretty succinct conclusion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ2yXWi0ppw&feature=fvwrel
Every waking hour I’m choosing my confession.
What say you Promthea? Was it just a dream?
Who are you to say anything?
In keeping with the Monkees analogies, this is hereby proclaimed to be the new BHO campaign, wishful thinking, song theme:
http://tinyurl.com/6v3rydl
(I say wishful thinking because I believe the Chicago Political Machine-Mafia nexus owns his soul although I can’t prove it.)
oops, theme song.
Let me add a small point about Obama’s relationship with Alice Palmer. (Who was, indeed, at the very least, a Communist sympathizer.)
Palmer must have beleieved that her “mentee” Obama shared many of her political views. Obama may have conned her, may have shared those views, or — most likely, in my opinion — shared some of her views and conned her.
It would be interesting to know which of those three is closest to the truth.
Jim Miller,
All you need to know is that rats will eat rats.
Now it’s just weird. Everybody knows by now the Obama is that most dangerous of characters: the vicious nerd, a critter that removes your intestines while it kneels before you begging for mercy. So all this haranguing back and forth sounds like people arguing that Richard Speck was a good guy because he was respectful when arranging the nurses’ bodies. How DO sealed court records get into the newspaper just when politically useful?
Ha, ha. I remember Richard Speck. He was the original monster.
Yes, it’s weird because we are weird. Clarify, go to ground, find what it is what we believe and why we believe it, and defend it, if it has life.
Weird is subjective, an adjective, a place both wonderful and terrible. We cannot escape it. We cannot even define ourselves.
And yet, we have common sense, which ought not be taken for granted.
Obama: ‘New York girlfriend’ was composite
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/05/obama-ny-girlfriend-was-composite-character-122272.html
Speaking of the Monkees: The mother of one of them invented White-out. I once heard an interview with him. He said that people think his mother had this quirky idea one day for White-out and became a millionaire. He said they didn’t see the years his mother experimented with the exact formula, trying it out in offices all over, finding a suitable manufacturer, negotiating contracts, and marketing the stuff to business execs. He said it took twelve years before she made a profit. So at least one Monkee has a better appreciation of capitalist innovation and free enterprise than Obama does.
roc. thats micheal nesbits mom…
[note that the evil company did not take it, throw her out and erase her idea from connection with her… must of slipped up or something… ]
Turns out, Obama is a composite too
http://news.investors.com/article/610303/201205040824/obama-life-untruths-david-maraniss-book.htm
Maraniss, as I recall, did a pretty good job of writing Billy Bubba’s,”First In His Class”, bio in the mid ’90s.