On Nov 6, 2008, at 2:18 PM, raghu quoted:
Obama's would-be rabbis came to him in Chicago and tried to persuade
the community organizer to abandon his first bids for office. He once
went to a Chicago bigwig and was asked who sent him. ``Nobody,'' Obama
answered. ``We don't want nobody nobody sent,'' he was told.
At the 2000 Democratic convention, he couldn't get a floor pass. He
couldn't even cadge an invitation to the Illinois delegation's
parties. He watched most of the speeches on television. He left early.
In which was also this:
It's coming. It always does.
By "it" is meant, I guess, the hagiography of Obama? ;-)
On Nov 6, 2008, at 11:52 AM, Doug Henwood wrote:
On Nov 6, 2008, at 9:43 AM, Charles Brown wrote:
And he's one of us.
Yeah, that's why he appointed Rahm Emanuel and is floating the name
of Larry "Africa Is Vastly Underpolluted" Summers.
I think this is the thing that bothers me the most about Obama.
He (Obama) frequently uses the line that this election/victory is
about "you" (his supporters) not him, but the truth of his agenda is,
I believe, the exact opposite... he has dispensed with ideology,
partisanship, methodology, existing structures and organisations with
similar stated goals, etc.,. Instead, he has built from the ground up
an alternative: himself as brand and solution. In his defence, as
stated above, he sincerely believes this stuff -- in a sense, I see
shades of Mahatma Gandhi in all of this. But, as someone said, I have
known the Mahatma, and Obama ain't no Gandhi! ;-)
What is the nature of the new Obama structure? It's not going to be
comprised of or draw from recent popular progressive collectives such
as the "netroots". He has explicitly rejected their support. And he
has not hesitated to take millions of dollars from the powerful and
wealthy (individuals and corporations), or [if reports are to be
believed] tap centrists or right-wingers for advice or participation
in his government.
Recently, I read a column by Gail Collins (who now infests the NYT op-
ed section as the lesser evil triplet along with Tom Fri and Dowd) in
which she proclaimed that progressives should not be mad at Obama
regarding FISA, etc, since he has not been in line with their agenda
from the start (and she is right about that), and she suggested that
the best way to characterise Obama is that he is "anti dumb". In
Gail's term, I see the basics of the Obama approach:
Larry Summers, Dick Lugar, Tom Daschle, Sam Nunn ... these are the
credentialled people. They are, therefore, the smart people by
definition. And smart people solve problems. Anything else is dumb,
and Obama is, as Collins says, "anti-dumb".
--ravi
--
Support something better than yourself ;-)
PeTA => http://peta.org/
Greenpeace => http://greenpeace.org/
If you have nothing better to read: http://platosbeard.org/
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