WARNING: THIS MAY NOT BE AN EXACT REPLICA OF THE CONTENTS OF THIS PACKAGE

Obama is, in his own words, something of a Rorschach test. In his latest book, “The Audacity of Hope,” he writes, “I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” That has been confirmed thus far during this campaign, and come November, Americans will have to decide if they want a Rorschach test for president. - James Kirchick, New Republic

BARACK OBAMA

NOVEMBER 2008

HOW THE OBAMA FAIRY TALE BEGAN

Paul Street Z Mag - Conventional wisdom holds that Obama entered national politics with his instantly famous keynote address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention. But, as Ken Silverstein noted in Harper's in the fall of 2006, "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 favorable elite assessment of Obama began in October of 2003. That's when "Vernon Jordan, the well-known power broker and corporate board-member 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," Silverstein noted, "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."

Drawing on his undoubted charm, wit, intelligence, and Harvard credentials, Obama passed this trial with shining colors. At a series of social meetings with assorted big "players" from the financial, legal and lobbyist sectors, Obama impressed key establishment figures like Gregory Craig (a longtime leading attorney and former special counsel to the White House), Mike Williams (the legislative director of the Bond Market Association), Tom Quinn (a partner at the top corporate law firm Venable and a leading Democratic Party "power broker"), and Robert Harmala, another Venable partner and "a big player in Democratic circles."

Craig liked the fact that Obama was not a racial "polarizer" on the model of past African-American leaders like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

Williams was soothed by Obama's reassurances that he was not "anti-business" and became "convinced...that the two could work together."

"There's a reasonableness about him," Harmala told Silverstein. "I don't see him as being on the liberal fringe."

By Silverstein's account, the good "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 [2004] Democratic primary." Elite financial, legal, and lobbyists contributions came into Obama's coffers at a rapid and accelerating pace.

The "good news" for Washington and Wall Street insiders was that Obama's "star quality" would not be directed against the elite segments of the business class. The interesting black legislator from the South Side of Chicago was "someone the rich and powerful could work with." According to Obama biographer and Chicago Tribune reporter David Mendell, in late 2003 and early 2004:

"Word of Obama's rising star was now spreading beyond Illinois, especially through influential Washington political circles like blue chip law firms, party insiders, lobbying houses. They were all hearing about this rare, exciting, charismatic, up-and-coming African American who unbelievably could win votes across color lines. . . [his handlers and] influential Chicago supporters and fund-raisers all vigorously worked their D.C. contacts to help Obama make the rounds with the Democrats' set of power brokers. . .

According to Mendell, Obama now cultivated the support of the privileged few by "advocat[ing] fiscal restraint" and "calling for pay-as-you-go government" and "extol[ing] the merits of free trade and charter schools." He "moved beyond being an obscure good-government reformer to being a candidate more than palatable to the moneyed and political establishment." .

"On condition of anonymity," Silverstein reported two years ago, "one Washington lobbyist I spoke with was willing to point out the obvious: that big donors would not be helping out Obama if they didn't see him as a 'player.' The lobbyist added: 'What's the dollar value of a starry-eyed idealist?'"

WHY IS OBAMA'S FIRST OBLIGATION TO THE REPUBLICANS?

OBAMA MAY NAME CONTROVERSIAL CONGRESSMAN AS CHIEF OF STAFF

18 HOURS A DAY WITH OBAMA & STILL NOT KNOWING HIM

NAMES ON THE LIST: TIM GEITHNER, POSSIBLE TREASURY SECRETARY

OCTOBER 2008

KICKING OBAMA ACROSS THE GOAL LINE

FORGET ABOUT BILL AYERS, HERE ARE SOME OF OBAMA'S PALS YOU SHOULD WORRY ABOUT

OBAMA KNEW BILL AYERS; MCCAIN IS DEPENDING ON PEOPLE LIKE THESE

FORGET ABOUT AYERS, OBAMA'S CHICAGO PROJECT WAS FUNDED BY WEALTH OF A RIGHTWING REPUBLICAN

ARE YOU BETTER OFF THAN YOU WERE EIGHT YEARS AGO?

A CAMPAIGN FOR OBAMA IN ELEVEN SENTENCES

HOW TO BEAT THE REPUBLICANS

STARTLING NEW EVIDENCE THAT OBAMA ISN'T MUSLIM . HE'S IRISH. . . THEY JUST FORGOT THE APOSTROPHE

BRITISH AMBASSADOR SHOWS GOOD HANDLE ON OBAMA IN PRIVATE LETTER

OBAMA GETS CLOSER TO CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRATS

OBAMA DOES WELL AMONG LATINOS

OBAMA BACKTRACKS ON HIS POLICIES

SEPTEMBER 2008

THINGS PRESIDENT OBAMA IS GOING TO REGRET

OBAMA HINTS RETURN OF DRAFT

MTV NEWS BRINGS OUT THE BETTER OBAMA

MTV News host Swaye gets Obama out of the pulpit, away from the ponderous and off the parsing to produce one of his best interviews we've seen and far more appealing that his stiff debate appearance. It was relaxed, friendly and plain spoken. If Obama talked to older Americans this way, he's do a lot better. [Be sure to watch all the clips; they automatically follow each other]

MICHELLE OBAMA HAS COUSIN WHO'S A RABBI

YOU DON'T NEED A WEATHERMAN TO KNOW WHICH WAY OBAMA'S WIND IS BLOWING

THE BLACK AGENDA FOR OBAMA: NOTHING

Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report - The current election cycle is, indeed, one for the history books. For the first time since the rebellions of the Sixties, we hardly hear the call for a Marshall-type plan to rebuild the cities - once the near-unanimous, unifying demand of virtually the entire spectrum of Black "leadership." Not that the demand has been made moot or passé by great achievements in rendering urban America more habitable to Blacks or more recent influxes of browns. The opposite is true: urban centers have become far more hostile environments to the non-affluent of all ethnicities. . .

In place of a massive public sector-led Marshall Plan to rehabilitate the cities for the benefit of the largely African American populations that inherited them by default through government-subsidized white flight, public policy now facilitates the Corporate Plan for the cities: Black removal.

If any handwriting-on-the-wall were needed to graphically illustrate the grand corporate scheme for the cities, it is written on the walls of the 70,000-plus unrehabilitated, empty homes of the scattered, mostly Black and poor classes of metropolitan New Orleans; in the rubble of countless demolished public housing projects across the nation, not one of which has ever been replaced unit-for-unit; and in the millions of affordable private dwellings that have been supplanted by habitats for well-to-do urban newcomers - a small fraction of whom are Black or brown. . .

With the ascension of Barack Obama, all Black agitation has been subordinated to his election, leaving African Americans as the only constituency that has presented no demands to the two corporate candidates. Black misleadership simply accepts what Obama feels comfortable in offering. His Denver acceptance speech shows Obama is prepared to give Blacks precisely what they have asked for: nothing. . .

Even as Hurricane Gustav bore down on New Orleans, Obama made only the most oblique reference to the 2005 catastrophe, with a swipe at "a government. . . that sits on its hands while a major American city drowns before our eyes." . . . If Obama cannot commit to making the displaced residents of New Orleans whole - despite, in his opinion, their having been victimized by government "incompetence" - then he will never lift a finger to derail the slow-motion displacement of gentrification elsewhere in urban America.

AUGUST 2008

UNIONS CONCERNED OVER OBAMA'S WALL STREET POLITICS

GREAT MOMENTS IN CHICAGO POLITICS

OBAMA PADS HIS RESUME

VANITY FAIR CLAIMS TO HAVE FOUND OBAMA'S LOST BROTHER

MIDDLE CLASS MORE PROGRESSIVE THAN OBAMA, CONGRESS

DEMOCRATIC POLS IN SWING STATES SAY OBAMA SHOULD CUT THE HOPE CRAP AND GET STRONGER ON ISSUES

OBAMA BEATS MCCAIN AMONG CHRISTIANS

OBAMA: THE MAN AND THE MACHINE

THE SORRY HISTORY OF OBAMA'S APPROACH TO IRAQ & AFGHANISTAN

OBAMA CAMPAIGN STAGNATES

OBAMA FLIPS BIG TIME ON OFFSHORE DRILLING

OBAMA & MCCAIN: LIFE WITHOUT FATHER

OBAMA TALKS SENSE ABOUT AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

OBAMA'S OWN GREEN ADVISOR DIFFERS ON ETHANOL

OBAMA & THE END OF POLITICS

JULY 2008

PRESS & OBAMA END THEIR AFFAIR

THE PROGRESSIVE PUZZLE: DEALING WITH THE OBAMA PROBLEM

STATE SENATOR OBAMA WAS IN POCKET OF COAL INDUSTRY

THE CHANGE WAR CANDIDATE

DEMOCRATS UNUSUALLY PSYCHED OVER ELECTION

OBAMA VETTING RIGHT WING AGRIBUSINESS LAWYER FOR VEEP

IS OBAMA QUIETLY PUSHING A NATIONAL DRAFT?

OBAMA ADVISOR WARNS AGAINST HOLDING THOSE IN POWER LIABLE FOR CRIMINAL ACTS

OBAMA WILL GET THE TROOPS OUT OF IRAQ . . .EXCEPT FOR THE ONES HE LEAVES THERE

OBAMA'S STRANGE AFFECTION FOR REAGAN

David Paul Kuhn, Politico - During his bid for the presidency, Obama has repeatedly praised the political gifts of Reagan, the modern president most revered by Republicans, and whose policies are still held in contempt by many leading liberals. A year ago Obama compared Reagan favorably to President Bush in a primary debate while defending his pledge to meet directly with the leaders of hostile nations without preconditions. "Ronald Reagan called [Russia] an evil empire," said Obama, but he also "spoke to the Soviet Union."

In January, Obama came under fire from within his party after casting himself as an emotive heir to Reagan. "Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America," Obama told a Nevada newspaper in January, noting that Reagan "tapped into what people were already feeling, which is: We want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing."

David Bonior, then John Edwards' campaign manager, charged that Obama was "wrong, frightfully so, in using Ronald Reagan as an example of voters reaching for change. The breadth of change Ronald Reagan brought was crippling for millions of Americans.". . .

"The idea that Ronald Reagan was a unifying figure, that the nation rallied around him, that politics were not divisive in that time, is wrong," said Peter Robinson, who drafted the "tear down this wall" speech. "Ronald Reagan was denounced again and again and again from the beginning of his presidency through to the very end.". . .

Looking back earlier this week on Obama's previous praise of Reagan, Mario Cuomo asked, rhetorically, "What did Reagan transform?" He answered: "It wasn't morning in America. If you are saying he transformed Americans toward a new hopefulness, hopefulness doesn't buy peace, it doesn't buy jobs."

THE COWBOYS & THE IVIES

OBAMA: THE SORRIEST POLITICIAN AROUND

JESSE JACKSON'S NUTCRACKER BLEEP

OBAMA FLIP FLOP OF THE DAY: WELFARE POLICY

MERKEL TELLS OBAMA TO KEEP HIS CAMPAIGNING AT HOME

OBAMA VOTES TO TRASH FOURTH AMENDMENT,
LET BUSH & TELCOMS ESCAPE PROSECUTION

OBAMA FLIP FLOP OF THE DAY: WELFARE POLICY

MAKING A MUDDLE OF THE POLITICAL MIDDLE & WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT

OBAMA LINKED TO THE ATTACK ON PUBLIC HOUSING

TELLING THE FACTS ABOUT OBAMA

JUNE 2008

RECOVERED HISTORY: OBAMA AND ISLAM

BILL CLINTON SAYS OBAMA WILL HAVE TO 'KISS MY ASS' FOR HIS SUPPORT

ONE OF OBAMA'S CHICAGO CONSTITUENTS TELLS HOW TO DEAL WITH HIM

WHO'S OBAMA TALKING WITH?

 QADDAFI ON OBAMA

OBAMA THROWS PUBLIC FINANCING UNDER THE BUS

WHY WHAT OBAMA IS DOING IS NOT COMMUNITY ORGANIZING

POWELL MIGHT SUPPORT OBAMA

OBAMA SPIN A LITTLE OUT OF CONTROL

MORE THAN 85% OF AMERICANS WOULD DO BETTER UNDER OBAMA'S TAX PLAN

OBAMA SUPPORTS AMNESTY FOR ILLEGAL SEARCHES

WASHINGTON POST Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) announced his support for a sweeping intelligence surveillance law that has been heavily denounced by the liberal activists who have fueled the financial engines of his presidential campaign. In his most substantive break with the Democratic Party's base since becoming the presumptive nominee, Obama declared he will support the bill when it comes to a Senate vote, likely next week, despite misgivings about legal provisions for telecommunications corporations that cooperated with the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program of suspected terrorists. . .

"Given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as president, I will carefully monitor the program," Obama said in a statement hours after the House approved the legislation 293-129.

This marks something of a reversal of Obama's position from an earlier version of the bill, which was approved by the Senate Feb. 12, when Obama was locked in a fight for the Democratic nomination with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).

Obama missed the February vote on that FISA bill as he campaigned in the "Potomac Primaries," but issued a statement that day declaring "I am proud to stand with Senator Dodd, Senator Feingold and a grassroots movement of Americans who are refusing to let President Bush put protections for special interests ahead of our security and our liberty."

GLENN GREENWALD, SALON Telling Americans that we have to give up basic constitutional rights -- and allow rampant lawbreaking -- if we want to save ourselves from "the grave threats we face" sounds awfully familiar. . . . Obama has obviously calculated that sacrificing the rule of law and the Fourth Amendment is a worthwhile price to pay to bolster his standing a tiny bit in a couple of swing states.

THE SPLIT PERSONALITY OF BARACK OBAMA

DAVID BROOKS, NY TIMES As recent weeks have made clear, Barack Obama is the most split-personality politician in the country today. On the one hand, there is Dr. Barack, the high-minded, Niebuhr-quoting speechifier who spent this past winter thrilling the Scarlett Johansson set and feeling the fierce urgency of now. But then on the other side, there's Fast Eddie Obama, the promise-breaking, tough-minded Chicago pol who'd throw you under the truck for votes. This guy is the whole Chicago package: an idealistic, lakefront liberal fronting a sharp-elbowed machine operator. He's the only politician of our lifetime who is underestimated because he's too intelligent. He speaks so calmly and polysyllabically that people fail to appreciate the Machiavellian ambition inside. . .

And then on Thursday, Fast Eddie Obama had his finest hour. Barack Obama has worked on political reform more than any other issue. He aspires to be to political reform what Bono is to fighting disease in Africa. He's spent much of his career talking about how much he believes in public financing. In January 2007, he told Larry King that the public-financing system works. In February 2007, he challenged Republicans to limit their spending and vowed to do so along with them if he were the nominee. In February 2008, he said he would aggressively pursue spending limits. He answered a Midwest Democracy Network questionnaire by reminding everyone that he has been a longtime advocate of the public-financing system.

But Thursday, at the first breath of political inconvenience, Fast Eddie Obama threw public financing under the truck. In so doing, he probably dealt a death-blow to the cause of campaign-finance reform. And the only thing that changed between Thursday and when he lauded the system is that Obama's got more money now.

And Fast Eddie Obama didn't just sell out the primary cause of his life. He did it with style. He did it with a video so risibly insincere that somewhere down in the shadow world, Lee Atwater is gaping and applauding. Obama blamed the (so far marginal) Republican 527s. He claimed that private donations are really public financing. He made a cut-throat political calculation seem like Mother Teresa's final steps to sainthood.

OBAMA DITCHES NAFTA POSITION THAT HELPED HIM WIN THE PRIMARIES

CNN In an interview with Fortune to be featured in the magazine's upcoming issue, the presumptive Democratic nominee backed off his harshest attacks on the free trade agreement and indicated he didn't want to unilaterally reopen negotiations on NAFTA. "Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified," he conceded, after I reminded him that he had called NAFTA "devastating" and "a big mistake," despite nonpartisan studies concluding that the trade zone has had a mild, positive effect on the U.S. economy.

Does that mean his rhetoric was overheated and amplified? "Politicians are always guilty of that, and I don't exempt myself," he answered. . .

Obama's tone stands in marked contrast to his primary campaign's anti-NAFTA fusillades. The pact creating a North American free-trade zone was President Bill Clinton's signature accomplishment; but NAFTA is also the bugaboo of union leaders, grassroots activists and Midwesterners who blame free trade for the factory closings they see in their hometowns.

The Democratic candidates fought hard to win over those factions of their party, with Obama generally following Hillary Clinton's lead in setting a protectionist tone.

In February, as the campaign moved into the Rust Belt, both candidates vowed to invoke a six-month opt-out clause ("as a hammer," in Obama's words) to pressure Canada and Mexico to make concessions. . .

Now, however, Obama says he doesn't believe in unilaterally reopening NAFTA. On the afternoon that I sat down with him to discuss the economy, Obama said he had just spoken with Harper, who had called to congratulate him on winning the nomination.

OBAMA CLOSE TO ETHANOL INDUSTRY

LARRY ROHTER, NEW YORK TIMES Mr. Obama is running as a reformer who is seeking to reduce the influence of special interests. But like any other politician, he has powerful constituencies that help shape his views. And when it comes to domestic ethanol, almost all of which is made from corn, he also has advisers and prominent supporters with close ties to the industry at a time when energy policy is a point of sharp contrast between the parties and their presidential candidates.

Nowadays, when Mr. Obama travels in farm country, he is sometimes accompanied by his friend Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader from South Dakota. Mr. Daschle now serves on the boards of three ethanol companies and works at a Washington law firm where, according to his online job description, "he spends a substantial amount of time providing strategic and policy advice to clients in renewable energy."

Mr. Obama's lead advisor on energy and environmental issues, Jason Grumet, came to the campaign from the National Commission on Energy Policy, a bipartisan initiative associated with Mr. Daschle and Bob Dole, the Kansas Republican who is also a former Senate majority leader and a big ethanol backer who had close ties to the agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland.

Not long after arriving in the Senate, Mr. Obama himself briefly provoked a controversy by flying at subsidized rates on corporate airplanes, including twice on jets owned by Archer Daniels Midland, which is the nation's largest ethanol producer and is based in his home state.

WILL OBAMA TAKE ON CREDIT CARD USURY?

OBAMA'S CHICAGO BOYS

OBAMA FANS THE BLACK FATHER MYTH

JAMES JOHNSON EMBARASSED OUT OF OBAMA POST

OBAMA MAKES WAR WITH IRAN FAR MORE LIKELY

OBAMA WOULD GIVE ALL OF JERUSALEM TO ISRAELIS

DID OBAMA & CLINTON GO TO SECRET BILDERBERG MEETING, TOO?

MORE REASONS OBAMA SHOULD HAVE VETTED HIS VETTERS

WASH POST As CEO of Fannie Mae, Johnson, a former chief of staff to Vice President Walter F. Mondale and chairman of the board of the Kennedy Center, was the beneficiary of accounting in which Fannie Mae's earnings were manipulated so that executives could earn larger bonuses. The accounting manipulation for 1998 resulted in the maximum payouts to Fannie Mae's senior executives -- $1.9 million in Johnson's case -- when the company's performance that year would have otherwise resulted in no bonuses at all, according to reports in 2004 and 2006 by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight.

In a 2006 civil enforcement action against Fannie Mae, another agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, called the company's 1998 accounting "fraudulent" and said numbers were "intentionally manipulated to trigger management bonuses."

Johnson left the company before it was swept up in an accounting scandal that tarred its reputation, but even during the years of scandal, Johnson was reaping hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees and other compensation, $3.3 million in all between 2001 and 2006.

Brian Brooks, an attorney for Johnson, said last night that the accounting issues at Fannie Mae were thoroughly investigated, and that "no one has ever suggested that Mr. Johnson was responsible for the accounting decisions at issue, nor has he had any involvement with these accounting issues during his tenure as a consultant since leaving employment with the company in 1999."

But Johnson is not the only member of Obama's vice presidential vetting committee that Republicans have targeted.

They also are preparing a case against former deputy attorney general Eric Holder for his role in the granting of a pardon to fugitive financier Marc Rich in the last days of the Clinton White House.

In December 2000, as Rich's lawyers were closing in on the pardon, one of them, Jack Quinn, singled out Holder in an e-mail. "The greatest danger lies with the lawyers," Quinn wrote his co-counsels. "I have worked them hard and I am hopeful that E. Holder will be helpful to us."

Any attacks on Holder will probably not mention that one of Rich's lawyers, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, went on to become Vice President Cheney's chief of staff. . .

Johnson who provides the most immediate fodder for attack. His lavish lifestyle, multiple homes, personal staff and chauffeur strike a dissonant chord as Obama excoriates Republican "tax cuts for the rich" and calls McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, an out-of-touch Washington insider.

Although OFHEO said Johnson benefited from the earnings manipulations, the agency did not accuse him of participating in them, and the SEC did not accuse him of any wrongdoing. He ended his term as chairman and chief executive of the District-based company in December 1998, before Fannie Mae reported its financial results for that year. In 1999, he served as chairman of the company's executive committee.

A federal regulatory agency suggested that even if Johnson's compensation for 1998 were entirely justified, Fannie Mae obscured its magnitude, disclosing pay of $6 million to $7 million a year in 1998. But Johnson was allowed to defer 111,623 shares of Fannie Mae stock, a move that was relegated to a footnote and not included in the company's summary compensation table.

Total compensation that year was closer to $21 million, according to an internal Fannie Mae analysis cited by OFHEO. . .

Among Johnson's post-employment perks were an inflation-adjusted consulting contract of $390,500 that began in 2002, two employees and a chauffeur, and office space at the Watergate, even after he began work at Perseus, an investment firm that gave him his own office. His lawyer described that compensation yesterday as "consistent with what is customarily provided to retiring Fortune 100 CEOs."

Johnson was supposed to reimburse the company for 50 percent of the chauffeur's time, but that did not apply to time spent waiting for Johnson or driving his wife. Consequently, he reimbursed Fannie for about 15 percent of the cost.

OBAMA'S VETTER BLEW MONDALE'S RACE

CRAIG CRAWFORD On so many fronts, I knew there was trouble for Barack Obama when he picked Jim Johnson for his vice presidential vetting team. Not only is Johnson a big-business Democrat with icky ties to even ickier businesses, like mortgage lending firms in trouble. But the longtime party insider is also firmly entrenched with Democratic losers going back to Walter Mondale, whose pathetic 1984 presidential campaign was run by Johnson.

If Obama is about a break with the past, he could find no one more counter-intuitive than Johnson. Already, Johnson is under fire for his own sweetheart loans. More than likely Obama will eventually come under intense pressure to dump his VP vetter.

For a clue about Johnson's questionable political acumen, here's what I remember from my own experience as a field operative in Mondale's presidential campaign. Johnson blew the only moment when it looked like Mondale might actually have a chance at overcoming Ronald Reagan's reelection bid.

Following Reagan's disastrous debate performance against Mondale, when the media began to seriously question the president's mental fitness, many Democratic insiders counseled their nominee to go in for the kill in the next debate. But Johnson, apparently believing that Mondale had a lock on the election, advised his candidate to back off, counseling that it would seem mean-spirited to do otherwise.

Johnson could not have been more wrong, as many of us in the campaign thought at the time. Still, Mondale followed his manager's advice and Reagan won the day - and probably the election - at the subsequent debate as the Democrat foolishly held his fire.

For some reason, Democratic nominees ever since - except Bill Clinton - have thought Johnson was some sort of genius. And it is no accident that Clinton is the only one to win the White House.

 HOW MANY TROOPS IN AN OBAMA RESIDUE?

OBAMA FLIP FLOPS ON CUBA

OBAMA'S TOP AIDE IS CORPORATE PR OPERATIVE

OBAMA'S IRAQ POSITION REMAINS IN DOUBT

HAROLD FORD TELLS OBAMA HOW TO CAMPAIGN

POLL FINDS OBAMA'S JEWISH PROBLEM A MYTH

CBS NEWS According to exit polls conducted in 30 primary states, Jewish Democratic primary voters overall supported Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama - 53 percent chose Clinton compared to 45% who chose Obama. . . Although Jewish Democratic voters favored Clinton in the primaries, Jewish registered voters overall say they would support either Obama or Clinton in a November match-up with McCain. According to CBS News Polls conducted from February to May, both Obama and Clinton would win among Jewish voters nationally by a comfortable margin. If the candidates were Obama and McCain, the polls show Obama would get 65 percent of the vote of Jewish registered voters to 28 percent for McCain. If the candidates were Clinton and McCain, Clinton would get 68 percent to 26 percent for McCain.

MAY 2008

IN FIRST 100 DAYS, OBAMA WOULD REVIEW EVERY BUSH EXECUTIVE ORDER

REUTERS If elected president, Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama said one of the first things he wants to do is ensure the constitutionality of all the laws and executive orders passed while Republican President George W. Bush has been in office. Those that don’t pass muster will be overturned, he said.Other goals for his first 100 days: work out a plan to withdraw troops from Iraq; make progress on alternative energy plans and launch legislation to reform the health care system

OBAMA'S VIEWS ON THE SUPREME COURT

OBAMA'S TOP AIDE IS CORPORATE PR OPERATIVE

NEWSWEEK When Illinois utility Commonwealth Edison wanted state lawmakers to back a hefty rate hike two years ago, it took a creative lobbying approach, concocting a new outfit that seemed devoted to the public interest: Consumers Organized for Reliable Electricity, or CORE. CORE ran TV ads warning of a "California-style energy crisis" if the rate increase wasn't approved-but without disclosing the commercials were funded by Commonwealth Edison. The ad campaign provoked a brief uproar when its ties to the utility, which is owned by Exelon Corp., became known. "It's corporate money trying to hoodwink the public," the state's Democratic Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn said. What got scant notice then-but may soon get more scrutiny-is that CORE was the brainchild of ASK Public Strategies, a consulting firm whose senior partner is David Axelrod, now chief strategist for Barack Obama.

Last week, Obama hit John McCain for hiring "some of the biggest lobbyists in Washington" to run his campaign; Obama's aides say their candidate, as a foe of "special interests," has refused to take money from lobbyists or employ them. Neither Axelrod nor his partners at ASK ever registered as lobbyists for Commonwealth Edison-and under Illinois's loose disclosure laws, they were not required to. "I've never lobbied anybody in my life," Axelrod tells NEWSWEEK. "I've never talked to any public official on behalf of a corporate client." (He also says "no one ever denied" that Edison was the "principal funder" of his firm's ad campaign.)

But the activities of ASK (located in the same office as Axelrod's political firm) illustrate the difficulties in defining exactly who a lobbyist is. In 2004, Cablevision hired ASK to set up a group similar to CORE to block a new stadium for the New York Jets in Manhattan. Unlike Illinois, New York disclosure laws do cover such work, and ASK's $1.1 million fee was listed as the "largest lobbying contract" of the year in the annual report of the state's lobbying commission. ASK last year proposed a similar "political campaign style approach" to help Illinois hospitals block a state proposal that would have forced them to provide more medical care to the indigent. One part of its plan: create a "grassroots" group of medical experts "capable of contacting policymakers to advocate for our position," according to a copy of the proposal. (ASK didn't get the contract.) Public-interest watchdogs say these grassroots campaigns are state of the art in the lobbying world. "There's no way with a straight face to say that's not lobbying," says Ellen Miller, director of the Sunlight Foundation, which promotes government transparency.

Axelrod says there are still huge differences between him and top McCain advisers, including the fact that he doesn't work in D.C. But his corporate clients do have business in the capital. One of them, Exelon, lobbied Obama two years ago on a nuclear bill; the firm's executives and employees have also been a top source of cash for Obama's campaign, contributing $236,211. Axelrod says he's never talked to Obama about Exelon matters. "I'm not going to public officials with bundles of money on behalf of a corporate client," Axelrod says.

OBAMA MOVES HARD RIGHT ON ISRAEL-PALESTINE

WITH OBAMA, THE DLC WINS AGAIN

TIME MAGAZINE DISCOVERS THAT OBAMA HAD A WHITE MOTHER

OBAMA'S ARMS LENGTH APPROACH TO THE GAY MEDIA

OBAMA'S KEY ADVISOR WANTS 60,000-80,000 AMERICAN TROOPS TO STAY IN IRAQ

OBAMA PRAISES FIRST GULF WAR, FOREIGN POLICIES OF REAGAN AND DADDY BUSH

ABE FOXMAN AND BARACK OBAMA

INTERESTING 1995 CHICAGO READER PIECE ON OBAMA

GOP CONGRESSMAN: TERRORISTS WOULD DANCE IN THE STREET IF OBAMA WINS

WHY DOES WALL STREET LOVE OBAMA?

THINGS YOU MAY NOT KNOW ABOUT OBAMA

OBAMA CAMPAIGN CAUGHT IN NAFTA DOUBLE TALK

THE OBAMA - REZKO STORY

OBAMA CAMPAIGN REPORTER: "HARD NOT TO DRINK THE KOOL AID"

CLINTON, OBAMA BRIBING SUPER DELEGATES

THE NEED FOR PROGRESSIVE PRESSURE ON OBAMA

OBAMA'S FINANCE CHAIR TIED TO SUBPRIME SCANDAL

BEHIND THE FARRAKHAN CONTROVERSY

LAND DEAL COMES BACK TO HAUNT OBAMA

OBAMA ON IRAQ: FEWER TROOPS, MORE BLACKWATER?

OBAMA TAKING BACK DOOR FUNDING FROM LOBBYISTS

GOP USING JOE MCCARTHY TACTICS AGAINST OBAMA

• AND SO IS CLINTON

MICHELLE OBAMA'S THESIS

HOLDING OBAMA TO ACCOUNT

JUST WORDS ON JUST WORDS

SOME JEWISH LEADERS OUT TO GET OBAMA AS JEWISH VOTERS CARE MORE ABOUT DOMESTIC ISSUES

TOP OBAMA AIDE IS SENIOR ECONOMIST AT DEMOCRATIC ABANDONSHIP COUNCIL

ACADEMICS LAUNCH CAMPAIGN AGAINST PRO-ISRAELI MCCARTHYISM

OBAMA'S MANY VIEWS ON MARIJUANA

OBAMA JOINS THE BUTTONED UP LOOK

SO YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT OBAMA'S PALS?

SO YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT DRUGS & OBAMA?

BLACK COLLEGE PAPER QUESTIONS BLIND LOYALTY TO OBAMA

OBAMA DISSES 1960S AND 1970S

WATCHING OBAMA

BIPARTISANSHIP IS BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH

GRATUITOUS GRAVITAS & KING KAROAKE

THE TIMIDITY OF HOPE

JOHN KERRYING BARACK OBAMA

OBAMA WILLING TO PUT EXTREME RIGHTWINGERS IN CABINET

WHY OBAMA IS CALLED BLACK

WITH OBAMA, THE DLC WINS AGAIN

BRUCE DIXON, BLACK AGENDA REPORT Obama has chosen to "reach out" to white and Republican voters while challenging none of their assumptions about America, racism or empire, at the same time, counting on on a deaf and blind black nationalism to shield him from accountability to African Americans. Republicans (and Hillary Clinton) know all they need do to counter him is prove to whites that he is not as conservative as he seems. Obama will thus be forced scramble relentlessly rightward from here on, disowning, denouncing and dishonoring any and all stirrings of black or grassroots militancy to keep white support without telling white America anything it doesn't want to know.

Back in 2003, when Obama was a candidate for the US Senate in the Illinois Democratic primary this reporter and Glen Ford challenged him on his affiliation with the Democratic Leadership Council. The right-wing, corporate-funded Trojan Horse inside the Democratic party had fervently embraced his political career, naming him one of its "100 to Watch" for 2003.

DLC endorsement is the gold standard of political reliability for Wall Street, Big Energy, Big Pharma, insurance, the airlines and more. Though candidates normally undergo extensive questioning and interviews before DLC endorsement, Obama insisted the blessing of these corporate special interests had been bestowed on him without these formalities and without his advance knowledge, and formally disassociated himself from the DLC. But like Hillary Clinton, and every front running Democrat since Michale Dukakis in 1988, Barack Obama's campaign has adopted the classic right wing DLC strategy.

In the DLC playbook, the road to winning elections is appealing to Republican-leaning white voters - demographic groups which pollsters and consultants in previous elections called "suburban soccer moms", NASCAR dads," and before that "Reagan Democrats." Candidates do this by decrying excessive partisanship, embracing "free trade" and "conservative" values, and displays of public piety. . .

By contrast, the 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns of Rev. Jesse Jackson won white support too, but embraced the burden of challenging white American assumptions about the essential goodness of America, about empire, and race and class. If you were organizing against police brutality or farm foreclosures, organizing a union or protesting the illegal war in Central America, the campaign in many cases came to you and augmented your local efforts. The Obama must campaign avoid this kind of activism like Dracula avoids crosses, because its candidate's appeal is based on challenging none of the fake history, none of the racism, injustice and unearned privilege at the heart of American life. . .

If there was an actual mass-based progressive movement in the US, operating on the ground and independent of political parties and campaigns, it might have a prayer of holding Barack Obama accountable. But there isn't.

APRIL 2008

LIVE WITH THE ELITE, DIE WITH THE ELITE

SAM SMITH

Sure, Obama is an elitist. I thought it the first time I saw him. The tone, the dress, the moves, the constant pretense of being in deep thought, the patronizing explanation replacing impassioned argument. Another smart-ass from an Ivy League law school. The ones that talk grandly and carry a little feather. We've got a lot of them in Washington.

That's why many white liberals went for him. He was comfortably familiar in all but hue. They treat him like a prophet but in fact he's just another of the black ivies who are riding the political waves these days. For Obama and Patrick Deval it was Harvard, for Mayor Nutter of Philadelphia it was the Wharton School at Penn, for DC's Mayor Fenty is was Oberlin and for Newark's Cory Book it was Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. Not bad if you can't have a mother who was Irish or latino.

But it's not as politically wonderful as it seems to some. St. Barack still can't get comfortably past one of the sleaziest politicians in his party's modern history and shows up weakly in matches against a guy who hasn't done anything worth remembering since Vietnam. His purported magnificence somehow fails to make the same impression at the polls as it does at the rallies and fundraisers of the well committed.

That's not surprising but it's worth noting and suggests a bit more humility in the Obama camp wouldn't hurt.
Of course, humility is not highly valued there. After all, it takes something beyond ordinary self-confidence to move from state senator to presidential candidate without even finishing your freshman term in the Senate.

On the other hand, Obama's not a corrupt and conniving cad nor a decrepit warrior looking for another dogfight, so it looks like he's the best we're going to get.

And it's not totally his fault that he sees himself as God's gift to his party and his country. His elitism is not really the problem; it is the elitism of those who convinced him of this: the white liberals.

These are the people who couldn't stand John Edwards, the candidate who came closest to the New Deal and Great Society values of any Democratic leader in decades. But his policies didn't move them, only his accent and haircut.

This is not a new problem. I wrote about it almost two decades ago:

Today's liberals seem to lack a sense of politics as war, in which one constantly rearranges the order of battle to win one's ultimate objective. They see politics more as a secular form of religion in which success is judged not by societal change but by the rigor with which the faith is maintained. They are political fundamentalists and, like religious fundamentalists, as far removed from their liberal heritage as Pat Robertson is from Jesus.

As with the religious fundamentalists, the liberal true believers often miss the point. The canon becomes particularized and heavily a matter of style and form. They know how to speak like liberals to other liberals but not how to talk to the rest of the world.

The result is a strange distortion of liberal priorities. Gut issues of immense potential popularity such as health, housing, job creation and education are left by the wayside in favor of issues that, no matter how worthy they may be, are most likely to alienate liberalism from the largest number of Americans.

This then is Obama's problem now: not so much that he's an elitist but that he's surrounded by them, funded by them, guided by them - and for too long has been trying to imitate them. If Ed Rendell was not so foolishly infatuated with the latest pretender to the Bush-Clinton duopoly, he might take Obama aside and give him a few lessons in talking like a real person again. Look at what a good job Rendell is doing making Clinton sound like one.

But Obama doesn't seemed blessed by that sort of advice. Both his white liberal and black constituencies love him too much for getting this far and wouldn't think of suggesting that he dismount his great stallion and reach out beyond the Ebenezer Baptist - Harvard Law axis to people who are seeking something more.

It wouldn't be hard. He could join a majority of doctors in this country and support single payer health insurance. He could go after usurious interest rates. He could propose a housing policy in which the government become equity partners with less wealthy homebuyers and recovered its share at sale.

Hell, he could take just one position without a dozen conditions and it would probably help.

But instead, it looks like he will continue to be the man his fans adore and the rest can't quite figure out.

That's not the best way to win an election.

MEDIA BIAS DOESN'T GET MUCH WORSE THAN THIS

All three major presidential candidates have highly controversial religious ties. We searched news sites for mention of these candidates and their ties and came up with these results:

• HILLARY CLINTON AND THE FELLOWSHIP: 45 MENTIONS
• JOHN MCCAIN AND REV JOHN HAGEE: 502 MENTIONS
• BARACK OBAMA AND REV JEREMIAH WRIGHT: 17,258 MENTIONS

WHO'S A PATRIOT?

LAWRENCE KORB AND IAN MOSS, CHICAGO TRIBUNE In 1961, a young African-American man, after hearing President John F. Kennedy's challenge to, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country," gave up his student deferment, left college in Virginia and voluntarily joined the Marines. In 1963, this man, having completed his two years of service in the Marines, volunteered again to become a Navy corpsman. (They provide medical assistance to the Marines as well as to Navy personnel.)

The man did so well in corpsman school that he was the valedictorian and became a cardiopulmonary technician. Not surprisingly, he was assigned to the Navy's premier medical facility, Bethesda Naval Hospital, as a member of the commander in chief's medical team, and helped care for President Lyndon B. Johnson after his 1966 surgery. For his service on the team, which he left in 1967, the White House awarded him three letters of commendation.. . .

While this young man was serving six years on active duty, Vice President Dick Cheney, who was born the same year as the Marine/sailor, received five deferments, four for being an undergraduate and graduate student and one for being a prospective father. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, both five years younger than the African-American youth, used their student deferments to stay in college until 1968. Both then avoided going on active duty through family connections.

Who is the real patriot? The young man who interrupted his studies to serve his country for six years or our three political leaders who beat the system? Are the patriots the people who actually sacrifice something or those who merely talk about their love of the country?

After leaving the service of his country, the young African-American finished his final year of college, entered the seminary, was ordained as a minister, and eventually became pastor of a large church in one of America's biggest cities.

This man is Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the retiring pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, who has been in the news for comments he made over the last three decades.

OBAMA'S KEY ADVISOR WANTS 60,000-80,000 AMERICAN TROOPS TO STAY IN IRAQ

ELI LAKE, NY SUN A key adviser to Senator Obama's campaign is recommending in a confidential paper that America keep between 60,000 and 80,000 troops in Iraq as of late 2010, a plan at odds with the public pledge of the Illinois senator to withdraw combat forces from Iraq within 16 months of taking office.

The paper, obtained by The New York Sun, was written by Colin Kahl for the center-left Center for a New American Security. In "Stay on Success: A Policy of Conditional Engagement," Mr. Kahl writes that through negotiations with the Iraqi government "the U.S. should aim to transition to a sustainable over-watch posture (of perhaps 60,000-80,000 forces) by the end of 2010 (although the specific timelines should be the byproduct of negotiations and conditions on the ground)."

Mr. Kahl is the day-to-day coordinator of the Obama campaign's working group on Iraq. . .

Both Mr. Kahl and a senior Obama campaign adviser reached yesterday said the paper does not represent the campaign's Iraq position. Nonetheless, the paper could provide clues as to the ultimate size of the residual American force the candidate has said would remain in Iraq after the withdrawal of combat brigades. The campaign has not publicly discussed the size of such a force in the past.

This is not the first time the opinion of an adviser to the Obama campaign has differed with the candidate's stated Iraq policy. In February, Mr. Obama's first foreign policy tutor, Samantha Power, told BBC that the senator's current Iraq plan would likely change based on the advice of military commanders in 2009. She has since resigned her position as a formal adviser. . .

In an interview yesterday, a senior Obama foreign affairs adviser, Susan Rice, said the Iraq working group is not the last word on the campaign's Iraq policy. . . Mr. Obama's policy to date also allows for a residual force for Iraq. In early Iowa debates, the senator would not pledge to remove all soldiers from Iraq, a distinction from his promise to withdraw all combat brigades. Also, Mr. Obama has stipulated that he would be open to having the military train the Iraqi Security Forces if he received guarantees that those forces would not be the shock troops of one side of an Iraqi civil war.

But the Obama campaign has also not said how many troops would make up this residual force. "We have not put a number on that. It depends on the circumstances on the ground," Ms. Rice said. She added, "It would be worse than folly, it would be dangerous, to put a hard number on the residual forces."

Mr. Kahl's paper laid out what he called a "middle way" between unlimited engagement in Iraq and complete and rapid disengagement. The approach is contingent, he said, on the progress and willingness of Iraq's major confessional parties in reaching political accommodation.

"There is a fundamental difference in the assumption between the Democratic approach and the Bush-McCain approach. That approach is premised on the assumption the Iraqi government wants to reach accommodation and what they need is time. The surge is premised on the notion of creating breathing space," Mr. Kahl said. He added that his strategy would pressure and entice the Iraqi government to begin political accommodation by not only starting the withdrawal, but also by stating that America had no intention to hold permanent bases in the country.

DOUG HENWOOD'S OBAMA REALITY CHECK

DOUG HENWOOD, LEFT BUSINESS OBSERVER Obama is inspiring the young, lifting the alienated off their couches, and catalyzing a new movement for . . . change, presumably one we can believe in. The content of this change is hard to specify. Some serious leftists we know and love point to Obama's roots as a community organizer in Chicago, though many people in a position to know say he didn't rock many boats in those days. He was embraced by foundation liberals, however, who greased his way into the Harvard Law School via a lakefront condo.

All of which doesn't make Obama uniquely bad: he's just another mainstream Democrat with a sleazy real estate guy in his past. Though he's being touted as an early opponent of the Iraq war, he told the Chicago Tribune in 2004: 'There's not that much difference between my position and George Bush's position . . . ' He voted to renew the PATRIOT Act, campaigned for happy warrior Joe Lieberman against Ned Lamont in 2006, and wants to increase the size of the U.S. military. He supports Israel's continuing torture of the Palestinians penned into the Gaza Strip. A Congressional Quarterly study found his Senate voting record was virtually indistinguishable from Hillary Clinton's; the only major difference in their votes is a surprising one: a move to limit class actions suits against corporations, which Clinton voted against, and Obama for. Obama's vote was against the preferences of a Dem financial base, trial lawyers, but pleasing to the Fortune 500 and Wall Street. . .

Some more thoughtful victims of Obama Disease point to detailed position papers on the candidate's website. These must always be taken with a grain of salt, especially during primary season. Candidate Bill Clinton promised to 'invest in people' and ended up being the president of 'a bunch of fucking bond traders,' as Hillary's husband memorably put it. LBJ campaigned as the peace candidate in 1964, and ended up killing a million Indochinese.

Obamians also point to his rejection of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council; they put him on their list of rising stars, and he asked to be removed. Encouraging-except for the fact that his chief economic advisor, Austan Goolsbee, the fellow who told the Canadians not to take the anti-NAFTA rhetoric seriously, is the DLC's chief economist. Goolsbee has written gushingly about Milton Friedman and denounced the idea of a moratorium on mortgage foreclosures. That hire is more significant than asking to be struck from a list.

Big capital would have no problem with an Obama presidency. Top hedge fund honcho Paul Tudor Jones threw a fundraiser for him at his Greenwich house last spring, 'The whole of Greenwich is backing Obama,' one source said of the posh headquarters of the hedge fund industry. They like him because they're socially liberal, up to a point, and probably eager for a little less war, and think he's the man to do their work. They're also confident he wouldn't undertake any renovations to the distribution of wealth. You could say the same about Clinton-but you know those hedge fund guys. They like a contrary bet. . .

What does Obama have? A lot of slogans that connect with nothing in the real world; in fact, their very emptiness may be the source of their appeal, because it allows people to project whatever they want to onto him, without getting bogged down in specifics, as Reagan liked to say. . . And despite the grand claims of enthusiasts, he doesn't really have a movement behind him-he's got a fan club. How does a fan club hold a candidate accountable? It's not like he'll take the phone calls of all those 27-year-olds who gave him $100 on the web as quickly as he'd answer a summons from Paul Tudor Jones.

Obama's appeal is a strange thing. Though he's added to it as his political momentum builds, his original base consisted of blacks and upper-status whites. The black support is out of racial pride, but the initial white support was driven by his post-partisan, post-racial appeal. Well-off whites love to hear a black man say that racism has largely receded as a toxic force, though it's really hard to figure out what the hell he's talking about in a world where black households earn about 60% as much as whites, and where black men are incarcerated at more than six times the rate of white men. And what of this post-partisan business? Politics is about conflicts over resources and priorities, and over the state's power to coerce; how ever could comity prevail in a world where interests and preferences diverge so widely?

As Adolph Reed told LBO, an Obama presidency "could give us the worst of all possible of worlds: one in which race is completely repackaged as a discourse of celebration and, to the extent that that had already become the only metaphor through which American politics could accommodate critical discussion of inequality, the language of '˜disparity,' it will no longer be possible for critiques of inequality to be heard as an appropriate topic for political discussion. . .

There's no doubt that Obamalust does embody some phantasmic longing for a better world-more peaceful, egalitarian, and humane. He'll deliver little of that-but there's evidence of some admirable popular desires behind the crush. And they will inevitably be disappointed.

As this newsletter has argued for years, there's great political potential in popular disillusionment with Democrats. The phenomenon was first diagnosed by Garry Wills in Nixon Agonistes. As Wills explained it, throughout the 1950s, left-liberals intellectuals thought that the national malaise was the fault of Eisenhower, and a Democrat would cure it. Well, they got JFK and everything still pretty much sucked, which is what gave rise to the rebellions of the 1960s (and all that excess that Obama wants to junk any remnant of). You could argue that the movements of the 1990s that culminated in Seattle were a minor rerun of this. The sense of malaise and alienation is probably stronger now than it was 50 years ago, and includes a lot more of the working class, whom Stanley Greenberg's focus groups find to be really pissed off about the cost of living and the way the rich are lording it over the rest of us.

Never did the possibility of disappointment offer so much hope. That's not what the candidate means by that word, but history can be a great ironist.

http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Obama.html

MARCH 2008

OBAMA RAISES TWICE AS MUCH FROM BIG BUSINESS INTERESTS AS MCCAIN

If the Catholic Church acted like the Democrats it would get its big bucks from atheists, porn stars and drug dealers. Read this and you'll understand why Democrats don't act like Democrats

BRODY MULLINS, WALL STREET JOURNAL Of seven major industries that have been the most reliable Republican resources, Sen. McCain has beaten Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama in only one, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan organization. Even that one, transportation, is a close call. Among the seven combined, the expected Republican nominee raised $13.1 million through February, compared with $22.5 million for Sen. Obama and $27.1 million for Sen. Clinton.

The Republican standard-bearer's attempt to claw back financial support from the GOP's business base could be a pivotal factor in determining the outcome of the presidential race. Employees of financial-services, insurance and real-estate companies so far have donated to Sen. Obama over Sen. McCain by almost two-to-one -- and favored Sen. Clinton by even more. Health-care and pharmaceutical firms have given three times as much to each of the two Democrats as to Sen. McCain. Defense firms put Sen. McCain ahead of Sen. Obama, but behind Sen. Clinton. Energy, construction and agribusiness firms have given more to both Democrats. . .

Two main factors have combined to put Sen. McCain in such a deep hole with businesses. First: Since early 2007, Democrats in general have been more successful at fund raising than their Republican counterparts. The unusually strong business-sector fund raising of Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama has been helped by a wide expectation during 2007 of likely Democratic success in the White House and congressional races because of President Bush's unpopularity. . . Second, Sen. McCain's maverick status in his party and frequent tangles with big business interests made other Republican candidates far more attractive to many industry donors. . .

Individually, Sens. Clinton and Obama haven't just beaten Sen. McCain to business donors. In many areas they bested the top Republican fund-raisers, Messrs. Romney and Giuliani, too.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120709422285181841.html?mod=hps_us_whats_news

OBAMA PRAISES FIRST GULF WAR, FOREIGN POLICIES OF REAGAN AND DADDY BUSH

AP Sen. Barack Obama said Friday he would return the country to the more "traditional" foreign policy efforts of past presidents, such as George H.W. Bush, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. At a town hall event at a local high school gymnasium, Obama praised George H.W. Bush - father of the president - for the way he handled the Persian Gulf War: with a large coalition and carefully defined objectives. . . "The truth is that my foreign policy is actually a return to the traditional bipartisan realistic policy of George Bush's father, of John F. Kennedy, of, in some ways, Ronald Reagan, and it is George Bush that's been naive and it's people like John McCain and, unfortunately, some Democrats that have facilitated him acting in these naive ways that have caused us so much damage in our reputation around the world," he said.

UDATE: OBAMA'S POSITION ON IRAQ

AMY GOODMAN: Senator Obama, quick question: 70 percent of Iraqis say they want the US to withdraw completely; why don’t you call for a total withdrawal?

SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Well, I do, except for our embassy. I call for amnesty and protecting our civilian contractors there.

AMY GOODMAN: You’ve said a residual force-

SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Yeah, but-

AMY GOODMAN: -which means [inaudible] thousands [inaudible].

SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Well, no. I mean, I don’t think that you’ve read exactly what I’ve said. What I said is that we do need to have a strike force in the region. It doesn’t necessarily have to be in Iraq; it could be in Kuwait or other places. But we do have to have some presence in order to not only protect them, but also potentially to protect their territorial integrity.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you call for a ban on the private military contractors like Blackwater?

SEN. BARACK OBAMA: I’ve actually-I’m the one who sponsored the bill that called for the investigation of Blackwater in [inaudible], so-

AMY GOODMAN: But would you support the Sanders one now?

SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Here’s the problem: we have 140,000 private contractors right there, so unless we want to replace all of or a big chunk of those with US troops, we can’t draw down the contractors faster than we can draw down our troops. So what I want to do is draw-I want them out in the same way that we make sure that we draw out our own combat troops. Alright? I mean, I-

AMY GOODMAN: Not a ban?

SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Well, I don’t want to replace those contractors with more US troops, because we don’t have them, alright?

OBAMA CAMPAIGN CAUGHT IN NAFTA DOUBLE TALK

AP - Barack Obama's senior economic policy adviser privately told Canadian officials to view the debate in Ohio over trade as "political positioning," according to a memo obtained by The Associated Press that was rejected by the adviser. A Barack Obama adviser says Canadian officials inaccurately portrayed talk about the camp's trade policy. . . .

The memo is the first documentation to emerge publicly out of the meeting between the adviser, Austan Goolsbee, and officials with the Canadian consulate in Chicago, but Goolsbee said it misinterprets what he told them. The memo was written by Joseph DeMora, who works for the consulate and attended the meeting.

"Noting anxiety among many U.S. domestic audiences about the U.S. economic outlook, Goolsbee candidly acknowledged the protectionist sentiment that has emerged, particularly in the Midwest, during the primary campaign," the memo said. "He cautioned that this messaging should not be taken out of context and should be viewed as more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans."

Goolsbee disputed the characterization from the conservative government official. "This thing about 'it's more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans,' that's this guy's language," Goolsbee said of DeMora. "He's not quoting me. "I certainly did not use that phrase in any way," he said.

The Obama campaign and the Canadian embassy denied there was any inconsistency between what the candidate was saying publicly and what advisers were saying privately.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/03/obama.nafta.ap/index.html

CNN - The Canadian memo said that when Rioux "asked whether we could expect to hear more of this as the elections progressed, Goolsbee thought not. In fact, he mentioned that going forward the Obama camp was going to be careful to send the appropriate message without coming off too protectionist.

"As Obama continues to court the economic populist vote, particularly in upcoming contests like Ohio, we are likely to see a continuation of some of the messaging that hasn't played in Canada's favor, but this should continue to be viewed in the context in which it is delivered," DeMora wrote in the closing section.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton said Goolsbee's visit was not as an emissary from the campaign, but as a professor from the University of Chicago. He was not authorized to share any messages from the campaign, Burton said.

CNN - "This is being reported as if somehow this is an official meeting of an Obama representative and the Canadian government," Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said in a conference call with reporters. "That was not the case. He was essentially doing a walking tour and was essentially having a casual conversation and the report on that conversation was not accurate."

But the Associated Press *reported Monday it had obtained a memo from a Canadian diplomat essentially confirming CTV's story and stating Goolsbee said Obama's tough talk on NAFTA was "more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans." Goolsbee denied Monday he ever made such a suggestion, and the Canadian embassy issued a statement saying there was it had "no intention to convey, in any way, that Senator Obama and his campaign team were taking a different position in public from views expressed in private.

OBAMA PLANS TO APPOINT EXTREME RIGHT WINGERS TO TOP CABINET POSTS

TIMES, UK - Obama is hoping to appoint cross-party figures to his cabinet such as Chuck Hagel, the Republican senator for Nebraska and an opponent of the Iraq war, and Richard Lugar, leader of the Republicans on the Senate foreign relations committee. Senior advisers confirmed that Hagel, a highly decorated Vietnam war veteran and one of McCain's closest friends in the Senate, was considered an ideal candidate for defence secretary. Some regard the outspoken Republican as a possible vice-presidential nominee although that might be regarded as a "stretch". . .

Obama believes he will be able to neutralise McCain by drawing on the expertise of independent Republicans such as Hagel and Lugar, who is regarded by Obama as a potential secretary of state.

Larry Korb, a defence official under President Ronald Reagan who is backing Obama, said: "By putting a Republican in the Pentagon and the State Department you send a signal to Congress and the American people that issues of national security are above politics."

Korb recalled that President John F Kennedy appointed Robert McNamara, a Republican, as defense secretary in 1961. "Hagel is not only a Republican but a military veteran who would reassure the troops that there was somebody in the Pentagon who understood their hopes, concerns and fears," he said.

LUGAR

Rated 0% by SANE
Rated 0% by AFL-CIO
Rated 0% BY NARAL
Rated 12% by American Public Health Association
Rated 0% by Alliance for Retired Americans
Rated 27% by the National Education Association
Rated 5% by League of Conservation Voters

Voted no on implementing the 9/11 Commission report
Vote against providing habeas corpus for Gitmo prisoners
Voted no on comprehensive test ban treaty
Voted against same sex marriage
Strongly anti-abortion
Opposed to more federal funding for healthcare
Voted for unconstitutional wiretapping
Voted to increase penalties for drug violations

HAGEL

Rated 0% BY NARAL
Rated 11% by NAACP
Rated 0% by Human Rights Coalition
Rated 100% by Christian Coalition
Rated 12% by American Public Health Association
Rated 22% by Alliance for Retired Americans
Rated 36% by the National Education Association
Rated 0% by League of Conservation Voters
Rated 8% by AFL-CIO

Strongly anti-abortion
Voted for anti-flag desecration amendment
Voted to increase penalties for drug violations
Favors privatizing Social Security

THINGS YOU MAY NOT KNOW ABOUT OBAMA

[Matt Gonzales is running with Ralph Nader as an independent vice presidential candidate. From an article in Counterpunch]

CLASS ACTION REFORM: In 2005, Obama joined Republicans in passing a law dubiously called the Class Action Fairness Act that would shut down state courts as a venue to hear many class action lawsuits. Long a desired objective of large corporations and President George Bush, Obama in effect voted to deny redress in many of the courts where these kinds of cases have the best chance of surviving corporate legal challenges. Instead, it forces them into the backlogged Republican-judge dominated federal courts. By contrast, Senators Clinton, Edwards and Kerry joined 23 others to vote against CAFA, noting the "reform" was a thinly-veiled "special interest extravaganza" that favored banking, creditors and other corporate interests. . .

CREDIT CARD INTEREST RATES: Obama has a way of ducking hard votes or explaining away his bad votes by trying to blame poorly-written statutes. Case in point: an amendment he voted on as part of a recent bankruptcy bill before the US Senate would have capped credit card interest rates at 30 percent. Inexplicably, Obama voted against it, although it would have been the beginning of setting these predatory lending rates under federal control. Even Senator Hillary Clinton supported it. Now Obama explains his vote by saying the amendment was poorly written or set the ceiling too high. His explanation isn't credible as Obama offered no lower number as an alternative, and didn't put forward his own amendment clarifying whatever language he found objectionable.

LIMITING NON-ECONOMIC DAMAGES: These seemingly unusual votes wherein Obama aligns himself with Republican Party interests aren't new. While in the Illinois Senate, Obama voted to limit the recovery that victims of medical malpractice could obtain through the courts. Capping non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases means a victim cannot fully recover for pain and suffering or for punitive damages. Moreover, it ignored that courts were already empowered to adjust awards when appropriate, and that the Illinois Supreme Court had previously ruled such limits on tort reform violated the state constitution. . .

MINING LAW OF 1872: In November 2007, Obama came out against a bill that would have reformed the notorious Mining Law of 1872. The current statute, signed into law by Ulysses Grant, allows mining companies to pay a nominal fee, as little as $2.50 an acre, to mine for hardrock minerals like gold, silver, and copper without paying royalties. . . The Hardrock Mining and Reclamation Act of 2007 would have finally overhauled the law and allowed American taxpayers to reap part of the royalties. . . Later it came to light that one of Obama's key advisors in Nevada is a Nevada-based lobbyist in the employ of various mining companies

ENERGY POLICY: On energy policy, it turns out Obama is a big supporter of corn-based ethanol which is well known for being an energy-intensive crop to grow. It is estimated that seven barrels of oil are required to produce eight barrels of corn ethanol, according to research by the Cato Institute. Ethanol's impact on climate change is nominal and isn't "green" according to Alisa Gravitz, Co-op America executive director. "It simply isn't a major improvement over gasoline when it comes to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions." . . . Obama voted in favor of $8 billion worth of corn subsidies in 2006 alone, when most of that money should have been committed to alternative energy sources such as solar, tidal and wind.

SINGLE-PAYER HEALTH CARE: Obama opposed single-payer bill HR676, sponsored by Congressmen Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers in 2006, although at least 75 members of Congress supported it. . . Obama's own plan has been widely criticized for leaving health care industry administrative costs in place and for allowing millions of people to remain uninsured. "Sicko" filmmaker Michael Moore ridiculed it saying, "Obama wants the insurance companies to help us develop a new health care plan-the same companies who have created the mess in the first place."

NORTH AMERICAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT: Regarding the North American Free Trade Agreement, Obama recently boasted, "I don't think NAFTA has been good for Americans, and I never have." Yet, Calvin Woodward reviewed Obama's record on NAFTA in a February 26, 2008 Associated Press article and found that comment to be misleading: "In his 2004 Senate campaign, Obama said the US should pursue more deals such as NAFTA, and argued more broadly that his opponent's call for tariffs would spark a trade war. AP reported then that the Illinois senator had spoken of enormous benefits having accrued to his state from NAFTA, while adding that he also called for more aggressive trade protections for US workers.". . . Obama cast the deciding vote against an amendment to a September 2005 Commerce Appropriations Bill, proposed by North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan, that would have prohibited US trade negotiators from weakening US laws that provide safeguards from unfair foreign trade practices

SOME FINAL EXAMPLES: On March 2, 2007 Obama gave a speech at AIPAC, America's pro-Israeli government lobby, wherein he disavowed his previous support for the plight of the Palestinians. . .

He wouldn't have his picture taken with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom when visiting San Francisco for a fundraiser in his honor because Obama was scared voters might think he supports gay marriage . . .

Obama acknowledges the disproportionate impact the death penalty has on blacks, but still supports it, while other politicians are fighting to stop it. . .

Obama aggressively opposed initiating impeachment proceedings against the president and he wouldn't even support Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold's effort to censure the Bush administration for illegally wiretapping American citizens in violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. . .

http://counterpunch.com/gonzalez02292008.html

FEBRUARY 2008

GETTING READY TO DEAL WITH PRESIDENT OBAMA

It is now reasonable to think about Barack Obama becoming our next president. There are a number of significant virtues in this, such as the end of the dismal Bush-Clinton-Bush era of corruption, corporatization and cultural decay. Such as our first reasonably honest president in over 30 years. Such as a president desiring not just a more powerful America but a better one. Such as a president who might deal with other countries decently and not as a schoolyard bully.

On the other hand we will still have a president who supports the Patriot Act, No Child Left Behind law, the basic fallacies of the war on terror, the continued abuse of the war on drugs and a medical industry controlled by profiteering insurance companies. He also appears largely indifferent to the collapse of constitutional government. There is nothing liberal, progressive or enlightened in any of these positions and it is a marker of the dismal state of liberalism that Obama has not been called on them.

Instead of mindlessly shouting "Yes, we can," liberals and progressives should be telling the Obama crowd, "Yes, but."

They could take a few lessons from the GOP rightwing which, even with the nomination all but sewed up, has still been able to force John McCain to change his positions on a number of key matters. Even when they lack a majority, they know how to stand their ground and shape the politics of the situation.

Liberals, on the other hand, not only never once forced Clinton to back down on one of his conservative moves, they never even tried. The same pattern is now clearly growing with Obama.

Liberals didn't used to be like that. They understood - as the GOP right does today - that politics is a two front war: one front takes on the other party and the second front confronts elements of your own party with which you disagree.

This was obvious when liberals had to deal with the likes of George Wallace, Strom Thurmond, Richard Daley or Camine DeSapio. Today, however, this same constituency - so deep into iconic rather than programmatic politics - is happy to help any Democrat enter the White House with no questions asked as long as the candidate, like a fine wine or classy car, adds gloss to their own image.

The effect of this phenomenon is likely to be quite different with Obama than it was with Clinton. Clinton, after all, was a con artist who corrupted others even as he enjoyed his own corruption. Further, the falsely premised enthusiasm he inspired was largely used for the benefit of himself and those close to him.

Obama is a more traditional politician, flawed to be sure, but without the depth of cynicism that propelled the Clintons and their friends. I imagine at times that as president he might be a bit like Dwight Eisenhower, placidly non-productive, occasionally exploited by corrupt friends, but mainly running the country like it was the world's largest 7-11, adequate but unchanging. Hope will be replaced by calm.

The advantage of this is that you have a president who is not going to do anything as stupid as invade Iraq or start a war with Russia. On the other hand, when the Eisenhower administration ended we found ourselves at the beginning of an era we now know as the Sixties. Imposed tranquility can keep a lot from coming to the surface, but only for so long.

The other possibility is that Obama will be a Jimmy Carter-like transitional figure. Carter served as the bridge between New Deal-Great Society social democracy and the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush robber baron neo-capitalism that was waiting on the other side of the Seventies. In a similar way, Obama - far too careful and conservative to actually fulfill the hopes he has aroused - may at least ease us from the Reagan era in which we still suffer to something demonstrably better. Sometime after his tenure, we might actually discover a reason for hope.

We can, of course, only guess. A major recession could quickly raise the level of public impatience with the lies of neo-capitalism and put aside Obama's caution. America's fourth great awakening - the religious revival some believe began on the left in the Sixties only to end up later as a major tool of the right, could wear itself out. What we may actually be seeing in the fundamentalist fervor of Obama's supporters is a sign of the transfer of faith from God back to politics again. It has been noted that after earlier great awakenings, something positive happened: the American revolution, the abolition movement and later the rise of progressive politics.

We can only guess, but it is safe to say that the excessive enthusiasm for the gossamer promise of Obama suggests that something important is happening well beyond the candidate himself. He just seems to have been at the right place at the right time - exploiting but not controlling.

In any case, if all goes about as well as can be expected these days, beginning on January 20 we will be introduced for the first time to the real Barack Obama. Hope and other cliches will take a back seat to budget and bills.

It is reasonable to expect to find a man far more timid than we have been led to believe. It is interesting to learn only just recently from Vanity Fair that Obama was elected president of the Harvard Law Review on the 19th ballot, as the overtly compromise candidate. This compromise law student would grow into a man who would promise to put right-wingers like Chuck Hagel in his cabinet, notably without similar promises to Democratic progressives or members of the Green Party. Compromise is clearly his safe haven; he is far more concerned with not doing wrong than with doing right.

And he is a lawyer. It is popular to consider that an asset for a politician, even though nearly half the members of our dysfunctional legislatures are lawyers, a job otherwise held by less than one percent of our population.

Observers as far back as de Tocqueville have railed against the American tendency to overload its politics with attorneys. And if you look at the record of lawyer presidents it's pretty mixed. We've had 25 of them. With the exception of four founding fathers, Abraham Lincoln and FDR, the list also includes Millard Fillmore, James Garfield, Chester Arthur, William McKinley, William Howard Taft, Calvin Coolidge, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton . Hardly an argument you want to present to the jury.

My view is that lawyers in politics tend to be okay if they are clearly on your side. Otherwise they can be a pain in the butt. When people complained to me that John Edwards was a trial lawyer, I would respond, "Yeah, but he would be our trial lawyer."

The other good lawyers are those for whom the law is simply a part of their life, informing it but not inspiring or guiding it, as in the case of FDR and Lincoln.

But Obama appears to be a lawyer through and through, which is why, for example, his healthcare plan is so awful. A pointlessly complex miasma designed for no higher purpose than to keep the insurance industry off his back. If you watched that recent debate in which attorneys Obama and Clinton spent a half hour trying to wriggle around the politics of the issue, you'd had little idea that they were actually talking about a large number of ill people not being able to afford to be ill because of the insurance industry.

In short, lawyers like Obama are great for handling divorces and settling disputes at the Harvard Law Review - perhaps even in the Mid East - but you don't want them to lead movements. Their minds are too weighed down with caveats.

So if you want anything really good to happen in an Obama administration you will have break through the infinite subsections and footnotes of his brain and convince him that it is, on balance, better and easier to do the right thing.

Obama is an empty vessel. If liberals and progressives are as pathetically obsequious towards Obama as they were towards Clinton, that vessel will be filled with the desires of large financial institutions, health insurance oligopolies and foreign policy experts attempting to compensate for hormonal insecurities by invading this or that. And Obama will end his term with the status of Reid or Pelosi rather than of JFK.

It could be happen differently if liberals and progressives were to follow the techniques of the civil rights movement with the Democrats or the contemporary GOP right, a politically sophisticated blend of intramural pressure and cooperation.

It could begin with a list of no more than a half dozen demands that would become as familiar to the media and the public as have such rightwing nemeses as abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research.

Single-payer healthcare and an end to American military invasions should be top contenders for the list because they already have sizable constituencies, media attention and are embarrassing to the Democratic Party establishment.

But first, an awful lot of people have to get their heads straight, starting with the poodle libs who have done so much damage to the cause of positive change by their loyalty to deceptive hustlers and their indifference to political substance.

We need a movement in which Obama is a key target, a healthy ally or a major opponent based not on warm and cuddly feelings but on the reality of his reaction to, and participation in, progressive change.

In short, the Obamania needs to die on Inauguration Day, replaced by a movement to end American imperialism, restore the Constitution, unravel the evils of neo-capitalism and instill some eco-sanity. It will be the strength of such a movement, and not the new president's virtues, that will largely determine whether he does the right thing and whether the right things happens.

If, on the other hand, we just wait for Obama, we will wake up one morning and the words on our lips will not be "Yes, we can" but "Why the hell didn't we?"

JUST WORDS ON JUST WORDS

SAM SMITH - The assumption held by many is that Obama is exceptionally eloquent. So what happened when Hillary Clinton accused him of relying on words rather than experience? He gave a somewhat immodest speech which inferred he was up there with Martin Luther King and the Declaration of Independence - quoting some of their epic phrases and then adding sardonically, "just words." The words he used to defend his eloquence, however, turned out to have been lifted (or borrowed)from his pal, Deval Patrick, governor of Massachusetts.

This is not a criminal offense but neither should it pass unnoticed because it sheds light not only on the candidate but on the time in which we live, a time of such persistent illusions that we can easily find ourselves accepting the fake as the real and even praising it as eloquent.

I got to thinking about Obama last night as 12 men competed on American Idol. I suddenly realized why so many contemporary singers leave me uneasy or confused: their words and their facial expressions aren't in sync. One singer crooned an extremely sad lyric as he grinned and flirted with the women in the audience. Another, in a typical pose of the contemporary vocalist, contorted his face as though he was being waterboarded, even while singing lyrics that were maniacally bland.

I mentioned this to a friend, who referred me to a tale by Lesley Stahl of CBS News, describing a critical interview with Ronald Reagan in 1984:

"I knew the piece would have an impact, if only because it was so long: five minutes and 40 seconds, practically a documentary in Evening News terms. I worried that my sources at t