Lettuce pray

http://www.grist.org/article/food-2010-11-18-white-house-backs-national-salad-bar-initiative

Lettuce pray
White House to put up to 5,000 salad bars in schools
Ed Bruske

First Lady Michelle Obama is expected to announce on Monday a major new initiative that would place up to 5,000 salad bars in public schools nationwide, despite uncertainties over how local health inspectors might treat those salad bars and USDA nutrition-tracking rules that could prove a major impediment.

Officials in the White House, led by chef Sam Kass, and at the U.S. Centers for Disease and Prevention, have been working to build a coalition representing the produce industry and Ann Cooper, director of nutrition services in Boulder, Colo. schools, who recently teamed with Whole Foods to raise $1.4 million from customers to establish a grant program that would place salad bars in qualifying schools.

Under the initiative expected to be announced on Monday in Florida, where First Lady Michelle Obama has taken her "Let's Move" campaign to fight childhood obesity, Cooper would manage applications for salad bars from the schools along with distribution of funds to purchase necessary equipment.

One potential obstacle to the program is the refusal of many school districts to install salad bars for food-safety reasons and because of cumbersome USDA rules governing the federally subsidized school lunch program that feeds some 31 million U.S. school children every day.

Cooper named three school districts she knows of -- Philadelphia, Austin, Tex., and Montgomery County, Md., -- that have already indicated they will not support salad bars. Concerns have been raised that elementary school children in particular might be prone to spread disease at salad bars because they are too short for the standard "sneeze guard" installed on most salad bars, or because they might use their hands instead of the serving utensils provided.

Cooper, who would not comment on the pending White House announcement, has dismissed those concerns, saying, "As far as I’ve found out, there are no documented disease outbreaks from school salad bars. By and large, this is not a high risk area."

But schools also are deterred by USDA regulations that require students to pass by a cash register or "point of sale" station after they have been to the salad bar to ensure that they have served themselves the correct portions of fruits and vegetables required under the federal lunch program. In October, the USDA's Food and Nutrition Services division, which oversees the subsidized meal program, circulated a memo saying that while it encourages the use of salad bars in schools, school menu planners must tell students the minimum amounts they must take from salad bars, cashiers "must be trained to judge accurately the quantities of self-service items," and point-of-sale registers "must be stationed after the salad bar."

Cooper has previously said USDA rules too often "don't work on the ground" and that forcing students to double back and pass a checkpoint after they've been to the salad bar "slows everything down."

Also, the CDC was trying to determine how local health inspectors might pass judgment on salad bars scattered across the country and what federal health requirements they might apply.

In addition to Cooper, the White House initiative participants are said to be United Fresh Produce Association, the National Fruit and Vegetable Alliance, and Whole Foods. The recent Whole Foods campaigns raised enough money to pay for salad bars in 564 schools. Around 570 schools applied for salad bar grants. Until now, the produce industry has been backing its own campaign to donate salad bars to schools.

Michelle Obama has embraced more fruit and vegetable consumption as a major plank in her efforts to improve American diets and combat weight-related illnesses, especially among children. Kass, who directs the First Lady's nutrition efforts, was seen as central to bringing the various salad-bar interests together and developing a unified effort under the White House banner.

A reporter for the Washington Post in a previous life, I now tend my “urban farm” about a mile from the White House in the District of Columbia and teach kids something I call “food appreciation.” I believe in self-reliance, growing food close to home and political freedom for the residents of the District of Columbia. I am currently working to introduce local produce into the D.C. school system. I write a daily food blog called The Slow Cook.

Obama’s Olympic Error

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-zirin/obamas-olympic-error_b_302025.html

Obama’s Olympic Error
By Dave Zirin

President Barack Obama is now en route to Copenhagen in an effort to sell Chicago as the site of the 2016 Summer Olympics. In the process, he may be selling Chicago down the river. Obama is joined arm-in-arm with his wife Michelle on one side and Mayor Richard Daley's Chicago political machine on the other. Michelle Obama says, "My father was disabled, and I think what it would have meant for him to see someone in his shoes compete. Kids need to see that and that needs to be celebrated just as much, if not more." This seems more like an argument to support the Paralympics (a tremendous event) but that's beside the point. Michelle Obama should perhaps realize that if the Olympics had come to Chicago when she was a young girl on Chicago's working class south side, her home may have been torn down to make way for an Olympic facility. No word on how being out of house and home would have helped her disabled father.

Mayor Daley, rocking a 35 percent approval rating, says that the Games would be "a huge boost to our economy, raising it to a new level. The Games will help us recover sooner from the recession that still grips our nation and enable us to better compete in the global economy."

There is only one problem with this argument: the history of the Olympic Games almost without exception brands it as a lie. As Sports Illustrated's Michael Fish - an Olympic supporter - has written, "You stage a two-week athletic carnival and, if things go well, pray the local municipality isn't sent into financial ruin."

In fact, the very idea that Chicago could be an appropriate setting for the Olympics might have been hatched by Jon Stewart for a four-year supply of comedic fodder. To greater or lesser degrees, the Olympics bring gentrification, graft and police violence wherever they nest. Even without the Olympic Games, Chicago has been ground zero in the past decade for the destruction of public housing, political corruption raised to an art form, and police violence. Bringing the Olympics to this town would be like sending a gift basket filled with bottles of Jim Beam to the Betty Ford Clinic: over-consumption followed by disaster.

It's also difficult for Chicago residents to see how this will help their pocketbooks, given that Daley pledged to the International Olympic Committee that any cost overruns would be covered by taxpayers.

This is why a staggering 84 percent of the city opposes bringing the Games to Chicago if it costs residents a solitary dime. Even if the games were to go off without a hitch - which would happen only if the setting was lovely Shangri-La - not even half the residents would support hosting the Games.

The Obamas, former Chicago residents, should be standing with their city. Instead, we have the sight of Barack, Michelle, and Oprah trying to outmuscle Pele and Brazil for a place at the Olympic trough. The question is why. Maybe Obama wants the Olympic fairy dust enjoyed by Ronald Reagan at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles or Bill Clinton at the 1996 games in Atlanta. Or perhaps he is returning favor to the developers and other sundry connected people in the Windy City who will make out like bandits once the smoke has cleared. But his intentions are clear: he wants the glitz, glamour, and prestige of the games and he wants it for the Daley machine. What the people of Chicago want doesn't seem to compute.

But we shouldn't be surprised at this point that Obama is tin-eared to the concerns of Chicago residents. As Paul Krugman wrote Sept. 20 on the banker bonuses, "the administration has suffered more than it seems to realize from the perception that it's giving taxpayers' hard-earned money away to Wall Street." Shoveling taxpayers' money into the Olympic maw is no better, especially in these tough times.

No Games Chicago organizer Alison McKenna said to me, "I oppose the Olympics coming to Chicago because instead of putting money toward what people really need, money will be funneled to real estate developers who will be tearing down Washington Park and other important community resources. I oppose the Olympics coming to Chicago because the nonprofit child-welfare agency that I work for had to sustain budget cuts and layoffs, while Chicago has spent $48.2 million on the 2016 Olympic bid, as of July 2009."

There is an urgency to building resistance to these kinds of priorities. Right now, the right wing is shamelessly adopting populist rhetoric and the power of protest to sell an agenda of racism and fear wrapped in taxpayer protection. The big public voice against Obama's trip to Copenhagen has been the repellent RNC chief Michael Steele who believes, and this is hilarious, that "At a time of war and recession" Obama needs to stay home. It shouldn't be a scoundrel like Steele who represents a party of privatization and occupation who delivers that message. Now is the time to build a pole of attraction on the left for people furious at corporate greed amidst a recession. This needs to happen, and not just for the Windy City. It's about building a vibrant protest movement that believes in social justice not the rank divisiveness of the right. Obama likes to say that change comes from "outside Washington." It's time to take him at his word.

Dave Zirin is the author of “A People’s History of Sports in the United States” (The New Press) Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com .

Find Out Who Topped Maxim's 2009 "Hot 100" List!

http://omg.yahoo.com/news/find-out-who-topped-maxims-2009-hot-100-list/22462

Find Out Who Topped Maxim's 2009 "Hot 100" List!

Us Magazine
5-13-9


Maxim has unveiled its "2009 Hot 100," the lad magazine's definitive list of the worlds most beautiful women.

Topping the list: House's Olivia Wilde, whom Maxim editors say they can't stop "drooling over."

For the first time, a First Lady makes the cut: Michelle Obama debuts at No. 93. Says Maxim, "[President Obama] may be dealing with two wars, an economic meltdown, and a rapidly graying dome, but at least our Commander-in-Chief gets to come home to the hottest First Lady in the history of these United States."

The top 10 most beautiful women (according to Maxim):

1. Olivia Wilde: "We may not know a McDreamy from a McNugget, but when it comes to TV doctors, there is only one who makes our body temperatures rise. We were drooling over the NYC native long before she was injected into Fox's hit medical drama (House)."

2. Megan Fox: "Seriously, do women get more painfully hot than this? Megan Fox has the face of an angel, a body so perfect that God may have carved it out of soap and sex appeal that could melt a unicorn's horn. Plus, we hear she smells like clouds."

3. Bar Refaeli: "If there's any evidence that the Middle East is a land of beauty and wonder Bar is it. The 24-year-old Israeli supermodel with the brain blowing body scorched the cover of the famed Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition."

4. Malin Akerman: "In the dark world of Watchmen, Malin was tasked with one tough mission ... Watchmen wasn't the first time we've seen Malin and it won't be the last. She's got four new flicks on her busy schedule."

5. Mila Kunis: "Mila's combination of exotic beauty and gal-next-door charm would make any sane man forget his ex in three seconds flat."

6. Eliza Dushku: "On-screen in Fox's Dollhouse, she's a lethal hottie who can negotiate a hostage release or recover stolen art for the Greek government. Off-screen she's the show's producer. Eliza, you've delivered a round house kick to our heartstrings."

7. Adriana Lima: "With apologies to Mrs. Tom Brady [Gisele], it's Adriana who epitomizes the Brazilian bombshell; her killer curves, ridiculous sexiness, and adorable accent make this supermodel the hottest native of a country stupid with smoking hot women."

8. Rihanna: "Pop's reigning princess has had a year of wild highs and lows. Rumor has it, she's in the studio recording her fourth album. We're dancing already."

9. Jordana Brewster: "This breathtaking daughter of a Brazilian swimsuit model and granddaughter of a Yale University president is the real reason the entire world went to see Fast & Furious."

10. Jennifer Love Hewitt: "Ever since she uttered her first 'Bailey!' on Party of Five, Love has been the object of many a man's obsession. She left us high and dry for a bit, but her return to the tube on Ghost Whisperer gives us our weekly fix of Love... and needy dead people."

Obama's First Appointment - An Ominous Portent

http://rense.com/general84/bark.htm

Obama's First Appointment -
An Ominous Portent
Barky's First Choices - No Seat At The Table For Labor And The Third World
By Webster G. Tarpley
11-7-8

WASHINGTON DC -- Obama's first appointments have confirmed the grimmest suspicions about the new regime.

The naming of the vicious thug Rahm Emanuel as the new Martin Bormann of the regime has caused much consternation, even among the netroots or nutroots crowd over at the Daily Kos. Rahm is a former member of the Israeli Defense Force whose ruling passion is that he is a warmonger. In 2006, when Rahm ran the Democratic congressional money machine, he made sure that only warmongers committed to the open-ended prosecution of the Afghan and Iraq wars could get any Democratic Party financing for their races. Many contests were lost as a result. A tragic case was that of grass-roots antiwar activist Christine Cegelis of Ohio, who was defeated in the Democratic primary by Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq war veteran who advocated endless hostilities there. Duckworth lost to the Republican by several points. If the $300,000 Rahm gave Duckworth had been shared with anti-war candidate Bob Bowen in Florida, a Democratic seat could easily have been added. Rahm is also a product of the filthy and corrupt Illinois bipartisan Combine, which I have described in my books.

A co-chair of the transition team is Valerie Jarrett, who served as Barky's travelling schoolmarm during the campaign. Jarrett also comes from the Daley wing of the Illinois combine. She has provided graft and related support for Michelle Obama's foundation-funded operations. Jarrett is also an integral part of the Chicago housing graft community, a region also inhabited by Barky's original godfather, the convicted felon and thief Tony Rezko. Jarrett is discussed in detail in my Obama biography. She is joined on the transition team by John Podesta, a Clinton-era retread who worked for Sen. Tom Daschle, the senator from Citibank, the biggest employer in South Dakota. Podesta also worked for Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, a close personal friend of Weatherman terrorist bombers Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

Another Daschle-Citibank retread is transition co-chair Tom Rouse, who was the chief of staff for Daschle when he was the weakest Democratic majority leader in recent memory, surrendering to Bush on point after point. Chief strategist remains David Axelrod of the corrupt Illinois Combine, who was taught his mindbending skills in the infamous "1313" Rockefeller-funded think tank at the University of Chicago.

BANKERS ONLY: NO VOICE FOR LABOR, RETIREES, SMALL BUSINESS, WOMEN

Obama's transitional council of economic advisers is also notable. The dominant figures here are all Wall Street derivatives merchants and their quackademic apologists and politician clients. The key people here are plutocrat Warren Buffet, Obama moneybags and Hyatt heiress Penny Pritzker, Goldman Sachs-Citibank alum Robert Rubin, woman-hating thug and failed Harvard president Larry Summers, Google spook Eric Schmidt, and Roger Ferguson, the former vice president of the Federal Reserve board. The most obscene is Trilateral Commission bigwig Paul Adolf Volcker, the bringer of the 22% prime rate of 1981 and the destroyer of the US indsutrial base. What is truly notable about this list is that there is not one single labor leader. No Sweeney of the AFL-CIO, no Hoffa of the Teamsters, no UAW, not even the unsavory Andy Stern of the SIEU, all big Obama backers. Note the difference to the New Deal, when labor reps were indispensable. With Barky, only derivatives monsters and their stooges need apply. Also notable by their absence are leaders of women's groups, small business associations, the congressional black caucus, retirees groups like the AARP ­ there is not even a token face representing any of these groups, all of which have a vital interest in economic policy. Read the ill omens if you have eyes to see. The Obama regime is shaping up as of the bankers, by the bankers, for the bankers. This is not the FDR New Deal ­ this is the Mussolini fascist corporate state.

WASHINGTON ECONOMIC CONFERENCE: THE DERIVATIVES BLOC VS. THE ANTI- DERIVATIVES BLOC

We are also told that Barky has been on the phone to foreign leaders about matters of economic. Let us read the tea leaves: whom did Barky call? Here is the list: Australia, the British, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, Mexico, and South Korea.

Notice now who is NOT on the list. Start with the great world powers who have been snubbed: Russia and China, both of whom are bigger holders of US Treasury bonds than most of those who are on the list. Saudi Arabia, who might have needed reassurance that Barky is not a commie, are also snubbed. Forget ideology, and behold the ineptitude. Most glaring of all is the lack of any phone call to a leading third world or developing sector country, other than Mexico, which is a branch of NAFTA. No calls were made to Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Nigeria, Algeria, India or a long list of other leading states. Nobody in Africa, nobody in south Asia, and nobody in South America got a call. Not even those who will be coming to the pseudo-Bretton Woods conference set for Washington later this month. The best we can hope for regarding that conference is that it end in a stalemate, dividing the world between a US-UK dominated derivatives bloc and a Brazil-India- Russia-China-South Africa anti-derivatives bloc interested in real physical commodity production, not fictitious capital.

Obama, in summation, is acting just like the abject puppet of the Wall Street derivatives merchants and warmongers which we have argued him to be.

Webster G. Tarpley is the author of Obama ­- The Postmodern Coup: The Making of a Manchurian Candidate, and Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biography, both available from amazon.com.

Obama's book blurb for Ayers

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=78640

Tuesday, October 21, 2008
See it with your own eyes: Obama's book blurb for Ayers
As state senator, presidential candidate praised work of former leader of Weather Underground
October 20, 2008
WorldNetDaily

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama wrote a review of domestic terrorist Bill Ayers' book in 1997, calling it "searing" and "timely," according to a blogger who tracked down the original printed version of the endorsement since that was before the publication in which it appeared was digitized.

According to the blogger at Zombietime.com, Obama, who was an up-and-coming state senator at the time, endorsed Ayers' book called "A Kind and Just Parent: Children of Juvenile Court."

In the short review on Dec. 21, 1997, Obama in the Chicago Tribune calls Ayers' book, "A searing and timely account of the juvenile court system, and the courageous individuals who rescue hope from despair."

The documentation calls into question Obama's repeated efforts to distance himself from Ayers, who boasted as recently as 2001 of trying to bomb various federal buildings such as the Pentagon and wishing he had done more.

Obama has described Ayers and someone who lived in his neighborhood and with whom in worked on a school project, but he's denied any close link.

"I find it very hard — no, make that impossible — to believe that Barack Obama had 'no idea' who William Ayers really was, or that he had a past as a notorious domestic terrorist (as Obama's campaign has claimed) while serving on panels with Ayers and simultaneously praising Ayers' book in a major newspaper," the blogger wrote.

The blogger described tracking down the book endorsement.

"I had seen mentions of the existence of this review in a very few media outlets, including CNN, National Review, American Spectator, and a handful of others. But because the review was published before the Chicago Tribune began digitizing and archiving its articles online, there was no direct Web link to the review itself — only citations of it. So, out of curiosity, I took it upon myself to visit a library in San Francisco, and using the library's Lexis-Nexis access and its archive of microfilm versions of major newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune, I finally tracked down a copy of the actual review itself," Zombietime said.

The endorsement came in part of the Chicago Tribune column called "Mark My Word," where Chicago leaders praised their favorite current books.

Ayers book had just recently been published by Beacon Press.

The blogger noted that Ayers, in his book, also mentioned Obama.

Ayers' wrote: "Our neighbors include Muhammad Ali, former mayor Eugene Sawyer, poets Gwendolyn Brooks and Elizabeth Alexander, and writer Barack Obama. Minister Louis Farrakhan lives a block from our home and adds, we think, a unique dimension to the idea of 'safe neighborhood watch': the Fruit of Islam, his security force, has an eye on things twenty-four-hours a day."

"So there's no question they knew each other," the blogger wrote.

On the Zombietime forum page, one participant wrote, "Obama is not running to change government he's running for overthrow government. Ayers wins."

"The more time that passes, the more obvious it becomes that the links between Ayers and Obama are multiple, and that Obama had to know about Ayers' criminal past," said another. "It certainly looks like he's hiding something."

On a Boston Globe forums page, the readers were concerned not so much about the relationship with Ayers, but Obama's repeated efforts to distance himself from Ayers.

"Personally I don't care too much about him associating with Ayers, the 60s were a turbulent time though bombing your own country is despicable; it bothers me a great deal that a presidential candidate can flat out lie and get away with it," wrote one contributor. "Just because many Americans are tired of Bush shouldn't mean we accept old style politics and deceit, but it seems to be the case this election."

The review came about the time, as WND reported, Obama's wife, Michelle, organized a university event in which she invited her husband and former radical Ayers to serve on a panel discussion about whether child murderers should be tried as adults.

Both Barack Obama and Ayers served on the side that opposed treating offending minors as adults.

Michelle Obama at the time was the University of Chicago's associate dean of student services and director of the college's Community Service Center, which sponsored the juvenile detention discussion Nov. 20, 1997.

She told the university's student newspaper she hoped the panel discussion would open a dialogue between members of the college and the broader Chicago community.

"We know that issues like juvenile justice impact the city of Chicago, this nation and – directly or indirectly – this campus. This panel gives students a chance to hear about the juvenile justice system not only on a theoretical level, but from the people who have experienced it," she said.

Panel leaders invited by Michelle Obama included her husband, who taught law at the university; Ayers, who was a university education professor; and four other speakers who had experience with Chicago's juvenile detention system.

Barack Obama was billed as a leader "who is working to combat legislation that would put more juvenile offenders into the adult system."

Ayers, promoting the panel event, told the student newspaper, "We should call a child a child. A 13-year-old who picks up a gun isn't suddenly an adult. We have to ask other questions: How did he get the gun? Where did it come from?"

During his Weathermen days, Ayers once famously commented, "Kill all the rich people. ... Bring the revolution home. Kill your parents."

In an ABC News interview, Obama described Ayers as "guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis."

But several other blogs earlier raised questions about the links between the two men. The Sweetness and Light blog, which first reported on Michelle Obama's panel event, commented "we all must be mistaken, since we have been repeatedly reassured that Mr. Ayers 'was just a guy who lived in the Obamas' neighborhood.'"

The two men also worked in 1994 on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, founded by Ayers.

Also in 1995, the first organizing meeting for Obama's state senatorial campaign reportedly was held in Ayers's apartment. In a widely circulated article, WND first reported Obama served on the board of the Wood's Fund, a liberal Chicago nonprofit, alongside Ayers from 1999 to Dec. 11, 2002, according to the Fund's website. Tax filings showed Obama received compensation of $6,000 per year for his service in 1999 and 2000.

Ayers' wife, Bernadine Dohrn, also has served on panels with Obama. Dohrn, once on the FBI's Top 10 Most Wanted List, was described by J. Edgar Hoover as the "most dangerous woman in America." Ayers and Dohrn raised the son of Weathermen terrorist Kathy Boudin, who was serving a sentence for participating in a 1981 murder and robbery that left four people dead.

As WND reported, an FBI report claims Dohrn built and planted the bomb that killed a San Francisco police officer in 1970.

Ayers, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has admitted to involvement in the bombings of U.S. governmental buildings in the 1970s. The charges against him were dropped in 1974, however, because of prosecutorial misconduct, including illegal surveillance.

But Ayers told the New York Times in an interview released Sept. 11, 2001, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough."

Beast of the Month - July 2008

Yes, I know, this is a little late, but better late than never...

Beast of the Month - July 2008
Barack Obama, Democratic Presidential Candidate

"I yam an anti-Christ..."
John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) of The Sex Pistols, "Anarchy in the UK"

"I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.”
Barack Obama regarding Reverend Wright on March 18, 2008, giving the black community fair warning

The economy is tanking, Iraq is a fiasco, and George W. Bush is even more hated than Nixon was in the worse days of Watergate. Even more telling, in three special 2008 Congressional elections so far, Republican strongholds were lost to Democrats: in both Louisiana and Mississippi (hardly progressive areas) and the seat held by former House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois. Given these facts, and given John McCain has proven himself to be a clueless jackass over the last year and a half, it should be the Democratic Party's game to lose the White House in 2008. The conventional wisdom is the only way Dems can blow it is by running a stunningly incompetent campaign.

That the party of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson has continued to be the mainstream representative of the working class over the past century - for better (FDR's New Deal) and for worse (George Wallace's racist segregation demagoguery) - makes this pretty significant. And while The Konformist would agree claims the Democratic Party represents the common man become flimsier each election cycle, it’s also true they come way closer to feigning these concerns than the GOP ever could, especially after eight years of Shrub. At the very least, the Democratic Party gets its votes from the poor and middle class over bread and butter issues, so must provide their base something in order to quell an out and out mass rebellion. From this viewpoint, an era where Democrats control the White House tends to be better than when Republicans are in charge, a viewpoint supported by history.

At the start of the year, Hillary Clinton seemed a shoe-in to win the Democratic nomination, and, in the process, the White House. Unless some stunning surprise happens before the Democratic convention, that isn't going to be the case. And for such a stunning upset victory, Barack Obama, The Konformist Beast of the Month, deserves a lot of credit. Just as much, it says something about Obama's admittedly appealing attributes. They were on wide display four years ago in Boston during the Democratic convention, when he gave a star-making speech as keynote speaker. The last time something like that was seen was twenty years earlier by then New York Governor Mario Cuomo. But while Cuomo wasted higher office opportunities playing Hamlet, Obama decided to seize the moment and go for gold while the iron was hot. The end result is a campaign that has captivated the media, and put an African-American man in the finals for running the White House.

It's not just talking heads who have been caught up in the Obama circus. On the frivolous side, numerous celebrities have joined, including George Clooney, Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas and Oprah Winfrey. (Then again, considering the last two major endorsements Oprah has done were for phony "autobiography" writer James Frey and dubious New Age scam The Secret, this may be a bad sign.) And as far as lightweight arguments go, The Konformist will take a movement that includes Jessica Alba, Scarlett Johansson and Nicole Scherzinger of the Pussycat Dolls over endorsements by Sly, Arnold and Chuck Norris. (The male Konformist editorial staff particularly appreciates Halle Berry plug for Obama, where she bluntly declared: "I'll do whatever he says to do." Of course, if she said that about one of us, it would lead to the greatest celebrity home porn video ever.) More substantive is the following he’s achieved among the young and African American communities, groups previously politically marginalized and apathetic. Whatever the hype behind Obamamania, the excitement he inspires is authentic.

That said, has there been a more shallow presidential campaign than that crafted for mass consumption by Team Obama? As Walter Mondale asked in 1984: "Where's the beef?" But beneath the empty slogan chanting of "Change" and "Hope" there really is little there there. Indeed, part of Obama's appeal is his vague, tofu-like blandness wrapped in admitted charisma, which even supporters concede has made people see in him what they want. But it seems with Obama, the public will soon be stuck with the tofu-like negatives of an inferior protein source that leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

It doesn't help that media reporting has been so sycophantic during the campaign. He's already been on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine twice, which is more airtime than they've given Coldplay. (Talk about tofu-like blandness, but that's for perhaps another Beast of the Month.) The fluffy, inane coverage of Obama as a rock star makes one wish for the days of hard-hitting political analysis given by John-John's George magazine, back when "politics as celebrity worship" was at least novel. There hasn't seen this much empty "news" reporting on a man who may run the White House since, well, since George W. Bush eight years ago. Perhaps this is because Obama, like Bush before him, has become the recipient of records amount of cash from the rich and powerful, especially from Wall Street.

Despite this, he's been supported by a bizarre cheerleading by most of the progressive set. MoveOn.org, DailyKos.com, HuffingtonPost.com and BuzzFlash.com have wagged their pom poms like he's some perfect mixture of JFK, RFK and MLK - only even better! Along the way, they've joined an increasingly nasty campaign to demonize Bill and Hillary in the ugliest of fashions, practically accusing the pair of plotting to murder Obama in a political coup after Ms. Clinton invoked the RFK assassination in June 1968 to show the history of late-running campaign battles. What makes this stranger is these same outlets have long overly lionized the Clintons as the paragon of Democratic Party virtues. The conventional wisdom is Hillary's support for the Iraq War did her in, and there is some truth to that. Still, while Obama brags about his supposed strong opposition to the quagmire, opposing it while representing a primarily black Chicago state congressional district hardly showcased noble bravery. Mr. Clinton probably put it best in January while speaking at Dartmouth College:

"It is wrong that Senator Obama got to go through 15 debates trumpeting his superior judgment and how he had been against the war in every year, numerating the years, and never got asked one time, not once, 'Well, how could you say that, when you said in 2004 you didn't know how you would have voted on the resolution, you said in 2004 there was no difference between you and George Bush on the war and you took that speech you're now running on off your website in 2004 and there's no difference in your voting record and Hillary's ever since?' Give me a break. This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen."

Slick Willie was blasted in the media for this statement, but there isn't a single lie in it. So it seems the main raison d'etre for the Obama campaign success is an easily uncovered hoax, if only the mainstream press had done their job and actually asked Obama some basic questions. (That Bill was basically calling out the korporate media on this one may partially explain the outraged response.) And it seems the smearing of Bill & Hill have less to do with Iraq than the progressive set being seduced by a cult of personality.

Given the lack of investigation of Obama by establishment mouthpieces, and given the flimsy resume he has as a man applying for Leader of the Free World, the right wing has filled the information vacuum with its predictably ugly displays. The general talking points of this smear campaign are that he's a radical black man and a closet Muslim who secretly hates America. Oh, and by the way, did we mention his middle name is Hussein and his last name rhymes with Osama? Thanks to these attacks, Obama's negatives have crept up, and his campaign has launched a Website, with the clever title of FightTheSmears.com, to battle these attacks. The Konformist supports his fight on dishonest attacks, as it would be a shame for him to lose the White House over what he is not. But while hack jobs by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity proliferate, another picture is presented by other critics of Obama, an image of a smug, narcissistic opportunist of the worst sort. It can be found on Websites such as HillBuzz ( http://hillbuzz.blogspot.com/ ) and No Quarter ( http://noquarterusa.net/ ) - two sites, it must be noted, run not by right-wingers but rather Democrat supporters of Hillary Clinton disgusted by his campaign in the primaries.

These are not sore losers who need to "get over it" - an actual quote by Obama in a Congressional meeting over what female supporters of Hillary must do. (Charming that the Obama campaign incorporates GOP catchphrases popularized during the 2000 election swindle as their own.) They are offended in no small part by the accurately perceived sexism used by Team Obama and its supporters in the Democratic race. Any YouTube search can confirm the crude discourse presented by Obama shills such as MSNBC's Keith Olbermann & Chris Matthews. (Of particular note is Olbermann's solution to the supposed problem of Hillary refusal to end her campaign early: "Somebody who can take her into a room and only he comes out.") Meanwhile, NPR political editor Ken Rudin cracked on CNN that Hillary was like "Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, she's going to keep coming back, and they're not going to stop her." And then there's this lovely quote with no subliminal intent from Obama himself: "I understand that Senator Clinton, periodically when she’s feeling down, launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal."

Beyond this criticism of Obama is the analysis of more left-wing Websites such as BlackAgendaReport.com. Tellingly, while Black Agenda Report, as its name applies, covers news and politics with a radical African-American critique, it shows little sympathy for their fellow black man in Barack. From their view, the Obama hype is a dangerous mass duping of the black community by a barely concealed fraud.

Ironically, it is African-Americans that fueled Obama over Hill. Without them, while Obama dominated the Yuppie vote, he would’ve been trounced among blue collar workers, who are more plentiful than latte-sippers among Democrats. Blacks, however, represent a sizable percentage of the Democratic vote (nearly one in five) so Team Obama began a push to take over the demographic, which Hillary was actually leading in last year (in no small part thanks to Bill, the most beloved politician in black America over the last twenty years.) They did this with a whisper campaign of race-baiting smears that would do Karl Rove proud. Tellingly, they developed a memo of talking points accusing the Clinton campaign of playing the race card, the same talking points that then began to dominate the chatter class. Meanwhile, Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., an Obama campaign co-chairman and son of the previously most successful black presidential candidate ever, had this to say about Hillary's emotional outpour that helped propel her to victory in New Hampshire: "Those tears also have to be analyzed. They have to be looked at very, very carefully in light of Katrina, in light of other things that Mrs. Clinton did not cry for, particularly as we head to South Carolina where 45 percent of African-Americans will participate in the Democratic contest, and they see real hope in Barack Obama." Bill's own "fairy tale" quote was used against him, distorted to imply some racist connotation. The end result of the sleazy strategy: Bill Clinton morphed in the mainstream media's presentation from the best friend in politics to Black America to a virtual closet Klansman, and Obama captured over ninety percent of the black vote.

The mainstream media tries to present white working class opposition to Obama merely as an issue of race (as though Yuppie liberals are above any racism in their own right.) Of course, The Konformist concedes racial dynamics among American voters can't be dismissed. But it seems what makes the Obamaheads go crazy over Barack is precisely what turns off Joe Blue Collar. Hip campaigns and repetitive slogans may satisfy those with disposable income, but those struggling want something that actually helps them survive in tough times. These voters were courted and won over by Hillary, who, like her wonky husband, actually seemed concerned about their plight and offered concrete agenda to help. Obama, meanwhile, merely sniffed they were bitter people clinging to guns and religion and went back to his vague generalities.

Any serious research of the Obama campaign proves the working class to be a shrewd judge here. Paul Krugman, the New York Times liberal economist, is one of the few mainstream voices to look under the hood at Obama’s economic agenda, and he’s responded with utter disdain. Despite his following among the progressive set, Obama's economic agenda is to the right of both Hillary and John Edwards. Two case studies are revealing, on the issues of healthcare and the subprime crisis, issues that are of highest concern to the working class base. It is telling that while both Edwards and Hill laid out plans to provide universal health coverage, Obama's would still leave fifteen million uninsured by most estimates. Meanwhile, though both Edwards and Ms. Rodham proposed a moratorium on foreclosures and a freeze on ARM loan rates, Obama offered no such help to bitter subprime victims. This shouldn’t be a surprise when one learns the leading economic advisor for the Obama campaign is Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago economics professor. Though he is on the "left" side of the U of C economic school, in a department made famous by ardent free market guru Milton Friedman, this means little. Goolsbee has pushed for all the right wing economics that Obama has cheerfully embraced, and has also taken one position Obama has yet to publicly support: the privatization of Social Security. Two other often cited Obama economic advisors, Jeffrey Liebman and David Cutler, have taken the same right-wing (or as they prefer to call it, "centrist") positions. It should be no surprise that Obama also used right wing talking points to bash Edwards and Clinton's plans during the primaries. Given these positions, it’s hard to believe the African-American community would back his candidacy if he were white.

The punch line is though Obama is quick to whine victimhood of racism whenever he's in a corner, he is paradoxically the one black politician who has gone out of his way to deny racism is a problem in modern society. Indeed, a major theme behind his campaign has been his election as president would prove we live in a post-racial society, where racism is a relic of the past. In a speech at Selma, Alabama, he declared that blacks were "90 percent of the way to equality," implying his election would provide the final dime in the battle. In fact, he and his mouthpieces in the media seem to argue the only way he can lose the 2008 contest is by racism. It appears the only person Barack Obama thinks is still suffering from racism in the USA is Barack Obama himself.

This stands in stark contrast to the political careers of Jesse Jackson Sr. and Al Sharpton. Whatever their faults (and certainly both have many) they are black leaders who dedicated their lives to siding with the poor and disenfranchised. And yet, though they are often vilified in the most racist of language (often labeled as "racial pimps" in discourse) neither would claim blackness is their greatest impediment to political victory, but rather their radical message of social justice. That there is no profound message behind Obama's marketing ploy explains why he reaches for the race card, as nothing else about him is threatening to the political establishment. After all, Al Jolson in blackface is about as progressive as Obama.

That said, the election is still the Democrats to lose. Still, it’s important to note the only time Obama has won a national office, his GOP opponent was the absurd joke candidate Alan Keyes. Yuppies, blacks and the young may be enough to win the Democratic nomination, but can it win in November? There's a reason Hillary drubbed Obama's ass by 41 points in West Virginia, and no, it isn't racism. This was the message behind Thomas Frank's 2004 book What's the Matter with Kansas?, that the Democrats needs to connect with the working class poor by a populist message of economics to combat cultural conservatism demagoguery. Instead of courting the BoBos (Bourgeois Bohemians) that are Obama's base, the Democrats should be creating WoBos, working class folks who identify with Michael Moore, Willie Nelson and Bruce Springsteen. Hillary, like her husband before her, was able to connect precisely with these voters because, for all the Clinton's "centrist" leanings, they actually believe in the ideals of the New Deal and, in the case of her husband, delivered over 22 million jobs in eight years while creating record budget surpluses. This is why every Red state the Democrats need to flip (including Ohio and Florida) Hillary won, along with California, Texas, New York and any other big state aside from Obama's home turf in Illinois. With the voters that Democrats need to win behind her and the states the Democrats need to get 270 electoral votes in her corner, it appears the Democrats have bet on the wrong horse.

And this is before the Republican slime machine has started any Swiftboating. While the Clintons have had their skeletons examined closer than any other politician after the White House years, Obama is still an untested, unknown entity. Already the public has been exposed to his controversial ties to sleazy real estate swindler Tony Rezko and his pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and his sniveling evasive response in both cases doesn't inspire confidence. Meanwhile, there are rumors of a purported video of Barack's wife Michelle ranting about "Whitey" being the cause of the world's ills in front of a group of African Americans (which, if true, shows even she doesn't believe his "post-racial" baloney.) Obama has denounced the rumors on FightTheSmears.com, but HillBuzz has already uncovered a photo of an event in June 2004 where Ms. Obama appeared with Louis Farrakhan's wife, an event that seems to jibe with the rumored tape. The rumor claims GOP operatives already have the tape, and are waiting to unleash it in October as an election surprise. Needless to say, while The Konformist may not dispute the reputed sentiments, they probably would not play too well in Middle America and would essentially hand the election to McCain.

In some ways, an Obama defeat is better than the alternative of Obama winning. Author Webster Tarpley has written a powerful expose of Obama, titled Obama - The Postmodern Coup. (A little disclosure here: yes, as Obamaheads will quickly exclaim, Tarpley is indeed a follower of Lyndon LaRouche, and perhaps that will lead some to distrust his work. Fair enough. But say what you will about LaRouche and Tarpley, they do their homework, and this book - like Tarpleys's previous unauthorized biography of George H. W. Bush - is a rigorous examination of Obama and his links that reveals what the establishment press has ignored.) Tarpley identifies the missing Mr. Big when it comes to Obama's foreign policy, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who isn't satisfied with mere war in the Middle East like the Neocons, but rather desires a Cold War sequel against Russia. And as the saying goes, sequels almost always suck. Z-man even wrote about this in a 1998 book titled The Grand Chessboard, where he outlined that control of oil in the Caspian Sea would be the major imperial power battle of the 21st century. (Guess he's been proven wrong on that one.) To support Brzezinski's strategy, already two political coups have been staged in the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Georgia, where charismatic politicians backed by millions from US financiers ran slogan heavy, substance light campaigns that caught the masses up in a political frenzy. (Sound familiar?) Both movements are now heavily unpopular in their nations, as the right-wing neoliberal economic agenda they secretly pushed via the hysteria have hurt their people's working class. Hmm...

Okay, just because the ugliest elements of the Democratic Party in both economics and foreign policy are behind Obama doesn't mean he supports their whole agenda. Maybe so, but beyond ideology, he's proven consistently over the past year when it comes to fighting about issues, "Obambi" caves when the going gets tough. His opportunism may be immense, but his spine is virtually non-existent. Quickly after wrapping up the Democratic nomination, he immediately went to work betraying the progressive base that supported him: backing Bush's notorious "faith-based" initiative, siding with the most reactionary Supreme Court justices on the death penalty issue, rejecting to limit fundraising for public finance after long promising he would. And then there's the big two: voting for a FISA bill (which he had promised not only to vote against, but filibuster) that retroactively shielded telecoms from punishment over their criminal alliance with the Bush Administration, and stating he was willing to "refine" (i.e. "reverse") his position on pulling out of Iraq. These last two even caused the Obama cult among progressives to denounce his moves and wonder if they've been hoodwinked. (Answer: yes, you have.) Meanwhile, though most of the mainstream media treated these moves as a "shift to the center" in reports, even an Obama toady like Bob Herbert of the NY Times couldn't help but call it what it was: "He’s lurching right when it suits him, and he’s zigging with the kind of reckless abandon that’s guaranteed to cause disillusion, if not whiplash."

Anyone watching Obama's handling of the Reverend Wright fiasco should've seen this coming. After all, whatever one thinks of Reverend Wright's controversial comments (and there was nothing Wright said that The Konformist could disagree with) he was Obama's pastor for 22 years, a man who married him to his wife, a man who even inspired the title to Obama's bland bestseller The Audacity of Hope with a sermon. Considering that history, Obama should have been expected to stand by Reverend Wright. In fact, Obama personally denounced Wright during his "More Perfect Union" speech in Philadelphia in March that left yuppie liberals gushing. (Here's the quote in case you missed it: "We've heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.") Then, after two Wright speeches in April caused a media uproar, he completely disowned his association with the preacher, though Wright never bad-mouthed Obama in any way. Oddly, while the latte-sippers were in a hissy fit demanding the denouncement, it was conservatives who called it what it was: throwing someone from the bus.

If politics is a battlefield, going to war with a decided coward seems to guarantee political defeat in shifting the frame of debate. It seems possible an Obama presidency of duplicitous surrendering may shift the United States even farther to the right than Dubya ever could. From that standpoint, perhaps McCain clueless leadership for four years while he's pooping in his granddad diapers, followed by a Hillary victory in 2012, may be better in the long run.

In any case, we salute Barack Obama as Beast of the Month. Congratulations, and keep up the great work, Barry!!!

How Obama lost the election

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/JI03Aa02.html

Sep 3, 2008
How Obama lost the election
By Spengler

DENVER - Senator Barack Obama's acceptance speech last week seemed vastly different from the stands of this city's Invesco Stadium than it did to the 40 million who saw it on television. Melancholy hung like think smog over the reserved seats where I sat with Democratic Party staffers. The crowd, of course, cheered mechanically at the tag lines, flourished placards, and even rose for the obligatory wave around the stadium. But its mood was sour. The air carried the acrid smell of defeat, and the crowd took shallow breaths. Even the appearance of R&B great Stevie Wonder failed to get the blood pumping.

The speech itself dragged on for three-quarters of an hour. As David S Broder wrote in the Washington Post: "[Obama's] recital of a long list of domestic promises could have been delivered by any Democratic nominee from Walter Mondale to John Kerry. There was no theme music to the speech and really no phrase or sentence that is likely to linger in the memory of any listener. The thing I never expected did in fact occur: Al Gore, the famously wooden former vice president, gave a more lively and convincing speech than Obama did."

On television, Obama's spectacle might have looked like The Ten Commandments, but inside the stadium it felt like Night of the Living Dead. The longer the candidate spoke, and the more money he promised to spend on alternative energy, preschool education, universal health care, and other components of the Democratic pinata, the lower the party professionals slouched into their seats. The professionals I sat with were Hillary Clinton people, to be sure, and had reason to sulk, for an Obama victory might do them little good in any event.

The Democrats were watching the brightest and most articulate presidential candidate they have fielded since John F Kennedy snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. And this was before John McCain, in a maneuver worthy of Admiral Chester Nimitz at the Battle of Midway, turned tables on the Democrats' strategy with the choice of Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Speaking to Obama supporters on the periphery of the big event, I was startled by the rapturous devotion elicited by the junior senator from Illinois. He is no symbol for identity politics, no sacrifice on the altar of white guilt, but the most gifted persuader of individuals that I have encountered in any country's politics, as well as a powerful orator on the grand stage. This is not a crowd phenomenon nor a fad, but the response of hundreds of people to an individual.

I sat in on a session with three leaders of Veterans for Obama, a group of retired young officers who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan, courtesy of the New Republic's writer on the scene, David Samuels. With passion and enthusiasm, these young people spoke of their hopes for nation-building in Iraq. The George W Bush administration should have put twice the resources into the beleaguered country, they harangued me - not just soldiers, but agronomists, traffic cops, lawyers, judges, and physicians. The Department of Agriculture should have mobilized, along with the Department of Justice.

Nation-building? Doubling down on the US commitment to Iraq? Isn't that trying to out-Bush the Bush administration, while Obama campaigned on getting out of Iraq and spending the money on programs at home? Unblinking, one of the soldiers said, "That's what we think Barack will do." They believed in a more expensive version of the administration's program, and faulted Bush for half measures - and somehow they believed that Obama really agreed with them, all the public evidence to the contrary. And they believed in Barack with perfect faith.

Gandalf's warnings about the irresistible voice of the wizard Saruman in J R R Tolkien's Lord of the Rings come to mind. If these battle-hardened veterans of America's wars fell so easily under the spell of Obama's voice, who can withstand it? Obama's persuasive powers, though, are strongest when channeled through the empathy of his interlocutor. Everyone believes that Obama feels his pain, shares his dream, and will fight his fight and heal his ills. But that is everyone as an individual. Add all the individuals up into a campaign platform, and it turns into three-quarters of an hour worth of promises that echo all the ghosts of conventions past.

Obama will spend the rest of his life wondering why he rejected the obvious road to victory, that is, choosing Hillary Clinton as his vice presidential nominee. However reluctantly, Clinton would have had to accept. McCain's choice of vice presidential candidate made obvious after the fact what the party professionals felt in their fingertips at the stadium extravaganza yesterday: rejecting Clinton in favor of the colorless, unpopular, tangle-tongued Washington perennial Joe Biden was a statement of weakness. McCain's selection was a statement of strength. America's voters will forgive many things in a politician, including sexual misconduct, but they will not forgive weakness.

That is why McCain will win in November, and by a landslide, barring some unforeseen event. Obama is the most talented and persuasive politician of his generation, the intellectual superior of all his competitors, but a fatally insecure personality. American voters are not intellectual, but they are shrewd, like animals. They can smell insecurity, and the convention stank of it. Obama's prospective defeat is entirely of its own making. No one is more surprised than Republican strategists, who were convinced just weeks ago that a weakening economy ensured a Democratic victory.

Biden, who won 3% of the popular vote in the Democratic presidential primary in his home state of Delaware, and 1% or less in every other contest he entered, is ballot-box poison. Obama evidently chose him to assuage critics who point to his lack of foreign policy credentials. That was a deadly error, for by appearing to concede the critics' claim that he knows little about foreign policy, Obama raised questions about whether he is qualified to be president in the first place. He had a winning alternative, which was to pick Clinton. That would have sent a double message: first, that Obama is tough enough to make the slippery Clintons into his subordinates, and second, that he is generous enough to extend a hand to his toughest adversary in the cause of unity.

Why didn't Obama choose Hillary? The most credible explanation came from veteran columnist Robert Novak May 10, who reports that Michelle Obama vetoed Hillary's candidacy. "The Democratic front-runner's wife did not comment on other rival candidates for the party's nomination, but she has been sniping at Clinton since last summer. According to Obama sources, those public utterances do not reveal the extent of her hostility," Novak wrote. If that is true, then Obama succumbed to the character weakness I described in a February 26 profile of (Obama's women reveal his secret). His peculiar dependency on an assertive and often rancorous spouse, I argued, made him vulnerable, and predicted that Obama "will destroy himself before he destroys the country".

Alternately, Obama might have chosen a rising Democratic star like Virginia's 50-year-old governor Tim Kaine. A weaker choice than Hillary, Kaine (or someone like him) would have made a bold statement of self-confidence. Obama could have said with credibility that he would bring to Washington a new generation of outsiders who would change the old system. Instead, Obama saddled an old and unpopular Washington warhorse.

Curiously, Obama ignored the rising stars of his own party, offering the prime time speaking slots to familiar faces, including Senator Edward Kennedy and Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as his own wife, the first prospective First Lady to take the keynote spot in the history of American party conventions.

McCain doesn't have a tenth of Obama's synaptic fire-power, but he is a nasty old sailor who knows when to come about for a broadside. Given Obama's defensive, even wimpy selection of a running-mate, McCain's choice was obvious. He picked the available candidate most like himself: a maverick with impeccable reform credentials, a risk-seeking commercial fisherwoman and huntress married to a marathon snowmobile racer who carries a steelworkers union card. The Democratic order of battle was to tie McCain to the Bush administration and attack McCain by attacking Bush. With Palin on the ticket, McCain has re-emerged as the maverick he really is.

The young Alaskan governor, to be sure, hasn't any business running for vice president of the United States with her thin resume. McCain and his people know this perfectly well, and that is precisely why they put her on the ticket. If Palin is unqualified to be vice president, all the less so is Obama qualified to be president.

McCain has certified his authenticity for the voters. He's now the outsider, the reformer, the maverick, the war hero running next to the Alaskan amazon with a union steelworker spouse. Obama, who styled himself an agent of change, took his image for granted, and attempted to ensure himself victory by doing the cautious thing. He is trapped in a losing position, and there is nothing he can do to get out of it.

Obama, in short, is long on brains and short on guts. A Shibboleth of American politics holds that different tactics are required to win the party primaries as opposed to the general election, that is, by pandering to fringe groups with disproportionate influence in the primaries. But Obama did not compromise himself with extreme positions. He did not have to, for younger voters who greeted him with near-religious fervor did not require that he take any position other than his promise to change everything. Obama could have allied with the old guard, through an Obama-Clinton ticket, or he could have rejected the old guard by choosing the closest thing the Democrats had to a Sarah Palin. But fear paralyzed him, and he did neither.

In my February 26 profile, I called Obama "the political equivalent of a sociopath", without any derogatory intent. A sociopath seeks the empathy of all around him while empathizing with no one. Obama has an almost magical ability to gain the confidence of those around him. Perhaps it was the adaptation of a bright and sensitive young boy who was abandoned by three parents - his Kenyan father Barack Obama Sr, who left his pregnant young bride; his Indonesian stepfather Lolo Soetero; and by his mother, Ann Dunham, who sent her 10-year-old son to live with her grandparents while she pursued her career as an anthropologist.

Combine a child's response to serial abandonment with the perspective of an outsider, and Obama became an alien species against which American politics had no natural defenses. He is a Third World anthropologist profiling Americans, in but not of the American system. No country's politics depends more openly on friendships than America's, yet Obama has not a single real friend, for he rose so fast that all his acquaintances become rungs on the ladder of his ascent. One human relationship crowds the others out of his life, his marriage to Michelle, a strong, assertive and very angry woman.

If Novak's report is accurate, then Michelle's anger will have lost the election for Obama, as Achilles' anger nearly killed the Greek cause in the Trojan War. But the responsibility rests not with Michelle, but with Obama. Obama's failure of nerve at the cusp of his success is consistent with my profile of the candidate, in which I predicted that he would self-destruct. It's happening faster than I expected. As I wrote last February:

It is conceivable that Barack Obama, if elected, will destroy himself before he destroys the country. Hatred is a toxic diet even for someone with as strong a stomach as Obama ... Both Obama and the American public should be very careful of what they wish for. As the horrible example of Obama's father shows, there is nothing worse for an embittered outsider manipulating the system from within than to achieve his goals.

By all rights, the Democrats should win this election. They will lose, I predict, because of the flawed character of their candidate.