Shock & Guffaw: Party Dude Wins Nobel Prize

He says that “everywhere I went” folks would pose the same question, “You seem like a nice enough guy. Why do you want to go into something dirty and nasty like politics?” He thinks the question is emblematic: “It signaled a cynicism not simply with politics but with public life, a cynicism that – at least in the South Side neighborhoods – had been nourished by a generation of broken promises.” And so forth. He goes on about his idealism, his lofty goals and his radiant vision of a better tomorrow. Then he delivers this two-liner:

“It was a pretty convincing speech, I thought. And although I’m not sure that the people who heard me deliver it were similarly impressed, enough of them appreciated my earnestness and youthful swagger that I made it to the Illinois legislature.”

It’s all a load of crap – a cynical self-promotion verging on hagiography. Here’s how our slacker genius really seized political power: the lazy slacker cut-throat way.

On the day after New Year’s of 1996, Barack Obama dispatched a hit squad of staffers and campaign volunteers to the somber hearing room of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners. Under the guidance of Obama’s hired consultant, Ronald Davis, whom Obama affectionately called his “guru of petitions,” the wrecking crew fell to the task of picking over each of nearly 1,600 signatures on state senator Alice Palmer’s ballot petition. Obama was paying Mr. Davis to disqualify as many of Palmer’s supporters as possible for even the most trivial of reasons. Obama dropped by every evening to see how his backroom hit team was doing. Obama feared Palmer; she was the greatest impediment to his lunge for power. Palmer had been a state senator since 1991 and a well-liked South Side activist for years before that. She had street cred. The black folks on the South Side saw Alice Palmer as authentically black.

Palmer’s stature in the minds of South Siders towered above the popular image of Barack Obama, who South Siders correctly understood to be a privileged Hyde Park outsider, a prim Harvard-educated dandy who spoke immaculate English and a go-getter of unproven loyalty whose political career had been launched and tightly scripted by Jewish handlers. Again and again in on-the-street polling, black folks would make reference to Obama’s Jewish managers and advisers; it was a dimension of Barack Obama that seemed to confirm his “otherness” in the eyes of South Siders. There was no way any slick mulatto raised by whites and living in up-scale Hyde Park could overcome Alice Palmer’s black authenticity and Barack Obama knew it. So did his handlers.

So Barack Obama plotted to throw Alice Palmer off the ballot. With a maneuver worthy of Niccolo Machiavelli, our slacker prince managed to disqualify hundreds of Palmer’s ballot-petition signatures for such trivial infractions as hand-lettered, rather than longhand signatures or maiden, rather than married, surnames. These were the sorts of errors that poorly-educated blacks were more likely to make and Obama exploited every one of their errors. He used their cultural history against them.

Eventually Obama’s wrecking crew was able to whittle Palmer’s petition to just below the 757-signature minimum for ballot qualification. Alice Palmer’s name was removed from the ballot. Barack Obama had demonstrated his utter contempt for the spirit of free choice and public debate. Palmer was confident that her popularity among South Siders would assure her election; she thought that right up to the moment Obama slipped her the stiletto.

There were a bunch of other authentically black South Side candidates who had also submitted ballot petitions. Obama’s night crawlers got all of them disqualified by using the same microscopic scrutiny of their petitions. In short: Barack Obama used backroom shenanigans to make certain that on Election Day his name would be the only name on the Democrat Party line. He was in slacker heaven! He had sidestepped the daunting obstacle of a real election contest.

One of the undermined candidates, named Gha-is Askia, captured the essence of the slacker Obama:

“Why say you’re for a new tomorrow, then do old-style Chicago politics to remove legitimate candidates? He talks about honor and democracy but what honor is there in getting rid of every other candidate so you can run scot-free? Why not let the people decide?”

Is he kidding? Why would a slick self-satisfied Harvard-grad Hyde Park snob like Barack Obama let a bunch of ignorant ghetto blacks decide what was good for them? Democracy be damned! Obama “just knew” that those stupid spooks would choose the wrong candidate, so he did them a favor. When asked about his backroom strangulation of democratic choice, a contented Barack Obama smirked and said, “I think they ended up with a very good state senator.” (Chicago Tribune, 4/3/07).

Our Slacker Goes National

In 2003 state senator Barack Obama approached Illinois’ senate president, Emil Jones, and requested his assistance to become a United States senator. Emil Jones was a notorious “fixer” who had risen through Chicago’s patronage system from sewer inspector to senate president. Jones would become Obama’s political godfather; he would declare that Obama “feels like a son to me.”

In 2003 Barack Obama had no noteworthy accomplishments as a state senator; his previous work as a “community organizer” amounted to no more than rallying people to rid a building of asbestos and pestering the City of Chicago to offer jobs to minority youth who lived below 57th Street. In 2004 Obama had none of the legislative accomplishments suitable for someone seeking a U.S. Senate seat. What Obama needed was a legislative portfolio and he needed it fast. That’s why he went to Emil Jones.

Jones went to work bulking up Obama’s thin portfolio by allowing Obama to present important legislation that had been brought to near completion by other senators. Sometimes these bills were snatched away from their authors without consent. Obama was given choice committee assignments. Obama’s chairmanship of the senate’s health committee allowed him to push legislation that favored the Service Employees International Union in Illinois. This union rewarded Obama with its endorsement.

Obama’s theft of other people’s high-profile legislation didn’t win the egotistical upstart any friends. He was widely disliked. State senator Rickey Hendon expressed his feelings this way: “. . . no one wants to carry the ball ninety-nine yards, all the way to the one-yard line, and then give it to the halfback who gets all the credit and the stats in the record book.” To this day Obama boasts about sponsoring bills that were, in fact, the stolen efforts of others. The senators in Springfield called Obama a “billjacker.” In the short stretch from 2003 to 2004 the patronage of Emil Jones puffed up Obama’s portfolio with 800 bills for which Obama claimed credit.

Jones understood the importance of keeping Obama’s image squeaky clean. He did this by keeping Obama away from controversial issues and heated debates. Obama voted “present” almost 130 times rather than leave any public record of his positions on controversial topics. Sometimes he would shun the senate chambers when voting would have been a test of his moral substance. After his election to the U.S. Senate, Obama repaid Emil Jones with millions of dollars of earmarked money for Jones’ pet projects back in Illinois. Obama knew how to grease The Machine. How Barack Obama got to the U.S. Senate is another study in slacker excellence.

As the 2004 election year began, several Democrats chose to run for the U.S. Senate: states senator Obama; the state’s comptroller, Dan Hynes; the Chicago mayor’s chief of staff, Gery Chico; liberal talk-radio hostess Nancy Skinner and a multi-millionaire named Blair Hull. Mr. Haynes had dropped to a second-place tie with Barack Obama. In the final week of the campaign all the pundits predicted a win for Blair Hull, who had a commanding lead at 27 percent. Obama and Haynes had 17 percent each. Obama was headed for obscurity. That’s when Obama’s Machiavellian political handler David Axelrod rescued the foundering Obama. Before he became Obama’s puppet master, Axelrod had worked closely with Blair Hull. That’s how Axelrod came to know the inside dirt about Hull’s messy divorce. Axelrod was also a former employee of the and that’s how the Chicago Tribune caught wind of hull’s marital problems and began pestering Mr. Hull to release all the nasty details. Hull’s divorce files were released to the public on February 27th, 2004. His ex-wife called him a violent man; she had lurid stories to tell. On primary day Hull finished in third place with a dismal 10.8 percent of the vote.

The big beneficiary of Axelrod’s sliming of Blair Hull was, of course, Barack Obama who finished with a stunning 52.8 percent of the vote and became the Democrat’s candidate for the U.S. Senate. The clandestine hand of Obama’s operatives had done its job. If they couldn’t get Barack’s opponents ripped from the ballot, then they would suffocate them with slime. The future Nobel Peace Prize winner had done it again! Slime on, slacker dude!

Barack Obama’s meteoric rise continued – unimpeded by political debate. His contest for the U.S. Senate in November was no contest at all; it was an eerie re-enactment of Barack’s primary race.

On the day that Democrats chose Obama, Republicans chose Jack Ryan as their candidate. Ryan was handsome, youthful and the former husband of actress Jeri Ryan, best remembered from Star Trek: Voyager.

Behind the scenes, Obama’s operatives went to work to smear Jack Ryan. This time David Axelrod’s former employer, the Chicago Tribune, sued in California for the release of Ryan’s divorce file. This file was made public on June 22nd, 2004; it included allegations of lewd sexual hijinx by the weepy actress ex-wife. The bad press was fatal to Ryan’s budding political career; he relinquished his nomination and disappeared down the same memory hole as Alice Palmer. The Republicans couldn’t find a fitful replacement on such short notice. At the party’s urging, Alan Keyes stepped in to give it a go, but he was no match for Obama’s flash and oratory. Keyes lost the race by the greatest margin in Illinois electoral history. A smirking Obama chortled, “My campaign had gone so well that it looked like a fluke.”

As you can see, Obama’s rise to national prominence was almost struggle-free. His victories were secured by the backroom machinations of his hired agents. Why would Obama want to engage opponents in public debate when his back-alley operatives could frustrate the democratic process behind closed doors?

To put it bluntly, Barack Obama thugged his way into the U.S. Senate. His every upward movement has been a cheat and a swindle. Let’s review: Barack’s work as a community organizer consisted of two modest projects, only one of which was ever completed; Barack became a state senator by slipping his first mentor, Alice Palmer, the stiletto and then getting all of his other political opponents scrubbed from the ballot so he could run unopposed. Barack won both his primary and general elections for the U.S. Senate because of last-minute revelations about his opponents’ divorces which spared Obama from the rigors of debating tough issues. As soon as Obama arrived in Washington he began his quest for the Oval Office. Obama spent most of 2007 and 2008 campaigning for the presidency. In his own words, “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. As such, I am bound to disappoint some, if not all, of them.”

Barack Obama was a blank screen to voters for one reason only: he had no history of political debate; he had been spared that ordeal by those Friends of Obama who always succeed in sliming his opponents out of the public forum or getting them scrubbed from the ballot so that the Slacker Prince could strut to victory unopposed.

Had Iowans known about Obama’s close relationship with the raving racist pastor, Jeremiah Wright, or his deep indebtedness to William Ayers, the wing commander of a lunatic ‘60s communist bomber group called the Weather Underground, then Obama’s political aspirations would be buried in a cornfield. Only secrecy and dumb luck kept his candidacy alive. The revelation of John Edward’s squalid infidelities didn’t arrive in time to give Hillary an intimidating lead. Once the Iowa caucus count convinced black Americans that white voters would embrace Obama, the feel-good momentum began rising like a fever. Black folks deserted Hillary in droves. Jobless white folks in Ohio and Pennsylvania turned their backs on the straight-talking John McCain and pulled the lever for the young upstart who promised them miracles.

How Barack Got the Prize

Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize became the instant model for a thousand punch lines. When David Beckham was named “man of the match” in England’s World Cup qualifying soccer game after playing a mere thirty minutes, his own coach ridiculed the honor as something “like Obama getting a Nobel Prize.” The buzz in Norway was all about whether Obama deserved the prize; most of the finger pointing was pointed at the prize committee’s chairman, Thorbjørn Jagland, a former prime minister who rose to prominence in the Norwegian Labor Party.

Mr. Jagland seemed to relish the controversy his promotion of Obama had stirred up. His critics had suggested that the prize would better serve to protect and support the imprisoned Chinese activist Hu Jia or Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai. Why use the prize to flatter an unaccomplished political celebrity who had been president for only twelve days. America’s slacker-dude social climber was only famous for being famous.

Thorbjørn Jagland fancies himself a thinker of big thoughts; he frets a good deal about such things as Islamophobia. When asked about his political beliefs, Mr. Jagland mentioned human rights and the Scandinavian belief in a fair distribution of wealth and an imagined “right” to free health care. In short, Mr. Jagland saw Barack Obama as a Labor Party sort of guy.

According to Lars Halvor Mageroy, the commentary editor at the Norwegian tabloid Verdens Gang:

“People say that vision is all that Obama had to show at this point, but Jagland is a politician who finds that aspect of politics to be of great significance.”

Mr. Jagland sees himself as an embattled visionary. In his defense of his choice of Barack Obama, Mr. Jagland described himself this way:

“If you are not able to make a courageous decision, you cannot help move the world in the right direction. If you are afraid of criticism or debate, then you shouldn’t have that kind of position or be in politics at all.”

These are wise words. Sadly, Mr. Jagland believes that he shares these qualities with Barack Obama – the same Barack Obama who is obsessed with criticism from Fox News, who tried to deny Fox News access to White House news conferences and who began sputtering like a kettle at full boil when George Stephanopoulos suggested that compelling citizens to purchase insurance-company products was, in fact, a tax. We’re talking about the same Barack Obama who was chastised by the liberal New York Times for repeatedly dodging genuine debates by creating preposterous caricatures of his critics and defending his positions with hollow “straw man” arguments. By Mr. Jagland’s high and wise standard, Mr. Obama “shouldn’t have that kind of position or be in politics at all.”

Mr. Jagland’s aphorism, “If you are not able to make a courageous decision, you cannot move the world in the right direction” should have instantly disqualified Barack Obama from consideration for the Nobel Prize. Until now, Barack Obama has demonstrated nothing but caution and dithering indecision. Let’s review his shameful performance to date.

Iran

Every year the theocracy that oppresses Iran celebrates the day in 1979 when Islamists took Americans hostage and began their 444-day captivity. The Islamist boss men in Tehran recently marked the thirtieth anniversary of the day the theocrats crashed the gates of the U.S. Embassy with tightly scripted state-sponsored street demonstrations, complete with the obligatory flag burnings and chants of “death to America.”

What made this year’s hatefest different were the counter-demonstrations by Iran’s democratic Green Movement activists. These courageous men and women are fighting for an open society; they braved club-wielding state security forces to show the West that they cherish Western values. Their gutsy rallies, complete with hundreds of placards written in English, were meant for the eyes of Americans and for the eyes of Barack Obama in particular. These rallies were a declaration of solidarity with traditional American ideals and an entreaty for American support. For a day, the Iranian streets became the most pro-American place on this planet.

Earlier this year, in the wake of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s theft of the June presidential election, the Green Movement activists had taken to the streets chanting, “O ba ma!” – a Farsi play on words that translates as, “He with us!”

Sadly for these hopeful idealists, Barack Obama remained his timid dithering self. In anticipation of the forthcoming Green Movement demonstrations, Obama hurried to extend his hand to the oppressive theocratic regime; he was quick to say that he “seeks a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran based on mutual interest and mutual respect. We do not interfere in Iran’s internal affairs.” Obama went on to itemize all of his pathetic previous attempts to appease the militant mullahs – all of which have been rebuffed. The democratic Green activists knew they had been snubbed. The new chant in the streets was, “Obama, Obama – either you’re with them or with us.” Is Obama’s display of obsequious boot licking what he meant by “restoring U.S. moral leadership”?

Obama fumbled an opportunity to reinforce the opposition at a time when the Iranian regime was at its weakest; instead he chose appeasement. President Ahmadinejad showed his gratitude by hitting the airwaves and boasting that he was the big man who got respect and deference from the American president while rejecting all of Obama’s already watered down nuclear proposals.

North Korea

The jaded veterans of the game of realpolitik had sized up Obama as someone who could be played. Obama had “chump” written all over him.

What was Kim Jong Il’s response to Obama’s promise of friendlier relations? In late January of this year the runty potentate of Pyongyang announced his intention to unilaterally ditch its 1991 nonaggression pact with South Korea. After that, the world’s worst-dressed dictator and possessor of the world’s largest collection of Daffy Duck memorabilia (I’m not making this up), moved a big Taepodong 2 ballistic missile – capable of reaching our west coast – onto a launch pad so it could pose for U.S. satellite photographs. As Baek Seung-joo, a director at the Korea Institute for Defense Analysis in Seoul, told the Los Angeles Times, “The missile is pointing at Obama.”

Pakistan

One of George W. Bush’s shining successes was corralling the rogue nuclear-proliferation network of Pakistani nuclear scientist A.O.Khan who, until Barack’s inauguration, had been under house arrest for five years. No sooner had America elected an obvious slacker dude than Pakistan lost all fear of America’s chief executive and freed A.O.Khan, who was something of a Pakistani national hero. With the Pakistani Dr. Strangelove once more on the loose, the timid Obama administration could only muster some muted “concern.”

The Arabs

Barack Obama’s efforts to reach out to the Arab street have been met with derision. “I have Muslim members of my family,” Obama told Al-Arabiya. He was almost pleading for acceptance, but he flunked their purity test.

“We welcomed him with almost total enthusiasm until he underwent his first real test: Gaza ,” wrote Egyptian novelist Alaa Al Aswany in his New York Times op-ed. He said the Arabs wanted Obama to embrace “the right of people in the occupied territory to resist military occupation.” In short, the price of Arab acceptance is Obama’s enthusiastic support of the bomb-happy Hamas terror squads.

Will Timid Obama Ignite Another War?

The thousands of subterranean centrifuges that are spinning out weapons-grade atomic bomb uranium can be heard by our defense satellites soaring above Iran. The president of Iran has declared himself to be an instrument of Allah, sent to welcome the prophesied returning of the Twelfth Imam who will oversee the final obliteration of all apostates and infidels in a cataclysmic End of Days super conflagration. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said as much in a speech before the assembled United Nations. Iran’s president has also made it crystal clear that, had he the weapons, he would burn the people of Israel off the face of our planet.

Time is of the essence. Israel cannot afford to wait much longer for Barack Obama to do something effective and convincing to terminate Iran’s expanding genocidal menace. If Obama dithers and Israel strikes defensively at Iran’s nuclear-weapons factories, then the price of oil will skyrocket to $300 a barrel and American servicemen will be sucked into a sudden and unprepared for Middle East war. Our slacker Peace Prize winner seems intent on hurrying this disaster along.

Way back in July at the big G-8 conclave in Italy, Iran was handed a September deadline to start negotiations about its nuclear activities. Iran’s long-overdue response was a five-page screed in which the Iranians whined about the “ungodly ways of thinking prevailing in global relations.” The pouting avatars of Seventh Century Islamic Puritanism had flipped the bird to the Twenty-first Century. The Iranians offered to jack jaw about anything other than their nuclear activities. What was Obama’s response to the rogue Iranians? Our slacker president pretended he just didn’t see the raised Iranian middle finger an inch in front of his nose. Obama characterized a future Iranian theocracy bristling with nuclear weapons as “unacceptable.” He sounded like a schoolmarm chiding a youngster for a dress code violation. None of this was lost on the Israeli realists who could plainly see that Obama had all the masculine fortitude of a Beverly Hills hairdresser.

In an effort to make Obama man up and start behaving like the chief executive of a great nation state, the Israelis loudly advertised their intention to blast the crap out of the Iranian atomic bomb factories. They made a big show of conducting long-range bombing exercises, but our slacker dude president continued to pretend that the ball hadn’t been lobbed onto his side of the net. Obama continued to behave as though he had the luxury of time. Perhaps he believes he can charm the Israelis out of striking with his gift for blather.

Time is running out. Iran will soon take delivery of spanking-new Russian S-300 anti-aircraft batteries. Iran will have refined enough uranium for its first atomic bomb within sixty days. The deadline to cripple Iran’s atomic menace is rapidly approaching.

It is not in the interest of the United States that Israel be the instrument of Iran’s disarmament. An Israeli strike would be unannounced and uncertain of success. Iran would retaliate against American assets and personnel in Iraq and the Persian Gulf. America would be caught flatfooted.

The planetary spectacle of our Peace-Prize winning slacker president outsourcing America’s responsibilities in matters of war and peace to a tiny allied nation is too embarrassing to contemplate. Little Barry Obama has ceded the driver’s seat on Iran policy to Bebe Netanyahu; little Barry would rather jabber piously from the passenger seat than take the wheel. Talk is all that Barry knows – he is clueless that Iran’s End-of-Days Muslim fundamentalists are beyond the reach of his eloquence.

Obama may just dither away the world as we know it – the world we rely upon for everything.