“Duh”mb And “Duh”mber

Sometimes it’s hard to imagine that so many people entrusted to run our country are as dumb as they are.  Sometimes it’s harder to imagine that the people entrusted to bring us information about the dumb shit the dummies in charge do in our collective name are even dumber than the dummies they’re reporting on.  But, if reading the news reports of the past week can be trusted at all to contain any smidgen of a hint of a scintilla of anything resembling truth, we are being governed by a plethora of Keystone Kop wannabes, and we know that because Spanky and Our Gang, Jr. told us so.

Let’s face it, ya gotta be at least a little stupid to get punked by White House Press Secretary and Tom Arnold/Wally Cox love child look-a-like, Robert Gibbsmeabreak.  But, according to Fox News, that’s exactly what happened to the White House press corps Friday.  Told ya they were all stupid.  The whole lot of ‘em.  In fact, not even I could believe they were that dumb, and kinda figured maybe the humorless drones over a Fox were having their idea of fun and yanking everybody’s chain with a belated April Fool’s Day-type prank, but, no, other sources like the Christian Science Monitor, and the Talking Points Memo press conference transcript, also confirmed that the sorry attempt at humor did indeed happen:

Dueling AstroTurf, Part II

A pretty strong case could be made that everything political that we read or see via the mainstream media, including the corporatized segment of the blogosphere, is AstroTurf.  Though the original term refers to the unethical public relations practice of creating the appearance of grassroots activity on behalf of corporations and politicians where none exists, given that it is ultimately a marketing tool designed to create buzz in order to persuade the gullible against their interests and in favor of the corporate/political entity that paid for it, I’m pretty confident in saying we’re currently being AstroTurfed to death.  By everybody.

Most of us are aware of the Obacracy’s use of the Axelrovian AstroTurf Army throughout the corporate media and blogosphere, from the leg-tingling sycophancy of MSNBO and it’s little sister former Big Three networks, to the shameless fluffing of the dying dinosaurs of the American press, to the ridiculous cheerleading of the Rah Rah Rally Boyz and Bots of the BoBama Blogosphere.  The influence of General Electric through it’s ownership of NBC and its relationship with MSNBC, Newsweek,  The Washington Post, New York Times, Slate Magazine, The Root, and others is pretty well known.  What hasn’t been fully sussed out yet is the relationship between General Electric, Exelon, (the big AstroTurfed Obama supporting Illinois energy company and owner of Commonwealth Edison run by William Ayers’ dad, Thomas before his death) and the Obama administration.  This site, USCAP, (United States Climate Action Program) shows there most likely is one, though, without further inquiry, it’s difficult to know exactly how strong or tenuous it is.   It is also common knowledge that Obama supports cap and trade regulations and has for some time.  Green Biz tells us that GE has been promoting it for a long time, too.

Axelrove’s Astroturf Army And The Trippi Influence

As the PUMAsphere rightly, and righteously, continues to rail against those responsible for inflicting the festering wound of Obamanism upon the Democratic party, it might be useful to take a moment to examine exactly where the blame belongs.  While there is no doubt that Joe Cannon at Cannonfire and John-South of Melrose at Liberal Rapture are absolutely correct that the Hopium-hooked of Huffcheetoville have caused irreparable harm to the party with their over-the-top, irrational, indefensible, threats, taunts, and vitriolic rants against anyone and anything daring to express anything approaching the appearance of the possibility of potential criticism of the Unworthy One, one must ask oneself, “who are these idiots, and who let them out?”  The answer to that question is at once, obvious and, a little convoluted.

We all tend to point fingers at the people who gave these rabid mobs a platform from which to rant, but, that might not be quite fair.  While the Arianna-heads and Kossacks of the blogosphere certainly must own up to their fair share of responsibility, the bulk of the blame lies in the laps of David Axelrove’s Astroturfing Army, who, in many instances, hijacked website comment sections freeper-like, with military-style precision, often in response to articles posted on even those sites that don’t fit the Obots’ email ordered acceptability standards.  It’s not hard to imagine that this online campaign began with the employment of a relatively small number of paid Obots and their sock puppets, and morphed into the larger online force via the drafting and careful cultivation of inferiority complex-plagued basement dwellers into Axelrove’s email army via their vaunted big donor-hiding, “small donor” list.

Why Obama?

I’ll be the first to admit that I did not come into this blogging business as the most politically astute or learned person on the planet.  The idea that I might be is so far from the possibility of reality that the words I just typed hardly belong in the same sentence.  I know that.  However, watching my hopes for the election of a candidate I thought to be most qualified to “inherit” (I’m beginning  to hate that word) the responsibility of guiding the county back on track be bashed, dashed, crashed and gleefully shattered to smithereens by disparate entities on the left and right, seemingly demented in their zeal, has given me an opportunity to learn and grow politically in a way unlikely to have been appreciated before, had it presented itself.  And frankly, I’m sick of it.

All. Of. It.

Each news story, op-ed column, Google search, blog post and talking head garbage spew disguised as informed opinion has added another tidbit of information, often counter to the point the happy yakker thought he/she was making, to the tapestry of my understanding of our nation’s political reality.  It’s enough to make you puke.

What’s In A Name?

Wanna hear something strange?  The President I love to hate, Alfred E. Urkelbama (What, me do that?) and I actually have a lot in common.  We’re both nominally “black,” (though, I didn’t grow up in Hawaii, I don’t have a white parent, and I don’t try to mute or exploit my blackness at other black people’s expense  for personal gain, but other than that…) and, like him, I don’t like labels.  Okay, so that doesn’t exactly qualify as “a lot” in common, but it is more than I thought, and “a lot” more than I really want to admit.  I really don’t like the guy, okay?

Other than a recent declaration that President Black Obama considered himself a “New Democrat,” assumedly aligning his political ideology with a faction of the same Democratic Leadership Council he once defiantly, uncategorically, denied, Oblahblah has consistently resisted being pigeon-holed.  This is understandable, given his early primary and caucus appeals to Republicans to crossover and support, vote for, and donate to him.  I mean, what do you call a guy who does that?  “Opportunist” if you’re kind, “traitor” if you’re not?

I’m not.

It also makes sense that he would reject the label, “liberal,” even if his philosophy leaned that way, (which, I’m not hardly sure of) since Republicans have made that term synonymous with “rabid Democratic champion of the shiftless and unworthy.”  Who, besides Jesus, would want to be thought of like that, huh?

Who Died And Made Rush God?

When did Rush Limbaugh become the face of the Republican party?  Well, duh-uh, when the West Wing field generals decreed it so and gave their suckophant foot soldiers in the media their “Operation  Limbaugh” marching orders.  Newsbusters claims that it all started when Rahm Emanuel had yet another one of his daily, early morning gabfests with his gossip buddies, James Carville, Paul Begala, and George Stephanopoulis, right before they fanned out to this weekend’s Sunday morning talk show circuit.  They must not have ever heard of Think Progress, the official attack blog of the Center for American Progress.  Media Matters holds the unofficial designation.  Anyway, Think Progress has been pushing the “Limbaugh is a traitorous enemy of the people” theme ever since Rush foolishly allowed himself to be baited into saying aloud what everybody on his side thought, long before CPAC.  For those unfamiliar with the Center for American Progress, they’re the supposedly George Soros-funded think tank responsible for stocking the Obama administration cabinet with Clinton-era retreads via John Podesta, a Clinton-era retread himself, who headed the O Team transition.  It bears remembering, however, that the unity pony has always been a unicorn, i.e., mythical, and not all OCabinet Clintonites qualify as Friends of the Family (tomdaschlerahmemanuel).  This guy has an interesting take on the “gentry vs. populist” theory of the systemic split in the Democratic party, and  though I’m not sure his interpretation is definitive, it’s worth a read.

Anyway, pushing the Rush Rules Republicans haka is a deliberate strategy designed to both divert attention from the real Obama agenda and minimize Republican opposition to it, while simultaneously boosting the grassroots support for whatever it is from the KoolAid Brigade.  Now, before anybody gets their “Cinie hearts Limbaugh” panties in a bunch, let me state unequivocally that I in no way endorse, support, or even like or listen to Rush Limbaugh, ever.  My point is, I agree with Newsbusters’ opinion that having pre-dawn chitchats between White House generals and talk show “strategists” is wrong on so many levels it’s not funny, and I strenuously object to the fact that it is the way the game and the public are currently being played.  Manage the media, massage the message, manipulate the masses.

Everybody’s trying to screw us all the way they like it.

And the big wheel on the big undercarriage-stuffed bus just keep on turnin’.

What “Is” Is

When Baracus Ceaser Obamacus incessantly cried, “Change!” from the rooftops via TelePrompTer in stump speech after stump speech written by the Cardboard Titty Groper at the behest of the Astroturfing PuppetMaster acting on behalf of the banksters bankrolling the hopium-fueled ObamaLove Train steamrolling into the White House, who knew he really meant restructuring the global financial landscape, huh?

The inventors of the soon-to-be patented (I’m sure) ObaSpeak have mastered the art of diversion through obfuscation that lesser politicians and wordsmiths have been practicing inartfully for millennia.  Thus, bailouts are not bailouts, and “nationalization” is not quite, exactly “nationalization,” per se.

I guess when you’re determined to “redistribute the wealth” on the downlow, you have to figure out a way to freak people out without freaking them totally out.  And, if you can come up with a way to trick them into thinking it’s their idea, so much the better.  That’s probably why the number of women in high places in the administration will always continue to be limited by design, we invented the “oh,honey, how clever,” ploy and can see right though it.  That’s why when it comes to the current global financial system restructuring going on right under the world’s nose, I sweetly call “bullshit, dear.”

I’m no economist, but I know screwing when I see it, even when I don’t know the people, or can’t identify the species of the animals involved.  And, oh, baby, oh, there’s some serious money screwing going on.

Before the banksters got together and financed the junior senator from Illinois’ meteoric rise to the top of the political trash heap, the world’s financial landscape looked very different.  Yet, in just a couple short years, the financial structure as we’ve known it has “collapsed,” almost in a curious tandem reverse/parallel tango with the seemingly unqualified and inexperienced young political phenom’s ascent.  Funny, that.

Now that there are no more large investment banks, as far as I know, news reports last year trumpeted the conversion to commercial banks of Goldman Sachs’ and JP Morgan Chase’s status as that of the last two, and the government has played favorites with which struggling banks and financial institutions to prop up, we now enter the “not really nationalizing, except we own ‘em” phase of the Bwah Ha Ha Plan.

How do we know that this is a Democratic UniParty plot, and not just a cleanup of the Bush administration mess?  Why, Harry Reid told us.  Not exactly in those words, per se; that’s not the way of ObamaCanCratSpeak.  From Politico:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he supports efforts of the federal government to dramatically expand its stake in Citigroup, but wants people to back off from the dramatic rhetoric.

“It’s not nationalization, it’s protecting the taxpayers’ interests,” Reid (D-Nev.) told MSNBC’s Morning Joe program on Monday.

“In the bailout, the TARP, that we made sure the American taxpayer had a way of getting paid back for their investments,” Reid said. “That’s what this is all about and it’s the right way to go.”

In other, normal American words, “yeah, we already own a lot of Wall Street, but, you’re getting a cut, eventually, so ixnay on the ationalization-nay, will ya?”  He forgot to mention that the 8 – 13 dollar cut you’re currently slated to get, just might be in Ameros in the near future.   Dollars will very soon be worthless, anyway, so kwitcherbitchin’.  Remember, TARP is bipartisan.

The Politico piece goes on to claim that Republicans are upset about, shhhh, nationalization, shhhh, but, didn’t that cross-party blog pioneer/ObaFluffer, Huff ‘n’ Puff, among every other news outlet on the planet, report last week that Lindsay Graham made the Sunday news show rounds planting the “we politicians can do it better” seeds in the Astroturf bs?  And, isn’t he just the cutest little Barney Frank alter ego across the aisle, hmmmmm?

Now even the Soros backed Center for American Politics‘ hatchet blog, Think Progress, is trumpeting the “if not nationalization, what?” drumbeat.  Even Republicans are beginning to see the futility of resistance. That the growing chorus of cacophony is reaching eardrum-splitting noise levels is probably just the inevitable response to the legitimate crisis of confidence currently devaluing the global economy, right?  I mean, we gotta do something, don’t we?

Sure.

So while the Spokesmodel-in-Chief dons his most comfortable Professor Man costume and publicly breaks up his lackeys into study groups, the better to memorize their approved talking points asssigned them by the Astroturfing, bankster-employed, stage manager/prducer who had them written and distributed, those who chose to remain clueless can take comfort in the fact that worldwide screwing of this magnetude has never before been attempted, so is likely not happening now.  It’s okay.  The thrill of telling you, “I toldja so,” will be just as sweet as it will be for other, less tinfoil- friendly PUMAs when the shit fully hits the fan and splatters us all.

From The Ground Up

Looks like Obama the Candidate was really serious about “change.”  As we all know, “change” was the buzzword of the 2008 campaign season, promoted constantly, incessantly, annoyingly by Barack Obama, and picked up on by all of his opponents in self defense.  But, while everybody else was just spouting campaign rhetoric; after all, whenever one administration replaces another, you’re going to get “change,” Obama seems to have been serious as a heart attack without health insurance about it.

Conventional wisdom and common sense would indicate to even the densest among us that in order to achieve the “true change” Obama promised to bring to the “old ways of Washington” in his determination to “remake the country,” the country in question, as in any renovation, would need to be torn down to the studs.  And, it appears Obama is well on his way to completing Phase One.  At least, according to George Soros.  Reuters reports that Soros, speaking at a Columbia University dinner, echoed the sentiments of the speaker before him, Paul Volcker, head of the president’s new Economic Advisory Board, when he said the world as we know it is well on its way to irrevocable destruction, economically speaking:

Renowned investor George Soros said on Friday the world financial system has effectively disintegrated, adding that there is yet no prospect of a near-term resolution to the crisis.

Soros said the turbulence is actually more severe than during the Great Depression, comparing the current situation to the demise of the Soviet Union.

He said the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September marked a turning point in the functioning of the market system.

“We witnessed the collapse of the financial system,” Soros said at a Columbia University dinner. “It was placed on life support, and it’s still on life support. There’s no sign that we are anywhere near a bottom.”

Hmmm…isn’t that what Rep. Paul Kanjorski said, and all the Obots went, “Pfssshh, yeah, right“?  And, if I’m following all this correctly, doesn’t this mean that the economic event that lead to Paulson’s TARP (don’t call it a) bailout and propelled a curiously over-funded Obama from a hotly contested, tied competition into the White House virtually unopposed, is also the catalyst of global financial ruin?  What say the Obots, now?

Well, they can’t say Obama leads by example.  Or, maybe he does, since people not paying bills, for one reason or another, is a big part of the mess we’re in.  Obama doesn’t seem to want to pay his bills, either, at least not the one to his adopted home city for the Bashapalooza they threw for him on Election Night.  The Chicago Sun Times has the details:

Chicago has yet to recoup the $1.74 million cost of President Obama’s victory celebration in Grant Park — despite a burgeoning $50.5 million budget shortfall that threatens more layoffs and union concessions.

“The Democratic National Committee has not yet paid us,” Peter Scales, a spokesman for the city’s Office of Budget and Management, said Thursday after questions from the Chicago Sun-Times. “We’re reaching out to them this week.”

I guess South Side Slick expects the city to just hang on for the stimulus money since there’s probably pork aplenty to cover.  And, now that the Illinois legislature has done its part in kicking Rod Blagojevich to the curb, the state qualifies for its share.  There’s probably a bonus for breaking harmless little Roland Burris‘ heart by stomping on his dreams and jackbooting him out of the Senate job he dearly wanted, foolishly embraced and would be out of in a minute anyway.  One way or another, Chicago will be paid; either they’re headed under the bus, or somebody will “deliver an envelope,” if you get my drift.  Obama takes care of his own, it’s the Chicago Way.

Of course, the Obama Way means nobody has to pay their bills; he’s hellbent on seeing to it that everybody at least has a house, regardless of whether they can afford it, or not.  He unveiled his big, stock market tanking housing plan to help out the lender-seduced buyers who jumped off the deep end into houses that now have them underwater, and financially back up those lenders for going along with the program with government money, if they feel like it, unless they’re Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  Since that’s the only way the greedy lenders can get the up front bailout money and back end insurance, I have a feeling they’ll probably play along.

For those pretty much destitute-from-the-jump folks just given over-priced houses by lenders, basically for free, just to get the right numbers on the paper those bankers were going to turn right around and sell for even more worthless computer bits and bytes signifying nothing, even though everybody knew they’d never be able to pay it back, Obie has sicced ACORN on the problem on the QT.  All those folks have to do is make like Wild West expansioneers and just squat on their homestead, since Obie’s got their back with the bailed out bankers, no matter what.  Besides, the original mortgage has probably been through so many grubby banksters’ hands, the guys trying to foreclose probably couldn’t produce the necessary paperwork if they wanted to.  If the system gamers get cold feet, or the banker on the low end not hip to the deal tries to lock them out, a quick call to Obie’s ACORN enforcers will bring the strongarm crew to help you gain access to your now completely free house.  Of course, like all Dons, Obie’s three steps removed, especially since he got Rep. Marcy Kaptur to sell the plan to the clueless for him.

Don’t be fooled by the “hold bank executives feet to the fire” rah-rah coming from the administration, either.   The whole “salary cap” thing is bogus all around, being nothing but re-election theater as it is.  Team Obama and his money man, Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat (TTTG,tc) tried to quietly tiptoe out of the whole TARP-related “take my money, play buy my rules” dramatic ploy, but Congress realized they need votes too, so they snuck it back into the stimulus bill.  And, even though it sounds like “Ooooooh, we showed those bad bankers,” anybody who believes there isn’t enough wiggle room in the provisions to drive a fleet of private jets, and Daschle limos through, is a hopium head, and deserves the no grease screwing a-comin’.

Same for anybody who really believes Obie’s gonna close Gitmo; I’ll believe it when I see it, since the Obama patented “clear myself ahead of time” review panel he commisioned, this time through the Pentagon instead of White House counsel like the brush-Blago-off-the-shoulders one, says everything at Gitmo is Geneva convention compliant and thus, hunky dory.  So, why close it?  Look for him to rescind his exec order sometime in the coming year, on the sly, like he’s extending those Bush policies.  Shhhhhh.

So, while Obacrats raise Democratic in-fighting to a new art form, using definitions of “what is is” as a time tested, media approved bludgeoning tool against their brethren-on-the-outs in the case of David (Caroline wasn’t my first choice) Paterson and Roland (but I didn’t give him any money) Burris, the Teflon TelePrompTer Reader can continue happily fronting for the banksters, robbing the world blind, fighting wars, and tearing the country to the ground, so he can remake it in his own image with a clean slate.  Like he, and his wife, told you he would.

All the while, remaining more popular than Jesus in the process.  Like Dee Dee Myers told us he was.

And, the wheels on…oh, hell, you know the rest.

Who’s Robert Wolf?

During one late night/early morning informal discussion on The Confluence, the name Robert Wolf, and his influence on Barack Obama, came up.  To be honest, I didn’t know Robert Wolf from the man in the moon, and still don’t.  However, I have looked into the question of whether or not he might be “the guy” who’s responsible for foisting the fraud that is our current president onto our nation via our easily bedazzled and bamboozled breth-and sist-ren, and, have concluded, probably not.  Though, he is a rather strong candidate, worthy of PUMA scrutiny and investigation.

Robert Wolf is the President and Chief Operating Officer of UBS Investment Bank, as well as Chairman and Chief Operating Officer of UBS Group for the Americas.  That comes straight from the UBS website.  The company is a global financial institution based in Switzerland, whose name (USB) comes from it’s original, pre-merger with Swiss Bank Corporation name, Union Bank of Switzerland.  The AG is initialized form of a Swiss word basically meaning shareholder corporation.   UBS AG, along with Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley are among the financial groups who gave Googles of money to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, either through employee contributions, direct personal donations, contributions to PACs, and/or bundling.  Wolf’s and UBS’ political contributions to date can be tracked here, here, and here.

On February 6, White House.gov posted a press release announcing President Black Obama’s newly established Economic Advisory Board, designed to brief the president as he makes up an economic strategy on the fly, then tries to sell it on the campaign trail and run it up the public opinion flagpole and Chris Matthews’ leg, as David Axelrod runs focus groups whose results he can doctor and leak to the press.  The board will tell him what to do for two years, then he will revisit the question of extending their term of service and basically do whatever they tell him to do.  (Okay, the press release doesn’t exactly say that, but, c’mon, we know what’s up.)  Anyway, besides Paul Volcker, Penny (first Commerce Secretary name withdrawn) Pritzker, and Austan (NAFTAgate) Goolsbee, the most interesting name on the list was…(drumroll, please)…Robert Wolf (rim shot).

Obama met Wolf in December of 2005 at a George Soros-sponsored “meet the bundlers” matinee soiree, and, according to an April 16, 2007,  New York Magazine article, it was man love at first sight.  Conversation was had, numbers were exchanged and a relationship was born. To make a long story boring, seems both were a little miffed at the “old school” dominance of the stuck up, cocky Clinton Machine, so the ambitious Obama jumped aboard the put out, mega-rich, political playa wannabe’s train, and together, they formed a younger rainbow money posse and rode off into the sunset, creatively plotting to take over the world with their new, invigorating “hopey changeness.”

Except…

Since it was George Soros’ party, and Soros supported Obama, it seems likely to me that,  if there was a big player to exploit, Soros put the “suck up to that guy” bug in Obie’s ear.  Also, a Washingtom Post article dated 2 days later, had already identified Goldman Sachs as Obama’s biggest donor, a title I don’t think GS ever relinquished.  At that time, WaPo listed Obie’s Big Givers as:

The figures reflect giving from the employees of Bear Stearns, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, J.P. Morgan Chase, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, as well as Goldman and UBS. Goldman employees gave about 50 percent more to presidential hopefuls than the next-highest set of givers, at Citigroup.

Remember, this is April ‘07 we’re talking here, before a single primary/caucus vote was cast/stolen.  It’s doubtful that Wolf was able to snooker so much financial support from his business rivals unless there’s been some major collusion going on for quite some time.

Which is possible…

According to Wikipedia, Wolf assumed his current position as Chief Operating Officer with UBS in January, 2007.  After a company shakeup in October of 2007, due to a “writedown” caused by the “deteriorating conditions in the US sub prime residential mortgage market,” Wolf was named President, Investment Bank.  May, 2008 saw more UBS writedowns and job losses.

In the midst of our world-wide economic crisis the story of the troubles UBS is currently facing is not getting quite the attention it deserves.  One of the skeletons in Obama’s closet is that the banking conglomerate which employs one of the President of the United States’ financial advisers is currently under investigation for income tax evasion, which could have major implications for the entire banking industry and global reprecussions.

In February of last year, Reuters quoted a Wall Street Journal report that UBS was facing “subprime mortgage investigations:”

U.S. government prosecutors are investigating whether Swiss banking giant UBS misled investors by reporting inflated prices of mortgage-backed securities it held despite knowing those valuations had eroded, the Wall Street Journal said on Saturday.

According to a May 7, 2008 Bloomberg piece, the company was facing a tax probe:

UBS AG, the world’s biggest money manager for rich individuals, said the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating whether the Swiss bank helped clients evade American taxes.

One senior bank employee was “briefly detained” by U.S. authorities as a “material witness,” the firm said in an e- mailed statement. The Financial Times reported that the employee was Martin Liechti, the Zurich-based head of UBS’s international wealth management business for the Americas. Rohini Pragasam, a UBS spokeswoman in New York, declined to comment on the FT report. Liechti could not immediately be reached for comment.

In June, ex-UBS employee, Bradley Birkenfeld plead guilty to charges against him that had been filed in May, that he was “incetivized” by the company to help clients hide assets.  By July, ABC was reporting that Senator Carl Levin was going after the company for helping US tax cheats hide taxable assets, and wanted the company shut down.  In November, another UBS big shot, Raoul Weil, was indicted in Miami for doing the same thing for a lot more clients.  In December, WSJ reported that the Feds had added Credit Suisse and HSBC to the probe list.

Now, in a series of rather confusing developments, USB has agreed to pay 780 million dollars in fines and open up its hallowed books to the government’s prying eyes.  Despite the agreement however, Raoul Weil is still being sought separately, and still considered a fugitive, as he has been since January.  It also seems that the Internal Revenue Service/Department of Justice has initiated a separate civil suit seeking enforcement of a “John Doe” summons that would require the company to reveal the names of up to 52,000 American customers.   The official UBS statement can be found here.

While there is no shortage of Soros conspiracy theories, some of them, regarding Obama and the Soros-backed, John Podesta-led Center for American Progress, of which Tom Daschle was a Distinguished Fellow, have even been explored here, I don’t think Soros is “the guy” anymore than I think Wolf is.  Unless Wolf has some secret plan to take down his own company from the inside, I can’t see how his Obama investment money has been well spent.  I do think that, as was pointed out in the PBS special “Inside the Meltdown,” the whole credit crisis was rumor generated, so that it, and all the other social media, internet, financial, political, and other manipulation that so fortuitously worked to Obama’s advantage could have been implemented by one savvy guy with his ear to the ground, his finger on the nation’s pulse, and a brick-sized chip on his shoulder.  I also believe there is such a guy, but his name ain’t George or Robert.

Selling ObamaLove

Does the public find Spokesmodel-in-Chief, Black Obama, sexy?  If you judge by the number of opinion pieces detailing soft-core porn, semi-erotic, reader submitted “dreams” about him, or music videos proclaiming “crushes” on him, you’d probably say “yes.”  However, if you Google, “Barack Obama sexy” and carefully read the predictably high number of hits, only to discover that most of them are responses and commentary on the two examples given, you’d have to determine the answer is, “not so much.”

Now, anyone who has spent any amount of time researching the Nations’ Neophyte President knows that for some reason, Google searches always return an incredibly high number of responses favorable to him.  Go figure.  But, as is often the case, these results can be misleading.  If one examines those results carefully, it is possible to find some rather interesting information.

The question of Oboyhe’scute’s “sex appeal” arose aroused came up today from a reader comment on my last post from “Laree” who claimed she didn’t get the attraction after reading Michelle Malkin’s quote from a love-struck Obamite buried in a Peoria Star Journal article about the President’s visit to a Catepillar-sponsored event last Thursday:

“I see him like he’s my own son, and not in a funny way, either,” Dorothy Tisdale, a 73-year-old Peorian, said in reference to President Obama. She was the same woman who, after Obama’s motorcade passed her, said the experience was “better than having sex.”

Though older women, like Golden Girls’ Betty White, and the aging schoolgirls on The View seem to agree that Obutno is sexy, and Arianna Huffington is determined to publish any and every little thing that hints of Obama studliness, the recurring theme of his dubious “sexiness” bears investigation.  The earliest example that comes to mind is the “I Got A Crush On Obama” You Tube (Google owned) video.  Bear in mind that Google, one of Obama’s largest donors, whose CEO is an Obama advisor, announced its You Tube acquisition October 9, 2006.  The Washington Post reported Obama announced his formation of a “presidential exploratory committee” January 17, 2007, with intentions to formally announce his candidacy on February 10 of that year.  On May 27, 2007, the Washington Post told us that Howard Dean’s former “all around web guy,” Joe Rospars, ran a staff of 11 out of  Barack Obama’s Chicago headquarters.

Joe Rospars today is listed as Program Director and Founding Partner of Blue State Digital, Obama’s online website and development consultants responsible for Obama for America or Organizing for America, Obama’s campaign site now under the auspices of the Democratic National Committee.  Blue State was founded by refugees from Howard Dean’s campaign trained at the knee of Dean’s personal ‘net pioneer, Joe Trippi.

On Blue State Digital’s OFA website however, they claim that Rospars’ 2004 founded company was hired by the Obama campaign in 2006.  But, Business Week says that the company, which has also worked for George Soros, was hired by Team Obama in February of 2007, nine days before Obie launched his campaign.  At any rate, on March 5, 2007, the anti-Hillary Clinton, pro-Obama unauthorized, “Hillary 1984” You Tube video mysteriously debuted, accredited only to ParkRidge47, with “I Got A Crush On Obama” following shortly thereafter.

techPresident’s Micah Sifry investigated the mystery of the 1984 You Tube fueled “Barocket” launch, March 19, concluding, along with his blog readers, that the video had to have come from the Obama camp.  Sifry, along with the San Francisco Chronicle, linked above, was ultimately proven correct after the Huffington Post outed ParkRidge47 as Phillip de Vellis, an employee of, you guessed it, Blue State Digital.  de Vellis came clean in a subsequent HuffPo post, claiming that he made the video in his basement and uploaded it to You Tube without BSD’s knowledge or authorization.  Sure.  He was fired, and that, as they say, was that.

Except…

In late September, during the general election, an eerily similar event occurred regarding a Palin-bashing video.   The Jawa Report exposed Winner and Associates’, Ethan Winner, employee and son of the public relations company founder and Axelrod associate, Charles Winner, as the producer of this video, now removed by You Tube, featuring a voice-over artist often employed by David Axelrod.  After the evidence surfaced, Winner, a known Obama supporter, sent an email to the Jawa Report, claiming he made the video on his own, without knowledge or authorization of anybody in his dad’s company, and the distinctive voice-over artist, who had never worked for David Axelrod (how would he know?) was hired by him.  Of course.

So, now we go back to “I Got A Crush On Obama,” the first of a series of videos that launched the ObamaLove campaign.  Supposedly, yet another independent singer/songwriter/producer was so smitten with political lust that she and her partner hired an actress to lipsync her Obama anthem and post it on the internet for free, not long after the freshman Senator tossed his hat in the ring.  Oh.  Yeah.

Though HuffPo reported on outing of the “Crush” video producers, Barely Political, which was later purchased by Fred Seibert’s Next New Networks, it was ABC News they quoted:

The song was performed by Leah Kauffman, a 21-year-old undergraduate at Temple University in Philadelphia, who wrote the lyrics with a friend, 32-year-old advertising executive Ben Relles, and the music with her producer, Rick Friedrich.

An actress/model named Amber Lee Ettinger then lip-synched the song for the video, shot by filmmakers found on Craigslist two hours before Relles and Ettinger hit New York City one Friday in May to shoot the video on a DV camera.

“Not including the hours we spent working on it, it probably cost a couple thousand dollars,” said Relles, a graduate of the Wharton School of Business, who said he did it for fun, not money, but is also selling “Obamagirl” and “I Got a Crush on Obama” T-shirts.

The “Crush” crew’s Relles asserted that they invested their time and money into the project and posted it on their new You Tube page June 10, 2007, in response to a Hillary Clinton songwriting contest they found on her campaign website.  Huh?  Like me, but long before me, and without my knowledge until I researched this post, Gregory Chang of Stop Obama, came to the same “Crush crew must be Axelrod astroturf” conclusion I did, for pretty much the same reasons, only he got there in April of last year.

Back to Joe Rospars‘, Obama’s embedded Blue State Digital, Joe Trippi trained, web guru.  Rospars’ the guy who commandeered Joe Anthony’s independent MySpace profile.  This January 8, 2009, Boston Globe article gives a bit of insight into the incestuous relationship between Joe Trippi and all his computer-geek spawn, including Boston native Jascha Franklin-Hodge of Blue State, and the impact of the exploitation of their talents and techniques upon the Obama campaign and administration, as well as politics of the fuure in general.

While the Obama Machine has denied involvement with “I Got A Crush On Obama,” there’s no doubt they have exploited the viral video to promote his sex appeal to young, female voters.  Given Joe Rospars’ involvement and tactics, it would be more of a stretch to believe that “Obama Girl” was a completely independent production than to suspect that Camp O had a hand in it somehow.  After all, Blue State Digital says that’s the way you do it:

In many cases, there is an opportunity to use an attention-grabbing tactic (such as an innovative online application or a memorable video) to create an online buzz that has the potential to go viral, bringing people into your organization’s orbit much more quickly and organically than could be achieved via a conventional program.  We’ll help you identify and take advantage of these opportunities, so that you can grow more quickly and put your new constituents to use in pursuit of your organizational goals.

On Blue State Digital created mybarackobama.com, now morphed into Organizing for America, you can find other Obama worshippers convinced that not only is he the hottest thing since fire, that heat can make you sexy too.  Now, do you see where ObamaLove is better than sex nonsense came from?

Yep, the guy who loves him the most.

Us vs. Them

There’s a political war being waged in America, with the internet being it’s primary battlefield.  No, it’s not between the Democrats and Republicans, that one’s over for now.  Nor is it the over-hyped, fake Clinton/Obama Drama, orchestrated just to keep the bad boyz of the blogosphere busy by allowing them to pretend to be relevant.  It’s not the war between the mainstream media and the blogosphere either, given the corporate influence and partisanship of most publications and blogs, the blogger bully “pioneers” have now seamlessly been integrated into the “establishment” and are little more than their ideology enforcers.  This point is explored by the National Review Online in an article about how the Center for American Progress-lead progressive left movement beat the GOP at it’s own game with the election of Barack Obama as president:

The Left has created not just a collection of unshaven bloggers but a machine that beat the Right at its own game. The Left’s response to idea mills like the Heritage Foundation and AEI is the Center for American Progress, except that it produces few ideas: A reported 40 percent of its budget is given over to marketing. The tip of the spear is ThinkProgress.org, a site written ostensibly by CAP policy wonks. Its sole function seems to be to discredit conservative candidates and personalities; it contains 11,000 pages with the words “Sarah Palin” on them, according to Google. ThinkProgress entries aren’t all that original, but they frequently serve as jumping-off points for the left-wing blogosphere and Countdown with Keith Olbermann.

The entire article is worth a look, but, as I said, I don’t think this is exclusively a “progressive/conservative” battle.  The Soros-backed Center, lead by Obama transition team leader, John Podesta, does seem to be the architect of a “psuedo-movement,” however, it’s just part of the story.  George Soros has not hidden his desire to remake the Democratic party in an image more to his liking, and it should be noted that in the primaries, he backed Obama over Clinton, even though she is supposed to be a co-founder of CAP.  He did, however, claim to be fine with a Clinton win, and I take him at his word on that.  Whether it was Soros himself, the Center for American Progress, the Democratic party, or some other, unknown entity who was crafting the game plan is not important; it seems clear, at least to me, that whoever the ultimate power brokers are, they were indeed fine with a win by either Democratic candidate.

The Black Agenda Report has been making the case all along that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were war-mongering, corporatist, ideological twins with not a soupcon of difference between them.  Whether or not you agree with their assessment as a whole, it’s hard to argue with the main thrust of it, Clinton and Obama agree on more than they disagree.  Both candidates have themselves made that point.  So, their primary battle was not about ideology, but the methodology of implementation of their mutual policy philosophy; Clinton representing the old-school, tried and true fundraising and campaign approach, Obama, the new, experimental Howard Dean, web-based, 50 state one.  If the trail-blazing, Wild, Wild West of the internet approach paid off, so much the better; if not, as many of the major donors and architects likely believed, their first choice would be enshrined in the Oval Office.  Win-win, no difference, safe bet.  Considering that a Democratic victory was almost a sure thing, such a gamble was pretty much a sucker bet, guaranteed to pay the house no matter what.

Many groups and individuals enthusiastically took that bet, though, believing that their efforts would pay off in a way that we now see will not come to pass.  A lot of the cheerleading was done by those with a vested interest in the outcome, either financial or political, some were volunteers, some were big-time, self important bloggers, others were supposedly “objective” faux journalists.  Then there were those who were skeptical all along, sensing that the primaries were a sham, the outcome was a done deal, and the fix was in, without being able to put their fingers on just what was wrong.  A lot of that skepticism came from reasonably informed, but not overly invested, regular voters.  The kind of workaday everyman and woman people who are the backbone of politics, though the outcry came from the slightly more involved faction of that group.  In other words, PUMAs.

Lets face it, the average American voter on either side is not steeped in the knowledge and traditions of the respective political parties and their policies and positions, most folks could not care less.  Most Democrats see the Republican party as the predominantly white, holier-than-thou, stingy busybodies who screwed everything up.  The Democrats are everybody else.  Most of the time, this rather simplistic view, and it’s equally simple alternate, work just fine.  We are only called upon to exercise our obligations to decide who will make decisions for us every two to four years, and we’re content to believe that if we will only vote for the best-looking candidate with the most money who we like the best, everything will be cool.  Frankly, we don’t have time or energy to dedicate to becoming better informed and more involved, we’re too busy working, raising families, paying taxes and doing all the things we rely on our government to help us do, to worry about political science.  And our elected officials know it, in fact, they depend on it, it’s how they keep getting elected.

But a funny thing happened when the machine tried to run it’s usual game a slightly different way this time.  The very means they tried to exploit, the internet, allowed those usually docile housewives and husbands sitting behind their laptops at the kitchen table, at their makeshift home office/den/bedroom desktops, in cars, trains, buses with Blackberries and I-Phones, in office cubicles, in coffee shops and libraries, or wherever they found internet access, to actually become not only informed, but involved.  Unsatisfied with the unwitting accomplice role into which they had been cast in the farcical theatricalization of the democratic process, some of them began to howl in outrage.  “Party unity, my ass!”

Without funding from the shadow forces, or donations from influence peddlers or seekers that power campaigns, with no access to daily talking point memos or press releases designed to tell them what to tell other people to think, these “kitchen table PUMAs” took matters into their own hands.  When their indignant objections to the party line pushers got them kicked off the mainstream media enforcement-arm blogs, they founded Blogger, WordPress and Typepad blogs of their own, countering the party driven propaganda being spewed by dedicated, though misguided partisans convinced that the official party endorsement of their point of view regarding their candidate made it not only superior to anyone else’s, but them solely responsible for his/her success.  Unlike the party-supported mainstream blogs whose proprietors were motivated by either party influence or financial reward, PUMAs are motivated only by principle.  We know that when the illusion of democracy is shattered, the whole house of cards falls apart.  Americans have to believe that the smiling, handsome, well funded guys we elect are nobly motivated, and the process fair.  Otherwise, we have to suspend our complicity and really get involved.

Thus, PUMAs objected to the caucus fraud and crossover primary voting exploitation, as well as the results of the Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting, not because they promoted a candidate they didn’t like, but because those activities made a mockery of democracy, and rendered the democratic process moot.  Those same Democrats, former Democrats, Independents and even some Republicans comprising the PUMA membership were equally outraged by the treatment of “Joe the Plumber” and Sarah Palin for the exact same reasons.

So, while we consider the future direction of our own patriotic “movement,” as well as the recent appointments of people like CAP’s Melody Barnes, Tom Daschle, and John Podesta, by president-elect Obama, and of his entire economic team, and what it all means, I submit we only need to continue doing what we started out to do, monitor the process.  The uncontrolled, uncontrollable American voters whose ultimate allegiance is to country, not party are the bane of the establishment’s existance.  Since we can no longer expect the press or the media to objectively report or investigate, if, indeed we ever could, we now have the means and opportunity to assume that role for ourselves.  As we become more knowledgeable and enlist more of the disgruntled, kitchen table electorate, our path and direction will continue to make itself clear.

We’re the squeaky wheels, the masses who reject the opiates, answering to no one, now fully awake and ready to roar.  And if we keep making noise, we will continue to grow, we will not be silenced, and we will be heard.  And our David will ultimately defeat the political Goliaths, because we’re right, and there’s a lot more of us than them.

Democratic Sheeple Manipulation Drama

For many of us, this year’s election cycle has seemed to be nothing more than theater, a scripted playlet mounted on the world stage with a predetermined outcome, performed to appease, rather than entertain, enlighten or engage the masses, at the same time occupying the time and attention of the fourth estate in order to minimize their relevance.  I’d like to make the case that, at least for the Democratic party, that’s exactly what happened.  So, get your tinfoil hat strapped on tight, your Orville Redenbacher ready, and your Barcalounger seatbelt tightened.  We’re going on a bumpy ride.

At about 2:20 on the above You Tube clip from Yearly Kos, August 2006, Senator Clinton says:

We are certainly better prepared and more focused on, you know, taking our arguments, and making them effective, and disseminating them widely, and really putting together a network, uh, in the blogosphere, in a lot of the new progressive infrastructure, institutions that I helped to start and support like Media Matters and Center for American Progress.

(emphasis Newsbusters)

Now, most of the information about this quote and what it means for future generations, blah, blah, blah, comes from conservative sites who seem to have had a real bug up their butts about HRC’s “confession” at the time.  The other side seems noticeably silent on the issue.  Discover The Networks, American Thinker, and Newsmax have all spun tales of evil Hillary witchery at political play in conjunction with equally evil billionaire Georege Soros.  The theory goes, Hillary Clinton and George Soros hatched a plan in 2003 to take over the world.  Or, at least, the country.  The means for doing so, was to establish a think tank (Center for American Progress) and a media watchdog group (Media Matters) to manage the message and combat the “vast rightwing conspiracy.”)  In 2006, the Washington Post ran an article claiming that CAP was funded by a group of mega-money men, Democracy Alliance, Soros included, who determined which “progressive” entities received funding, and which ones didn’t.  One that didn’t is the Clinton-centric Democratic Leadership Council.  What’s up with that?  Why would a group reportedly founded to fund “progressive” entities give money to one organization supposedly founded by the Clintons and not another?  Is the DLC an old school Bill Clinton faction and CAP Hillary’s new way of doing things?  If so, where does Rahm Emanuel fit in?  Tom Daschle?  Are the Clintons the architects of the Democratic resurgence using both the DLC and CAP?  Too much tinfoil?

Okay, moving on.  On November 18, Bloomberg News ran a piece claiming that CAP was setting Barack Obama’s foreign policy.  Say what?  The Bill Clinton chief of staff-lead organization Hillary Clinton helped found, by her own admission, is now at the forefront of the new Democratic president-elect’s policy panel?  Huh?

Thanks in part to funding from benefactors such as billionaire George Soros, the Center for American Progress has become in just five years an intellectual wellspring for Democratic policy proposals, including many that are shaping the agenda of the new Obama administration.

Now, in case you’ve forgotten, Barack Obama is said to be “thisclose” to naming Hillary Clinton Secretary of State.  The recent media reports have been full of speculation about the impact and implications of such an appointment, with some praise and much gnashing of teeth, but there also has been specualtion that this deal was done in June when Obama and Clinton met at Dianne Feinstein’s house, though MSNBC says the Obama/Clinton “good vibrations” relationship began to evolve after the Democratic National Convention.  Not only does MSNBC’s characterization seem unlikely, it also seems irrelevant.

Hillary Clinton is “dragging her feet” in accepting Barack Obama’s “unofficial offer” because it too, is irrelevant.  This seems to me to have been a done deal all along.  With the news that Clinton will choose her own team, with Obama’s loyalists being relegated to White House staff, or booted completely, it’s hard not to see this as a preordained fait accompli.  Not that everybody was in on the deal, that wouldn’t be necessary, in fact, too many people in the know would likely screw things up.  It’s not even like the outcome of the primaries was absolutely fixed, the deck was stacked to increase the likelihood of the ultimate desired result, but Clinton as president wouldn’t have been considered failure.  After all, the goal, as stated by HRC, over, and over again, was to “get a Democrat in the White House.”  However, Obama as president allows the Democratic party to not only re-brand itself while reinforcing it’s inclusive image, it redirects the party in the age of the internet in the manner John F. Kennedy did in the age of television.  Therefore, with Obama as the puppet-face of the Democrats and Clinton actually wielding the power, an argument could be made that an impressive win-win situation resulting from a well-planned, long-term “plot” has been achieved.

Maybe all the angst and interplay between competing Democratic factions played out in the news and blogosphere was merely smoke and mirrors distractions all along.  Perhaps PUMA was born out of the frustration of knowing something was wrong that we just couldn’t put our finger on.  Could it be that the frustrations of those feeling disenfranchised by the results of the Rules and Bylaws Committee and the subsequent farce of the Democratic National Convention were just a byproduct of the implementation of a foregone conclusion?  Is that why Obama selected an HRC supporting veep nobody would pay much attention to?

Could be.

Or, not.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Roiled and Tinfoiled

Given the fact that during the primaries, nothing excited the tinfoil hat wearing lunatic fringe of the PUMAsphere and the right wing like a good “George Soros backs Barack Obama” conspiracy theory, an article in today’s Bloomberg News should send PUMA-inspired sales of Reynolds Wrap straight through the roof.  Entitled, “Soros Funded Idea Factory Becomes Obama Policy Font” the article documents the influence of the Soros-backed Center for American Progress:

Thanks in part to funding from benefactors such as billionaire George Soros, the Center for American Progress has become in just five years an intellectual wellspring for Democratic policy proposals, including many that are shaping the agenda of the new Obama administration.

Much as the Heritage Foundation provided intellectual heft for the Republican Party in the 1980s, CAP has been an incubator for liberal thought and helped build the platform that triumphed in the 2008 campaign.

“What CAP has done is recapture the role of ideas as an important political force, something the Republicans had been better at for 25 years,” said Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute, a non-partisan policy-research organization in Washington.

CAP’s president and founder, John Podesta, 59, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, is one of three people running the transition team for president-elect Barack Obama, 47. A squadron of CAP experts is working with them.

Claiming that though the group is not the largest think tank in the business, it may well be the most influencial to the Obama administration with at least 10 members on Camp O’s transition team, the article features a few enthusiastic quotes from CAP’ers on their mission:

“Others strive to be objective, we don’t,” said Jennifer Palmieri, CAP’s vice president for communications.

Podesta likes to say, “we’re not a think tank, we’re an action tank,” said Dan Weiss, an environmental activist who joined CAP last year.

George Soros has been quoted as saying that removing George Bush from office was the central focus of his life and something he would sacrifice his entire fortune to achieve if somebody could guarantee it.  Since that wish was going to come true this year anyway without costing him a dime, maybe Georgie found a better use for all that leftover dough.  Quoted in the New York Times in January, he said this:

‘’I personally support Obama, but I don’t have any particular relationship,’’ said Mr. Soros, who has sometimes been a contentious figure in criticizing American economic and political actions. ‘’If he talks the way I talk, he would have no chance of getting elected: So I wish him well, but I don’t talk to him.’’ (Mr. Soros did help play host at a fund-raiser for Mr. Obama at the home of Paul Tudor Jones II, another prominent hedge fund manager, in May.)

Mr. Soros added that he had ‘’very high regard’’ for what he depicted as Mrs. Clinton’s statesmanlike qualities. ‘’I prefer Obama because I think he would bring more radical change,” he said. “But if she is the candidate, I will be very supportive of her.’’

Maybe Soros’ think tank figured out that his interests would best be served with Clinton as Secretary of State in an Obama administration.  If so, the fact that the self-appointed blogger bullies and Obama staff KoolAid drunken true believers are being reported by Politico as being “roiled” is an even more delicious irony than it otherwise would be.

From his supporters on the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, to campaign aides of the soon-to-be commander-in-chief, there’s a sense of ambivalence about giving a top political plum to a woman they spent 18 months hammering as the compromised standard-bearer of an era that deserves to be forgotten.

“These are people who believe in this stuff more than Barack himself does,” said a Democrat close to Obama’s campaign. “These guys didn’t put together a campaign in order to turn the government over to the Clintons.”

Maybe George Soros did.

SNL Unbanned And Edited

This is the edited version of the controversial Saturday Night Live bailout sketch.  It seems, believe it or not, that the reason the sketch was originally pulled is because neither Lorne Michaels, the show’s creator and producer, nor the NBC legal team, knew that the Sandlers, a couple depicted in the sketch, were real people.  According to the L.A. Times:

“I, in a state of complete ignorance, thought they were characters in the piece,” he said. “I did not know they were real, up until somebody called me about it on Monday. And I went, what? Now, that’s entirely my fault. Entirely.

“When I spoke to them, I can assure you this: They are very, very real. I think they were angry, I think distraught, I think they were not expecting to turn on the television and see that. First of all, I pleaded incompetence, which is not a thing I do often, and the fact that I did not know they were real is 100% my responsibility.”

The unflatteringly depicted couple, accused in the skit of exploiting the subprime mortgage crisis, did not complain; the decision to remove the bit was simply the show’s attempt to excercise an abundance of caution.  You buying any of this?  Another L.A. Times story says this:

A “Saturday Night Live” skit that skewered President Bush, Democrats, homebuyers and subprime lenders for their roles in the mortgage meltdown was removed from the program’s website because it “didn’t meet out standards,” a spokesman for the show said Tuesday. An edited version of the skit will be re-posted online soon, the spokesman said.

A third L.A. Times story, shares this:

In an interview with Gold, the show’s executive producer, Lorne Michaels, said the Sandlers were distraught but had not demanded the changes. He noted the “People who should be shot” line was deleted as was a reference to their “corrupt activities.”

But a comparison of the two versions shows that actually a little more than that was cut. What also was excised was any mention of the involvement of Massachusetts’ Rep. Frank in the Sandler subprime mess.

The original sketch below.

SNL Unbanned

Found it!

more about “SNL Unbanned“, posted with vodpod

h/t Pat Dollard