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Alinsky’s Chapstick?

Melanie Phillips on Obama and tranformational Marxism:

In her game-changing convention speech, Sarah Palin took a swipe at Obama for having been nothing more in his life than a ‘community organiser’.

This prompted the Obama campaign to issue a pained defence of community organisation as a way of promoting social change ‘from the bottom up’. The impression is that community organising is a worthy if woolly and ultimately ineffectual grassroots activity. This is to miss something of the greatest importance: that in the world of Barack Obama, community organisers are a key strategy in a different game altogether; and the name of that game is revolutionary Marxism.

The seditious role of the community organiser was developed by an extreme left intellectual called Saul Alinsky. He was a radical Chicago activist who, by the time he died in 1972, had had a profound influence on the highest levels of the Democratic party. Alinsky was a ‘transformational Marxist’ in the mould of Antonio Gramsci, who promoted the strategy of a ‘long march through the institutions’ by capturing the culture and turning it inside out as the most effective means of overturning western society. In similar vein, Alinsky condemned the New Left for alienating the general public by its demonstrations and outlandish appearance. The revolution had to be carried out through stealth and deception. Its proponents had to cultivate an image of centrism and pragmatism. A master of infiltration, Alinsky wooed Chicago mobsters and Wall Street financiers alike. And successive Democratic politicians fell under his spell.

His creed was set out in his book ‘Rules for Radicals’ – a book he dedicated to Lucifer, whom he called the ‘first radical’. It was Alinsky for whom ‘change’ was his mantra. And by ‘change’, he meant a Marxist revolution achieved by slow, incremental, Machiavellian means which turned society inside out. This had to be done through systematic deception, winning the trust of the naively idealistic middle class by using the language of morality to conceal an agenda designed to destroy it. And the way to do this, he said, was through ‘people’s organisations’.

At the risk of launching yet another gratuitous and unwarranted attack on Obama when what I really should be doing is discussing the “issues” (Hope? I’m for it! Change? Depends. Gonna need more details, I think) — and at the risk of being too self-referential, given that I’ve been making this same argument more generally as it pertains to the aims of modern progressivism — I ask you: does Obama fit the Alinsky mold, or is he, as others argue, merely a shallow baking pan concerned with nothing more than the swirls in his own frosting?

Discuss.

237 Replies to “Alinsky’s Chapstick?”

  1. happyfeet says:

    Well you know already what I’m gonna ask.

  2. happyfeet says:

    Anyone? Bueller?

  3. Pablo says:

    In her game-changing convention speech, Sarah Palin took a swipe at Obama for having been nothing more in his life than a ‘community organiser’.

    This prompted the Obama campaign to issue a pained defence of community organisation as a way of promoting social change ‘from the bottom up’.

    As things progressed, the Obama camp has turned the term into code for nigger. So don’t say it anymore, racists.

  4. PC says:

    God this question is too hard for me. I didn’t read Obama’s memoirs. (Did they give any clues?)

    Since I just got caught up on the clips of Obama’s sexism (yeah, the sweetie thing bowled me over and I had to watch it multiple times), I’m gonna go with option B. He clearly has all kinds of fucked up issues regarding being abandoned by both of his parents. So I think it’s all about him.

  5. happyfeet says:

    But please. With his Happy Corps this and Marxy Corps that and his cooptation of the White House Office of Faith-Based & Community Initiatives hells yeah he fits the mold. Marxy little feller, through and through. And get a load of his woman. Jeez.

  6. happyfeet says:

    Card Check!!!

  7. Pablo says:

    I ask you: does Obama fit the Alinsky mold, or is he, as others argue, merely a shallow baking pan concerned with nothing more than the swirls in his own frosting?

    I think he’s becoming concerned with the people who control the oven he was hoping to turn a lovely sheet cake out of, now that the cake has fallen. Also the Clintons.

  8. SarahW says:

    Keep his green corps far away from me.

  9. SarahW says:

    Helpful troubled youth in berets. Off of my lawn.

  10. SarahW says:

    You know, you’re not really FREE if you have to make all these pesky decisions for yourself all the time.
    Real freedom is letting others do the deciding.

  11. Rich "El Tejon" Cox says:

    O! is a cyborg built from lesser parts by the old school Dem machine intended to defeat the Clintonator 2008. The Chicago Brigade did not realize what would happen when the O! became self aware and thus have had to attach a Biden symbiote from 35 years ago in the past. The mission to retrieve him did not go without mishap however, as his wife was killed in the initial contact. A form of stasis was created and the symbiote was required to return to his chrysalis of solitude every night.

  12. Comrad Palin says:

    In her game-changing convention speech,

    Game Changer ‘Cuda! So ‘sperienced and edmedcated too!

    She got her ‘um welfare baby on the teat and a welfare gran’ chillun in her 17-year-old’s oven! See, she white, an’she can call ’em out them negroes!

  13. Comrad Palin says:

    They do it fo da welfare! Them inner-seetay coloreds. They hav’n all kind’o chillun simplies for z chek$$$!

    Uh-uuuh Miss Sarah, she ain’t evah seens her a negro need’n helps. She snowflakes.

  14. Pablo says:

    Shut up, thor.

  15. Jeff G. says:

    Hard to tell what you’re getting out, now that you’ve broken out the bad Chandler Harris to go with your strained Celine, thor.

    Is the gist that Palin, married to a part-Native, is now a racist, too? Wow. Is there no evil this woman doesn’t drink up like baby’s blood through a KKKrazy Straw?

  16. lee says:

    My opinion; Obama is a mouthpiece for the machine.

    I still think he ran with the intention of winding up as Clintons VP, then, when he became a sensation, powerful Dems that were tired of the Clintons power whispered in his ear. Obama knew he wasn’t ready for the job, but between his vast, throbbing ego, and the comforting feeling that his lines would be scrolled across the teleprompter, all that was left was for the media to bury his history.

    Done, and done.

  17. Jeff G. says:

    Oh, and thor? I won’t have you posting under multiple names. Don’t like it? Head on over to some other site and see how long they keep you around after the first Down’s joke.

    — On the right, I mean. The lefties will make you their boy king.

  18. TerryH says:

    Ironically, applying Alinsky’s rule 11 onto Palin has so far produced the opposite of the intended effect.

    BECAUSE OF THE HYPOCRISY!!!!

    Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.

    According to Alinsky, the main job of the organizer is to bait an opponent into reacting. “The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.”

  19. dicentra says:

    Hey, looks like Frank J. has finally figured out what a community organizer does. We can always count on Frank J. to find these things out so we don’t have to.

    As for the closing question, I’m with Dan: he has definitely immersed himself in the Alinsky Kool-Aid, but he probably hasn’t drunk more than a sip or two. He just finds it to be a nice cool swim on a hot day.

    However, his handlers — and I hate to make the accusation that someone is a mere puppet, but O! keeps dropping those kinds of hints — are much more dedicated to The Cause and will utilize O! like the tool he is.

  20. Comrad Palin says:

    Piss in your Mother’s pig snout, Pablo. You cowardly embarrassment.

    Let’s’ums talk about dim toopid negro Marxists! America welcom’d’em all nice likes. We shows’em darkies capitalism, on da tradin’ blocks! Dim niggers heard us’a callin’ out prices! Day seens how weez done it. Market price’n an all.

    The fucks wrong with ’em coloreds? Why ’ems gots to take’n aftah dim radical preach’n and teach’n, aftah all we dunz for ’ems!

  21. Rich "El Tejon" Cox says:

    At the risk of losing my man-card… I thought the “Barracuda” moniker came from the pic of Palin a few days ago in front of a beautiful muscle car. That no longer seems to be evident. Anyone know what kind of car that was? Yes guys.. there was a car. A blue one.

    OK… back to your regularly scheduled thread.

  22. thor says:

    Hey, thor’s wife is right here. Want thor to call her pit as a Russian crypto-Marxist whore just so she’ll get the nuance? Trust me, she understands all them big words. Got her a Masters degree here in America. Dostoyesky, she gets that too. They good teachers in America.

    Thor wife’n be white. She American. But her mommy done speak’m Russian. Second-class sort’a beigiest, eh JHo! American with a funny accent. Like all ’ems Obama Marxist-whores!

    Fuck your feigned outrage.

  23. lee says:

    Is it just me, or are the obamabots especially angry today.

    The inability to handle frustration is a sign of immaturity…

  24. happyfeet says:

    I didn’t know you had gotten married. For real? Congratulations. She sounds very nice and also pretty from what you’ve said and like you guys are good together. Say hi for me.

  25. lee says:

    Wait.

    Chekov IS a Star Trek charactor…I don’t get it.

    /backwoods redneck

  26. TmjUtah says:

    Most of the Che shirt – wearing losers I’ve ever met really lose enthusiasm for Teh Struggle when I ask when they intend to declare the Revolution.

    I mean, my schedule is flexible but I need to know when I need to put aside a morning to take out trash, ya know.

    As for the Chicago “machine”… they are just a different neighborhood in the Liberal plantation system. It’s like DC; it comes down to the fact that there is not much room for ideology when there’s so much money to divvy up. I might almost believe that Mrs. Obama is a True Believer… but then I think of her drawing over 300K a year for being married to a Senator and I have to think…”no…not so much.”

    Capice?

    It would be terribly difficult for anyone to “handle” the President of the United State. Think it through. Even the Kos crazies who fantasize Cheney or Rove running President Bush with a Nintendo controller probably don’t believe it in their hearts.

    Strip away the campaign foolishness and reach a decision, and badabing, there you have the one man where the buck stops, like it or not, for the nation, the Constitition, and in practical terms, the free world.

    It takes a special kind of ego to clasp that ring close and not let go. It would take a monster from an entirely different plane, I think, to presume that power absent the responsibility, of the office.

    Granted, recent days have brought forth unforced, cascading revelations of stupidity, ideological fanaticism, and outright evil from so many different directions (mainly Left) that I could be wrong… but I will maintain that even if the desire to control existed in the form of an Uber Soros or merely Alinsky’s Shade, the sheer inefficiency of such an arrangement would make its execution impossible almost before the puppet master got firm hold of the strings.

    Nobody in DC wants a socialist state. A lot of Dems make noises that way… but they just want their perks and power and to be treated with Teh ResPect They Deserve as our Bettahs…

    It’s not about color. It’s about who ends up at the pointy end. Mr. Obama is… unfit on more levels than there are on a Vulcan Chess board. And until tonight, I just assumed Biden was merely a Democrat time server. I didn’t know he was a coward.

    Stuff like that is good to know. I hope he’s changed in for somebody with a working pair.

    Wake me up when the little car stops in the center ring. I imagine it will be in the next day or two. I am beyond amazement right now, but a part of me wonders how they’ll package the switch.

    What an amazing season this is.

  27. thor says:

    Oh no, I didn’t mean you couldn’t post your “Shut up, thor!” “Suck my dick!”-s “Fuck your Russian whore, thor!” with pride.

    Big men of language are welcome to the word!

    Just don’t pretend there’s an obvious off-limits.

  28. Jeff G. says:

    What? Performance art.

    Peasants.

  29. Jeff G. says:

    Oh, but there is an off limits, thor. And it’s obvious. And I’ve tried to make that plain.

    You’ve gone all gutter, all the time. If you don’t want to participate in the threads based on their content, find different lodgings.

  30. happyfeet says:

    I was trying to have a moment here.

  31. David R. Block says:

    Thorazine, you seem to get less lucid with each comment.

  32. Sean M. says:

    I mean, my schedule is flexible but I need to know when I need to put aside a morning to take out trash, ya know.

    Why not just do it on Garbage Day?

  33. thor says:

    Why edit as if you’re the problem. Outside of your implied taunts that Olga – she has a name, a Russian one, go figure – is just another Russian cigarette-smoking slut, why edit?

    Olga doesn’t smoke. Olga doesn’t drink. Olga goes to church. Olga has been an American citizen for 13-fuckin’-years. Not the sexually adventurous type, and I’d know. A child psychologist by trade, in fact! Little stutterers, that’s her specialty.

    Give it to her, boys! Remember how it is – You don’t like me! Even if you dolts ain’t ever met Sarah Palin, and even though I don’t call your wives whores and sluts, but be the conservative Americans you are. Get Olga! Go for it! She asked for it, for Christ’s sake!

  34. thor says:

    Olga, by the way, hates America. I’ve heard her mutter it under her breath after a really bad day.

  35. Jeff G. says:

    I edited it because it has nothing to do with your wife — and everything to do with showing you how you’ve been writing for the last few weeks.

    It’s awful, frankly.

    I don’t much care about Olga. And even were she running for office, I doubt I’d really be talking about her twat.

    Food for thought.

  36. lee says:

    Heh. If only he could transfer that outrage into empathy and shame for the words he has written about a certain state governor.

    Nah, introspection is hardly a leftists strength.

  37. ThomasD says:

    Obama’s latest misteps and apparent lack of focus lead me to believe him less a true believer and more a shallow opportunist.

    Not to say he’s harmless, victory has a way of binding you to your base and, if he wins, his base is going to be calling the shots while the press trumpets ‘mandate’ loudly.

  38. Jeff G. says:

    G’night all! G’night, Olga!

  39. mojo says:

    thor’s problem: DFRS (Digital Free Rider Syndrome):

    The perverse belief that somebody is obligated to underwrite your online bullshit.

    Get your own bullhorn, pal. It’s a free country.

  40. geoffb says:

    Is Obama an Alinsky type? I’d say yes but he isn’t very good at it under pressure.

    Channeling McCain — “Alinsky… you magnificent bastard, I read your book! Boyd’s was better.”

  41. Olga, by the way, hates America.

    Olga shouldn’t let the door hit her in the ass. You, too.

  42. David Warner says:

    Obama actually moved on from Alinsky shortly after his failed community organizing efforts. Alinsky wasn’t much for actual politicians and charismatic leaders, so he didn’t exactly play to Obama’s strengths.

    If you can imagine a libertarian who was oblivious to/dismissive of the entire classical liberal tradition, and there is a plausible argument to be made that this is the case with Alinsky and his fellow red diaper changers (the French Revolution had a Left Wing and a Right Wing, they’d already slaughtered or run off all the Huguenot/Liberals; Weimar, Mensheviks, et. al. => liberal = pathetic), its not outside the realm of possibility that such a person would come up with something not far from Alinskyism.

    Without, you know, the Marxism and stuff.

  43. B Moe says:

    Fuck your feigned outrage.

    I know its a tired cliche, the opposite of Andrew and Gleens, but I don’t really give a fuck and I am gonna let you in on a stone cold fact, asshole. I used to be a communist, when I was a kid up into being a young man, during Carter and Reagan, and one of the things that most pissed me off was little fucking psuedo-intellectual fucking pussies like thor and SEK that wouldn’t man up and own it. If you are a commie, be a commie.

    Part of the problem, though, is pinheadedness on the right side, and folks need to own that shit, too. Communists aren’t inherently evil, parasitic spawns of Satan. Most of them are quite well meaning in fact, and not evil or mean spirited at all, just misguided and wrong. Next time you meet a commie, remember it might be somebodies mommy.

    Shalom.

  44. Sean M. says:

    B Moe, you ever read Witness?

  45. B Moe says:

    Don’t think so, who wrote it?

  46. Sean M. says:

    Whittaker Chambers. The guy who testified against Alger Hiss. It’s a good read.

  47. thor says:

    #

    Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 9/10 @ 11:13 pm #

    Olga, by the way, hates America.

    Olga shouldn’t let the door hit her in the ass. You, too.

    Maybe you should go and suck off tall, handsome Russian men and write a lengthy book about it. It’s how Genet got his big break. Look him up, gullaboy.

  48. ducktrapper says:

    When will the community finally be organized and what how will we know? Has anyone asked him what this organized community will look like? Utopia or … East Berlin?

  49. m kasper says:

    I am starting to wish we would just sit back and let the left continue their seriously apopletic reaction to Palin. What has been coming from them in the last 2 weeks has been positively fascinating. The Repubs might want to sit back and let them rip about the right, and at the same time start talking policy.

    It’s time to jump off the wave that going to crash and start riding another good one that addresses specifics on the country’s security, immigration, energy. I still don’t feel comfortable with McCain, and I’m nervous about McCain/Palin using the words “bipartisan” “big oil” “big pharmaceuticals.” That’s RINO-populous talk.

  50. ducktrapper says:

    The biggest aim of community organization is to control the narrative. They’re doing a great jog in some areas. Thus Matt Damon and his rant and medias’ rapt attention.

  51. Pablo says:

    Wow. Talk about adding value to the discussion, thor. You know, seeing as how you can’t actually do it. Maybe you could mention the concept.

  52. N. O'Brain says:

    Comment by thor on 9/11 @ 1:53 am #

    Somewhere, Alinsky’s ghost is pissing in his sheet.

  53. N. O'Brain says:

    Comment by thor on 9/11 @ 1:53 am #

    Somewhere, Alinky’s ghost is pissing in his sheet.

  54. Bob Reed says:

    O! is a bit of both. He is the perfect frontman for the radical left’s aspirations. Possesing the most unassailable identity in the victimhood class, and a congenial charisma, they considered him “teflon” in the same sense as Clinton and Reagan.

    But, make no mistake, Obama understands and utilizes Alinsky tactics all the way. He may be a political neophyte, nationally, and struggling to come to grips with real ideological opposition; but he is not simply a useful idiot. Indeed, he may be driving the strategy to a large extrent.

    But, what is amusing is how these elite, academic Marxisits, get so out of touch with the same people they are supposed to be helping. McMav and ‘Cuda appeal to people in a more foksy, almost Jacksonian, way than O! and the far left elitists could ever dream of doing…

  55. Carin says:

    Well, Obama was linked to the Gamaliel Foundation. He was hired by the Developing Communities Project, which was part of the Gamaliel network, and he eventually became a trainer and consultant for Gamaliel. Gamaliel uses post-Alinsky methods to make themselves appear to be moderates by dressing nice, and shunning the appearing of being a radical. They want their message to come across as common sense answers for working families. From NR, Sept 1, Kurtz:

    Throughout his career, Obama has drawn on all of these strategies. In Illinois’s Republican-controlled state senate, Obama specialized in incremental legislation, often drawn up in collaboration with groups like Gamaliel and ACORN. His tiny, targeted expansions of government-financed health care, for example, were designed to build political momentum for universal health care. And his claim to be a “common-sense pragmatist,” rather than a leftist ideologue, comes straight out of the Gamaliel playbook.

    Gamaliel keeps it’s public face clean, but it does admit that one of it’s missions is healthcare for all. It’s a God given right, you know, and that society is divided between the halfs and half-nots. If you clear away it’s moderate veneer, it is “organizing” for collectivism and redistribution.

    Even as a Senator, he is linked to Gamaliel and ACORN. So, I’m leaning toward the “yes, he’s a Marxist” answer. He just knows how to put a palatable face on it.

  56. Carin says:

    Ah, I see Phillips brings up the Gamaliel/NR stuff. I suppose I should read the linked article FIRST before I comment.

    Regardless, I guess the two options are 1) Obama is, to his soul, an Alinsky/Gamaliel community organizer radical or 2) He used “community organizing” as his route to politics.

    Honestly, neither option is all that great.

  57. The Lost Dog says:

    O! makes my skin crawl. Sarah Palin could kick his ass every which way but loose. And he (and his handlers) are scared shitless of this wonderful woman, who embodies everything that the feminists and proggs have been whining for. He can’t even touch her in the arena of ideas, so he sends his trolls out to desperately search for dirt to besmirch her with. What a true man the “Lightbringer” is! He knows that he is hopelessly outclassed, so he immediately turns to the “shiv in the back” strategy. Yes! Here is a man we can all look up to! A bringer of change! And hope!

    I do think O! is quite sincere in what he does, but, unfortunately, he is unable to understand what the Constitution is, is unable look at history, and, like a vampire, unable to see himself in the mirror. I think his condition is sometimes known as “hubris”. How could almost half of his followers believe that the Supreme Court judges should ignore the Constitution and rule by how they “feel”? That is one very scary statistic. It is truly about the scariest thing I have heard in this election season.

    I sometimes fear that we have passed the tipping point, and that soon a majority of Americans (well, that and the millions of “sorta” Americans who have just kind of sauntered into this country) will firmly believe (and vote for)the idea that the world is about the government knowing best. They are ready to vote for a life of misery for everyone. I just saw a clip of Reagan saying: “Who among us is qualified to rule the life of another?”

    Obviously, the proggs think that they are. “Americans, you stupid bastards! Drop and give us twenty!”

    If O! wins, get ready for the thermostat police, the food police, the radio/TV police, the fashion police, the library police, and on and on. If O! is smart he will roll all these into one entity and call it a “National Police Force”, and arm them to the teeth. And thor (or some other terminally “pissed at mommy and daddy” person) will be the four star “general” that leads this crew.

    What? Excuse me? What? You mean he’s already suggested that? Well, I’ll be damned! Right now, you could knock me over with the SS!

    I know. Not that funny.

    But neither is the left or their plans for America.

  58. TheGeezer says:

    The community organizers Obama worked with in Chicago were Alinsky associates.

  59. Lisa says:

    I commend you for not talking pigs and lipstick, Perf.

    Hello PWers!

  60. Salt Lick says:

    I denounce attacks on thor’s wife and also congratulate him on the recent nuptials.

    Truth be told, I was a two percenter at Texas A&M, probably before thor got out of shortpants. The Corps of Cadents numbered about 4000 at that time and still ran PT through campus chanting “I don’t care what the peace queers think, I just want to kill some chinks.” I was several times threatened for “liberal” stances (once for suggesting that killing the Rice Band might not be appropriate retribution for a half-time show mocking A&M’s dog-mascot Reveille) and helped start the campus ACLU chapter. I doubt things have changed overmuch (campus holds the George Bush library), so thor may be suffering PTSD.

    I realize now how much I missed by not joining in A&M’s traditions. It was college, for Pete’s sake.

  61. Darleen says:

    Carin

    Sarah hit it on the head when she said the American Presidency is not the place for a journey of personal discovery … in the words of Shelby Steele, Obama still doesn’t know who he is.

    What gets lost in the lipstick video is how before that audience Obama starts dropping his “ys”… “polic-eh” instead of policy which he pronounced quite plainly on O’Reilly. It’s as phoney as Hillary “talking black” infront of black audiences.

    The biggest problem with O!’s empty suit is his willingness to let himself be filled up with Wright/Ayers- far left radicalism, then smile sweetly while dissembling to others.

  62. urthshu says:

    Community organisers strike me as pretty much like this.

    Obama a tool? No, at least by his lights. He’s much too impressed with himself to be a mere tool, even if in reality he is.
    No, he fancies himself a leader, with the best of ideas to repair and improve the lot of Americans, all based on grievances which will never quite be allowed to go away b/c the Alinsky paradigm has nothing to say once a problem is solved.

  63. Mikey NTH says:

    Sen. Obama may have started out as a community organizer, and may have tried to follow Alinsky’s dictums, but he seems to have dropped it.

    The Alinsky model is one of incremental change. That requires a lot of patience and by the time the change is made to organizer may have died of old age. Or events may have changed, the community may have changed to the extent that there isn’t anything left to organize. I.E., think of Detroit – a great city has imploded to the point that there is alomost nothing left.

    Another problem that Sen. Obama may have noted with community organizing is getting those to be organized to actually listen and follow. How many times do you got to be told to shove off before you get disheartened? In addition, the communities that the community organizer is trying to organize are usually those where the population does not follow through. Again, see the Detroit Public Schools.

    In fact it may have been Sen. Obama’s experiences with the CAC that led him out of community organizing and really into the machine politics. All that work, all that money and the result? 100% nothing. Those he was trying to organize do not give a fig about what he was trying to do. How do you organize a tub of live bait? How do you make people follow? Alinsky wrote a nice book, and the rules seem to be real useful, but they depend on the community providing reliable people who can follow instructions through. If those people were present in large numbers they wouldn’t need a community organizer in the first place, they would have done it themselves.

    To sum up: I think Sen. Obama tried this,; I think, based on his own statements of the professors and friends he sought out in college, that he thought this radical organizing was doable and would get him power. I think he realized that it wasn’t very doable because the local community didn’t care enough to follow; and that the local machine existed as it did for a very good reason, and was the only way for him to get power. So he joined with the machine and became their version of a community organizer. And that has led him to where he is today.

  64. Carin says:

    Sarah hit it on the head when she said the American Presidency is not the place for a journey of personal discovery … in the words of Shelby Steele, Obama still doesn’t know who he is.

    But, what may hold true to both these thoughts is that Obama is, in reality, nothing more than a politician. It was always the plan, by whatever means necessary.

    Nothing very hopey or changy about a career politician. I prefer to back those who are drawn to politics out of a desire to make things better. “Better” given Baracky’s past, means wealth distribution.

    I don’t know if his is a journey of self-discovery. I have a feeling he knows who he is. He may not be that interested in revealing that “self” to the voters.

  65. Mikey NTH says:

    #17 Terry H.:

    I wonder what happens when ‘Rule 11’ runs into ‘temporary restraining order’ and ‘stalking charge’? Something tells me that Alinsky’s rules (he died in 1972 – 36 years ago) are very dated and and have little relevance to what the world is like today.

  66. thor says:

    #

    Comment by Salt Lick on 9/11 @ 7:01 am #

    I denounce attacks on thor’s wife and also congratulate him on the recent nuptials.

    Truth be told, I was a two percenter at Texas A&M, probably before thor got out of shortpants. The Corps of Cadents numbered about 4000 at that time and still ran PT through campus chanting “I don’t care what the peace queers think, I just want to kill some chinks.” I was several times threatened for “liberal” stances (once for suggesting that killing the Rice Band might not be appropriate retribution for a half-time show mocking A&M’s dog-mascot Reveille) and helped start the campus ACLU chapter. I doubt things have changed overmuch (campus holds the George Bush library), so thor may be suffering PTSD.

    I realize now how much I missed by not joining in A&M’s traditions. It was college, for Pete’s sake.

    A fellow two-per! No! Takes a big man to admit that here on PW. I went to TAPs, I was down with that, but walking on the grass outside the student center, fuuuuck, I stomped all over it. They kicked me off stack several times because I smelled like alcohol, but how come they would discover that after I climbed up there was the only question I had about that. Humped logs! They’d let you hump even if you were breathing Budweiser. I haven’t been on campus in probably 15-20-years. Big back then, bigger now, no doubt.

    Jeff’s not a bad guy. If Olga ran for public office he’d shut his hole no matter is she was a dedicated Bukharin disciple. Notice how he was so quick to protect little Trig? One picture is all it would take. A good long stare at some of the children with severe facial deformities that Olga works with and he’d either puke or pie his hole, both most likely. Tough guys are like that, and I’m one I think. All is fair unless it involves that. I’ll save you from the details, but I will relay this, even though most of ’em don’t live that long, I’ve seen and heard the stories of their big day – some of you might know this – the kids in that type of therapy have a big speech day – generally it’s when they first utter “I love you.” Mom, dad, and those three words, that’s enough for some of ’em, all they got.

    I doubt Jeff would curse Olga’s Marxist twat, too.

  67. urthshu says:

    Bear in mind, too, that Hillary has her own Alinsky-derived political heritage [I’ll leave it to others to debate whether marriage to a rising politico is a “long march through the institutions”] and is neither a tool nor shallow – yet she clearly doesn’t support Obama, her comrade.

    Sure, power is obviously a part of it. But she might also view it as a problem of goals and implementation, such that Obama is trying to get too much, too fast – like the Freicorps he wants, etc.

  68. Slartibartfast says:

    I pity thor’s wife, but also denounce attacks on her.

  69. thor says:

    Comment by Darleen on 9/11 @ 7:02 am #

    Carin

    Sarah hit it on the head when she said the American Presidency is not the place for a journey of personal discovery … in the words of Shelby Steele, Obama still doesn’t know who he is.

    That you’d listen to anything of Shelby Steele involving politics says a lot. Hey, a cheap shot is a cheap shot though, and that’s a really good one so I guess it’s no surprise you’re not above repeating it.

    Pig with lipstick is still a pig! Oinkey!

  70. Warren Bonestel says:

    Damn, Jeff. How do you attract people like that? (I was here the night – or week, rather – when that woman melted down.)

    I know you have a secret decoder ring and all, but still.

    …mebbe it’s that mojo you use…or was it sacrificing putrescent newts during the winter equinox?

    How do you do it?

    Was it that bottle of Michael Jordan spray cologne…

  71. Sticky B says:

    Comment by Sean M. on 9/11 @ 12:50 am #

    B Moe, you ever read Witness?

    I was gonna suggest “Gulag” by Anne Applebaum. She’s a WaPo columnist now and can hardly be accused of carrying any water for the VRWC. And yet she lays out the facts about survival under a communist regime pretty bluntly.

  72. Salt Lick says:

    I went to TAPs, I was down with that,

    Silver taps. Quite possibly the most moving college tradition in America.

    … but walking on the grass outside the student center, fuuuuck, I stomped all over it.

    I cavalierly stepped on it right after the MSC was built. And now I’m ashamed.

    I bet they love you at Aggie Muster, thor.

  73. thor says:

    I wouldn’t be ashamed, at least I’m not. Traditions are/were sometimes, at least at A&M, a little much. There were so many I can’t remember ’em all. I liked saying “howdy” to persons as you walked by them. Always thought that one was particularly friendly.

    Kids are kids, and we were kids. We had to rebel in some way or another. Pssst, I was a KA. My brother talked me into that. I was the worst active ever, as well. Rebel to the end.

  74. Mark A. Flacy says:

    A good long stare at some of the children with severe facial deformities that Olga works with…

    We now understand her attraction to you.

    Does anyone know where you can buy troll chow at bulk rates?

  75. urthshu says:

    Maybe OT:
    One of the things that centrists supported Dems for during this cycle was the belief that, once in power, they’d grow up a little – stop being obstructionist morons, start taking the WoT seriously, etc.

    B/c of that stand, most of the centrists I’ve talked with supported Hillary, not Obama. None of them trusted him. I’ve yet to talk with any of those centrists to date, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see them leaning McCain now.

  76. thor says:

    The revolution had to be carried out through stealth and deception. Its proponents had to cultivate an image of centrism and pragmatism. A master of infiltration, Alinsky wooed Chicago mobsters and Wall Street financiers alike. And successive Democratic politicians fell under his spell.

    Stealth and Deception! Ohnoes! Seems Alinsky was a miserable failure seeing how everyone knew of the his deceptive stealth.

    I think Obama’s days in and after college were some years back. I know none of you have changed a lick since you were young, but I think maybe Obama has. Just a guess!

    Any other dark, spooky canards you think we should discuss as they pertain to this mystery man of two autobiographical books, Jeff?

  77. B Moe says:

    I was pretty drunk when I wrote that last night and wasn’t clear, I am not talking about nor trying to defend capital C Communist Party members, or any of the authoritarian Communist regimes that have been inflicted upon the world. I am talking about folks who think communist principles are a good and workable thing and would like to see more of them in our government policy, either nationally or locally. One of my best friends is a communist, but wants to see it implemented in a strictly local fashion, he fears it greatly as a centralized power.

    Basically what I was trying to say is trying to make communism a monolithic belief system is a mistake, just like the left trying to paint all Christian, or even all Pentecostals, as exactly alike.

  78. Roman says:

    Thor – ever lived in a Communist country?

  79. thor says:


    Comment by SarahW on 9/10 @ 9:22 pm #

    Keep his green corps far away from me.

    Comment by SarahW on 9/10 @ 9:24 pm #

    Helpful troubled youth in berets. Off of my lawn.

    Saving your warm spit for the kids. How cute! Do you wave an American flag as you spit on ’em? Such a touch that would be.

  80. thor says:

    #

    Comment by Roman on 9/11 @ 8:28 am #

    Thor – ever lived in a Communist country?

    Nah, man, I’ve only lived in Alaska, well, I ventured to the metropolis of Idaho in my formative radical years, but Alaska is it, God’s country, so I have need or time for much else.

  81. Carin says:

    Ok, I’ll play the straight gal. I had to look it up to see what thor and B Moe were talking about. Urban Dictionary:

    1. Two Percenter

    Someone at Texas A&M who isn’t involved. If they even go to games they won’t even stand up. They are the opposite of a red ass.

    2. two percenter

    Two percent of the male population has an erect penis over nine inches.

  82. Great Banana says:

    Any other dark, spooky canards you think we should discuss as they pertain to this mystery man of two autobiographical books, Jeff?

    Aside from admitting that he sought out marxists and radicals to be his friends and mentors, those books don’t shine any light on what Obama actually believes. So, this is really not much of an intellectual point.

    Indeed, the press seems wholly unconcerned with discovering what O! believes, and O! himself doesn’t seem interested in putting it out there.

    So, really, what other areas of investigation as to O! do you find to be off limits? Are we allowed to inquire into nothing regarding this would-be president? Really?

  83. thor says:

    I stood until I got tired of standing. We weren’t that good back then, and it was effen hot.

    Makes me a two-and-a-half-percenter!

  84. Carin says:

    Honestly, can’t we just concentrate on Sarah Palin? All this stuff about Biden’s son and Obama’s past association is just static.

    FOCUS PEOPLE!

  85. thor says:

    What color lipstick does she wear?

  86. Salt Lick says:

    Honestly, can’t we just concentrate on Sarah Palin?

    FOCUS!

    Whoops. Excuse me while go nurture my three percenter.

  87. B Moe says:

    That was thor and salt lick, I don’t know nothin’ bout no Texas A&M.

    Although my band played a pig kissing contest at Amarillo College one time. I remember the pig wasn’t very happy. Or wearing lipstick.

  88. Salt Lick says:

    Um, ONE percenter.

  89. thor says:

    This thread is about the evil radicalism that hibernates in Obama’s dark heart. We all know it’s there so we remind ourselves of his inner-evilness just so we know we know.

  90. Rob Crawford says:

    Because, of course, anyone who writes an autobiography puts in all the events in his life, not just the ones that make him look good.

    Ya know, like mentioning mentor “Frank” and not mentioning that “Frank” was a die-hard member of the CPUSA.

    Or leaving out the racism and bile that comes from Rev. Wright’s pulpit.

    Or leaving out his ties to the vote-fraud champion ACORN.

    Or leaving out the utter failure of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge to actually do anything constructive.

  91. The Lost Dog says:

    “Never forget”

    Darleen,

    You are right. But too many people want us to forget. The destruction of the WTC is just too inconvenient for many people who want to bash America.

    I know I will never forget. I live about 45 miles from NYC and lost seven friends, four of whom were close friends. Two of my sister’s investment partners are gone because they decided to have breakfast in the twin towers. And two more were guilty of going to work that day.

    I have another friend who was across the street when a fire truck and it’s crew were literally flattened by falling debris. He is traumatized to this day.

    But the left wants us to forget. They even squeal if the collapse is shown on TV. I am still so angry that I can’t believe it. I hate the people who try to minimize the tragedy of that day, or try to use it as a political football by blaming Bush and America for the attack.

    It is unreal to a lot of people who don’t live around NYC, but let me tell you, it is very real to those of us who were familiar with NYC and the World Trade Center. I have been in those buildings many times, and from the mid-eighties on, I was always very nervous about being there. It was just too perfect of a target.

    I used to work for a courier company, and when I had deliveries there, I could drive unimpeded into the basement. It always freaked me out, big time.

    But, back to the subject at hand.

    Too many people refuse to acknowledge the fact that the destruction of the World Trade Center was an act of war. They don’t even want us to see it on TV, because it is too graphic, and might keep the anger alive. “Forget it. No big deal. Bush is the bad guy.”

    Yeah, well, pardon my french, but fuck that.

    I am angry every day about what those bastards did to so many innocent people and their families. And to my friends. I thank God every day that my sister decided not to go to breakfast with her partners that day.

    It is just another reminder that Utopia is not gonna happen as long as humans walk the Earth.

    I just wish that everybody in this country could have actually watched, in person, the buildings come down. Perhaps they would be a little more aware of the reality that we call “our world”, and that there are people in this world that would like nothing better than to kill everyone in this country, just for the sport of it.

    9/11 will always be a part of me, no matter what the date is.

    It’s too bad that it is not as personal to most of the rest of the country. It certainly would have been a wake up call to many more people if their family or friends were killed by those sadistic assholes.

    At least you remember…

  92. thor says:

    Looks like Twerp Crawford got emailed Sean Hannity’s talking points memo this morning. Praise the Almighty!

  93. happyfeet says:

    Democrats are really weak on national security. They hate this September 11 anniversary stuff cause it makes them feel all awkward and self-conscious.

  94. Carin says:

    Typical thor. Criticize the source. Ignore the argument. At least you’re consistent. Except, of course, when you’re drunk and then I never can tell what the hell you’re talking about.

  95. Roman says:

    This thread is about the intellectual framework that shaped Obama. If Alinsky’s tactics were indeed a cornerstone of Obama’s training, why should we view this any differently than the intellectual framework that Putin grew up with (i.e. The KGB) and how this framework has shaped Putin’s actions. It’s a valid discussion to have. Certainly, we can agree that Obama wants to move the country to the left. What, prey tell, comes after socialized medicine? Let’s even jet back to current state – what comes after the TSA and what comes after the goverment takeover of the mortgage giants – how big is this thing going to get?

    And Thor, if you get the chance, check out a communist or former communist country, they’re a bit harder on the bloggers there – so consider yourself forewarned.

    http://www.denverpost.com/world/ci_10350640

  96. urthshu says:

    >>I hate the people who try to minimize the tragedy of that day, or try to use it as a political football by blaming Bush and America for the attack.

    Nothing was written in stone that they had to do that. It was a choice they made to frame it that way, in furtherance to whatever they perceived as their goals. Tone deaf, as usual.

    And the super geniuses will tell you to your face that you’re a retard for not agreeing, even while you tell them repeatedly that they’re making a dreadful mistake, that they’ll lose if they keep it up.

    And they lose, then call you a retard all over again.

  97. thor says:

    Well, get this, Roman, in Russia the equivalent of the Republican party here would be Putin’s party there. All us freedom-loving Americans are zee trouble-making Liberals!

    Alaska is close to Russia so we’re in-the-know when it comes to them fuckin’ Commies.

  98. geoffb says:

    “Gamaliel specializes in ideological stealth, and Obama, a master student of Gamaliel strategy, shows disturbing signs of being a sub rosa radical himself. “

    I’ve had personal experience with the organizing of the Gamaliel foundation. Not that that name ever came up in the whole 2 hour meeting. It took me a while on Google to make the connection.

    The meeting was innocuous seeming after services at our (then) church in 2002 I believe. It was to ask our congregation to join with other local congregations in support of a “local” group ISAAC.

    Afterwards I told my wife I was very disturbed by the way the meeting was done. She was asked what bothered me as she wasn’t freaked by it. I said it was the same as recruitment meetings I remember from my late 60’s college day that were run by SDS types. That was what sent me to Google to figure out just what was behind this “local” organization.

    Gamaliel is transnational and very hidden. They also seem to be in love with biblical acronyms for the locals to use. Some of them are,

    MOSES-Metropolitan Organizing Strategy for Enabling Strength

    MICAH- Milwaukee Inner-city Congregations Allied for Hope

    JOSHUA- Justice Organization Sharing Hope and United for Action

    JONAH-Joining Our Neighbors, Advancing Hope

    JONAH- Joint-religious Organizing Network for Advocacy Hope

    ISAAC – Interfaith Strategy for Advocacy & Action in the Community

    JOB – Justice Overcoming Borders

    ESTHER – Equality, Solidarity, Truth, Hope, Empowerment, Reform

    AMOS-Advocating Mobolizing Organizing in Solidarity

    NOAH – Northeast Ohio Alliance for Hope

    NOAH (Niagara) – Niagara Organizing Alliance for Hope

    ARISE – A Regional Initiative Supporting Empowerment

    ACTS – Alliance of Communities Transforming Syracuse

    SOPHIA- Stewards of Prophetic Hope In Action

    ACTION – Alliance for Congregational Transformation

    One thing I hope for in a McCain/Palin administration is to bring daylight and transparency to the actions of all these hidden Foundations and NGO’s that litter our national political scene.

  99. N. O'Brain says:

    “Comment by thor on 9/11 @ 9:09 am #

    Well, get this, Roman, in Russia the equivalent of the Republican party here would be Putin’s party there. All us freedom-loving Americans are zee trouble-making Liberals!”

    Um, no thor, Putin is a fascist, and that’s your side of the aisle, the reactionary left.

    Now go wipe your chin.

  100. happyfeet says:

    Putin thugged up Russia to where it’s not respectable anymores. They are the white trash of Europe now. The ones you don’t want next door.

  101. thor says:

    Hey, let me wipe your ass while I’m at it.

    Nah, fucknozzle, Tom DeLay was the closest thing to a “fascist” that we’ve had, until recently, in American politics.

    Big-time Republican was DeLay. Yeah, think so, ya bumbling moose blower.

  102. Mr. Pink says:

    Can you please explain to me how Tom Delay, one member of Congress, was a facist?

  103. happyfeet says:

    Tom DeLay was nice how he beat the shit out of the more faggy Republicans. I miss him.

  104. Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) says:

    – Shut up thor.

  105. Mr. Pink says:

    Thor has anyone ever told you that your opinion is not “fact”?

  106. thor says:


    Comment by geoffb on 9/11 @ 9:13 am #

    One thing I hope for in a McCain/Palin administration is to bring daylight and transparency to the actions of all these hidden Foundations and NGO’s that litter our national political scene.

    Maybe call ’em in front of some Senate hearings on un-American activities. That’d teach ’em agitators.

    Personally, I’d make ’em Lefties run through a fist-and-kick gauntlet made up of a line of respectable Republican businessmen and a line of righteous Evangelicals.

    They act like they belong here in America. If I could punch some sense into one of ’em I would.

  107. Education Guy says:

    It’s really kind of sad how much thor hates women.

  108. Mr. Pink says:

    I would put 5 bucks on thor being a virgin.

  109. Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) says:

    – Palin has really gotten into the Lefts psyche.

    – Watching them self-destruct the last week or so, gives you a very good idea of what they’d be like with any real power.

    – As it is, they’re politically impotent. Lot of noise. After they lose this one they’ll crawl back in their holes for awhile.

  110. Rob Crawford says:

    Thor, it is nice of you to concede my point that Obama’s “two autobiographies” are fluff pieces that leave out the bits that might not play well with the electorate.

  111. N. O'Brain says:

    “Comment by Mr. Pink on 9/11 @ 9:31 am #

    Can you please explain to me how Tom Delay, one member of Congress, was a facist?”

    He can’t.

    thor is an ignorant asshole with no knowledge of history, economics, politics or how to extract his head out of his ass.

  112. N. O'Brain says:

    “Maybe call ‘em in front of some Senate hearings on un-American activities.”

    See what I mean?

    HUAC, that’s the House Unamerican Activities Commitee, thor, you ignorant asshole, was established by the Democrats.

  113. happyfeet says:

    Ronnie Earle is definitely a fascist though. He must have been getting paid I think.

  114. N. O'Brain says:

    “Comment by Mr. Pink on 9/11 @ 9:43 am #

    I would put 5 bucks on thor being a virgin.”

    You mean, like, with a woman, right?

  115. geoffb (JARAIP) says:

    “Maybe call ‘em in front of some Senate hearings on un-American activities. That’d teach ‘em agitators. “

    Nah, I just don’t like secret societies working the US political scene.

    Funny how “daylight” and “transparency” are equated with thuggishness by the Left, while real thuggish behavior is treated as normal.

  116. Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) says:

    – thors not a Democrat. Hes an outlier, like a bairy runt freak in a circus sideshow. His days are spent bitterly tossing shit at the passing audience, starring into his cage as the world passes him by.

    – It gets him through the night. So far.

    – What hes afraid of is he knows some day it won’t be enough anymore.

  117. happyfeet says:

    I don’t think thor is virginal or gay. It’s really hard to be virginal and drink alcohol and he just doesn’t seem gay to me. Who seems gay to me is Kai Ryssdal. But could be I’m just thrown off by the gay-mo name and his exudey metrosexualism.

  118. Dread Cthulhu says:

    thor: “Nah, fucknozzle, Tom DeLay was the closest thing to a “fascist” that we’ve had, until recently, in American politics.”

    Actually, Woodrow Wilson’s administration is a better example, what with the organization of the APL.

  119. SmokeVanThorn says:

    thor is a racist for criticizing Shelby Steele.

  120. SarahW says:

    #96 A lot of hope and change on that list.

  121. thor says:


    Comment by N. O’Brain on 9/11 @ 9:44 am #

    thor is an ignorant asshole with no knowledge of history, economics, politics or how to extract his head out of his ass.

    Jeez, just go ahead and call me a Republican why don’t’cha.

  122. urthshu says:

    >>After they lose this one they’ll crawl back in their holes for awhile.

    No they won’t.

  123. Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) says:

    – Yeh they will. They’ve completely lost control of the mob.

    – Its no good if you’re so unhinged you telegraph every move you’re making. Each cycle for the last three, they’ve sunk deeper and deeper into complete chaos.

    – They’ll need to regroup.

  124. Mikey NTH says:

    When you capture an institution, the institution captures you. Revolutionaries with tenure. Plutocratic populists. Aristocratic agitators. Hustlers in Brooks Brothers suits.

    Like about as fast as the French revolution turned into the empire.

  125. Log Cabin says:

    …and he just doesn’t seem gay to me.

    We sure as hell don’t want him! We got Rosie, we got Boy George, we got Tom Cruise… but a weirdo like Thor we don’t need!

  126. urthshu says:

    Nah, gotta disagree.
    We tell them all our plans, even give them advice and they never change what they do. They can’t. They’re the geniuses and you’re a big fatso dummyhead.

    They’ll shut up for a day, at most. Then they’ll just call us stupid and whine about moving to Canada.

  127. thor says:


    Comment by Mr. Pink on 9/11 @ 9:38 am #

    Thor has anyone ever told you that your opinion is not “fact”?

    They publish the results of the opinion polls in Rolling Stone for a reason, ya ‘cuda tit.

  128. Roland THTG says:

    Jeez, just go ahead and call me a Republican Idiot Aggie why don’t’cha.

    Fixed that for ya.

  129. Rob Crawford says:

    Sorry, BBH, but I don’t think they’ll go quietly into the wilderness. I think they’ll do every damned thing they can to pump up their followers.

  130. thor says:

    Dissed and orphaned by the gay Republicans. It’s days like this I dream about. I’m going to go draw a happy face on my calender.

  131. Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) says:

    – Well yes. the visable idiots will roll on. They couldn’t stop if they wanted too. But the planners. They will regroup and devise some new angles.

    – Same as they did after Nam.

  132. geoffb (JARAIP) says:

    “A lot of hope and change on that list.”

    Mostly they hope no one notices what they want to change and how they want to change it.

  133. ducktrapper says:

    Marcotte would have banned his ass long ago. After about one post, as a matter of fact. Yay Jeff! This is real entertainment you got going here!

  134. Roland THTG says:

    Maybe they will figure out that the crazy didn’t get it done this time. Most likely though, they will decide that there wasn’t crazy.

  135. Roland THTG says:

    enough

  136. N. O'Brain says:

    “Jeez, just go ahead and call me a Republican why don’t’cha.”

    How could one call a reactionary fascist asshole like you a Republican?

  137. Sdferr says:

    Roman asks what I take to be an important question to contemplate: “[…] What, prey tell, comes after socialized medicine? …what comes after the government takeover of the mortgage giants – how big is this thing going to get?

    Suppose our current crop of middle-of-the-road and left-leaning and full-on-left Democratic Party politicians are successful in capturing power in the three branches of Government. Suppose further they manage to put in place in law, policy and judicial interpretation every proposal they espouse today.

    Suppose again, this is all done cooperatively, without great angst, hand-ringing and resistance by the relevant power centers of ostensible opposition and with the populace at large acting together to achieve the Democrat’s stated ends.

    I’d offer my judgment to Roman that in answer to the specific question, “how big is this thing going to get?” — taking the phrase “this thing” as the future of the United States as a whole, rather than as his intended aim [my sense] of the more limited “extent of the direct control of Government over ever widening aspects of the lives of the people and economy” — pretty damn small compared with almost any other future one can imagine.

  138. Obstreperous Infidel says:

    ducktrapper, ignore it. Seriously, it’s easy to do. I wwish more would. You can tell if it ever makes a valid, or at least salient, point when someone else responds to it and that response doesn’t involve, “shut up, thor” or “you’re a fucking piece of shit, thor”. The guy needs a hug. I don’t think we’re the ones to give it to him.

  139. thor says:

    The paradoxical thing about a woman like Marcotte is this, you have to pin her ankles back behind her ears just to straighten her out. I call it my pretzel-straight principle.

  140. Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) says:

    – Easy. Like this. “Hey thor, you fucked up turn-coat Republican. What happened. did daddy catch you at a CPOA rally and disown your sorry ass?”

  141. thor says:

    Actually, Obstreperous, that’s why I’m here. Come Nov. 4th I plan on offering crypto-Marxist-derangement-syndrome hug therapy. You here are what I refer to as a network full of future business opportunities, leads, prospects, ducks waiting to be closed, deals in my pipeline!

  142. happyfeet says:

    My boss is doing yoga. It’s his new thing. He says you sweat and sweat and sweat. I really hate all the visuals from when he tells about it. Kinda like that Marcotte one right there.

  143. ducktrapper says:

    I am ignoring it. I thought I’d just point out some of the real differences between left and right these days. This site is one. Marcotte is another. It seems we believe in free speech and even allow opposition.

  144. JBean says:

    Afterwards I told my wife I was very disturbed by the way the meeting was done. She was asked what bothered me as she wasn’t freaked by it. I said it was the same as recruitment meetings I remember from my late 60’s college day that were run by SDS types. That was what sent me to Google to figure out just what was behind this “local” organization.

    Thanks for the list. Your comment brings up an interesting question. How many people, lacking your previous experience, would recognize this for what it is? And how many can explain it to, or warn away others? One of the comments to Phillips article, a Brit, speaking of his own country’s “devolution,” put it this way:

    “The conservative right, as usual, was playing to the old constitutional gentleman’s rules and was completely outflanked and defeated. Even today the conservative right does not realise what is at stake. That without cunning hard-fighting opposition to the Left’s totalitarian tendencies the thinking of the right is doomed to destruction, eventually to be outlawed and repressed by the ‘progressive revolution.'”

  145. thor says:

    I need to buy the back episodes of Upright Citizens Brigade. Thx for reminding me, JBean.

  146. Mikey NTH says:

    My brother asked my opinion on the article that Jeff is posting on. I expanded my previous comment here and sent it to him, and I am going to copy that here:

    Alinsky died in 1972 – 36 years ago. Rules for Radicals is hence even older than that. Something to take into account is that some of the rules may no longer be applicable because the environment has changed.

    It should also be noted that like police riot tactics have changed since 1968 the response of communities to outside agitators and organizers has also changed. Rather than just quoting the book, the book ought to be seriously looked at to see if it is even relevant any longer. You have that WWI infantry manual – how relevant is that today?

    I would also note that Sen.. Obama stopped being a community organizer. I think he did this because it didn’t work. He went to college and sought out Marxist professors who filled him with this stuff, with all of these theories. He then went to Chicago and nothing happened. Why didn’t all of these theories of community organizing work? I have some ideas:

    (1) You are an outsider. I don’t care how good a comrade you are, you are an outsider and you are stepping on the toes of those already there and they will resent you, you bloody carpet-bagger.

    (2) You are going to organize me? Shove off, I got better things to do. Apathy and inertia are hard to overcome.

    (3) Is there a community there? You’d think Detroit would be ripe for community organizing (for example). You’d be wrong. There’s no there there anymore.

    (4) In line with #2, to achieve anything you need motivated, reliable people. If those people existed in that community they would be doing the organizing and would so not need you.

    (5) This is old hat. In the late 1960’s this may have seemed powerful and scary because no one had encountered this before (like the ‘panzer-panic’ troops had in the early days of WWII). By 1980 this stuff was old hat and well-known. The community organizer and his tactics became just another loud-mouthed jerk who would be treated like loud-mouthed jerks were always treated. The press really stopped covering it because – again – it wasn’t new, it was boring, and it really wasn’t accomplishing anything.

    (6) Urban collapse. This stuff works real well in an urban environment, not so well in a suburban, exurban environment. Narrow streets and crowded neighborhoods enhance the spectacle. Wide boulevards and a spread out population – you might as well hold your rally in a cow pasture for all the spectacle you are going to create.

    (7) The people drawn to this are useless. See #2 and #4 Alinsky was actually trying to achieve something. He was being pragmatic and came up with actual goals and plan to the goals. Unfortunately for him, many of the people drawn to this are there to feed their egos, to create the little fantasy play about ‘taking it to the man’. (See that article on Fantasy Ideology I sent you before). Look at the latest group of ‘community organizers’ and protestors. They are bunch that are on the take or exhibitionists looking for an audience. Do you think this group is doing more than seeking a bribe to go away (in the first instance) or looking for a stage, any stage, upon which to act out their fantasies (in the second instance)? Do you really think this current dog’s breakfast of lunatics and hustlers was what Alinsky had in mind?

    I think Sen.. Obama tried the community organizing, encountered the problems I have noted, and decided to join the local political machine as the vehicle to power. The Alinsky model was no longer working, it was a ticket to nowhere and no one.

  147. JHoward says:

    The guy needs a hug.

    Given that it’s descended from madness into abuse, the guy needs a healthy thumping.

    So yeah, ignore it. Enough already.

  148. Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) says:

    – Englands so-called Conservative base, the majority of it as opposed to the Blair smaller more classic conservative(small c) Liberalism, is not the same as American Conservatism, which is based in independent and Constitutionalist thinking, intermingled with a good dose of Libertarianism.

    – The “old” English Conservatism is more rightly characterized as “royalty” based.

    – Big difference, and why its largely just symbolic these days. As such, that group posses no serious threat to the Union based Liberals.

    – Britain’s social character however, switches quickly to steadfast deterministic Conservatism, whenever something posses a serious threat. Notice how they in fact, handle every instance of Muslim extremism and its attacks, even as they seem to oafishly pander to the demands of their Muslin immigrants.

    – an interesting dichotomy.

  149. geoffb (JARAIP) says:

    #125
    “When you capture an institution, the institution captures you. “

    This brought to mind the scene in the movie “The Big Fix” where the (former) radical “Howard Eppis” explains how he sold out. Very funny scene.

  150. Lisa says:

    Darleen I love you lots but it is dead wrong and slightly arrogant to say that Barack Obama doesn’t know who he is. True, he does not fit the stereotypes we have all grown comfortable with – either the militant reactionary knucklehead in the Jackson/Sharpton mold, or the persnickity bowtied conservative in the Sowell/Steele mold. He jarringly average in his affect and mannerisms. That does NOT mean he doesnt’ know who he is (it just means you don’t).

    And on the “talking black” thing: Most people, particularly good speakers, take up a bit of the affectations of those they are speaking to. That does not imply some kind of indentity crisis – it just is how it is. I have a friend who was born and raised in Baltimore but went to the Columbia School of Journalism and has been working in the broadcasting business ever since – she has a perfectly bland newscaster dialect, but when she gets around her folk from Baltimore, she sounds like a bit player in a John Waters movie. I think you are reading way too much into a brother talking a bit more “black” around black people.

  151. happyfeet says:

    actual goals and plan to the goals

    This is a key difference between Mr. McCain and that Baracky guy I think. Baracky’s goals are mostly marxy happy talk but with some very real political goals that he doesn’t discuss very much. He wants to redistribute wealth to all the leftist usual suspects and entrench them to where we will be under their thumb forever or at least for a long time. I don’t see McCain doing anything similar except for his carbon tax nonsense that hopefully someone will have the good sense to filibuster. Baracky is a tool I think someone said, a Soros cat’s paw I think. And get a load of his woman.

  152. happyfeet says:

    I hate how he walks around at his town meetings like he’s at an urban poetry slam, looking a lot at the floor while he paces and gets his little Baracky quasi-ethnic groove thing going on. It’s so not presidential how he does that.

  153. happyfeet says:

    Baracky does not signify as presidential I mean.

  154. Looks like the Democrats have been gulled by the ultimate SDS recruitment meeting.

  155. JBean says:

    Mikey NTH @147 — You’re making the assumption that these groups are still drawn from and work exclusively among the “community” of poor and downtrodden.

    I think Kurtz’s articles do a good job of explaining how they (and Obama) have evolved. Rather than working on such things as asbestos-removal, they now ply their skills in schools, churches, immigrant organizations and, in the case of the many-tentacled ACORN —

    “…the targets and strategy have changed. Acorn prefers to fly under the national radar, organizing locally in liberal urban areas — where, (Sol) Stern observes, local legislators and reporters are often “slow to grasp how radical Acorn’s positions really are.” Acorn’s new goals are municipal “living wage” laws targeting “big-box” stores like Wal-Mart, rolling back welfare reform, and regulating banks — efforts styled as combating “predatory lending.” Unfortunately, instead of helping workers, Acorn’s living-wage campaigns drive businesses out of the very neighborhoods where jobs are needed most. Acorn’s opposition to welfare reform only threatens to worsen the self-reinforcing cycle of urban poverty and family breakdown. Perhaps most mischievously, says Stern, Acorn uses banking regulations to pressure financial institutions into massive “donations” that it uses to finance supposedly non-partisan voter turn-out drives.”

     Obama’s campaign recently got caught mislabeling an $800,000 payment to an ACORN subsidiary named “Citizens Services”  for a get-out-the-vote project as “advance work” and “staging” for major events. I can’t imagine why.

  156. Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) says:

    “That does NOT mean he doesnt’ know who he is (it just means you don’t).”

    – Yeh. We know Lisa. Thats the problem. We’re veing asked to vote for a person that, for whatever reasons you want to conjure up as the root cause, has been running for the presidency for nearly two years now, and we don’t know who he is.

    – Unfortunately all we have to go on, since for whatever reason he can’t seem to state his own principles in a clear and understanding manner, are things like “alinsky, Ayers, Wright, BLT, et al.”

    – That may be grossly unfair in your eyes, but being honest about it I’d have to assume you’re in the same boat.

    – The question any reasonable person would have to ask is, what do you see, or hear, or in some manner divine, that others do not?

  157. looking a lot at the floor while he paces and gets his little Baracky quasi-ethnic groove thing going on. It’s so not presidential how he does that.

    Yeah, that’s kind of embarrassing.

  158. Bob Reed says:

    Comment by thor on 9/11 @ 9:09 am #

    Well, get this, Roman, in Russia the equivalent of the Republican party here would be Putin’s party there. All us freedom-loving Americans are zee trouble-making Liberals!

    thor I’m really sorry but you have the roles reversed here…

    You see many, if not most, of the members of the republican party are classical liberals, that are dedicated to individual liberty and the notion of states rights, as opposed to an over arching, all powerful, centralized government. Y’know, one more like the constitutional government envisioned by the founders of this nation…

    Modern liberals, like most that identify with the Democratic party are more akin to socialists and believe in all the hallmarks of that system such as wealth redistribution and especially in a centralized, uber-strong, national government; the kind with sweeping authority to tell us how to eat, live, sleep, etc. Which is where O! and his allies would take this nation should they get in power (God forbid!)…

    Which of these two are most like the crypto-fascists in the Soviet Union Russia???

    Answer: The Dem’s, of course…

    I guess they must have not had much of a Poly Sci course at A & M, or you took a non-humanities courseload; engineering perhaps?

    I on the other hand, took humanities courses to enhance my engineering credentials; I mean, what kind of self-respecting rocket scientist would I be if I were a complete doo-fus when it came to matters of civics???

    Regards on your nuptials, best wishes for a long union…

  159. Sdferr says:

    Lisa, do you notice a similar dialect pronunciation tic (habit?/put-on?) in McCain and Palin or Biden for that matter?

    With a simple analysis of the crowd before whom he was speaking when he made his lipstick/pig remarks, I don’t think your interpretation of the phenomenon in Sen. Obama will bear the weight you’ld want it to. I don’t think it even begins to be a “talking black thing” as you assert.

    It’s much closer to generic “countrified” down homey speech pattern to my ears, an “I’m one of you” thing to be sure but not “I’m one of you black guys” thing at all.

  160. Lisa says:

    The idea of “talking black” has always annoyed me for a host of reasons anyway. It is kind of insulting. But lots of black people cleave to the idea of a black dialect, alas….

  161. Sam Hall says:

    I guess they must have not had much of a Poly Sci course at A & M, or you took a non-humanities courseload; engineering perhaps?

    I doubt thor would make it past the first year as an engineer candidate.

  162. happyfeet says:

    talking black you have to get past but sometimes you do get a sense that Baracky is more focused on how how he’s talking and not on what he’s saying

  163. Roman says:

    Sdferr –

    Re: comment 138 – I’m uncertain what about 28%-39% of a person’s paycheck is small. As a rule, anything that gets bigger (except, of course, for Goldstein’s sinewy forearm muscles), typically loses it’s efficiency. I’m willing to offer my share of “neighborliness,” to use Obama’s term. But, when I see inefficiencies that already exist – like this one:

    http://thewomblog.com/?p=1570

    I question if we would be at all well served, as a Nation, to continue moving in that direction.

    Not to mention that McCain is penultimately more capable of ripping nastier cabbage farts than Obama, if indeed – by the fate of someone’s hanging chads – this election were to be decided by a “Fart-Off.”

  164. Sdferr says:

    Yeah, me too, Lisa. And by the way, while I have tended to notice and care about Sen Obama’s speech patterns more than may seem reasonable (I pay an uncommon attention to voices and sounds in speech), in my own defense, let me say I don’t begrudge him the act in any way, it’s a very common thing to do.

  165. Lisa says:

    I think you are closer to the mark sdferr. I really couldn’t put my finger on what he was doing. And I am not trying to say “it was a black thang” or anything. Just that it is not that unusual for people to take on some of the affectations of those whom they are talking to. We kind of demand it and call the candidate tone-deaf to the common man or some crazy shit when they don’t (or if they order a grilled chicken sandwich instead of a meat and cheez-whiz greaseburger like “the common man would”).

  166. Sdferr says:

    My intent Roman, was precisely that the Nation will wither away from the loss of individual freedoms inherent in the Dems vision of a “better” world. Next to nothing will be built aside from bureaucracy, not noted as an efficient means of accomplishing anything worth the doing.

  167. Roland THTG says:

    I guess they must have not had much of a Poly Sci course at A & M, or you took a non-humanities courseload; engineering perhaps?

    THor spent four years staring into that cow window they had over there.

  168. SarahW says:

    Oh, I blame Obama very much for his speech patterns, and bobbling around…the affected speech, and the exagerrated mannerisms. It’s phony, it obvious, and I don’t care for it.

  169. Lisa says:

    BTW, I think McCain is much more subtle, but he has the habit of getting a little more H. Ross Perot-ish when he is in the flyover states. Using all of those down-home metaphors for everything (Obama’s health care plan is crazier than your nekkid Aunt Mabel at the Harvest parade!!).

  170. SarahW says:

    It telegraphs a certain condescending vanity.

  171. Roland THTG says:

    Baracky’s speachifying reminded me of Cartman. “Repect my authoratie!”
    I call bullshit. Sounded like Hillary: “I gots mahls to go afore I kin rest my po haid.” Or somesuch shittery.

  172. SarahW says:

    And yet one can carry it off, and the other cannot.

  173. Sam Hall says:

    or if they order a grilled chicken sandwich instead of a meat and cheez-whiz greaseburger like “the common man would”

    Lisa, where exactly did you come by your bizarre sterotypes?

  174. Salt Lick says:

    It’s much closer to generic “countrified” down homey speech pattern to my ears, an “I’m one of you” thing…

    Obama gave that speech about two hours from here, in Lebanon, Virginia. LEBA-F*CKING-NON, VIRGINIA, people. Some towns in that region had signs at the city limits even in the 70’s warning that if you were “black,” you better leave town before dark.

    Obama’s trying to talk like a hillbilly was one of the most ludicrous things I’ve ever heard and it was further proof to me that he’s trying to hide who he is. He only got away with it because that crowd was pulled together in unionized coal-mining country.

  175. Sdferr says:

    I get more annoyed at Michelle’s “sch” when saying “stress” or “straight” or “street”, SarahW than at Barack’s choices to appeal at that level. And that’s not something she is trying to do (it’s far more about me – I just don’t like it when anyone does it, even though I know they can’t help themselves, they likely don’t even hear the difference).

    I’m sanguine about Barack because it is obviously phony and I think people do notice and futher, it puts them off.

  176. Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) says:

    = Lisa, its not any sort of bigoted based idea that puts me off about the “talking black thing”. If Obama was running for some sort of celebrity enterprise I’d be on his side in a heartbeat.

    – Its that he looks like what I suspect he really is. A young spirited, highly intelligent guy, who isn’t afraid to get down in the ditches, if thats what it takes. I actually admire that sort of focused determinations, as long as it doesn’t turn into all out arrogance.

    – But as feets said its not Presidential. I honestly believe the Left shoved him into the ring before he was ready. The thing he lacks is seasoning. A temperance that, yes might make him less effective in younger eyes, but at the same time an introspect that would stand him well in a crisis.

    – Let me give you an example. His belief that you can somehow reorder the distribution of wealth just by writ. I’ve heard him say, “Look, we are spending 10 billion a month in Iraq…..surely we could do better for our own country with all that money we’re “wasting”.

    – Thats the sort of non-introspective thinking I believe he would shed with some seasoning.

    – Iraq, for better or worse, is an investment. Products are produced and sold. Terrible maybe, but thats reality. Its an investment in the future. A Democracy square in the middle of Jihadland that will assure the rest of the world to have more faith we’ll be around for awhile.

    – That compares in no way with simply taking money from one group and handing it to another, and thats exactly what he would be doing. 40% of the population these days already pay none or very little income tax. So you’d be basically just handing them money, money that has no real production behind it. No real value. It can’t work.

    – I think the problem is a lot of Liberals look around at our country and think “christ with all this wealth theres no reason we can’t do it.”

    – Thats because they don’t understand what real “wealth” means, where it really comes from, and what exactly gives it “value”.

    – Just printing money, something we already do a lot more than we can afford too, only generates inflation, and that ends up draining all this wonderful “wealth”.

    – Thats just one example. There are many others. The damnable laws of unintended consequences.

  177. JBean says:

    Obama’s trying to talk like a hillbilly was one of the most ludicrous things I’ve ever heard and it was further proof to me that he’s trying to hide who he is.

    I think he knows who he is — he just has no idea who people in towns like Lebanon, VA are.  He’s never lived among them, gone to school with them or made any effort to get to know them. And there’s a whole lot of Lebanons out there.

  178. […] response to questions I posed in the previous thread, thor chides: This thread is about the evil radicalism that hibernates in Obama’s dark heart. We all know […]

  179. psycho... says:

    I think Sen.. Obama tried the community organizing, encountered the problems I have noted, and decided to join the local political machine as the vehicle to power. The Alinsky model was no longer working, it was a ticket to nowhere and no one.

    Well, that’s his story. One of them.

    There’s no evidence that Obama knows any of this bookish stuff, except what seems like habitual use of a few of its catchphrases, ones that you can pick up anywhere in any “radical” milieu without knowing the sources. But let’s say there’s some actual Alinsky stewing in his head.

    (I really don’t see it.)

    With few exceptions, political literature is esoteric. For example, the “long march through the institutions” isn’t that, exactly. In practice, you might notice it’s rather heavy on the “long” and light on the “through.” There’s no revolution at the end of this thing. Why? BECAUSE OF THE HYPOCRISY?

    No. Because the words are for anybody who reads them, but what they mean isn’t. When you quote their sacred texts back at leftists to scold them, they laugh at you. In a peculiarly haughty way. Why? This, sometimes. (Usually it’s just because they’re douchebags.)

    Alinsky was a tactician whose rules are just as useful to the “counter-revolutionary” machine as they are to “radicals” — more so, even. Only so, I’d say. And I think it’s mistaking what they’re called for what they are that generates, in outsiders, a false break in these supposed ex-radical power-players’ narratives — Obama’s, Ayers’s, Hillary’s, whoever’s. You know the type.

    Look who these people are. Senators and CEOs, sinecured professors, patronage dispensers. You don’t get to be one of those by changing your mind. It’s a track, not a path. You can’t — anymore, anywhere, now that no politics is in any meaningful way “of the people” — start your adult life aiming for something else, go “Oh shit, this isn’t working,” and become President, Senator, or even a professor. You get tapped, early — or, in ever more rare cases, you tap yourself — and you live the life you must. All of it.

    So what really happened? Was Obama tapped before, while, or after he was a “community organizer?” Why’d he go to Chicago? Who sent him? Not a book.

    They sent him to it.

    (I don’t think he read it.)

  180. Pablo says:

    Tom “The Hammer” DeLay is the man thor wishes he could be. Given the chance, I suspect he’d go all Mark David Chapman on him.

  181. Sdferr says:

    He’ll never willingly tell us, psycho, nor anyone else neither.

  182. Silver Whistle says:

    B Moe,

    That was very brave of you fessing up to being an ex-commie. I wonder if O! will ever fess up as to his real affiliations. It would probably be very cathartic.

  183. Lisa says:

    Yeah but what have the good folks of Lebanon, VA done to try to get to know the rest of America? It is this type of fetishizing of the Lebanon, VA’s of this country that bugs me. As if somehow they are more “authentic” than South Baltimore. If Sacramento, CA doesn’t need their candidates to prove they are just like “them” then why do these motherfuckers in Lebanon, VA feel the need to have candidates prove this shit. Think about the issues, fool and not whether the person looks “real” in a John Deere cap. This is why our politics stay stupid.

  184. Sdferr says:

    Why does the Candidate himself seek “…to prove they are [he is- sdf] just like “them””, Lisa?

  185. Carin says:

    Lisa, you could say the same thing about Palin walking into a church on the West side of Detroit. Urban black audiences aren’t exactly friendly to outsiders either.

    So, there’s that. People are people.

  186. urthshu says:

    >>but what have the good folks of Lebanon, VA done to try to get to know the rest of America?

    Why should they have to? Shouldn’t they merely vote their class interests? If they do, then obviously the Dems have the goods they need, right? All they’d need to make the right decision is to be educated, to have it explained properly. Right?

    Oops, sorry, thats the old Left. The one that blamed itself for not meeting folks where they were and swore to do better. This new Left just calls them goobers.

  187. Lisa says:

    Too true Carin. And it is fucking irritating when some fool gets on and says “what does this white person know about a black person in the hood” as if living in the hood and ordering 6 wings for 2.99 would make them a better senator/congressman/president.

    Good point. It bugs when we fetishize these insulated little tribes of idiots though. Being who you are and wanting people to feel you on issues is one thing. Feeling ENTITLED to have politicians kiss your countrified/ghettofied ass is another.

  188. Sdferr says:

    I thought the very structure of the polity required the politicians to act in just such a manner when seeking the approbation of the voters? Damn well better kiss my ass, the voter is taught to think, since I, the voter, am the boss.

  189. SarahW says:

    “then why do these motherfuckers in Lebanon, VA feel the need to have candidates prove this shit.”

    Lisa? That makes no sense. It was Obama who did the pandering. I hardly believe it was by request.

  190. SarahW says:

    It’s his phoniness led him to bobble and slur.

  191. SarahW says:

    Ostensibly, he thought he would gain something from it, instead of look foolish.

  192. urthshu says:

    The bobbing/slurring is as authentic as Kerry’s hunting get-up.

  193. happyfeet says:

    I think it helps Baracky to be not him when he’s doing his Baracky thing. Cause it’s so compromisey on the face of it, having to appeal to all those people he’s having to appeal to. His affectations help him not feel so dirtied I think.

  194. happyfeet says:

    sullied, like a used yoga towel

  195. JBean says:

    It is this type of fetishizing of the Lebanon, VA’s of this country that bugs me.

    I’m not fetishizing anything, Lisa — they don’t need the politician. The politician needs them. It has nothing to do with race. Get over yourself.

  196. Silver Whistle says:

    Happy,

    Would you threaten me, please? Just a little? I would love to see what that would be like.

  197. cranky-d says:

    Feeling ENTITLED to have politicians kiss your countrified/ghettofied ass is another.

    I would call for an “Amen,” but that might be wrong somehow. I conditionally denounce myself until I get a ruling.

  198. happyfeet says:

    Oh yeah you don’t like it? I beat you face.

  199. Silver Whistle says:

    Oh yeah you don’t like it? I beat you face.

    Oh, you are so banned.

  200. JBean says:

    Cause it’s so compromisey on the face of it, having to appeal to all those people he’s having to appeal to. His affectations help him not feel so dirtied I think.

    Yeah, happy, it’s a long way down to that level for Baracky.

  201. Lisa says:

    JBean did I say it was about race in that statement fool?

    Next.

  202. Lisa says:

    Yeah yeah. You all suffer from ODS, bitches. Take a Xanax.

    But you know I still love you, PWers.

  203. Lisa says:

    LOL @ cranky-d. I can’t really speak to the appropriateness of an amen, being that I am a non-godbothering Marxist crank. However, I will denounce you for good measure. Better denounced than sorry.

  204. SarahW says:

    Oh BTW I found a bottle of purple Fabuloso, and it beat down the kitchen sink’s not so fresh feeling, beat it down something fierce.

  205. Sdferr says:

    Suffer Lisa? More like delight!

  206. Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) says:

    – Lisa, he hasn’t sold the product yet. The affectation could be a plus, but old rule still applies. First the commercial, then the entertainment.

  207. JBean says:

    Lisa, it was this comment:

    “And it is fucking irritating when some fool gets on and says “what does this white person know about a black person in the hood as if living in the hood and ordering 6 wings for 2.99 would make them a better senator/congressman/president.”

    I was talking about middle America Lisa — that demographic that Barack can’t seem to reach, not some dumb hicks living in some isolated towns, like you portray them. You can sneer all you want, compare them to the hood, or whatever, but the truth remains — Obama knows nothing about middle-class America. His education was among the elite: in Hawaii, Occidental, Columbia and Harvard. He worked in the Chicago slums, but he went home at night to Hyde Park. He’s been hanging out with, and courting,  the movers and the shakers of Chicago politics for years — the privileged, even though some, like Ayers, like to play at being daring revolutionaries, backed all they while by a corporate daddy’s money, of course.

    The most he knows about the voters he needs most comes from that book. I think it’s called “What’s the Matter With Kansas?”

  208. Lisa says:

    You are a damned stankassed liar. Do you think he grew up in Hyde Park? He grew up among the middle class, fool. Just because he went to a great school and made something of himself (many Americans do that sort of thing) does not mean he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. But you keep repeating that lie, liar. See how far it gets you.

  209. B Moe says:

    B Moe,

    That was very brave of you fessing up to being an ex-commie.

    It is just what I thought at the time. I was young and naive and just knew that if we did it right communism would be wonderful. Everybody working together and sharing… what is not to like? Eventually I realized most of my fellow travelers were either lying manipulators or freeloaders just like everybody else and Marx was kind of full of shit if you really studied it and then observed what actually happened, and just kind of drifted into a more reality based world view. I am not really embarrassed about it, just the folly of youth.

  210. Mr. Pink says:

    So this guy goes from Alinsky pupil, to Rev Wright disciple, to calling his political opponents pigs. Lisa what’s not to love???

  211. Silver Whistle says:

    Yes, but B Moe, you have the honesty to admit your youthful excesses.

  212. Sdferr says:

    Silver Whistle, I got a feeling Sen. Obama may not view his own intellectual history as partaking of excess (though of course I cannot know in any detail, since he will not detail it) but a virtuous traversal bringing him to the very edge of power and acclaim.

  213. happyfeet says:

    Yay fabuloso I think. I’m going to get my purple on this weekend.

  214. thor says:

    Obama knows nothing about middle-class America

    What the fuck do you know about Alaskans and the strata of economic classes there or anywhere else, ya crypto-classless-Dumbass? I think you’re coding in ole racist Hillary’s hard-working White-folk code.

    I’m white from a solid middle-income background and so I have your decoder ring right here, Hick! I’m voting Obama. What you have to say about it? Am I betraying my race, perhaps. Obama knows enough to get my vote and a lot of other hard-working White people, asshole, but not yours, and that’s because some of us are educated – we decent folk, nudge! – unlike your scaly white-trashed code speaking ass.

  215. Slartibartfast says:

    I’m voting Obama.

    thor, you shock and amaze me. I had no idea.

    Really.

  216. Silver Whistle says:

    I’ve got lots of friends of the leftwards pursuasion – hell, let’s face it, around these parts I wouldn’t have many friends if I shunned socialists. But none of them are ashamed or embarassed to admit it. Now that O! is on “the very edge of power and aclaim” it would seem that any mention/investigation/querying of his political wellspring results in a blank. Why doesn’t someone just out and ask the dude?

  217. Lisa says:

    I am with you B Moe. I still joke around that I am a Marxist. But after I left the pot-smokey salons of my youth, I realized that capitalism and enlightened self-interest actually work quite nicely most of the time – not all of the time though (I am still a raging socialist on many matters).

  218. Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) says:

    – thor is voting for Obama.

    – Wulll gee wiz Sarge….Alert the press!

  219. Lisa says:

    So this guy goes from Alinsky pupil, to Rev Wright disciple, to calling his political opponents pigs. Lisa what’s not to love???

    Calling his political opponents pigs, eh? LOL!!!!

    That was a joke, right?

  220. Lisa says:

    Pupil, disciple….really overheated rhetoric. Cut down on those Harlequin Romance books.

  221. Mr. Pink says:

    Thor when you vote for Obama will you have an orgasm?

  222. Mr. Pink says:

    Lisa if you do not think he was referring to Palin as a pig and McCain as an old fish your willfully blinding yourself.

  223. thor says:

    We get a steady diet of lectures on Obama’s failings with hard-working middle-class whites. Best that a hard-working middle-class white volley back the smack down.

    We’re not angry! We don’t hate America! Or so these lecturers assume.

  224. happyfeet says:

    You comment an awful lot to be hard-working. Me too that’s why I noticed.

  225. Sigivald says:

    The King of Babylon was the first Radical?

    Who knew?

  226. JBean says:

    You are a damned stankassed liar. Do you think he grew up in Hyde Park? He grew up among the middle class, fool. Just because he went to a great school and made something of himself (many Americans do that sort of thing) does not mean he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. But you keep repeating that lie, liar. See how far it gets you.

    Way to elevate the discussion, Lisa. Classy, even.

    And can you show this fool the middle class people from O’s life who have stepped forward to vouch for him? (Family and campaign workers aside, of course).

  227. thor says:

    Vouchers? I don’t think he supports vouchers.

  228. Mikey NTH says:

    #187 Carin:

    There is something in which you speak. I gre up in west Dearborn, and other than city hall and the Adray Arena, I didn’t go to east Dearborn that much. Everything I needed was closer. When I lived in east Derborn I rarely went to west Dearborn, as everything I needed was closer.

    Many urban areas are exactly like that – they are collections of little towns seperated by streets, etc. People act that way, act insular even if living in a greater entity. Funny, isn’t it?

  229. Mikey NTH says:

    #204 Lisa:

    I don’t think I suffer from ODS. I don’t think he is ‘teh evul’, I don’t see him as some ‘pocket Lenin’ (like a pocket battleship – without the armor and guns and all that), I just think he is the wrong choice now. I don’t see Alinsky’s ‘Rules’ as anything more than a guide on how to influence government – such rules and tactics available to all sides, and some of the rules perhaps no longer applicable as the environment has changed.

    Above all – I think this one of the best sports ever invented. Having fun yet? I am.

  230. Pablo says:

    Obama knows enough to get my vote…

    So does Stalin, as you mentioned on the other thread, hammer boy.

  231. Pablo says:

    Good point. It bugs when we fetishize these insulated little tribes of idiots though. Being who you are and wanting people to feel you on issues is one thing. Feeling ENTITLED to have politicians kiss your countrified/ghettofied ass is another.

    Yup. And I think Palin had a great line about that vis a vis small town folk that I would guess applies to ghetto folk too:

    “We tend to prefer candidates who don’t talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco”

    That isn’t about having one’s ass kissed, it’s about not having smoke blown up it. Nobody likes that.

  232. thor says:

    #

    Comment by Pablo on 9/11 @ 3:32 pm #

    Obama knows enough to get my vote…

    So does Stalin, as you mentioned on the other thread, hammer boy.

    This link will explain my love for Stalin, Plinkblo.

  233. Rob Crawford says:

    Geezus, Lisa, get over it. Obama grew up in a hell of a lot more privilege than most people — raised by his bank executive grandparents? sent to a tony private school? Hawaii?!

  234. yonsaon says:

    “Obama’s latest misteps and apparent lack of focus lead me to believe him less a true believer and more a shallow opportunist.” — ThomasD #37

    I had the same thought. But his backers, like Soros, are even more opportunistic parasites, and a whole lot more focused. Obama’s their tool, a trained rat pushing the buttons they want him to push to get the treats they provide. Following their lead, he’ll modify America to their benefit, not ours.

  235. Michael B says:

    “does Obama fit the Alinsky mold, or is he, as others argue, merely a shallow baking pan concerned with nothing more than the swirls in his own frosting?”

    Obama doesn’t need to perfectly fit the mold in order to be of the mold, even if he’s but an essentially egoistically driven and transmogrified version of the mold.

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