I disagree with Mr. Hamm I think the annology fits perfectly.

Take Bob Dylan.  A rebel when it paid, a Xtian convert when times changed, and a whore for the cash always, just like Hillary.

Or The Ramones hot one minute, then forgotten sort o like Howard Dean.

Or Mick Jagger Great for a long time, but without a clue that he should have left the stage years ago… Like Ted Kennedy, Bob Dole, Orin Hatch and a host of others.

But the best link between the two is the adolescent narcisim which, in politicians and rock idols, stays around for very old aage.

“the daily practice of compromising democracy and justice comes to shape and define you. You become your path. The end does not justify the means and the means change the end, if that makes any sense. This is part of why Martin Luther King, Jr. rejected efforts to get him to run for the presidency.”

Miriam,

  That was very insightful—and that is why MLK ceased to exist—he realized it was more than just “race,” it had to do with class, and the power of corporations to use the military to subjugate populations, so that those same corporations could freely exploit—MLK was dangerous because he was too charismatic and he couldn’t be controlled.

BO IS NO MLK!

This is the answer I received from Paul Street when I asked him if he thought B. O. actually believed the drivel he spouts, as opposed to, say, George Wallace, who finally said he did not believe all the BS he spouted over the years of his political career, he did it because it was necessary to get power…....
Mariam: My sense is that (beneath his pronounced statements of Christian committment) Obama is a soulless political machine who says what he thinks will get him into the White House some day. What he or other policymakers and politicans truly believe is rarely a simple matter to discern; sometimes it comes out only later. Pretty much by definition they make a big distinction beween private beliefs and public statements.

My sense is that B.O. is more conscious than most politicians of the extent to which he is spewing bullshit. I mean he’s no dummy. Like Clinton and unlike, say, Bush, he is highly intelligent.

B.O. is considered to have strong “man of the people” and related domestic policy credentials (this even while he has been vetted by corporate elite power brokers, who have determined that he is safe for existing homeland hierarchies) but to be presidentially suspect (as far the structurally super-empowered corporate imperial folks who matter are concerned) because of short national experience particularly with regard to grave matters of foreign policy.

That’s why you see him giving these weighty global policy speeches with obvious major input from people in around the foreign policy establishment. He is trying to sound presidential and safe for the Empire. If you look at the chapter called “The World Beyond Our Borders” in his plodding book “The Audacity of Hope,” it’s just loaded with terrible statements showing (1) the significant influence of elite doctrine and education (how much he believes I have no idea…) and (2) a desire to impress the elite that he’s safe and will seek to maintain basic imperial continuties.. a more intelligent and “competent” version of American global dominance than that promised by incompetent morons like Bush II.

Speaking of being smart and Chomsky, I don’t give smart people a lot of points for being smart but for what they do with their brains. What’s so great about Chomsky in my opinion is that he took an obviously super-gifted mind and background—- capacities that could have probably put him into the economic super-elite if that’s what he’d wanted—- and applied it all instead to marvelous morally engaged radical-democratic criticism of social injustice and imperial criminality. I’ve worked for many years (though no longer) in and around academia and must say that it is full of people with all kinds of smarts (no not Chomsky-level smarts, but very clever and knowledgeable people often enough) who just do nothing worthwhile or meaningful (not to mention radical) with their capacities and their privlege. With some noble exceptions, they spend most of their time making excuses for the crimes of concentrated power or just pursuing totally innocuous subject mattters. It’s a very boring and often quietly vicious, back-kniving world where the stultifying stench of irrelevance and wasted energy is thick indeed.

The Buddhists have a point when they say “the path is the goal.” The notion that you have to opportunistically say all these conservative things to get into office and then you can really rock and roll in a true progressive way forgets that (even if Obama were some kind of closeted progressive waiting to get into touch with his inner democratic socialist or whatever) the daily practice of compromising democracy and justice comes to shape and define you. You become your path. The end does not justify the means and the means change the end, if that makes any sense. This is part of why Martin Luther King, Jr. rejected efforts to get him to run for the presidency.

Read more at ZNet.

Obama supported Lieberman—Let’s all delude ourselves, to think Obama represents something more than a typical political hack.  Maybe, that’s why his book is really called “The Audacity of Hope.”

Obama does not need much experience in politics because he is sharp. I like him and I might vote for him. He can do the job. What I worry about is the job he may do.
First thing out of the box as a junior senator he OKed Condie Rice. He approved of holding Teri Schiavo hostage to her neurotic parents’ wishes. His evironmental vote record is good but not perfect. He will not radically end Iraq ASAP sighting stability as the factor. I do not see him endorsing the impeachment of Bush & Cheney. He voted for the seven hundred mile fence.
We are in trouble folks. If we do not find an exceptable democratic candidate there will be hell to pay.

6 years or 16 won’t make, necessarily, a good or a winning candidate.(look to the record: how many practicing Senators have won the Presidency?)  We need to look to the character, and wisdom of the man or woman..not how long they have served in congress.  perfect example is John Kerry, a good and noble man, whose delivery (hence his “likeability”) has been “sentorialized” and no one wants to hear him talk for very long!!  His running mate, John Edwards (who, if given three more days in Iowa during the primaries in ‘04 would have come from a 37% deficent to win, instead of coming in a close second) stands a much greater chance of taking the nomination AND the Presidency in 2008 because of his character, wisedom, passionate and credible delivery (GETTING BETTER EACH TIME I SEE AND HEAR HIM), his “story” and his true “likeability”.  He is the BEST hope we have in 2008.

Sorry NO Obama for me. No way, No how.
Why?
After living through 6 years of NO Experience - not fit for the JOB of the current “occupant”.

I want a “proven track record”. Bush didn’t have one. Obama doesn’t have one either. Maybe in 10 years after working in the Senate. But right now he is a FAD with the American people. Show me, don’t tell me your past record. Prove it. Bottom line proof of how YOU helped the American “working Bees and their families”?

How did you remove all the government WASTE? What did YOU do for our young college students? What did you do for Stanford College Loans? What did you do to get education dollars needed to k-12 programs? What did you do to control health care costs? What did you do to bring HIGHER paying jobs back to the USA? What did you do to promote research on stem cells? How many “pink slips” did you get out on government workers DO NOTHING jobs? How many government programs that DO NOTHING did you chop? Did you force BUSH to end the wars?

I will NOT be fooled, Obama has NO RECORD of proof. He is way toooooo
Green.

All red ones “return to sender”!

Most Sincerely,
Concerned Mother

Assuming McCain lives long enough, he could get the Republican nomination for president. If that happens, then his running mate is the one to watch, because it’s doubtful that McCain would survive his first term.

To the Obama Fan Club:

Don’t know how he became a top democratic candidate ?
Most people don’t even know what state he comes from or why he became so popular in the democratic ranks ?
Could it be that the democrats are trying to get a male Afro-American running mate for Hillary, so they can get the Afro-American vote ?
This will fail and actually allow the Republicans to get a landslide win in 2008 with a Giuliani & Mccain ticket !
The American electorate is not ready for a selfserving ambitious woman President who really only cares about her own future, and a Afro-American male who has no past that the average voting American knows about !
This must be some Republican right wing conspiracy COME TRUE !

AL GORE, PLEASE RUN FOR PRESIDENT IN 2008—WE ALL KNOW YOU REALLY WON IN 2000!