Where do you see this rambling Republican beast headed for? A Sunset or a Different Dawn ?

American wanted change—ANY change. J. B. Williams doesn’t mince words:

Now that it’s clear to everyone in the free world that the Republican Party national leadership is indeed out of touch with rank and file Republicans across the country and unable to defeat even the most unqualified and inexperienced Democrat candidates on the national stage, heads must roll and they will.

As Sydney Blumenthal describes in his recent book, The Strange Death of Republican America,

Bush’s second term has witnessed the great unraveling of the Republican coalition. His radicalism has pushed conservatism to extreme claims on executive power, preemptive war, the rule of law, a one-party state, hostility to science, suppression of career staff professionals in departments and agencies, and the hollowing out of the federal government.

More recently we have the October surprise (to anyone who hasn’t been paying attention) that our economy is totally in the dumper, a lackluster 2008 Republican nominee lineup despite the insertion of spunky Sarah Palin at the very end, and now the Republicans’ loss of control of the Executive and Legislative branches of our government with the almost assured appointments of two (maybe three) Supreme Court Justices by Democrats.

So where do you think this old (white?) elephant is headed off to now?

Imagine yourself at the podium talking to a huge crowd, and the words on the teleprompter say things like: "This is the moment that the world is waiting for. . ." or, "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions." How do you pull it off? Maybe you flash to Peter O’Toole as Lawrence of Arabia, running across the top of a train shouting, "Acaba! Acaba!" with stirring music underwriting your every move. Even so, something in you hesitates at throwing your full self into such grandiosity. Something healthy in you that feels it’s just too way over the top. Besides, isn’t it up to other people to say whether you are a transformative figure?

That something in you that hesitates is not present in some people, such as Barack Obama. When he proclaims that, "we are the change we’ve been waiting for," he goes full tilt with a straight face and no embarrassment. Those caught up in his rhetoric feel like they are part of the "we," and that they are going to be part of something big and wonderful together. Others of us get an unsettling sense that even when he says "we," it’s all about him, quite singular. We don’t sense individuals in a crowd relating to him (as we do, for example, when Hillary Clinton speaks), but a fused entity lost in him. He is not offering to  serve them or fight on their behalf. He is proclaiming that they can become part of him. Many of us get an eerie chill because this is the kind of messianic promise made by cult leaders, not politicians.

And that’s just the beginning of the diametrically opposed reactions to Obama that have deeply divided feminists, progressives, and Democrats, and pitted friends, family members, co-workers, neighbors, networks, interest group members and officials, former political allies, as well as demographic groups against one another. One of the things that keeps us so divided is that his devotees and even many of his converts seem to know so little about him yet consistently reject information that does not fit with their trusting view of him. Many pour out unprecedented—for "progressives"—nastiness, misinformation, and hatred to demean Hillary Clinton and then Sarah Palin, and to intimidate and even threaten those who don’t agree with them. Their bullying has dominated campuses, caucuses, and the convention as well as the blogosphere and media. "Truth squads" aim to silence anything but unqualified admiration.

This is not politics as usual. How can we explain the depth and ferocity of opposing views about a man who portrays himself as a uniter? What is unleashing such widespread animosity and bullying? Is there something about the candidate himself that is inherently divisive?

When a situation has lots of pieces that don’t seem to fit, I look for a lens that can make comprehensive sense of them. In this case, we can get part of the way there via Alinsky-style "community organizing" which Obama says is the best education he ever had. This explanation dovetails perfectly with another that takes us deeper and makes sense of diametrically opposed perceptions and reactions: the anatomy of the candidate’s "self-system." The hypothesis advanced here is that his self-system appears to be organized by "narcissistic personality disorder" (NPD). The NPD lens can illuminate the structure and dynamics not only of the candidate but also of his campaign and the roles of the key sets of players. That is the focus of this article which has grown into two parts: why Obama cannot unify, and how he has divided us.

Having first engaged seriously with NPD 30 years ago and integrated it into my interdisciplinary work, I find the term "narcissist" can be a valuable tool when it is not tossed out casually or without a clue that the self-centered-ness to which it typically refers is merely the tip of an iceberg. We need to dive beneath the surface.

When we do, we discover that NPD is a defective way of organizing the self. Rather than growing around a core, it is cut in half and has no center. The ensuing hollowness and fragmentation explains why "NPDs" lack empathy and authenticity, and have difficulty standing by a principle. It’s also why the psychiatrists who first began recognizing this pattern referred to it as the "as-if" personality. Non-professionals who try to figure out NPDs invariably find themselves
encountering masks and personae, and puzzle over what lies beneath them. Where is the "real" person? Where is the "real" Barack Obama?

They will never succeed in finding him. The devastating truth about NPDs is that there is no "there" there. Nothing substantial and real lies under the masks. There are only masks.

But there is an invisible anatomy beneath the masks. It makes sense of what otherwise doesn’t. It shows us how the pieces fit together and why NPDs are inherently divisive. NPD is not uncommon, and it comes in variable degrees and with different overlays. We’ve all paid an enormous price for not recognizing NPD the last time around. Bush, too, claimed to be a uniter. Despite the disaster he has perpetrated, the Democratic establishment and most of the media have learned absolutely nothing. They can’t wait to do it all over again.

I, on the other hand, being a sociologist, tend to look beneath the surface to social and behavioral processes and the meanings they enact. I have been appalled by what it reveals about this campaign. I am perhaps even more disturbed by the feeble degree of interest and outrage among so many Democrats about these processes and what that bodes for our future. My allegiance is to neither wing of the corporate party nor their candidates, but to getting at the truth—the only basis for any of the
things we say we value.

The issue of divisiveness initially came into focus during the spring because, despite his rhetoric, Obama’s campaign and captive media kept hammering Clinton as "polarizing," and, along with the DNC, as "dividing the Party." How could a candidate who kept getting stronger and winning all the swing states be seen that way—unless, as we now know, the playing field had been rigged before a single vote was cast? This claim had legs, however, because it built on the old shibboleth that Hillary is polarizing. Really? What has seemed obvious to me for the past sixteen years is that Hillary is just the Rorschach onto whom has been projected our culture’s polarizing ambivalence about women, especially powerful women, a deep ambivalence that is carried by many women as well as many men. Not only was Hillary getting a phoney bad rap, but, equally troubling, why were so many voters unable to see through the media narratives to discern that the Obama campaign, their bloggers, and their captive media were the ones generating extraordinarily hateful vitriol and divisiveness?

When I began this piece in early August, we could still hold out the hope that the pledged and automatic delegates could resist the monumental pressure and intimidation to choose the eminently qualified woman over the unqualified man—and of course, as most people don’t know, they nearly did on Convention Wednesday until they were quashed. Although the short-term electoral context has changed, nothing changes the absolute necessity of untangling the modus operandi of this campaign. Liberal ideologues will consider my critique heretical while I consider their singularity and suppression of other narratives dangerous. I’m in the business of deconstructing false narratives and exposing what goes on beneath them—the job our defunct Fourth Estate failed to do.

Forming a Self: the Right Way and a Wrong Way. To understand NPD, we need to see the invisible structure beneath the masks. The kind of structure in focus here is mental: how we represent images, feelings, and experiences and organize them into a pattern or structure. Because we filter new experience through that structure, it becomes a self-reproducing system. The most basic of these structures is how we configure the self.

Gaining a sense of self while also learning about relationships and boundaries with others is the big task of an infant/toddler. When this goes well, "I" develop a sense of "me" and "you" in relationship with a realistic internal boundary separating us.

• Someone organized by NPD never got that right. Instead, the young narcissist-to-be lays down a different primary pattern: good/bad.

• The profoundly disturbing implication is that his self has no core or center from which to grow himself. Instead, he has two halves split off from each other. They don’t "talk" to each other. His self-boundary is in the wrong place. It divides him in two rather than drawing a line between himself and the other.

• What gets really crazy-making is that both halves of "me" get mixed up with "you" (i.e., my mental representations of you). Both halves cut right across self and other. "Good me" conflates parts of you and of me, and "bad you" conflates different parts of you and of me.

• The mixups enabled by his mislocated boundary lead to unending projections and reversals that are inevitably destructive, and make our heads spin when we try to untangle them. That’s why it is so important to slow them down and have some guidance for how to see their strange anatomy.

To add to our difficulty in seeing through the spaghetti maze, NPD is a deep structure which can be overlaid by later developments and adaptations that obscure its operation to many observers. The bright NPD can use his charm to "pass" with people who aren’t used to looking deeper, and in situations that do not threaten his faulty structure. Things get very nasty very quickly, however, whenever his "stuff" kicks in. That, not his surface adaptations, is my focus here. I begin with half of his faulty self, what the literature refers to as the "Grandiose Self."

Grandiose Self. The surface presentation of the Grandiose Self may be extremely charming, polished, even charismatic. He has a sense of entitlement and an appearance of great independence. Beneath his
grandiosity, however, lies a sense of emptiness and hollowness. How can he not feel hollow when he has no center?

Rather than learning how to "feed" and take care of himself, the NPD’s sense of entitlement leads him to expect to be filled up emotionally and supplied by his admirers. His Grandiose Self requires a steady diet of admiration, applause, and other supplies to feel alive, real, and good; anything less than wholehearted approval may be experienced as criticism. When the applause stops, the narcissist deflates like a balloon.

Beneath his grandiosity and entitlement lies the hidden structure of the NPD’s Grandiose Self. It conflates three streams into the "good" self who the narcissist considers himself to be:

 
(a) realaspects of himself that he "owns" as being "who I am";

 
(b) qualities he idealizes and claims for himself but does not in fact embody; and

 
(c) mirroring aspects of other(s) which feed his fantasy of himself by reflecting the only image of himself he identifies with and will accept and which he appropriates as part of himself.

What’s wrong with this structure? First of all, the narcissist lacks the normal tension between who he is and his ideal or fantasy of himself. That tension is essential to realistic self-perception. Presidential candidates do not normally claim that the other party’s administration is handling Gustav better than Katrina because they are following "my recommendations."

Once we know about that conflation, we are not quite so surprised by the Obama mantras about the world waiting for His Coming. That conflation also explains why the speaker of such words shows no embarrassment in speaking them, or in demanding a Greek temple stadium or the Brandenburg Gate, or usurping a presidential seal for his podium. He feels entitled to these venues, symbols, and much more. When called on it, he does not feel shamed. No acknowledgment of his gross inappropriateness will be forthcoming, only a denial of his intent when turned down ("The Brandenburg gate was only one venue we were considering") or denial of our interpretation ("We never intended to use the seal for more than one occasion"). It’s like a cat who has misjudged a leap: "I intended to change my position in precisely that manner." Yet a cat knows she is pretending; the narcissist doesn’t.

Given the absence of a center and the fragility of the Grandiose Self, narcissists are defensive, thin-skinned, and lack a sense of humor about themselves. This may not at first appear obvious because they conceal their lack of humor and humility with preemptive, inoculating statements about themselves. ("They’ll try to scare you and tell you that I’m ….." the stump speech intones.) But underneath: how dare anyone criticize! Or worse, poke fun.

Nothing hurts a narcissist more than ridicule. Mockery and even simple questions can trigger "narcissistic wounds" that lead to retaliatory behavior—especially if they churn up some truth he is trying to hide. No surprise then that following an acerbic cartoon cover of the presidential pretender and his wife, there was, according to Dana Milbank, no room for the New Yorker on the Europlane.

Obama’s conflation of fantasy and reality is readily observable in his representations of his polygynous father and his union with his mother. Barack, Jr. has created a mythic birth for himself that rearranges facts, events, and time, including the Selma march (four years after he was born!). His inability to represent his parents’ relationship realistically is merely the beginning of fabrications, distortions, denials, and coverups about his birth, childhood, schooling, family, and chunks of his adult life. Like many others, I am concerned about not only what he is hiding about himself, but also his still being a prisoner of his internal family drama.

Whoopsie—The Democratic National Committee’s hood ornament got ..er..unscrewed and bounced into the street. Of course, it was loosened up a long while back when the DNC moved itself mostly to Chicago two months before the Democratic Convention. That right there tells you a lot about the DNC. (I think the “D” should be removed—it doesn’t belong there any more.)

Kirsten Powers concludes that DNC Chair, Howard Dean, was helpful to Obama for one reason—staying out of the way.

Dean had high level detractors. Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s new Chief of Staff, publicly feuded with Dean over how to spend funds for House races, asserting that Dean was wasting money by spreading it around to all 50 states.

James Carville described Dean’s leadership as “almost Rumsfeldian in its incompetence.”

Paul Begala charged that Dean was “apparently . . . just hiring a bunch of staff people to wander around Utah and Mississippi and pick their noses.” (More here.)

Then there was Dean’s decision to strip Florida and Michigan of their delegates for holding their primaries early, only to give both states a reprieve after it was too late for Hillary Clinton to have an honest shot at the nomination.

And Dean gets an “F” for remaining silent while sexism and misogyny ran rampant within the Democratic Party. (Sorry, Howie, the weak admission after it was all over didn’t cut it for anyone.).

But Obama and company should be very grateful to Howard Dean for pushing that 50 state strategy, one that probably helped account for Obama’s win in some previously red states. Whether Dean gets rewarded or stays flopping about in the street as the DNC limo speeds off remains yet to be seen.

Next up, did the Democrats get a “mandate”? And how will Republican Senators treat Ted Stevens when he returns to D.C.?

Here’s an interesting piece on what’s going to happen to Ted Stevens:

Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska may not have the warmest of welcomes from fellow Republicans when he returns to the Senate later this month for Congress’ lame-duck session.

No matter the outcome of Stevens’ still-undecided election, some Republican senators are concerned about welcoming a convicted felon back into the Republican conference come Nov. 18, when the Senate returns for a postelection session in Washington, D.C.

They include Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., who was among those to call for Stevens to step down after the Alaska Republican’s Oct. 27 conviction on seven felony counts of failing to report gifts and services, including renovations that doubled the size of his Alaska home.

DeMint’s fellow Republican from South Carolina, Sen. Lindsey Graham, called on Stevens to step down, too, as did Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, of Arizona, and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

Appealing verdict

Since his conviction, Stevens, 84, has maintained his innocence and says he “has not been convicted of anything.” Stevens, who is appealing the jury verdict, has been relying on the technical definition of “conviction,” which doesn’t take effect until sentencing. Stevens’ sentencing has been postponed pending the appeal of his conviction.

DeMint’s spokesman, Wesley Denton, said the South Carolina senator would prefer to see Stevens be removed from the GOP Senate conference, which would keep Stevens from representing the Republican Party and also strip him of all committee assignments. Stevens continues to sit on committees, including the Commerce and Appropriations committees, but he has lost his leadership posts on them.

“Clean our own house”

Republicans should “be the first to act by expelling Stevens from the GOP conference and not assigning him any committees,” Denton said. “We should clean our own house first.”

Any move on ousting Stevens from the conference would probably be up to the Republican leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky. A decision would need to be made Tuesday, so that senators have a week to consider an ouster before they return Nov. 18 to vote on it.

McConnell has said that if Stevens is re-elected and “the felony charge stands through the appeals process, there is zero chance that a senator with a felony conviction would not be expelled from the Senate.” … Read all.

Sometimes, stubbornness is a virtue. Sometimes, it’s just plain stupid.

One of the highlights of this whole miserable election was watching Just Say No Deal’s Diane Mantouvalos tell Chris Matthews that his sexism towards Hillary was one reason she started JSND (at 4:15). She left him stuttering:

By the way, there’s a blog tracking Chris Matthews’ leg, called Chris Matthews’ Leg. Their motto is: “If his lower extremities feel something, you’ll hear it here first.”

Chris Matthews’ Leg already has the inside scoop from election night:

Barack Obama’s victory speech overstimulated the sensitive neuro-receptors in Chris Matthews’ lower left extremity and caused it to hum like a tuning fork.

The Leg couldn’t help feeling it had played a small role in making this historic night possible.

Yes, Chris, MSNBC and pretty much the entire broadcast news industry traded the last bits of their journalistic credibility in the bacchanal of fawning coverage. Sure, Matthews’ and Olbermann’s Bush-Derangement and over-the-top Obama water-carrying during the election made them a national punchline.

But as the nation’s union bosses, trial lawyers, grievance mongers, Israel haters, and global warming hysterics uncorked the champagne and prepared their legislative agendas–The Leg could be heard to whisper:

“Totally, worth it, man . . . totally worth it.”

Here’s the original Chris Matthews’ confession:

Lines were long and tempers flared Wednesday not to vote but to get paid for canvassing for Barack Obama. Several hundred people are still waiting to get their pay for last-minute campaigning. Police were called to the Obama campaign office on North Meridian Street downtown (Indianapolis) to control the crowd.

The line was long and the crowd was angry at times.

“I want my money today! It’s my money. I want it right now!” yelled one former campaign worker.

A former spokesman for the Obama campaign said 375 people were hired as part of the Vote Corps program and said people signed up to work three-hour shifts at a time. Three hours of canvassing got workers a $30 pre-paid Visa card.

The workers showed up to get their cards Wednesday morning at 10:00 am.

“There was a note on the door saying 1:00 pm and then at 1:20 pm everybody was like why is nobody here. They just got here and they’re trying to get it organized,” said Heather Richards, a former campaign worker.

Well, golly gee willikers - what a surprise! People are having a hard time getting Obama to fulfill his obligations! You’d think with the gazillion dollars from illegal contributions he received, he would have plenty of green to spread among his people, maybe even some bonuses for jobs well done for the 375 workers who came to get paid. If you thought that, you’d be wrong!

Eventually people did start getting paid, but some said they were missing hours and told to fill in paperwork making their claim and that eventually they would get a check in the mail.

“Still that’s not right. I’m disappointed. I’m glad for the president, but I’m disappointed in this system,” said Diane Jefferson, temporary campaign worker.

“It should have been $480. It’s $230,” said Imani Sankofa.

“They gave us $10 an hour. So we added it. I added up all the hours so it was supposed to be at least $120. All I get is $90,” said Charles Martin.

“I worked nine hours a day for 4 days and got paid half of what I should have earned,” said Randall Waldon.

Some people weren’t satisfied with filling out a claim form for money they felt was still due to them.

“They say that they gonna call you or they going to mail it to you, but I don’t know. We’ll see what happens,” said Antron Grose.

“Talking about they’ll mail it to us. I ain’t worried about that, man. They’re not going to mail nothin’,” said Martin.

Seems Johnny Mac was right about the Redistributor in Chief - he wants to redistribute YOUR funds, not his! So, you just keep sitting by that mailbox and phone - I am SURE they will be rushing to get you the money for which you worked. Ahem. (And given this, I wonder how well the Obama camp is going to do issuing those 1099s in January?)

And if I was the woman in this video below (from No Quarter Election Thread), I sure wouldn’t be holding my breath:

If Obama is having, um, difficulties actually paying his employees wages earned, I’m not sure why this woman thinks Obama is going to do ANYTHING for her, much less pay her mortgage and her gas. Wow - it is just hard to fathom the gullibility of some people…

And in more news in the “Welcome To The Real World” round-up, the passing of Proposition 8 in CA and Amendment 2 in FL were a rude awakening to many. Here’s the thing - while all those Hollywood types (talking to YOU, Ellen) were singing Obama’s praises, they, like so many others, ignored that the bottom line of his pandering message was that HE IS AGAINST SAME SEX MARRIAGE. He has said that time and time again including in his wishy-washy message that he doesn’t think Prop 8 should pass in CA, but that he is against same sex marriage all the same. So, guess what? It passed, because a lot of his constituents, especially African Americans and the evangelicals he courted, are against same sex marriage. Had any of those mindless people BOTHERED to actually look at his “words, just words,” they would have known that.

But no, Cher, and Ben Affleck, and Matt Damon, and Wanda Sykes, and all of those people wanted to go with the cool guy, so they, along with the REST of Democrats, turned a deaf ear and blind eye to the shenanigans Obama was using in caucus states and that the DNC used to take votes away from Hillary, both in FL and MI, as well as the COnvention. I don’t think the constituents SHE courted would have voted FOR Proposition 8. Oh well - the GLBT community, and women, have all been thrown under the bus for the ascension of THE ONE. Hope you’re happy now because you helped to make it happen!

Oh, wait - those people in CA aren’t. But all those folks protesting there can just get over themselves - they have no one but themselves to blame for the passage of Proposition 8. Had any of the big wigs there stood up and cried foul over the RBC’s decision, or DEMANDED a fair, DEMOCRATIC Convention, I doubt Prop 8 would have passed. So, tough, all you Hollywood folks who oohed and ahed over The One in Denver and had no qualms with the DNP violating its own rules - you did it to yourselves. Hate it for ya, Ellen (and Portia),and the other 18,000 people affected by this, but hey - maybe you shouldn’t have been pushing Obama so much during your show. And maybe all you people should have actually done your freakin’ homework on what was happening in the election.

While I am at it, over 62% of Floridians voted FOR Amendment 2 voted FOR Amendment 2, to Constitutionalize discrimination in their state. In other words, a whole bunch of Democrats voted for that, too. Thanks so much, all you wonderful folks - in both states. What a healing uniter Obama is, isn’t he?? Hey, that’s what they keep claiming, so it HAS to be true - just not for women in general and GLBT people in particular. Whatever.

Anyway, who cares about social justice for GLBT and women now that we have the first biracial president-elect? Who cares about ACORN using TAXPAYING DOLLARS to commit massive amounts of voter fraud, and how they will surely get even more money from and ALL Democratic government (I mean, really - if they were already getting millions of dollars before, as well as new-mortgage kickbacks, and Chris Dodd wanting to give them BILLIONS of dollars from the bailout repayment, who the hell is going to stop them NOW?)? Who cares that their GOTV arms committed voter fraud for Obama and that his followers voted more than once? What’s the big deal, anyway?

Sadly, that is the real world we have now, where caucus fraud will be institutionalized, voter fraud will continue to be tolerated, even excused by people who should know better (that is, the people who, thanks to all of the “poor little ACORN” posts by the NY Times, think ACORN is being beset upon by Republicans and they aren’t doing anything wrong - even when Democrats admit they are. Bob Herbert is especially guilty of this tactic. Apparently, these readers have missed his *subtle* Obama bias…), and electronic voting machines will continue to flip ballots. That is our world today, because really - who is going to stand up against caucus fraud now? Not the Democrats, who KNEW it was occurring but said nothing, or the MSM, which ignored Clinton’s attempts to inform them about documented fraud. Who’s going to stand up against voter fraud? Not Democrats - that would cast aspersions on THE ONE. Who will stand up for us?

And who will stand up for women? Not the Democrats, that’s for sure. They made a sport of misogyny this election, and haven’t let up yet on Governor Palin, either. They not only stood by while Obama laid claim to Clinton’s ideas, but were in a wicked big hurry to shove her out of the race (once she created those policies, of course, because what would Obama have done if he had to create them on his own??). Oh, and they didn’t just shove her out, they treated her with contempt, as if she had no right to come to the party. They treated her in a way they have never treated ANY man, even one as inexperienced and unqualified as, well, Obama. No, they not only stood by, they engaged in, and encouraged, the misogyny we experienced this year (did anyone EVER hear Obama speak out against hanging Sarah Palin in effigy in West Hollywood? No. Ever hear him speak out against the misogyny directed at Clinton? No. No, he engaged in it, not fought against it.). I bet Obama wishes he had stolen Clinton’s economic proposal now that the Dow tanked the worst after his election of any time in history precisely because they DON’T know where he stands. That can’t be a good omen for things to come, and rubs a bit of the shine off of his “win.” I reckon he shouldn’t have been so dismissive when John McCain claimed her plan (and actually gave her credit, something Obama has NEVER done). Oh, well!

It’s going to be some four years here in the real world, with more rude awakenings, more expectations dashed, and more dreams broken. Heck, Obama’s workers are already experiencing that, as well as his anti-war supporters with the choice of Emmanuel as his Chief of Staff. Well, time to wake up, people, to what the rest of us have always known - Obama is a con man, and you fell for it. Don’t waste your time waiting by the phone or the mail-box for your wages, or hope of mortgages and gas paid (!!!). It ain’t gonna happen - but we could have told you that…Oh, wait - we did tell you that, and you didn’t believe us. How about now?? It hasn’t even been two days since the election, and look at the shine fade…

1)The computer systems of both the Obama and McCain campaigns were victims of a sophisticated cyberattack by an unknown “foreign entity,” prompting a federal investigation, NEWSWEEK reports today.

At the Obama headquarters in midsummer, technology experts detected what they initially thought was a computer virus—a case of “phishing,” a form of hacking often employed to steal passwords or credit-card numbers. But by the next day, both the FBI and the Secret Service came to the campaign with an ominous warning: “You have a problem way bigger than what you understand,” an agent told Obama’s team. “You have been compromised, and a serious amount of files have been loaded off your system.” The following day, Obama campaign chief David Plouffe heard from White House chief of staff Josh Bolten, to the same effect: “You have a real problem … and you have to deal with it.”
—————
Officials at the FBI and the White House told the Obama campaign that they believed a foreign entity or organization sought to gather information on the evolution of both camps’ policy positions—information that might be useful in negotiations with a future administration. The Feds assured the Obama team that it had not been hacked by its political opponents. (Obama technical experts later speculated that the hackers were Russian or Chinese.) A security firm retained by the Obama campaign took steps to secure its computer system and end the intrusion. White House and FBI officials had no comment earlier this week.

Read the rest ->

Nothing like being a victim to alert a person to the danger. I wonder if any technology-related policies will benefit from Obama’s victimization.

2)Meanwhile, in Russia, things are heating up. Foxnews has a piece about Russian President Medvedev “sending a signal” to the US.

Russia will deploy missiles near NATO member Poland in response to U.S. missile defense plans, President Dmitry Medvedev said Wednesday in his first state of the nation speech.

Medvedev also singled out the United States for criticism, casting Russia’s war with Georgia in August and the global financial turmoil as consequences of aggressive, selfish U.S. policies.

————————-

Speaking just hours after Obama was declared the victor in the U.S. presidential election, Medvedev said he hoped the incoming administration will take steps to improve badly damaged U.S. ties with Russia. He suggested it is up to the U.S. — not the Kremlin — to seek to improve relations.

“I stress that we have no problem with the American people, no inborn anti-Americanism. And we hope that our partners, the U.S. administration, will make a choice in favor of full-fledged relations with Russia,” Medvedev said.

Well, here we go. A Russian demand for a new American President to kiss some butt. Hmmmmm.

3)In the most thoughtful piece I’ve seen on the racial aspect of a President Obama, Shelby Steele talks a bit about what Obama implicitly promised and what he may not be able to deliver. From LAT.

[Obama's] talent was to project an idealized vision of a post-racial America — and then to have that vision define political decency. Thus, a failure to support Obama politically implied a failure of decency.

Obama’s special charisma — since his famous 2004 convention speech — always came much more from the racial idealism he embodied than from his political ideas. In fact, this was his only true political originality. On the level of public policy, he was quite unremarkable. His economics were the redistributive axioms of old-fashioned Keynesianism; his social thought was recycled Great Society. But all this policy boilerplate was freshened up — given an air of “change” — by the dreamy post-racial and post-ideological kitsch he dressed it in.

This worked politically for Obama because it tapped into a deep longing in American life — the longing on the part of whites to escape the stigma of racism. In running for the presidency — and presenting himself to a majority white nation — Obama knew intuitively that he was dealing with a stigmatized people. He knew whites were stigmatized as being prejudiced, and that they hated this situation and literally longed for ways to disprove the stigma.
——————–

Of course, it is true that white America has made great progress in curbing racism over the last 40 years.
——————–
It is exactly because America has made such dramatic racial progress that whites today chafe so under the racist stigma. So I don’t think whites really want change from Obama as much as they want documentation of change that has already occurred. They want him in the White House first of all as evidence, certification and recognition.

But there is an inherent contradiction in all this. When whites — especially today’s younger generation — proudly support Obama for his post-racialism, they unwittingly embrace race as their primary motivation. They think and act racially, not post-racially. The point is that a post-racial society is a bargainer’s ploy: It seduces whites with a vision of their racial innocence precisely to coerce them into acting out of a racial motivation. A real post-racialist could not be bargained with and would not care about displaying or documenting his racial innocence. Such a person would evaluate Obama politically rather than culturally.

On the nose. Particularly that last part. Although many people would not feel the same, I can say that this election has pretty much cured me of any need to seek “racial innocence.” While many blacks have often said they felt constrained not to make whites feel “threatened” by their presence, I think whites could respond that they often felt constrained to project “I’m not racist” at every opportunity.

However, I’m not doing it anymore. I’ll be polite to people, not wishing to give offense and just hoping to get along - same as ever. But I’m not going to worry if someone perceives me as a racist because I looked at them too long or noticed what was in their grocery cart or any of a thousand things you do when you interact others. I’m done with that.

But what about how Obama will transform our culture? What does Steele say?

There is nothing to suggest that Obama will lead America into true post-racialism. His campaign style revealed a tweaker of the status quo, not a revolutionary. Culturally and racially, he is likely to leave America pretty much where he found her.
——————
Presidents follow the culture; they don’t lead it. I hope for a competent president.

Yeah. I completely agree. All I ever wanted was competence.

4)The Orlando-Sentinel had an interesting and yet ridiculous piece today. Obama won because of black athletes. Seriously.

If you’re searching for tangible reasons why it became possible for Barack Obama to make his historic run at the presidency of the United States, then look no further than the golf course, basketball court or football field.

Obama may have emerged from the partisan political arena, but it was the nonpartisan athletic arena that opened white America’s eyes and minds to the amazing potential and personalities of black America.

OK, you can make a case for any barrier-breaker, no doubt about that. But to suggest that black athletes who excel in the ruthless meritocracy that is sports today somehow are the forerunners of a man elected despite a lack of experience is not a very good argument, IMO. Seeing Michael Jordan play basketball or Lynn Swan play football is to see a truly expert individual. Simply put, you don’t play if you don’t have the chops.

But to suggest a presidential campaign reflects meritocracy is absurd. It reflects many things, but not necessarily merit. These athletes will be out on their butts as soon as they can’t perform. Anyone honestly think THAT will happen to BO? Has it yet?

5)Who should get Obama’s Senate seat? An AA of course. I’m seriously doubting any white people need apply, but let’s look at the contenders. From Newser is a Time piece on who could fill that seat.

As confidence grew in recent weeks that Barack Obama would be the next President of the United States, a battle intensified among various Illinois politicos to fill his Senate seat. Although a number of local leaders have publicly expressed interest in the position, the decision on who will complete the roughly two years remaining in Obama’s Senate term ultimately rests with Illinois’ governor, Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat and former congressman. . .
—————

Identity politics may play a major part in Blagojevich’s decision. Observers believe the governor may feel compelled to appease two of his core constituencies — women, and blacks, particularly from his native Chicago area — that could prove crucial to his prospects should he seek reelection in 2010. He may feel extra pressure to replace the Senate’s only black member with another African-American. One of the names most frequently mentioned here is Jesse Jackson Jr., a veteran Congressman who represents parts of Chicago’s South Side, and a national co-chair of Obama’s presidential campaign.

In an interview Monday, Jackson told TIME: “I’d be honored and humbled to succeed Sen. Obama in the U.S. Senate. I’m confident the governor will make a decision in the best interest of the state, and country.” But Blagojevich could also opt for a sort of placeholder figure to complete Obama’s term and allow Democrats to find a long-term candidate for 2010. Among the prominent black politicians the governor would turn to in that scenario, are Illinois’ secretary of state, Jesse White, or Emil Jones Jr., the recently retired president of Illinois’ senate, and one of Blagojevich’s few General Assembly allies.

The author mentions some other contenders, but I think Jackson is the most likely choice and he’s clearly indicated he wants it. And as national co-chair of Obama’s campaign, I’m betting it’s his. As for the idea that a woman might get the seat? Only if Obama tells Jesse Jr. to pipe down.

A better question is this: what might Blagojevich need more than the goodwill of the President?

6)Newser also has a story from the AP about Iraq.

Iraqi officials said Wednesday they don’t expect Barack Obama to withdraw U.S. troops hastily from Iraq because he told them last summer that he wouldn’t make a decision without consulting them and U.S. commanders on the ground.

With violence down and the economy No. 1 on American voters’ minds, the Iraqis said they believe the new president will take his time before fulfilling his promise to end the war in Iraq, which costs U.S. taxpayers $12 billion a month at a time of financial crisis back home.
——————

“Obama has to deal with Iraq’s issues in a positive way and have a sense of responsibility to correct the situation in Iraq, as well the situation inside America,” said Salim Abdullah, spokesman of the largest Sunni bloc in parliament.

“We are not concerned that he will take a unilateral decision to remove troops quickly from Iraq since he needs to discuss this issue with the Iraqi government first,” Abdullah said.
——————–

This year, U.S. and Iraqi negotiators hammered out an agreement that would remove U.S. soldiers from Iraq’s cities by June 30, with the last American troops leaving the country by 2012. The accord still must be approved by parliament by year’s end when the U.N. mandate expires.

The draft agreement has drawn strong opposition inside Iraq, but government officials are hopeful that parliament can approve the pact in time for the deadline.

That would largely satisfy both Obama’s pledge _ and the Iraqi goal _ of an orderly end to the U.S. mission.

Don’t forget that part. Despite an agreement in place, Obama will take credit for any forward movement in Iraq. Having said that, I don’t think Bush deserves any credit at all. But perhaps some of his people might. They won’t get any.

7) Lastly, I looked in vain for MSM or even sorta MSM discussions of this election in terms of misogyny or in terms of women’s issues. Crickets. Except for a wonderful post here on NQ by Bud White, there is very little out there. We should push BO on this issue at every opportunity and carefully monitor his administration. While everyone talked about race being the “unspoken issue” of the campaign, it got thoroughly aired. What was never spoken of was hate against women.

So far, only bloggers are addressing the issue, but here’s another one:

Grail Guardian is pointed:

There will never be a female President of the United States. There. I said it. Ladies, go home and grab your burkas and start cooking dinner for your man and popping out babies. You will never have equal pay for equal work, you will never be considered competent or capable at anything you ever do, and you stand no chance of ever getting anywhere unless it’s to a soccer or hockey game to cheer your (male) children on. Of course the laws will be wide open to allow you to abort female children so you don’t have to sully the landscape with them at all anymore.

How do I know? Because before even half the nation’s votes were tallied tonight, not only were all the major networks calling the race for Barack Obama, but the pundits are already discussing how Sarah Palin was John McCain’s downfall. Pundits attempting to defend her popularity with statistics were shot down on Fox News. That’s it – it’s over. You will not see another female Presidential candidate taken seriously in this country in our lifetimes. We’ll be lucky if we continue to see women continue to hold seats in the Senate and House after tonight. Female Governors? Forget about it. Palin won’t be re-elected there, because in spite of the fact that Alaska loved her (90% approval rating) just 4 months ago, she has been trashed and is now persona non grata in her own state courtesy of the Chosen One.

Time to saddle up. We need to demand BO own this issue since he’s knowingly benefitted from misogyny. At the very least, he should be required to choose some women for his administration. But we already know what his people said to just that request before: “you can’t have that.”

Lynette Long talked with a BO staffer and heard just that.

Think the Congressional Black Caucus might be willing to push for women? BO MIGHT listen to them.

But as I reviewed the history of the primary and the current issues facing us, it seemed increasingly like the only ethical, pragmatic and appropriate choice.

Consider the caucus fraud, stripping of Clinton’s votes and denial of a fair and open roll call. The relentless sexism from the media and the silence from Democratic Party. Obama’s refusal to have town halls with her and then McCain. Obama’s waffling on important issues like FISA and campaign finance reform. The obscene amounts of money that Obama’s campaign has spent when people are losing their homes. Over 680 million dollars of which we know. Probably more. His lack of judgment in choosing close associates and friends. Like Jeremiah Wright. Tony Rezko. William Ayers. Khalidi.

It is clear that the Democratic Party as we knew it, the Democratic Party of my parents, no longer exists. Its leadership does not support the most basic principle of one person, one vote. And they do not support women, the majority of its membership.

Clearly, it is time to look somewhere else.

And then the economy tanked and the choice became very clear. I have never voted Republican in my life. As I began to study the issues more closely, I grew to really appreciate what John McCain has to say. He understands that you cannot tax small businesses at a high rate, as Obama is proposing. Small businesses are what drive the economy. We need and must create opportunities for Joe (and Josie!) the Plumber. What can Obama be thinking? And how does he possibly plan to pay for all of the programs he is proposing? More taxes in a struggling economy?

Nobody gets this more than the Cuban community in Miami.

Traveling much of the time in Miami with Dr. Lynette Long, the leading expert on the caucus fraud perpetuated against Hillary Clinton by Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee, we did a lot of canvassing and shaking of hands, otherwise known as retail politics. Almost everyone we met were proudly, even vehemently pro McCain. Even the seniors who didn’t speak English would shake their heads and wag their fingers when we asked them about Obama. They are suspicious of charisma and empty promises. Families who had made the treacherous journey to come to America, often leaving behind everything they knew or had owned compared Obama to Castro. “Fidel said change, too,” one young woman said whose family’s property had been seized and whose father had been imprisoned in Cuba for six years. “I don’t want socialism. I know how bad it can be. Our families want to work hard. We want opportunities, not hand outs. We love John Mccain. We trust him.” America is the land of immigrants and opportunities. In honor of these wonderful Cuban Americans who are the soul of Miami and part of the extended heart of this great country, let’s get out the vote.

That being said, our military has performed as well as could be expected under very dangerous circumstances. We have lost brave people, courageous people, to this war. Many of our service people have physical disabilities as a result of being there, and many more have psychological trauma that affects them, their families, and their friends. Our military has given a great deal. They deserve our appreciation, our support, and our respect for what they have done in service to our country.

And, since we are there, how we leave is important. We can’t just pull out all of our troops willy nilly. That would be tremendously irresponsible of us, in terms of the Iraqis who will be left behind without sufficient infrastructure in place, and it will diminish the efforts of our military, and the memory of those who paid the ultimate price.

Below are two videos of two different Iraqi war veterans, both of whom endorse McCain. The first is a sergeant who gave his Purple Heart to McCain:

To say the least, these are two very powerful pieces from those who know first-hand what our being in Iraq means. While I know there are others in the military who do not support McCain, their reasons for doing so speak for themselves.

Finally, there was the following endorsement in my local paper. Now, I have to say, I was stunned. SC is a red state, to be sure, but the city from which this paper comes is not. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw their endorsement of John McCain in this editorial: John McCain For President because they, like many in the MSM, have printed primarily pro-Obama, negative or not-so-pro-McCain pieces. But they nailed it with McCain:

John McCain has served our nation with extraordinary distinction for more than 40 years. But his best service should be yet to come. He understands where America has been, where it is today, and where it must go to fulfill its potential. His proven courage, experience, knowledge, judgment and capacity for working across party lines make him the best choice for the presidency on Tuesday.

Mr. McCain’s habit of delivering blunt “straight talk” represents a refreshing departure from modern political spin. For a quarter century in the U.S. House (1983-87) and Senate (1987-now), the Arizona Republican has applied sound principles of fiscal responsibility and strong national defense on a case-by-case basis.

The self-proclaimed “maverick” has dared to be his own man by taking unpopular positions on tough topics that sent most politicians retreating toward pandering generalizations. He repeatedly, and accurately, points out that he will win no “Miss Congeniality” awards from fellow federal lawmakers — due in large part to his relentless opposition to wasteful “pork” spending.

He has drawn the ire of presidents from his own party and ideological purists on the right by deviating from Republican orthodoxy. Yet his voting record affirms his credentials as a common-sense conservative. And any fair assessment of his record will affirm his prescience over a wide array of difficult issues.

Campaign propaganda to the contrary, Sen. McCain has often opposed President Bush on both the domestic and foreign fronts. He has consistently urged the president to veto spending bills filled with “earmarks” that lacked sufficient legislative scrutiny. He has rightly opposed the folly of wasteful agricultural and ethanol subsidies. He correctly warned, two years ago, that insufficient regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac risked a colossal mortgage-industry meltdown.

And why is it, pray tell, everyone thinks OBAMA is going to do anything positive with the mortgage crisis when he is a part of the problem? I just do not get that one - such a shocking lack of logic involved there…

As to the war:

He was an early critic of the failure to send enough troops to Iraq to consolidate our initial victory in the 2003 invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein from power. Along with trusted Senate colleague and close friend Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Sen. McCain was an early and ardent advocate for a “surge” of U.S. troop levels in Iraq, an overdue move President Bush finally ordered in the spring of 2007.

At that time, prominent Democrats in Congress — including Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, now his party’s presidential nominee — predicted that such an increase in American forces would fail. A few months later, with the surge’s outcome still in doubt, most pundits decreed that Sen. McCain’s bid for the GOP presidential nomination already had failed. The Democrats were wrong about the surge. The pundits were wrong about the nomination.

I admit - I was one Democrat who was wrong about the surge. I honestly thought it was going to be a disaster. I acknowledge - I was wrong.

Unlike Obama, one cannot deny, McCain has character:

Even Sen. McCain’s detractors must acknowledge that he has shown remarkable backbone by bucking his party’s base on many controversial issues, including:

Illegal immigration: He recognizes it as a problem that demands comprehensive reform, not just a border fence.

Judicial appointments: Along with Sen. Graham, he helped forge a compromise that broke a senatorial stalemate blocking President Bush’s court nominees.

Man-made climate change: He recognizes it as a real threat that must be addressed.

Torture of terror suspects: He vigorously criticized the administration for condoning interrogation abuses that undermine our nation’s moral standing.

Such bold stands have given Sen. McCain considerable credibility as a powerful force for cross-party cooperation.

Now, this is where the Post and Courier pushes the meme about Obama. Honestly, how people can still push this BS is beyond me, but here it is:

We are impressed by Sen. Obama’s positive ability to inspire a broad range of Americans, and by his historic role as our nation’s first black major-party presidential nominee. But he falls far short of Sen. McCain on the decisive question of experience — an especially critical consideration in regard to foreign policy.

And though Sen. Obama promises to foster bipartisan accords, unlike Sen. McCain he has not taken on his party’s base. Sen. Obama chides Sen. McCain for frequently supporting President Bush. However, Sen. Obama has voted with his party’s leadership at an even higher rate. His 2007 voting record was deemed the most liberal in the Senate by the National Journal, which is not a right-wing publication.

Most of Sen. Obama’s positions fall well to the left of the national mainstream, including his push to provide “tax cuts” for many Americans who pay no income tax now. Sen. McCain’s prescription for the ailing economy includes tax relief, but it’s based on practical, free-market fundamentals rather than counterproductive attempts to “spread the wealth.”

Sen. McCain proposes reforming health care via private-sector incentives. Sen. Obama proposes public-sector mandates.

Sen. McCain favors free trade. Sen. Obama increasingly backs protectionism.

Sen. McCain strongly supports school choice. Sen. Obama, despite some lip service, does not.

Sen. McCain has long pushed for entitlement reform. Sen. Obama has not.

Sen. McCain would appoint constitutional constructionists to the federal bench. Sen. Obama would appoint liberal activists.

With strengthened Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate certain, a victory for Sen. Obama would assure a lopsided edge for liberal government.

Back in the day, say before 5/31/08, if someone said we were going to have a liberal government, I would have been ecstatic. But I have seen the light - at least in terms of how the Democrats really act. The way the Democratic leadership and the Democratic Party have treated women this way is simply abhorrent. There is nothing liberal about the way they have acted at all. And frankly, who the hell knows for what Obama really stands considering he has flip flopped on just about everything during this campaign? So, yeah - now, I don’t trust them to have that much power. No way in hell. The editors continue:

A victory for Sen. McCain would assure needed balance between a conservative president and a liberal Congress. More importantly, it would assure a steady, capable and brave hand to guide us through the looming crises sure to come.

As for concerns about Sen. McCain’s age (he turned 72 in August), he has kept a demanding campaign schedule and has routinely kept his lively 96-year-old mother nearby to remind voters that he comes from a family known for healthy longevity. Similar worries were expressed about Winston Churchill, nearly 77 when he began his final stint as British prime minister in 1951, and Ronald Reagan, 17 days shy of his 70th birthday when he became U.S. president in 1981. That’s awfully good septuagenarian company.

And despite misinformed assertions that Sen. McCain would too quickly choose military options, the former Navy fighter pilot knows far better than most that the horror of war should always be a last resort.

No kidding. I have tried to say this to people. Military people always choose war last because they KNOW what it is really like. Never mind that both he and his running mate have children in the theatre currently - he knows, far, far better than Obama possibly could.

Finally:

His reputation for courage long preceded his first run for office. He gallantly endured more than five years as a prisoner of war, including torture, after being shot down over Hanoi. He refused to accept early release after his communist captors discovered his father was the U.S. Pacific commander.

John McCain has demonstrated a strong commitment to principle in the political arena, too. His exemplary qualifications for the White House are clear.

I agree - he is far, far more qualified than Obama could dream of being, he has good character, a backbone, and truly loves this country, all things I cannot say about Obama. I agree with the Edistors of the Post and Courier. They are right - McCain is the clear choice on Tuesday.

I have watched in horror and amazement as deeds, gaffes, falsehoods and gross errors in judgment that would have taken down any other politician just slide from Obama like Teflon, much like George Bush. Bush’s problem is not that he’s a Republican. It is that he is a petty, arrogant bully who thinks he is anointed by God, much like Barack Obama.

I believe Obama’s supporters are voting for a carefully crafted narrative; a symbol rather than a man. Symbols don’t govern. Men do. Women do. A symbol is nothing if there is no substance behind it. Here is my closing argument that he is “words, just words” and the substance of Barack Obama is as thin as tissue paper.

Campaign manager David Axelrod had to find a way to propel an affable but rather wishy-washy, under-achieving legislator from Illinois with only a couple of years in the Senate under his belt past a host of far more accomplished candidates. Therefore ‘experience’ became a dirty word.

With Senator Obama’s silvery speeches, his slick, evasive way around all direct questions and no policy decisions one could pin on him, he was able to move close to the front of the field. But he could not get past his biggest obstacle: the brilliant Joan of Arc in a pantsuit, Hillary Clinton. All eight guys sharing the debate stage piled on, including Obama, but still, she came out on top with her preparedness and smarts. So the narrative had to be amended. Not only is experience a dirty word, “Clinton” had to become a dirty word as well.

We were reminded of Republicans hunting Bill Clinton endlessly in the 90’s and told that we didn’t want to support political dynasties, i.e., Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton. Well, Hillary is Bill’s wife, so technically, she’s a Rodham. No dynasty there, but no matter. So first “experience” became a dirty word and “Clinton” became a dirty word, too.

After seven years of George Bush, Democrats, starved to retake the presidency, were sick and tired of partisan bickering and infighting. Whether people loved the Clintons or not, some were afraid that perhaps the Clinton name meant that the “hunt” would start all over again so they were willing to buy Axelrod’s first narrative in order to escape the second.

And then the third narrative was born: Barack Obama is post-racial, post-partisan and stands apart from inside-the-beltway politics. He will cut through the gristle and build consensus because he has no enemies and is not set in his ways like some old pol.

Axelrod then had to create a fourth narrative: Barack as rock star. He needed to draw the eye in order to bypass the Clintons’ rock star status within the Democratic Party and to distract the American public from the most important reason not to vote for him: he didn’t know what he was doing and had a paper-thin resume.

Hence we got the super-sized rallies, the soaring speeches, the ‘fainting,’ people screaming “I love you, Barack” from the throngs in the audience. We now know that many of his enormous rallies had freebie giveaways – rock concerts and the like. But that was a well kept secret, like the rest of this well-crafted stage farce. So the mystique of Obama was born.

The Democrats’ antipathy toward the Iraq war also helped to birth the fifth Obama narrative – Obama as the anti-war candidate, because of a speech he allegedly gave in the ultra liberal Hyde Park district of Illinois in 2002, at no political cost to himself. He was the man of “good judgment” for his war opposition. Not that he had the power to vote on any such a thing at the time. If he did, surely he would have found a way to do as he had always done in the State Senate when challenged by a politically risky vote: vote “present” as he did there 130 times.

But then, an all too compliant media started to get the collective tingle up their leg. Whether this was out of fear of being called racist if they didn’t ‘treat the black guy nicely’, or just their obsession with taking Hillary down or both, I don’t know. But they willfully decided not to do their jobs. He received no vetting whatsoever.

Still, Hillary Clinton had a formidable lead in the polls and was winning the majority of primaries before Super Tuesday (including Michigan and Florida), so he needed a new narrative to blunt her momentum and I’m sure everyone remembers what that was. It was born after Hillary’s unexpected win in New Hampshire and solidified with the South Carolina primary in January – ‘Bill Clinton is a racist and Hillary is insensitive to the plight of the African American community.’

When the campaign started, Obama was ‘bi-racial.’ That wasn’t working for him so well, so he became ‘African American.’ Another new narrative – is that number six? I am beginning to lose count.

Axelrod knew that Obama’s exotic background and dispassionate, professorial demeanor was not connecting well with the black community. Therefore, he had to drive a wedge between the Clintons and the AA community who were so fond of them. Professor Sean Wilentz published a brilliant article in the New Republic called “Race Man” detailing exactly how this was done. Again, the media played an important role here because they gave carte blanche to any nonsense that came out of Obama’s mouth, or that of his surrogates. This narrative of Hillary and her supporters as racist, low-information “Archie Bunkers” grew legs, although it had no basis in fact.

Even the clueless Senators John Kerry and the bloviating Joe Biden told us we had to vote for Obama because he is black. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it is just as racist to vote for someone based on the color of their skin as it is not to. So I guess narrative three (post-racial, post-partisan) was discarded.

Then, against the will of most of the mainstream media in March and April, word of Obama’s malignant associations started to bleed out: the now convicted criminal Tony Rezko, Reverend Wright, unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers and more. Another new narrative was born: the “I didn’t know” or the “it was boneheaded” narrative: a convenient way for Obama to avoid taking personal responsibility for any of his past actions or associations. Good judgment, you say?

Sometimes I think Senator Obama gets up in the morning, walks to the mirror, smiles at it and challenges himself to see how many dissembling statements he can make to the press without getting called on them. I think it must be a game to him, otherwise, how could he dare to be so cavalier with the truth before the American people.

I’m not going to detail his lies about these close associations, or his involvement with ACORN, nor am I going to detail his reneging on his important policy promises like FISA, NAFTA, Iraq, Israel, don’t ask don’t tell, women’s rights, gun control, Bush’s faith based initiatives and so on. All of these are egregious breaks in faith and trust not only with his supporters but with the entire party. Worse still were the press and DNC elite riding shotgun for him at every turn helping him to steal the Democratic nomination through caucus fraud, blocking re-votes and illegitimately being awarded delegates he did not actually earn. Let’s leave that aside for the moment, too.

To me, the worst break in faith was his reneging on public financing, for one very simple reason: his entire candidacy was built on the notion that the American people needed a new way of doing business in Washington. That lobbyists, special interest groups or billionaires cannot buy the Presidency.

So far, he has spent nearly a billion dollars trying to buy the Presidency.

Much of this money has come to him from questionable – and untraceable – donations on the internet. He just spent millions blanketing five networks with a thirty minute infomercial; this after spending six million for his faux-Greek column event at Invesco Field bullying all into submission at the Convention; this after his Barack-apolooza celebrity European Tour, trying to overwhelm the multitudes, foreign and domestic, into believing he is the President without him actually having done anything to earn the title.

He has said that he rejects lobbyists but the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac scandal have revealed that aside from his ardent supporter, Senator Chris Dodd, head of the Senate Banking Committee, Senator Obama has received more lobbying money from them than anyone. A new way of doing business?

Pollsters are cooking the numbers shamelessly in Obama’s favor. Until this last week, where we finally had the likes of CNN’s John King admitting to the ridiculously biased media coverage, it was a veritable love fest for Barack and a sandstorm for Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Had Obama kept his word to accept public financing, as John McCain did, and just campaigned on the issues, as McCain has worked to do – do you think Obama would still be in this contest at all?

These are his fighting tools: Experience is a dirty word. Clinton is a dirty word. I take lobbying money but I pretend I don’t and no one calls me on it. I change my tune daily on different networks and no one bothers to compare my false statements. I am not bi-racial, I am black. I insult the white grandmother who raised me by labeling her a “typical white person.” I insult people who don’t vote for me by calling them “bitter voters who cling to God and guns.” The Clintons and their supporters are racists. Everyone who says anything bad about me must be racist. If the press does not write glowing reports about me, I kick them off my plane, although they have paid good money to be there. “I didn’t know” (about Wright, Rezko, Ayers, Pfleger, my aunt living illegally and in squalor in Boston). Everything you find wrong with me or my campaign I either didn’t know about or it was ‘boneheaded.’

This is a new, cleaner way of doing business in Washington? What is cleaner about trying to overwhelm everyone else out of the race before the American people notice that your policies won’t hold water, and that you won’t hold any position long enough to stand against the changing wind. Obama promised hope and change. He, like George Bush, proclaimed himself a great ‘uniter,’ yet he has rapidly emerged as the most divisive figure in politics. How ironic that he, and the media, tried to paint Hillary as ‘divisive and polarizing’ when he and his supporters are responsible for more hateful vitriol than I have yet seen. Friends and couples are actually breaking up over supporting or not supporting this man.

His careless ‘let’s throw money at the problem’ attitude is horrid, particularly in such difficult economic times.

Obama and Biden deriding the “Joe the Plumbers” of this world belies not only their rhetoric but basic Democratic principles. Further it shows Obama to be an elitist, out of touch with the needs and concerns of average Americans. He postulates on “spreading the wealth around” from the safety of his Chicago mansion, and says it is “selfish” not to do so, while he and his wife, millionaires, give relatively little to charity, and his ‘favorite aunt’ in allowed to contribute $260 to his campaign yet lives illegally and in squalor in Boston. Oh, he “didn’t know.”

More do as I say, not as I do. That is the most damning and devastating part of his candidacy. It was always built on a lie built upon yet another bunch of lies.

How can anyone run on their “good judgment,” yet say “I didn’t know” to breaking revelations at every turn and be given a pass? How can we trust such a man ‘to know’ enough to take care of us when he doesn’t know enough to take care of himself or his own? Or willfully turns a blind eye to crooked and divisive behavior?

A grossly inexperienced, under-qualified man is poised to take the most difficult job in the world at one of the most challenging times in our recent history. And the entire narrative the svengali Axelrod and the media have crafted for him is built on nothing but smoke and mirrors. Hope and change indeed.

Contrary to his image, he is nothing more than an old style politician, an opportunist borne of the Chicago Daley machine, a man who has worked to buy the presidency and changes his policy positions as one would change their socks. After the Joe the Plumber debacle, the myth of Mr. Hope and Change has been debunked. What was initially appealing about his candidacy no longer exists. What is left?

I can find no good reason to vote for him.

I certainly hope the American people will come to the same conclusion this Tuesday.