Thursday, February 28, 2008

Groomed from the beginning

* Barack’s entire record of state legislation that he touts now was done in his first year as a state senator, so that he could have some record when he wanted to run for higher office, immediately. But he lost a Congressional run in 2000 because he was like four years old.
* Then, in 2002, black Democrats took over the state legislature and were led by the powerful Majority Leader Emil Jones Jr. (“a gravel-voiced, dark-skinned African-American known for chain-smoking cigarettes on the Senate floor”). Since Jones was powerful and black, Barack — and this has been reported before — asked Jones to make him a U.S. Senator. “I’m gonna make me a U.S. Senator,” Jones said to a friend.
* Jones “appointed Obama sponsor of virtually every high-profile piece of legislation, angering many rank-and-file state legislators who had more seniority than Obama and had spent years championing the bills.” And then Jones “further helped raise Obama’s profile by having him craft legislation addressing the day-to-day tragedies that dominated local news headlines.” What didn’t Jones do? Is Barack Obama just a hologram of this “Jones”?
* Then Obama ignored black community issues in his district, to avoid being the black candidate. “Obama’s aloofness on key community issues for years frustrated Lucas and many other South Siders. Now they believe he was just afraid of making political enemies or being pigeonholed as a black candidate.”
* Barack only won his Senate seat in 1996 by finding petty flaws in the other candidates petitions. He pulled a Harvard on the common people.
* In 2004, the article’s author profiled Barack Obama and included many complaints from other black politicians in the state legislature, about Barack’s cheating record. Obama responded by screaming at the reporter over the phone.

reluctant supporters
'Obama and me'
"...he was a largely ineffective lawmaker during most of his career in the Illinois General Assembly."
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