donderdag 6 november 2008

Obama 32


Nu even wat achtergronden van de man die zogezegd de 'hoop' vertegenwoordigt. In een kritiek van het boek The Case Against Barack Obama. The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favourite Candidate' van de Amerikaanse politiek verslaggever David Freddoso is het volgende te lezen:
'Throughout his tenure in the Illinois General Assembly, Obama had given favors and steered state contracts to contributors and friends. In particular, he has a great deal of ties to real estate developers that benefited from his state legislative career and he benefited from their success. Developers having access to the corridors of power is nothing new, especially in Chicago, but for a candidate who is preaching an anti-lobbyist anti-special interest message, the evidence shows he didn't practice what he preaches.
The Obama campaign has steadfastly refused to speak the nitty-gritty of policy on the stump and has run a "cult of personality" campaign. This is why it is a timely and important work to show the man behind the façade, but to do so in a legitimate way. Many, mostly slanderous, attempts have been made to show Obama as some kind of un-American Trojan horse candidate. This has only helped to inoculate him against legitimate criticism. However, Freddoso sticks to the record with copious footnotes to back him up.
Most of Obama's more radical leftist connections are public record. The public fallout from the Rev. Wright controversies started to bring to light that strange company that Obama has kept. In particular, Freddoso touches upon Obama's relationship to Bill Ayers who was part of the terrorist group the Weathermen. Obama may try to walk and talk like a "moderate" on the stump, but he surrounds himself with the far left.
The book is a thorough treatment of Obama's career, what he has done and how he got there. The image that emerges does not mesh at all with the icon of hope. The media, for their part, simply has not dug deep into the mirage that is the Obama campaign. The book provides a sorely needed analysis for a candidate who is almost getting a free ride to the White House. It is fact-based, well-researched, and is critical reading for anyone interested in who Obama really is.'

'Editorial Reviews
Review
The first serious negative biography of Senator Barack Obama casts the Democratic nominee as a fake reformer and a real liberal. The Case Against Barack Obama by National Review's David Freddoso, blasts Obama for failing to take on the Chicago machine, for listening to "radical advisors," and for backing "doctrinaire liberal" causes from teachers unions to abortion rights... The Obama that emerges from its pages is not, Mr. Freddoso says, "a bad person. It's just that he's like all the rest of them. Not a reformer. Not a Messiah. Just like all the rest of them in Washington." And the author makes a fairly compelling case that this is so. The best part of the book concentrates on Mr. Obama's record in Chicago, his home town and the place from which he was elected to the Illinois state Senate in 1996, before moving to the United States Senate in 2004. The book lays out in detail how this period began in a way that should shock some of Mr. Obama's supporters: he won the Democratic nomination for his Illinois seat by getting a team of lawyers to throw all the other candidates off the ballot on various technicalities. One of those he threw off was a veteran black politician, a woman who helped him get started in politics in the first place.
If Mr. Obama really were the miracle-working, aisle-jumping, consensus-seeking new breed of politician his spin-doctors make him out to be, you would expect to see the evidence in these eight years. But there isn't very much. Instead, as Mr. Freddoso rather depressingly finds, Mr. Obama spent the whole period without any visible sign of rocking the Democratic boat. He was a staunch backer of Richard Daley, who as mayor failed to stem the corruption that has made Chicago one of America's most notorious cities. Nor did he lift a finger against John Stroger and his son Todd....Cook County, where Chicago is located, has been extensively criticized for corrupt practices by a federally appointed judge....Take a break from the hugs, hopium with a good read
If what you want from Sen. Barack Obama's historic Democratic convention speech on Thursday night is to give yourself up to profound emotion and to join others in common passion and release, then guzzle some hopium and enjoy. Or you can enrich the experience by reading The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate by David Freddoso. Freddoso's book, on the best-seller lists, is the anti hopium. It is the pin of reason to the Obama balloon.'

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