The Administration that Ran Aground on Envy

All the inspiration that was present at the start of the Obama Administration is now gone. All that are left are the partisan hangers-on and most likely they will continue to hang on.

What happened?

I say this President ran aground on envy. Envy is the fundamental and core belief that the world is unjust and that this injustice must be corrected - at all costs. For people dominated by envy, some people have money and power and others don't and that simply isn't fair. (I wonder if this idea comes from the Garden of Eden story? There everything was provided and since in real life it isn't, they are pissed. They keep thinking this reality is somehow just not right nor just. And, as long as that exists anywhere in the world, those with the money and power are to be hated and taken down. You can hear it in the speaking of Obama's Aunt Zeituni. She sees American welfare as a duty and so does our President. Ayn Rand defined envy "the hatred of the good for being the good."

That, my friends, is the essence of the Obama Administration. He exhibits it on every front.

He exhibits it in our foreign policy where he arbitrarily gives to our enemies and withdraws support of our friends. (Honest to God, I have some Jewish friends who are so liberal they would vote for Obama if he were building Auschwitz on property adjacent to theirs. That's another story.) He exhibits it in his treatment of business, stealing people's property and dictatorially handing it over to his voter constituency, the unions. He arbitrarily lets blacks get away with crimes that he would never allow for whites so he doesn't treat all Americans equal under the law. He rails against Wall Street and big business to induce guilt for producing value so he can loot their value and our value. He destroys his own value by openly lying. What could have a man be so anti-human life that he sneers at the good and creates a distraction while he plunders the good (your money, your belief in him, your good will) which he wants. This is the criminal mind at work. See here.

Frederic Douglas said it best as to why this Administration has run aground: "A man, at times, gets something for nothing, but it will, in his hands, amount to nothing." It has built its constituency on those that will amount to nothing. They do not have their hands on the levers and dials of producing value and because they don't, essentially they are parasites - in the material sense and in the spiritual sense, getting high on hope not solid plans. (Here's an example of getting high on hope.) They can only exist as long as their host, the vital producers, will support them. Their time is running out.

"Need" as the Ultimate Justification

I believe the liberal mind is a more socially accepted version of the criminal mind. Both justify taking other people's money and property for their purposes.

The human condition at bottom is that one must traverse the gap from "need" to "value produced" which satisfies the need. The need is generated by a living organism using its energy to maintain its life. That process, life, gives rise to needs which must be fulfilled if the life is to continue.



The blue arrow is "the gap." To mature as a human being means that one is able to navigate that gap and provide for his needs in a way that works while at the same time doesn't undermine his continued ability to provide for his needs.

The criminal mind and the liberal mind emphasize "need" as a lack - ultimately a lack of stuff or status. They think it unfair that the needy are not provided for. They believe that it is fundamentally unjust that everyone is not provided for - that it is some kind of cosmic injustice and that the world, because of this, is basically unfair. Because this is unjust, they say, they feel justified to correct this injustice and that is why they can, with a straight face, advocate taking your stuff, destroy a country such as America that has a system that allows people to traverse the gap of being human and create value, giving away other people's values (money) to poor people and poor nations, etc., etc.

Every time they open their mouths, they reinforce the "goodness," the "appropriateness" of being needy. When Obama brings some poor person or crippled person or in some way needy person onto the stage with him, he wants to hear about their neediness - the more needy the better - and he adds importance to their being needy. (I find this embarrassing for the person he is using.) He gives them his ear and kindness, attention and ultimately some money or goods. The one thing he doesn't do is talk about how they resourcefully went from need to results that satisfied their need. To focus on that would mean he would have no reason to exert his power over us and take our stuff.

Because Obama and Michelle, the current point people for this view, and the rest of the liberals do this, I consider them and their kind the embodiment of evil in mankind. (I'm not talking about evil in the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments manner. Because man possesses volition, he chooses his course of action. He can choose to get across that gap, using his talents and mind to do that or not and this is his fundamental choice - to live as a human being or not.) There is nothing evil about having needs. We all have them by virtue of being alive. Granting them ultimate status and holding them aloft rather than supporting getting across the gap - by being creative and productive - is evil.

The ultimate joke, though, is on those that hold aloft need as the ultimate in importance. Although evil appears potent because it counts on fear and causes havoc in human lives by destroying their values and it always seems pleasurable in the short run, it is ultimately impotent. That is because it is not about developing the means for producing real value and satisfying needs. To continue, the mind besieged by evil must feed off the people who do traverse the gap since they are the ones who know how to get from need to value produced. (Frederick Douglas made clear that taking care of the needy for its own sake provides nothing lasting: "A man, at times, gets something for nothing, but it will, in his hands, amount to nothing.")

When I hear/see Obama, Michelle, the Pope, mother Theresa when she was alive, Pelosi, Schumer, Reid, Weiner, Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and thousands of other such people, I see evil incarnate. They foster a world that doesn't and cannot work, and they work to create parasites wherever they go. There is nothing more hideous that that. (If you think Mother Theresa was humane, she had millions of dollars and would not spend a frickin' dime on having the dying people she cared for have some measure of comfort as they went through the dying process. She could have conditioned the air because she could have easily have afforded it. Why? Because she thought suffering was the way to becoming whole - and holy, i.e., coming to know god. Source: The Missionary Position: Mother Theresa in theory and Practice by Christopher Hitchens.)

The criminal mind is always justified to commit his crime. Why? Because to his mind, the world is not just and did not treat him fairly for him to properly mature when he was dependent on others. To him, this shouldn't be. (I wonder if some portion of humanity is pissed because their God or their ancestors' God threw they out of the Garden of Eden? There everything was provided. Now they must work for the values they need.) He stays needy rather than find a way to clear away his fears and his grievances such that he become a value producer.

A person stuck in need ends up hating the good (value production) for being the good. (The good is value production and virtue is action which produces value.) Hating the good for being the good is envy and this mental orientation is sourcing the destruction of values now upon us.

So how do we get through this? Create and produce value. In everything you do. You will love it and will feel so nourished by it.

The torch represents the value you seek to produce that
lights your way. The stiffened arm is your moral strength
to get on with it and produce the result!

In Defiance of the Law of Cause and Effect

How many times have we heard this same refrain? Act against your nature, people! Our President pretends that somehow, when people have a purpose and build their life on it, they won't chose to act consistent with that purpose - that they can be seduced into changing their purpose - or more like this, "because of me, my charm and my idealism, you will want to change". It garners no credit for anyone to believe (and hope) for such a magical "transformation." It isn't generous. It isn't intelligent. It's stupid. Why? Because it defies a law of nature.

What law? The Law of Cause and Effect!

Listening to John Allison III of BB&T fame,(a recorded speech I possess) he said it this way. The Law of Cause and Effect: Everything in nature has a nature and it acts consistent with its nature. Tigers are tigers, stones are stones and people are people.

So what is the nature of a person? At root, a person is consistent with his purpose. One cannot operate for a minute without a purpose of some kind. An idea that comes into one's conscious mind is the event which unites spirit with body, mental with physical to cause a result of some kind.

Suppose a person laid in bed until he had some idea that he wanted to get up. He can say all kinds of things to himself - like, "I've got to get up because I've got to go to work. Yah, no one should have to work and because I have to, life is hell. I'm consigned to the burden and drudgery of life" - in other words, he may consider himself completely at the effect of, a victim of life. Of course there are zillions of positive reasons for getting up too.

No matter, what had to happen - regardless of the reason - was that an idea had to pop into the person's head and that became his purpose for the next few minutes or hours or longer. Whether he's willing to be responsible for that is another matter in this discussion. One simply could not operate without a purpose - at even the most rudimentary level above the automatic functions that the body provides so long as it lives.

But, creating a purpose for which one lives his life is more than a momentary undertaking. That goes far beyond waiting until one is struck by an idea or a feeling. It is something that one can create in the largest sense and generated from one's loves and one's ideals for an eminently fulfilling life. Or it is something one can create from the unquestioned beliefs he got from his childhood - but to the same scope. It can provide motive for a moment, a month or a lifetime.

A purpose sets the aspect of one's personal nature - his character. And this doesn't change in the broadest sense. It is possible to change it, but not without a lot of serious self-examination and work extending oneself into new, uncharted areas of his life.


When any leader has gotten to where he is, by virtue of his purpose and by enrolling, willingly or unwillingly, millions of followers, and further, when his purpose is rooted in the soil of centuries, that person is not going to change. To pretend otherwise and enroll the American people on that idea is immensely, horrendously disingenuous. (It could only be done with such people who defer to faith as a valid mental action, be it in a specifically religious form or in a modern mystical form. Anyone who lives in and is oriented to the real, everyday world and is working to manifest their larger and long-range purposes and have some capacity to integrate ideas and the events of life, simply would not buy this idea. One has to revert to the "magical thinking" of childhood [a stage in an individual's development] in order to consider this a real possibility.)

And yet, this is the foreign policy of this Administration that we are asked to swallow.

The cartoonists are reacting. (I got these from Sultan Knish's blog.)

The Government Can

Bail Bill Upholds Unreality - Kill It

Here is an article by Robert Tracinski who writes the TIA Daily column. I'm copying it whole as it is great to get your feet on the ground in terms of free market principles. Also, I must say that I am shocked regarding Bernake's complete disregard for what has the free market work. After reading this and his attempt at Czardom, I'm persuaded the guy is a psychopath.

TIA Daily • October 1, 2008
Kill the Bailout
The Government Can't Rewrite Reality

The House of Representatives deserves praise for taking swift action to avert a growing economic crisis—by not approving the trillion-dollar financial bailout plan.

The bailout bill was blocked Monday by a rebellion among House Republicans, who voted two-to-one against a plan they consider a step down the "slippery slope to socialism," in the words of Texas Representative Jeb Hensarling.

They are absolutely correct, and the 133 Republicans who voted to stop this coup against the financial markets—not to mention some of the 95 Democrats who may have balked for similar reasons—need to find the courage to stand firm. That's especially true since the Senate is likely to vote today to approve the bailout.

The Senate is supposed to serve, in James Madison's analogy, as the "cooling saucer" for the hot tea served up by the House—but in this case, it is the House that has remained cool and refused to panic. That's because the hysterical demand for a bailout didn't come up from the people; it came down from the elites in Washington and Manhattan. The House is reflecting the sensible skepticism coming up from the folks on Main Street who don't want to pay the bills for bailing out Hank Paulson's former colleagues on Wall Street.

Some cold, realistic scrutiny of the bailout is desperately needed because this plan is not just an attack on the free market. It is an attack on reality. The financial crisis was caused by more than a decade of using government power to rewrite the facts of reality and override the judgment of the market, and the bailout just offers more of the same fantasy economics.

Congress wanted everyone to be able to get a mortgage to buy a home, regardless of income, credit history, or ability to save for a down payment. The name for this contradiction was "affordable housing," an initiative aimed at providing the benefits of home ownership to those who could not, in fact, afford it. So when the market concluded that low-income borrowers could not meet the credit requirements for mortgages, the Clinton administration invoked trumped-up charges of racism to expand enforcement of the Community Reinvestment Act, bullying banks into dropping as "arbitrary" such old-fashioned credit standards as proof of income. And when the market balked at the increased credit risk created by these loans, Congress backed the expansion of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government-sponsored enterprises that used federally guaranteed money to buy up the increasingly risky mortgages.

At every point, when the market sent the message that reality would not support the higher level of risk being taken on by mortgage lenders, the government used its power to override this message.

The vigorous government-created market for riskier "sub-prime" loans masked the real dangers, creating the illusion that increased profits could be obtained without increased risk—an illusion that encouraged some private lenders to follow Fannie and Freddie's lead. To be sure, some of this private risk-taking was part of the normal process of failure in a capitalist economy. A large part of the current financial upheaval originated with high-risk investment banks and hedge funds that held large amounts of mortgage-backed securities. These securities were carefully balanced against one another according to mathematical formulas that were calculated to cancel out their risks. But the mathematical formulas were new and hadn't been tested in a bear market. When the downturn came, they failed.

This is a normal part of the rough and tumble of capitalism. All of the current talk about the "failure" of the free market ignores the fact that the process of failure is a crucial benefit of the free market. In a capitalist system, high-risk firms are always trying out new and untested ideas, and failure is the messenger that tells the market which strategies work and which strategies don't. It is also an indispensable corrective mechanism that moves capital from enterprises with failing strategies to those with successful strategies.

But the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve have repeatedly short-circuited this mechanism by trying to outlaw failure. When the market sent the message that too many bad loans had been made and that this needed to be corrected by a contraction in the amount of available credit, the government wanted to avoid the unpleasant consequences of such a contraction. So the Federal Reserve papered over the facts—with a flurry of paper money—by artificially reducing interest rates and loosening up credit just when it needed to be tightened.

But that didn't change the underlying facts, and the bad investments still went bad. Yet as the market has sent the message that some firms have become over-extended and are no longer solvent, the government has still tried to avoid letting the market face the facts. The Treasury and the Fed kept trying to rewrite reality by orchestrating a series of government-backed bailouts.

Over at RealClearMarkets, Joseph Calhoun points out a crucial part of this assault on facts:

There has always been a stigma attached to borrowing directly from the Fed and for good reason. If a bank can’t get other banks to lend it money, that tells the market something about the condition of the bank in question.

Last August, Bernanke convinced three large banks to borrow at the discount window in an effort to remove that stigma. When that didn’t work, he concocted a scheme to allow banks to borrow from the Fed in anonymity via a mechanism he called the Term Auction Facility. When Bear Stearns blew up, he added the Term Securities Lending Facility for investment banks. By removing the stigma of borrowing from the Fed and hiding the identity of the borrowers, Bernanke removed important information from the market.

So the Fed's approach to potential bank failures was to try to help failing banks pretend that they weren't failing.

Or consider the SEC's ban on short sales for a list of about 700 stocks—with more companies lobbying to get themselves put on the list. Again, the whole approach of the SEC is not to prevent companies from failing, but to help them pretend that they are not failing, by outlawing trades that would tend to drive their stock prices down.

In fact, all that this sort of policy has achieved is to expand business failures. When Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, for example, it had been in negotiations with several major financial institutions who were considering investing billions in a private buy-out of the firm. But they balked at making the deal because they were waiting for the Fed to offer incentives and guarantees. Thus, the Fed's yelping about how each bankruptcy of a Wall Street firm poses a risk of "systemic failure" turns out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, because the prospect of an open-ended series of bailouts is blocking all of the mechanisms by which a free market actually prevents widespread failure.

The bailout package would have the government buy out up to $700 billion worth of bad loans. But this is merely delaying the re-pricing of those loans to their proper value. Left to themselves, the holders of these loans would eventually find it necessary to sell them at pennies on the dollar; Merrill Lynch sold its bad loans at 22 cents on the dollar. Private companies could then recognize the magnitude of the loss and start to rebuild their businesses with the remaining assets they possess. But now no firm has an incentive to sell off its bad loans. Why dump them for 22 cents on the dollar when the government might buy them, a few weeks later, at 50 or 80 cents?

So instead what is going to happen is that the federal government is going to go into the financial markets and dictate which securities are worth how much. It is still unclear exactly which loans the government will buy or how much it will pay for them, so no private investor can say whether an investment will pay off or not. This is how the prospect of a government bailout blocks the private buyouts that would actually clean all of the bad debt out of the system.

Instead, this plan transforms the US Treasury into a trillion-dollar hedge fund, making investments in securities whose proper market value is unknown and promising its shareholders—us—that unlike the best Wall Street investment banks, Treasury bureaucrats really know how to make a profit on sub-prime mortgage loans. That's why probably the best comment on the bailout is an e-mail making the rounds on Capitol Hill presenting Paulson's pitch for the bailout deal—in the style of a Nigerian banking scam. "I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude," it begins. Time to hit the "delete" button.

The bailout represents more of the same problems that got us here because it is backed by all of the same people who created those problems. And I'm not just talking about Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, who organized the series of ad hoc bailouts that spread uncertainty through the financial industry. Much worse is the fact that a chief negotiator for the bailout is House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, the chief sponsor of the "affordable housing" scam. And as for Barack Obama, Stanley Kurtz exposes the role played by ACORN, Obama's former employer as a "community organizer." It turns out that a big part of ACORN's "community organizing" was to use thug tactics and the threat of government regulation to intimidate banks into making high-risk mortgage loans.

Fortunately, the public has the good sense to smell that something is rotten. I just got an e-mail recounting what Virginia Representative Jim Moran told Fox News: that calls from constituents commenting on the bailout were running 50-50—50% "no" and 50% "hell, no."

The House should not simply delay the bailout bill or mitigate its worst features; that will prolong the uncertainty in the financial markets. Instead, they need to make sure that the bailout meets with firm and repeated rejection over the next week, preferably by a growing margin of votes.

It is time for the House to kill the bailout and kill it decisively.

It is time for Congress to stop the government from rewriting reality, so that the market can be free to recognize the facts, pick up the pieces of failing firms, and begin rebuilding.

Is Alinsky's Principle Turning on Obama?

Saul Alinsky is Obama's primary mentor. He was powerful because he had a specific plan of action for gaining power. Alinsky was a psychopath, pure and simple. He appeals to people who want power and are angry. Hillary liked him and so does Obama.

"Teaching hatred for the normal majority is the key to power for radicals. But Alinsky taught that you can't easily hate millions of people. To do that effectively you need a one-person scapegoat to focus all your hatred on. 'Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.' (Saul Alinsky) That is the politics of personal destruction, and it doesn't matter if the target is black like Clarence Thomas, or a woman like Sarah Palin, or a severely wounded war veteran like John McCain." (or a President, George Bush - SCB) (This quote from here.)

The internet is abuzz with articles about Obama's underhanded dealings and being the thug behind the scenes. This was mentioned a few weeks ago related to other people and organizations but had died down. Now it is back.

And what a perfect place to put all the frustration and outrage over the general government incompetance. It's clear to me there is a crisis of confidence in the US Government. Two of the biggest crooks, Frank and Dodd, at the heart of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fiasco are making pronouncements, yelling in response to every question, as if they have moral authority - which they don't.

McCain supporters are increasingly frustrated. Their hope has been that given all the mess maybe McCain would have enough belief in freedom to at least forestall the complete capitulation of our relatively free society to liberal fascism and the socialist state.

All of this is now accentuating Obama's fascism and willingness to operate via threats of force. What follows is a list of links that I gleaned from the internet, thanks to a friend sending them to me. Further most of these links came from http://www.instapundit.com/, a middle-of-the-road website written by a law professor.

Start with this one about Alinsky and his tactics.

Then read this from the UK on how Obama undermined our government's negotiations with Iraq leaving them confused.

Then how about this one on how Obama is silencing the voice of Gun Owners. Also here.

One comment on a blog: "I fear that under the Obama administration, the lawyers sending these letters will be government employees."

And here is evidence of that already. Two elected officials are protecting the Obama campaign and only the Obama campaign. How unjust is that?

And here is a video showing how prosecutors and sheriffs are becoming part of the Obama's truth squad. And even the Justice Department is working for Obama.

Here in Reason Magazine's website is an article explaining why Obama is vulnerable on the Second Amendment. Notice how, in Obama's world, you have no rights. That means that you are not and independent human being who gets to live his life as he chooses. You are the property of the Government and the politicians get to decide. Your life is to be negotiated by someone else. Whatever that is, it ain't American and individual rights.

Or how about this Alinsky tactic to undermine free speech?

Here's an article regarding the NRA's response.

Obama's attempt to interrupt and silence a Chicago radio show back in August when Stanley Kurtz who investigated the Chicago Annenberg Challenge was featured.

And just a couple days before that stories were run on how Obama threatened the major TV stations who might run the ad produced by the American Issues Project. I detailed that here.

Although the Left may have overriden your voice at the US Justice Department, if you want to file a complaint, the numbers are at the link.

Showboat Obama Loves Mobs

This image says to me that Obama loves crowds - not mobs. But given the way he and his campaign is operating to quash The American Issues Project's video and Stanley Kurtz, contributing editor to the National Review who is now revealing the relationship of William Ayers and Barack Obama, I'm now persuaded he loves the mob.

Why?

Because he must! A man who does not deal in facts must get you to accept him by relating personal evaluations which you cannot argue with OR he must appeal to masses who eschew critical thinking - a mob.

(This last is Argument from Popularity, a logical fallacy. Yes, millions of people can be wrong. Both of the above techniques are a subset of Appeals to Emotion, a larger category of non-reason.)

The article below by the Chicago Tribune is about Obama's response to WGN's scheduling of an interview with Stanley Kurtz. WGN called the Obama Campaign for a spokesman and it declined the request. And this is not their first action against the charges now being constructed regarding Obama's lying regarding his relationship with the unrepentant domestic terrorist, William Ayers. Obama's Campaign has sent letters implying the loss of broadcast license to intimidate all the major TV stations who might show the American Issues Project video.

The one thing the Obama Campaign and Obama himself is unwilling to do is tell the truth. Notice the language of the emails sent to WGN. Below that notice how there are no facts provided in Obama's countervideo, directed erroneously to McCain rather than AIP.

This is a battle that promises to become huge because Obama is willing to quash our Individual Right of the Freedom of Speech - the First Ammendment to the Constitution of the United States. (And Bill Clinton said Obama is now ready to defend the Constitution? I don't think so!)


Obama campaign confronts WGN radio
by John McCormick and Steve Schmadeke

Chicago Tribune Washington Bureau
Posted August 27, 2008 11:02 PM

DENVER -- Sen. Barack Obama's campaign organized its supporters Wednesday night to confront Tribune-owned WGN-AM in Chicago for having a critic of the Illinois Democrat on its air.

"WGN radio is giving right-wing hatchet man Stanley Kurtz a forum to air his baseless, fear-mongering terrorist smears," Obama's campaign wrote in an e-mail to supporters. "He's currently scheduled to spend a solid two-hour block from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. pushing lies, distortions, and manipulations about Barack and University of Illinois professor William Ayers."

Kurtz, a conservative writer, recently wrote an article for the National Review that looked at Obama's ties to Ayers, a former 1960s radical.

The magazine had been blocked in its initial attempts to obtain records from the University of Illinois at Chicago regarding the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which Obama chaired and Ayers co-founded. The school later reserved its position and made the records available Tuesday.

Obama's campaign urged supporters to call the radio station to complain.

"Tell WGN that by providing Kurtz with airtime, they are legitimizing baseless attacks from a smear-merchant and lowering the standards of political discourse," the note said.

"It is absolutely unacceptable that WGN would give a slimy character assassin like Kurtz time for his divisive, destructive ranting on our public airwaves," the note continued. "At the very least, they should offer sane, honest rebuttal to every one of Kurtz's lies."

Zack Christenson, executive producer of "Extension 720 with Milt Rosenburg," said the response was strong.

"I would say this is the biggest response we've ever got from a campaign or a candidate," he said. "This is really unprecedented with the show, the way that people are flooding the calls and our email boxes."

Christenson said the Obama campaign was asked to have someone appear on the show and declined the request.

"He got into the files just yesterday, so we wanted to have him on to find out what he found. And, if at all possible, we wanted to get the Obama campaign, to get their side of the story," Christenson said. "That's why the uproar is kind of amazing, because we wanted the Obama campaign's take as well."

The show's producer said the calls dropped off after the show's first hour. He did not have a count of calls, but said it was "non-stop."

Obama's campaign has launched similar offensives against stations that have run campaign ads that it did not like.


Here is Obama's video response to AIP aired August 25, 2008.

I can see the bumper stickers now.

We are now going to see the proof that Obama lied. The only defense to a charge is to either counter it with facts or smear it. See my ** (footnote) on "Swiftboating".

Obama not only lied, he is a vicious systematic liar. Lying, shading, obfuscating, and pooh-poohing is everywhere in his telling of his past. Everywhere.

And this is why Obama loves mobs. They, and the relating of his personal experiences which we cannot argue with, are his defense against reason, purposeful evasion, and the only thing you and I have in common with any other human being: the real world.

Is This Coronation by Global Triangulation?

Suppose you have a close relationship with a friend/spouse. Your friend/spouse does something you don't like and instead of going to them with your complaint/concern, you go to another friend and talk about them. This person agrees with your side of the story which eases your angst. You don't really resolve your difference with your friend/spouse and you don't repair your relationship.

The situation smoulders; your relationship deteriorates. You wonder why you can no longer get it up. Your interest wains; an emotional estrangement ensues. A worse case is if you used what the second friend said as backing for your position in a talk with your friend/spouse. Needless to say, your friend/spouse will get angry, feel outnumbered and violated because you blabbed about them outside the relationship. This is the phenomenon of triangulation, the use of an uninvolved outside person/group to gain power in a situation.

There are other aspects to this like asking a question of the third person that you know they will answer in a certain way and then use that differently back home in a different context.

Obama is now in the Mideast, soon to go to Europe. Already Der Spiegel, a German news magazine, ran a controversial article stating that Maliki, PM of Iraq, agrees with Obama's 16 month plan. "When asked in and interview with SPIEGEL when he thinks US troops should leave Iraq, Maliki responded, as written in the article, 'as soon as possible, as far as we are concerned.' He then continued: 'US presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.'"

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,566841,00.html

(I'm hearing now that Maliki said he was misinterpreted by Der Spiegel. This may or may not be true since the Muslim countries are known for their opaque manipulations. I'm left wondering.)

Is Obama going to Europe to get backing from a "friend" to finesse McCain? Cannot he now say (or better yet let us see for ourselves), "It's what Maliki as spokesman for the Iraqi people want so my timetable is right and your hedging on a withdrawal date regardless of your reasons is wrong?"

McCain's position as I understand it is that we have had tremendous success in Iraq. We don't want to mess it up by being hasty and opening up the situation to a reversal when it is in its closing phase. If the situation were to deteriorate we may have to go back for a third war in Iraq, the very thing that most people complained about how Bush I handled the situation.

Obama, after visiting Iraq and Jordan (he's already been to Afghanistan) heads to Europe for some "rock star" performances. 300 of the press are following his every move, beaming images and stories back to the US. Is he using this means rather than debate and dialogue with McCain and the American people to secure his coronation? I think he intends so.

Power and adulation is Obama's primary motive. Positive results in the districts he has representated are "shrimpy" at best and non-existent or negative in at least two important cases.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/06/27/grim_proving_ground_for_obamas_housing_policy/ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP-YoB5mnZs regarding his association with Rezko who is now in jail in housing and http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/06/19/that-%e2%80%9cguy-who-lives-in-my-neighborhood%e2%80%9d-behind-the-ayers-obama-relationship/ regarding his education project.

I do not favor public housing under any circumstances as the free market is moral and it is practically superior for providing housing at all income levels. Also the same freedom provides responsible charity. The above links demonstrate the results for projects Obama put himself on the hook for. These projects are the result of an immoral ethic that pervades our society and which allows Obama to be irresponsible regarding his results. He says "I didn't know."

Further, political triangulation is a tactic from the class warfare playbook - pit one class against another, one ethnic group against another, ultimately one person against another in an ongoing group-based battle. Alinsky, his primary class warfare political tactic mentor, screams the only issue to be power, power, power, Everything I see in Obama is a match for these tactics. His campaign is certainly not about the issues. He says anything, contradicts what he's previously said or walks an oratorial tightrope in the hope to feed cake to all sides. As for me, my head is spinning; I have a headache; I don a neck brace before I watch TV (not really). The fascination with his eloquent preacherly orations have soured to grandiloquent bullshit. I don't believe any of it except that he loves adulation too much.

Just as the person in the opening scenario won't do the heavy lifting and endure the discomfort of rationally dealing with the real issues for whatever reason and opts for petty blow-offs, Obama continues to play the "I'm a star" game where "out-starring" his opponent is his answer. I find it deeply disrespectful to human being and anyone who actually cares and is interested in the workability of his ideas.

McCain is looking like a loyal friend/spouse while Obama galavants around the neighborhood looking for people who tell him he's cool.