Obama: Are you SURE it's not about the money?

Matt Taibbi directs our attention to an anti-Obama piece by Frank Rich. It's an "explosive" piece, sayeth Matt -- and perhaps it is, in his world. In mine, and perhaps in yours, Rich offers mostly the same-old same-old about Obama's continuing affronts to his progressive base. Still, you ought to read it.

Here's a bit where Rich definitely kept his boom muffled:

The bigger political problem is that a far larger share of the American electorate views him as a tool of the very fat-cat elite that despises him. Given Obama’s humble background, his history as a mostly liberal Democrat, and his famous résumé as a community organizer, this would also seem a reach. But the president has no one to blame but himself for the caricature. While he has never lusted after money -- he’d rather get his hands on the latest novel by Morrison or Franzen -- he is an elitist of a certain sort. For all the lurid fantasies of the birthers, the dirty secret of Obama’s background is that the values of Harvard, not of Kenya or Indonesia or Bill Ayers, have most colored his governing style. He falls hard for the best and the brightest white guys.

Where to start? Yes, Obama is indeed a tool of the fat-cat elite that despises him. That's not a matter of perception: That's the way it fucking is.

The psychology of those ungrateful Wall Streeters is of some interest. If Obama and the Democrats had given them a proper flogging back in 2009, the bankers probably would have felt grateful when the pain stopped. "Your ass is nice and red now, bitch. Say 'Thank you, Daddy' and I'll give you a sip of water." You can't be a modern politician if you don't understand basic BDSM.

Everything else in this paragraph is wrong. Obama had very little discernible history as a liberal Democrat; image is not history. If Obama's background was so "humble," then why did he go to rich kid schools like Occidental and Columbia -- despite having (by his own admission) poor grades? I've never seen any indication that our President is a man of great intellectual attainment or even curiosity. He isn't as dumb as Dubya, thank you Jesus, but he never struck me as someone who would ever have anything interesting to say about...oh, I dunno. Free Will versus Determinism. Croce on art. Mahler's use of polyphony. Constitutional law. The transcendental cinema of Inoshira Honda. Anything.

What of the important matter of Obama's motivations? Rich says that the Devil's bag of gold held no allure for Barack "nose-in-a-book" Obama. I beg to differ. One name: Tony Rezko. Another name: Blago. Throughout 2008, I kept pointing to Evelyn Pringle's all-important series of articles which proved that every time Blagojevich got a shady pay-off, the same sinister forces also gave one to Obama.

Here's another name: Nadhmi Auchi, the U.K.-based tycoon who took over Iraq's cellphone service. From an earlier post:

Evelyn Pringle has written extensively about Auchi, an international crook with connections to Tony Rezko, Barack Obama's original patron. Nadhmi Auchi is the fellow who wired $3.5 million to Tony Rezko (who later claimed to be a near-pauper at the time) which allowed Rezko to buy that infamous property for Barack Obama. Nobody quite knows why Auchi forked over millions to help an Illinois "progressive" politician.

And here's Pringle:

US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald does not make a habit of destroying pubic officials by listing them in indictments for no reason and the only two political candidates identified as receiving campaign money from Operation Board Games kickback schemes are Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and the US Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama.

Instead of referring to Board Games as the “Rezko” case, before long the media will likely be calling it the “Blagojevich” case. However, because the governor did not become the presidential candidate, when the scandal is recorded in the history books it will be the “Barack Obama” case.

Curtain Time Part II will show that Obama was the inside guy in the Illinois senate as far as setting up the Health Facilities Planning Board to extort contributions from companies in exchange for the approval of applications to build medical facilities.

Obama was chairman of the Senate Health & Human Services Committee in January 2003. A few articles in the media have mentioned that Obama sat on a committee that reviewed matters related to the Planning Board in conjunction with the Governor's staff but none have discussed his integral part in getting the bill passed

A review of senate records from January 2003 to August 2003, shows Obama played a major role as chairman of that committee, in pushing through Senate Bill 1332, that led to the "Illinois Health Facilities Planning Act," which reduced the number of members on the Board from 15 to 9, making the votes much easier to rig.

State Senate Bill 1332 had no reason to exist except to enrich some fat cats. That bill was Obama's baby. The construction costs for those hospitals were padded. Kickbacks went to Blagojevich and Barack Obama. Nearly every time Blago got money, Obama got money. Less money, but still: Money.

And yet Dems like to think that the guy was and is impervious to the appeal of mere lucre. When will they learn? The problem with Obama is not a matter of pyschology or personality or strategy or weltanschauung or any of that other crap that liberal intellectuals love to talk about. The problem was always corruption.

Liberal intellectuals don't like to talk about corruption because it carries the reek of conspiracy theory. Well, what I'm talking about here has nothing to do with the nonsense one gets from Glenn Beck or Alex Jones. This is something real.

Obama came up in Chicago, for chrissakes. That should have been Clue One. When Obama becomes a private citizen in 2013, do you really think that the guy is going to be building homes for poor people?