Barack Obama: Another Elmer Gantry huckster

Barack Obama's autobiography, The Audacity of Hope, reveals yet another death penalty, warmongering Democrat, being run for president by the capitalist class to make sure the workingclass does not vote Red or Green. His hustle would make Elmer Gantry, the sleazy character in Upton Sinclair's novel of the same name, proud.

From: "Obama’s The Audacity of Hope: Portrait of a modern American political operative" by David Walsh, 2/14/07 at
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/feb2007/obam-f14.shtml

He loves the military and wants a larger military, proving he is not a peace candidate. He once called for bombing Iran, which Bush is about to do.

"In his book, he pursues this theme consistently. “I am a Democrat,” he tells his readers on page 10, “my views on most topics correspond more closely to the editorial pages of the New York Times than those of the Wall Street Journal,” and he goes on to enumerate some of the issues that make him a Democrat. “But,” he quickly adds, “that is not all that I am.... I believe in the free market, competition, and entrepreneurship, and think no small number of government programs don’t work as advertised.... I think America has more often been a force for good than for ill in the world; I carry few illusions about our enemies, and revere the courage and competence of our military"

He rejects the positive aspects of the 1960s, which were part of his mother's politics:
"Unpleasantly enough, in The Audacity of Hope, Obama’s ideological attack on New Deal liberalism takes the form of a rejection of his own mother’s outlook. He first explains his own “curious [i.e., essentially hostile] relationship to the sixties” and goes on to refer condescendingly to his mother as “an unreconstructed liberal” and to “her incorrigible, sweet-natured romanticism...her heart a time capsule filled with images of the space program, the Peace Corps and Freedom Rides, Mahalia Jackson and Joan Baez.”"

He praised the first Persian Gulf Massacre of 1990-1991:
"In other words, contrary to the wishful thinking of a sizeable number of left liberals, Obama is a garden variety imperialist politician, whose principal cause for anxiety about the Bush Iraq strategy is its abject failure. He endorses the first Gulf war, praising “George H. W. Bush and his team” for “engaging in the hard diplomatic work of obtaining most of the world’s support for our actions, and making sure our actions serve to further recognize international norms.”"

He is a staunch anti-communist, praising Reagan's capitalist program:
"Noting in passing the “bankruptcy of communism and socialism as alternative means of economic organization,” Obama argues for a greater role for government “in dealing with market failures,” while complimenting Reagan (again!) for his “central insight—that the liberal welfare state had grown complacent and overly bureaucratic.” What are we left with as a program? Not much."

His support for fascism and the death penalty are clear:
"From his friendly remarks about Bush, including an anecdote in which he shares a joke with the president and his passing (but significant) remark that “I assume he [Bush] and members of his Administration are trying to do what they think is best for the country,” to his attack on the Democratic Party for running away “from a debate about [moral] values,” to his convoluted support for the attacks on constitutional rights since September 11, 2001 (“I acknowledge that even the wisest president and most prudent Congress would struggle to balance the critical demands of our collective security against the equally compelling need to uphold civil liberties”), to his endorsement of the death penalty, Obama tacks most consistently toward the right."

At page 208 of this 375 page book, we see what a con artist Barack Obama really is, much like Elmer Gantry:
"A priceless passage in The Audacity of Hope occurs on page 208 when Obama recounts the day he was “finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church and be baptized.... [K]neeling beneath that cross on the South Side of Chicago, I felt God’s spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to his will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.”"

"Obama is probably not aware of the extent to which his account reminds one of the “conversion” of Elmer Gantry, womanizer and religious huckster, in Sinclair Lewis’s novel of the same name: “Oh, for the first time I know the peace of God! Nothing I have ever done has been right, because it didn’t lead to the way and the truth! Here I thought I was a good church-member, but all the time I hadn’t seen the real light. I’d never been willing to kneel down and confess myself a miserable sinner. But I’m kneeling now, and, oh, the blessedness of humility!” However, one must say that the fictional Gantry surpassed Obama in self-knowledge...he recognized that he was a fraud."

Only the socialist Peace & Freedom Party and Green Party run peace candidates and are the only 2 anti-death penalty parties on the ballot.