Can our government become irrevocably corrupt?
Bookworm on May 16 2012 at 10:33 am | Filed under: Barack Obama
Earl sent me a link to an article about the shameful corruption that characterizes Argentinian politics. Earl included in his email a reference to the Perons, whose malevolent aura still hangs over the Argentinian political scene:
Argentina’s government has become a massive racketeering operation. The list of international swindles the government has committed entirely openly is nauseating. The Obama administration recently suspended Argentina’s privileged developing-nation status because of its refusal to pay any arbitral awards owed to U.S. companies. That was hot on the heels of Argentina’s nationalizing a Spanish-controlled oil company and then laughing publicly at the Spaniards’ claimed valuation — another brazen swindle.
What happens in Argentina matters because the government is stealing from the American pocket. It also matters because it should make us think about government corruption.
We all know that power and money inevitably lead to corruption. In some nations, however, that corruption is endemic, while in others, America included, it periodically erupts, only to be stifled by our pleasantly Puritan political morality. Yes, it continues to exist as a low, buzzing background noise, but it is not what characterizes American government as a whole. After all, we recovered from the scandals of the Harding administration, and George Bush did a good job of pulling back from the Clinton corruption abyss.
I do wonder, though, how deeply the Obama tentacles are going to spread into the American body politic. He doesn’t just to garden-variety power and money corruption; he does hard-core Chicago-style corruption. To Obama, dishonest is the nature of politics, not just a byproduct.
Nothing better illustrates Obama’s view than an anecdote culled from Edward Klein’s new (and unauthorized) biography about Obama, The Amateur
He also had a run-in with Steven Rogers, a wealthy businessman who became the Gund Family Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.
Early in his campaign for the U.S. Senate he gave Mr Obama $3,000 and arranged for thousands more dollars to be donated to him on one condition: he come and speak at the school when he got elected.
After becoming a Senator Mr Obama is said to have gone back on his offer because he was too busy and told Mr Rogers: ‘Come on man, you should know better when politicians make promises’.
In a furious tirade Mr Rogers screamed at him: ‘You’re a dirty rotten m*****f*****. What kind of s*** are you trying to pull? F*** you, you big-eared m*****f*****.’
A year later Mr Obama finally showed up but by then Mr Rogers’ had all but written him off as a friend.
(Thanks to PowerLine for highlighting this passage.)
Back in 2008, a compliant media may have convinced the American public that Obama was a blank slate of uninterrupted purity, but one of the things that’s become clear during his 3+ years in the White House is that Obama has no honor: he will say anything to obtain a political or personal advantage. He’s also surrounded himself with people who have exactly the same attitude. They reserve a tight, Mafia-style loyalty for each other, and everyone else (including the American people as a whole) is treated with contempt, disdain and dishonesty.
We know what Obama is. There are no more surprises, just ugly details. But the important question is whether Obama will leave one more dirty mark on America, to go along with a damaged economy, massive debt, weakened national security, etc. Will he have made corruption a permanent, inevitable, and pervasive part of American politics?
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14 Responses to “Can our government become irrevocably corrupt?”
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“We know what Obama is.” I wish that were so, Book. I recognized BO immediately for what he was, but I have been living in the Chicago area for a long time.
I cannot tell you how many people that I have spoken with that cannot even begin to comprehend (or refuse to comprehend) the type of corruption that BO embodies. It is just totally out of their experience bubble.
That ignorance, more than anything, concerns me in this coming election.
We really are standing at the edge of a minefield. Assuming Obama is repudiated at the polls in November, and we pull back a bit from the brink of disaster he has led us to, what then? Should a victorious President Romney begin looking into Obama’s massive corruption and subversion? Will there be an investigation, both by Congress and the Attorney General? Will the scope of the damage Obama has inflicted be revealed to the citizenry?
I have my doubts. The mainstream media, even in its death throes, will fling lie after lie at the public, not only to defend Obama but to incite violence. Obama’s constituencies will be in agony, and like the MSM will lash out wildly. I don’t think you can underestimate the gullibility and ignorance of college students or the majority of black Americans when it comes to believing a leftist narrative about Obama and the “real” explanation that would be offered for his ouster. Can we risk a race or generational war?
That’s the question the left’s hardcore elements are asking themselves. Will conservatives push the issue of Obama’s corruption? If so, how hard and how far? If the left succeeds in fomenting civil war, can it win? Remember, winning for the left doesn’t necessarily mean actual physical or political control. Simple destruction of the republic will suffice—ruined economies, anarchy, civil unrest, fragmentation, and massive expansion of gang/union turfs will all work splendidly to complete Obama’s vision.
Robert Bork was right: we really are slouching toward Gomorrah, aren’t we!
I actually believe the US is self cleaning. We’ve had corruption before. And it is a bit worse now with a lot of it induced via regulation, which Congress seems loath to bring under control. But, there may be a good deal of bright lights searching out the corners once Obama is out.
I don’t think they’ll go after Obama himself, to many vested in the first black President thing. However, if I was one of his minions, i’d be concerned about the investigations that will ensue to clear the decks but also from the Left to explain Obama’s loss.
I think that could be better, with a bit of effort, the corruption fight could spread beyond the official office into the corrupt organizations they came from, supported or funneled money to.
And don’t think there aren’t investigations that were stopped that have evidence piled up in a closet waiting for the go ahead.
Danny, I read your comment so quickly that I thought you said, “slouching toward gonorrhea”. Then again, not much of a difference between a STD and the LEFT and they’re both transmitted the same way.
Charles, I agree with your assessment and I don’t see a course correction even “if” Romney is in the WH in January. I do, however, see nothing but misery if {insert Mr. Roger’s observatons here} if the POS is reelected. Maybe, it gets down to how much any election can mitigate the level of corruption. DC is flea-infested and short of sending in a fleet of Terminix exterminators, raising the buildings and their inhabitants, I suspect that we will be scratching our heads and body parts cursing the little buggers into the next election cycle.
JKB, I agree with you. Nobody is going to go after Obama. However, we need to derail the inevitable attempts by Obama and his supporters (esp. Queen Michelle) to create a “Camelot” mythology around Obama as well as dismantle the webs of institutional corruption sown by his minions.
I propose that the best thing that could be done is to investigate all the abuses and shine the bright light of exposure on to them, so that they can forever be recorded for posterity and that those that willingly or unwillingly supported this be made aware that we know who they are and what they did.
Let them be humiliated by the shame of history.
SADIE….ick!
Fortunately, in the Internet Era we have the “People’s Smithsonian,” namely the tens of thousands of hours of videos and TV programs that show the idiocy of the Obamaites and their enablers. It must be very frustrating for the left to fling feces and have it almost instantly fly back in their faces.
Danny #6:
Michelle Malkin did just such a thing with her book, Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies, published in 2009.
I haven’t noticed any difference in the outrage of the general population.
What else can we do?
“People’s Smithsonian”
I LOVE IT!
If the LEft’s current legislature passes, in another 10 years they will own the internet and be able to physically raid anyone that steps out of line on the internet, using unmanned drones even.
Ron19 – you may be right, but I suspect that the solution is resolution – keep these books coming!
I noticed the same trend with Clinton, whereby you had devastating books that revealed his sale of top U.S. technologies (including nuclear warhead reentry capabilities) to the Chinese in exchange for campaign cash (Kenneth Timmerman’s “The Selling out of America”) or the travesty of the impeachment trial, whereby the Senate (incl. Republicans) deliberately ignored the FBI dossier evidence of Juanita Broderick’s rape…all in order to keep-up appearances (Democrat House Investigative Counsel David Schippers’ “Sellout”).
However, as Charles The Hammer, these books are out there and, one day (soon, I hope), historians will revisit them.
Congress, though, will need to do its part.
Book says:
> We know what Obama is. There are no more surprises, just ugly details.
Book, it isn’t that you spoke poetically or with grandeur. But that one short sentence is as real as real can get in describing Obama. It has the virtue of perfect, ABSOLUTELY PERFECT truth. Spoken – or written – with clarity.
We know what Obama is.
There are no more surprises,
just ugly details.
Thirteen words that speak the truth, as if they were shouted from the highest mountaintop.
It will take time, but yes, eventually Barack Obama will be regarded as among the worst of Presidents. Definitely in the bottom ten. Likely in the bottom five. But it’ll take time.
Corruption and massive government spending and debt will cement his place at the bottom – but not until we emerge from the horror that is coming (and what America will look like upon that eventual emergence, I have no idea.) We will have go through the nadir of this hell we are creating before the evaluation of Obama’s contribution to it becomes honest.
Only after the emergence will the leftist policies that drove The Fall be blamed to their just extent. Obama is the poster child for these policies. He is their worst offender by far, and no Democrat President that follows him in the next fifty years will be allowed to be as monstrously terrible as he’s been allowed to be. The Democrats won’t even nominate a candidate as bad as Obama – let alone win with one. This is as bad as it gets.
Blacks will eventually evaluate Barack Obama honestly as well – but only after we’ve elected the first honorable, non-corrupt, effective black President. Once we’ve had a good, strong, admirable Black president as our Chief Executive, blacks will finally feel free to judge Barack Obama as the miserable failure that he is. Until then, though, they will deny. But in the end Barack Obama will take his justified place at the bottom of the list, even with blacks.
People in the future will ask how, in the modern Information Age, it was possible to elect such an unworthy, terrible President. The answer for that – and the blame – will fall upon the Mainstream Media. Their part in all of this will become brutally clear to all, in retrospect. These are the dark days for mainstream media, and their reputation will be toast.
I think we’ll all still be alive when this honest evaluation is cemented. But it IS going to be awhile.
I wouldn’t bet on that if I were you, Book. The Left always has surprises. In the same fashion that evil will always be evil.