VI. Grabbing a Senate Seat with a Little Help from his Trilateral Friends 261appeasement to the theoretical level of positive virtue. It was clear to many that Obama is a wimp
far worse than Bush the Elder, an incurable wuss and whiner. González senses the seriousness of
this problem and asks:
Why should we believe Obama has courage to bring about change? He wouldn’t have his
picture taken with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom when visiting San Francisco for a
fundraiser in his honor because Obama was scared voters might think he supports gay marriage
(Newsom acknowledged this to Reuters on January 26, 2007 and former Mayor Willie Brown
admitted to the San Francisco Chronicle on February 5, 2008 that Obama told him he wanted to
avoid Newsom for that reason.) (Matt Gonzalez, “The Obama Craze,” Counterpunch)
We need to point out here that anything impinging on homosexuality evokes palpable terror on
the part of Obama, quite evidently because of his own bisexual practices, as Larry Sinclair has
pointed out. Another case in point is the death penalty, which Obama supports, for obvious
demagogic reasons. A politician who was willing to sacrifice human lives as the rhetorical props
for his own ambition is beneath contempt, and this fits the anointed one:
Obama acknowledges the disproportionate impact the death penalty has on blacks, but still
supports it, while other politicians are fighting to stop it. (On December 17, 2007 New Jersey
Governor Jon Corzine signed a bill banning the death penalty after it was passed by the New
Jersey Assembly.)’ (Matt Gonzalez, “The Obama Craze,” Counterpunch)
So far, Obama has proven undecided about how to play the Mexophobia card. Here his
maneuvering is complicated by the contradictory situation in which he desperately needs Latinos to
vote for him, while these Hispanic voters have shown that they simply cannot stomach Obama and
are against him by at least a two to one margin.
On September 29, 2006, Obama joined Republicans in voting to build 700 miles of double
fencing on the Mexican border (The Secure Fence Act of 2006), abandoning 19 of his colleagues
who had the courage to oppose it. But now that he’s campaigning in Texas and eager to win over
Mexican-American voters, he says he’d employ a different border solution. (Matt Gonzalez, “The
Obama Craze,” Counterpunch)
Gonzalez is surely on firm ground when he concludes: ‘It is shocking how frequently and
consistently Obama is willing to subjugate good decision making for his personal and political
benefit.’ (Matt Gonzalez, “The Obama Craze,” Counterpunch)
If Nader and González can develop an anti-Obama critique of the necessary depth and intensity,
they will be performing an important public and patriotic service in helping to disorganize and
demoralize the left wing of Obama’s movement of fanatical cultists.
OBAMA OPPOSES CAPS ON CREDIT CARD INTEREST, FAVORS USURY
One of the issues which was raised against Obama during the course of the Democratic
candidates’ debates was his vote against a mandatory federal limit on credit card interest rates. It
was clear to everyone that the interest rate cap included in the bill in question was far too high, but
on the other hand passing the bill meant regulating credit card rates at the federal level for the first
time in living memory. Obama predictably voted in favor of maintaining limitless usury in the
tradition of Jeremy Bentham, and at the same time retreated behind a pedantic, professorial
smokescreen about how the legislation had failed to meet his high standards. One might say that