A Look at the Surreal Health Care Debate…Dr. Weil, A Tea Party Guy, Newt Gingrich and One Unholy Media Stew

~~By InsightAnalytical-GRL

“A Look at the Surreal Healthcare Debate” …well, not by me, but one offered up by Thursday (9/10)  night’s group of cable ghouls that I happened to see over the span of a few short minutes.

For some unknown reason I turned on CNN and caught a bit of Larry King.  Dr. Andrew Weil was on, blasting the same-old, same-old of the current health care “reform” efforts.  While the challenges are correctly recognized, the solutions are within the same model we have now. Weil is usually quite sanguine, but Thursday night in his own quiet way, he seemed pretty frustrated over the structure of our non-system. He predicts that whatever is done will fail, because costs won’t come down.  He thinks that high-tech stuff is way overused and he especially is irate over the drug advertising on TV.  We are the only country that allows this and it makes the physician more prone to dishing out the drugs when a patient comes in with a request rather than time spent on real discussion with the patient.  He wants that advertising stopped now!  He likens our ties to Big Pharma as being like the role of Wall Street in our lives.

He stated that places like Germany, Australia, and Norway are places where health care seems to satisfy people (Germany and Australia are part public and part private), but they, too, face the same problems of rising costs.  He mentioned that in Germany and other places, however, people seem to be willing to learn to “take care of themselves,”– they can take care of their own rashes and colds without running to the doctor, he said.

Basically, it seems Weil wants a system where doctors really take the time to know their patients and use modern medicine as well as tried and true remedies and new alternative approaches. He hope kids who are being exposed to new ideas will pass them to their parents. He figures we’ll see a different sort of  person coming into the system to be doctors if the approach to medicine changes, people who will have a real committment to healing  and dealing with patients differently if the attitude about health care changes. He sees some movement among some doctors toward this now. The system currently is all about insurance payments, not medicine, and a fear of liability suits, hence the overuse of reapeated/overkill diagnostic tests.  He strongly believes in preventative medicine, in getting people to understand how they can help themselves in terms of diet and stress management so they stay healthier longer.

He also pointed out that while we hear about eating more fruits and vegetables, they seem to be the most expensive foods, as industry is pushing cheap, processed stuff  full of things that are government subsidized to keep them cheap…all the sugar– corn syrups, fructose, etc.– and oils…which is diametrically opposed to what the message to eat better is saying.

Part of the show involved an interview with the guy leading the “Tea Party Express.”  This guy was revolting to me.  King asked if there was anything in the current reform bills that this guy approved of.  NO.  Well, King asked about the move to end the “pre-existing condition” stranglehold.  NO, was again the answer.  King then posed a hypothetical question…If you wife had a health problem and couldn’t get insurance, would that change his mind?

Well, this BOZO said NO, because he was SURE in the free market there would be someone to write a policy for her!  I guess it was that idiot Roland Martin (?) who actually said the correct thing, that there would be no one there to write a policy for her, that could be easily affordable.  On this I totally agree…this guy, who is leading an awful lot of lemmings these days, has no clue.  Heck, if you’re on disability you pay DOUBLE what the normal Medicare supplement costs!   (I know this from personal experience.) Has this guy ever applied for a policy in the open market with a serious precondition?  The waiting times to be covered, if it’s even allowed, are daunting and the premiums are sky high!  And, not all companies offer the same options. So, yeah, MAYBE she could get a policy, but if she could, it wouldn’t be cheap OR offer immediate coverage in most cases. He’d have to look long and hard. Very hard…

His glibness really bugged me.  It annoys me that that people like him are uninformed or so wedded to their own ideology and are leading lots of people who are also uninformed.  The folks who follow the leaders are often too busy to keep informed or really don’t have the capacity to understand a lot of what’s going on, and are so vulnerable to being fooled and ultimately lead toward their own destruction.  This guy sounded like a Republican or Libertarian, but the key point was he was so rigid. Had the compassion of a a robot…Frankly, I saw the two sides of the same coin (Obama/Organized “Opposition” leader  = same crap) and the pied piper mentality that has befallen this country. The  often-misquoted Janus myth really doesn’t describe this situation, but the visual seems to help create the mood…

Janus

That’s not to say some Tea Party folks aren’t well-informed…many are and many are Independents or ticked-off Democrats who are along for the ride for other reasons than Republican reasons.  But, I’m so uneasy about hooking into people who are so against any change at all.  I wish there were people without long-term agendas doing the leading…and when I say “long-term agendas” I mean the Republican agenda which would love to ditch the security net as quickly as possible or take back ANY restraints on the health industry/insurers.  The leader of the Tea Party Express, along with Glenn Beck fall into this category.

After this little segment of insanity, I then caught a bit of Greta van Susteren who was chatting with Newt Gingrich.  Greta seems to have come completely on board with the FOX stance of complete negativity.  There she sat with old Newt who had the GALL to say that we need more “scientific reasearch” along with the standard GOP stuff about taxes, more freedom to sell policies across state lines, etc., which do squat to really reform much of anything.   Let’s see…didn’t Bush CUT research funds to the bone????

Well, yes, he did without much upset from Republicans, who were also busy doing the cliffhanger bit on paying doctors who participated in Medicare. Dr. Weil mentioned how far back we’ve been set back by this and even referred to the “religious” groups (and Bush) who howled about stem cell research. For Weil to get into that hornet’s nest was pretty surprising, but, as I said before, Weil seemed pretty pissed off in a quiet way.  Weil is grateful that there’s been some restoration of funding for research, but I don’t think he’ll be looking to Newt and the Republicans to come in and do MORE when they retake the government.  Would you??

So there you go…Greta sits there and doesn’t challenge old Newt. I’ve noticed that she NEVER puts anything into context…that lawyer’s brain of hers is permanently atrophied, it seems.  I used to have some hope that she could put together SOMETHING informative, but she’s gone downhill and spends way too much time on missing children cases…

And, so,  people like Newt say things that are LUDICROUS and the Tea Party Express guy with the stick up his ass (looks like a blond, ex-army guy or something, with a strange look in his eyes) leads the way to…WHERE?

Which is why I prefer to watch “You Are What You Eat” on BBC America…at least it provides some visual shock value in terms of the junk people consume, some discussion about the effects on health, and some inspiration that things can actually CHANGE, one unhealthy person at  a time…

“The Bailout” by Cartoonists

~~By InsightAnalytical-GRL

Grail Guardian shipped us a bunch of cartoons on the subject of  THE BAILOUT and the general state of the .  Here are a couple and more will be sprinkled here in the future…Cartoonists DO say it best!! Thanks, GG!!

China, the Treasury, and Real Estate (As in the New World Trade Center); Cross-Pollination:The New America Foundation/Council of Foreign Relations

Editor’s Note: Last week’s post, Russia-China Proposals; “Rebalancing” Global Currency Reserves: Why the U.S. Can’t Take Anything for Granted Re: the Dollar, inspired American Lassie to develop a few observations/opinions:

~~By American Lassie

China won’t be buying any more Treasury Bonds, for a while at least, because the yield is too low. Not enough bang for the buck. The Federal Reserve has been buying Treasury Bonds like a drunken sailor for a reason. To keep the yield low. They don’t want China to buy any more bonds, IMO. China has too great a strangle hold on America as it is. Bernanke and Geithner don’t want the people of America to buy bonds right now, another reason for keeping the yield low.

It is my opinion, and many people will differ with me on this, that Geithner and Bernanke want Americans to invest in stocks to help bolster Wall Street and the banks, and to buy, buy, buy durable goods to help move the economy along.

The plan being that if the banks are strengthened and do what they have been given all this bail-out money to do, they will lend more freely to make it possible for the people to buy these durable goods– cars, washing machines, refrigerators, household furniture, etc.  If they free up the money needed by business to continue producing these goods, there might be a slim chance that this thing could turn around. But if the banks continue to put the bail-out money where they have been putting it, it will be the same old same old.

It stands to reason that Americans won’t buy Treasury Bonds with such a low yield, especially when they have so little faith in their government.

***

China may not be in the market for any more Treasury Bonds because of the low yield, or the fear that the large investment they already have in the notes is losing their vallue. But this hasn’t prevented their continued buying and leasing of U.S. real estate.

The Vantone Industrial Co., Ltd, a Chinese real estate group has just become the first commercial tenant of the still under construction skyscraper to replace the Twin Towers destroyed on 9/11.

They have taken a 20-year lease on the top floors of the 70 floor building to begin when the building is completed. It is projected to be completed in 2013.

The floors 64 through 69 will be known as the China Center. Wonder what the 70th floor penthouse will be used for? Any guesses?

Vantone Industrial provided the Port Authority with a $10 million dollar letter of credit. What goes on here?

No more Treasury notes, but a real estate coompany establishing itself in the new trade center. This is indeed food for thought. Know thine enemy. Our intelligence people had better be on hand constantly while that 70th floor is under construction, and after, IMO.

Our government notes aren’t so valuable right now, but the soil of the United States is still coveted by many. What better way to keep your ears peeled than to set up shop on the top floors of the tallest building in the city.

http://www.costar.com/News/Article.aspx?…&ref=1&src=rss

***

Regarding the 1st Bernard Schwartz Economic Policy Symposium sponsored by the New America Foundation (See this post for more details: A Reminder: Live Streaming of the First “Bernard L. Schwartz Economic Policy Symposium” Today (3/26) With a Rather Interesting Group & Agenda [To End “Fumbling” on Economic Policy]):

It’s important to note: “The Honorable Laura Tyson holds the Chair in Global Management and Public Policy, at the Haass School of Business at the U of C at Berkley.” (Haas being Richard Haass, the President of  The Council on Foreign Relations [CFR].)

I will point you to an article, (that I was saving with other research for a possible post), that I think you will want to read. It’s a short article but it is very informative.

http://www.crossroad.to/Quotes/globalism/2008/trends.htm

Let’s take a closer look at THE NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION…

On the matter of the “New America Foundation,” don’t get your hopes up people because this is nothing new.  It’s like the message we used to get continuously during the commercials in the old time soap operas.  “Duz does everything”- “New and Improved” – “Better than Ever”, the blurbs go on and on, but we still got the same old soap only in a different box.  The primary drivers in this group are the same re-cycled Democrats who brought you Hopey Changey politics this past election cycle.

LAURA TYSON, the Chair of Global Management and Public Policy, Haass School of Business, Univ. of Calif. at Berkeley, has an impressive resume and there is no doubt that she is an extremely intelligent economist who need not take a back seat to anyone in her field. She was top economic advisor to former President Bill Clinton.  She was head of the National Economic Council and Chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors. In fact, her skill and expertise, in my opinion, played a major part in the financial surplus that Bill Clinton left to the American people when he left office.

I admire Laura Tyson greatly as an economist, but the fact that she is a member of The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) as are the people with whom she associates, disturbs me more than a little. Her association with Richard Haas, President of the CFR bothers me a lot.

The following was written on April 2, 1997 by Fernando Quintero, a reporter for the Rocky Mountain News in Colorado. Mr. Quintero spent a number of years working in higher education. He was a writer and editor for the University of California at Berkeley Office of Public Affairs.

“Over the past four years nearly a quarter of the University’s (U of Calif. at Berkeley) economics faculty at the Business School and the College of Letters and Sciences has taken leave to go to Washington.  No other university outside the Ivy League  has provided the White House with so much economic brain power.”

-snip-

The fact is, a Berkeley Mafia does exist and Tyson is the Godmother.”
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/1997/0402/tyson.html

BERNARD SCHWARTZ, along with Tyson, is also a member of The Council on Foreign Relations. He is chairman and CEO of BLS Investments, LLC. His concern over our deteriorating infrastructure is legitimate.  This has been his baby for a long time, but as in the case of Tyson his connections are to be questioned.  Mr Schwartz is a very benevolent donor to the Democratic Party.

GEORGE SOROS is another member of the “New America Foundation”.  Mr Soros is a leading figure in the CFR and close with Henry Kissinger (who once made the statement that Jimmy Carter isn’t the President of the United States, the Trilateralist Commission is, and I am the Trilateralist Commission). Soros is also a confidante of Zbigniew Brzezinski and George Soros is also a partner in the Carlyle Group.  He is truly a busy and involved individual.

“The Carlyle Group specializes in seizing control of aerospace and defense contractors and then strong-arming contracts out of the Department of Defense.”

-snip-

“Shortly after September 11, George Soros developed a strategy how to manipulate messages within the media.”…
http://911review.org/Sept11Wiki/CarlyleGroup.shtml
http://911review.org/Sept11Wiki/Soros,George.shtml

It is my personal opinion that George Soros is a very evil man, and anything he touches smells of fire and brimstone.  This nefarious creature has caused untold damage not only to the United States of America, but to other countries.  He is evil personified and he does not wish well for our country and any group that he is connected with, in my opinion, is just as dirty as he is.

I love my country very much, my ancestors fought and died for this country, and to see this foreign-born billionaire, who was able to come to this country and make a fabulous fortune and then turn around and try to ruin us, makes my blood boil.  He is  one of the main players in the quest to level this country to third world status enabling himself and his cohorts to pronounce a New World Order.  He recently said something to the effect that this crisis has satisfied his life’s ambition.  What kind of devil makes it his life’s ambition to see people out of work, losing their homes, going hungry etc.?  Old Beelzebub must be down there dancing a jig.

“COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, a U.S. think tank.  Some CFR critics say the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement were all arranged and approved by the CFR and the insiders.  And that each one has played on a kind of reverse psychology:
The more societal unrest there is , the more people will turn (sic) its govenment for control, eventually becoming so desperate for order that they grant their government more and more power over every citizen’s private life.”

-snip-

“Some of their directors hold important positions in many other worldwide connected companies or government related institutions:  John Deutch, Richard Holbrooke, Theodore Sorenson, George Soros, or David Rockefeller.”
http://911review.org/Sept11Wiki/Cfr.shtml

So you can readily see why I think the New America Foundation is nothing more than the CFR.  New and improved?  Not at all.  This is the same old bunch with the same old ambitions.  Just using a new package to try to fool us old dumb citizens who they think will swallow anything.  Not anymore, Buster.  The cataracts are off our eyes and the wax is out of our ears and we have a steel rod up our spines and we say to you – fool me once, shame on you – fool me twice, shame on me.

No sale,  Mr. Soros and Ms. Tyson. Money is so tight right now that I’m mighty particular what I spend it on and your lying, treacherous words don’t fit into my budget.  Take your global philosophy and eat it– I’m not buying and I’ll bet no other thinking and reading American will either.

Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-NY: “Fighting Dem”? Or Just Blowing Smoke for the Folks Back Home? (Guess…)

~~By InsightAnalytical-GRL

Yesterday, it really looked like we had a “Fighting Dem” as Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-NY went after the SEC over its failure to uncover the Madoff Ponzi scheme, didn’t it?  Ackerman is known for having a gift for making acerbic comments…but how much fight is really there?

First a bit of history on Ackerman. He was a supporter of Hillary Clinton during the primaries last year, endorsing her in late January 2008. On June 5, just a couple of days before Clinton suspended her campaign early on June 7, he endorsed Obama. (There were others who waited another day, by the way. Full list of who did what, when here.)

He showed real signs of life during the Caroline Kennedy/NY Senate saga. He was the first to question her qualifications with comments like these:

From the NY Post (December 11, 2008):

Rep. Gary Ackerman of Queens, a 25-year veteran of Congress, declared in a radio interview: “I don’t know what Caroline Kennedy‘s qualifications are.”

“Except that she has name recognition, but so does J.Lo,” Ackerman continued on Steve Malzberg’s radio show on WOR. “I wouldn’t make J.Lo the senator unless she proved she had great qualifications, but we haven’t seen them yet.”

He took the obligatory hit at Sarah Palin on Face the Nation as things moved forward (December 22, 2008):

WASHINGTON – A Democratic congressman compared Caroline Kennedy to Sarah Palin, saying the would-be senator hasn’t proved she has the “guts and the gumption” to succeed Hillary Rodham Clinton. Rep. Gary Ackerman of Roslyn Heights said on CBS‘ “Face the Nation” yesterday that the Kennedy legend and connections won’t be enough to make her a successful senator if Gov. David A. Paterson appoints her to the U.S. Senate.

So, the fireworks yesterday at the Madoff hearing seem to be pretty typical of Ackerman’s style. (The video at his website is a shorter version of this clip, without the reference to “dung”):

One thing to be aware of is the fact that a lot of the money that has disappeared once belonged to a lot of folks from Ackerman’s district, so Ackerman’s umbrage will certainly play well at home!

Kanjorski-led panel reviews $50 billion fraud scheme

By MARCY GORDON
Associated Press Writer

Published: Monday, January 05, 2009
Updated: Monday, January 5, 2009 6:28 PM EST

WASHINGTON — Republican and Democratic House members said Monday that the alleged $50 billion fraud involving Wall Street figure Bernard Madoff reflects deep, systemic problems at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

SNIP

The SIPC shortfall will only worsen the distrust of investors, already deepened by the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, said Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y. His district encompasses the affluent north shore of Long Island, home to many of Madoff’s alleged victims

(Note the reference to the Great Depression, the party line these days as part of the “fear stimulus” being used to pass the pork-laden “stimulus”  package.)

But beneath the brash, confrontational style that plays well on TV, we see a typical Democrat who’s sticking with the crowd:

From November 19th, 2008:

Think Progress » Rep. Ackerman: Auto Execs’ Private Jet Travel Like Guy At ‘The Soup Kitchen In High Hat And Tuxedo’.

But by December 5, 2008:

Automakers’ fourth-and-long plea

Last Updated: December 5, 2008: 8:06 PM ET

Even Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y., who was the first to raise the issue of corporate jets at the earlier hearing, seemed more open to helping the auto industry in his opening comment this go round.

“One does not always have a second chance to make a first impression. Welcome back,” Ackerman said. “The last time you didn’t get it. By coming up with this plan, maybe you do.”

From September 11, 2008:

Mortgage Mess Unleashes Chain Of Lawsuits

By Tomoeh Murakami Tse and Carrie Johnson

Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, September 11, 2007; 10:34 AM

Credit agencies, which graded billions of dollars worth of mortgage-backed securities as safe investments throughout the recent housing boom, are also feeling the heat.

Members of Congress are calling for hearings and oversight, saying the rating agencies are conflicted because they are paid by investment banks that issue the securities the agencies rate. Institutional investors accuse the rating firms of being slow to downgrade securities.

“Essentially, the originators and credit raters shoved enough pigs and laying hens in with the beef herd that investors expecting prime ribs on their silver platter and money in their pocket ended up with pork ribs on their paper plate and egg on their face,” Rep. Gary L. Ackerman (D-N.Y.) said in an opening statement during a Financial Services Committee hearing last week.

Nice, but what was 13 term Congressman Ackerman doing when there were calls for “oversight” when Democrats took charge of Congress a couple of years ago?  I don’t see any mention of a crusade for oversight in Ackerman’s bio and list of accomplishments at his website. I don’t have the time or inclination at this point to see how he voted when the whole business of pushing bad loans was originally put together way back when, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Ackerman went along with it all then…(See his new legislation introduced January 27, below.)

And he’s right in line with all the rest on other aspects of current economic issues (Also, seee voting pattern, below):

LI House delegation to back $700B bailout

BY JENNIFER MALONEY |jennifer.maloney@newsday.com

September 29, 2008

“We, the taxpayers, will get back our investment,” said Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-Roslyn Heights). “Any shortfall where we don’t get our money back is going to be paid for by Wall Street.”

Really???

Ackerman Running for Re-election to Congress

Manhasset Press  October 24, 2008

Following his interview with the Great Neck Record, Congressman Ackerman was to head to Washington to vote on the “bailout.” With the financial crisis at the forefront, he was quick to note: “We have to correct the errors of the past.” He emphasized that the country must “restore confidence and put liquidity in the market” so that “people can pay for education, pay bills, pay mortgages, run businesses …”

With his background on financial service committees, the congressman emphasized that the country “must come up with solutions even before a crisis.”

Congressman Ackerman told how he had put in financial legislation even before this current financial crisis came to a head. His bill calls for credit agencies to be required to put like loans in a package, and prohibiting them from “rating what is not ratable.” And he emphasized that “We must hold credit agencies responsible for what they do.”

Congressman Ackerman termed this “common sense regulation.”

Blah, blah, blah…”correct the errors of the past”…Not without oversight, I’m afraid.

And in the run-up to the now “Bad Bank” which is in the works, we saw how Ackerman was already on board:

Rep. Steve LaTourette seeks help from President Bush to stop National City sale

Posted by Sabrina Eaton, Stephen Koff and Teresa Dixon Murray/ Plain Dealer Reporters November 18, 2008 09:51AM

Other committee members grilled Paulson on his failure to use money in the $700 billion bailout package to reduce mortgage foreclosures. Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the committee, put in the hearing record a letter from Rep. Dennis Kucinich in which the Cleveland Democrat urged Congress to withhold more TARP money from the Treasury Department because of its failure to act on foreclosures.

New York Democratic Rep. Gary Ackerman called the Treasury Department’s decision to avoid buying troubled mortgages from banks, as it originally promised, “the second-largest bait-and-switch scheme that history has ever seen, second only to the reasons given us to vote for the invasion of Iraq.”

Paulson said that the money had to be used to prevent a collapse in the financial system and that the Treasury Department is still looking for ways to reduce foreclosures.

Rep. Ackerman can display all the “righteous anger” that he wants for the TV cameras and the folks back home, but I have to ask–isn’t he really just part of “diversion” along with all the huffing and puffing about capping executive salaries?  The Madoff  issue is important, of course, but Ackerman’s brash style seems to be only style when it comes to many economic issues and, like others,  late to the party with his protests.

Eleven Democrats in the House voted against the stimulus bill…you won’t find Ackerman’s name among them.

***

ADDENDA

Rep. Gary Ackerman’s Official Website biography

According to GovTrack.us, Ackerman is a “rank and file” Democrat; OpenCongress cites a 98% record of voting with party (Votes most often with Ellen Tauscher, D-CA)

Rep. Ackerman introduced this bill on January 27, 2009 Source: GovTrack.us

H. R. 710

To secure additional Tier I capital for the United States banking system from parties other than the Federal Government by providing authority to the Secretary of the Treasury to guaranty certain new preferred stock investments made by public pensions acting in a collective fashion, and for other purposes.

If you have a public pension, watch this bill:

(2) INSTITUTION ELIGIBLE FOR INVESTMENTS- Only an investment in preferred stock that meets the requirements of subsection (e) and has been issued by a financial institution which meets the definition of a qualifying financial institution under the TARP Capital Purchase Program established under the authority of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 may be treated as an eligible investment for purposes of this Act.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-710

“THE ILLUSION OF BARACK OBAMA”…A Must-Read from The Australian

~~Posted by InsightAnalytical-GRL

Back in August I posted a report on my dealings with a Radio Australia talk show host named Phillip Adams who also does a column for The Australian.  His post was really a testament to the aging, radical crowd that sneers at anything that’s “not Obama.” See  I Write to an Aussie Talk Show Host About Obama, He Gets “Inspired,” Writes a Column in “The Australian” (Mentioning Me), and Then….

Well, The Australian printed a piece in May that offsets the Adam Phillips piece and doesn’t mince words.

A commenter called “Woman Voter” writing in a thread at No Quarter suggested that a post be done on this piece, so I’m going to pick up on it. It’s worth a read and I am posting it in its entirety.

The piece, entitled The Illusion that is Barack Obama, was written by Fred Siegel “a contributing editor of City Journal. He teaches at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.” City Journal is an “urban-policy magazine” put out by the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think-tank. Siegel has written other pieces for CJ on the subject of Obama, all questioning his candidacy (just search “Fred Siegel” at the site and you’ll come up with a list of articles).  In case you’re wondering what became of Judith Miller, she’s listed as an editor; but don’t be put off by the conservative nature of this publicaton…the pieces on Obama are worth looking at.

This particular piece is s a litany of the flaws in the Barack Obama candidacy, a compendium which gives a picture of Obama that is easy to absorb. The reader might not agree with all the premises offered, but there’s enough here to make it a worthwhile read.

The Illusion that is Barack Obama

Fred Siegel | May 05, 2008

POLITICAL campaigning necessarily produces a wide gap between words and deeds. This is the price of bringing together a broad coalition with disparate interests. All effective politicians are at times authentically insincere or sincerely inauthentic. Exaggeration, embellishment, overstatement, doubletalk, deception and lies presented as metaphorical truths are the order of the day.

So, of course, Barack Obama is no different. He exaggerates the credit he deserves for a limited piece of ethics-reform legislation. He embellishes when he presents himself as having had a consistent record on the Iraq war when in fact he’s done a fair amount of zigzagging.

He engages in doubletalk when, on free trade and Iraq, he tells the yokels one thing and the policy people another. He overstates when he presents his minimal accomplishments in the Illinois Senate as proof of his stature. He engages in systematic deception when he says he doesn’t take money from lobbyists.

He presents a lie as metaphorical truth when he says it was the 1965 bloody Sunday attacks on peaceful civil rights protesters in Selma, Alabama, that inspired his parents to marry. (They had been married for years already.)

All of this is unappealing, but also unexceptional. What makes it different is that there’s not just a gap but a chasm between his actions and his professed principles, which would normally kill a candidacy. And because his deeds are so few, the disparity is all the more salient.

Obama, far more than the others, is the “judge me by what I say and not what I do” candidate. He wants to be the conscience of the country without necessarily having one himself.

The disparity between Obama’s rhetoric of transcendence and his conventional Chicago racial and patronage politics is a leitmotiv of his political career. In New York, politicians (Al Sharpton excepted) are usually forced to pay at least passing tribute to universal principles and the ideal of clean government.

But Chicago, until recently a city of Lithuanians, blacks and Poles governed by Irishmen on the patronage model of the Italian Christian Democrats, is the city of political and cultural tribalism.

Blacks adapted to the tribalism and the corrupt patronage politics that accompanied it. Historically, one of the ironies of Chicago politics is that the clean-government candidates have been the most racist, while those most open to black aspirations have been the most corrupt. When the young Jesse Jackson received his first audience with then mayor Richard Daley Sr – impervious to the universalism of the civil rights movement in its glory – offered him a job as a toll-taker. Jackson thought the offer demeaning but in time adapted.

In Chicago, racial reform has meant that the incumbent mayor, Richard M. Daley, has been cutting blacks in on the loot. Louis Farrakhan, Jackson, Jeremiah Wright and Obama are all, in part, the expression of that politics. It hasn’t always worked for Chicago, which, under the pressure of increasing taxes to pay for bloated government, is losing its middle class. But it has served the city’s political class admirably.

For all his Camelot-like rhetoric, Obama is a product, in significant measure, of the political culture that Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass described: “We’ve had our chief of detectives sent to prison for running the Outfit’s (the mob’s) jewellery-heist ring. And we’ve had white guys with Outfit connections get $100 million in affirmative action contracts from their drinking buddy, Mayor Richard Daley … That’s the Chicago way.”

At no point did Obama, the would-be saviour of US politics, challenge this corruption, except for face-saving gestures as a legislator. He was, in his own Harvard law way, a product of it.

Why, you may ask, did the operators of Chicago’s political machine support Obama? Part of the answer was given long ago by the then boss of Chicago, Jake Arvey.

When asked why he made Adlai Stevenson – a man, as with Obama, more famous for speeches than for accomplishments – his party’s gubernatorial candidate in 1948, Arvey is said to have replied that he needed to “perfume the ticket”.

Obama first played a perfuming role as a state senator. His mentor, Emil Jones, the machine-made president of the Senate, allowed him to sponsor a minor ethics bill. In return, Obama made sure to send plenty of pork to Jones’s district. When asked about pork-barrel spending, Jones famously replied: “Some call it pork; I call it steak.”

Obama repaid the generosity. When he had a chance to back clean Democratic candidates for president of the Cook County board of supervisors and Illinois governor, he stayed with the allies of the Outfit. The gubernatorial candidate he backed, Rod Blagojevich, is under federal investigation, in part because of his relationship with Tony Rezko, the man who helped Obama buy his house.

The Chicago way has delivered politically for Obama even this year. Ninety per cent of his popular-vote lead over Hillary Clinton comes from Illinois, and two-thirds of that 90 per cent comes just from Cook County.

Some of this advantage came from the efforts of Obama’s political ally, the flame-throwing reverend James Meeks, a political force in his own right. Meeks, who mocks black moderates as “niggers”, is an Illinois state senator, the pastor of a mega-church and a strong supporter of Jackson’s powerful political operation, which has put its vote-pulling muscle squarely behind the Obama campaign. It was only with Obama’s remark about bitter, white, working-class, small-town voters that we saw his difficulties appealing beyond the machine’s reach. He won his US Senate race in 2004 not only because his opponents self-destructed but also because of the machine’s ability to deliver votes.

In Pennsylvania, he has lacked such assistance and the campaigning has not gone nearly so well. First, Obama pretended to be a tenpin bowler and scored a 37. Then, appearing before a supposedly closed San Francisco audience, he complained that small-town Pennsylvanians “cling to guns or religion or antipathy towards people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment, as a way to explain their frustrations”. This is the man who belongs to a church built on bitterness, rancour and conspiratorial fear. During the Wright affair, Obama not only repeatedly lied about what he knew and when but violated the spirit of the civil rights movement in its mid-1960s glory.

When, as a young man, I was on the periphery of the movement, there was an unwritten rule that if people told racist jokes or speakers engaged in defamatory rhetoric, you needed to register your immediate disapproval by confronting the speaker or ostentatiously walking out.

Wright’s “black theology” is essentially a Christianised version of Malcolm X’s ideology of hate.

But for 20 years, Obama, who had planned to run for mayor of Chicago, kept silent about the close, if at times competitive, relationship between Wright, whose 8000-member mega-church gave him his political base, and Farrakhan. His ambition overrode his moral integrity.

As part of his “black value system”, Wright attacked whites for their “middle classism”, materialism, and “greed in a world of need”. Obama sounded similar notes in his recent address at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York, in which he laid the blame for the sub-prime mortgage crisis on those who had “embraced an ethic of greed, corner cutting and inside dealing”.

But that’s exactly what Obama did in buying his luxurious house. Given the choice of purchasing a less expensive home or getting into bed with his fundraiser-cum-slumlord-cum-fixer Rezko, Obama chose the latter. Then again, the oppressed of Trinity United Church of Christ are building Wright a $US1.6 million ($1.7million), 960sqm home complete with four-car garage, whirlpool and butler’s pantry. This house, which backs on to a golf course, is to sit in Tinley Park, a gated community in southwest Chicago that is 93 per cent white.

The Obamas’ charitable giving is consistent with Wright’s talking Left while living Right. Obama and his wife are quite well off. They had an estimated income of $US1.2 million from 2000 to 2004. But the man who preaches compassion and mutuality gave all of 1 per cent of that income to charity during those years. Most of that went to Wright’s church.

There is a similar chasm when it comes to Obama’s claim to post-partisanship. His achievements in reaching out to moderate voters are largely proleptic. But words are not deeds and, although Obama has few concrete achievements to his name, his voting record hardly suggests an ability to rise above Left v Right.

In the Illinois Senate, he made a specialty of voting present, but after his first two years in the US Senate, National Journal’s analysis of rollcall votes found that he was more liberal than 86 per cent of his colleagues. His voting record has only moved further Left since then. The liberal Americans for Democratic Action gives him a 97.5 per cent rating, while National Journal ranks him the most liberal member of the Senate. By comparison, Clinton, who occasionally votes with the Republicans, ranks 16th.

Obama is such a down-the-line partisan that, according to Congressional Quarterly, in the past two years he has voted with the Democrats more often than did the party’s majority leader, Harry Reid.

Likewise, for all his talk of post-racialism, Obama has played, with the contrivance of the press, traditional South Side Chicago racial politics. The day after his surprise loss in New Hampshire, and in anticipation of the South Carolina primary, with its heavily black electorate, South Side congressman Jesse Jackson Jr – Obama’s national co-chairman – appeared on MSNBC to argue, in a prepared statement, that Clinton’s teary moment on the campaign trail reflected her deep-seated racism.

“Those tears,” said Jackson, “have to be analysed … They have to be looked at very, very carefully in light of Katrina, in light of other things that Mrs Clinton did not cry for, particularly as we head to South Carolina, where 45 per cent of African-Americans will participate in the Democratic contest … We saw tears in response to her appearance, so that her appearance brought her to tears, but not hurricane Katrina, not other issues.”

In other words, whites who are at odds with, or who haven’t delivered for, Chicago politicians can be obliquely accused of racism on the flimsiest basis, but pillars of local black politics such as Wright, with his exclusivist racial theology, are beyond criticism.

Liberals love Obama’s talk of taking on powerful financial interests. But here , too, he is rather slippery. In his Cooper Union speech, he denounced in no uncertain terms the “special interests” of people on Wall Street (who are well represented among his campaign donors).

He, of course, had an opportunity to push for repealing the privileged tax treatment of private equity firms when that question was before Charles Grassley’s Senate subcommittee – but he simply made a pro-forma statement in favour of doing so and disappeared.

Nationally, as in Chicago, Obama the self-styled reformer never crosses swords with any of his putative foes. To pick another example, he has attacked “predatory” sub-prime lenders while taking roughly $US1.3 million in contributions from companies in that line of business.

Obama is the internationalist opposed to free trade. He is the friend of race-baiters who thinks Don Imus deserved to be fired. He is the proponent of courage in the face of powerful interests who lacked the courage to break with Wright (until Wednesday). He is the man who would lead our efforts against terrorism yet was friendly with Bill Ayers, the unrepentant 1960s terrorist. He is the post-racialist supporter of affirmative action. He is the enemy of Big Oil who takes money from executives at Exxon-Mobil, Shell and British Petroleum.

Obama has, in a sense, represented a new version of the invisible man, a candidate whose colour obscures his failings.

But so far, the wild discrepancy between Obama’s words and his deeds, and between his enormous ambitions and his minimal accomplishments, doesn’t seem to have fazed his core supporters, who apparently suffer from a severe case of cognitive dissonance. Like cultists who rededicate themselves when the cult’s prophecies have been falsified, his fans redouble their delusions in the face of his obvious hypocrisy.

That is because Obama, in the imagination of many of his fans in the public and the press, is both a deduction from what was – the failures of the Bush administration and the scandals of the Clintons – and an expression of what should be.

The ideal, the aspiration, is so rhetorically appealing that it has been assumed to be true. They remind one of Woodrow Wilson’s answer when asked if his plan for a League of Nations was practicable: “If it won’t work, it must be made to work.”