May 27, 2012

An old white lefty's view of where Obama is coming from

The late Robert Fitch, a veteran critic of New York real estate insiders, gave a speech to the Harlem Tenants Association on November 14, 2008 applying his brand of analysis to the history of Obama's rise in Chicago. 
In fact, as Obama knows very well, for most of the last two decades in Chicago there’s been in place a very specific economic development plan. The plan was to make the South Side like the North Side. Which is the same kind of project as making the land north of Central Park [i.e., Harlem] like the land south of Central Park. The North Side is the area north of the Loop—Chicago’s midtown central business district—where rich white people live; they root for the Cubs. Their neighborhood is called the Gold Coast. For almost a hundred years in Chicago, blacks have lived on the South Side ...
And in the 1980s, the argument began to be made that the public housing needed to be demolished and the people moved back into private housing. For a while, the election of the city’s first black Mayor, Harold Washington, blocked the demolition. But Washington died of a heart attack while in office, and after a brief interregnum, the Mayor’s office was filled in 1989 by Richard M. Daley—whose father had carried out the first urban renewal. Daley was his father’s son in many ways. By 1993, with subsidies from the Clinton Administration’s HOPE VI program, the public housing units began to be destroyed. And by 2000 he’d put in place something called The Plan for Transformation. It targeted tens of thousands of remaining units. 
With this proviso: That African Americans had to get 50% of the action—white developers had to have black partners; there had to be black contractors. And Daley chose African Americans—as his top administrators and planners for the clearances, demolition and re-settlement. African Americans were prominent in developing and rehabbing the new housing for the refugees from the demolished projects—who were re-settled in communities to the south like Englewood, Roseland and Harvey. Altogether the Plan for Transformation involved the largest demolition of public housing in American history, affecting about 45,000 people—in neighborhoods where eight of the 20 poorest census tracts in the U.S. were located. 
But what does this all have to do with Obama? Just this: the area demolished included the communities that Obama represented as a state senator; and the top black administrators, developers and planners were people like Valerie Jarrett—who served as a member of the Chicago Planning Commission. And Martin Nesbitt who became head of the CHA. Nesbitt serves as Obama campaign finance treasurer; Jarrett as co-chair of the Transition Team. The other co-chair is William Daley, the Mayor’s brother and the Midwest chair of JP Morgan Chase—an institution deeply involved in the transformation of inner-city neighborhoods thorough its support for—what financial institutions call “neighborhood revitalization” and neighborhood activists call gentrification. 

William Daley went on to serve as Obama's second chief of staff, following Rahm Emmanuel, who is now mayor of Chicago.
If we examine more carefully the interests that Obama represents; if we look at his core financial supporters; as well as his inmost circle of advisors, we’ll see that they represent the primary activists in the demolition movement and the primary real estate beneficiaries of this transformation of public housing projects into condos and townhouses: the profitable creep of the Central Business District and elite residential neighborhoods southward; and the shifting of the pile of human misery about three miles further into the South Side and the south suburbs. 
Obama’s political base comes primarily from Chicago FIRE—the finance, insurance and real estate industry. And the wealthiest families—the Pritzkers, the Crowns and the Levins. But it’s more than just Chicago FIRE. Also within Obama’s inner core of support are allies from the non-profit sector: the liberal foundations, the elite universities, the non-profit community developers and the real estate reverends who produce market rate housing with tax breaks from the city and who have been known to shout from the pulpit “give us this day our Daley, Richard Daley bread.” Aggregate them and what emerges is a constellation of interests around Obama that I call “Friendly FIRE.” Fire power disguised by the camouflage of community uplift; augmented by the authority of academia; greased by billions in foundation grants; and wired to conventional FIRE by the terms of the Community Reinvestment Act of 1995. …
Yes, Obama worked with Ayers, but not the Ayers who blew up buildings; but the Ayers who was able to bring down $50 million from the Walter Annenberg foundation, leveraging it to create a $120 million a non-profit organization with Obama as its head. Annenberg was a billionaire friend of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Why would he give mega-millions to a terrorist? Perhaps because he liked Ayers’ new politics. Ayer’s initiative grew out of the backlash against the 1985 Chicago teachers’ strike; his plan promoted “the community” as a third force in education politics between the union and the city administration. Friendly FIRE [i.e., liberal, multiracial Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate interests] wants the same kind of education reform as FIRE: the forces that brought about welfare reform have now moved onto education reform and for the same reason: crippling the power of the union will reduce teachers’ salaries, which will cut real estate taxes which will raise land values. 
Is Obama a minion of Richie Daley? It’s true that Obama has never denounced Daley. He actually endorsed him for Mayor in 2007. Even after federal convictions of Daley’s top aides. After the minority hiring scandals. And after the Hired Truck scandal which showed that the Daley machine shared its favors with The Outfit. But the Daley dynasty has expanded far beyond wiseguy industries. The Mayor’s brother, William Daley, who served on Obama’s transition team, also serves now as a top executive of J.P. Morgan Chase. He heads the Midwest region. And chairs J.P. Morgan Chase Foundation, the core of friendly FIRE. Here’s an excerpt from a recent report: "…[we] achieved significant progress toward our 10-year pledge to invest $800 billion in low- and moderate income communities in the U.S.—the largest commitment by any bank focused on mortgages, small-business lending and community development. In 2006, we committed $87 billion, with total investment to date of $241 billion in the third year of the program. Played a leadership role in the creation of The New York Acquisition Fund, along with 15 lenders and in conjunction with six foundations and the City of New York. The Fund is a $230 million initiative to finance the acquisition of land and buildings to be developed and/or preserved for affordable housing.“ 
It’s also true that key Black members of the Obama inner circle are Daley Administration alumnae—but they’ve moved up—now they’re part of Chicago FIRE. Like Martin Nesbitt. Obama is Nesbitt’s son’s godfather. He’s the African American chairman of the CHA. But his principal occupation is the vice presidency of the Pritzker Realty group. Although they’re not well known outside of Chicago, the Pritzkers rank among the richest families in the U.S. There are ten Pritzkers among the Forbes 400: Thomas is the richest at2.3 billion. Anthony and J.B. are next at $2.2 billion; Penny in fourth, at $2.1 billion—Daniel, James, Gigi, John, Karen, and Linda weigh in with $1.9 billion. Penny is finance chair of the Obama campaign. Martin is the treasurer. 

Daley saw Obama as a potential rival for the mayor's office. After Daley brushed aside Rep. Bobby Rush's challenge for his job in 1999, Daley turned around and provided some quiet aid to Rush in 2000 to help turn back Obama's challenge to Rush. Daley saw Rush, a former Black Panther, as easy to beat, but saw Obama as potentially a greater long term challenge.
Penny Pritzker herself has had a rocky career as a commercial banker. In 1991, she founded something called the Superior Bank of Chicago which pioneered in sub-prime lending to minorities. Superior was an early casualty of the sub-prime meltdown, though, crashing in 2001 when it was seized by the FDIC. Depositors filed a civil suit against Penny charging that Superior was a racketeering organization. The government charged that Superior paid out hundreds of millions of dividends to the Pritzkers and another family while the bank was essentially broke. There was a complex settlement in which the Pritzkers were forced to pay hundreds of millions in penalties; but the agreement contained provisions that may enable the Pritzkers to earn hundreds of millions. Notwithstanding the Superior bank disaster, Penny is being touted as Obama’s next Secretary of Commerce. 
Valerie Jarrett is another black real estate executive. Described as “the other side of Barack’s brain,” she also served as finance chair during his successful 2004 U.S. Senate campaign. Jarrett was Daley’s deputy chief of staff – that was her job when she hired Michelle Obama. Eventually Daley made her the head of city planning. But Jarrett doesn’t work for Daley anymore. She’s CEO of David Levin’s Habitat—one of the largest property managers in Chicago—and the court-appointed overseer of CHA projects. Habitat also managed Grove Parc, the scandal-ridden project in Englewood that left Section 8 tenants, mostly refugees from demolished public housing projects, without heat in the winter but inundated with rats. Grove Parc was developed by Tony Rezko, who’s white. And his long-time partner Allison Davis, who’s black. 
Let’s look at Rezko and then Davis. It was Rezko’s ability to exploit relationships with influential blacks—including Muhammad Ali—that enabled him to become one of Chicago’s preeminent cockroach capitalists.

Rezko was Ali's business manager in the 1980s because he was the business manager for the Muhammad family behind the Nation of Islam.
Altogether, Rezko wound up developing over 1,000 apartments with state and city money. There was more to the Obama-Rezko relationship than the empty lot in Kenwood. Rezko raised over $250,000 for Obama’s state senate campaign. While Obama was a state senator he wrote letters in support of Rezko’s applications for development funds. But Obama ignored the plight of Rezko’s tenants who complained to Obama’s office. Rezko’s Grove Parc partner, Allison Davis, was a witness in the Rezko trial, he’s pretty radioactive too. But you could see why Rezko wanted to hook up with him. 
Davis was the senior partner in Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland, a small, black law firm, where Obama worked for nearly a decade. As the editor of the Harvard Law Review, Obama could have worked anywhere. Why did he choose the Davis firm? Davis had been a noted civil rights attorney and a progressive critic of the first Daley machine. But in 1980 Davis got a call from the Ford Foundation’s poorly known, but immensely influential, affiliate LISC—the Local Initiatives Support Corporation—that had just been founded. LISC, whose present chair is Citigroup’s Robert Rubin, connects small, mainly minority community non-profits with big foundation grants and especially with bank loans and tax credit-driven equity. LISC wanted to co-opt Davis in their ghetto redevelopment program. He agreed and the Davis firm came to specialize in handling legal work for non-profit community development firms. Eventually Davis left the firm to go into partnership with Tony Rezko. Meanwhile, Obama did legal work for the Rezko-Davis partnership. And for Community Development Organizations like Woodlawn Organization. 
In 1994, the LA Times reports, Obama appeared in Cook County court on behalf of Woodlawnn Preservation & Investment Corp., defending it against a suit by the city, which alleged that the company failed to provide heat for low-income tenants on the South Side during the winter. There were several cases of this type, but as the Times observes, Obama doesn’t mention them in Dreams from My Father. In the 1960s, under the leadership of Arthur M. Brazier, Bishop of the Apostolic Church of God, Woodlawn gained a reputation as Chicago’s outstanding Saul Alinsky-stylec ommunity organization. Mainly, TWO [The Woodlawn Organization] battled the University of Chicago’s urban renewal program. But gradually, Brazier’s political direction changed. Now TWO is partnering with UC in efforts to gentrify Woodlawn. When Barack Obama left Jeremiah Wright’s church, he switched to Brazier’s Apostolic Church of God.

I don't believe that's fully true.
Brazier is typical of a much larger group—real estate reverends—who play the Community Development game and in the process have acquired huge real estate portfolios. But it’s really a national phenomenon. Here in New York we have Rev. Calvin Butts whose church has a subsidiary, the Abyssinian Development Corp. In partnership with LISC, the ADC now boasts a portfolio of $500 million in Harlem property alone. Rev. Floyd Flake of the Allen African Methodist Episcopal Church in Jamaica, Queens has a sizeable portfolio of commercial property too. Chicago’s disciples of development include Wilbur Daniel. He’s the Pastor of Antioch Missionary Baptist Church in Englewood who really did exclaim “Give us this day our Daley bread,” meaning free land and free capital for real estate development. Daniel’s prayers were answered in 2001, when with Daley’s help, Antioch was chosen to be the lead church in Fannie Mae’s $55 billion House Chicago plan for the redevelopment of the South Side. How has Obama earned the support and allegiance of friendly FIRE? Where does he stand on the Plan for Transformation? 
Generally speaking, he’s been careful not to leave too many footprints. If you google Obama and public housing, nothing comes up. But in 1995, a year before he ran successfully for state senate seat from South Side, in Dreams from My Father he wrote about his encounters with Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Obama says he was impressed by Wright’s emphasis on the unity of the black community. But he’s a little skeptical of too broad a unity; of achieving unity without conflict. He says, “Would the interest in maintaining such unity allow Reverend Wright to take a forceful stand on the latest proposals to reform public housing?” Here he’s referring to Clinton’s Hope VI—that provided matching federal money for the demolition of public housing. And the corresponding local initiatives, which culminated in the Plan for Transformation. “And if men like Reverend Wright failed to take a stand, if churches like Trinity refused to engage with real power and risk genuine conflict, then what chance would there be in holding the larger community intact?” 
I have to stop now and put Karnak’s envelope to my forehead. What we see is that the Chicago core of the Obama coalition is made up of blacks who’ve moved up by moving poor blacks out of the community. And very wealthy whites who’ve advanced their community development agenda by hiring blacks. Will this be the pattern for the future in an Obama administration? I can’t read the envelope. But I do believe that if we want to disrupt the pattern of the past we have to make some distinctions: between the change they believe in and the change we believe in; between our interests and theirs; between a notion of community that scapegoats the poor and one that respects their human rights—one of which is not to be the object of ethnic cleaning. Between Hope VI and genuine human hope.

Putting this in a larger perspective, it's reasonable to believe that Obama was drawn to Chicago in 1985 by the excitement of the Council Wars racial struggle between Mayor Harold Washington and the retrograde white leader Fast Eddie Vrodolyak in what seemed like a zero sum racial battle. But Obama found, when he finally got to know real life poor blacks in 1985-1988, that they weren't as uplifting as he had assumed from watching PBS fund-raising documentaries about the Civil Rights era. But he slowly started to realize that who he really liked were affluent, well-educated blacks. So, he bailed for Harvard Law School, intending to come back and lead blacks back to power in the mayor's office.

Over time, however, Richie Daley became mayor and he was more than happy to cut reasonable blacks in on the profits that could be made by clearing out Cabrini Green and the like, just as long as they'd play ball with Friendly FIRE. Michelle Obama had a wealth of contacts -- she'd been Jesse Jackson's babysitter, she worked for Daley's deputy Valerie Jarrett, and she liked money -- and Barack Obama was naturally drawn into this little world centered around Jarrett and Penny Pritzker.

On the other hand, let me point out a subtle distinction. I suspect that the secret end game envisioned by the more hardheaded liberal white leaders (I'm looking at you, Mayor Emmanuel) is likely not just to yuppify the Near South Side and move poor blacks to the Far South Side of Chicago where they can still vote in Chicago elections. Instead, the hard men want to use Section 8 rental vouchers to send poor blacks packing clear out of Chicago to hickvilles like Champaign-Urbana, while middle class blacks move themselves to inner ring suburbs, leaving only Obama-like upscale blacks in Chicago. This would slowly destroy black political power in Chicago, leaving behind only token affluent blacks and pockets of black poverty around the worst toxic waste sites in the industrial deep South Side.

For example, last year, Mayor Emmanuel's Chicago Police Department sent a 40-man SWAT team into just about the last two ungentrified houses in Lincoln Park, only seven blocks from Penny Pritzker's new mansion, to find pretexts for evicting the owners, an extended family of poor blacks.

Assume you are Mayor Emmanuel, and assume you want two decades or so in office like both Daleys got. Your job is going to be a lot more fun in 20 years if Chicago follows Manhattan and D.C. in whitifying rather than go down the path of Detroit and Cleveland.

But, as of 1995, Obama and his spiritual adviser, Jeremiah Wright, objected to what was looming on the horizon as a remote possibility: the more massive economic cleansing of blacks from not just the good parts of Chicago like Cabrini Green and the South Lakefront, but from the inland parts, where Wright's church was and where Obama had done his rather feckless community organizing.

Wright is quoted in Dreams, and Obama echoed Wright's argument in a 1995 Chicago Reader interview, that middle class blacks shouldn't flee to the suburbs to keep their sons from being gunned down. They should make a stand in Chicago (at least farther south than the potentially immensely valuable land around the loop and lakefront). Obama said in 1995:
"The right wing talks about this but they keep appealing to that old individualistic bootstrap myth: get a job, get rich, and get out." ... 

So, Obama here is agreeing with Wright's stance against black flight to the suburbs, which in Dreams from My Father is symbolized by Wright telling his secretary not to move to the suburbs to keep her son safe. But, as Fitch suggests, Obama's opaque statement in Dreams -- “And if men like Reverend Wright failed to take a stand, if churches like Trinity refused to engage with real power and risk genuine conflict, then what chance would there be in holding the larger community intact?” -- can be interpreted to mean that Obama wants to play a dual game that Rev. Wright is too stubborn even though it would be in his own interests: Obama wants to play palsy-walsy with people like the Pritzkers, but also to make sure that public housing project blacks are only relocated as far as the South Side, where they can still vote and still attend Rev. Wright's church, not all the way to exurban hickvilles like Round Lake Beach.

Obama told the Reader in 1995:
"I want to do this as much as I can from the grass-roots level, raising as much money for the campaign as possible at coffees, connecting directly with voters," said Obama. "But to organize this district I must get known. And this costs money. I admit that in this transitional period, before I'm known in the district, I'm going to have to rely on some contributions from wealthy people—people who like my ideas but who won't attach strings. This is not ideal, but it is a problem encountered by everyone in their first campaign.
"Once elected, once I'm known, I won't need that kind of money, just as Harold Washington, once he was elected and known, did not need to raise and spend money to get the black vote."
Obama took time off from attending campaign coffees to attend October's Million Man March in Washington, D.C. His experiences there only reinforced his reasons for jumping into politics.
"What I saw was a powerful demonstration of an impulse and need for African-American men to come together to recognize each other and affirm our rightful place in the society," he said. "There was a profound sense that African-American men were ready to make a commitment to bring about change in our communities and lives.
"But what was lacking among march organizers was a positive agenda, a coherent agenda for change. ... 
"But cursing out white folks is not going to get the job done. Anti-Semitic and anti-Asian statements are not going to lift us up. We've got some hard nuts-and-bolts organizing and planning to do. We've got communities to build."

But, of course, in 2000, Obama's plan to follow Harold Washington's career path to the mayor's office by first getting elected to the House of Representatives was derailed by the whupping he got from ex-Black Panther Bobby Rush in black districts. When he recovered from his depression, he gerrymandered his district to include the rich white Gold Coast north of the Loop that, culturally, is his natural base. When Michelle threatened to leave him unless he came up with a workable career strategy, he gave up on winning major power in the callous world of Chicago politics, where voters expect their politicians to be more than just elegant symbols of the electorate's own refinement, but instead to deliver the goods. Obama thus reworked his goals to winning statewide and even national office by taking his ethereal everything-to-everybody act on the road to the more naive parts of white America.

One big question is what precisely was Obama's role in real estate driven changes in Chicago that Fitch outlines. The answer appears to be: eh, not that much. He was there, he looked dignified, he uttered sonorous speeches, he was friends with the players, he tried to foster compromises that would advance the interests of the rich, white and black, without damaging the interests of demagogues like Rev. Wright by driving blacks all the way out of Chicago.

But, as far as I can tell, he doesn't appear to have been a major player himself. He doesn't seem to have been a driving force in the dealmaking. Was this out of scrupulousness (ethical, racial, or careerist)? Or is Obama, on the whole, just more decorative than dynamic?

Postscript:

To flesh out this subtle point about black flight to the suburbs, it's worth quoting from Dreams from My Father at length about Obama's first meeting with Rev. Jeremiah Wright:
Eventually a pretty woman with a brisk, cheerful manner came up and introduced herself as Tracy, one of Reverend Wright’s assistants. She said that the reverend was running a few minutes late and asked if I wanted some coffee. As I followed her back into a kitchen toward the rear of the church, we began to chat, about the church mostly, but also a little about her. It had been a difficult year, she said: Her husband had recently died, and in just a few weeks she’d be moving out to the suburbs. She had wrestled long and hard with the decision, for she had lived most of her life in the city. But she had decided the move would be best for her teenage son. She began to explain how there were a lot more black families in the suburbs these days; how her son would be free to walk down the street without getting harassed; how the school he’d be attending had music courses, a full band, free instruments and uniforms. 
“He’s always wanted to be in a band,” she said softly. 
As we were talking, I noticed a man in his late forties walking toward us. He had silver hair, a silver mustache and goatee; he was dressed in a gray three-piece suit. He moved slowly, methodically, as if conserving energy, sorting through his mail as he walked, humming a simple tune to himself. 
“Barack,” he said as if we were old friends, “let’s see if Tracy here will let me have a minute of your time." ...
“Some people say,” I interrupted, “that the church is too upwardly mobile." 
The reverend’s smile faded. “That’s a lot of bull,” he said sharply. “People who talk that mess reflect their own confusion. They’ve bought into the whole business of class that keeps us from working together. Half of ’em think that the former gang-banger or the former Muslim got no business in a Christian church. Other half think any black man with an education or a job, or any church that respects scholarship, is somehow suspect. 
“We don’t buy into these false divisions here. It’s not about income, Barack. Cops don’t check my bank account when they pull me over and make me spread-eagle against the car. These miseducated brothers, like that sociologist at the University of Chicago [William Julius Wilson], talking about ‘the declining significance of race.’ Now, what country is he living in?” 
But wasn’t there a reality to the class divisions, I wondered? I mentioned the conversation I’d had with his assistant, the tendency of those with means to move out of the line of fire. He took off his glasses and rubbed what I now saw to be a pair of tired eyes. 
“I’ve given Tracy my opinion about moving out of the city,” he said quietly. “That boy of hers is gonna get out there and won’t have a clue about where, or who, he is." 
“It’s tough to take chances with your child’s safety." 
“Life’s not safe for a black man in this country, Barack. Never has been. Probably never will be." 
A secretary buzzed, reminding Reverend Wright of his next appointment. We shook hands, and he agreed to have Tracy prepare a list of members for me to meet. Afterward, in the parking lot, I sat in my car and thumbed through a silver brochure that I’d picked up in the reception area. It contained a set of guiding principles-a “Black Value System”-that the congregation had adopted in 1979. ... There was one particular passage in Trinity’s brochure that stood out, though, a commandment more self-conscious in its tone, requiring greater elaboration. “A Disavowal of the Pursuit of Middleclassness,” the heading read. “While it is permissible to chase ‘middleincomeness’ with all our might,” the text stated, those blessed with the talent or good fortune to achieve success in the American mainstream must avoid the “psychological entrapment of Black ‘middleclassness’ that hypnotizes the successful brother or sister into believing they are better than the rest and teaches them to think in terms of ‘we’ and ‘they’ instead of ‘US’!”

It's informative to quote that "value" in full from Trinity's website, much of which Obama left of Dreams:
8. Disavowal of the Pursuit of “Middleclassness.” Classic methodology on control of captives teaches that captors must be able to identify the “talented tenth” of those subjugated, especially those who show promise of providing the kind of leadership that might threaten the captor’s control. 
Those so identified are separated from the rest of the people by: 
Killing them off directly, and/or fostering a social system that encourages them to kill off one another. 
Placing them in concentration camps, and/or structuring an economic environment that induces captive youth to fill the jails and prisons. 
Seducing them into a socioeconomic class system which, while training them to earn more dollars, hypnotizes them into believing they are better than others and teaches them to think in terms of “we” and “they” instead of “us.” 
So, while it is permissible to chase “middleclassness” with all our might, we must avoid the third separation method – the psychological entrapment of Black “middleclassness.” If we avoid this snare, we will also diminish our “voluntary” contributions to methods A and B. And more importantly, Black people no longer will be deprived of their birthright: the leadership, resourcefulness and example of their own talented persons.

Keep in mind that Senator Barack Obama donated $26,770 to Jeremiah Wright's church in 2007, according to his tax return. That's while he was running for President.

How do we make sense of all of this seemingly conflicting information about Obama? I suspect the simplest answer is that Obama never quite made sense out of it all either.

77 comments:

Auntie Analogue said...

Could this turn out to be the Bain of Obama's reelection campaign?

Peter said...

For a New Yorker such as Robert Fitch the mere concept of demolishing public housing must have seemed freakishly weird. Every single housing project that New York City has ever opened, going back to the 1930's, remains in full occupancy today.

Peter A said...

Is Obama an evil muslim socialist actively trying to destroy America? Or is he a typical political hustler using race and ethnicity make sure he and his pals can get a cut of whatever wealth this country generates? I think Steve has shown for a while now that the latter is much more likely to be true, although the far right will never be convinced of this. Ironically Steve's portrait of Obama would be far more political damning than rants about birth certificates and Reverend Wright, simply because it goes more directly after the leftist myth that Obama is "special." Too many of the far Right attacks are also premised on the idea that Obama is somehow "special", which helps sustain the Obama myth. He's not special though, he's really a pretty mundane politician who has been smart enough to use race to advance his career. Neither a messiah nor a demon. Just the banal everyday evil of American political corruption.

Anonymous said...

This is quite intereting, Harold Washington was the first and probably the last black mayor of Chicago like David Dinkins in NYC.

Whiskey said...

This shows why Obama is failing. His whole model, his political positions, are about shaking down various moneyed groups to produce NARROW political patronage. Chicago, NYC, etc. depend on real estate money, outside insurance, and massive wealth transfers. Its Greece in miniature. Thats why its failing.

None of that speaks to the White middle class, which gets screwed. Or the desire by the White working/middle class to move up in wealth, which requires real wealth creation in manufacturing, energy extraction, and agriculture. Stuff that actually creates wealth not simply moves it around.

If you made Richard Daley President, you would not get much different. Look at Jarrett -- a total failure as an advisor, she does not understand that the President gets judged on results, like a football coach. Have a crummy won-loss record, you get bounced EVEN IF YOU ARE BLACK.

The President controls the brakes (regulations), the gas (spending, interest rates, printing money), and the steering wheel of the economy (the budget and who/what gets money spent on it). People demand results. They want gas cheap, and food and clothing too. They want more not less money in their pockets at the end of every month. Nothing in the Chicago Model of trading favors among the Universities, non profits created by the Wealthy, crony-capitalist real estate, insurance, and finance, has prepared Obama for anything but massive failure.

Anonymous said...

it's spelled Champaign - Urbana & it has some university influence, so it's not really hickville. it's over 3 hours south of chicago. & C-U already has more than its share of ghetto-americans! (with their typical ghetto-american behavior)- panjoomby

countenance said...

Peter A wrote:

Is Obama an evil muslim socialist actively trying to destroy America? Or is he a typical political hustler using race and ethnicity make sure he and his pals can get a cut of whatever wealth this country generates?

The answer is yes.

One does not preclude the other.

The better way to think of this post is that when you stuff enough money into the mouths of the big chiefs (Reverends), that will have the effect of keeping the Indians (ghetto blacks) in line. Obama's Chicago career is basically an intermediary between Chief and Indian.

formerly no name said...

Is Obama an evil muslim socialist actively trying to destroy America?

Obviously this is just the extreme edge of GOP partisan rhetoric. Only goobers are fooled by such stuff. The late Midwestern GOP operative Tom Roeser used to describe a form of it when he told tales of campaign slush funds used for "spreading rumors in bars."

Anonymous said...

Chicago, NYC, etc. depend on real estate money, outside insurance, and massive wealth transfers. Its Greece in miniature. Thats why its failing.

I'm not sure these metropolises are "failing".

Cities are population sinks that survive by taxing the agricultural base, importing its food, resources, and women. They always depend on imports.

Anonymous said...

He was there, he looked dignified, he uttered sonorous speeches, he was friends with the players, he tried to foster compromise that would advance the interests of the rich, white and black, without damaging the interests of demagogues like Rev. Wright by driving blacks all the way out of Chicago. But he doesn't appear to have been a major player himself. He doesn't seem to have been a driving force in the dealmaking. Was this out of scrupulousness (ethical, racial, or careerist)? Or is he just more decorative than dynamic?

Have you forgotten about Michelle and the patronage job which was created for her in the UChig healthcare system, wherein her duty was to steer undesirable [aka "ghetto"] blacks AWAY from UChig and into the local community healthcare clinics, thereby making UChig once again safe for "the rich, white and black"?

TGGP said...

Whiskey, I predict that Obama will be re-elected. Care to wager against me?

Also, Obama does not directly control the Federal Reserve, though he certainly could have devoted more time & thought to his power to appoint people to it rather than leaving vacancies for such a long time.

Anonymous said...

Seducing them into a socioeconomic class system which, while training them to earn more dollars, hypnotizes them into believing they are better than others and teaches them to think in terms of “we” and “they” instead of “us.”

So, while it is permissible to chase “middleclassness” with all our might, we must avoid the third separation method – the psychological entrapment of Black “middleclassness.” If we avoid this snare, we will also diminish our “voluntary” contributions to methods A and B. And more importantly, Black people no longer will be deprived of their birthright: the leadership, resourcefulness and example of their own talented persons.


This is actually a good analysis of how whites are bought off by the hostile elite.

Anonymous said...

I walked ten miles today through the Gold Coast, Lincoln Park, and Lakeview in Chicago. Very few blacks to be seen anywhere and lots of white yuppies and their small children. The gentrification of Chicago is in full force.

Power Child said...

I'll admit, I only skimmed this, but about 2/3rds of the way through I came up with a great idea: Steve, you should write historical/cultural atlases, through the iSteve lens, of all the cities you've lived in or whose political innerworkings you are intimately familiar with! Such a project could combine your narrativistic insights into politics, your interest in racial and immigration issues, your expertise in human biodiversity, and your theories about...wait for it...topography!

Whaddaya say?

Anonymous said...

"But cursing out white folks is not going to get the job done. Anti-Semitic and anti-Asian statements are not going to lift us up.
but bashing whites - a-ok- in fact the other two afore mentioned groups want it that way.

Anonymous said...

"...as far as I can tell, he doesn't appear to have been a major player himself. He doesn't seem to have been a driving force in the dealmaking. Was this out of scrupulousness (ethical, racial, or careerist)? Or is Obama, on the whole, just more decorative than dynamic?"

Well, somebody is calling the shots in the White House. Is that Valerie Jarrett? Maybe she gave the order for Seal Team Six to ventilate Osama bin Laden.

Anonymous said...

Without a doubt this is Steve's most interesting post of 2012. It reminds me of prying up old floor boards in a dilapidated building; finally the thousands of scurrying rats and bugs living underneath are revealed.

anony-mouse said...

I can't believe that Chicago politicians are corrupt.

If so maybe someone should make a movie about it. See if that Cary Grant fellow is around. And maybe Rosalind Russell.

Steve Sailer said...

"topography!"

I spent my first ten years in Chicago asking Chicagoans where the secondary Continental Divide is that divides the Great Lakes - St. Lawrence north Atlantic watershed from the Mississippi Gulf of Mexico watershed. Finally, a man at the maritime museum on Navy Pier told me there was a 50' tall bronze statue of French explorers on the continental divide in Summit, IL, about 12 miles SW of the Loop. Sure enough, there was.

Many years later, I discovered that Benjamin Franklin's entry into global politics concerned Chicago, even though it wouldn't exist for 75 years. The British were thinking of trading newly conquered Quebec City back to France for a sugar island, but Franklin insisted over and over to London that the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi had to have a portage, and that to control the entryways to that portage -- i.e., what would become Chicago in the 1830s -- was to control the continent.

Old Ben was pretty smart.

Anonymous said...

TGGP said,


"Whiskey, I predict that Obama will be re-elected. Care to wager against me?"

I fear you might be right, but God, I hope you're wrong.

Paul said...

Interesting but too long- for blog posts, you should keep it shorter- no more than 1/3 or 1/2 of this length...

Anonymous said...

It's clear that the alliance of the two ends of the Bell curve comprising the Obama coalition mainly benefits the right side. It appears to be the mid-20th century American Jewish strategy writ local of using the moral imperative to uplift blacks to do well by doing good (as Poor Richard would say).

Anonymous said...

Great insights and inside info by Steve Sailer and Robert Fitch.

The gentrification of the largest american cities is in full swing. Led by prosperous white-ethnics and homosexuals to whom suburbia was never very attractive or welcoming.

More and more blacks are getting squeezed out and many are heading back South.

Anonymous said...

Steve, you make the mundane-ity of everyday living and wheeling and dealing (that everyone does) sound so incredibly conspiratorial and sinister!!

You can find stories like this behind any ____________.

Where is the scandal?

Anonymous said...

"But Obama ignored the plight of Rezko’s tenants who complained to Obama’s office."

"In 1994, the LA Times reports, Obama appeared in Cook County court on behalf of Woodlawnn Preservation & Investment Corp., defending it against a suit by the city, which alleged that the company failed to provide heat for low-income tenants on the South Side during the winter. There were several cases of this type..."

The contrast with his claimed ideals is amusing.

“Give us this day our Daley bread,”

I recently heard the word "bread" clearly used to mean "money" in a Kanye West "song".

"which in Dreams from My Father is symbolized by Wright telling his secretary not to move to the suburbs to keep her son safe."

Hasn't the Rev. himself now moved to the suburbs?

Anonymous said...

The stealth ethnic cleansing of black people from Manhattan, Cabrini Green etc is the other even more under-reported aspect of section 8.

Anonymous said...

I guess this means that big statue of Revilo Oliver isn't going to be built in his hometown of Urbana after all.

Anonymous said...

"Or is Obama, on the whole, just more decorative than dynamic?"

I think most of them are because of all the time it takes to deal with all the public engagements.

The man standing behind the face will be the dealmaker. Bush had Cheney, Blair had Mandelson, Obama i guess had Rahm (left over Iran?) and now somebody not as good whoever they are.

I think it's only the especially gifted ones like Clinton who can do both the public stuff and the dealmaking at the same time.

It's a bit like the Chinese emperors being given endless ceremonial duties while the mandarins do all the actual governing.

Fuenlabrada said...

re: Allison Davis - if these pictures are correct, that is one very white 'black' family.
http://www.geni.com/people/Allison-S-Davis-Esq/6000000009103322585

Rrrrrroger said...

I disagree with Paul. I think Mr. Sailer should keep writing as long as he thinks it's interesting.

Joe Six-Pack said...

"I guess this means that big statue of Revilo Oliver isn't going to be built in his hometown of Urbana after all."

Revilo P. Oliver was a WWII veteran and intellectual giant.

He was totally rigth on his views about politics, history, religion and modern America.

Anonymous said...

Wow, it's a good thing for this Obama guy that he's not in a public position. What would happen to him if anybody actually started looking into any of this?

Wright Stuff said...

I always thought Rev. Wright had a big ideological overlap with the criticisms of global-scale hyper-meritocracy, among which I'd include Chua's "World On Fire." However it's unclear whether this tendency was mostly organic (in daily competition with NOI, which preaches its own separatist meritocratic principle) or mere academia-influenced pandering to the increasingly politically denatured lumpenproles of SS Chicago. Wright was a Navy medic, with 2 degrees from the most prominent HBC, deep associations with the black clerical elite, and came up in the febrile environment of the early 70s so probably he is just a consummate marketing pro like Cornel West.

DPG said...

Great digging here, Steve. I'm going to have to re-read this. I thought the Breitbart 'vetting' concept was a little overblown, but stuff like this gives it fresh life.

I basically know nothing about Obama's political start in Chicago, despite being an avid consumer of news. My suspicion has always been that he's a bit vacuous, but that he's a well-spoken black man who was willing to play ball with the powers that be.

If the Republicans had any sense, they would used Wright's denouncement of middle class values to hold Obama's feet to the fire. If there's one thing that has bipartisan appeal amongst moderates in this country, it's "middle class values."

Anonymous said...

“Life’s not safe for a black man in this country, Barack. Never has been. Probably never will be."

Funny. Non-whites say, "Life's not safe for a non-black anywhere where a lot of blacks live. Probably never will be."

It would seem blacks agree.

marry Harry but mess around with Ike said...

I never read a lot into Obama's Chicago origins. He used it for his springboard, and they've used him, but he's not much of a machine-savvy political athlete (look how he's faltering in the re-elect campaign and it's not even summer). Unlike 50 years ago it's just one among many destinations with local rich Democrats. By contrast, when a legit Republican contender comes out of somewhere other than the sunbelt (Dallas/Houston, the Atlanta sprawl, Florida) it's taken for a miracle...

Nanonymous said...

developing and rehabbing the new housing for the refugees from the demolished projects—who were re-settled in communities to the south like Englewood, Roseland and Harvey.

Englewood? Then it must be pure co-incidence: Murder Rate Down Everywhere In Chicago But Englewood - "The figure for murders in Englewood is up 40 percent compared with 2010"

Reg Cæsar said...

And his long-time partner Allison Davis, who’s black.

Speaking of "senile sodomy"...

Fitch must have been pretty old indeed if he was unaware of the connotations of the phrase "long-time partner". Especially since he-- and any Chicagoan in earshot-- would have known that Davis was among the last of the dying breed of male Allisons.

Almost everyone now is careful to specify business partner in these situations.

jody said...

"Is Obama an evil muslim socialist actively trying to destroy America?"

yes, he is actually. he's just not very capable or competent, and is saved and bailed out at every turn by the extremely skewed and totally one sided treatment the US now doles out to any person who is african or part african and shows a modicum of ability.

his stated goal is to fundamentally transform america. i don't see how it could be any clearer. he just doesn't have lots of solid plans or goals, because he's not that smart, and because he's never actually accomplished anything in his life, having had everything handed to him, while completely ensconced in an academic, and then legal, and then political bubble. aided by affirmative action at every step.

his cabinet works fervently to remove european males from society and replace them with anybody else. once they get in there though they realize they have no idea what they're doing.

"Steve's portrait of Obama would be far more political damning than rants about birth certificates and Reverend Wrighta"

because he's half african, and being a communist, racist, anti-american liar, is ok now for people who are african or part african.

the truth is probably that obama was born in the US, but that there's some incriminating information on his private documents which shows he committed identity fraud. this is likely why he's often reported as being born in kenya in multiple physical documents - because he probably often lied about that, and somewhere, there's a possible felony level crime with regard to identity fraud. that's why he has an entire army of lawyers hiding all his stuff. maybe he said he was kenyan to get financial aid for college, or something like that. put aside the birth certificate - several of this guy's documents are suspect.

"He's not special though, he's really a pretty mundane politician who has been smart enough to use race to advance his career. Neither a messiah nor a demon. Just the banal everyday evil of American political corruption."

even though he's not that competent, he has an army of jewish allies and liberal euro americans who have helped him for a while now. they've done massive, incredible amounts of damage to the united states in only 3 years. the US may never recover long term from things which obama has already done. another 4 years would guarantee the end of the US as we know it, and transition it into some bizarre future that previously would have been only imagined in some work of science fiction, a book or movie, positing a weird alternate future united states.

Anonymous said...

Wow, well worth the slog through if you look at the last bit quoted! Brilliant find, Steve!

Classic methodology on control of captives teaches that captors must be able to identify the “talented tenth” of those subjugated, especially those who show promise of providing the kind of leadership that might threaten the captor’s control.

Applies just as much to white people as black, but we can't get away with saying that publicly, especially in conjunction with our own racial organizations etc.

Also I love how gentrification is talked about by the left as "ethnic cleansing", with no mention of how the "white flight" that is the direct result of high black crime rates is ethnic cleansing too.

Anonymous said...

The whole thing sounds very "People I Know". Great movie, btw.

jack strocchi said...

There seems to be a pattern here.

Black mayor in a major US city (Dinkins in NYC, Barry in WDC and Washington in CHI.) oversees urban blight and crime wave and gets involved in personal scandal. Gets dumped for yuppie mover-and-shaker (Guliani-Bloomberg, Williams-Fenty, Daley-Emmanuel) who cracks down on crime and revitalises urban property values.

Poor blacks ethnically cleansed and move to nearby derelict cities (Newark, Baltimore, Chicago ex-urbs) with depleted tax-base. Educated blacks economically elevated to provide cover for the whole squalid process.

Lather, rinse and repeat until the End of History.

Pat Boyle said...

I came across an odd fact a couple days ago that throws some light on the Obama birther controversy. Probably you and the well informed iSteve readership already know about this but on the chance that you don't, I will share.

There is a well established and similar birther conspiracy established for Dwight Eisenhower and for the first George Bush. There is a somewhat similar conspiracy theory about Nixon too, although it is so confused it hard to understand completely.

Eisenhower is said to have been born in Austria by the Holocaust Denial movement. This makes sense to them because Eisenhower is one of the most critics of the Denial movement. He enlisted Patton and Bradley as witnesses to the Nazi atrocities and had photographs taken so as to undercut any subsequent attempt by Nazi apologists to brand the Holocaust as mere propaganda.

So many in the Denial movement needed to denigrate Eisenhower's credibility. They said he was an Austrian Jew and the whole born in Texas story was a fabrication.

I had never heard this particular bit of paranoia before. I stumbled across it while googling this Illinois group that was attacked in the restaurant by the hammer wielding "anti-racists".

Holocaust Deniers also have photos of George Bush Sr. and his father Prescott Bush in a group photo with many top Nazis including Joseph Mengele. The photo is real enough but the man (supposedly Prescott) and the boy (George) don't look very much like the Bushs. I think they claim that George H.W. Bush was born in Germany and was of course a Nazi.

It isn't clear if Nixon was actually foreign born but according to the site I saw was clearly working for some group with interests inimical to those of the US. Among this group's interests is some sort of Kennedy assassination cover up.

So the fuss about Obama being a "Manchurian Candidate" or born abroad is not unprecedented. I understand why Eisenhower had to be defamed by the Denialists although the why the Bushs are portrayed as a German Nazi family seems a little mysterious. I suspect there are millions who
believe that Nixon was somehow involved in one or more of the Kennedy assassinations - certainly Lyndon Johnson was widely believed to have been involved at the time.

The paranoia about Obama's birthplace now seems to have been solved. He, being well known to be obsessed by race and under attack from many black politicians as not being black enough, had the story proliferated that he had been born in Kenya. That probably helped in his race against Bobby Rush but later came back to haunt him in his run for the Presidency. It's not really much of a mystery and it seems the birth myth was a myth of his own doing.

If anything it seems that Obama has had rather fewer paranoid attacks from the fringes than average. But those attacks have gotten much more media attention. The liberal media "line" on Obama was that he would be attacked unfairly because he's black. That didn't happen, so the few fringe elements that did promote wild theories got more attention than they would have if they had been aimed at white Republicans like Eisenhower, Bush or Nixon.

Albertosaurus

Anonymous said...

Although they’re not well known outside of Chicago, the Pritzkers rank among the richest families in the U.S. There are ten Pritzkers among the Forbes 400: Thomas is the richest at2.3 billion. Anthony and J.B. are next at $2.2 billion; Penny in fourth, at $2.1 billion—Daniel, James, Gigi, John, Karen, and Linda weigh in with $1.9 billion. Penny is finance chair of the Obama campaign.

May I assume that everyone at iSteve is aware that the Pritzkers turned off the credit card security authentication checks for the 2008 campaign [here, here, here, etc]?


***************
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I suspect that the secret end game envisioned by the more hardheaded liberal white leaders (I'm looking at you, Mayor Emmanuel) is likely not just to yuppify the Near South Side and move poor blacks to the Far South Side of Chicago where they can still vote in Chicago elections. Instead, the hard men want to use Section 8 rental vouchers to send poor blacks packing clear out of Chicago to hickvilles like Champaign-Urbana...


Emanuel Disavows 25% of School Kids, Says CTU
By Mary Ann Ahern
Tuesday, Feb 28, 2012
nbcchicago.com

Karen Lewis, the Chicago Teacher's Union President, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel have a testy relationship at best.

But it wasn't always that way.

The two leaders met privately last year ahead of Emanuel's inauguration. They went for dinner and to attend a dance — both are fans of the art form — and to develop a working relationship.

"We were both seeing who the other person was," she said.

Lewis said she got her answer about Emanuel's character rather quickly.

"In that conversation, he did say to me that 25 percent of the students in this city are never going to be anything, never going to amount to anything and he was never going to throw money at them."

She said the comment took her aback, and she looked at him askance...



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Hasn't the Rev. himself now moved to the suburbs?


Yeah, Steve covered that story just the other day.

What with Wright moving to Tinley Park, and Barry moving to the Not-So-Black-House at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, there's an eery similarity with the final scene of George Orwell's Animal House:

HUMANS = Scots-Irish [MacPritzkers, MacEmanuels, MacAxelrods, MacMinows, etc]

PIGS = Uppity Light-Skinned Mulattoes [Barry, Rev Wright, Valerie Jarrett, etc]

WORK ANIMALS = Dark-Skinned Problematic Ghetto Blacks

But as the animals outside gazed at the scene, it seemed to them that some strange thing was happening. What was it that had altered in the faces of the pigs? Clover's old dim eyes flitted from one face to another. Some of them had five chins, some had four, some had three. But what was it that seemed to be melting and changing...

Chicago said...

This throws a little light on the man of mystery we happen to have as president. It really makes the whole "hope and change" advertising jingle out to be one colossal obscene joke. And this article is written by a lefty who is inclined to go easy on him; imagine a full story by someone less enchanted with leftist mythology.

Marlowe said...

Half of ’em think that the former gang-banger or the former Muslim got no business in a Christian church. Other half think any black man with an education or a job, or any church that respects scholarship, is somehow suspect.

The Very Reverend Wright seems quite sharp.

Eugene Sawyer said...

Harold Washington was not the last black mayor in Chicago.

rob said...

make sure that public housing project blacks are only relocated as far as the South Side, where they can still vote and still attend Rev. Wright's church, not all the way to exurban hickvilles like Round Lake Beach.

Thank God there's some incentives keeping the Rahm Emmanuel's from transfering all the vibrant blacks to Whitopias.


How do we make sense of all of this seemingly conflicting information about Obama? I suspect the simplest answer is that Obama never quite made sense out of it all either.

These highly decorative affirmative action diversities like Obama and the supreme court hispanica don't really have philosophies, ideologies or even agendas really. They like what's been good for them. They aren't liberals, or conservatives, or progressives; they're after the gibsmedats. Maybe they're gibsmedatists.

Anonymous said...

Robert Heinlein* alert: Veterans Give Romney Big Lead Over Obama... Men give Romney an eight-point edge, while women opt for Obama over Romney by seven points. It turns out that the male skew for Romney is driven almost entirely by veterans. Romney leads by one point among nonveteran men, contrasted with the 28-point edge Romney receives among male veterans....





*For the three people at iSteve who don't get it, go here.

J said...

This portrait of Obama makes much more sense than the original you painted two years ago. Then you suspected that Obama was a child of the international development gang, the World Bank and the Ford Foundation, with some CIA connections thrown in.

Now it seems he was the consegliere of a powerful Chicago real-estate developer group operating like the Chinese "New Men" - Party Members and all. Someone took notice that the man has speaking talent, and they decided to finance his political carrier. The rest is history.

May be he not such a bad President. The world seems to have accepted his leadership.

Jonathan Silber said...

While exhorting parishioners to remain, for the greater good of their race, in Chicago, and to forgo the greater safety, from black violence, of life in the suburbs, the Reverend Wright was building for his retirement a million-dollar home in Tinley Park, a suburb of Chicago that is ninety-four percent white, and less than two percent black.

riiches said...

Fuenlabrada commented above on Allison Davis' whiteness. In an interview about his consulting work on the "Human Stain" film, he talks about passing.

http://www.blackfilm.com/20031031/features/allison_davis.shtml

Anonymous said...

This portrait of Obama makes much more sense than the original you painted two years ago. Then you suspected that Obama was a child of the international development gang, the World Bank and the Ford Foundation, with some CIA connections thrown in.

Now it seems he was the consegliere of a powerful Chicago real-estate developer group operating like the Chinese "New Men" - Party Members and all. Someone took notice that the man has speaking talent, and they decided to finance his political carrier. The rest is history.


There could be some truth in both theories. Well-connected guys switch lanes from time to time, especially when they sense that they're untouchable.

Mr. Anon said...

"Anonymous said...

I recently heard the word "bread" clearly used to mean "money" in a Kanye West "song"."

You must be very young. "Bread" has been used to mean "money" since at least the sixties. Actually, it's one of the more immediately recognizable terms from the hip-patois of that era. It was one of those words that even squares knew.

Good God, I'm getting old.

Mr. Anon said...

Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate should not be referred to as "industries". They are businesses, but not industries - they do not involve the creation of wealth, only the rearrangement of it.

Anonymous said...

Oops: "George Orwell's Animal House"
= "George Orwell's Animal Farm"

Steve Sailer said...

I want to see that movie!

Mr. Anon said...

"Anonymous said...

""Oops: "George Orwell's Animal House= "George Orwell's Animal Farm""

Blogger Steve Sailer said...

I want to see that movie!"

What Otter said to Flounder could is the quintessence of communism, or indeed any left-wing undertaking:

"You f**ked up. You trusted us."

Anonymous said...

There seems to be a pattern here.

Black mayor in a major US city (Dinkins in NYC, Barry in WDC and Washington in CHI.) oversees urban blight and crime wave and gets involved in personal scandal. Gets dumped for yuppie mover-and-shaker (Guliani-Bloomberg, Williams-Fenty, Daley-Emmanuel) who cracks down on crime and revitalises urban property values.

Poor blacks ethnically cleansed and move to nearby derelict cities (Newark, Baltimore, Chicago ex-urbs) with depleted tax-base. Educated blacks economically elevated to provide cover for the whole squalid process.

Lather, rinse and repeat until the End of History.



Blacks getting cleverly shafted. This conspiracy theory presented by Sailer that you summarized so well is far more believable, since it explains the ground reality and recognizes who really has the power. But will Fox News and Rush Limbaugh ever embrace it? Of course not. Maybe they are part of the conspiracy assigned to blow smoke to cover what's really going on?

irishman said...

I just checked. I can't believe that was 4800 words!

Anonymous said...

Oops: "George Orwell's Animal House"
= "George Orwell's Animal Farm"


The Germans bombed Pearl Harbor. The Germans have ALWAYS bombed Pearl Harbor.

Steve Sailer said...

"The Germans bombed Pearl Harbor. The Germans have ALWAYS bombed Pearl Harbor."

!

Anonymous said...

Now it seems he was the consegliere of a powerful Chicago real-estate developer group operating like the Chinese "New Men" - Party Members and all.

Obama is not bright enough, or experienced enough, to be anyone's consigliere.

Let's! said...

"Talented tenth"? Sounds like Barr, I mean Wright, gets HBD! Otherwise, he would have spoken of the "Charter school tenth" or the "terrifically tutored tenth," no?

TGGP said...

I always thought twitter's hashtag was stupid, but now I've gone and created one for George Orwell's Animal House.

J said...

Obama is not bright enough, or experienced enough, to be anyone's consigliere.

Why you say that? He worked years as a lawyer in ghetto real estate issues in Chicago.

Anonymous said...

Steve, Hannity had an entire show dedicated to 'dreams from My Father' last night. Might be a good idea to start advertising your study guid again.

Anonymous said...

Steve, Hannity had an entire show dedicated to 'dreams from My Father' last night.

Yeah, I caught some of that last night.

Boy is it weird [frankly surrealistic] to see blacks [albeit very light-skinned] who actually "get it".

But I have heard that there is a something of a gender gap amongst American blacks - by and large, they vote about 95% DEM - but that 95% breaks down as something like 100% DEM for black females, compared to only 89% DEM for black males.

So I guess there really are conservative black dudes out there, but the MacFrankfurt School is sure as Hades ain't ever gonna let you see them on MSM broadcasts.

Dahinda said...

Gentrification in Chicago started as far back as the 1940's when civic leaders wanted to make sure that the middle class did not leave the city. It was the reason for the high rise public housing in the first place. Also, why is the West Side always forgotten? On the West Side of Chicago, there is a ridge that runs north to south at approx. 6000 west, and that, Steve, is the continental divide.

Anonymous said...

I think Erik Rush reads isteve, he claims to have broke the Jeremiah Wright story:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7r8GBqL914

Anonymous said...

My family is all from the area of Chicago by Calumet City.We would go back and see the blue ERV logos that were the signs of Vrdolyak. (Stevie Ray Vaughan used that typeface and logo as his "SRV") Fast Eddie was a hero to the Poles, Slovaks and Ruthenians that occupied the blocks of row houses everyone my family knew lived in.

Anonymous said...

>You must be very young. "Bread" has been used to mean "money" since at least the sixties.<

Hey kids! 1960s-speak FYI:

Bread = money
Groovy = awesome
My bag = my interest or specialty or talent; syn. my thing

etc.

We need a sitcom or "Mad Men"-type series focusing on the late 1960s/very early '70s. It won't be too soon by the time it gets out of development. Think urban renewal machers with "Easy Rider" kids, or something.

Anonymous said...

>You must be very young. "Bread" has been used to mean "money" since at least the sixties.<

Hey kids! FYI 1960s-talk:

Bread = money
Groovy = awesome
My bag = my interest or specialty or talent; syn. my thing

etc.

We need a sitcom or "Mad Men"-type series focusing on the late 1960s/very early '70s. It won't be too soon by the time it gets out of development. Think urban renewal machers losing everything and their kids doing the "Easy Rider" bag. Edge: DON'T put MLK or Woodstock in it (maybe peripherally). The black character could be Obama's dad.

Londoner said...

Not a word of Obama's autobiography sounds even close to believable. Trite vignettes with scripted, cliched, folksy dialogue, probably written with a long-term view to being narrated by Morgan Freeman. It just sounds made up.

"Bread" has been a slang term for money in Britain for a very long time. There was a tv sitcom called "Bread" in the mid-1980s, and the term definitely pre-dates that by several decades. "Dough" is another old word for money.

Anonymous said...

I think Erik Rush reads isteve, he claims to have broke the Jeremiah Wright story:

Boy, it sure would be nice to have a calm, reasonable, friendly [or at least not too antagonistic] conversation with a black guy who "gets it".

Dittoes for a Scots-Irish guy [although, in fairness to him, Mencius Moldbug has been fairly honest at times as to the nature of Scots-Irish politics].

Forgot My Alias Again said...

Steve, the portage between the Maumee and the Wabash makes for a much more graceful arc from Quebec to New Orleans. Forget Chicago...the key to the continent is Fort Wayne!

Douglas Knight said...

The slang usage of bread meaning money was popular in the 40s. Dough goes back to the 19th century.