EXCLUSIVE COVERAGE OF ANA NICOLE SMITH'S APPEAL
BY ONE OF FLORIDA'S LEADING EXPERTS

WILL APPEALS COURT REDEEM FLORIDA JUSTICE?

WILL "BEADLE BUMBLE" WIN THE APPEAL?

OUR PREDICTION ON THE COURT'S ACTION

(CHICAGO)(February 28, 2007) My God, the Fourth District Court of Appeal. I have litigated a pile of cases in that court, and the court doesn't particularly care for me. I have won some appeals and lost others. Personally, I don't particularly like the judges.

I had one DCA judge censured; and one judge removed for misconduct (shoplifting). So I could write a negative assessment of the Ana Nicole Smith appeal. But my personal integrity compels me to say the Fourth DCA is one of America's outstanding intermediate state appellate courts.

Florida courts are among the best in the nation when it comes to accessibility and openness to litigants; in other words, the structure of the court system is open and accessible. It's the best. Yes, they have a lot of zoo-ready judges; but then as I made clear in an earlier column judges everywhere in America can be loony.

On balance, I think the Fourth DCA will do a good job, and I expect them to try to redeem the reputation of Florida justice, by delivering the body to ANS's mother.

The problem is that the oral hearing before the court was problematical. Virgie Arthur's appellate counsel had an overwhelmingly strong case, but she is a lousy appellate advocate and was unprepared for the oral argument. The "guardian" made a somewhat more coherent argument in what is a weak legal position.

I hope Beadle Bumble, a character in Dickens who says, "If the law supposes that…the law is a ass, a idiot" does not win.

Arthur's lawyer was unprepared and virtually incompetent. When asked about Anna Nicole's purchase of a burial plot, Roberta Mandel was silent. She didn't know the trial record. In point of fact Smith purchased no plots; Howard Stern did. No one told her to clarify that point on rebuttal. A weak legal team.

Mandel conceded the "facts" but that is where she should have made her strongest attack. Even though "facts" are usually "found" in the trial court, and are not subject to review on appeal, the Smith appeal was extraordinary.

The nation spent a week seeing that ANS was deranged and under the influence of drugs, as well as grief-stricken. How could her "intent" be controlling, and so clear, when the record was replete with evidence she was incapable of forming informed intent or informed consent? Mandel was silent, again.

This is a case where on common sense the mother should win. The arguments made by Judge Seidlen and the "guardian" are absurd. If the child is too young to decide, let a complete stranger take control. What kind of nutty reasoning is that?

And so the Fourth DCA faces a real challenge. In my opinion, Florida law (Andrews v. McGowan, 739 So.2d 132) completely favors Virgie Arthur. But Mandel's appeal was presented so poorly that there is a serious question whether she can win.

Ultimately, Judge Seidlen made Florida courts into "a ass, a idiot" by his pathetic performance and by his perversion of both statutory law and common sense. In a case of unfortunate characters, common sense, common law and Florida statutes supported Arthur's position.

Will she win? She should. Despite the "cold neutrality" of the judicial process, judges still are sensitive to public opinion in a highly visible case such as this one. To suggest that a drugged-up, incoherent woman knew what she was doing when she claimed she "wanted to be buried in the Bahamas" is ludicrous. Roberta Mandel made an atrocious showing as Arthur's appellate advocate; that could doom Virgie Arthur's strong case.

Andrews should appeal to the Florida Supreme Court if she loses.

This appeal once again presents graphic evidence of the great difference that a good advocate can make. Mandel had a strong case but she is a lousy lawyer. Stern/Guardian had a weak case but in the face of a weak appellate opponent they may well win.

I vote for Virgie Arthur. Based on the hearing, it's hard to suggest she will win. But she should. It's the law.

MEDIA CONTACT: (866) 706-2639

----------------------------------------
Chicago-based Internet journalist, broadcaster and critic Andy Martin is the Executive Editor and publisher of ContrarianCommentary.com. © Copyright by Andy Martin 2006. Martin covers national politics with forty years of personal experience. Columns also posted at politicalgateway.com. Comments? E-mail: AndyMart20@aol.com. Media contact: (866) 706-2639. Cell (917) 664-9329.

CONTRARIAN COMMENTARY FOR February 24, 2006

ANNA NICOLE SMITH AND THE JUDGES OF BROWARD COUNTY

AND THANK YOU FOR EXPOSING AMERICA'S JUDICIAL SYSTEM TO FLORIDA'S SUNLIGHT

UNFORTUNATELY, BROWARD COURTS ARE MORE LIKE, THAN UNLIKE, AMERICA'S OTHER JUDICIAL SYSTEMS; WE SHOULD NOT BE SMUG ABOUT FLORIDA'S COURTHOUSE CLOWNS SUCH AS LARRY SEIDLEN AND LARRY KORDA

(CHICAGO)(February 24, 2007) Florida is a wonderful place, especially when gleaming sunbeams bounce off high-rise buildings while northern cites are frozen solid. But the state is also an open-air insane asylum, with the inmates firmly in control.

Nowhere is the "asylum" aspect of Florida's environment more obvious than in the circus tent officially labeled the "Broward County Courthouse." Judge Larry Seidlen, one of the inmates, said last week his courtroom was not a "circus." He was too modest. The entire Broward County Courthouse is a circus tent.

Viewers across America have been shocked this week to learn just how crazy Florida judges can be. Many of us have been transfixed by the unbelievable circus in the courtroom of Judge Seidlen. I confess, I watched.

Before unfortunate Anna Nicole could lie in state she has had to lie down for the lies people tell in Florida courts. Lie down in darkness.

Well, as is so often the case with major national newsbreaks, ContrarianCommentary.com's executive editor, yours truly, was there first. Broward County Courthouse circus? Been there, done that.

I litigated cases in front of Larry Seidlen in the 90's, as well as Larry ("Crazy") Korda, another Anna Nicole inmate-judge. I would not trust these men with a grocery list, let alone a serious legal proceeding. And there they were, on national television this week, advertising how crazy justice can be in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

But is Anna Nicole's case really that unique? Is what we watched a one-time freak show? Not at all.

Not really. In terms of the competence and incompetence of the judges, her case is both extraordinary and very ordinary.

Florida is unusual in that the state has an very open judicial system (for which, honestly, it should be commended and congratulated); TV cameras are routinely allowed in courtrooms and judicial chambers. The result is that we see more craziness than we do from courts in New York or Illinois, where the courtroom doors are firmly locked to avoid media access to judicial corruption and incompetence.

Judge Seidlen made an ass of himself. But then Broward judges are famous for making asses of themselves. In the 90's I filed a complaint against Judge Paul ("Marko the Barbarian") Marko, who told a woman in a divorce case she should cruise singles bars because the judge did the same. He accepted punishment from the Florida Supreme Court. Fortunately for litigants, Marko died an early death. He was the worst of the worst.

Seidlen and Korda continue to linger, along with a platoon of other weirdo judges in Broward County. On any given day these failed lawyers are meting out justice to the innocent citizens who have the misfortune to need a court. Most of the time the goofy judges labor in anonymity and, like the giant squid retrieved from the oceans, also last week, the system goes forward, quietly claiming its helpless victims. Every so often a celebrity case appears and then we see inside Florida's circus courthouses. For real.

But is Florida really that different than New York, Illinois, or anywhere else? Not really. Political hacks and incompetent judges are everywhere.

Somewhere along the line in school most of us read about pre-revolutionary France, where people were jailed for stealing a loaf of bread ("Les Miserables"), or a similar Charles Dickensian era in England when people were sentenced to "transportation" and shipped to Australia for minor thefts. "Tut, tut," we say, "That's history."

But this week, a man in Indiana, a helpless homeless man with mental illness, was released after spending 17 months in jail for stealing a bottle of soda from Wal-Mart. Authorities said he was "lost in the system." Pretty sad.

If the truth be known America's courts and courthouses are all pretty crazy places. Pretty sad.

While judicial egos continue to inflate, and judges, especially federal judges, demand and bigger and grander temples for their ministrations, the quality of justice steadily declines. Almost every week, somewhere in the United States an innocent man is released from jail after serving a lengthy jail sentence for a crime he didn’t commit. I stopped keeping count. There have been over a hundred men released from death row after being found innocent. In each case, justice and a series of judges failed.

And still Neanderthal conservatives cry for more punishment, more jails and tougher judges. Why don't they ask for more competent judges? (Full disclosure: I'm a Republican, but not a Neanderthal.) Judicial incompetence is a nationwide problem, not only in Larry Seidlen's courtroom.

In Florida, judges are elected, and usually elections turn on ethnic identity, not competence. In Illinois, judges are also elected; things are no better there. One judicial candidate, Frederick Rhine, changed his last name to O'Brien because he said Irish lawyers were disproportionately elected in Cook County (Illinois).

And in New York, the U. S. Supreme Court has just agreed to decide whether the state's judicial elections are a sham and farce. Additionally, New York still allows plumbers and carpenters to serve as judges in "town justice" courts; somehow, legislators ignore that we are 200 years past the colonial era.

As long as Anna Nicole was healthy and had no need for judges, she was an entertaining floorshow in her own right. Then she died and the real three-ring circus began.

I have been watching and exposing corruption in the courts for almost forty years. So the Anna Nicole's extravaganza is no surprise. None.

As a young law student, almost forty (40) years ago, I walked into the Champaign County, Illinois courthouse to fight corruption. An old couple had died, and a local judge and Urbana Mayor Stanley Weaver had looted their estate. My thanks: the local newspaper, the News-Gazette, attacked me for exposing corruption. The paper's owner was friends with the judge and mayor. And so it goes. I went on to be a small part of a team that exposed two Illinois Supreme Court judges (Roy Solfisburg and Ray Klingbiel) for taking bank stock bribes. My reward? Attacks from the court for being disloyal to the judiciary. All this while I was still in law school.

In the 1970's I lit the fuse that ignited Operation Greylord in Chicago. Over 80 judges and court personnel were convicted. Once again judges attacked me for exposing corruption. Courthouses are spooky places; they don't like sunlight. Or honesty and integrity.

At one time in the 1980's I had reversed close to a majority of the federal judges in Washington. I handled an appeal before then-Circuit Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg. On remand, the famous District Judge Gerhard Gesell was furious I had overturned him. But we still won.

I have also filed cases in New York, where one Judge Tomkins went home after work and beat his wife. Another, Joe ("Jose")("JoJo") Cabranes, listened to cases in which his own divorce lawyer was representing clients. Real winners. So I have seen enough corruption in courthouses to fill a bushel basket.

Seen in context, Broward County justice is typical, not atypical. And so while Larry Seidlen, the self-styled "taxi driver from the Bronx" (what is it with taxi drivers?) made a fool of himself in court last week, Americans are fooling themselves if they think Seidlen and Korda are the only wacko incompetent judges in the United States. Our courthouses in every state are full of corrupt nincompoops such as Seidlen and Korda. Florida is among the worst in courthouse corruption and incompetence. But it is not alone. Far from it.

Thanks to my enemies at the Illinois Supreme Court I never did enter the private practice of law. I have devoted my life in the law to exposing corruption and incompetence in the judicial system and trying to improve our courts. And, in the words of Robert Frost, it has "made all the difference" to my life.

Anna Nicole. Rest in peace. Larry Seidlen: go back to driving a cab.

---------------Chicago-based Internet journalist, broadcaster and critic Andy Martin is the Executive Editor and publisher of ContrarianCommentary.com. © Copyright Andy Martin 2007. Martin covers national and international politics with forty years of personal experience. Columns also posted at politicalgateway.com; contrariancommentary.wordpress.com. Comments? E-mail: AndyMart20@aol.com. Media contact: (866) 706-2639.

WHERE'S OBAMA?

FEDERAL JUDGE AGREES WITH ANDY MARTIN-- ILLINOIS LAW IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL

CONTRARIAN COMMENTARY FOR February 24, 2006

I TOLD YOU SO: PART FOUR

SUDAN LAW WAS A JOKE, A FEDERAL JUDGE AGREES

WHO'S THE REAL "CONSTITUTIONAL SCHOLAR" IN ILLINOIS

(CHICAGO)(February 24, 2007) Last year, during the primary election season, I filed a lawsuit against State Treasurer Judy Topinka in her official capacity. That meant I was not suing her personally but rather challenging the authority of her office to take action under the U. S. and Illinois constitutions.

My lawsuit said that Topinka's support for a "Sudan disinvestment law" sponsored by State Senator Jacqueline Collins was a mistake and a sign of Topinka's pandering to legislators. My lawsuit claimed that the state law barring investments in Sudan was unconstitutional. The case was filed in circuit court in Sangamon County. It's a public record.

Given the rather low level of intelligence of Chicago's news media, and their failure to intelligently investigate either Blagojevich's or Topinka's overall fitness as candidates, the Sudan issue was ignored and Topinka was later defeated.

I did not press my lawsuit, however, because I did not want to be accused of being disloyal to Judy during the election season; I had endorsed her for election after the primary. And so I waited until after the election, with its unfortunate result, to reactivate the case. The holiday season being what it is, I didn’t get around to looking at my state court folder until this month.

In the meantime, last August the National Foreign Trade Council had filed a parallel federal court lawsuit to my state court action.

Friday, a federal judge agreed with the Council and me and entered an injunction declaring the Sudan disinvestment law unconstitutional.

Once again, my legal reasoning and in particular my constitutional analysis of misguided public policy in Illinois proved correct. I have a forty-year track record of accurate and prescient legal reasoning. It's a public record.

Not to put too fine appoint on it, but there is another Illinoisan whom the media describe as a "constitutional scholar." Yup, none other than Barry (Barack) Obama. Can Obama point to any lawsuit or judicial decision where his constitutional claims were vindicated, where his name appears on the papers? I doubt it. Obama's constitutional "scholarship" exists mainly in his own mind, and in the minds of media sycophants who want to believe what they want to believe--and the facts be damned.

I tip my hat to Obama as a world-class Kool-Aid salesman, the best since Jimmy Jones. But I don’t think for a minute that Barry O is even remotely a constitutional scholar.

Just mark your notebooks--

I told you so. It's a public record.

---------------Chicago-based Internet journalist, broadcaster and critic Andy Martin is the Executive Editor and publisher of ContrarianCommentary.com. He is a chronicler of all things Midwestern and the authentic Voice of Middle America. © Copyright Andy Martin 2007. Martin covers national and international politics with forty years of personal experience. Columns also posted at politicalgateway.com. Comments? E-mail: AndyMart20@aol.com. Media contact: (866) 706-2639.

CONTRARIANCOMMENTARY.COM
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Headquarters mail:
Post Office Box 1851
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Anthony R. Martin, J. D.
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Executive Editor

February 21, 2007

LEGAL DEPARTMENT
Random House, Inc.
1745 Broadway
New York, NY 10019
Via fax (212) 572-6066

LEGAL DEPARTMENT
Crown Publishing Group
1745 Broadway
New York, NY 10019
Via fax (212) 940-7868

NOTICE OF CONSUMER FRAUD AND
CORPORATE FRAUD UNDER NEW YORK LAW

Dear Counsel:

Approximately 2-1/2 years ago I notified Crown Books that Barack Obama (and Crown Books) were involved in a consumer fraud--by selling a fraudulent book on his life. He was selling a document that was being mischaracterized as an "autobiography" when it was a novelized version of his life.

Obama and Random/Crown have fooled others. I learned from my research, for example, that the free encyclopedia "Wikipedia" refers to your book as an "autobiography."

The issue of the novelization of Mr. Obama's life, as depicted in your publishing list, came to life again this week with stories in the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Sun-Times. I am also enclosing 2004 stories.

Mr. Obama admits he created composite characters and other fictitious elements to move along his narrative. By no stretch of the imagination does his work qualify as "biography" or "autobiography" as it is identified on your publishing list (see attached).

I have no objection to your selling Mr. Obama's book so long as you label it with a clear disclosure that it is a fictionalized version of his life, and do not represent on either your web site or in any other sales matter or manner that the book is "autobiography" or "biography."

Biographies are expected to provide scrupulous accuracy, not novelization. For example, you just don’t say "I don't remember" a major character in a brief (then 35-year) life such as his; you go and find out that person's name and include it accurately.

Obama's "biography" is a fraud. The Sun Times reported yesterday that in trying to find out whom the "real" people in the book were, his own staff was forced to start from scratch, without any help from the senator who obviously can't remember his own fabrications.

If you refuse you take what I believe to be reasonable action I will choose a legal forum where the book is being sold, including the United Kingdom, and file a legal action under both general and consumer fraud laws to restrict the marketing/advertising of Obama's book by both Random House/Crown Publishing and any booksellers.

Please feel free to contact me to discuss this matter further. If you wish to rely on any legal authority to publish as "biography" what is clearly now fiction, then by all means provide it to me so I may review your legal research and respond to you appropriately.

Respectfully submitted,

ANDY MARTIN
EXECUTIVE EDITOR
CONTRARIANCOMMENTARY.COM

AM:sp
W/encl.

ATTENTION: ASSIGNMENT/DAYBOOK EDITORS

ANNOUNCEMENT OF NEW YORK CITY NEWS CONFERENCE: OBAMA FRAUD

INTERNET EDITOR ANDY MARTIN ASKS THAT RANDOM HOUSE STOP SELLING BARACK OBAMA BOOK AS "BIOGRAPHY," THREATENS LAWSUIT

NEWS CONFERENCE DETAILS:

WHO: Internet journalist/editor Andy Martin

WHERE: New York City, sidewalk in front of 1745 Broadway

WHEN: Wednesday, February 21, 2006 3:00 P.M.

WHAT: Andy Martin demands that Random House/Crown Books stop
selling Obama book as "biography"

MEDIA
CONTACT: Andy Martin (866) 706-2639

Internet editor and critic Andy Martin will hold a New York news conference Wednesday, February 21st to threaten Random House and Crown Books with a consumer fraud lawsuit if they continue to sell Barack (Barry) Obama's book "Dreams From My Father" in their biography/autobiography lists.

"Mr. Obama has conned a lot of people," Martin will state, "But he never fooled me. Not in 2004, and not in 2007. It is now clear that 'Dreams From My Father' is itself a dream, Barack Obama's daydream of how he would have liked his life to unfold, not how it actually unfolded. It is simply fraudulent to represent that his book is 'biography' or 'autobiography' as Random House is doing, when the book contains fictionalized and composite characters and even the author can’t remember the truth. I have no objection to Random House selling Barry's book properly labeled as 'fiction,' but I do object to any sale as 'fact.'

"Unlike Mr. Obama, a lawyer who could probably not find his way to the courthouse, I do know how to sue, and I will take action if Random House's fraudulent corporate behavior continues."
-------------------------------------
Chicago-based Internet journalist, broadcaster and critic Andy Martin is the Executive Editor and publisher of ContrarianCommentary.com. © Copyright by Andy Martin 2007. Martin covers national and world politics with forty years of personal experience. Columns also posted at politicalgateway.com; ContrarianCommentary.blogspot.com; contrariancommentary.wordpress.com. Comments? E-mail: AndyMart20@aol.com. Media contact: (866) 706-2639.

CONTRARIAN COMMENTARY FOR FEBRUARY 20, 2007

LOS ANGELES TIMES EXPOSES BARACK OBAMA AS A FRAUD

THE MAN WHO BROUGHT DOWN OBAMA; ANDY MARTIN SAYS, "I TOLD YOU SO"

IT'S TIME FOR BARRY OBAMA TO BE HELD TO THE STANDARDS OF A WHITE MAN; THE WHITE HOUSE IS NO PLACE FOR AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

(CHICAGO)(FEBRUARY 20, 2007) Later today we will issue a special analysis on Barack Obama's first week as a national candidate. It won't be a pretty sight. But before the big picture, we address a more focused picture, the larger deeper truth about Barry (Barack) Obama: the man is a complete fraud.

On August 11, 2004, while Obama was still a candidate, I held a news conference in which I stated, "The man is a complete fraud. The truth is going to surprise, and disappoint, and outrage many people who were drawn to him… In the meantime, Crown Books should stop selling Obama's novelization of his life." Well. (The news release can easily be located on the Internet, but here's one link: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1189687/posts

Earlier this month, during the period leading up to Obama's declaration for the presidency, we continued to question his qualifications for any office, let alone the presidency.

Monday's Los Angeles Times exploded one of the major myths in Obama's memoir, Dreams From My Father, that Obama had been the spearhead behind efforts to remove asbestos contamination at Altgeld Gardens on the South Side of Chicago: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-obama19feb19,1,7228837.story

In reality, Obama stole the credit from real community activists and "organizers" and appropriated their efforts as his own. Obama covered the tracks to his burglary of the truth by using fictional characters to replace the "real" people in the Altgeld episode. It is no surprise that Sweet reports today Obama was "worried about a pending potentially negative…story."

Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times, who is an unabashed Obama-lover, is also an honest journalist. She too, way back in 2004, questioned Obama's use of fiction as fact, and stated, "It is impossible to know who is real and who is not." (Sun-Times, 2/20/07, see http://www.suntimes.com/news/sweet/264478,CST-NWS-sweet20.article). Indeed, Ms. Sweet, it is not impossible at all. "Obama" is not real. Mr. Obama is a fictional creation of a very talented and very intelligent bunkum artist, Barry (Barack) Obama. From end to end, from start to finish, Barack Obama is an imaginative self-invention.

In 2004, Sweet writes today, Obama could not remember the identity of one of the key characters in his book: "I don't remember what Smitty's real name was. I think it was Wally." He wrote a book about events that had taken place a few years earlier, and "forgot" the names of his key characters. So much for Obama's respect for fact checking.

Sweet also says that Obama's campaign staffers had to read his book over the past few days to decipher who the "real people" in his book were. They couldn't just ask the candidate. He couldn't tell them. And the man wants to be president? Be real.

Let's be brutally honest: If a white man, or a white candidate (Joe Biden, are you listening?) committed a fraud of this magnitude he would be driven out of the presidential race. But the national media ignores Obama's lies as they shamelessly pander to minority pressures. Biden's lies in 1988 (I was there in Iowa when the story broke) are piddling compared to Obama's prevarications. Biden was pilloried, and is still being criticized decades later, and Obama gets a free pass for his lies.

And Obama has the nerve to say he is being held to a "higher" standard as a minority candidate. Rubbish.

It is time for truth telling, as Barry O likes to say, and it is time for him to tell the truth to the American people and withdraw as a candidate. The Oval Office is no place for affirmative action. We need someone who is a real leader, not a self-imagined leader. Real experience, not imaginary experience, is essential. Joe Biden paid the price for a fictional resume in 1998. It is now long past the time when Obama should have been forced off the national political stage, and sent to Hollywood, where his brilliant fictional talents truly lie.

There is no "affirmative action" credit for the White
House. There is only one standard, for Black or White. And Obama has embarrassingly fallen short of the minimum standards for our highest office.

As I wrote in 2004, long, long ago, "The truth is going to surprise, and disappoint, and outrage many people who were drawn to him."

Well, what about it Barry? I mean Barack.

[Is it any wonder ContrarianCommentary.com is the fastest growing and most authoritative news and information source for intelligent readers worldwide?]

I have previously identified myself in columns as the "man who brought down Obama." He's falling.

------------------------------------------
Chicago-based Internet journalist, broadcaster and critic Andy Martin is the Executive Editor and publisher of ContrarianCommentary.com. © Copyright by Andy Martin 2007. Martin covers national and world politics with forty years of personal experience. Columns also posted at politicalgateway.com; ContrarianCommentary.blogspot.com; contrariancommentary.wordpress.com. Comments? E-mail: AndyMart20@aol.com. Media contact: (866) 706-2639.

CONTRARIAN COMMENTARY FOR February 15, 2006

CHIEF ILLINIWEK: BRAVE STUDENTS, COWARDLY TRUSTEES AND ADMINISTRATORS

SAVE THE CHIEF, PART II: CHIEF ILLINIWEK GOES TO COURT

(CHICAGO)(February 15, 2007) I first wrote about Chief Illiniwek last October 6th. See (http://www.politicalgateway.com/main/columns/read.html?col=672)And, although I am not a sportswriter who has covered Illinois teams, I rise again as a loyal Illini to defend the Chief and to do a little dance of my own in support of the brave students who have filed a lawsuit to save Chief Illiniwek, and thereby confronted and shamed the U. of I.’s cowardly trustees and administrators.

You don’t get to be a trustee of a public university by bucking the system. Trusteeship is usually a payoff to loyal supporters. And so boards of trustees in general tend to be conformist and risk adverse. Likewise, college administrators are usually frustrated academics who are better at politics than academics. They also rise through the campus bureaucracy. Again, they are not saber-rattlers.

And the National Collegiate Athletic Association (“NCAA”)? Why that’s a billion dollar business that uses slave labor and the promise of future employment for the few to dupe the many into participating and risking life and limb on behalf of alma mater. Good work if you can get it. Or, as my aching and gracefully aging Fighting Illini bones remind me, maybe not such good work.

And so, in our politically-correct-obsessed age the “few,” the radical, noisy, obnoxious few, can intimidate and often dominate the many, merely by “maumauing” trustees and administrators. Like legislation and sausages being made, it isn’t pretty to watch this process.

The Chief Illiniwek controversy has attracted an unusually colorful and mendacious cast of protesters, including an irate heir who claims he should have inherited the Chief’s regalia. By his very act of arrogant cupidity the pretender-in-chief and heir has confirmed the wisdom of the original chief who sold the regalia to the University to protect its future provenance.

Watching the unhappy heir who demanded return of the chief’s regalia reminded me just how greedy and arrogant unsatisfied heirs and descendants can be. Now what I have I not inherited that I should have inherited? Hmmm. The shabbiness and tawdriness of the of the chief’s opponents only ennobles our great Illini tradition.

Nevertheless, despite the overwhelming public and alumni support for maintaining Chief Illiniwek as a revered symbol of our state and university, the noisy few have been outdistancing the silent many in this contorted athletic competition.

Enter the students. The current Chief and Assistant Chief filed suit Thursday to bar the NCAA from retaliating against the University of Illinois for retaining the chief as a symbol of our university. I hope they win. The administrators will be trembling that they might. So will the trustees, cowards all. But the people of this great state will be cheering.

Former News-gazette sports editor Loren Tate appears to have been one of the first to float “academic freedom” as a basis to protect the chief and ensure the tradition endures. Well, fine. But how about just plain freedom? The right of a free people to choose how they will portray their past to present and future generations?

But something will be missing in the courtroom. The University. Indeed, just writing this column is getting my dander up. I might just file to intervene and speak on behalf of the People of Illinois. Our Chief is part of our history. He is worth fighting for and worth preserving. Why is it that in tiny North Dakota the state is fighting to preserve its traditions, and in mighty Illinois the trustees and administrators are camouflaged and in hiding? See: www.ag.state.nd.us/NCAA/Complaint-State-Court.pdf. Calling Lisa Madigan.

The president of the University of North Dakota rose to his school’s defense, see http://www.und.edu/president/html/statements/NCAAletter.html. Where is our president of the University of Illinois?

None of this would be happening if Governor Rod “Blah Blah” Blago were still alive. Of if he had just once driven south of Cook County to sample life in Springfield. If only the state that produced Lincoln could produce a leader today. But it hasn’t. It produced Topinka and Blagojevich and the result is obvious and painful to behold.

Illinois is a vastly different place than it was 200 years ago. And, by contemporary standards, atrocities and injustices took place. I wasn’t there but I will accept that truth. Today the Chief speaks to our hallowed remembrance and honor for the tribes that lived on the land we now call Illinois. I hope Chief Illiniwek will forever enshrine our sense of history, our sense of remembrance and our sense of loyalty to history that he represents. If the students lose this battle, we will all be diminished. I pray they will win a smashing victory for all of us.

Now about that football team. But then I’m not a sportswriter and I aim to keep it that way. Go Illini.

---------------
Chicago-based Internet journalist, broadcaster and critic Andy Martin is the Executive Editor and publisher of ContrarianCommentary.com. He is a chronicler of all things Midwestern and the authentic Voice of Middle America. © Copyright Andy Martin 2007. Martin covers national and international politics with forty years of personal experience. Columns also posted at politicalgateway.com. Comments? E-mail: AndyMart20@aol.com. Media contact: (866) 706-2639.

THE MASK OF BARACK OBAMA


A PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE


By the editors and
contributors and analysts
of ContrarianCommentary.com
Copyright © 2007


February 10, 2007


I.
THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILING
At some elementary, functioning, practical level we are all “profilers.” Every human being is constantly reacting to other humans, profiling their likes and dislikes, their attractiveness and unattractiveness. The police detective at the crime scene is already creating his or her own profile of a possible perp.
Indeed, we use the colloquial term “read” to reflect efforts to probe deeper into someone’s psyche. “Can you read him?” “Does she read me?” And so on.
Organized, governmental profiling came into general use in World War II. Initially, Great Britain’s Special Operations executive (SOE) began to profile aspects of the Nazi regime and its demented leaders. Later, the US’s Office of Strategic Services (OSS) also began to use profiling techniques to delve more deeply into the motivations of our enemies.
The advent of the Cold War and the CIA brought even more organized and expansive profiling techniques into use. These operations were later copied and extended by the FBI.
“Profiling” became controversial in 1964 when psychologists ran an ad in the New York Times claiming that Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater was psychologically unfit to be president because he was unstable and dangerous. They were issuing an expert opinion based on the profiling of the candidate.
Since the 1964 debacle profiling has come into general use by campaigns, media and other public projects. We also use the colloquial expression “What makes him tick?” to reflector informal attempts to profile the motivation and character of potential customers, competitors and others with whom we come into conflict.
Finally there was a barrage of profiling analysis during the period of Bill Clinton’s impeachment proceedings. Thus, we are on solid ground in seeking to analyze and create a psychological profile of presidential candidate Barack Obama.

II.
THE METHODOLOGY/TECHNIQUES OF PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILING
Psychologists use the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) as a matrix for profiling and diagnosing mental illness. This study is not limited by the DSM which, in any case, has limited application to a study of political personalities.
A profiler will use what is available; the value of the profile will depend on the input. During the Cold War, for example, the CIA successfully profiled Russian and Chinese leaders using published materials as well as media reports. There was little else to go on and the profiles were still remarkably accurate.
Personal interviews and views are obviously the gold coin of psychological profiling a political candidate but they were unavailable in the case of Mr. Obama.
More significantly from a profiling approach, his personality lends itself to planting subtle nuggets of self-revelation in his writings. His earlier writings, moreover, were prepared at a time when the prospects of a presidential campaign were probably not even an idle dream. So these early statements are especially helpful to a personality examination and identification.

III.
PROFILING BARACK OBAMA
Initially one can ask: why profile Obama? Is a psychological profile really needed? The answer is, understanding a public figure’s psyche and psychological motivation is no less critical because that person is in the public arena. It may be even more important. We can see an example of the need for constant review and evaluation of a person’s mental state ripped out of the headlines, in the saga of the astronaut who went berserk and sought to stalk her romantic rival.
NASA is now reviewing its external psychological profiling procedures, to see if changes are necessary, as well as internal evaluation protocols to see why it was that no one was aware and recognized Capt. Lisa Nowaks’s mental deteriorating. So it is essential not only to profile Obama, but to keep profiling him as more information and more self-revelation become available.
A review of Obama’s public speeches, campaign materials and especially his writings reflect that Obama’s personality has been remarkably consistent from childhood through adulthood.
In his book “Dreams From my Father,” Obama lays out the foundation for an examination of his character and personality. That seminal work reveals much, and almost all of what it reveals is truthful and applicable to his presidential prospects.
Obama’s life began with loss, hurt, confusion, alienation, frustration. Out of these he constructed a psychological "mask" that still endures.
Every individual wears a mask. It is a part of reality and a part of a healthy personality and psyche.
But Obama’s pain still controls his personality. Like Dr. Strangelove’s arm, that can’t help rising, Obama's sense of loss, exclusion, frustration and fantasy still overarch his personality. He authored a book “Dreams From My Father,” when in reality he got no dreams from his father. Obama created his father’s “dreams” in his own fantasy world. The fantasies associated with the “missing parent” are among the most powerful, the most enduring and occasionally the most devastating in human experience.
He was “Barry” until he went to college. Then he became the tribal Barack. But on his first visit to his “roots” in Kenya, he once again succumbs to “Barry,” because that is what his father and family called him.
He apparently held and still holds Kenyan-American dual nationality, but has scrupulously avoided any discussion of his “dual” status. Duality is not what Obama craves: he craves the singular, the linear, and the straight and narrow, to compensate for his own confused and winding initiation into the hardship of life and family, of creating a personality and mask consonant with his troubled feelings.
Over and over again, Obama returns in his speeches and in his writings to a sense of loss, alienation, detachment. He is a skillful promoter, and he manages to overcome his mask, to gild it with soft statements and lofty promises. He sells his weakness as a new paradigm of strength, security and clarity when there is little strength and no clarity in his mind.
Indeed the very essence of his personality is the perpetual, eternal promise unfulfilled. Obama’s “Hope” is the absence of reality, the unattainable in his own life scaled up to a national fantasy which he hopes to peddle to unsuspecting voters and especially young people. When he fails, they will feel betrayed.
While decrying the “smallness” of our politics he resorts to the smallest dimensions himself. Is he seeking to control foreign policy, or is he a frustrated local school board member? Should our schools be run from Washington, as he suggests, by the president, or should local people have final authority? Should the federal government have a bigger role in local schools, or is he just engaging in the casual blather that he decries in others? What is he going to do about teacher salaries? Nationalize or federalize them? And, oh, the teachers’ unions. In Obama's fantasyland all of these conflicts and contradictions dissolve into "hope." He is for more pay and perks, but which teacher's union supports strict accountability and expedited procedures for dismissal of incompetents?
Does Obama really believe that we need to revive the role of “labor unions” in his “digital economy,” or is that merely another sop to leaders that might support his candidacy? The very things that Obama condemns, he is in the process of becoming.
Bill Clinton reduced the presidency to worrying about school uniforms. Before long, Obama may be promising “healthy snacks” for school children as part of his "hope" for the future. Where does the smallness end? Obviously not with Obama, the newest champion of the same, the secure, the warm and fuzzy and ultimately the same escapist fantasies as every other career politician.
In Iraq? Obama wants to “cut and run,” by 2008. “We can’t wait, till 2008.” It will succeed marvelously as political policy in the Democratic Party primaries, but it will bring collapse to or failed policy even worse than that engendered by George Bush.
While Obama claims to be moving along Robert Frost’s “road not taken,” in reality he is on the same road, seeking the same fund raising contributors (tens of millions of dollars), seeking to stimulate the same media hysteria and ultimately seeking to run a traditional campaign while claiming he is doing precisely the opposite. In short, a bunkum artist who is fully capable, because of his “Mask,” of convincing himself of the truthfulness of his delusions. The same way children are.
Can his personality stand the stress? Probably not.
The media will get tired of Obama’s same old tired message, he substitution of hope for reality. And, ultimately, he will get tired of himself.
Politically Obama will become cannon fodder for the Republicans. Goofy Republicans wanted Hillary; they may get Barack, a dream come true. Giuliani (whom I don’t particularly like) would rip him up. Ultimately, Obama’s personality matrix left Obama weak inside, weak under the surface, "all sail and no anchor." He learned to avoid conflict, not fight. His mother raised someone who would run away, not stand his ground. And in Iraq that could prove fatal.
Obama says his campaign is “not just about me.” But in his mind it will always be just about him. Righting the wrongs he perceived and experienced as a child. Strengthening the powerlessness he reviled. Restoring his role, the one his siblings called his father’s “Obama” attitude, in the pantheon of politics. He will strive to be a strong leader on the surface, using powerful language and images; but inside he will still be the pied piper of powerlessness. And know it.
Obama has succeeded largely by his successful concealment at the margins. Obama's natural tendency, his default state of mind, is to evade, conceal, avoid--and escape. He managed to hide his middle name in 2004; he can’t any longer. Questions of family background will still plague him. As Democrats raise the volume of their demands for withdrawal, our adversaries will seek to stroke those fears with renewed attacks of their own in Iraq.
War is war, but war is also psychology. Obama’s psychology is weak. His presentation today was weak, and his approach to dealing with his adversaries will ultimately come to be seen as weak. Obama is still the outsider, still the one who needs to justify himself, and still the one who still needs to create a fantasyland to compensate for the void left by his absent father.

IV.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
The conflicts inside Barack Obama’s soul played out today in Springfield, where he alternated between jive and reality.
As much as Obama might try to change his face, to abandon his “old” Obama for a “new” persona, he cannot do so. His growth is limited by the demons within him. The mask is rigid, hardened.
He approached the American people as though he were speaking to a college audience, casual and insufficiently serious for someone who asks for the right to put his hand on the nuclear button as well as Washington’s bible.
Obama’s 2004 Democratic National Convention speech was so powerful and so memorable precisely because he was constrained by format and content. Today’s display was free-form Obama, and he won’t travel well and sell well outside a narrow spectrum of the electorate.
As Obama comes to realize he may have finally overreached, and perhaps even exceeded his level of incompetence, he may withdraw into himself, withdraw from the battlefield, and plan to return again in a later campaign.
The Mask, however, will remain. It can never be removed. He hasn’t learned how. All of the inadequacies and frustrations he perceived as a child still drive him and still control his personality. He won’t learn how to remove the Mask because he continues to be afraid there is nothing behind it.

ANDY MARTIN MAKES U. S. SENATOR DICK DURBIN AN OFFER HE CAN'T REFUSE:

ANDY MARTIN
The Right Republican for
U. S. Senator from Illinois/2008
Suite 4406, 30 E. Huron Street
Chicago, IL 60611-4723
Toll-free tel. (866) 706-2639
Toll-free fax (866) 707-2639
Web site: www.AndyforUSSenator.com
E-mail: AndyMart20@aol.com

February 8, 2007

Senator Dick Durbin
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
Via fax (202) 228-0400

Dear Dick:

One of your highly paid munchkins, Mike Daly, was quoted by Lynn Sweet today in the Chicago Sun-Times as saying you don’t have an opponent in 2008.

I beg to differ.

It is hard to believe that it is now 41 years since we worked together for Senator Paul Douglas, you in Springfield, I in Washington.

I salute your political success. But, if I had to change places, I don’t think I would. I have led an interesting life. And in the words of Robert Frost, that has made all the difference. I suspect I will be Senator Douglas’ sentimental favorite in 2008.

And, amazingly after 42 years it appears we will probably meet as opponents in 2008. Unless the political establishment scares up an opponent for me in the Republican primary.

Lynn Sweet quoted your over-the-top e-mail fund raising appeal. Who writes that malarkey for you? Do you really believe that crap?

Money, money, money. Maybe you should audition for the role of host in the musical Cabaret.

And there is a sinister evil in your efforts to raise tens of millions of dollars.

Millions and millions of dollars will be directed at bribing you to support Israel, to continue a bloody occupation, to prevent establishment of a Palestinian state and, ultimately, to keep the Middle East in perpetual turmoil because that is what Israel’s supporters mistakenly believe serves their interests.

Again, I beg to differ.

I favor immediate Israeli withdrawal from Palestine, not immediate American withdrawal from Iraq. The Andy Martin Peace Plan was first promulgated in 2000 and it has stood the test of time. It will be a centerpiece of my campaign.

I suspect that if you sent out an honest fund raising letter, saying you would vote for peace in Palestine as well as Iraq, and will no longer blindly endorse Israeli government use of cluster bomb units (CBU’s) against civilians, your fundraising river would shrink to a trickle.

I remember how Chuck Percy was crucified in his reelection campaign, merely because he supported a balanced Middle East policy.

And so I have an offer for you. An offer you shouldn’t refuse.

I can't guarantee, of course, that I will be the Republican nominee. But, if I am, let’s eliminate campaign spending and campaign as two friends across the state of Illinois, two friends who differ on the issues but two friends who love Illinois, love America and respect the democratic process.

Let's do Douglas proud.

We could actually enjoy ourselves. You would appreciate being able to say what you really think, instead of what your contributors want you to think. For myself, I have never been accused of towing anyone’s line.

Let’s keep just enough money, perhaps $100,000, to cover motel rooms, gas and wear and tear on the vans, maybe the odd plane ticket.

No need to run around the country begging for money.

I realize this would give you an advantage. But I offer you that handicap because as a Fighting Illini, I think I can neutralize the advantage and beat you while still remaining a friend.

All the money in the world couldn’t save the Republican Party in 2006 because my colleagues were on the wrong side of history. Your Middle East policy is also on the wrong side of history. Fifty million dollars can’t save you if you stand against the truth.

I said at the beginning of this letter I have enjoyed life. I have. I have never had to beg contributors for money, never had to sell my soul, never had to grovel for support when I know what I was doing was morally compromised. Most respectfully, I suggest that your Middle East policies are morally compromised.

The idiots in the Bush White House once said that “The road to Jerusalem lies through Baghdad.” Now they know better. “The road to Jerusalem lies through peace. And Washington.”

Let’s come together as friends, to campaign for democracy. We will be swinging hard at each other on the issues, very hard. I don’t support many of your left-wing prescriptions for our future, and you don't support my honest belief in more limited government.

By the way, if you want to put me on your campaign e-mail list, I’ll put you on mine. I can promise you that my letters and statements make for better reading because I write them myself. If we agree to forego campaign spending, you’ll have to write your own material as well.

And don't go out and scare all of your pro-Israel voters by telling them that Andy Martin, a supporter of Palestinian national rights, is running against you. I am a supporter of human rights, for both Israelis and Palestinians.

Let’s go back to the honest, open way politics used to be practiced. Let Illinois lead the way to a national renewal, to a revival of Lincoln-Douglas. Let’s make Durbin-Martin a future watchword for honest politics and open campaigning on the issues, not the money.

As always, I wish you the best. If I win the Republican nomination I will be an honorable opponent and I hope you will be the same.

From way back in 1966,

ANDY MARTIN


AM:sp

An Open Letter to Illinis Republican Party Chairman Andrew McKenna:


ANDY MARTIN
The Right Republican for
U. S. Senator from Illinois/2008
Suite 4406, 30 E. Huron Street
Chicago, IL 60611-4723
Toll-free tel. (866) 706-2639
Toll-free fax (866) 707-2639
Web site: www.AndyforUSSenator.com
E-mail: AndyMart20@aol.com

February 8, 2007

Mr. Andrew McKenna
Chairman
Illinois Republican party
Suite 1245
205 W. Randolph St.
Chicago, IL 60606
Via fax (312) 201-0181

Dear Andy:

I was amused to read in Lynn sweet’s Sun-Times today that you are out recruiting an opponent for me in the Republican senate primary, http://www.suntimes.com/news/sweet/248280,CST-EDT-sweet08.article.

It is usually better for state chairmen to stay our of contested primaries. The political marketplace usually does a better job of allocating nominations than insiders and power brokers. I hope you will commit to support the winner of the primary, including me.

The Republican Party’s electoral strategy in 2006 was disastrous. When I ran my commercial in January, asking the President to “Bring Home Our heroes,” the right wing stormed. Mainline Republicans played ostrich. The result: we ignored what was on voters’ minds. Not only did federal candidates suffer, we were also creamed for local (i.e. state) offices. The party is in a parlous condition in the state legislature. On balance, I had a far, far better grasp of the “ground war” than others did.

We are never going to be close friends but at least we should try to work together for the good of all Republicans, those who like us and, yes, even those who dislike us.

As I write this my campaign is tuning our political antennae for 2008. Once again, my campaign will be ahead of the pack on campaign intelligence and strategy.

A Republican will never be able to raise enough money to put Durbin on the defensive. Indeed, Illinois’ two most recent “big money” boys have been disasters. I refer, of course, to our own Jack Ryan and the Democrats’ Blair Hull. We can only run straight at Durbin, Fighting Illini style, and confront him with the role of his party in the failed foreign policy that is endangering our future.

If we want to put a scare into Durbin we have to scare him on the issues. We have to make his multi-millions worthless.

And so, if anyone wants to run against me in the primary, “Make my day.” My campaign is on track and ahead of schedule.

What do I suggest: lets meet and see in we can cooperate instead of confronting each other. I will always be a maverick Republican on the issues but I supported the party’s nominees last year and was ready, willing and able to work.

2008 is going to be an excruciatingly difficult year for the Republican Party. That doesn’t mean we leave the playing field, go home and allow the Democrats to claim a win. There are still ways to win, and ways to fight, honest and tough. In the meantime, I will be attacking Durbin and refining my campaign strategy.

Please feel free to call if you have any questions.

With personal regards,

ANDY

AM:sp

CONTRARIAN COMMENTARY FOR FEBRUARY 8, 2007

OBAMA WEEK: PART TWO

MR. & MRS. BARACK OBAMA: PROFITEERING FROM POVERTY

“HEALTH CARE” AS A VEHICLE TO IMPROVE THE HEALTH OF THE OBAMA FAMILY’S BANK ACCOUNT

“OBAMACARE” MEANS MORE MONEY FOR NOTHING EXCEPT MICHELLE OBAMA AND OTHER POVERTY PARASITES

(CHICAGO)(FEBRUARY 8, 2007) The late Chicago columnist Mike Royko used to say that the motto of the City of Chicago should be “Ubi est mea?” (“Where’s mine”) to reflect the fact that Chicago was a city quintessentially built on greed, not public service.

Mike Royko, meet Barry and Michelle Obama.

Senator & Mrs. Barack Obama have become wealthy “playing the system” in Chicago, and playing up their own bank balances. Now Barack (“Barry O”) wants to be president. In a “bid’em high” contest with Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, Obama proposes free health care for everyone: Obamacare.

It might behoove us to see how the Obama family has become wealthy at the expense of their “community.”

Mrs. Michelle Obama is paid a third of a million dollars a year to serve as “Vice President of External Affairs” at the University of Chicago Hospital on the city’s South (and poor) Side.

What is it exactly that Michelle Obama does to merit being paid a third of a million dollars every year? Like her erstwhile husband, who claims he came to Chicago to be a “community organizer,” and never successfully organized anything but his own personal wealth, Michele Obama essentially does nothing for her cool third-of-a-million. She, too, is also an “organizer.”

The reason health care in America is so expensive today is because we have allowed racial and political hucksters such as the Obamas to get rich exploiting poverty and the poor. The Obamas manage to use societal guilt to pyramid their own economic success and self-importance. They are quick to play the race card to improve the balances on their cash card.

Mrs. Obama has a law degree from Harvard. Why would she want to be engaged in superintending “community affairs” when she could practice law? Because “community affairs” is where the money’s at, goofy.

Mrs. Obama’s salary has gone from approximately $50,000 in 1999 to over $300,000 after her husband was elected senator. What does she do for that money? Well, according to the Chicago Tribune, Mrs. Obama is in charge of “women and minority vendor purchases, rejuvenation of [the hospital’s] volunteer program” and a “collaborative effort” with South Side clinics to provide care for low income residents. Three hundred thousand dollars a year for that? Good work if you can get it. And good luck.

If you’re sick, do you really need “outreach” to find the nearest hospital? Not really. People know where to do to find emergency treatment, a community clinic, a doctor.

So Mrs. Obama is not saving lives, working in an “ER” or contributing anything positive to the medical environment on the Southside of Chicago. Instead of being a part of the solution, she’s part of the problem. If Senator Obama wants to find out why “health care” costs so much today, all he has to do is roll over in bed and talk to his wife. Barry, ask Michelle a few questions, painful as that may be to your bank balance.

Mrs. Obama used to work in a law firm. But at law firms actually have to work to get paid. Nonproductive people are weeded out. In “community service” organizations such as hospitals we have tolerated the creation of bureaucracies of highly paid people such as Mrs. Obama who produce nothing and contribute nothing to health care—except the improved health of their own bank balances.

Again according to the Tribune, the University of Chicago Hospital has approximately 17 “vice presidents” earning in the third-of-a-million-dollar range. What is Obamacare going to do about this kind of payroll padding that inflates health care costs? Add more people, more “community organizers,” more Obamas.

Hospitals used to be charitable institutions. Doctors would treat the indigent as well as the wealthy. It was not a perfect system but then we don’t live in a perfect world. Then the “poverty pimps” arrived. Or “poverticians” if you prefer. “Poverticians” became part of the medical landscape as part of the civil rights revolution.

Former New York Mayor Ed Koch described poverticians as people who got rich from poverty, people who made fat, easy livings profiteering from racial guilt and fears of community rebellions. A little mau mau action (ah, those Kenyans again). A little Jesse Jackson give-my-family-and-friends a franchise to get wealthy or we'll shut you down on Thursday action. In short a “reverence” for personal profit instead of community progress. In short, Mayor Koch was describing Michelle Obama.

She contributes nothing to health care except increasing the cost. She collects a third of a million dollars—tripled since Obama was elected to the U. S. Senate—to “reach out” to people who are desperate for medical attention and supposedly can't find treatment due to the “high cost of health care,” in reality due in large part to the fact that “health care” supports nonproductive people like Michelle Obama.

The health care system is “high cost” because it supports lavish lifestyles of people such as the Obama family who consume mightily and contribute nothing to the healing process.

So if you are happy to have the Obamas become rich profiteering from poverty, meet Obamacare. Obamacare would deliver “free” health care to the masses. But such treatment is available today. Obamacare would substitute today’s admittedly imperfect system for a perfect system of racial and community profiteering. We would have more people earning huge salaries to engage in “outreach” and “community development.” Nothing would change in the operating room but everything would change in the operators’ living rooms through the addition of more well-paid parasites that did nothing but get rich from doing nothing.

As I constantly like to remind people who are mesmerized by Barack Obama, what did he ever “organize” in Chicago? A strike? Heaven forefend. A successful community movement? Nope. He organized nothing except his own self-advancement. The poor that Obama claims to have organized are still poor and still there where he found them decades ago.

Now there is nothing wrong with wanting to be rich, and succeeding; but please don’t tell me you were organizing the community when you were only organizing your own financial enrichment.

I want to be clear that that I am not saying that the Obamas are bad people. On the contrary, they are good people. They seem like a charming couple. But the “Godfather” would understand the financial reality of using race to get rich. The Obamas trained learned law school to use briefcases instead of legal briefs to advance themselves into the realm of the rich and famous.

We all want to achieve the American dream: a fancy home financed in part by someone such as Illinois’ sleazy Tony Rezko at taxpayer expense. A job where you show up and collect a cool third-of-a-million for doing nothing and contributing nothing except serving as an ornament to our societal stupidity and guilt. Today, “wealth” is being created by public agencies that bemoan “high costs” while they support 17 “ vice presidents” doing nothing.

Obama organized his resume as a “community” worker to catapult himself into Harvard Law School, then “public service” in Chicago. First he padded his resume; then he padded his bank balance. Then his wife padded hers. Ubi est mea.

Or, as Pogo would say to Barack and Michelle, “We have met reason for high cost health care; and it’s the Obama Family.”

But don’t say, “Physician, health thyself,” because the Obamas are lawyers, not doctors. Indeed. the last thing we need in hospitals is more lawyers. But that’s what “Obamacare” would provide. And Obamacare has already provided well for the Obama family.

Mr. Royko, “Ubi Est Mea” it is. And Mr. Obama and Mrs. Obama have found their “mea” getting rich off the poor. Nice work if you can get it. Code Blue anyone?

Friday: IS OBAMA A “CHRISTIAN?”

Saturday: BARACK (BARRY) OBAMA: A PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE.

------------------------------------------
Chicago-based Internet journalist, broadcaster and critic Andy Martin is the Executive Editor and publisher of ContrarianCommentary.com. © Copyright by Andy Martin 2007. Martin covers national and world politics with forty years of personal experience. Columns also posted at politicalgateway.com; ContrarianCommentary.blogspot.com; contrariancommentary.wordpress.com. Comments? E-mail: AndyMart20@aol.com. Media contact: (866) 706-2639.

CONTRARIAN COMMENTARY FOR FEBRUARY 7, 2007

OBAMA WEEK: PART ONE

WHY OBAMA IS WINNING AND AMERICA IS LOSING

AMERICA’S NEW PIED PIPER OF POLITICS

THE MAN FROM HYPE, NOT HOPE


(CHICAGO)(FEBRUARY 7, 2007) U. S. Senator Barack (“Barry O”) Obama wants to be President of the United States. Well, why not? Or as the TV pitchman used to say, “Whyyyyyy not!”

I don’t Bear Mr. Obama any ill will. As a slightly demented friend in New York used to say, “everyone has to have a scam.” And Obama’s scam is the presence of nothing at all except himself. Nothingness. He is the Camus candidate.

Cindy Richards, a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, today provided a distillation of why Obama is succeeding. And why Barry O is bad for America. Cindy agonistes wrote “Why Obama won my internal battle.” She was fighting with herself over Barry O? Well, yes. And apparently she lost. Or at least America is losing.

I don’t mean to pick on Richards. After all, unlike Mrs. Obama, Ms. Richards is a vice president of nothing. She writes for a living. We can list her as “entertainer.” So why am I focusing on Richards? Because in her brief column she catalogs all of the ways that Barry has fooled us, and is fooling America.

It won’t be pretty when the bubble bursts.

When we see the man behind the curtain. When someday we realize it was all Hype, not Hope. Barry Obama is America’s latest pied piper of politics. With perfect pitch.

We usually count on people in a local community to know someone best. But now that the Chicago Bears have lost the Super Bowl and newspapers need to sell, sell, sell we can look forward to Obamamania. A media feeding frenzy over Kenyan-American Barack Obama. Only Chicago’s media, and Ms. Richards in particular, don’t know Barack Obama very well at all. Not well at all.

Richards lists ten (10) reasons why Obama should be president.

One: he is good at fund raising. Money talks, and the rest of us walk. OK. If you like to walk. But where is all of this money coming form? Rich people. Hollywood people. Business people. True to his huckster’s stance as an “outsider,” Obama is so far outside the system he’s inside out.

Two: he has a blank resume (see below for Obama’s lack of any professional accomplishments.) We used to elect distinguished Americans with identifiable achievements to the presidency, e.g. Dwight Eisenhower. It wasn’t a perfect process, but no one dared suggest that having done nothing was a basis to allow someone to ascend to an aeropagus where they could do something, namely damage.

Three: Obama is a “constitutional law scholar.” Well, presumably that can be verified. Has he written any authoritative law review articles? Tried any cases? Argued any appeals. Nope. Obama has done nothing but promote himself to the gullible as a “legal scholar.” He has fooled a lot of people, not he least of which includes the media.

Obama is a lawyer. Yes. If every “lawyer” is a scholar, then Obama is a scholar. But if merely being a lawyer does not make you a scholar then Barry Is just a mediocre lawyer with no legal accomplishments and a nonexistent legal resume. Absent his sweet talk and confused psyche he would be indistinguishable from the many other minority lawyers out there. A “scholar,” he isn’t. But he’s fooled Cindy. And triggered her “internal battle.”

Indeed, because Chicago has evolved into a community of very progressive racial relations, there is a plethora of highly competent, highly successful minority lawyers in Chicago. Men and women with real accomplishments in the law. None of them are named Obama. My own law school has produced some. And none of them is named Obama. When we allow Obama’s vacuous claims to legal “scholarship” to be accepted as truth we insult the very process of public debate over the qualifications of the person who will lead our nation in the future.

To be sure, years ago they used to write stories claiming Hillary Clinton was one of “America’s best lawyers.” And she wasn’t. Hillary, meet Barry.

Four: Obama has the “audacity to hope.” When hope is merely hype, and serves as a substitute for thought, hope is dangerous, not a reason to catapult someone into the White House. We need someone with the heft to lead, not the “hope” to accomplish something in the future that he has so far failed to accomplish in his entire adult life.

Five: Obama is “comfortable is a room full of steelworkers.” He won’t be comfortable with real workers when people realize what a classic and world class con artist he is. Obama "talks labor" but he has never accomplished anything significant for workers. He says he is for the poor folk, but only if he enriches himself in the process. He says he is against Wal-Mart, but then again few millionaires such as himself shop there.

Six: Obama’s not “tainted” by the Iraq War. In the sense that Obama did not vote for the Iraq fiasco, she’s right. But in the reality that Obama’s recent statements are worthy Kerryisms (“I voted for before I voted against) Obama has been in a vicious bidding war with John Edwards and Hillary Clinton to see who can seem more inflated with their anti-Iraq flatulence. In 2009 hype/hope will have to confront reality/substance. In Iraq. But by then Barry O will probably be onto some new and nebulous cause. As the Chicago Tribune quotes his wife, Obama’s a dreamer, not a detail man. Everyone has to have a scam.

Seven: His heart is in the right place. Puhlllze.

Eight: “He’s got religion.” Obama is a worthy successor to Chicago’s late religious huckster “Billy Sunday.” Only in the atheistic Democratic party of 2007 could Obama be deemed “religious.” But oh he can sell. Truly, he deserves a revival tent, not a white house.

Nine: Obama doesn’t want to impose “his religion” on “us.” That’s because there is no religion. Hype vs. hope.

Ten: He can win. He can’t. Or, as Abraham Lincoln once said, (he of the venue where Obama will announce his candidacy this Saturday) “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”

And there you have it. Someone who has been entrusted with a column in a major metropolitan daily says she has struggled with herself over Barry O, only to be confused, confounded and ultimately convinced by one of the great hucksters in American political history that he is “right” to be president.

There is an expression for wasted wealth, “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations.” I don’t know what the comparable expression for nations is, maybe “Empire to emptiness” in three generations.” But whatever the term is, we are headed there. Good luck with your “internal struggles,” Cindy. If indeed Obama wins, we will all be struggling. To survive.

First the Democrats produced “the Man From Hope.” We all know how he ended up. With a cigar in his hand. Now they are offering us the “Man With Hope.” “Close. But no cigar.”

Thursday: MR. & MRS. OBAMA: PROFITEERING FROM POVERTY

Friday: IS OBAMA A “CHRISTIAN?”

Saturday: BARACK (BARRY) OBAMA: A PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE.

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Chicago-based Internet journalist, broadcaster and critic Andy Martin is the Executive Editor and publisher of ContrarianCommentary.com. © Copyright by Andy Martin 2007. Martin covers national and world politics with forty years of personal experience. Columns also posted at politicalgateway.com; ContrarianCommentary.blogspot.com; contrariancommentary.wordpress.com. Comments? E-mail: AndyMart20@aol.com. Media contact: (866) 706-2639.

ANDY MARTIN
The Right Republican for
U. S. Senator from Illinois/2008
Suite 4406, 30 E. Huron Street
Chicago, IL 60611-4723
Toll-free tel. (866) 706-2639
Toll-free fax (866) 707-2639
Web site: www.AndyforIllinois.com
E-mail: AndyMart20@aol.com


February 6, 2007


Hon. Henry Waxman
Chair
U. S. House
Washington, DC 20515
Via fax (202) 225-4784

Dear Chairman Waxman:

I am a little astounded by the AP reports on testimony before your committee today by Paul Bremer. I am afraid he either committed perjury, inadvertently confessed to his own mental incompetence or else misled the committee to cover-up targeted looting by Americans of cash and cash equivalents that took place under his incompetent aegis.

Mr. Bremer's claim that he served in Baghdad at a time "when much of the city was burning and looting was widespread" is delusional. I served as a Baghdad bureau chief during much of 2003. I traveled across the city and across the country, traveling alone with one Iraqi aide. We were usually inconspicuous to invisible.

Indeed, it was my columns that first concentrated attention on Paul Bremer's unfitness for the job and incompetence to perform in Baghdad. He locked himself behind his walls and seldom came out.

The City was not "burning," and while there was minor looting the overall environment quickly became tranquil and safe. I felt free to go anywhere in Baghdad; I saw no evidence of protracted post-conflict looting or burning.

What is wrong with Mr. Bremer's mind? He will indeed be a tragic figure in American history.

If the Committee would like some truthful testimony on what Baghdad was like, and some testimony on how Iraqis were rebuilding the city themselves, and we were free to travel virtually anywhere, I would be happy to come and testify.

I am disappointed, of course, that my Republican colleagues persist in defending Bremer. He is indefensible.

Fax and e-mail reach me fastest.


Respectfully submitted,





ANDY MARTIN


ARM:sp

CONTRARIAN COMMENTARY FOR FEBRUARY 3, 2007
INSIDE THE BUSH WHITE HOUSE: PART THREE
ANDY MARTIN SCORES ANOTHER INTELLIGENCE BULL'S EYE
THE CIA READS ANDY MARTIN'S CONTRARIANCOMMENTARY.COM TO SEE WHAT IS HAPPENING IN WASHINGTON; SHOULDN'T YOU?
HOW DOES HE DO IT?
(CHICAGO)(February 3, 2007) On January 15th I explained how and why the proposed "surge" in Iraq was actually linked to secret plans for a coup that would place a Shiite strongman in power in Baghdad.
On February 2nd, the U. S. Government confirmed our story by issuing a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) showing that the imposition of a Shiite strongman was the only palatable option available to the Bush administration if all else fails in Iraq.
Inside the Bush White House: Part One, provided extensive detail as to the planning behind the potential coup, the reasons behind the coup, and the mechanics of how a coup would be implemented.
The NIE confirmed all of the material elements of our column.
How do we do it? Why does the CIA read ContrarianCommentary.com to know what's happening in Washington?
We call ourselves the most respected independent voice for military, intelligence and foreign policy analysis. We had the "surge" story in September.
Other than eating up the Sulzburger Family's expense account allowance gallivanting around the world, when was the last time Tom Friedman broke exclusive advance news of internal planning in the White House? Not recently.
If you want to know what is happening inside the White House, the intelligence community and inside Iraq, read ContrarianCommentary.com.
Take our January 15th story on planning for the Shiite strongman coup, and place it next to the NIE issued yesterday. They match up. Surprising, isn't it.
Look for Inside the Bush White House: Part Four, long-delayed, with more exclusive information on secret plans and internal pressures fueling "le surge."
________________________________________________Chicago-based Internet journalist, broadcaster and critic Andy Martin is the Executive Editor and publisher of ContrarianCommentary.com. © Copyright by Andy Martin 2007. Martin covers national and world politics with forty years of personal experience; he is America’s most respected independent foreign policy, military and intelligence analyst. Andy is a Middle East expert who is Executive Director of the Revolutionary War Research Center, the original consortium devoted to counterinsurgency, guerilla war and political insurrection. He has spent 36 years in and out of the Middle East and spent much of 2003 in Iraq. Columns also posted at politicalgateway.com; contrariancommentary.blogspot.com; contrariancommentary.wordpress.com. Comments? E-mail: AndyMart20@aol.com. Media contact: (866) 706-2639

CONTRARIAN COMMENTARY FOR FEBRUARY 2, 2007
ISRAEL LOSES, AGAIN, IN UNITED STATES COURTS
PALESTINIAN ACQUITTAL IN CHICAGO SHOWS STRENGTH OF AMERICAN JUSTICE SYSTEM
(CHICAGO)(February 2, 2007) The Israeli government has been trying to achieve in Chicago's federal courts what it could not on the battlefield: a victory over Hamas. And Thursday Israel lost, again.
Earlier this week, I wrote to U. S. Attorney General Roberto Gonzales and asked him to release Palestinian freedom fighter (and friend) Sami Al-Arian. Gonzales should take my advice. The Salah/Ashqar defeat is a stinging indictment of Israeli government and a massive worldwide embarrassment for the Bush Administration and former Attorney General and Media-Clown-In-Chief John Ashcroft.
Guess who won? The American people.
We showed once more that while these malicious cases conjured up by pro-Israel American prosecutors are difficult to defend against: [1} we have brave lawyers who will labor for their clients and the truth; kudos to Michael Deutsch and William Moffit. [2] We still have honest jurors, ordinary Americans who can penetrate Israel's lies and the Bush's Administration's despicable and demented Middle East politics.
America may not be perfect, but we beat anything that's in second place. Thank you, jurors!
The Chicago trial was the most devastating defeat for Israel because during the trial Israeli torture was documented in detail. For that we have to thank the hapless former N. Y. Times reporter Judith Miller, who calmly watched torture-in-progress in Israel and testified at the trial.
We had the obscene spectacle, permitted by a pliant federal judge, of Israeli torturers putting on a secret show in Chicago, with secret courtroom, and secret identities. And the Israelis still couldn't con the American people.
What does that tell you about Israel and the torturing thugs in control of that nation's destiny?
I got a negative response to my "Free Sami Al-Arian" letter to the Attorney General from a Republican county chairman and I responded politely and respectfully of course.
What I have to say to my friend the chairman is that I'll try to manage the politics in Washington if you'll manage the politics in your county (which I shan't name). In foreign policy there is no place for on-the-job training (George Bush take notice).
Foreign policy and diplomacy are devilishly complex, confusing, and contradictory. Illinois needs a U. S. Senator who speaks for Illinois, and not Dick Durbin, who speaks for the Knesset. I may not always be right in my views, but I will always speak from my heart, on behalf of the people of Illinois, instead of Senator Dick Durbin, who speaks from his pocketbook on behalf of his campaign contributors.
Many well-intentioned Americans have unfortunately swallowed the relentless Israeli propaganda in the United States (former President Jimmy Carter take notice) that Arabs are bad and evil, and Israelis are paragons of virtue and justice and the "only democracy" in the Middle East. In the wake of the Salah/Ashqar verdict, we can now brand Israel a "Tortureocracy, not a Democracy."
That nation could not survive without a national policy of crimes against humanity and torture, as well as other obscene practices. Israel has been lying to the United States and the American people for almost 60 years, and the American people—when given the impartial truth in an American courtroom—are fully capable of sorting our Israel's lies.
Senator Durbin, let's debate these issues during the campaign.
So am I anti-Israel? Not at all. I wish the Israeli people--the warm, loving, caring genuinely generous Israeli people I have encountered there--life and love in peace and harmony with all the people of the Middle East. If Israelis would start treating Palestinians as brothers and sisters, as neighbors and valued colleagues, instead of as sworn enemies, peace would descend on the Middle East overnight. Yes, overnight.
The myth that Israelis and Arabs are locked in perpetual tribal wars that require endless blood sacrifice on both sides is sheer poppycock. Both Israelis and Palestinians want to live in peace and prosperity.
I have been a contributor to a group, Givat Haviva, which works to bring young Israelis and Palestinians together. Those kids get along fine. Now if only we could get their parents to behave themselves.
My hero Daniel Barenboim does the same with the Palestine Youth Orchestra. People of good will on both sides can and someday will prevail.
In Chicago on Thursday, justice prevailed.
The U.S. Constitution prevailed, after a vicious assault by mendacious prosecutors, malicious Israeli agents and a supine federal judge.
And the American people prevailed. We will not allow our courts to be used as an extension of Israeli torture chambers more reminiscent of Saddam Hussein and Adolph Hitler.
If there was the will in Washington to do justice in the Middle East, instead of only Israeli justice, we could solve the problems there this weekend. Why won't Condo Rice and George Bush try? Why?
The jurors probably asked themselves the same question. And voted to a acquit.
________________________________________________
Chicago-based Internet journalist, broadcaster and critic Andy Martin is the Executive Editor and publisher of ContrarianCommentary.com. © Copyright by Andy Martin 2007. Martin covers national and world politics with forty years of personal experience; he is America’s most respected independent foreign policy, military and intelligence analyst. Columns also posted at politicalgateway.com; contrariancommentary.blogspot.com; contrariancommentary.wordpress.com. Web sites: AndyMartin.com, AndyforUSSenator.com. Comments? E-mail: AndyMart20@aol.com. Media contact: (866) 706-2639