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OK....article in the issue with the cover:

The Political Scene
Making It
How Chicago shaped Obama.
by Ryan Lizza

*************************H/T to Flopping Aces**************************

******************EXCERPT******************

Posted by: Curt @ 11:31 am in Barack Obama, Uncategorized

In the new issue of The New Yorker there is a long piece about what makes Obama tick. The author, Ryan Lizza, went looking to find out and found that the ticking is just Chicago politics as usual. No change, no new direction. Just plain ole’ politics. It’s a long piece so I’ve taken only bits and pieces of it that are relevant to understanding the messiah.

They start with someone who was beside him early on in his political career but became quite disillusioned by him:

Preckwinkle soon became an Obama loyalist, and she stuck with him in a State Senate campaign that strained or ruptured many friendships but was ultimately successful. Four years later, in 2000, she backed Obama in a doomed congressional campaign against a local icon, the former Black Panther Bobby Rush. And in 2004 Preckwinkle supported Obama during his improbable, successful run for the United States Senate. So it was startling to learn that Toni Preckwinkle had become disenchanted with Barack Obama.
Preckwinkle is a tall, commanding woman with a clipped gray Afro. She has represented her slice of the South Side for seventeen years and expresses no interest in higher office. On Chicago’s City Council, she is often a dissenter against the wishes of Mayor Richard M. Daley. For anyone trying to understand Obama’s breathtakingly rapid political ascent, Preckwinkle is an indispensable witness—a close observer, friend, and confidante during a period of Obama’s life to which he rarely calls attention.
Although many of Obama’s recent supporters have been surprised by signs of political opportunism, Preckwinkle wasn’t. “I think he was very strategic in his choice of friends and mentors,” she told me. “I spent ten years of my adult life working to be alderman. I finally got elected. This is a job I love. And I’m perfectly happy with it. I’m not sure that’s the way that he approached his public life—that he was going to try for a job and stay there for one period of time. In retrospect, I think he saw the positions he held as stepping stones to other things and therefore approached his public life differently than other people might have.”
On issue after issue, Preckwinkle presented Obama as someone who thrived in the world of Chicago politics. She suggested that Obama joined Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ for political reasons. “It’s a church that would provide you with lots of social connections and prominent parishioners,” she said. “It’s a good place for a politician to be a member.” Preckwinkle was unsparing on the subject of the Chicago real-estate developer Antoin (Tony) Rezko, a friend of Obama’s and one of his top fund-raisers, who was recently convicted of fraud, bribery, and money laundering: “Who you take money from is a reflection of your knowledge at the time and your principles.”

I don't see how the excerpt is particularly negative.

The are enough qualifications and spin that one can take what is clearly a testimony that Brack is an ambitious politician in a positive or negative light depending on ones predilections. Quote: "In retrospect, I think he saw the positions he held as stepping stones to other things and therefore approached his public life differently than other people might have.”

Not exactly withering fire.

This quote: “Who you take money from is a reflection of your knowledge at the time and your principles.” can be used as exculpatory or inculpatory as well. When Barack knew Reszko, he hadn't yet been convicted of any crimes, so, was his knowledge at the time damning?

Or this one on Trinity UCC: “It’s a church that would provide you with lots of social connections and prominent parishioners,” she said. “It’s a good place for a politician to be a member.

Not news, and it could be taken as just smart politics, and a lame but acceptable rationale for why Brack stayed for so long.

Does the article offer that William Ayers kicked off Barack's first campaign? Does it mention some of the backstabbing he did to get his State Senate seat? Any of the dirty tricks he supposedly used in Texas or the Caucus States to shut down Hillary's organizers and caucus goers?

I hate to say I'm going to have to buy a copy of The New Yorker. Maybe I'll finally go in for the root canal I've been putting off for so long ...