Posted on 10/03/2009 3:15:07 AM PDT by Scanian
Have you ever wondered why our Barack Obama, not noted for devotion to hard work in his previous jobs as a law associate, community organizer, state senator, and U.S. senator, raced around America, risking life, limb, and laryngitis, crying "change we can believe in," and begging the voters to send him to the White House as the President of the United States?
It wasn't because Mr. Obama wanted to be the first African-American chief executive, and his wife to be the first African-American First Lady. It wasn't because the job paid $400,000 a year. It wasn't because he wanted to give us a national healthcare system. It wasn't because he wanted to restore the economy with stimulus packages and trillion-dollar deficits. It wasn't because he wanted to "community organize" the country and the world.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
From the article:
So, as we ponder Mr. Obama, and try to fathom who he is and what he stands for, we ought to remember that the perks of office — an example is flying his wife at taxpayers’ expense to Copenhagen to pitch Chicago for the 2016 Olympics — is the reason, the only reason that he wanted to be the 44th President of the United States.
***Nahh, that’s not the ONLY reason. He’s showing up on his daily Obamathon pushing his health care plan because he’s driven also by idealogy, in particular a modern form of national socialism.
Obama is a National Socialist
· www.freerepublic.com ^ | October 27, 2008 | Kevmo ... We called Obama a socialist because he definitely is one. .... To: Kevmo. Barack Odingo is not a ...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2116981/posts
Not so far fetched. Bambi really thinks it's all about him. The people who set him up and are behind him - such as Emmanuel, Ayers, Axelrod and the gang - are radical leftists who have a program, which Bambi has adopted because he has found that it is the way to the power and privilege he has always craved and felt to be his due.
The perks and trappings are his due, he truly believes. It has been a long time since the world has seen such a narcissist. Oh, wait, I forgot about Chavez, Idi Amin and Robert Mugabe. And then there’s Mao and Stalin. Well, he’s in the company he deserves.
One of the most idiotic article I've ever read.
The true motivator for most people is not money, it's power and status. The "perks" the author references are largely a way of showing off one's status to others. In the "free world," the way most people acquire status is by making more money.
This can be seen by the way billionaires don't just retire and enjoy the perks of the money they couldn't spend in a dozen lifetimes. They keep working and piling up wealth because they are now competing for status against other billionaires. (There are often, of course, other more admirable motives mixed in.)
The US presidency is the highest status and most powerful position on the planet. The perks are nice, I'm sure, but they're just the frosting. The presidency would be competed for with every bit as much enthusiasm if we cut the perks of the office to the bone.
Which I'd be in favor of, BTW. The imperial trappings are indecent for a republic.
No, I think Barry actually believes that stuff also. He really wants to destroy America. See Cloward and Piven paper from The Nation in the 1960s.
Apparently we deserve it too, since so many of us were dumb enough to have voted for this punk.
Nahh.
Not a nationalist bone in his body.
I and probably everyone else that didn't vote for BO knew this from the moment he lied about public funds. There is no way Obama is ever going to make it to the uber-rich lifestyle unless he chose the path he did. the Presidency for Obama is a way for he and his wife to sell countless books and cash in on countless favors.
The author provides not a single reason why he believes Obama, more than any other president of recent years, is motivated by "the perks." He just recites what the perks are and then announces their enjoyment was Obama's SOLE motivation.
So were Reagan, Clinton and both Bushes motivated solely by "perks?" If not, what is the author's evidence that Obama is different?
It is possible the author is right. It would be nice if he produced something more than an assertion to support his position.
I wonder how much of his motivation is power and how much is privilege. Obama clearly loves holding power over the lives of others. I don't know how much he cares about what he does with that power - whether he believes in national socialism, soviet socialism, or whatever version of socialism he's leaning toward at the moment - or he just likes those Big Government philosophies because they expand his personal power over the minutia of our lives.
It's obvious that he enjoys the privilege, but is that just a bonus on the side, or is it a major reason he chose to grab power over our country? It's hard to understand a man whose motives are so foreign to my own, and I admit that I don't really understand him. I just fear for my country while he holds power.
The Presidency is going to be a cash cow for the Obama’s and they knew it. Look at the books that were immediately released following the election and look at his books sales during this time. Easy conclusion.
For what it is or isn’t worth, Mr. Obama has been steeped in socialist ideals since he was a kid. The official line of socialism is not to revel in the trappings of wealth but to exercise vigorous power to keep the peons in line with the plan du jour.
Nahh. Not a nationalist bone in his body.
***A reasonably good point. It was pointed out on that thread that zer0bama is trying to nuance National Socialism as InterNational Socialism.
But calling him an InterNAZI just doesn’t have the same zing...
If Mr. Obama were merely a worldly soul looking for the comfort of earthly riches, I think we’d see him much more pragmatic about the things that keep America’s economic boat afloat. The world’s welfare, for better or worse, is tied to America’s, so if he wants his accumulated riches to mean something to him in the future, he would have a reason to refrain from economy torpedoing measures.
It isn’t the public and tangible perks of luxury airplanes, $50,000 vacation rentals, etc. It is the absolute satisfaction of the power to enforce your ‘will’ indiscriminantly. The power to force entire populations to change their daily lives, the way they shop, eat, sleep and work. The power of life-over-death, to decide who lives and who dies. The power of reward for obedience, and the power of punishment for dissention.
The idea that politicians are primarily motivated by money is puerile.
They’re primarily motivated (like most people) by a desire for status and power.
For most people the purpose of acquiring money (far beyond possible physical use) is that it is our society’s main route to status and power. IOW, money is a means, not an end.
Politicians take a more direct route to the same end. Election to office provides them with immediate status and power. The money is just another perk of office, not the prime motivator.
Yup. Power and status.
Quite so. Not to mention that the rewards that socialism deals out are demeaning, and the punishments are draconian.
Ah, but for the ‘demeaning’ aspects, we now have stigma-resistant EBTs for the poor. (Electronic Benefit Transaction).....
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