Is Obama Just A Failure With A Good Rap?

It's funny how the media can shape our perceptions of anything as perhaps different from the reality of a situation. Spending some time trying to look more deeply into Barack Obama's background, one could come away wondering, what has he ever really accomplished in the real world, besides giving good speeches and running for office?

When and where did he start community organizing, for instance? I've read he started in Harlem but can't find details on that. What there is, is this and this.

In the early 1980s, when Jerry Kellman interviewed a young, idealistic Ivy League graduate for a $10,000 a year job with Chicago’s Developing Communities Project (DCP) he had no way of knowing it would be a meeting that would follow him for the rest of his life.

But Obama wasn't a "new" grad. I'd like to know more about these two seemingly lost years - years during which it would appear he failed at making money, frankly.

After graduating from Columbia University in 1983 with a major in political science, Obama worked as a financial consultant in New York City. But he was bored—and drawn to public service. In 1985, he moved to Chicago to work with local churches organizing job training and other programs for poor and working-class residents of Altgeld Gardens, a public housing project where 5,300 African-Americans tried to survive amid shuttered steel mills, a nearby landfill, a putrid sewage treatment plant, and a pervasive feeling that the white establishment of Chicago would never give them a fair shake.

It's relevant, as for all intent and purposes he seems to have failed as a community organizer - at least as far as bringing any real change. He left in frustration after only three years. I'm not trying to diminish whatever it is he has done. But aside from talking a lot and making people feel better about themselves, I'm just not sure what he has accomplished with any consistency in life beyond running for office.

Perhaps his most confrontational effort was to pressure city authorities to remove asbestos from the apartments in 1986. When the on-site manager didn't take action, Obama nudged the residents into confronting city housing officials in two angry public meetings downtown. These generated "a victory of sorts," Obama said later, as workers soon began sealing the asbestos in the buildings. But the project gradually ran out of steam and money. In fact, some tenants still have asbestos in their homes, according to current resident Linda Randle, 53, who worked with Obama in the '86 anti-asbestos campaign.

Faced with such frustrations, after three years in Chicago, Obama decided to apply his skills in the wider world. He entered Harvard Law School in 1988, became the first African-American president of Harvard Law Review in 1990, and earned his law degree in 1991. He returned to Chicago to work as a civil rights lawyer and teach at the University of Chicago Law School. He eventually won a seat in the Illinois State Senate and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004.

Comments

[scarshapedstar]

It's too bad you didn't have this philosophy when you were enthusiastically fellating a Connecticut yankee with a fake Texas accent who ran an oil company, a baseball team, and a state educational system into the ground - in that order, and scarcely missing a beat. And then he proceeded to bankrupt the country, sell out our military to corporate mercenaries, and turn us into a pariah state.

Man, why don't more people listen to your brilliant judgment?

[scarshapedstar]

This point bears repeating:

George Bush couldn't turn a profit off an OIL COMPANY.

Let that one sink in for a while.

[nom de guerre]

wow. the original, free thinkers - who mysteriously follow identical paths to totalitarian noncomformity - *really* don't like it when their guy is questioned in any way, huh?

can we ask about his $1,650,000 mansion now? or how he managed to afford it?

[bobInStamford]

Newsflash for rural patriots - You dont get a mansion for $1.6 M. Lol

[SteveC]

What is with the little brained libtards always bringing out their visceral hatred for Bush and always quantifying things in terms of sex?

This point bears repeating:

I'm still waiting to reap the benefits of the oil (which isn't a fossil fuel btw) from Iraq, since we presumably went to Iraq just for that very thing.

[Wahoo Willie]

"Newsflash for rural patriots - You dont get a mansion for $1.6 M. Lol"

Well, guess we know DaBoob isn't in real estate. "Better to act mute and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt"

[Yoda]

"a major in political science"

Get you a McChicken, that and $1.00 will.

[seekeronos]

"--- I'm still waiting to reap the benefits of the oil (which isn't a fossil fuel btw) ---"

And all this time I was lead to believe that oil was a byproduct of dead dinosaurs, giant cockroaches and ferns and plankton that were buried and subducted deep into the earth's crust were millions and millions of years of super-duper heat and pressure turned it from dead goo into bubbling crude.

SteveC, could you explain to a skeptic how this is not so?

Thanks!

[SteveC]

Well, when there's literally lakes of oil and natural gas on Titan(they had dinosaurs?) and scientists can't reproduce oil from decaying organic matter, I tend to think oil is more natural than we think. Add to the fact old oil wells supposedly dry have been bubbling crude up again. Now why is that?

[syn]

"What is with the little brained libtards always bringing out their visceral hatred for Bush and always quantifying things in terms of sex?"

If one examines the backstage prospective from the ThEAtre world, perhaps it is because the little brained libtards have the idea in their heads that Bush represents 'puritian' Republicans who don't have sex and therefore libtards hate them for not helping to spread their sexually transmitted love for disease?

I mean if STDs are not spread around how can libtards make a living pontificating their misery?

[BobInStamford]

Wow, what fascinating observations. Lets hear some more about how NYers are going to vote for that tortured old man.

[syn]

Well Boob take a look at the number of NYCers in the primary election who came out of the closet for both the old lady and the old man, I was just as surprised to see Obama's low turnout as you will be. With all the botoxed walking around I thought for sure Obama would have taken Manhattan.

[seekeronos]

"--- Well, when there's literally lakes of oil and natural gas on Titan(they had dinosaurs?) and scientists can't reproduce oil from decaying organic matter, I tend to think oil is more natural than we think. Add to the fact old oil wells supposedly dry have been bubbling crude up again. Now why is that? ---"

This interests me... I haven't got much time tonight to google these items up, so if you have some links, I'd be obliged if you could provide some of the ones you came across.

I have also heard somewhere else about some older wells starting to reproduce - perhaps the physics behind it is much like that of deep water wells (deep, ancient springs that survived the Noachian cataclysm perhaps).

Another potential resource might be deep pockets of methane-producing algae out in the Caribbean, if this is recoverable.

As for the Natural Gas and oil on Titan -- I guess that would put to rest that oil comes from dead dinos and buried plant matter. The next thing I'd have to ask is - by what process is it formed? I'd suspect that geothermal processes are at play here, although I do not presume to know what sort of geothermal activity exists on Titan.