That’s the thrust of a phony grassroots campaign proposed by David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s chief strategist. Axelrod is the senior partner of a political consulting firm called ASK Public Strategies. And, as Newsweek reports, this outfit is into some pretty tawdry “strategies”:
ASK last year proposed a “political campaign style approach� to help Illinois hospitals block a state proposal that would have forced them to provide more medical care to the indigent. One part of its plan: create a “grassroots� group of medical experts “capable of contacting policymakers to advocate for our position.�
If you think that sounds a tad hypocritical coming from the guy who runs Obama’s campaign, you’re not alone. Here’s how Captain Ed puts it:
Obama has run on health-care issues to create universal health-insurance coverage to do exactly the opposite of what ASK proposed. Axelrod’s firm wanted to set up another phony front group to oppose that same policy, attempting to fake the public into thinking that the “grassroots� effort had nothing to do with the hospitals themselves.
This sounds like “change” we can’t believe in. However,  as illustrated by the following excerpt from a letter to Andrew Sullivan, Obama’s disciples possess a capacity for belief that transcends such mundane matters as intellectual honesty:
Obama is more akin to Open Source [than a Mac] … In Open Source, you expand, improve, shine, polish, integrate, mashup, a well designed soft product. The software runs on PCs and Macs, on Big Iron Sun and IBM mainframes, stitched together into a massively parallel supercomputer… all wired together.
Anyone think that the complacency of such people will be vitiated by revelations about Axelrod’s shady deals? How can such things matter when we’re going to be “all wired together”?
Comments 5
Pot calling the kettle black!This type of stuf happens on both sides.To point out the faults of one side shows the divisiveness of yourself.To pick on the indigent is elitist.
Posted 27 May 2008 at 8:35 am ¶The so-called open source movement is led by Richard M Stallman (RMS), a creepy communist. If Obama’s people were wise, they’d want to distance themselves from the likes of RMS.
Exhibit A: http://www.stallman.org/
Posted 27 May 2008 at 8:57 am ¶Actually, RMS (an eccentric genius, as well as a textbook case of Asperger’s syndrome) would insist on correcting you: “his” movement is the Free Software movement (“free as in speech, not free as in beer”), while the more pragmatic “open source” movement is led by the (politically VERY different) Eric S. Raymond:
http://catb.org/~esr/
See also his essay on how Free Software differs from Open Source:
http://catb.org/~esr/open-source.html
Posted 27 May 2008 at 10:20 pm ¶We seem to be on the same page with these friends of Obama’s!
http://goodtimepolitics.com/2008/05/25/david-axelrod-obamas-political-strategist-his-firm-axelrod-and-associates/
This chairwomen of Obama’s is the one that gets to me!
Posted 28 May 2008 at 12:50 am ¶http://goodtimepolitics.com/2008/05/25/obamas-chairwomen-penny-sue-pritzker-28-billion-ceo/
“an eccentric genius”
You throw the word genius around too freely. Writing some fairly insignificant software while spouting some recycled communist dribble hardly qualifies a person as a genius.
“would insist on correcting you: “hisâ€? movement is the Free Software movement (â€?free as in speech, not free as in beerâ€?), while the more pragmatic “open sourceâ€? movement is led by the (politically VERY different) Eric S. Raymond:”
This distinction only holds significance to the smallest minority of computer nerds and is far more blurry than you suggest. Linux, the centerpiece and driving force of the open sores movement, is still bound by RMS’s anti-capitalist GNU public license agreement Eric Raymond is every bit the freak show that RMS is, and is nobody a serious politician would want to associate with in any fashion.
Posted 28 May 2008 at 9:46 am ¶Post a Comment