Mo' Money, Mo' Problems: Obama Forgets He's Corporate, Plus a Comical Note on Subliminal Anti-Duopolist Messaging in a Mainstream URL

The White House's official blog has headlined this week's video address with a most ironic slogan. To wit: "No Corporate Takeover of Our Democracy." The editorial staff at the White House Press Office took a more descriptive route with their headline, writing: "President Obama Challenges Politicians Benefiting from Citizens United Ruling to Defend Corporate Influence in Our Elections." For a moment though, when I first saw the former headline at Memeorandum, I thought it might have been from The Onion. But it appeared legitimate, so I pondered the possibility that the White House's website had been hacked by The Yes Men, and finally wondered whether it was not a parody of a memorable quote from Steve Carell's character on The Office. In the episode on Sexual Harassment, Michael Scott forgets that he's "corporate" and hires a lawyer to protect himself against potential complaints filed by the company's corporate attorney:

I am so used to being the bad boy. I am so used to fighting corporate that I forget that I am corporate, upper management. They hooked me up with an attorney to protect me. You can’t be too careful about what you say. Mo’ money, mo’ problems.

Mo' money, mo' problems indeed. For the president, however, money hasn't been much of a problem. That's why the headline from the blog was just so funny. The president apparently believes that forcing those who fund political advertisements to identify themselves in the advertisement will somehow "stop the corporate takeover of our democracy," which simply doesn't follow. For instance, corporate contributions to candidates for elected office are all publicly disclosed, yet the president himself was elected in 2008. Among the top twenty contributors to Obama's 2008 presidential campaign we find Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley, whose PACs, members, owners or employees and their families contributed roughly $3 million dollars to the future president. Moreover, no less than ten of the top twenty contributors to John McCain's campaign were international banksters and their families and friends, who together provided the Republican with well over 2 million reasons to support them in their time of need.

As we all know, their investments paid off in spades. In the Bush administration's bailout of the global banking mafia, which received significant and vocal bipartisan support from candidates Obama and McCain, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley ended up on the receiving end of over 70 billion dollars, that we know of, from the US taxpayer. And the president thinks transparency in television advertising will stop the corporate takeover of our democracy? At least we'd know who's funding so much of the garbage that passes for programming on commercial television.

Comical note: while searching for stories documenting the bankster bailout numbers, I happened to catch a telling anti-duopolist obscenity that had been sneaked into the URL for the story linked above under "Goldman Sachs." The link directs you to an article in the UK's Daily Mail from October 30th, 2008. Notice the fragment identifier following the hash tag (#) at the end of the web address. I kid you not, copy and paste it yourself:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1081624/Goldman-Sachs-ready-hand-7BILLION-salary-bonus-package--6bn-bail-out.html#fuck_mccain_obama