{"id":307918,"date":"2017-05-13T03:01:39","date_gmt":"2017-05-13T02:01:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-audacity-of-sleaze-profiles-in-corruption\/"},"modified":"2017-05-13T03:01:39","modified_gmt":"2017-05-13T02:01:39","slug":"the-audacity-of-sleaze-profiles-in-corruption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-audacity-of-sleaze-profiles-in-corruption\/","title":{"rendered":"The Audacity of Sleaze: Profiles in Corruption"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<div id=\"attachment_92654\" style=\"width: 520px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-92654 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2017\/05\/Screen-Shot-2017-05-11-at-10.53.25-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"510\" height=\"381\" srcset=\"http:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2017\/05\/Screen-Shot-2017-05-11-at-10.53.25-PM.png 510w, http:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2017\/05\/Screen-Shot-2017-05-11-at-10.53.25-PM-300x224.png 300w, http:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2017\/05\/Screen-Shot-2017-05-11-at-10.53.25-PM-768x574.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 510px) 100vw, 510px\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo by Carlos Pacheco | <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/\">CC BY2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<p>It actually doesn\u2019t take a lot of courage to aid those who are already powerful, already comfortable, already influential.<br \/>\u2014 Barack Obama, Acceptance Speech for the Kennedy Library Foundation\u2019s \u201cProfiles in Courage\u201d Award, May 7, 2017<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>What could be more absurd than Drone War King Barack Obama getting an award for courage?<\/p>\n<p>The speech that Obama gave after getting the 2017 \u201cProfiles in Courage\u201d prize from the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation last Sunday \u2013 that\u2019s what.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Venality of Hope <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In his ponderous address, Obama showed that his aptitude for grandiose, fake-progressive oratory has not been extinguished by dips with Richard Branson in the cool Caribbean (more on that below). Obama\u2019s brash Orwellian chutzpah was on grand display. He praised freshly elected Congresspersons for having the \u201cpolitical courage\u201d to \u201csave the financial system\u2026even when it was unpopular\u201d in 2009.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, these dauntless peoples\u2019 representatives had the epic valor required to boldly defy public opinion by expanding a major taxpayer bailout to the well-heeled Wall Street parasites who crashed the national and global economy through their selfish and reckless behavior \u2013opulent bloodsuckers who grant lucrative salaries, speaking fees, and other neoliberal disbursements to not-so public officials who do their bidding while \u201cserving\u201d (the Few) in government.<\/p>\n<p>Ask Obama. Ex-prez \u201cO\u201d has been spotted <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-usa-obama-kiteboarding-idUSKBN15M1SP\">kiteboarding with Branson<\/a>,&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2017\/05\/12\/the-audacity-of-sleaze-profiles-in-corruption\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Photo by Carlos Pacheco | CC BY2.0 It actually doesn\u2019t take a lot of courage to aid those who are already powerful, already comfortable, already influential.\u2014 Barack Obama, Acceptance Speech for the Kennedy Library Foundation\u2019s \u201cProfiles in Courage\u201d Award, May 7, 2017 What could be more absurd than Drone War King Barack Obama getting an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-307918","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307918\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}