Those who crave a slice of President of the United States (POTUS) are finding out that buying POTUS is not for everyone. To begin with, unless you come from a family of felons, you may never have any need for POTUS. So it would be a gigantic waste of effort to go searching for it. Besides POTUS is far from affordable and has appreciated considerably over the last eight years. It is not likely you can just waltz up to the White House POTUS counter and ask them for POTUS off the shelf. That alone would make you an unworthy connoisseur of POTUS. Besides, the official line is that POTUS is not for sale.
The auction for POTUS can only be attended by sealed invitations. Average Americans are rarely, if ever, invited. Many of them believe that POTUS never actually reaches the market. If they only knew. You don’t even have to be American to bid for POTUS, you just need an invitation to the auction.
Buying POTUS is not something you do as a lone ranger, although some Texan is bound to make the attempt. You need to gather around you a small army of well-connected Washington Lawyers. There are cases where it has been done with just a couple of lawyers, but one of them was a presidential in-law. Hugh Rodham, a huge first brother, actually had to refund his POTUS commission, because you can’t be seen publicly trading POTUS. It is considered quite gauche not to keep the whole affair private. When you trade POTUS, you can’t very walk around proclaiming your business, otherwise you never hear the end of it. To enhance your chance of getting some POTUS, It is obligatory to line up Democratic Party donors with deep pockets and it helps to have the full attention of the DNC finance department.
If you are lucky enough to be in the good grace of the Israeli government, especially the Massed, you get a wholesale discount on POTUS. Clout is everything when you venture out on a to acquire an allotment of POTUS. What kind of Clout? Just enough to have Congressman John Brademas contact John Podesta, Clinton’s former chief of staff and let him know that Shlomo Ben-Ami, Israel’s foreign minister had successfully lobbied King Carlos of Spain to request a pardon for Mark Rich. Throw in a few late night calls from Prime Minister Barak and a hundred hand delivered appeals from influential Jewish community elders and Israeli politicians. Bingo, you got POTUS.
There are certain people who know certain lawyers who can usher you through the entire process of acquiring POTUS. Bring lots of money for the lawyers, for the DNC, for Hillary’s campaign, for Hillary’s brother and for the library to be built to honor POTUS. They can promise you the Rose Garden, but access to POTUS does not come cheap.
The day after Mark Rich successfully concluded his now infamous POTUS transaction, he got a congratulatory phone call from a certain Mr. Lewis Libby, who just happens to be the current chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Lewis, in a previous incarnation, was a lawyer for Mark Rich. These days, the marching order from President Bush is to move on. So when Libby was asked whether the pardon was justified, he offered this bit of legalese “I have no opinion because I would not be able to render an opinion without all the facts before me.” Men like Libby prowl the corridors of power in Washington on the strength of their ability to evade straight answers. In Washington, the better you lie, the higher you fly. Libby worked Mark Rich’s file for years and it is safe to assume that as a lawyer called to testify before Congress, he kept up with the latest developments. Make no mistake, Libby knows all about buying POTUS. He just doesn’t want to talk about it in public.
It all comes down to the ghosts in the closets. In Washington, everyone has files on everyone else. It is a legacy of J Edgar Hoover. You bring up their files, they retaliate by taking your file down to the Justice Department and CNN. If they really want to get nasty, they place a call to the National Inquirer. Unfortunately, this rarely happens. The file holders maintain a balance of terror and the public is left in the dark, with the active collaboration of our media lords. No one is clean; you get dirty before you take your first trip up the steps of the Capitol. But, with the media lords holding the ultimate files, once in a while a ‘rogue’ journalist breaks a scandal about POTUS. The media titans sit tight to see if it will blow over in a day. They might even let it go a week. Beyond a week and they have to retreat from attempts to squelch it. People are getting edgy and somebody somewhere can get trigger happy with their files, especially now that the illustrious National Inquirer is at the scene of the crime. Some of the greatest political revelations of our generation are destined to come from crusading journalists in “second tier” papers, because the big media boys have an incestuous relationship with the Federal government and cannot be relied upon to do their civic duty. They would rather have more POTUS than less. When you can afford it, you don’t ask the price.
Here we are just learning the basics on the ins and out of acquiring a slice of POTUS and the elders of the Democratic and Republican parties want to spoil our fun. ‘Move on’ they say. Forget about it, there is no moving on. I want to check out every hair on the bearded lady’s face, up close and personal. Sure, its ugly, but we all deserve to know more about it. We need more dirt piled high and deep. The majority of Americans have speculated about the POTUS market for years. We desperately want to know why the folks who recently managed to purchase large chunks of POTUS don’t want to even reveal the price they paid. The market for POTUS needs to be monitored and regulated. It is too valuable to turn it into an export commodity that can be had by any little east Mediterranean country with access to large pools of Washington legal sharks. We should at least make a rule to allow only Americans to buy and deal in POTUS. We should also monitor how people use their POTUS once they get a hold of it.
There are a few dreamers who believe we should ‘reform’ the POTUS market. Take Warren Beatty’s recent comments to the New York Times (2/25/2001) :
” The Democratic Party has abdicated much of its soul to raise the money necessary to be elected. To regain its historic mission and activate its natural constituencies, the party must, above all, face the fact of its own culpability in the odor of the legalized bribery that constitutes the way we finance our campaigns.” Warren, if the party is staffed by “legal” bribe takers, shouldn’t we just legally dismantle it? Those who buy POTUS or Congress, end up owning America and ruling the world. Isn’t it time we stopped putting America on sale to the highest bidder?
The Media seems to be studiously avoiding any notice of the entanglement of the Jewish Lobby in this latest POTUS scandal. Now, how much POTUS did this Lobby buy for Israel and how many additional billions ended up financing the Israeli arsenal being used to suppress the Palestinian independence uprising. Some folks found it in their hearts to send $3 billion to the DNC and the RNC for the purpose of acquiring POTUS and Congress. These folks always seem satisfied with the deal they are getting. I have never heard one of them complaining to the Better Business Bureau or demanding a refund. No other industry seems to have such a satisfied customer base. During the Clinton Administration, the Israeli Lobby pretty much managed to lease out the State Department.
No one deals in POTUS like the media tycoons themselves. It’s a vital seasonal part of the business. POTUS doesn’t just grow on trees. No other product or service is marketed like POTUS. First the POTUS campaign coughs up big money to market themselves to a public that can’t afford to buy them. Than the Media lords slip some of the money back as rebate donations to POTUS and go out and collect more money for POTUS from the beautiful and the noveau riche who couldn’t tell a deficit if it bit them in their budget. What a deal! The media lords take money from POTUS for marketing, get access to
POTUS, sell a little POTUS and at the very end throw POTUS out with the dirty dishwater claiming they are shocked that someone actually pays for POTUS.
Mr. Ahmed Amr is Editor of NileMedia.com in Seattle and a regular contributor to Media Monitors Network (MMN)
Like this ? Vote for it to win in MMN Contest
