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First Nation Means No Business

Boycott non-native businesses Friday, Manitoba chiefs urge
Last Updated: Thursday, June 28, 2007 | 10:27 AM CT
CBC News
Manitoba's Southern Chiefs Organization wants First Nations to boycott non-native businesses on Friday's national day of action — but an Ontario aboriginal leader says the boycott doesn't make sense.

The boycott would be one way to demonstrate the economic power of the native community, said Nahanni Fontaine, director of justice with SCO.

Aboriginal people as a group spend huge amounts of money, she added, but little of it stays in aboriginal communities.

"The idea is that we're sustaining our own poverty. We need to in some … tangible way, even if it's just for one day at this point, to stop buying products and services from non-aboriginal businesses."

The decision to call a boycott follows the recent SCO election of a new grand chief, Morris Shannacappo, and is the beginning of a long-term strategy of economic action, Fontaine said.

"I don't want people to think that it's personal, that it's an attack on individual business owners," she said. "It absolutely isn't. But it's about time that we need to support our own."

But the boycott is being panned by Angus Toulouse, the Assembly of First Nations' regional chief for Ontario, who says it doesn't make any sense.

"I think that we're wanting to support — and we always have — any of the businesses that are doing business with First Nations communities," he said.

"Many First Nations people and communities don't have any of these businesses in the community, so they are needing to go to a nearby municipality, nearby town or nearby city to do business."

Making life inconvenient won't help the cause of aboriginal peoples, Toulouse said.

The national day of action is intended to draw attention to the issues facing aboriginal people in Canada, such as poverty and unresolved land claims.

Memo creates a wrinkle in Obama's campaign

Obama's 'Dumb Mistake' Sparks Furor



Democratic Sen. Barack Obama has spent the last few days overturning a memo, which recently sparked furor among the Indian-American community. The memo, which he says was issued by his staff members last Thursday and sent to reporters, expressed criticism over rival Sen. Hillary Clinton's financial ties to India—a move that backfired on Obama. In an interview with The Associated Press, Obama described the memo as a "dumb mistake," which referred to Bill and Hillary Clinton's investments in India, including Sen. Clinton's fundraising among Indian Americans, and the former president's $300,000 in speech fees from Cisco, a company that has moved U.S. jobs to India. Obama, who later took responsibility for the memo, said the contents of the memo are not a reflection of his relationship with the Indian-American community. In a statement on his web site, Obama said he was not aware of the memo before it was distributed. Campaign members said they will ensure that senior staff reviews all materials before they are distributed publicly.

What If Obama Wins

YES, WHAT IF HE WINS?

A Free and Short Video of Obama.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAPD8COEPnc&NR=1

OBAMA HIS OWN MAN

Obama warns of 'quiet riot' among blacks By BOB LEWIS, Associated Press Writer
Tue Jun 5, 7:03 PM ET
HAMPTON, Va. - Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) said Tuesday that the Bush administration has done nothing to defuse a "quiet riot" among blacks that threatens to erupt just as riots in Los Angeles did 15 years ago.
The first-term Illinois senator said that with black people from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast still displaced 20 months after Hurricane Katrina, frustration and resentments are building explosively as they did before the 1992 riots.

"This administration was colorblind in its incompetence," Obama said at a conference of black clergy, "but the poverty and the hopelessness was there long before the hurricane.

"All the hurricane did was to pull the curtain back for all the world to see," he said.

Obama's criticism of Bush prompted ovation after ovation from the nearly 8,000 people gathered in Hampton University's Convocation Center, particularly when he denounced the Iraq war and noted that he had opposed it from the outset.

Repeatedly, he referred to the riots that erupted in Los Angeles after a jury acquitted four police officers of assault charges in the 1991 beating of Rodney King, a black motorist, after a high speed chase. Fifty-five people died and 2,000 were injured in several days of riots in the city's black neighborhoods.

"Those 'quiet riots' that take place every day are born from the same place as the fires and the destruction and the police decked out in riot gear and the deaths," Obama said. "They happen when a sense of disconnect settles in and hope dissipates. Despair takes hold and young people all across this country look at the way the world is and believe that things are never going to get any better."

He argued that once a hurricane hits or a jury renders a not guilty verdict, "the frustration is there for all to see."

Obama, who is bidding to become the first black president, took the stage after a succession of ministers repeatedly brought the crowd to its feet, singing, praying and swaying to music.

Repeatedly, with evangelical zeal, he raised issues that roused the crowd: increasing the minimum wage and teacher pay, funding for public schools and college financial aid for the poor, ending predatory lending and expediting the reconstruction of New Orleans and the Mississippi coast.

He introduced his own pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago's Trinity United as "Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian." He credited Wright with introducing him to Christ, and peppered his speech with Scriptural references, at one point invoking the opening lines of the Lord's Prayer.

Obama noted that during the riots, a bullet pierced the abdomen of a pregnant woman and lodged in the elbow of her fetus. The baby was delivered by caesarian section, the bullet was removed and the child, Jessica Glennis Evers-Jones, has only a small scar on her arm to show for it.

Using the incident as a metaphor, Obama said society's problems are worsening because "in too many places across the country, we have not even bothered to take the bullet out."

"When we have more black men in prison than in college, then it's time to take the bullet out," he said.

Obama doesn't regularly focus on racial themes in his standard campaign speeches. He did speak out on black issues in Selma, Ala., in March, when he told a largely black audience that he was a product of the civil rights movement and lectured blacks for failing to vote in large numbers.

Several ministers at the conference said Obama's message and style plays well among black voters and with their spiritual leaders.

The Rev. Robert Abbott, pastor of the Holy Trinity Baptist Church in Amityville, N.Y., said Obama connects with black audiences because of the preacher's style he uses when addressing them.

"The way he sounds, it's like he can reach out and encourage people," Abbott said.

Apology Enough?

FOX News Apology Not Enough for Conyers
By Aysha Hussain
© DiversityInc 2007
Congressman John Conyers is fed up with FOX News.

In response to FOX News' on-air apology for showing his picture with a story about Congressman William J. Jefferson being indicted on bribery charges, Conyers said the FOX News was insincere and its inaccurate reporting should not be tolerated, especially when dealing with people of color.

"FOX News has a history of inappropriate on-air mistakes that are neither fair, nor balanced," said Conyers in a statement. "This type of disrespect for people of color should no longer be tolerated. I am personally offended by the network's complete disregard for accuracy in reporting and lackluster on-air apology."
Melanie Roussell, Conyers' press representative, said the congressman was doubly upset that the apology did not specifically state the nature of the mistake nor did they mention his name, according to an article in BusinessWeek. TPM Media posted a copy of the broadcasted apology on YouTube.
In the statement, Conyers' office also noted, "The network apologized on-air for airing the wrong video; however, they did not personally apologize to Mr. Conyers," reported by Rawstory.com.
However, FOX News' Washington, D.C., bureau chief, Brian Wilson, said he personally reached out to Conyers after making the error. Wilson told BusinessWeek he responded to an e-mail request sent by Jonathan Godfrey, communications director for the House Committee on the Judiciary, stating his regret for the error. Wilson also said he left a voicemail with Godfrey, asking what he could do to make amends, including an in-person apology. But Wilson said no one got back to him. According to Wilson, Godfrey's e-mail requested only an on-air correction indicating no need to speak with Conyers personally.
TVNewser reported that Godfrey did not receive Wilson's messages until several hours later. Wilson apparently had offered his apologies approximately two hours before the on-air apology broadcast.
The news organization blamed the on-air mistake on a 22-year-old production assistant who accidentally grabbed the wrong videotape.

DiversityInc's article on the airing of the FOX News' footage was so popular that hundreds of DiversityInc readers forwarded the story to other readers. (See also: Do They All Look Alike? FOX News Shows Wrong Black Congressman Indicted)
A handful of our readers objected to the story, saying it was unfair to criticize FOX News for this mistake. The comments all were similar to this one from Obie Amacker:
"I was appalled to read the following verbiage that opened one of today's articles, 'but the news channel apparently thinks all black Congressmen look alike.' What an inflammatory statement obviously geared at making a negative representation of FOX. This weekend alone I must have seen 4 or 5 other news/sports clips that identified the wrong individual. It happens ... purely unintentionally and with all races/nationalities/etc. It is sensationalized reporting like this that disillusions so many Americans and discredits the legitimacy of orgs such as yours."

Obama Healthcare Plan Critics

The Ins and Outs of Obama's Health Plan
By Jacob S. Hacker, TomPaine.com
Posted on June 5, 2007,
If Iraq had the starring role in Sunday night's Democratic debate, health care was the key supporting actor. Sen. Hillary Clinton, Sen. Barack Obama, former Sen. John Edwards, Gov. Bill Richardson, and Rep. Dennis Kucinich all spoke with passion about the need to reform a health insurance framework that, in Edwards's well-chosen words, "is completely dysfunctional."

Unfortunately, while we have growing clarity of purpose in Democratic discussions, we have not always had clarity of vision. Few candidates have specified how they would achieve affordable quality health care for all. (Sen. Clinton is among those whose health plan remains TBA.) And last week, when Obama released his long-awaited health plan, most of the health care commentariat appeared not relieved, but completely flummoxed about what he was up to.

Obama's speech presenting the plan didn't resolve the confusion either: Even more general than the policy blueprint released by the campaign, it simply magnified the uncertainty, fueling initial reports that were either misleading or just plain wrong.

However, after Sunday's debate and new statements from the campaign (including a posting from Harvard economist David Cutler, a key Obama adviser, at the Campaign for America's Future blog), the outlines of Obama's plan are clearer.

And it's much more sophisticated, bold, and far-reaching than initial reactions suggest.

Granted, I am not a detached observer. I have talked with Obama and his team, and I'm gratified that the proposal they adopted contains core elements of the proposal I've been advocating, "." Still, I have no affiliation with the Obama campaign, and I have talked with other candidates and officeholders, including, most notably, Edwards.

I also have differences with the Obama approach, and I'll present some in a moment. But first we should understand what his approach is, and how it would dramatically transform American health insurance for the better.

Obama's proposal is best understood as a new framework to provide automatic coverage for everyone who works (or lives in the family of a worker). In the Obama plan, if you work (or someone in your family works), you are entitled to good insurance, either from your employer or through a new public plan.

Notice what I said: a new public plan. Obama believes that a new Medicare-style public plan for those younger than 65 will deliver big savings and better coverage, and that this plan should be the default source of coverage for anyone whose employer doesn't provide good insurance. Indeed, he takes a major step beyond Edwards by envisioning a national Medicare-like plan (Edwards would make a plan similar to Medicare available on a regional basis) and by clearly stating that this plan will have generous, guaranteed benefits.

No less important, Obama, like Edwards, is insisting on shared responsibility. Employers have to either provide benefits at least as good as the new public plan or make a payroll-based contribution to the public plan, in which their workers will be automatically enrolled. This is a massive change. Today, employers have no obligation to sponsor or help fund their employees' health coverage. If Obama's plan is implemented, paying at least a minimal amount for coverage will become a basic requirement of operating a business in the United States.

The Obama plan also calls for a "National Insurance Exchange" that allows those automatically enrolled in the public plan to obtain private insurance instead. Some progressive activists have called this a sell-out to the private insurance industry, but they should take note of two features of Obama's plan.

First, the Obama camp is committed to making the public plan a highly affordable option and ensuring it has generous benefits. They will do this by leveraging the huge economies of scale and bargaining power of a national plan, as well as capitalizing on its capacity for quality improvement and for the provision of preventive and primary care that will keep people healthier.

Second, Obama has also made clear that he is completely opposed to the huge giveaways for private insurers that are currently being provided by Medicare to entice private plans to enroll Medicare beneficiaries. Whether the private plan option will work well remains to be seen. But if it's appropriately regulated and placed on a level playing field with the public plan, there is a real potential for healthy competition, rather than a race to the bottom.

A lot of blog space is being devoted to the Obama plan's lack of a so-called "individual mandate" -- a requirement that everyone have coverage. The plan does require coverage of kids, but not of adults. I would prefer an individual mandate; I have one in my plan. Edwards, who also backs a mandate, rightly says this is a key difference between him and Obama.

Nonetheless, the role of the individual mandate in plans like Obama's and Edwards's (and mine) can easily be overstated. The real work of covering Americans in these plans is done by guaranteeing automatic coverage for everyone with some tie to the workforce. Indeed, according to calculations done by Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute during the preparation of my proposal, 90 to 95 percent of non-elderly Americans will be automatically covered by such a guarantee. Moreover, many of those without ties to the workforce are covered by public insurance through Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

Of course, many are eligible but not covered, and this brings us to what Obama can do to strengthen his plan. Obama should be talking much more about how he intends to sign people up for coverage who don't have a tie to the workforce. He should also be pressed to say whether he really believes that having a separate insurance system for low-income Americans and children -- in the form of Medicaid and S-CHIP -- makes sense once such an effective national framework for secure coverage is created. And Obama needs to be much clearer about how he will cover the self-employed and early retirees.

Most of all, however, Obama should be reminded of a pithy lesson he no doubt learned in law school: Keep it simple. It shouldn't take health policy wonks a week to figure out that Obama has actually proposed a bold break with present arrangements. And it shouldn't require frenzied after-the-fact statements to make clear that Obama's plan is based on an attractive bedrock principle: If you work or someone in your family works, you should have guaranteed coverage.

Obama is known for the lyrical simplicity of his language and prose. Let's hope he can bring a bit of that lyricism and simplicity to articulating -- and improving -- a health plan of which he should be proud.

Jacob S. Hacker is a Yale University political science professor and a fellow at the New America Foundation. He is the author of The Great Risk Shift: The Assault on American Jobs, Families, Health Care, and Retirement -- And How You Can Fight Back.

ALL The Ducks in a Row

June 4, 2007
Iraq Is Flash Point as 8 Democratic Rivals Clash
By ROBIN TONER and JEFF ZELENY
GOFFSTOWN, N.H., June 3 — The three leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination attacked each other overtly and subtly Sunday over Iraq and their judgment, honesty and leadership in handling that war.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, the front-runner in national polls, both drew fire and calmly returned it in the second nationally televised Democratic debate, arguing that the differences among the Democrats were minor compared with their differences with President Bush.

But former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina repeatedly went after Mrs. Clinton and Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, accusing them of being followers in Congress — not leaders — in the effort to bring an end to the war.

“There are differences between us,” said Mr. Edwards, who has campaigned hard for the support of antiwar Democrats. “And I think Democratic voters deserve to know the differences between us. I think there is a difference between making very clear when the crucial moment comes, on Congress ending this war, what your position is, and standing quiet.”

Mr. Obama, for his part, noted that he opposed the war while still in the Illinois Senate in the fall of 2002, unlike Mr. Edwards, who voted to authorize the use of force but has since repudiated that vote. “The fact is that I opposed this war from the start,” Mr. Obama said to Mr. Edwards. “So you’re about four and a half years late on leadership on this issue.”

It was one of several striking exchanges — arguably the sharpest of the Democratic campaign — that highlighted the three-way nature of this race for the nomination. The eight Democratic candidates squared off on the campus of St. Anselm College here, just outside Manchester, in a state that has jealously protected its traditional position as the first primary in the nation.

Stagecraft heightened political reality, with CNN placing the three front-runners next to one another before tall lecterns for the first hour of the two-hour debate. Mrs. Clinton was in the center, a place she also sought to hug on the political spectrum.

Often, she seemed to be looking beyond the Democratic primary and toward the general election. On the war in particular, she seemed intent on focusing attention not on her initial vote to authorize the war and how her record on that issue compares with the records of her rivals for the nomination, but on the larger divide between the two parties.

“This is George Bush’s war,” Mrs. Clinton said. “And what we are trying to do, whether it’s by speaking out from the outside or working and casting votes that actually make a difference from the inside, we are trying to end the war.”

But Mrs. Clinton’s efforts to step above the fray of a primary — to be presidential — did not stop her opponents. Mr. Edwards, noting that he had acknowledged that he was wrong to vote for the use of force, pointedly added, “It is important for anybody who seeks to be the next president of the United States, given the dishonesty that we’ve been faced with over the last several years, to be honest to the country.”

Mrs. Clinton has declined to repudiate her vote to authorize the war, much to the dismay of antiwar Democrats. But she has steadily moved toward an antiwar policy and has said that if she knew in 2002 what she knows today, she would vote differently.

The mounting pressure from the party’s base to quickly end the war drew a few gentle protests from some of the candidates, including Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the only Democratic presidential candidate in the Senate who voted for the Iraq spending legislation that passed last month. Under a continued threat of a presidential veto, Democratic leaders stripped a timeline for troop withdrawal from the legislation.

“Ladies and gentlemen, you’re going to end this war when you elect a Democratic president,” Mr. Biden said. Referring to what it takes to override a veto in the Senate, Mr. Biden said, “You need 67 votes to end this war. I love these guys who tell you they’re going to stop the war.”

The three leading candidates also debated whether senators should have read, in 2002, the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which made clear there was disagreement within the government over the strength of Iraq’s weapons programs. Asked if she regretted not reading it, Mrs. Clinton replied: “I feel like I was totally briefed. I knew all of the arguments that were being made by everyone from every direction.”

But, Mr. Obama said, “obviously there was some pertinent information there,” noting that former Senator Bob Graham of Florida, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, had cited the report as a factor in his vote against authorizing the war.

In general, Mr. Obama appeared more forceful and poised than he did during the first debate, on April 26 in South Carolina. Later, even he conceded he had stumbled in answering a question about how he would respond to a terrorist attack on American soil. When asked Sunday night about how he would deal with Osama bin Laden, Mr. Obama declared, “You take him out.”

A day after four men were charged with attempting to sabotage Kennedy International Airport, the candidates were asked whether the Bush administration’s war on terrorism had been a success domestically. Mr. Edwards said that it had not, calling it “a global war on terror bumper sticker — political slogan, that’s all it is.”

But Mrs. Clinton shot back that she disagreed. “I’m a senator from New York. I have lived with the aftermath of 9/11,” she said. “I believe we are safer than we were. We are not yet safe enough.”

During the two-hour debate, the candidates were asked questions about a wide range of domestic and foreign policy issues. Asked what he would do to address high gasoline prices, Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut said he would require a 50-mile per-gallon standard for automobiles within 10 years.

Senator Clinton was asked whether her husband’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for gays in the military was a mistake. “No. It was an important first step,” she said, calling it “a transition policy.”

Asked to raise their hands if they supported repealing the policy, all eight Democrats signaled that they did.

The candidates also were asked how, if elected to the White House, they would use the former president. “Obviously Senator Clinton may have something to say about how I use Bill Clinton,” Mr. Obama said as the crowd laughed aloud. With a wide smile of her own, she replied, “When I become president, Bill Clinton, my dear husband, will be one of the people who will be sent around the world as a roving ambassador.”

The forum was moderated by Wolf Blitzer of CNN, which played host to the debate with WMUR-TV and The Union Leader of New Hampshire. In the second hour, the candidates sat down and took questions from voters, many of which centered on foreign affairs, from undertaking military action in Iran to rebuilding alliances with Pakistan to intervening on the violence in Sudan.

Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico said the United States should lean on China to pressure the Sudanese government to allow more United Nation as peacekeepers into the northern African nation, where at least 300,000 people have died and two million have been driven from their homes. “If the Chinese don’t want to do this, we say to them, maybe we won’t go to the Olympics,” he said, referring to the 2008 summer games.

Most of the debate time was allotted to the leading contenders, which generated some complaints from the other candidates.

Some Important Background on Barack Obama

June 1, 2007
One Place Where Obama Goes Elbow to Elbow
By JODI KANTOR
Last Christmas, Senator Barack Obama flew to Hawaii to contemplate a presidential bid in the peace of his childhood home. But there, on a humid playground near Waikiki Beach, he found himself being roughed up by some of his best friends. It was the third and final game of the group’s annual three-on-three basketball showdown, and with the score nearly tied, things were getting dirty.

“Every time he tried to score, I fouled him,” Martin Nesbitt recalled. “I grabbed him, I’d hit his arm, I’d hold him.” Michael Ramos, another participant, explained, “No blood, no foul.”

Mr. Obama, like everyone else on the court, was laughing. And with a head fake, a bit of contact and a jumper that seemed out of his range, Mr. Obama sank the shot that won the game.

From John F. Kennedy’s sailing to Bill Clinton’s golf mulligans to John Kerry’s windsurfing, sports has been used, correctly or incorrectly, as a personality decoder for presidents and presidential aspirants. So, armchair psychologists and fans of athletic metaphors, take note: Barack Obama is a wily player of pickup basketball, the version of the game with unspoken rules, no referee and lots of elbows. He has been playing since adolescence, on cracked-asphalt playgrounds and at exclusive health clubs, developing a quick offensive style, a left-handed jump shot and relationships that have extended into the political arena.

If one were somehow to play a highlight reel of Mr. Obama’s on-court exploits, it would start in Hawaii, with a pudgy junior high school student in short shorts and high socks who had a Julius Erving poster plastered on his bedroom wall.

It might include the time he and several Harvard Law School classmates played inmates at a Massachusetts prison; the students were terrified to win or lose, because the convicts lining the court had bet on both outcomes. (“I got two packs on you!” they called out.)

Cut to the future Mrs. Obama asking her brother to take her new boyfriend out on the court, to make sure he was not the type to hog the ball or call constant fouls. The reel might then show Mr. Obama, an Illinois Democrat, playing with former NBA stars in a tournament fund-raiser for his Senate campaign, and at the family gatherings that always seem to end with everyone out by the hoop next to the garage.

Basketball has little to do with Mr. Obama’s presidential bid — in fact, he has trouble finding time to shoot baskets anymore — but until recently, it was one of the few constants in his life.

At first, it was a tutorial in race, a way for a kid with a white mother, a Kenyan father and a peripatetic childhood to establish the African-American identity that he longed for. In “Dreams From My Father,” Mr. Obama described basketball as a comfort to a boy whose father was mostly absent, and who was one of only a few black youths at his school. “At least on the basketball court I could find a community of sorts,” he wrote.

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Craig Robinson, Mr. Obama’s brother-in-law, said: “He didn’t know who he was until he found basketball. It was the first time he really met black people.”

Now, Mr. Obama’s friends say, basketball has been his escape from the sport of politics, but also a purer version of it, with no decorous speeches, no careful consensus — just unrestrained competition.

“He can be himself, it’s a safe haven, he can let his competitive juices flow and tease his buddies,” Mr. Nesbitt said. “It’s just a relaxing respite from the every-moment and every-word scrutinization that he gets.”

Before Rickey Green, a former NBA all-star, played with Mr. Obama in a 2004 Senate campaign fund-raiser, “I didn’t think he could play at all, to be honest with you,” Mr. Green said. But “he’s above average,” for a pickup player, Mr. Green said. “He’s got a nice little left-hand shot and some knowledge of the game.”

Mr. Robinson, now the coach of Brown University’s men’s team, said the 6-foot-2 senator is too skinny to be an imposing presence, but he is fast, with good wind even when he was a smoker. Mr. Obama is left-handed, and his signature move is to fake right and veer left, surprising players used to guarding right-handed competitors.

On the court, Mr. Obama is confident, even a bit boastful.

“If he would hit a couple buckets, he would let you know about it,” said Alexi Giannoulias, who played in the late 1990s with Mr. Obama at the East Bank Club, a luxurious spot in downtown Chicago.

He is gentleman enough to call fouls on himself: Steven Donziger, a law school classmate, has heard Mr. Obama mutter, “my bad,” tossing the other team the ball.

But “he knew how to get in the mix when he needed to,” Mr. Giannoulias said. “There are always elbows, there’s always a little bit of jersey tucking and tugging,” he said, continuing, “Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do to win.”

The men — and it is generally men — who play with Mr. Obama are not, they will have you know, the paunchy, lumbering type. “Most of the guys who played in our little circle are former players in college or pros,” said Mr. Robinson, who is still Princeton’s fourth-leading scorer of all time. “They’re real high level.”

Mr. Obama cannot match their technical prowess, say those who played regularly with him. But he is fiercely competitive, and makes up for his deficits with collaboration and strategy. “He’s very good at finding a way to win when he’s playing with people who are supposedly stronger,” Mr. Nesbitt said.

At country clubs across the land, politicians network and raise money over rounds of golf, a sport Mr. Obama also plays. But Chicago is a basketball town, and over the years, Mr. Obama’s gymmates have become loyal allies and generous backers.

Mr. Nesbitt, an owner and executive at an airport parking company and chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority’s board of commissioners, helped Mr. Obama get to know Penny Pritzker, who is now his national finance chairwoman.

Arne Duncan, a top Chicago public school official, is helping with Mr. Obama’s education platform.

Mr. Giannoulias met Mr. Obama on the court, and thanks in part to his backing, is now the Illinois state treasurer. Other regular gymmates include the president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, the director of the Illinois Department of Public Health and several investment bankers who were early and energetic fund-raisers.

Though some of these men could afford to build courts at their own homes, they pride themselves on the democratic nature of basketball, on showing up at South Side parks and playing with whoever is around. At the University of Chicago court where he and Mr. Obama used to play, “You might have someone from the street and a potential Nobel Prize winner on the same team,” Mr. Duncan said. “It’s a great equalizer.”

It is a theme that runs throughout Mr. Obama’s basketball career: a desire to be perceived as a regular guy despite great advantage and success. As a teenager, he slipped away from his tony school to university courts populated by “gym rats and has-beens” who taught him “that respect came from what you did and not who your daddy was,” Mr. Obama wrote.

Later, the Harvard game against the prison inmates, said Hill Harper, who organized it, was intended to show them that “we support you, we’re not removed from everything going on.”

But the easy friendships Mr. Obama once struck up on the court are a thing of the past. Lately, the rule in the family is “No more new friends,” Mr. Robinson said. “You don’t know what people’s real agendas are.”

Now, for exercise, Mr. Obama pounds treadmills at hotel gyms. He played a bit last year, with American troops on military bases in Kuwait and Djibouti, and again at Christmas. His staff members laugh when asked if the senator has had any playing time since coming to Washington or hitting the campaign trail. (“I dream of playing basketball,” Mr. Obama said in a television interview on Tuesday.) Before the first Democratic debate in South Carolina, Mr. Robinson reserved a court and a slot on Mr. Obama’s schedule, hoping the candidate could blow off some steam before the big night. It did not happen.

The solution, Mr. Obama’s friends say, is for him to win the presidency, so they can all play together at the White House.

“I always tease him about that,” Mr. Nesbitt said. “If you win, you gotta have a hoop.”