Barack Obama made two moves recently that leave him open to charges of selling out. One, his selection of James Johnson to help select a running mate. Johnson is a former CEO of Fannie Mae, where he helped usher in the subprime lending crisis. Also he's a Bilderberg attendee! The other new hire, though, will surely upset many more liberal stalwarts: Obama named Jason Furman as his economic policy director. Furman is a former Clintonite economist who loooooooves giant retailer Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart, he says, is a boon to poor Americans, because their prices are so low. They keep their prices low, critics charge, by fucking over their non-union workforce and aiding the export of manufacturing jobs overseas, but Furman argued in a 2005 paper that consumers saved enough money shopping at the store to offset the impact on wages. Obama's never quite been a champion of organized labor, but this selection does throw him open to accusations of pretty blatant hypocrisy (hooray electoral politics!):

During the primary campaign, Mr. Obama was sharply critical of the company. He has said he will not shop there and that Wal-Mart should pay "a living wage."

At a January debate, Mr. Obama seemed to play to Wal-Mart's critics when he suggested that Senator Clinton's six-year stint on the company's board paled in comparison to his record as a community organizer in Chicago. "While I was working on those streets watching those folks see their jobs shift overseas, you were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board at Wal-Mart," Mr. Obama said, in one of his sharpest jabs at Mrs. Clinton.

That reporting comes from the Sun, by the way, New York's least-favorite conservative daily newspaper. They are thrilled by this appointment, as an editorial reveals: "Senator Obama's choice of the left's most prominent defender of Wal-Mart, Jason Furman, as his campaign's economic policy director is a sign of hope for the Democrat of Illinois."

Well, we're glad they're happy.