Fire Hydrant of Freedom
Politics, Religion, Science, Culture and Humanities => Politics & Religion => Topic started by: Crafty_Dog on February 16, 2008, 09:12:43 PM
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Its looking like BO is going to beat the Hillbillary Clintons. The man's track record :roll: is rather vague, so lets see what we can do to get a sense of the man, the people around him, and the phenomena.
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http://www.mynorthwest.com/?nid=91
Obama Campaign Theatrics
--Producer Phil writes
A Wall Street Journal writer, James Taranto , has uncovered a hilarious and puzzling coincidence at 5 different Sen. Obama campaign speeches over the last few months, including the recent speech in Seattle.
Dori and listeners have found one other Sen. Obama incident posted on YouTube where a person near the stage faints. Sen. Obama responds to each incident with the same routine and phrases.
Is it phoney, orchestrated, manufactured campaign theatrics or is it merely physiological coincidence? You be the judge.
VIDEO circa Feb. 24th, 2007-Sen. Obama in Los Angeles, CA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpMf1070uW0
VIDEO Sept. 8th, 2007--Sen. Obama in Santa Barbara, CA scroll to 6:29
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_oXsljcKaA
VIDEO Dec. 8th, 2007--Sen. Obama in Des Moines, IA scroll to 1:45
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO1whLUKZhE
VIDEOJan. 8th, 2008--Sen. Obama in Hanover, NH
http://wcco.com/video/?id=35214@wcco.dayport.com
VIDEOFeb. 4th, 2008--Sen. Obama in Hartford, CN scroll to 6:05
AUDIOFeb 8th, 2008 Sen. Obama encountered another fainter at his Key Arena speech in Seattle
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He's for hope, and change! What more do you need to know? :roll:
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Ummm, , , things like this , , ,
AIM Says Media Cover-Up Obama’s Socialist-Oriented Global Tax Bill
Press Release | By admin | February 13, 2008
WASHINGTON, February 13, 2008 -- Accuracy in Media editor Cliff Kincaid disclosed today that a hugely expensive bill called the "Global Poverty Act," sponsored by Democratic Senator Barack Obama, was quickly passed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday and could result in the imposition of a global tax on the United States. Kincaid said that the major media's cover-up of the bill, which makes levels of U.S. foreign aid spending subservient to the dictates of the United Nations, demonstrates the media's desire to see Senator Obama elected to the presidency.
In a column posted on the AIM web site, Kincaid noted that Senator Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was trying to rush Obama's "Global Poverty Act" (S. 2433) through his committee without hearings.
The legislation would commit the U.S. to spending 0.7 percent of gross national product on foreign aid, which amounts to a phenomenal 13-year total of $845 billion over and above what the U.S. already spends. It was scheduled for a Thursday vote but was moved up a day, to Wednesday, and rushed through by voice vote. Kincaid learned, however, that conservative Senators have now put a "hold" on the legislation, in order to prevent it from being rushed to the floor for a full Senate vote.
The House version (H.R. 1302) was suddenly brought up on the House floor last September 25 and was passed by voice vote. House Republicans were caught off-guard, unaware that the pro-U.N. measure committed the U.S. to spending hundreds of billions of dollars. Kincaid's column notes that the official in charge of making nations comply with the U.N. Millennium Goals, which are prominently highlighted in the Obama bill, says a global tax will be necessary to force American taxpayers to provide the money.
Legislation would aim to cut extreme global poverty in half by 2015
February 13, 2008 -- WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senators Barack Obama (D-IL), Chuck Hagel (R-NE), and Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Congressman Adam Smith (D-WA) today hailed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's passage of the Global Poverty Act (S.2433), which requires the President to develop and implement a comprehensive policy to cut extreme global poverty in half by 2015 through aid, trade, debt relief, and coordination with the international community, businesses and NGOs.
This legislation was introduced in December. Smith and Congressman Spencer Bachus (R-AL) sponsored the House version of the bill (H.R. 1302), which passed the House last September.
"With billions of people living on just dollars a day around the world, global poverty remains one of the greatest challenges and tragedies the international community faces," said Senator Obama. "It must be a priority of American foreign policy to commit to eliminating extreme poverty and ensuring every child has food, shelter, and clean drinking water. As we strive to rebuild America's standing in the world, this important bill will demonstrate our promise and commitment to those in the developing world. Our commitment to the global economy must extend beyond trade agreements that are more about increasing corporate profits than about helping workers and small farmers everywhere. I commend Chairman Biden and Ranking Member Lugar for supporting this bill and moving it forward quickly."
"Poverty, hunger, and disease will be among the most serious challenges confronting the world in the 21st century," Senator Hagel said. "This legislation provides the President of the United States the framework and resources to help implement a comprehensive policy to reduce global poverty. It is the human condition that has always driven the great events of history. This is a responsibility of all citizens of the world."
"Global poverty directly impacts our national security. We must rally private sector and government resources to eliminate extreme global poverty and to fight global disease." said Senator Cantwell. "With more than 1.1 billion men, women and children throughout the world living on less than $1 a day, it is of the utmost importance to make sure these people get the help they need and push for sustainable economic growth. We need to do more to save lives in the poorest countries and extend our hand to people in need."
"Global poverty is one of the greatest moral and security challenges facing the world today. Nearly 2.7 billion people live on less than $2 a day and close to a billion live on less than $1 a day. This bill represents a major advance in our effort to address global poverty. After introducing this measure in the House for the past several years, I am pleased to see the Senate Foreign Relations Committee take significant steps toward its final passage," Congressman Smith said.
For years, America has committed to improving the lives of the world's poorest people. In 2000, the U.S. joined more than 180 countries at the United Nations Millennium Summit and vowed to reduce global poverty by 2015. We are halfway towards this deadline, and it is time the United States makes it a priority of our foreign policy to meet this goal and help those who are struggling day to day.
The Global Poverty Act:
* Declares it official U.S. policy to promote the reduction of global poverty, the elimination of extreme global poverty, and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal of cutting extreme global poverty in half by 2015.
* Requires the President to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to carry out that policy.
* Includes guidelines for what the strategy should include - from aid, trade, and debt relief, to working with the international community, businesses and NGOs, to ensuring environmental sustainability.
* Requires that the President's strategy include specific and measurable goals, efforts to be undertaken, benchmarks, and timetables.
* Requires the President to report back to Congress on progress made in the implementation of the global poverty strategy.
The legislation is supported by a broad range of groups, including Bread for the World, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, CARE, Oxfam America, Habitat for Humanity International, National Wildlife Federation, Sierra Club, United Church of Christ, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the Borgen Project, United Methodist General Board of Church and Society, RESULTS, Micah Challenge USA, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
Source: Senator Barack Obama
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“In 1963, John F. Kennedy was murdered in Texas by a fervent admirer of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. In 2008, a large Cuban flag emblazoned with the image of Che Guevara, Castro’s brutal henchman, is prominently displayed in a Barack Obama campaign volunteer office in Houston. Obama has been widely compared to JFK, most notably by the late president’s brother and daughter. President Kennedy, a stalwart anticommunist, despised Castro and his gang of totalitarian thugs. But when word broke last week that Obama’s supporters in Houston work under a banner glorifying Che, the campaign’s reaction was to brush it off as an issue involving volunteers, not the official campaign. After two days of controversy, the campaign issued a statement calling the flag ‘inappropriate’ and saying its display ‘does not reflect Senator Obama’s views.’ Would JFK have reacted so mildly?... That this sadistic thug’s face also adorns the office of a U.S. presidential candidate’s supporters is appalling and disgraceful. That the candidate couldn’t bring himself to say so is even worse.” —Jeff Jacoby
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Crafty,
No one wants reality to intrude on feel good sloganeering....
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/02/18/michelle-obama-hasnt-been-proud-of-america-in-at-least-26-years/
I guess this explains BHO's refusal to wear a flag pin.
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BO meets with Bloomberg?!?
http://wcbstv.com/topstories/barack.obama.michael.2.599317.html
NEW YORK (CBS) ― Just when the speculation seemed to simmer to silence, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has once again turned up the heat on the presidential hot stove.
The Independent mayor had a mystery breakfast meeting in Manhattan Friday morning with Democratic candidate Barack Obama, a move that could irk the Hillary Clinton campaign seeing as, after all, New York is her turf.
Bloomberg has repeatedly asserted he plans to complete his entire mayoral term and keep out of the presidential race, but he sure knows how to tease the masses.
Obama and Bloomberg met on a coffee date, scheduled because of their "mutual interest." The billionaire mayor and the Illinois senator chatted over eggs and potatoes early Friday at the New York Luncheonette on East 50th Street.
"We are trying to push our agenda because it helps New Yorkers, and because what's worked in New York will work elsewhere," said Bloomberg spokesman Stu Loeser. "There are a lot of people we'd like to speak to and we're going to continue to press our case."
Security closed the diner to regular customers while the politicians were there.
Members of the media gathered outside the glass window next to the booth where the pair appeared to partake in quite the serious conversation, with Obama keeping his index and middle fingers glued to his temple as he listened intently to an animated Bloomberg.
After the 45 minute meal, Obama picked up the $17.34 check, and he left a generous $10 tip, according to their waitress, Judith Perez.
"When I took the order, I was very nervous," she admitted.
Obama and Bloomberg then said their goodbyes, leaving in separate cars without addressing the media throng.
Loeser said among the topics discussed were global warming, homeland security, education, and the economy. He added that Bloomberg wasn't there for any other agenda such as joining forces as Obama's wingman against Clinton.
Thursday night, Obama made his first trip to Harlem as a presidential candidate, and the Apollo Theater was a packed with a sold out crowd charged just $50 each to see him. Before his visit to the Apollo, Obama paid his respects to one of Harlem's top powerbrokers in Rev. Al Sharpton, who says he hasn't decided who he is supporting.
Still the meeting sent a warning to Clinton that Harlem could be up for grabs.
"I trust him," said Harlem resident Angela Dews. "Hillary is slick. Democrats are taking us for granted."
By having breakfast with Obama, Bloomberg is doing what he said he would do while not running for president and dropping his Republican party affiliation: he is injecting himself into the national dialogue to try to influence the debate.
"I am going to speak out on those issues," Bloomberg said in June. "By not being affiliated with a party I think I'm going to have a better opportunity to do that."
Obama "is a person who is not only setting policy in the senate, he's also one of the handful of people who are shaping the national debate," Loeser said.
A spokesman for Obama, Robert Gibbs, said the men share a similar view: that Washington has been consumed by partisan politics.
Earlier this week, Bloomberg dined with Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, so today's mysterious photo-op with the Democrat Obama may be his way of showing how non-partisan he is in the presidential race.
Bloomberg speaks well of her publicly, but there is speculation he wanted to annoy Clinton, because she did not endorse him when he ran for mayor as a Republican. The two last met at the Sept. 11 anniversary ceremony, and their last private meeting was in March, Loeser said.
CBS 2's Magee Hickey, Marcia Kramer, and Steve Fink contributed to this article.
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Obama Speaks!
Friday, 15 February 2008
From Obama Says US Must End Gun Violence:
Feb 15, 12:14 PM (ET)
By NEDRA PICKLER
MILWAUKEE (AP) - Barack Obama says the country must do "whatever it takes" to eradicate gun violence but believes in the right to bear arms.
Obama says he's offered his Senate office to help Northern Illinois University with the investigation into a campus shooting rampage. The shooting happened in his home state. Obama was campaigning in neighboring Wisconsin.
The senator, a former constitutional law instructor, says he believes the Second Amendment to the Constitution grants individual gun rights.
But he says it's subject to commonsense regulations like background checks.
I just have to ask: After everything he has said and done, does he actually think we believe or trust him?
More on the Constitutional Right to Sporting Goods
Monday, 04 February 2008
From the AP:
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Democratic Sen. Barack Obama assured Western voters Saturday he believes in Jesus as well as the rights of gun owners.
The presidential candidate warned people about hoax e-mails they may get saying he’s secretly a Muslim who might want to destroy the United States.
“I’ve been going to the same church for 20 years, praising Jesus,” the Illinois senator told more than 10,000 people packed into Boise State’s basketball arena. He is a member of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago…
…”And then there are people who say, ‘well he doesn’t believe in the Second Amendment,’ even though I come from a state — we’ve got a lot of hunters in downstate Illinois. And I have no intention of taking away folks’ guns.”
Obama didn’t mention that he does support gun control and has a record of voting for it in the Illinois Senate. He backed limiting handgun purchases to one a month, but he made no attempts to ban them. Today, he stands by his support for controls while trying to reassure hunters that he has no interest in interfering with their access to firearms.
Well I have a few questions:
Barack, do you support my right to carry bowling balls? How about those extra-heavy, 15 pound, assault balls?
Do you support my right to shoot someone in my apartment who has invaded, unannounced and uninvited pointing a knife or gun at me?
How about if I live in the Chicago slums?
How about if I live downstate a mile from my nearest neighbor, 20 miles from the nearest cop?
These questions may seem completely unrelated, but according to Barack, they are not.
According to Barack, the Second Amendment is about hunting traditions from rural areas and has nothing to do with individual's rights.
And according to Barack, hunters should have access go guns while those in the inner city should be restricted because of the danger.
I am not sure where is he going with this or how he might attempt to accomplish it, but it sounds like we are heading back towards the racist roots of gun control.
Obama Calls for Permanent Assault Weapons Ban to Combat Inner-City Violence
Saturday, 19 January 2008
Hat tip to Traction Control from Fox News :
Sunday, July 15, 2007
He also said government should support and fund more after-school programs to keep kids off the streets. But some of the burden must also be shouldered by residents who need to do more to raise and protect at-risk children, he added."We have an entire generation of young men in our society who have become products of violence, and we are going to have to break the cycle," Obama said. "There are too many young men out there who have gone down the wrong path."He later added, "There's a reason they go out and shoot each other, because they don't love themselves. And the reason they don't love themselves is because we are not loving them enough."
CHICAGO — Standing before a church congregation that has witnessed inner-city violence firsthand, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Sunday that more must be done to end a social ill that is "sickening the soul of this nation."
Obama told churchgoers at the Vernon Park Church of God on Chicago's South Side that too many young lives are being claimed by violence and more must be done to combat the problem.
"From South Central L.A. to Newark, New Jersey, there's an epidemic of violence that's sickening the soul of this nation," the Illinois senator told the crowd. "The violence is unacceptable and it's got to stop."
Nearly three dozen Chicago students have been killed this year, according to Chicago Public Schools. Obama said that figure is higher than the number of Illinois serviceman who've died in Iraq in 2007.
"We need to express our collective anger through collective action," Obama said.
He said the government needs to permanently reinstate an assault weapons ban and close regulatory loopholes that protect unscrupulous gun dealers.
He also said government should support and fund more after-school programs to keep kids off the streets. But some of the burden must also be shouldered by residents who need to do more to raise and protect at-risk children, he added.
"We have an entire generation of young men in our society who have become products of violence, and we are going to have to break the cycle," Obama said. "There are too many young men out there who have gone down the wrong path."
He later added, "There's a reason they go out and shoot each other, because they don't love themselves. And the reason they don't love themselves is because we are not loving them enough."
From the New York Post
Wednesday, 26 December 2007
GOING BARACK & FORTH
FLIPS AFTER '96 ON EXECUTIONS, GUNS
December 23, 2007 -- Barack Obama has been flip-flopping like a carp on a boat deck, changing his position over the years on everything from the death penalty to the Patriot Act to Cuba, a review of his record shows.
The Illinois senator's views became markedly more conservative as he drew close to running for president.
On the death penalty, for instance, the Oprah heartthrob was a strong foe back in 1996 when he ran for the Illinois state Senate, according to a questionnaire from a political activist group that he filled out at the time. The answers were reviewed by The Associated Press.
But this year, he's been throwing some red meat to pro-execution voters around the country by saying he supports pulling the switch on those who commit particularly heinous crimes.
On gun control, Obama changed direction since 1996, when he called for a ban on all handgun possession and sales in Illinois.
In 2004, on another questionnaire, he backed off, saying a ban is "not politically practicable."
And so on....Going Barack and Forth
D.C. Gun Ban Constitutional!
Friday, 23 November 2007
But the campaign of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said that he "...believes that we can recognize and respect the rights of law-abiding gun owners and the right of local communities to enact common sense laws to combat violence and save lives. Obama believes the D.C. handgun law is constitutional."
From the Chicago Tribune.
The Joyce Foundation
Tuesday, 11 September 2007
The Joyce Foundation is a liberal, charitable foundation that, among other things, funds gun control groups. According to Wikipedia :
Since 2003, the Joyce Foundation has paid grants totaling over $12 million to gun control organizations and for research into gun violence prevention. The largest single grantee has been the Violence Policy Center, which received $4,154,970 between 1996 and 2006, and calls for an outright ban on handguns, semi-automatic and other firearms, and substantial restrictions on gun owners.
Conveniently, the Joyce Foundation has a list of the gun control funding grants here .
The Joyce Foundation's Annual Reports list Barack Obama as one of the 12 members of the Board of Directors from 1998 until 2001 .
From a Very Unexpected Source: The Daily Kos
Monday, 06 August 2007
Obama gunning to lose in 2008.
Nobody said that winning the Congress with a BlueDog approach would make for an easy honeymoon -- just witness the party's rage over this week's vote (myself included) -- but no-one can challenge that our win in 2006 has begun the change that this nation sorely needed. But as if right on time to scuttle our success, news comes out that Obama has finally begun to talk about firearms and gun control and frankly, the position he is taking will only mean the loss of BlueDog, rural, libertarian leaning, and gun owning Democrats...
So many of us have been waiting for more clarity on many of Obama's positions and one of those has been his position on American gun ownership. This month he is making himself clearly heard:
Obama delivers message tough on guns
Just days prior to announcing his urban agenda aimed at combating urban poverty, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama entered Vernon Park Church of God on July 15 to a thunderous applause from a supportive crowd with a message challenging the gun lobby, criticizing the Bush administration and issuing a call to action for Black men.
“Our playgrounds have become battlegrounds. Our streets have become cemeteries. Our schools have become places to mourn the ones we’ve lost,” said the Illinois senator. “I’m sick and tired of seeing our young people gunned down.”
Sen. Obama decried the inaction on the part of the Bush administration to ban assault rifles, mentioning that the nearly three dozen children killed in Chicago this year is higher than the number of Illinois servicemen who have died in Iraq.
The clear implication of this statement is that Obama belives that Chicago's violent crimes are to be solved at a national level -- since Chicago & IL already have VERY tough gun control laws that have not stopped their crime problems--, and to be solved by gun control legislation specifically mentioning the 1994 "Assault Weapons Ban" and blaming Bush for that ban's lack of renewal.
Read more at http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/8/6/104556/3837 .
The Right to Bear Sporting Goods
Friday, 15 June 2007
The Blue Steel Democrats blog Senator Obama's Position on Gun Ownership Rights.
Obama says U.S. needs to review gun policies
Sunday, 22 April 2007
April 20, 2007
NASHUA, N.H. --Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said this week's shooting at Virginia Tech highlights serious shortcomings with gun control.
"We're still selling handguns to crazy people," Obama said during a campaign stop at a Nashua senior center on Friday. "We're supposed to have a system that these people are screened out. What's clear is the background check system in this case failed entirely."
Actually, the perp was never involuntarily committed to a mental hospital, so was not a prohibited person on those grounds.
Read more at http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2007/04/20/obama_says_us_needs_to_review_gun_policies/.
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Obama has a history of hiding his behaviors from others.
This is a deal-breaker of a red flag in anyone, not just a political officeholder.
Furthemore, BHO's association with a known CPUSA member would prohibit him as a civilian or .mil from getting a security clearance.
http://www.aim.org/aim-column/obamas-communist-mentor/
In his biography of Barack Obama, David Mendell writes about Obama's life as a "secret smoker" and how he "went to great lengths to conceal the habit."
But what about Obama's secret political life? It turns out that Obama's childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, was a communist.
In his books, Obama admits attending "socialist conferences" and coming into contact with Marxist literature. But he ridicules the charge of being a "hard-core academic Marxist," which was made by his colorful and outspoken 2004 U.S. Senate opponent, Republican Alan Keyes.
However, through Frank Marshall Davis, Obama had an admitted relationship with someone who was publicly identified as a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). The record shows that Obama was in Hawaii from 1971-1979, where, at some point in time, he developed a close relationship, almost like a son, with Davis, listening to his "poetry" and getting advice on his career path. But Obama, in his book, Dreams From My Father, refers to him repeatedly as just "Frank."
The reason is apparent: Davis was a known communist who belonged to a party subservient to the Soviet Union. In fact, the 1951 report of the Commission on Subversive Activities to the Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii identified him as a CPUSA member. What's more, anti-communist congressional committees, including the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), accused Davis of involvement in several communist-front organizations.
Trevor Loudon, a New Zealand-based libertarian activist, researcher and blogger, noted evidence that "Frank" was Frank Marshall Davis in a posting in March of 2007.
Obama's communist connection adds to mounting public concern about a candidate who has come out of virtually nowhere, with a brief U.S. Senate legislative record, to become the Democratic Party frontrunner for the U.S. presidency. In the latest Real Clear Politics poll average, Obama beats Republican John McCain by almost four percentage points.
AIM recently disclosed that Obama has well-documented socialist connections, which help explain why he sponsored a "Global Poverty Act" designed to send hundreds of billions of dollars of U.S. foreign aid to the rest of the world, in order to meet U.N. demands. The bill has passed the House and a Senate committee, and awaits full Senate action.
But the Communist Party connection through Davis is even more ominous. Decades ago, the CPUSA had tens of thousands of members, some of them covert agents who had penetrated the U.S. Government. It received secret subsidies from the old Soviet Union.
You won't find any of this discussed in the David Mendell book, Obama: From Promise to Power. It is typical of the superficial biographies of Obama now on the market. Secret smoking seems to be Obama's most controversial activity. At best, Mendell and the liberal media describe Obama as "left-leaning."
But you will find it briefly discussed, sort of, in Obama's own book, Dreams From My Father. He writes about "a poet named Frank," who visited them in Hawaii, read poetry, and was full of "hard-earned knowledge" and advice. Who was Frank? Obama only says that he had "some modest notoriety once," was "a contemporary of Richard Wright and Langston Hughes during his years in Chicago..." but was now "pushing eighty." He writes about "Frank and his old Black Power dashiki self" giving him advice before he left for Occidental College in 1979 at the age of 18.
This "Frank" is none other than Frank Marshall Davis, the black communist writer now considered by some to be in the same category of prominence as Maya Angelou and Alice Walker. In the summer/fall 2003 issue of African American Review, James A. Miller of George Washington University reviews a book by John Edgar Tidwell, a professor at the University of Kansas, about Davis's career, and notes, "In Davis's case, his political commitments led him to join the American Communist Party during the middle of World War II-even though he never publicly admitted his Party membership." Tidwell is an expert on the life and writings of Davis.
Is it possible that Obama did not know who Davis was when he wrote his book, Dreams From My Father, first publishedin 1995?That's not plausible since Obama refers to him as acontemporary of Richard Wright and Langston Hughes and says he saw a book of his black poetry.
The communists knew who "Frank" was, and they know who Obama is. In fact, one academic who travels in communist circles understands the significance of the Davis-Obama relationship.
Professor Gerald Horne, a contributing editor of the Communist Party journal Political Affairs, talked about it during a speech last March at the reception of the Communist Party USA archives at the Tamiment Library at New York University. The remarks are posted online under the headline, "Rethinking the History and Future of the Communist Party."
Horne, a history professor at the University of Houston, noted that Davis, who moved to Honolulu from Kansas in 1948 "at the suggestion of his good friend Paul Robeson," came into contact with Barack Obama and his family and became the young man's mentor, influencing Obama's sense of identity and career moves. Robeson, of course, was the well-known black actor and singer who served as a member of the CPUSA and apologist for the old Soviet Union. Davis had known Robeson from his time in Chicago.
As Horne describes it, Davis "befriended" a "Euro-American family" that had "migrated to Honolulu from Kansas and a young woman from this family eventually had a child with a young student from Kenya East Africa who goes by the name of Barack Obama, who retracing the steps of Davis eventually decamped to Chicago."
It was in Chicago that Obama became a "community organizer" and came into contact with more far-left political forces, including the Democratic Socialists of America, which maintains close ties to European socialist groups and parties through the Socialist International (SI), and two former members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), William Ayers and Carl Davidson.
The SDS laid siege to college campuses across America in the 1960s, mostly in order to protest the Vietnam War, and spawned the terrorist Weather Underground organization. Ayers was a member of the terrorist group and turned himself in to authorities in 1981. He is now a college professor and served with Obama on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago. Davidson is now a figure in the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, an offshoot of the old Moscow-controlled CPUSA, and helped organize the 2002 rally where Obama came out against the Iraq War.
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Both communism and socialism trace their roots to Karl Marx, co-author of the Communist Manifesto, who endorsed the first meeting of the Socialist International, then called the "First International." According to Pierre Mauroy, president of the SI from 1992-1996, "It was he [Marx] who formally launched it, gave the inaugural address and devised its structure..."
Apparently unaware that Davis had been publicly named as a CPUSA member, Horne said only that Davis "was certainly in the orbit of the CP [Communist Party]-if not a member..."
In addition to Tidwell's book,Black Moods: Collected Poems of Frank Marshall Davis,confirming Davis's Communist Party membership, another book, The New Red Negro: The Literary Left and African American Poetry, 1930-1946, names Davis as one of several black poets who continued to publish in CPUSA-supported publications after the 1939 Hitler-Stalin non-aggression pact. The author, James Edward Smethurst, associate professor of Afro-American studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, says that Davis, however, would later claim that he was "deeply troubled" by the pact.
While blacks such as Richard Wright left the CPUSA, it is not clear if or when Davis ever left the party.
However, Obama writes in Dreams From My Father that he saw "Frank" only a few days before he left Hawaii for college, and that Davis seemed just as radical as ever. Davis called college "An advanced degree in compromise" and warned Obama not to forget his "people" and not to "start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that shit." Davis also complained about foot problems, the result of "trying to force African feet into European shoes," Obama wrote.
For his part, Horne says that Obama's giving of credit to Davis will be important in history. "At some point in the future, a teacher will add to her syllabus Barack's memoir and instruct her students to read it alongside Frank Marshall Davis' equally affecting memoir, Living the Blues and when that day comes, I'm sure a future student will not only examine critically the Frankenstein monsters that US imperialism created in order to subdue Communist parties but will also be moved to come to this historic and wonderful archive in order to gain insight on what has befallen this complex and intriguing planet on which we reside," he said.
Dr. Kathryn Takara, a professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa who also confirms that Davis is the "Frank" in Obama's book, did her dissertation on Davis and spent much time with him between 1972 until he passed away in 1987.
In an analysis posted online, she notes that Davis, who was a columnist for the Honolulu Record, brought "an acute sense of race relations and class struggle throughout America and the world" and that he openly discussed subjects such as American imperialism, colonialism and exploitation. She described him as a "socialist realist" who attacked the work of the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Davis, in his own writings, had said that Robeson and Harry Bridges, the head of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and a secret member of the CPUSA, had suggested that he take a job as a columnist with the Honolulu Record "and see if I could do something for them." The ILWU was organizing workers there and Robeson's contacts were "passed on" to Davis, Takara writes.
Takara says that Davis "espoused freedom, radicalism, solidarity, labor unions, due process, peace, affirmative action, civil rights, Negro History week, and true Democracy to fight imperialism, colonialism, and white supremacy. He urged coalition politics."
Is "coalition politics" at work in Obama's rise to power?
Trevor Loudon, the New Zealand-based blogger who has been analyzing the political forces behind Obama and specializes in studying the impact of Marxist and leftist political organizations, notes that Frank Chapman, a CPUSA supporter, has written a letter to the party newspaper hailing the Illinois senator's victory in the Iowa caucuses.
"Obama's victory was more than a progressive move; it was a dialectical leap ushering in a qualitatively new era of struggle," Chapman wrote. "Marx once compared revolutionary struggle with the work of the mole, who sometimes burrows so far beneath the ground that he leaves no trace of his movement on the surface. This is the old revolutionary ‘mole,' not only showing his traces on the surface but also breaking through."
Let's challenge the liberal media to report on this. Will they have the honesty and integrity to do so?
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Second post of the AM:
I've read that BO wants a federal law to override the CCW laws of 30 states. Here's more on his proposals about guns-- not every single idea is bad, but a few of them really are:
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http://volokh.com/posts/1203389334.shtml
His record isn't likely to win back the rural "pro-gun" voters who've fled to the Republicans in recent years, likely costing Gore the election in 2000. From the Chicago Defender, Dec. 13, 1999:
Sweeping federal gun control legislation proposed by Sen. Barack Obama (D-13th) would increase the penalties on gun runners who are flooding Chicago's streets with illegal weapons.
At an anti-gun rally held at the Park Manor Christian Church, 600 E. 73rd St., headed by the Rev. James Demus, Obama also said he's backing a resolution being introduced into the City Council by Alds. Toni Preckwinkle (4th), Ted Thomas (15th), Leslie Hairston (5th) to call for a "shot-free" millennium celebration.
Obama outlined his anti-gun plan that includes increased penalties for the interstate transportation of firearms. The maximum penalty now for bringing a gun across the border is 10 years in prison. Obama is proposing to make it a felony for a gun owner whose firearm was stolen from his residence which causes harm to another person if that weapon was not securely stored in that home. [!!!]
He's proposing restricting gun purchases to one weapon a month and banning the sale of firearms at gun shows except for "antique" weapons. Obama is also proposing increasing the licensing fee to obtain a federal firearms license.
He's also seeking a ban on police agencies from reselling their used weapons even if those funds are used to buy more state-of-the-art weapons for their agencies. Obama wants only those over 21 who've passed a basic course to be able to buy or own a firearm.
He's proposing that all federally licensed gun dealers sell firearms in a storefront and not from their homes while banning their business from being within five miles of a school or a park. He's also banning the sale of 'junk" handguns like the popular Saturday Night Specials.
Obama is requiring that all people working at a gun dealer undergo a criminal background check. He's also asking that gun manufacturers be required to develop safety measures that permit only the original owner of the firearm to operate the weapon purchased.
Additionally, he wants an increase of the funds for schools to teach anger management skills for youth between the ages of 5-13. Obama is also seeking to increase the federal taxes by 500 percent on the sale of firearm, ammunition [sic] -- weapons he says are most commonly used in firearm deaths.
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Obama's church: More about Africa than God?
Chicago congregation has 'non-negotiable commitment' to 'mother continent'
Posted: January 09, 2008
1:00 am Eastern
By Ron Strom
WorldNetDaily.com
While some election commentators are looking carefully at the level of devotion Sen. Barack Obama has to Islam, it is the strong African-centered and race-based philosophy of the senator's United Church of Christ that has some bloggers crying foul.
Obama and Wright
Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago is where Obama was baptized as a Christian two decades ago, even borrowing the title for one of his books, "The Audacity of Hope," from a sermon by his senior pastor, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.
The first paragraph of the "About Us" section of the church's website mentions the word "black" or "Africa" five times:
We are a congregation which is Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian. ... Our roots in the Black religious experience and tradition are deep, lasting and permanent. We are an African people, and remain "true to our native land," the mother continent, the cradle of civilization. God has superintended our pilgrimage through the days of slavery, the days of segregation, and the long night of racism. It is God who gives us the strength and courage to continuously address injustice as a people, and as a congregation. We constantly affirm our trust in God through cultural expression of a Black worship service and ministries which address the Black Community.
Focus on the African continent continues in two of the 10-point vision of the church:
A congregation committed to ADORATION.
A congregation preaching SALVATION.
A congregation actively seeking RECONCILIATION.
A congregation with a non-negotiable COMMITMENT TO AFRICA.
A congregation committed to BIBLICAL EDUCATION.
A congregation committed to CULTURAL EDUCATION.
A congregation committed to the HISTORICAL EDUCATION OF AFRICAN PEOPLE IN DIASPORA.
A congregation committed to LIBERATION.
A congregation committed to RESTORATION.
A congregation working towards ECONOMIC PARITY.
Commented Florida blogger "Ric" in discussing vision No. 4: "Commitment to Africa? I thought Christians were to have a commitment to God alone?"
The blogger continued: "First off just by this 10-point layout describing Barack Obama's church, we see that on some issues they are not clear. Even though it sounds good to the reader, it still leaves one guessing and not knowing where they truly stand as a congregation.
"Second, the church seems to place Africa and African people before God, and says nothing about other races in their community or a commitment to help the people in their community.
adsonar_placementId=1270202;adsonar_pid=663759;ads onar_ps=1451068;adsonar_zw=300;adsonar_zh=250;adso nar_jv="ads.adsonar.com";"Third, the church seems to promote communism by the term they use called 'economic parity.' Is this what Barack Obama truly believes?"
On another page on the website, Pastor Wright explains his theology, saying it is "based upon the systematized liberation theology that started in 1969 with the publication of Dr. James Cone's book, 'Black Power and Black Theology.'
"Black theology is one of the many theologies in the Americas that became popular during the liberation theology movement. They include Hispanic theology, Native American theology, Asian theology and Womanist theology."
Wright rebuts those who might call his philosophy racist, saying, "To have a church whose theological perspective starts from the vantage point of black liberation theology being its center is not to say that African or African-American people are superior to any one else.
"African-centered thought, unlike Eurocentrism, does not assume superiority and look at everyone else as being inferior."
The church's official mission statement says it has been "called by God to be a congregation that is not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ and that does not apologize for its African roots!"
The Jan. 6 Sunday bulletin had an announcement about how to register for the winter Bible study held by the "Center for African Biblical Studies."
Another page in the 36-page bulletin announced the "Black and Christian New Member Class." All those wanting to become full-fledged members of Trinity "MUST complete your new member class!" warned the announcement, which included a schedule of class times. There was no mention of what class a prospective member might take if he or she were not black.
Demonstrating the church's quest toward "economic parity," one of the associate pastors, the Rev. Reginald Williams Jr., wrote a blurb in the bulletin decrying the powers that be for not making "fresh food stores" available in the black neighborhoods of Chicago.
Wrote Williams in a discussion of infant mortality in the black community: "In West Englewood, one of the five worst areas in the city, McDonald's restaurants abound, while fresh food stores are lacking. The same resources should be made available in each and every neighborhood in this city.
"This is an issue which we must all attack. We must push our policymakers for programs for health education, good stores for proper nutrition and access to health care."
The thought for the day on the same page was a quote from former Rep. Shirley Chisholm: "Health is a human right, not a privilege to be purchased."
Obama recently talked about his faith with the Concord, N.H., Monitor.
"I've always said that my faith informs my values, and in that sense it helps shape my worldview, and I don't think anyone should be required to leave their religious sensibilities at the door," Obama told the paper last week. "But we have to translate those concerns into a universal language that can be subject to argument and doesn't turn into a contest of any one of us thinking that God is somehow on our side."
The candidate told the Monitor he doesn't buy everything his pastor proclaims, saying: "There are some things I agree with my pastor about, some things I disagree with him about. I come from a complex racial background with a lot of different strains in me: white, black, I grew up in Hawaii. I tend to have a strong streak of universalism, not just in my religious beliefs, but in my ethical and moral beliefs."
Obama's popularity has soared in the last several days, with journalists from NBC even admitting to getting caught up in the "feel good" aura of the campaign.
As WND reported, the network's Brian Williams noted on MSNBC yesterday: ""[Reporter] Lee [Cowan] says it's hard to stay objective covering this guy. Courageous for Lee to say, to be honest. ... I think it is a very interesting dynamic."
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I've yet to see Obama say what he stands for or what he believes in . I am stilll waiting. :roll:
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Obama's Teamster 'Diplomacy'
February 21, 2008; Page A16
Barack Obama has pledged to "renew American diplomacy." Except, apparently, when it might interfere with an endorsement from the Teamsters.
President James Hoffa bestowed the powerful union's blessing on Mr. Obama yesterday, not so coincidentally only days after the Senator declared his opposition to the pending U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement. In a statement inserted in the Congressional Record last week, Mr. Obama said he believes the pact doesn't pay "proper attention" to America's "key industries and agricultural sectors" like cars, rice and beef. Opposition to free-trade deals is now a union litmus test, especially for the Teamsters and Service Employees International Union, which endorsed the Senator last Friday.
Try squaring Mr. Obama's views on the FTA with his criticism of the Bush Administration for not negotiating with unfriendly regimes, taken straight from an online position paper: It "makes us look arrogant, it denies us opportunities to make progress, and it makes it harder for America to rally international support for our leadership." Or consider this promise from his Asia policy paper: Mr. Obama "will maintain strong ties with allies like Japan, South Korea and Australia" and "work to build an infrastructure with countries in East Asia that can promote stability and prosperity."
Consider also that Seoul is willing to open up some of its own politically sensitive industries, such as banking and cars, for the FTA. Mr. Obama might take a look at a report last fall from the International Trade Commission, which says the FTA is expected to boost U.S. GDP by $10 billion to $12 billion annually and that the impact on American employment would be "negligible." In exchange, consumers in both countries would enjoy lower prices and a wider range of goods.
Korean President Roh Moo-hyun has put a lot of political capital behind the trade pact and President-elect Lee Myung-bak is also a strong supporter. The men, who represent opposing parties, don't agree on much but they have agreed to push the FTA through the National Assembly as early as this week. A U.S. "no" would be a huge embarrassment for them -- and for American "diplomacy."
WSJ
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Foraging for Taliban AKs?!? WTF?!?
http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2008/02/democratic-debate.html
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Foraging for Taliban AKs?!? WTF?!?
http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2008/02/democratic-debate.html
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/02/22/abc-interviews-obamas-army-source-for-last-nights-ammo-shortage-claim/
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Obama's Cash Games
February 22, 2008; Page A14
Too soft to withstand a Republican assault. Too vague to know how he'd govern. Those two big raps on Barack Obama can now be shelved. The Illinois senator this week provided his first, highly illuminating, example of how he'd operate in the Oval Office. It's clear he's as crafty as Hillary Clinton.
This case study has to do with that great love of good-government types, campaign finance. Last year, Mr. Obama sparked his campaign by pressuring Republicans to join him in a pledge to use only public money in a general election. Last week, when rival and fellow pledge-taker John McCain reminded him of that promise, Mr. Obama refused to go "locking" himself into an agreement.
This "No, We Can't" moment is supposedly a function of the Obama campaign's belief that it can massively out-raise Mr. McCain, and wants no public financing limits. The more cynical (and likelier) case is that Mr. Obama is using this in hopes of handicapping Mr. McCain in the upcoming months -- well before the general election begins.
Whatever the motive, this is a telling first example of the actual cash value of Mr. Obama's soaring words. From the start, Mr. Obama's promises to reform government, to make campaign finance more transparent, to weed out "moneyed special interests" have been integral to Obamamania.
This is no mere side issue, but the stuff on which the senator lifts crowds. "Now I know some will say we can't make this change," he thundered in one "transparency" talk on lobbyists. "That the culture of corrosive influence in politics is too sprawling to spotlight . . . That's not how I see it . . . Making government accountable to the people isn't just a cause of this campaign -- it's been a cause of my life for two decades."
Consider, too, that this is one of the few instances in which Mr. Obama did more than talk. His campaign won rave reviews when it last year forwarded a proposal to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to allow candidates to defensively raise money for a general election, but give it back if both sides agreed to public money. Mr. Obama then committed to taking public funds if his competitor did. This was a key moment in the Obama rise, a supposed example of his "fresh thinking."
Where is that "fresh thinking" now? Mr. Obama made his pledge when his campaign and fund-raising prospects were unknown. Today, the charismatic candidate is inching closer to the nomination. He is said to be collecting money at a clip of a million dollars a day. Liberal bloggers are pressuring him to keep this advantage. And Mr. Obama, with nary a whiff of remorse for the "cause of his life," has changed gears.
"This should be a warning for anyone caught up in Obama rhetoric," says Todd Harris, a Republican strategist. "When that rhetoric meets political expediency, it's not the rhetoric that wins." What makes this even wilier gamesmanship is that it is far from clear that it's in Mr. Obama's interest to forgo public financing. He instead appears to be using the threat that he is a money powerhouse to contain Mr. McCain now.
Bradley Smith, former head of the FEC and current chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics, notes that one reason nominees take public financing in the general election (President Bush and John Kerry did) is that it is a fab financial deal. Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama would each receive about $85 million to spend in the two months between conventions and Nov. 4. That's a whopping $1.4 million a day, and about as much as Mr. Obama spent last year.
Mr. Smith points out that even a red-hot Obama would struggle to best Mr. McCain's $85 million. It takes money to raise money, so he'd need closer to $100 million to realize $85 million. Even under public financing, Mr. McCain can raise about $20 million in private funds, which Mr. Obama would also have to match. And the Democrat would need to do all this while simultaneously staying competitive in a primary fight that could conceivably last through the summer. Do the math and he'd probably need to gin up $200 million over eight months, a near-impossible feat. "What he's probably doing is using this as leverage," says Mr. Smith.
How so? The answer may be found in the op-ed Mr. Obama penned this week in USA Today in response to criticism. In it, Mr. Obama said he still wants to "aggressively pursue such an agreement," but dramatically raises the stakes. Any "solidly constructed" agreement, in his mind, would now have to go beyond public dollars, and also "limit fundraising help" from "outside groups" and "address the amounts that Senator McCain . . . will spend for the general election while the Democratic primary contest continues." Hmmm.
Mr. Obama knows Republican 527 groups are scooping up cash and will soon unleash it to Mr. McCain's advantage. He knows Mr. McCain's greatest asset is the next few months, when he'll be able to define himself and his opponents while Democrats slap away at each other. So Mr. Obama is proposing a new ethical challenge to Mr. McCain, one that conveniently hobbles his rival. You can call this savvy, and it might reassure voters who've wondered if Mr. Obama has the fists to tangle with the big boys. But you can't call it high-minded or visionary.
Mr. McCain is pounding Mr. Obama on his pledge, and that's to be expected. But he'll have to tread carefully. Too much focus on the public money question will only remind Republicans he is the goody-two-shoes coauthor of McCain-Feingold. A bigger risk is that Mr. McCain -- who is now being hit on his ethical record -- will fall for this and unilaterally disarm in an effort to burnish his credentials. Doing so won't help him win his base, or an election. (His bigger concern should be sorting out the FEC mess he's created with his November campaign loan.)
The real shame is that voters must suffer through all this. As two believers in complex campaign-finance laws, Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama helped create a system that now requires both to engage in games over 527 spending and tax subsidies. If they really believed in better government, they'd call for a system in which donors can give what they want, so long as it is transparent. That's called having faith in your citizens, and it would be change we could believe in.
WSJ
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Try a Little Tenderness
February 22, 2008
Barack Obama's biggest draw is not his eloquence. When you watch an Obama speech, you lean forward and listen and think, That's good. He's compelling, I like the way he speaks. And afterward all the commentators call him "impossibly eloquent" and say "he gave me thrills and chills." But, in fact, when you go on the Internet and get a transcript of the speech and print it out and read it--that is, when you remove Mr. Obama from the words and take them on their own--you see the speech wasn't all that interesting, and was in fact high-class boilerplate. (This was not true of John F. Kennedy's speeches, for instance, which could be read seriously as part of the literature of modern American politics, or Martin Luther King's work, which was powerful absent his voice.)
Mr. Obama is magnetic, interacts with the audience, leads a refrain: "Yes, we can." It's good, and compared with Hillary Clinton and John McCain, neither of whom seems really to enjoy giving speeches, it comes across as better than it is. But is it eloquence? No. Eloquence is deep thought expressed in clear words. With Mr. Obama the deep thought part is missing. What is present are sentiments.
Our country can be greater, it holds unachieved promise, our leaders have not led us well. "We struggle with our doubts, our fears, our cynicism." Fair enough and true enough, but he doesn't dig down to explain how to become a greater nation, what specific path to take--more power to the state, for instance, or more power to the individual. He doesn't unpack his thoughts, as they say. He asserts and keeps on walking.
So his draw is not literal eloquence but a reputation for eloquence that may, in time, become the real thing.
But his big draw is this. In a country that has throughout most of our lifetimes been tormented by, buffeted by, the question of race, a country that has endured real pain and paid in blood and treasure to work its way through and out of the mess, that for all that struggle we yielded this: a brilliant and accomplished young black man with a consensus temperament, a thoughtful and peaceful person who wishes to lead. That is his draw: "We made that." "It ended well."
People would love to be able to support that guy.
His job, in a way, is to let them, in part by not being just another operative, plaything or grievance-monger of the left-liberal establishment and left-liberal thinking. By standing, in fact, for real change.
Right now Mr. Obama is in an awkward moment. Each day he tries to nail down his party's leftist base, and take it from Mrs. Clinton. At the same time his victories have led the country as a whole to start seeing him as the probable Democratic nominee. They're looking at him in a new way, and wondering: Is he standard, old time and party line, or is he something new? Is he just a turning of the page, or is he the beginning of a new and helpful chapter?
Mr. Obama did not really have a good week, in spite of winning a primary and a caucus, and both resoundingly. I don't refer to charges that he'd plagiarized words from a Deval Patrick speech. He borrowed an argument that was in itself obvious--words matter--and used words in the public sphere. In any case Mrs. Clinton has lifted so many phrases and approaches from Mr. Obama, and other candidates, that her accusation was like the neighborhood kleptomaniac running through the street crying, "Thief! Thief!"
His problem was, is, his wife's words, not his, the speech in which she said that for the first time in her adult life she is proud of her country, because Obama is winning. She later repeated it, then tried to explain it, saying of course she loves her country. But damage was done. Why? Because her statement focused attention on what I suspect are some basic and elementary questions that were starting to bubble out there anyway.
* * *
Here are a few of them.
Are the Obamas, at bottom, snobs? Do they understand America? Are they of it? Did anyone at their Ivy League universities school them in why one should love America? Do they confuse patriotism with nationalism, or nativism? Are they more inspired by abstractions like "international justice" than by old visions of America as the city on a hill, which is how John Winthrop saw it, and Ronald Reagan and JFK spoke of it?
Have they been, throughout their adulthood, so pampered and praised--so raised in the liberal cocoon--that they are essentially unaware of what and how normal Americans think? And are they, in this, like those cosseted yuppies, the Clintons?
Why is all this actually not a distraction but a real issue? Because Americans have common sense and are bottom line. They think like this. If the president and his first lady are not loyal first to America and its interests, who will be? The president of France? But it's his job to love France, and protect its interests. If America's leaders don't love America tenderly, who will?
And there is a context. So many Americans right now fear they are losing their country, that the old America is slipping away and being replaced by something worse, something formless and hollowed out. They can see we are giving up our sovereignty, that our leaders will not control our borders, that we don't teach the young the old-fashioned love of America, that the government has taken to itself such power, and made things so complex, and at the end of the day when they count up sales tax, property tax, state tax, federal tax they are paying a lot of money to lose the place they loved.
And if you feel you're losing America, you really don't want a couple in the White House whose rope of affection to the country seems lightly held, casual, provisional. America is backing Barack at the moment, so America is good. When it becomes angry with President Barack, will that mean America is bad?
* * *
Michelle Obama seems keenly aware of her struggles, of what it took to rise so high as a black woman in a white country. Fair enough. But I have wondered if it is hard for young African-Americans of her generation, having been drilled in America's sad racial history, having been told about it every day of their lives, to fully apprehend the struggles of others. I wonder if she knows that some people look at her and think "Man, she got it all." Intelligent, strong, tall, beautiful, Princeton, Harvard, black at a time when America was trying to make up for its sins and be helpful, and from a working-class family with two functioning parents who made sure she got to school.
That's the great divide in modern America, whether or not you had a functioning family, and she apparently came from the privileged part of that divide. A lot of white working-class Americans didn't come up with those things. Some of them were raised by a TV and a microwave and love our country anyway, every day.
Does Mrs. Obama know this? I don't know. If she does, love and gratitude for the place that tries to give everyone an equal shot would seem to be in order.
See all of today's editorials and op-eds, plus video commentary
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http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=42FC5818-3048-5C12-005E33B3C0F4E64B
Michelle Obama thesis was on racial divide
By: Jeffrey Ressner
February 22, 2008 08:07 PM EST
Michelle Obama's senior year thesis at Princeton University, obtained from the campaign by Politico, shows a document written by a young woman grappling with a society in which a black Princeton alumnus might only be allowed to remain "on the periphery." Read the full thesis here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.
"My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'blackness' than ever before," the future Mrs. Obama wrote in her thesis introduction. "I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don't belong. Regardless of the circumstances underwhich I interact with whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be black first and a student second."
The thesis, titled "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community" and written under her maiden name, Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, in 1985, has been the subject of much conjecture on the blogosphere and elsewhere in recent weeks, as it has been "temporarily withdrawn" from Princeton's library until after this year's presidential election in November. Some of the material has been written about previously, however, including a story last year in the Newark Star Ledger.
Obama writes that the path she chose by attending Princeton would likely lead to her "further integration and/or assimilation into a white cultural and social structure that will only allow me to remain on the periphery of society; never becoming a full participant."
During a presidential contest in which the term "transparency" has been frequently bandied about, candidates have buried a number of potentially revealing documents and papers. In Hillary Rodham Clinton's case, there's been a clamoring for tax records, White House memos and other material the candidate's team has chosen to keep from release. The 96-page Princeton thesis, restricted from release by the school's Mudd Library, has also been the subject of recent scrutiny.
Earlier this week, commentator Jonah Goldberg remarked on National Review Online, "A reader in the know informs me that Michelle Obama's thesis ... is unavailable until Nov. 5, 2008, at the Princeton library. I wonder why."
"Why a restricted thesis?" asked blogger-pastor Louis Lapides on his site Thinking Outside the Blog. "Is the concern based on what's in the thesis? Will Michelle Obama appear to be too black for white America or not black enough for black America?"
Attempts to retrieve the document through Princeton proved unsuccessful, with school librarians having been pestered so much for access to the thesis that they have resorted to reading from a script when callers inquire about it. Media officers at the prestigious university were similarly unhelpful, claiming it is "not unusual" for a thesis to be restricted and refusing to discuss "the academic work of alumni."
The Obama campaign, however, quickly responded to a request for the thesis by Politico. The thesis offers several fascinating insights into the mind of Michelle Obama, who has been a passionate advocate of her husband's presidential aspirations and who has made several controvesial statements, including this week's remark, "For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country." That comment has fueled debate on countless blogs, radio talk shows and cable news for days on end, causing her to explain the statement in greater detail.
The 1985 thesis provides a trove of Michelle Obama's thoughts as a young woman, with many of the paper's statements describing the student's world as seen through a race-based prism.
"In defining the concept of identification or the ability to identify with the black community," the Princeton student wrote, "I based my definition on the premise that there is a distinctive black culture very different from white culture." Other thesis statements specifically pointed to what was seen by the future Mrs. Obama as racially insensitive practices in a university system populated with mostly Caucasian educators and students: "Predominately white universities like Princeton are socially and academically designed to cater to the needs of the white students comprising the bulk of their enrollments."
To illustrate the latter statement, she pointed out that Princeton (at the time) had only five black tenured professors on its faculty, and its "Afro-American studies" program "is one of the smallest and most understaffed departments in the university." In addition, she said only one major university-recognized group on campus was "designed specifically for the intellectual and social interests of blacks and other third world students." (Her findings also stressed that Princeton was "infamous for being racially the most conservative of the Ivy League universities.")
Perhaps one of the most germane subjects approached in the thesis is a section in which she conveyed views about political relations between black and white communities. She quotes the work of sociologists James Conyers and Walter Wallace, who discussed "integration of black official(s) into various aspects of politics" and notes "problems which face these black officials who must persuade the white community that they are above issues of race and that they are representing all people and not just black people," as opposed to creating "two separate social structures."
To research her thesis, the future Mrs. Obama sent an 18-question survey to a sampling of 400 black Princeton graduates, requesting the respondents define the amount of time and "comfort" level spent interacting with blacks and whites before they attended the school, as well as during and after their University years. Other questions dealt with their individual religious beliefs, living arrangements, careers, role models, economic status, and thoughts about lower class blacks. In addition, those surveyed were asked to choose whether they were more in line with a "separationist and/or pluralist" viewpoint or an "integrationist and/or assimilationist" ideology.
Just under 90 alums responded to the questionnaires (for a response rate of approximately 22 percent) and the conclusions were not what she expected. "I hoped that these findings would help me conclude that despite the high degree of identification with whites as a result of the educational and occupational path that black Princeton alumni follow, the alumni would still maintain a certain level of identification with the black community. However, these findings do not support this possibility."
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http://michellemalkin.com/2008/02/20/michelle-obamas-america-and-mine/?print=1
Michelle Obama’s America–and mine
By Michelle Malkin • February 20, 2008 08:04 AM
Barack Obama–the guy who effectively mocked the Clintons for not saying what they mean–is now trying to spin his wife’s comments by explaining that she, uh, didn’t really mean what she said.
I give you your morning snort-starter:
Democratic Sen. Barack Obama sought Tuesday to clarify his wife’s statement that she is proud of the U.S. “for the first time in my adult life.” He said her newfound pride is about the political system and was not meant to disparage her country…”Statements like this are made and people try to take it out of context and make a great big deal out of it, and that isn’t at all what she meant,” Obama said. “What she meant was, this is the first time that she’s been proud of the politics of America,” he said. “Because she’s pretty cynical about the political process, and with good reason, and she’s not alone. But she has seen large numbers of people get involved in the process, and she’s encouraged.”
Jim Hoft has the vid of Michelle Obama repeating the line twice. She meant what she said.
***
My column this week gives you two Michelles, two Americas. John Edwards was right after all!
Michelle Obama’s America—and mine
Michelle Malkin
Copyright Creators Syndicate 2008
Like Michelle Obama, I am a “woman of color.” Like Michelle Obama, I am a working mother of two young children. Like Michelle Obama, I am a member of the 13th Generation of Americans born since the founding of our great nation.
Unlike Michelle Obama, I can’t keep track of the number of times I’ve been proud—really proud—of my country since I was born and privileged to live in it.
At a speech in Milwaukee this week on behalf of her husband’s Democrat presidential campaign, Mrs. Obama remarked that “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country, and not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change.”
Mrs. Obama’s statement was met with warm applause from other Barack supporters who have apparently also been devoid of pride in their country for their adult lifetimes. Or maybe it was just a Pavlovian response to the word “change.” What a sad, empty, narcissistic, ungrateful, unthinking lot.
I’m just seven years younger than Mrs. Obama. We’ve grown up and lived in the same era. And yet, her self-absorbed attitude is completely foreign to me. What planet is she living on? Since when was now the only time the American people have ever been “hungry for change?” Michelle, ma belle, Barack is not the center of the universe. Newsflash: The Obamas did not invent “change” any more than Hillary invented “leadership” or John McCain invented “straight talk.”
We were both adults when the Berlin Wall fell, Michelle. That was earth-shattering change.
We’ve lived through two decades’ worth of peaceful, if contentious election cycles under the rule of law that have brought about “change” and upheaval both good and bad.
We were adults through several launches of the Space Shuttle, in case you were snoozing. [Ed. note: Speaking of which, welcome back, Atlantis!] And as adults, we’ve witnessed and benefited from dizzyingly rapid advances in technology, communications, science, and medicine pioneered by American entrepreneurs who yearned and succeeded to change the world. You want “change?” Go ask the patients whose lives have been improved and extended by American pharmaceutical companies who have flourished under the best economic system in the world.
If the fall of communism, American ingenuity, and a robust constitutional republic don’t do it for you, hon, then how about American heroism and sacrifice?
How about every Memorial Day? Every Veteran’s Day? Every Independence Day? Every Medal of Honor ceremony? Has she never attended a welcome home ceremony for the troops?
For me, there’s the thrill of the Blue Angels roaring over cloudless skies. And the somber awe felt amid the hallowed waters that surround the sunken U.S.S. Arizona at the Pearl Harbor memorial.
Every naturalization ceremony I’ve attended, where hundreds of new Americans have raised their hands to swear an oath of allegiance to this land of liberty, has been a moment of pride for me. So have the awesome displays of American compassion at home and around the world. When millions of Americans rallied to help the victims of the 2005 tsunami in southern Asia—including members of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group that sped from Hong Kong to assist survivors—my heart filled with pride. It did again when the citizens of Houston opened their arms to Hurricane Katrina victims and folks across the country rushed to their churches, Salvation Army, and Red Cross offices to volunteer.
How about American resilience? Does that not make you proud? Only a heart of stone could be unmoved by the strength, valor and determination displayed in New York and Washington and Shanksville, Pa., on September 11, 2001.
I believe it was Michael Kinsley who quipped that a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth. In this case, it’s what happens when an elite Democrat politician’s wife says what a significant portion of the party’s base really believes to be the truth: That America is more a source of shame than pride.
Michelle Obama has achieved enormous professional success, political influence, and personal acclaim in America. Ivy League-educated, she’s been lauded by Essence magazine as one of the 25 World’s Most Inspiring Women; by Vanity Fair as one of the “10 World’s Best Dressed People; and named one of “The Harvard 100″ top influencers. She has had an amazingly blessed life. But you wouldn’t know it from her campaign rhetoric and her griping over her and her husband’s student loans.
For years, we’ve heard liberals get offended at any challenge to their patriotism. And so they are again aggrieved and rising to explain away Mrs. Obama’s remarks.
Like Lady MacBeth*, Lady Michelle and her defenders protest too much.
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Update: Yes, my English teachers are going to kill me. The Shakespeare reference is to Hamlet, not MacBeth!
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I recently criticized a post of Newt's theory that another contract with America will be what McCain needs to beat Obama. I agree with the need for real ideas and roadmaps on how to get there. However, I don't think that alone will defeat BO. I think this Peggy Noonan's piece is the other half of the puzzle. I feel she hits on something big here that can and should be used full court press to focus Bo's whole thesis of hope as totally misplaced, misaligned and definitely not in the interests of Americans.
http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html
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And here is Peggy's piece:
Try a Little Tenderness
February 22, 2008; Page W14
Barack Obama's biggest draw is not his eloquence. When you watch an Obama speech, you lean forward and listen and think, That's good. He's compelling, I like the way he speaks. And afterward all the commentators call him "impossibly eloquent" and say "he gave me thrills and chills." But, in fact, when you go on the Internet and get a transcript of the speech and print it out and read it--that is, when you remove Mr. Obama from the words and take them on their own--you see the speech wasn't all that interesting, and was in fact high-class boilerplate. (This was not true of John F. Kennedy's speeches, for instance, which could be read seriously as part of the literature of modern American politics, or Martin Luther King's work, which was powerful absent his voice.)
Mr. Obama is magnetic, interacts with the audience, leads a refrain: "Yes, we can." It's good, and compared with Hillary Clinton and John McCain, neither of whom seems really to enjoy giving speeches, it comes across as better than it is. But is it eloquence? No. Eloquence is deep thought expressed in clear words. With Mr. Obama the deep thought part is missing. What is present are sentiments.
Our country can be greater, it holds unachieved promise, our leaders have not led us well. "We struggle with our doubts, our fears, our cynicism." Fair enough and true enough, but he doesn't dig down to explain how to become a greater nation, what specific path to take--more power to the state, for instance, or more power to the individual. He doesn't unpack his thoughts, as they say. He asserts and keeps on walking.
So his draw is not literal eloquence but a reputation for eloquence that may, in time, become the real thing.
But his big draw is this. In a country that has throughout most of our lifetimes been tormented by, buffeted by, the question of race, a country that has endured real pain and paid in blood and treasure to work its way through and out of the mess, that for all that struggle we yielded this: a brilliant and accomplished young black man with a consensus temperament, a thoughtful and peaceful person who wishes to lead. That is his draw: "We made that." "It ended well."
People would love to be able to support that guy.
His job, in a way, is to let them, in part by not being just another operative, plaything or grievance-monger of the left-liberal establishment and left-liberal thinking. By standing, in fact, for real change.
Right now Mr. Obama is in an awkward moment. Each day he tries to nail down his party's leftist base, and take it from Mrs. Clinton. At the same time his victories have led the country as a whole to start seeing him as the probable Democratic nominee. They're looking at him in a new way, and wondering: Is he standard, old time and party line, or is he something new? Is he just a turning of the page, or is he the beginning of a new and helpful chapter?
Mr. Obama did not really have a good week, in spite of winning a primary and a caucus, and both resoundingly. I don't refer to charges that he'd plagiarized words from a Deval Patrick speech. He borrowed an argument that was in itself obvious--words matter--and used words in the public sphere. In any case Mrs. Clinton has lifted so many phrases and approaches from Mr. Obama, and other candidates, that her accusation was like the neighborhood kleptomaniac running through the street crying, "Thief! Thief!"
His problem was, is, his wife's words, not his, the speech in which she said that for the first time in her adult life she is proud of her country, because Obama is winning. She later repeated it, then tried to explain it, saying of course she loves her country. But damage was done. Why? Because her statement focused attention on what I suspect are some basic and elementary questions that were starting to bubble out there anyway.
* * *
Here are a few of them.
Are the Obamas, at bottom, snobs? Do they understand America? Are they of it? Did anyone at their Ivy League universities school them in why one should love America? Do they confuse patriotism with nationalism, or nativism? Are they more inspired by abstractions like "international justice" than by old visions of America as the city on a hill, which is how John Winthrop saw it, and Ronald Reagan and JFK spoke of it?
Have they been, throughout their adulthood, so pampered and praised--so raised in the liberal cocoon--that they are essentially unaware of what and how normal Americans think? And are they, in this, like those cosseted yuppies, the Clintons?
Why is all this actually not a distraction but a real issue? Because Americans have common sense and are bottom line. They think like this. If the president and his first lady are not loyal first to America and its interests, who will be? The president of France? But it's his job to love France, and protect its interests. If America's leaders don't love America tenderly, who will?
And there is a context. So many Americans right now fear they are losing their country, that the old America is slipping away and being replaced by something worse, something formless and hollowed out. They can see we are giving up our sovereignty, that our leaders will not control our borders, that we don't teach the young the old-fashioned love of America, that the government has taken to itself such power, and made things so complex, and at the end of the day when they count up sales tax, property tax, state tax, federal tax they are paying a lot of money to lose the place they loved.
And if you feel you're losing America, you really don't want a couple in the White House whose rope of affection to the country seems lightly held, casual, provisional. America is backing Barack at the moment, so America is good. When it becomes angry with President Barack, will that mean America is bad?
* * *
Michelle Obama seems keenly aware of her struggles, of what it took to rise so high as a black woman in a white country. Fair enough. But I have wondered if it is hard for young African-Americans of her generation, having been drilled in America's sad racial history, having been told about it every day of their lives, to fully apprehend the struggles of others. I wonder if she knows that some people look at her and think "Man, she got it all." Intelligent, strong, tall, beautiful, Princeton, Harvard, black at a time when America was trying to make up for its sins and be helpful, and from a working-class family with two functioning parents who made sure she got to school.
That's the great divide in modern America, whether or not you had a functioning family, and she apparently came from the privileged part of that divide. A lot of white working-class Americans didn't come up with those things. Some of them were raised by a TV and a microwave and love our country anyway, every day.
Does Mrs. Obama know this? I don't know. If she does, love and gratitude for the place that tries to give everyone an equal shot would seem to be in order.
WSJ
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Obama's Finance Ploy
February 25, 2008; Page A14
Barack Obama is promising to end partisanship in Washington, and here's a place to start: He could stop playing politics with the Federal Election Commission in a way that could hamper John McCain's campaign against, well, Mr. Obama.
The Illinois Senator is blocking confirmation of one of President Bush's appointees to the FEC, which administers election laws. This has left the agency two commissioners short of the quorum it needs to make decisions -- with the potential for direct harm to Mr. McCain's campaign. As we've been writing, the Arizona Senator took out a controversial $1 million loan that FEC Chairman David Mason has said might lock him into the public finance system for the primary season. Mr. McCain doesn't want to do that because he'd have to abide by spending limits that would reduce his campaigning this spring and summer. Mr. Mason says the FEC needs to rule on the matter, but without a quorum Mr. McCain is left hanging.
The FEC must also vote to certify that Mr. McCain can receive an estimated $85 million in public funds for the November election. The Republican has already pledged to accept those funds, and the spending limits that go with them, and he is counting on the money to make him competitive against a Democratic nominee. However, no FEC quorum, no public McCain funds in the fall -- and a potentially big advantage for Mr. Obama, who is raising far more in private donations.
The FEC dispute centers on Hans von Spakovsky, a Bush appointee whose two-year recess term ended in December and who has been renominated. Before coming to the FEC, Mr. von Spakovsky was a lawyer in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, where he supported voter-ID laws that Democrats claim will harm black voters but have been vindicated in court. Mr. von Spakovsky's nomination was approved by the Rules Committee in September, but then Mr. Obama intervened with a "hold." Other Democrats have since joined him.
Mr. von Spakovsky was supposed to be voted on in a package of four FEC nominees. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid instead demanded that all four get individual votes, hoping to tank only Mr. von Spakovsky. The six FEC commissioners have staggered terms, and one Republican and one Democrat are supposed to end their terms simultaneously so there is no partisan advantage. Mr. von Spakovsky is paired with Steven Walther, a Nevada lawyer with close ties to Mr. Reid. The Majority Leader can hardly expect to get his hand-picked choice, while throwing Mr. Bush's overboard.
All of this is the rankest sort of partisan Beltway gamesmanship, all the worse because it is rooted in racial politics. It is precisely what Mr. Obama says he wants to rise above, but apparently that will happen only after he wins the Presidency. Mr. Obama also boasts about his role in crafting last year's lobbying and ethics law, which includes a provision requiring candidates to report "bundled" campaign contributions. The FEC was unable to devise the rules for that provision before it lost its quorum in December. Meanwhile, Mr. Obama is bundling away.
We dislike these campaign laws, in part because they allow the likes of Mr. Obama to claim to be reformers while working the rules to their own advantage. But if Senators who want to be President are going to pass these rules, the least they can do is give the FEC the ability to enforce them.
WSJ
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Obama and the Power of Words
By STEPHEN F. HAYES
February 26, 2008; Page A19
These are words that move and uplift, that give hope to the hopeless. These words inspired millions of voters nationwide to join the grand experiment called democracy, casting votes for their candidate, their country, their destiny:
"More than anything else, I want my candidacy to unify our country, to renew the American spirit and sense of purpose. I want to carry our message to every American, regardless of party affiliation, who is a member of this community of shared values . . . For those who have abandoned hope, we'll restore hope and we'll welcome them into a great national crusade to make America great again!"
So Ronald Reagan proclaimed on July 17, 1980, as he accepted his party's nomination for president at the Republican National Convention in Detroit, Mich.
Earlier that day, the New York Times ran a long profile of Reagan on its front page. The author, Howell Raines, lamented that the news media had been unsuccessful in getting Reagan to speak in anything other than "sweeping generalities about economic and military policy." Mr. Raines further noted: "political critics who characterize him as banal and shallow, a mouther of right-wing platitudes, delight in recalling that he co-starred with a chimpanzee in 'Bedtime for Bonzo.'"
Throughout his campaign, Reagan fought off charges that his candidacy was built more on optimism than policies. The charges came from reporters and opponents. John Anderson, a rival in the Republican primary who ran as an independent in the general election, complained that Reagan offered little more than "old platitudes and old generalities."
Conservatives understood that this Reagan-as-a-simpleton view was a caricature (something made even clearer in several recent books, particularly Reagan's own diaries). That his opponents never got this is what led to their undoing. Those critics who giggled about his turn alongside a chimp were considerably less delighted when Reagan won 44 states and 489 electoral votes in November.
One Reagan adviser had predicted such a win shortly after Reagan had become the de facto nominee the previous spring. In a memo about the coming general election contest with Jimmy Carter, Richard Whalen wrote Reagan's "secret weapon" was that "Democrats fail to take him very seriously."
Are Republicans making the same mistake with Barack Obama?
For months now, Hillary Clinton has suggested that Mr. Obama is all rhetoric, no substance. This claim, or some version of it, has been at the center of her campaign since November. One day after losing to him in Wisconsin and Hawaii -- her ninth and tenth consecutive defeats -- she rather incredibly went back to it again. "It's time we moved from good words to good works, from sound bites to sound solutions," she said -- a formulation that could be mistaken for a sound bite.
As she complained about his lack of substance, tens of thousands of people lined up in city after city, sometimes in subfreezing temperatures, for a chance to get a shot of some Mr. Obama hopemongering. Plainly, her critique is not working.
And yet, Republicans are picking it up. In just the past week, conservative commentators have accused Mr. Obama of speaking in "Sesame Street platitudes," of giving speeches that are "almost content free," of "saying nothing." He has been likened to Chance the Gardner, the clueless mope in Jerzy Koscinski's "Being There," whose banal utterances are taken as brilliant by a gullible political class. Others complain that his campaign is "messianic," too self-aggrandizing and too self-referential.
John McCain has joined the fray. In a speech after he won primaries in Washington, D.C., Virginia and Maryland, Mr. McCain said: "To encourage a country with only rhetoric rather than sound and proven ideas that trust in the strength and courage of free people is not a promise of hope. It is a platitude." After Wisconsin, he sharpened the attack, warning that he would expose Mr. Obama's "eloquent but empty call for change."
The assumption behind much of this criticism is that because Mr. Obama gives a good speech he cannot do substance. This is wrong. Mr. Obama has done well in most of the Democratic debates because he has consistently shown himself able to think on his feet. Even on health care, a complicated national issue that should be Mrs. Clinton's strength, Mr. Obama has regularly fought her to a draw by displaying a grasp of the details that rivals hers, and talking about it in ways Americans can understand.
In Iowa, long before the race became the national campaign it is today, Mr. Obama spent much of his time at town halls in which he took questions from the audience. His answers in such settings were often as good or better than the rhetoric in his stump speech, and usually more substantive. He spoke about issues like immigration and national service in a thoughtful manner -- not wonky, not pedantic, but in a way that suggested he'd spent some time thinking about them before.
More important for the race ahead, Mr. Obama has the unique ability to offer doctrinaire liberal positions in a way that avoids the stridency of many recent Democratic candidates. That he managed to do this in the days before the Iowa caucuses -- at a time when he might have been expected to be at his most liberal -- was quite striking.
His rhetorical gimmick is simple. When he addresses a contentious issue, Mr. Obama almost always begins his answer with a respectful nod in the direction of the view he is rejecting -- a line or two that suggests he understands or perhaps even sympathizes with the concerns of a conservative.
At Cornell College on Dec. 5, for example, a student asked Mr. Obama how his administration would view the Second Amendment. He replied: "There's a Supreme Court case that's going to be decided fairly soon about what the Second Amendment means. I taught Constitutional Law for 10 years, so I've got my opinion. And my opinion is that the Second Amendment is probably -- it is an individual right and not just a right of the militia. That's what I expect the Supreme Court to rule. I think that's a fair reading of the text of the Constitution. And so I respect the right of lawful gun owners to hunt, fish, protect their families."
Then came the pivot:
"Like all rights, though, they are constrained and bound by the needs of the community . . . So when I look at Chicago and 34 Chicago public school students gunned down in a single school year, then I don't think the Second Amendment prohibits us from taking action and making sure that, for example, ATF can share tracing information about illegal handguns that are used on the streets and track them to the gun dealers to find out -- what are you doing?"
In conclusion:
"There is a tradition of gun ownership in this country that can be respected that is not mutually exclusive with making sure that we are shutting down gun traffic that is killing kids on our streets. The argument I have with the NRA is not whether people have the right to bear arms. The problem is they believe any constraint or regulation whatsoever is something that they have to beat back. And I don't think that's how most lawful firearms owners think."
In the end, Mr. Obama is simply campaigning for office in the same way he says he would operate if he were elected. "We're not looking for a chief operating officer when we select a president," he said during a question and answer session at Google headquarters back in December.
"What we're looking for is somebody who will chart a course and say: Here is where America needs to go -- here is how to solve our energy crisis, here's how we need to revamp our education system -- and then gather the talent together and then mobilize that talent to achieve that goal. And to inspire a sense of hope and possibility."
Like Ronald Reagan did.
Mr. Hayes, a senior writer for The Weekly Standard, is the author of "Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President," (HarperCollins, 2007).
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Obama's 'Patriot' Act
February 27, 2008; Page A16
WSJ
No, we're not talking about Barack Obama's opposition to the post-9/11 antiterror law. We're referring to the Senator's support for something called the Patriot Employer Act, which deserves more attention as an indicator of his economic agenda.
Along with Democratic co-sponsors Sherrod Brown and Dick Durbin, Mr. Obama introduced the bill in the Senate in August 2007. Recently in Janesville, Wis., he repeated his intention to make it a priority as President: "We will end the tax breaks for companies who ship our jobs overseas, and we will give those breaks to companies who create good jobs with decent wages right here in America."
Mr. Obama's proposal would designate certain companies as "patriot employers" and favor them over other, presumably not so patriotic, businesses.
The legislation takes four pages to define "patriotic" companies as those that: "pay at least 60 percent of each employee's health care premiums"; have a position of "neutrality in employee [union] organizing drives"; "maintain or increase the number of full-time workers in the United States relative to the number of full-time workers outside of the United States"; pay a salary to each employee "not less than an amount equal to the federal poverty level"; and provide a pension plan.
In other words, a patriotic employer is one which fulfills the fondest Big Labor agenda, regardless of the competitive implications. The proposal ignores the marketplace reality that businesses hire a work force they can afford to pay and still make money. Coercing companies into raising wages and benefits above market rates may only lead to fewer workers getting hired in the first place.
Under Mr. Obama's plan, "patriot employers" qualify for a 1% tax credit on their profits. To finance this tax break, American companies with subsidiaries abroad would have to pay the U.S. corporate tax on profits earned abroad, rather than the corporate tax of the host country where they are earned. Since the U.S. corporate tax rate is 35%, while most of the world has a lower rate, this amounts to a big tax increase on earnings owned abroad.
Put another way, U.S. companies would suddenly have to pay a higher tax rate than their Chinese, Japanese and European competitors. According to research by Peter Merrill, an international tax expert at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, this change would "raise the cost of capital of U.S. multinationals and cause them to lose market share to foreign rivals." Apparently Mr. Obama believes that by making U.S. companies less profitable and less competitive world-wide, they will somehow be able to create more jobs in America.
He has it backwards: The offshore activities of U.S. companies tend to increase rather than reduce domestic business. A 2005 National Bureau of Economic Research study by economists from Harvard and the University of Michigan found that more foreign investment by U.S. companies leads to greater domestic investment, and that U.S. firms' hiring of more offshore workers is positively, not negatively, associated with the number of American workers they hire. That's in part because often what is produced overseas by subsidiaries are component parts to final, higher-value-added products manufactured here.
Mr. Obama is also proposing to raise tax rates on affluent individuals, as well as on capital gains and dividends. This would also lead to more capital and jobs leaving the U.S. The after-tax return on U.S. investment would fall appreciably if these tax hikes were adopted, and no amount of tax-credit subsidy will keep capital from fleeing to lower tax jurisdictions.
If the U.S. didn't impose the second highest corporate income tax rate in the world, companies would have less incentive to move jobs overseas. Rather than giving politically correct companies a 1% tax credit, it makes more sense to reduce the U.S. corporate tax rate for everyone -- by at least 10 percentage points to the global average.
Economists have long understood that companies don't really pay taxes; they merely collect them. A study by the American Enterprise Institute has shown that U.S. workers bear the cost of the corporate income tax in lower wages and salaries. To borrow Mr. Obama's language, what's really unpatriotic is the 35% U.S. corporate tax rate.
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http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/13390609/campaign_08_the_radical_roots_of_barack_obama/2
Interesting reading.
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The range of your reading material is impressive :-)
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Obama and Chicago Mores
By JOHN FUND
March 3, 2008; Page A17
On Tuesday, Barack Obama may well wrap up the Democratic nomination. Yet how he rose so quickly in Chicago's famously suspect politics -- and who his associates were there -- has received little scrutiny.
That may change today as the trial of Antoin "Tony" Rezko, Mr. Obama's friend of two decades and his campaign fund-raiser, gets under way in federal court in Chicago. Mr. Rezko, a master fixer in Illinois politics, is charged with money laundering, attempted extortion, fraud and aiding bribery in an alleged multimillion dollar scheme shaking down companies seeking state contracts.
John McCain's dealings with lobbyists have properly come under a microscope; why not Mr. Obama's? Partly, says Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass, because the national media establishment has decided that Chicago's grubby politics interferes with the story line of hope they've set out for Mr. Obama. Former Washington Post reporter Tom Edsall, who now teaches journalism at Columbia University, told Canada's Globe & Mail that "reporters have sometimes allowed themselves to get too much caught up in [Obama] excitement." Then there are Chicago Republicans, loath to encourage the national party to pounce because some of their own leaders are caught in the Rezko mess.
For its part, the Democratic Party may once again nominate a first-time candidate they haven't fully vetted politically. Democrats flocked to Michael Dukakis in 1988, ignoring Al Gore's warnings about Willie Horton; later they were blindsided by revelations about Bill Clinton after he was elected president.
This year, Hillary Clinton made a clumsy attack on Mr. Rezko as a "slum landlord" during one debate. But her campaign has otherwise steered clear -- at least until last Friday, when Howard Wolfson, a top Clinton aide, suggested to reporters on a conference call that "the number of questions that we don't know the answers to about the relationship between Mr. Rezko and Mr. Obama is staggering." Mr. Obama's campaign told me they have answered all questions about Mr. Rezko and have no plans to release any further records.
Mr. Obama has admitted that the 2005 land deal that he and Mr. Rezko were involved in was a "boneheaded" mistake, in part because his friend was already rumored to be under federal investigation. The newly elected Mr. Obama bought his $1.65 million home on the same day, June 15, that Mr. Rezko's wife bought the plot of land next to it from the same seller for $625,000. Seven months later she sold a slice of the land to the trust that Mr. Obama had put the house into, so the senator could expand his garden.
Mr. Obama has strenuously denied suggestions that the same-day sale enabled him to pay $300,000 under the house's asking price because Mrs. Rezko paid full price for the adjoining lot, or that he asked the Rezkos for help in the matter. Both actions would be clear violations of Senate ethics rules barring the granting or asking of favors.
Still, there are anomalies. Mr. Obama admits that he and Mr. Rezko took a tour of the house before it and the adjoining plot were sold. Financial records given to federal prosecutors a year later show Mrs. Rezko had a salary of only $37,000 and assets of $35,000. In court proceedings at that time, to explain how much his bail should be, Mr. Rezko declared that he had "no income, negative cash flow, no liquid assets."
So where did the money for Mrs. Rezko's $125,000 down payment -- and the collateral for her $500,000 loan from a local bank controlled by Amrish Mahajan, like Mr. Rezko a Chicago political fixer -- come from?
The London Times reports that, three weeks before the land transactions, Nadhmi Auchi, an Iraqi billionaire living in London, loaned $3.5 million to Mr. Rezko, who was his Chicago business partner. Mr. Auchi's office says he had "no involvement in or knowledge of" the property purchase. Mr. Auchi is a press-shy property developer (estimated worth: $4 billion) who was convicted of corruption in France in 2003 for his involvement in the Elf affair, the biggest political and corporate fraud inquiry in Europe since World War II. He was fined $3 million and given a 15-month prison term that was suspended provided he committed no further crimes.
Mr. Auchi was also a top official in the Iraqi oil ministry in the 1970s. He has for years vigorously denied charges he had dealings with Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf War. However, an official report to the Pentagon inspector general in 2004 obtained by the Washington Times cited "significant and credible evidence" of involvement by Mr. Auchi's companies in the Oil for Food scandal and illicit smuggling of weapons to the Hussein regime.
In 2003, Mr. Auchi began investing in Chicago real estate with Mr. Rezko. In April 2007, after his indictment, Mr. Auchi loaned another $3.5 million to Mr. Rezko, a loan that Mr. Rezko hid from U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's office. When Mr. Fitzgerald learned that the money was being parceled out to Mr. Rezko's lawyers, family and friends, he got Mr. Rezko's bond revoked in January and had him put in jail as a potential flight risk.
In court papers, the prosecutor noted that Mr. Rezko had traveled 26 times to the Middle East between 2002 and 2006, mostly to his native Syria and other countries that lack extradition treaties with the U.S. Curiously, Mr. Auchi has also lent an unknown sum of money to Chris Kelly, who, like Mr. Rezko, was a significant fund-raiser for Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (himself under investigation by a federal grand jury as an alleged beneficiary of the Rezko shakedowns). Mr. Kelly is himself under indictment for obstructing an IRS probe into his activities.
Mr. Obama says he has "no recollection" of meeting Mr. Auchi during a 2004 trip the billionaire made to Chicago, and no one believes he knew of his background. While his name will come up in the trial as a beneficiary of Rezko donations (since donated to charity), Mr. Obama will not be called to testify.
There may be nothing more in Mr. Obama's dealings with Mr. Rezko beyond an "appearance of impropriety." Still, Mr. Obama does have an obligation to explain how he fits into Chicago politics. David Axelrod, Mr. Obama's Karl Rove, is a longtime spoke in the Daley machine that's dominated Chicago for a half century. Gov. Blagojevich, also part of the machine, shared key fund raisers with Mr. Obama.
"We have a sick political culture, and that's the environment Barack Obama came from," Jay Stewart, the executive director of the Chicago Better Government Association, told ABC News. He notes that, while Mr. Obama supported ethics reforms as a state senator, he has "been noticeably silent on the issue of corruption here in his home state, including at this point, mostly Democratic politicians."
Mr. Obama will eventually have to talk about Illinois, if only to clear the air. After John McCain last month was attacked for cozy ties to lobbyists, he held a news conference and answered every question. Hillary Clinton held a White House news conference on Whitewater and her cattle futures. Mr. Obama must do the same for questions about Mr. Rezko and "the Chicago way" of politics. If he doesn't, they may increasingly haunt his candidacy.
Mr. Fund is a columnist for WSJ.com.
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http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/2008/03/michelle-obama-america-just-downright.html
More patriotic words from the would-be first lady..... :roll:
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http://www.gertzfile.com/gertzfile/InsidetheRing.html
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The NY Times really digs deep ono this one :roll:
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Senator Barack Obama stood before Washington’s elite at the spring dinner of the storied Gridiron Club. In self-parody, he ticked off his accomplishments, little more than a year after arriving in town.
Skip to next paragraph
The Long Run
A Measured Start
This is part of a series of articles about the life and careers of contenders for the 2008 Republican and Democratic presidential nominations.
Robert A. Reeder/Washington Post
Mr. Obama poked fun at himself at the Gridiron Club in 2006 with, left, his current chief strategist, David Axelrod, and his communications director, Robert Gibbs.
“I’ve been very blessed,” Mr. Obama told the crowd assembled in March 2006. “Keynote speaker at the Democratic convention. The cover of Newsweek. My book made the best-seller list. I just won a Grammy for reading it on tape.
“Really, what else is there to do?” he said, his smile now broad. “Well, I guess I could pass a law or something.”
They were the two competing elements in Mr. Obama’s time in the Senate: his megawatt celebrity and the realities of the job he was elected to do.
He went to the Senate intent on learning the ways of the institution, telling reporters he would be “looking for the washroom and trying to figure out how the phones work.” But frustrated by his lack of influence and what he called the “glacial pace,” he soon opted to exploit his star power. He was running for president even as he was still getting lost in the Capitol’s corridors.
Outside Washington, Mr. Obama was a multimedia sensation — people offered free tickets to his book readings for $125 on eBay and contributed thousands of dollars each to his political action committee to watch him on stage questioning policy experts.
But inside the Senate, Mr. Obama, the junior senator from Illinois, was 99th in seniority and in the minority party his first two years. In committee hearings, he had to wait his turn until every other senator had asked questions. He once telephoned reporters himself to draw attention to his amendments. And some senior colleagues were cool to the newcomer, whom they considered naïve.
Determined to be viewed as substantive, Mr. Obama kept his head down, declining Sunday talk show invitations for his first year, and consulted Senate elders for advice. He was cautious — even on the Iraq war, which he had opposed as a Senate candidate. He voted against the withdrawal of troops and proposed legislation calling for a drawdown only after he was running for president and polls showed voters favoring it.
And while he rightly takes credit for steering through an ethics overhaul that reformers called a “gold standard,” like most freshmen he did not play a significant role in passing much other legislation and disappointed some Democrats for not becoming a more prominent voice in other important debates.
Yet Mr. Obama was planning for the future. He spent much of his time raising money for other Democrats, which helped him build chits and lists of potential voters. He tended to his image, even upbraiding a reporter for writing that he had smoked a cigarette (a habit he later said he gave up for his presidential bid).
Early on in his tenure in Washington, he concluded that it would be hard to have much of an impact inside the Senate, where partisan conflict increasingly provoked filibuster threats, nomination fights and near gridlock even on routine spending bills.
“I think it’s very possible to have a Senate career here that is not particularly useful,” he said in an interview, reflecting on his first year. And it would be better for his political prospects not to become a Senate insider, which could saddle him with the kind of voting record that has tripped up so many senators who would be president.
“It’s sort of logic turned on its head, but it really is true,” said Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the former senator and Democratic leader who has been a close adviser to Mr. Obama.
“Two things develop the more time you spend here,” Mr. Daschle said. “One is a mind-set that we did it this way before, we should do it this way again, and I think that’s a real burden. More importantly — and Hillary and McCain are the perfect examples of this — the longer you are here, you take on enemies. And these enemies don’t forget.”
Rising to Stardom
If freshman senators arrive as celebrities, it is usually because they are “dragon slayers,” having ousted big-name incumbents. Mr. Obama was not one of those; two serious opponents in Illinois self-destructed, smoothing his path to election in November 2004.
He had been anointed his party’s rising star after delivering a soaring speech at the Democratic National Convention the previous July. His fresh face that fall cheered Democrats demoralized by their failure to win the White House and the defeat of Mr. Daschle, the party’s Senate leader.
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But Mr. Obama knew the Senate scorns a showboat. He had waited to crack open “Master of the Senate,” Robert A. Caro’s book about the legendary legislative career of Lyndon B. Johnson, until after he was elected, wary that he would be photographed — and seen as presumptuous — reading it during his campaign. After he was on the cover of Newsweek the same week President Bush appeared as Time’s Man of the Year, his fellow Democratic senators gently ribbed him at their first weekly luncheon of the new Congress.
He met with nearly one-third of the Senate, from both sides of the aisle, including his future rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, to learn about the institution and solicit advice on how to succeed. That shaped a strategy: work hard, tend to your constituents, and, above all, get along with others. He spent many weekends traveling across Illinois for town-hall-style meetings.
Mr. Obama’s advisers referred to it as “the Hillary model,” patterned after Mrs. Clinton’s approach when she joined the Senate in 2001. But while Mr. Obama expressed admiration for her at the time, he dissuaded reporters from making too close a comparison.
“I wasn’t the first lady, and I didn’t have some of the political baggage of eight years of hand-to-hand combat between the White House and the Republican Congress,” he said soon after he first arrived. “In that sense, she had a harder task.”
Knowing he needed insider help, Mr. Obama cajoled Mr. Daschle’s former chief of staff, Pete Rouse, to lead his office. Mr. Rouse advised Mr. Obama about managing relationships on the Hill and helped engineer hefty assignments, including a Foreign Relations Committee seat. He sought out senior colleagues, traveling to Russia with Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana, an advocate of nuclear disarmament. (Later, they passed legislation to reduce stockpiles of conventional weapons.) Mr. Obama also sought tutorials from Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, considered the Democrats’ master legislator.
Some colleagues found Mr. Obama remarkably well prepared, even more so than longtime staff members, in discussions. And his role as the good student earned him the affection of some fellow lawmakers. “I don’t think you can be around him and not come to the conclusion that this is a person of rare quality,” said Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota.
Mr. Obama had visited Washington only a handful of times before taking office, and he was fresh enough to its ways that he bubbled over about his first trip on Air Force One in June 2005. He fretted about getting lost on his first trip to the White House, for a reception the day he was sworn in, and later marveled that there were flat-screen televisions in the Lincoln Bedroom.
But he remained ambivalent about the city and its institutions. Unlike many senators with young children, he did not move his family to the capital. He rarely spent more than three nights in Washington — aides would reserve tickets on several flights to make sure he got home to Chicago after the final Senate vote of the week.
Mr. Obama found the Hill a difficult place to fit in, and it was not always clear that he wanted to. He was 43 when he arrived, younger than most of his colleagues — whose average age was 60 — and even many senior staff members. Unlike senators who come up through the House, he did not have an existing network of friends, and while some members of Congress bunk with others, he lived by himself in one of the nondescript new boxes along Massachusetts Avenue. On the nights he was in town, he typically went alone to a Chinatown athletic club — not the Senate gym — or attended events on the Hill.
And for all his efforts to play down his celebrity, Mr. Obama was exceptional, and it was hard for him or anyone to ignore the aura and sense of history around him. He was only the third black senator elected since Reconstruction. His memoir was on The New York Times’s best-seller list for 54 weeks. And Washington society was eager to embrace him — a Capitol Hill newspaper ranked him as No. 2 on its list of most beautiful people.
Etching a Path
Mr. Obama was also pulling in big money. He created a political action committee, the Hopefund, to increase his visibility and help other Democrats. It raised $1.8 million the first year.
In the Senate, meanwhile, he was discovering the realities of being a senator — that not every bill is perfect (or perfectly unacceptable) and that most votes required balancing the good and bad. Mr. Obama wanted to vote to confirm John G. Roberts Jr. for the Supreme Court, for example — he thought the president deserved latitude when it came to appointments — but Mr. Rouse advised against it, pointing out that Mr. Obama would be reminded of the vote every time the court made a conservative ruling that he found objectionable.
Mr. Obama took few bold stands and diverted little from the liberal orthodoxy he had embraced in the Illinois Senate. His voting record in his first year in Washington, according to the annual rankings by National Journal, was more liberal than 82.5 percent of the Senate (compared with, for example, Mrs. Clinton’s 79.8 percent that year).
He worked with Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma and one of the most conservative in the chamber, to establish a public database to examine government spending after Hurricane Katrina.
But for the most part, he stuck to party lines; there were few examples of the kind of bipartisan work he advocates in his current campaign.
He disappointed some Democrats by not taking a more prominent role opposing the war — he voted against a troop withdrawal proposal by Senators John Kerry of Massachusetts and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin in June 2006, arguing that a firm date for withdrawal would hamstring diplomats and military commanders in the field.
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His most important accomplishment was his push for ethics reform. Party leaders named him their point person in 2006, and when the Democrats assumed the majority in Congress in January 2007, Mr. Obama and Mr. Feingold, a longtime Democratic proponent of ethics reform, proposed curtailing meals and gifts from lobbyists, restricting the use of corporate planes and requiring lobbyists who bundle donations to disclose individual donors.
Mr. Obama’s determination not to back down, Mr. Feingold said, “struck me as an example of someone showing real guts.”
Of course, he added, “He was not any freshman. He was Barack Obama.”
To others, though, the mismatch between Mr. Obama’s outside profile and his inside accomplishments wore thin. While some senators spent hours in closed-door meetings over immigration reform in early 2007, he dropped in only occasionally, prompting complaints that he was something of a dilettante.
He joined a bipartisan group, which included Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, and Mr. Kennedy, that agreed to stick to a final compromise bill even though it was sure to face challenges from interest groups on both sides. Yet when the measure reached the floor, Mr. Obama distanced himself from the compromise, advocating changes sought by labor groups. The bill collapsed.
To some in the bipartisan coalition, Mr. Obama’s move showed an unwillingness to take a tough stand.
“He folded like a cheap suit,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, a close ally of Mr. McCain. “What it showed me is you are not an agent of change. Because to really change things in this place you have to get beat up now and then.”
Laying the Groundwork
Early on in his tenure in Washington, Mr. Obama began meeting every few months over late-night pizza with a handful of classmates from Harvard Law School and a couple of senior advisers to discuss his future. Being a 2008 presidential candidate, participants said, never came up. The only race mentioned was for Illinois governor in 2010 — the year Mr. Obama’s Senate term ended — but the group decided to put off considering the idea until at least his fourth year in the Senate.
Mr. Obama chose Hurricane Katrina in September 2005 to step into a more prominent role, speaking to his party’s caucus about the importance of using the disaster to focus the party’s efforts toward ending poverty.
The next February, he appeared on several Sunday shows in a row. “People are getting tired of me already,” he said in an interview.
In fact, outside Washington, people were clamoring for more. He was received like a returning hero in Africa in August 2006. On a book tour two months later, crowds mobbed him, and people urged him to run for president.
During the midterm elections that year, Mr. Obama was his party’s most sought-after campaigner — he helped raised nearly $1 million online in a matter of days that spring for Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, the institution’s senior member.
His appearances on the trail helped lay the groundwork for a possible presidential campaign. He earned the good will of some Democrats who have now endorsed him. And most campaign events required tickets, so his staff members collected names and addresses of potential supporters.
Finally, Mr. Obama did what he had done when he first arrived in the Senate, quietly consulting those who knew the institution well — Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Daschle — for advice on whether to run.
They told him that these chances come along rarely. His celebrity was undeniable. And yes, he was green, but that also meant he did not have the burden of a long record.
“For somebody to come in with none of that history is a real advantage,” Mr. Daschle said. “I told him that he has a window to do this. He should never count on that window staying open.”
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OK, lets pair that NY Times fluff piece with this:
If you boil Obama's appeal down to its essential core, most of his supporters seem to like him because he's a relatively young, charismatic, black man who talks a lot about "change," "unity," and the "audacity of hope."
But, what does that tell you about how Obama would behave if he gets into office? Very, very little. After all, pretty much anybody, from Napoleon, to Fidel Castro, to Mickey Mouse could run on a platform of "hope," "change," and "unity" because it's so broad and meaningless.
Of course, that doesn't mean that Barack doesn't have an agenda. He most certainly does have one, but it's just an agenda that he tries to avoid talking about because the better Americans get to know him, the less appealing he's going to be.
So, with that in mind, let me take you through a short tour of some of Barack Obama's radical beliefs. In all fairness, I should note that he has flip-flopped on some of these issues after his Barney the Dinosaur style "I Love You, You Love Me" campaign for the presidency got into full swing. But, experience has taught us that you can put a lot more stock into what a politician says before he starts trying to desperately convince middle America to vote him into the White House, than after.
#1) Weakening America's Military: Barack Obama has pledged, among other things, to make defense cuts during war time, to cut spending on national missile defense, that he won't weaponize space, to slow development of future combat systems, and to seek a "world without nuclear weapons." Is this a man who can be trusted as Commander-In-Chief?
#2) Losing the War in Iraq: Obama is promising to throw away the hard earned gains our troops have made in Iraq by immediately removing combat brigades each month, regardless of the situation on the ground, and by having all of our "combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months."
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff publicly warned Barack and, for that matter, Hillary that they could create a "chaotic situation" with their policy that could take the "gains we have achieved and struggled to achieve and turn them around overnight." Come on, Admiral, don't you know that Obama isn't going to listen to what the military has to say about a war when there's an election to be won?
#3) Gay Marriage: Although Barack Obama claims to oppose gay marriage, in 2004 he said that he opposed the Defense of Marriage Act, which is the only thing keeping the courts from imposing gay marriage on the whole country. If you want to see gay marriage become the law of the land in your state, no matter what the voters think, vote for Obama.
#4) Pro-Partial Birth Abortion: It's never a surprise to find a Democrat who's a big fan of abortion, but Obama goes above and beyond the call of duty. He had a perfect rating of 100% from NARAL in 2005, 2006, and 2007, opposes "notifying parents of minors who get out-of-state abortions," and he even opposed banning partial birth abortions. If you want to see as many women as humanly possible in this country putting their own children to death via abortion, vote Obama.
#5) Legalizing Marijuana: Obama, a former (we hope) druggie, who has admitted to using marijuana and cocaine, has said that he favors "decriminalizing marijuana." Perhaps you can't blame him for wanting to make it easier for people to get drugs since, after all, he used them and look how he turned out. If Barack gets into the White House, one day mothers all over America can tell their children that they'll never be anything in life if they use hard drugs and those children can reply, "Well, at least I can be President!"
#6) Handing 845 billion dollars of your money to other nations: Obama's Global Poverty Act would commit the United States to spending, over the next 13 years, 845 billion dollars more than what we already do on global poverty. Obama followed that up with a release that said in part, "It must be a priority of American foreign policy to commit to eliminating extreme poverty..." If Obama actually believes that not only is the United States capable of "eliminating extreme poverty," but that we should actually make that utopian dream a "priority," then he's far too naive to be in the White House.
#7) If you think George Bush is a big spender, you haven't met Obama: Even though the United States is already running a deficit, Obama is planning to push a whole host of new big government programs including a "10-year, $150 billion program to establish a green energy sector," a "$60 billion National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank," and a "nearly universal health care plan (whose annual price tag he low-balls at $50 to $65 billion)." If you're all for tax and spend liberalism and watching the deficit spiral even further out of control, there's no one you should want in the White House more than Obama.
#8) Amnesty and your tax dollars for illegal aliens: Believe it or not, John McCain, the Republican who is most closely associated with catering to illegal aliens, is actually well to Barack Obama's right on the issue.
Obama favors drivers licenses for illegals, wants to give illegals welfare and Medicaid, wants to let them participate in Social Security, opposes making English our national language, and he favors a comprehensive approach to illegal immigration, AKA amnesty, that even John McCain now claims to oppose.
#9) Gun Control: Obama is a perfect example of the stereotypical, liberal gun grabber. Obama has pledged to "Ban the sale or transfer of all forms of semi-automatic weapons," has "opined unequivocally that D.C.'s ban was 'constitutional'," and in 1996, Obama, in a survey, "supported banning the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns." If you're an opponent of the 2nd Amendment, who believes law abiding citizens shouldn't be allowed to defend themselves, Obama is your man.
John Hawkins is a professional blogger who runs Conservative Grapevine and Right Wing News.
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www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/chi-070325obama-youth-story,1,4006113.story
chicagotribune.com
The not-so-simple story of Barack Obama's youth
Shaped by different worlds, an outsider found ways to fit in
By Kirsten Scharnberg and Kim Barker
Tribune correspondents
March 25, 2007
HONOLULU
The life stories, when the presidential candidate tells them, have a common theme: the quest to belong.
A boy wants to find his place in a family where he is visibly different: chubby where others are thin, dark where others are light.
A youth living in a distant land searches and finds new friends, a new language and a heartbreaking lesson about his identity in the pages of an American magazine.
A young black man struggles for acceptance at an institution of privilege, where he finds himself growing so angry and disillusioned at the world around him that he turns to alcohol and drugs.
These have been the stories told about the first two character-shaping decades of U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's life, a story line largely shaped by his own best-selling memoir, political speeches and interviews.
But the reality of Obama's narrative is not that simple.
More than 40 interviews with former classmates, teachers, friends and neighbors in his childhood homes of Hawaii and Indonesia, as well as a review of public records, show the arc of Obama's personal journey took him to places and situations far removed from the experience of most Americans.
At the same time, several of his oft-recited stories may not have happened in the way he has recounted them. Some seem to make Obama look better in the retelling, others appear to exaggerate his outward struggles over issues of race, or simply skim over some of the most painful, private moments of his life.
The handful of black students who attended Punahou School in Hawaii, for instance, say they struggled mightily with issues of race and racism there. But absent from those discussions, they say, was another student then known as Barry Obama.
In his best-selling autobiography, "Dreams from My Father," Obama describes having heated conversations about racism with another black student, "Ray." The real Ray, Keith Kakugawa, is half black and half Japanese. In an interview with the Tribune on Saturday, Kakugawa said he always considered himself mixed race, like so many of his friends in Hawaii, and was not an angry young black man.
He said he does recall long, soulful talks with the young Obama and that his friend confided his longing and loneliness. But those talks, Kakugawa said, were not about race. "Not even close," he said, adding that Obama was dealing with "some inner turmoil" in those days.
"But it wasn't a race thing," he said. "Barry's biggest struggles then were missing his parents. His biggest struggles were his feelings of abandonment. The idea that his biggest struggle was race is [bull]."
Then there's the copy of Life magazine that Obama presents as his racial awakening at age 9. In it, he wrote, was an article and two accompanying photographs of an African-American man physically and mentally scarred by his efforts to lighten his skin. In fact, the Life article and the photographs don't exist, say the magazine's own historians.
Some of these discrepancies are typical of childhood memories -- fuzzy in specifics, warped by age, shaped by writerly license. Others almost certainly illustrate how carefully the young man guarded the secret of his loneliness from even those who knew him best. And the accounts bear out much of Obama's self-portrait as someone deeply affected by his father's abandonment yet able to thrive in greatly disparate worlds.
Still, the story of his early years highlights how politics and autobiography are similar creatures: Each is shaped to serve a purpose.
In its reissue after he gave the keynote address at the Democratic convention in 2004, "Dreams from My Father" joined a long tradition of political memoirs that candidates have used to introduce themselves to the American people.
From his earliest moments on the national political stage, Obama has presented himself as having two unique qualifications: a fresh political face and an ability to bridge the gap between Americans of different races, faiths and circumstances. Among his supporters, his likability and credibility have only been boosted by his stories of being an outsider trying to fight his way in.
As much as he may have felt like an outsider at times, Obama rarely seemed to show it. Throughout his youth, as depicted in his first book, he always found ways to meld into even the most uninviting of communities. He learned to adapt to unfamiliar territory. And he frequently made peace--even allies--with the very people who angered him most.
Yet even Obama has acknowledged the limits of memoir. In a new introduction to the reissued edition of "Dreams," he noted that the dangers of writing an autobiography included "the temptation to color events in ways favorable to the writer ... [and] selective lapses of memory."
He added: "I can't say that I've avoided all, or any, of these hazards successfully."
Life without a father
It was a complicated time.
Hawaii had become a state only two years before Obama's birth, and there were plenty of native Hawaiians still deeply unhappy about it. The U.S. military was expanding on the island of Oahu, home to the new capital of Honolulu. And a young, iconoclastic white woman who had defied the social mores of the day by marrying a dashing black man from Kenya was coping with the fact that her new husband essentially had abandoned her and their young child in 1963 to study at Harvard.
Oblivious to all of this was a perpetually smiling toddler the entire family called Barry. In snapshots, the boy is a portrait of childhood bliss. He played on the beach. He posed in lifeguard stands. He rode a bright blue tricycle with red, white and blue streamers dangling from the handlebars.
In the six weeks since Obama announced his intention to run for the White House, he routinely has suggested that his diverse background--raised for a time in the Third World, schooled at elite institutions and active in urban politics--makes him the best-suited candidate to speak to rich and poor, black and white, mainstream voters and those utterly disenchanted with the political system.
Not as well known is the fact that the many people who raised him were nearly as diverse as the places where he grew up. There was his mother, Ann, a brilliant but impulsive woman; his grandmother Madelyn, a deeply private and stoically pragmatic Midwesterner; his grandfather Stanley, a loving soul inclined toward tall tales and unrealistic dreams.
"Looking back now, I'd say he really is kind of the perfect combination of all of them," said his half sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng. "All of them were imperfect but all of them loved him fiercely, and I believe he took the best qualities from each of them."
During her son's earliest years, Obama's mother, whose full name was Stanley Ann Dunham because her father desperately had wished for a boy, attended college at the University of Hawaii. Known as Ann throughout her adult life, she kept to herself. She became estranged from her husband, Barack Obama Sr., after his departure for Harvard and rarely saw the group of friends that they had made at the University of Hawaii.
One of those friends, Neil Abercrombie, then a graduate student in the sociology department, frequently would see young Obama around town with his grandfather Stanley, whom Obama called "Gramps."
"Stanley loved that little boy," said Abercrombie, now a Democratic congressman from Hawaii. "In the absence of his father, there was not a kinder, more understanding man than Stanley Dunham. He was loving and generous."
A close friend of Obama's from their teenage years, Greg Orme, spent so much time with Dunham that he, too, called him "Gramps." Orme recalled that years later, at Obama's wedding reception in Chicago, Obama brought the crowd to tears when he spoke of his recently deceased maternal grandfather and how he made a little boy with an absent father feel as though he was never alone.
Madelyn Dunham, a rising executive at the Bank of Hawaii during Obama's Punahou days, was more reserved but seemed to love having her grandson's friends over to play and hang out.
"Those were robust years full of energy and cacophony, and she loved all of it," Soetoro-Ng said of her grandmother, who has lived alone since her husband died in 1992.
Ann and the boy lived with the Dunhams in Honolulu until Obama was 6. Then his young mother, now divorced, met and married an Indonesian student studying at the University of Hawaii.
In one family photo before the mother and son moved to Indonesia, Obama walks barefoot on Waikiki Beach, arms outstretched as though embracing the entire beautiful life around him. The sailboat the Manu Kai (bird of the sea, in English) is about to set sail behind him.
Obama, too, was about to journey far from these familiar shores.
Memories of a racial awakening?
Obama has told the story--one of the watershed moments of his racial awareness--time and again, in remarkable detail.
He is 9 years old, living in Indonesia, where he and his mother moved with her new husband, Lolo Soetoro, a few years earlier. One day while visiting his mother, who was working at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Obama passed time by looking through several issues of Life magazine. He came across an article that he later would describe as feeling like an "ambush attack."
The article included photos of a black man who had destroyed his skin with powerful chemical lighteners that promised to make him white. Instead, the chemicals had peeled off much of his skin, leaving him sad and scarred, Obama recalled.
"I imagine other black children, then and now, undergoing similar moments of revelation," Obama wrote of the magazine photos in "Dreams."
Yet no such Life issue exists, according to historians at the magazine. No such photos, no such article. When asked about the discrepancy, Obama said in a recent interview, "It might have been an Ebony or it might have been ... who knows what it was?" (At the request of the Tribune, archivists at Ebony searched their catalogue of past articles, none of which matched what Obama recalled.)
In fact, it is surprising, based on interviews with more than two dozen people who knew Obama during his nearly four years in Indonesia, that it would take a photograph in a magazine to make him conscious of the fact that some people might treat him differently in part because of the color of his skin.
Obama, who has talked and written so much about struggling to find a sense of belonging due to his mixed race, brushes over this time of his life in "Dreams." He describes making friends easily, becoming fluent in Indonesian in just six months and melding quite easily into the very foreign fabric of Jakarta.
The reality was less tidy.
Obama and his mother joined her new husband, a kind man who later would become a detached heavy drinker and womanizer, family members in Indonesia say. Their Jakarta neighborhood resembled a village more than the bustling metropolis the city is today. Electricity had arrived only a couple of years earlier. Half the homes were old bamboo huts; half, including the Soetoro house, were nicer, with brick or concrete and red-tiled roofs.
Former playmates remember Obama as "Barry Soetoro," or simply "Barry," a chubby little boy very different from the gangly Obama people know today. All say he was teased more than any other kid in the neighborhood--primarily because he was bigger and had black features.
He was the only foreign child in the neighborhood. He also was one of the only neighborhood children whose parents enrolled him in a new Catholic school in an area populated almost entirely by Betawis, the old tribal landowning Jakarta natives who were very traditional Muslims. Some of the Betawi children threw rocks at the open Catholic classrooms, remembered Cecilia Sugini Hananto, who taught Obama in 2nd grade.
Teachers, former playmates and friends recall a boy who never fully grasped their language and who was very quiet as a result. But one word Obama learned quickly in his new home was curang, which means "cheater."
When kids teased him, Obama yelled back, "Curang, curang!" When a friend gave him shrimp paste instead of chocolate, he yelled, "Curang, curang!"
Zulfan Adi was one of the neighborhood kids who teased Obama most mercilessly. He remembers one day when young Obama, a hopelessly upbeat boy who seemed oblivious to the fact that the older kids didn't want him tagging along, followed a group of Adi's friends to a nearby swamp.
"They held his hands and feet and said, `One, two, three,' and threw him in the swamp," recalled Adi, who still lives in the same house where he grew up. "Luckily he could swim. They only did it to Barry."
The other kids would scrap with him sometimes, but because Obama was bigger and better-fed than many of them, he was hard to defeat.
"He was built like a bull. So we'd get three kids together to fight him," recalled Yunaldi Askiar, 45, a former neighborhood friend. "But it was only playing."
Obama has claimed on numerous occasions to have become fluent in Indonesian in six months. Yet those who knew him disputed that during recent interviews.
Israella Pareira Darmawan, Obama's 1st-grade teacher, said she attempted to help him learn the Indonesian language by going over pronunciation and vowel sounds. He struggled greatly with the foreign language, she said, and with his studies as a result.
The teacher, who still lives in Obama's old neighborhood, remembers that he always sat in the back corner of her classroom. "His friends called him `Negro,'
" Darmawan said. The term wasn't considered a slur at the time in Indonesia.
Still, all of his teachers at the Catholic school recognized leadership qualities in him. "He would be very helpful with friends. He'd pick them up if they fell down,'' Darmawan recalled. "He would protect the smaller ones."
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Third-grade teacher Fermina Katarina Sinaga, now 67, has perhaps the most telling story. In an essay about what he wanted to be when he grew up, Obama "wrote he wanted to be president," Sinaga recalled. "He didn't say what country he wanted to be president of. But he wanted to make everybody happy."
When Obama was in 4th grade, the Soetoro family moved. Their new neighborhood was only 3 miles to the west, but a world away. Elite Dutch colonists once lived there; the Japanese moved in during their occupation of Indonesia in World War II. In the early 1970s, diplomats and Indonesian businessmen lived there in fancy gated houses with wide paved roads and sculpted bushes.
Obama never became terribly close with the children of the new school--this time a predominantly Muslim one--where he was enrolled. As he had at the old school, Obama sat in a back corner. He sketched decidedly American cartoon characters during class.
"He liked drawing Spider-Man and Batman," said another friend, Widiyanto Hendro Cahyono, 46. "Barry liked to draw heroes."
Then, one day about a year after he had arrived, Obama was gone.
"Suddenly we asked, `Where's Barry?'
" remembered Ati Kisjanto, 45. "And we were told he had already moved away."
Not one of `the brothers'
As much as young Obama stood out physically in the classrooms of Indonesia, so, too, did he at Punahou School, the elite private prep academy his mother moved him back to Hawaii to attend.
Obama, his mother and new baby sister, Maya, moved into a small apartment near the school's sprawling, lush campus. And from the first day of 5th grade right up until his graduation in 1979, the young man was one of only a small number of black students at a school heavily populated by the children of Hawaii's wealthy, most of them white and Asian.
Then and now, Punahou and Hawaii liked to see themselves as more diverse and colorblind than the rest of the nation. But the reality felt far different for the handful of African-Americans attending classes there.
Rik Smith, a black Punahou student two years older than Obama, remembers a Halloween when white students would dress as slaves, coming to school in tattered clothes with their faces painted black with shoe polish. "Like being black was a funny costume in and of itself," recalled Smith, now a doctor who specializes in geriatrics in California.
"Punahou was an amazing school," Smith said. "But it could be a lonely place. ... Those of us who were black did feel isolated--there's no question about that."
As a result, the handful of black students at Punahou informally banded together. "The brothers," as Lewis Anthony Jr., an African-American in the class of 1977 put it, hung out together, often talking about issues involving race and civil rights. They sought out parties, especially at the military bases on the island, where African-Americans would be in attendance.
Obama, however, was not a part of that group, according to Anthony and Smith. Both of them seemed surprised to hear that in "Dreams"--which neither of them had read--Obama writes about routinely going to parties at Schofield Barracks and other military bases in order to hang out with "Ray," who like Anthony and Smith was two years ahead of him in school.
"We'd all do things together, but Obama was never there," Smith said, adding that they often brought along the few other black underclassmen. "I went to those parties up at Schofield but never saw him at any of them."
Obama devotes many words in his book to exploring his outsider status at Punahou. But any struggles he was experiencing were obscured by the fact that he had a racially diverse group of friends--many of whom often would crowd into his grandparents' apartment, near Punahou, after school let out.
One of those kids was Orme, a smart, respectful teenager from a white, middle-class family. Though Orme spent most afternoons with Obama and considered him one of his closest friends, he said Obama never brought up issues of race, never talked about feeling out of place at Punahou.
"He never verbalized any of that," Orme said during a telephone interview from his home in Oregon. "He was a very provocative thinker. He would bring up worldly topics far beyond his years. But we never talked race."
Whatever misgivings Obama had about Punahou, attending the school was largely his decision.
When his mother, a woman said to have been born with a keen sense of wanderlust, announced she was returning to Indonesia, Obama, then a teenager, asked to stay in Hawaii, according to Soetoro-Ng, 36, who still lives in Honolulu. Once again, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, who had been as much parents as grandparents throughout the young man's life, said he could live with them.
"I don't imagine the decision to let him stay behind was an easy one for anyone," Soetoro-Ng said. "But he wanted to remain at Punahou. He had friends there, he was comfortable there, and to a kid his age, that's all that mattered."
One place Obama has said he found a sense of community was on the basketball court. A member of the varsity squad, though not a starter, Obama and his teammates brought Punahou the state championship in 1979, his senior year.
Adept at nailing long jump shots, Obama was called "Barry O'Bomber" by teammates. Alan Lum, who later would coach the basketball team at Punahou as well as teach elementary school there, recalled Obama as always being the first to confront coaches when he felt they were not fairly allotting playing time.
Obama wasn't shy about advocating for himself and his fellow backup players, Lum said. "He'd go right up to the coach during a game and say, `Coach, we're killing this team. Our second string should be playing more.'
"
But it was on the court in the off-season that Obama seemed to be even happier. Back then, Punahou was a completely open campus, with several basketball courts where 20-something men from Honolulu would come in the late afternoon for what often turned into flashy, highly competitive pickup sessions. Many of the men were black.
Orme would stay for the games.
"At the time, it was about basketball," said Orme, who has remained friends with Obama over the years and who plays basketball with him almost every Christmas when the two return to Hawaii to visit family. "But looking back now I can see he was seeking more from those guys than that. He was probably studying them and learning from them. He was a younger black man looking for guidance."
Old friend disputes memoir
Every senior graduating from Punahou gets to design a quarter-page in the yearbook. They compose notes to friends and family and include photos or quotes that best represent them.
On page 271 of the 1979 Oahuan, Obama's entry reflects the crossroads he found himself at as he prepared for life beyond Hawaii. He thanked "Tut and Gramps," his nicknames for Madelyn and Stanley Dunham, but didn't mention his faraway mother.
He also thanked the "Choom Gang," a reference to "chooming," Hawaiian slang for smoking marijuana. Obama admits in "Dreams" that during high school he frequently smoked marijuana, drank alcohol, even used cocaine occasionally.
"Junkie. Pothead. That's where I'd been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man," Obama wrote in "Dreams."
In the book, Obama discusses race and racism at his high school with one other Punahou student, "Ray,'' the young black man described in detail in "Dreams" as perpetually angry at the white world around him. "It's their world, all right," Ray supposedly shouts at Obama. "They own it and we in it. So just get the f--- outta my face."
But Kakugawa, in the interview Saturday, said Obama's recollection of that conversation was mistaken. "I did say we were playing in their world," he explained, "but that had nothing to do with race. He knew that."
Kakugawa explained that he had meant they were playing in the world of the elite people who populated and ran Punahou--famous Hawaiian families like the Doles, owners of the pineapple fortune, or the original developers of Waikiki, the tourist mecca. "It just wasn't a race thing," he reiterated again and again.
Obama confirmed in an interview earlier this month that the Ray character in "Dreams" actually is Kakugawa.
In another passage from the book, Ray complains that white Punahou girls don't want to date black guys and that he and Obama don't get enough playing time as athletes, speculating that they'd be "treated different if we was white. Or Japanese. Or Hawaiian. Or f------ Eskimo."
But Kakugawa, a convicted drug felon, said Saturday that he had never been the "prototypical angry black guy" that Obama portrays. Because of his biracial heritage, he said, he was "like everyone in Hawaii, a mix of a lot of things."
A close friend and track teammate of Kakugawa, John Hagar, also said he was surprised by Obama's description of the character representing Kakugawa as an angry young black man. "I never picked up on that," Hagar said. "He was just one of those perfect [ethnic] mixes of everything you see in Hawaii."
Asked Saturday about Kakugawa's recollections, the Obama campaign declined to make the senator available. But spokesman Bill Burton said Obama "stands by his recollections of these events as related in his book."
"There's no doubt that Keith's story is tragic and sad," Burton added.
While Obama rocketed to political prominence, his friend headed down the troubled road Obama had feared he was following. Since 1995, Kakugawa has spent more than 7 years in California prisons and months in Los Angeles County Jail on cocaine and auto theft charges.
Another story put forth in "Dreams" as one of Obama's pivotal moments of racial awakening checks out essentially as he wrote it. Obama recounts taking two white friends, including Orme, to a party attended almost entirely by African-Americans.
According to the book, the characters representing Orme and the other friend asked to leave the party after just an hour, saying they felt out of place. The night, Obama later wrote, made him furious as he realized that whites held a "fundamental power" over blacks.
"One of us said that being the different guys in the room had awakened a little bit of empathy to what he must feel all the time at school. And he clearly didn't appreciate that," Orme said. "I never knew, until reading the book later, how much that night had upset him."
As Obama's senior year drew to a close, his mother sent him letters from afar, about life in Indonesia and her work there with non-profit groups doing economic development. She also sent advice about his future. College would be his next stop. She mixed encouragement to keep up his grades with laments about American politics.
"It is a shame we have to worry so much about [grade point], but you know what the college entrance competition is these days," she wrote. "Did you know that in Thomas Jefferson's day, and right up through the 1930s, anybody who had the price of tuition could go to Harvard? ... I don't see that we are producing many Thomas Jeffersons nowadays. Instead we are producing Richard Nixons."
In the spring of 1979, Obama's mother and Maya, Barack's younger half sister by almost nine years, flew to Hawaii for his high school graduation. If young Obama had struggled to find a place at Punahou, it was well hidden on this day as well. He laughed and posed for photos with friends.
With a trimmed Afro, Hawaiian flower leis around his neck, Obama was surrounded by the disparate people who shaped him. In one photo he hugs his beaming sister.
In a striking snapshot with his grandparents, Stanley smiles proudly while Madelyn hugs him fiercely, as though she doesn't want to let him go forth into a world far from the remote island that for so long had been his home.
----------
Kirsten Scharnberg reported from Honolulu and Kim Barker from Jakarta, Indonesia; Tribune staff reporter Ray Gibson contributed to this report.
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I don't have a URL for this, but it sure does capture something:
"My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you'll join with me as we try to change it." -- Barack Obama
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/03/13/video-obamas-pastor-takes-highly-nuanced-approach-to-racial-divisiveness/
No race-baiting here..... :roll:
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Obama on Offense
By DOROTHY RABINOWITZ
March 13, 2008
It came as a relief to hear, in the last few days, that both Democratic candidates were now about to go on the attack, though pundits agreed such low tactics had been forced on Barack Obama. There's something reassuring about the usual election season blather over negative campaigning. That relief is a response, mostly, to any whiff of normality promising to emerge in the current Democratic race.
Still, the prospects are thin, given the rapturous response Mr. Obama has enjoyed at the hands of a good part of the press -- attitudes so obvious that the usual stern media denials that their coverage was other than objective have been hard to find. Anyone who doubts this bias has only to look at the past week's charges that Hillary Clinton and company have been playing the race card -- the latest in a series of such accusations made by Obama surrogates, carried forward by the media.
Of those offenses, the most memorable, perhaps, concerned Bill Clinton's challenge to the record Sen. Obama claimed regarding his long opposition to the Iraq war, which Mr. Clinton called "a fairy tale." In short order, word was put out that the former president had insulted black Americans and their high hopes for this election, by use of this disparaging term, "fairy tale." Mr. Clinton, some charged, had denigrated Mr. Obama's entire candidacy as a fantasy.
There was, too, the Martin Luther King/Lyndon Johnson saga. Here Hillary Clinton's incontestably accurate comment -- that it had taken the action of a president, Lyndon Johnson, to pass the Civil Rights Act, and thus bring to fruition the goal to which Dr. King had devoted his life -- ignited storms of outrage, furious commentaries on how Sen. Clinton had played a sly race card, diminishing Dr. King's importance in comparison to that of the white president.
In all, the pattern of these charges may well suggest a race card in play, only it wasn't the Clintons who were playing it.
The latest charge arose from a "60 Minutes" interview a week ago, in which Mrs. Clinton was supposedly contriving a way to suggest that Mr. Obama is in fact a secret Muslim. In the stories carried elsewhere in the media, the case against her rests on five words.
The entire "60 Minutes" exchange -- showing her effort to answer interrogator Steve Kroft's persistent questions -- would have been more instructive. Because, as in so many interrogations, an emphatic no -- when the investigator is looking for another answer -- is never enough.
Mr. Kroft: "You don't believe that Sen. Obama is a Muslim?"
Mrs. Clinton: "Of course not. I mean, you know, there is no basis for that. I take him on the basis of what he says. You know, there isn't any reason to doubt that."
Kroft: "You said you take Sen. Obama at his word that he's not. . . . You don't believe that he's. . . ."
Clinton: "No, no. There's nothing to base that on, as far as I know."
Kroft: "It's just scurrilous . . .?"
Clinton: "Look, I have been the target of so many ridiculous rumors that I have a great deal of sympathy for anybody who gets, you know, smeared with the kind of rumors that go on all the time."
The now famous five words, "as far as I know" come trailing a sentence showing an interviewee clearly trying to fill space -- babbling, as we all do, when there's nothing more to say and the persistent interrogator requires, nevertheless, more talk. Clearly, that "as far as I know" is chatter, without import, in the midst of emphatic declarations rejecting the notion that Mr. Obama is Muslim.
Without import except, of course, to the cadres prepared to find in those words material for the manufacture of another story of a Clinton outrage. To do so requires reporting only the sentence in which the phrase appears, while leaving out all that came before and after. New York Times columnist Bob Herbert did precisely that in a column on Saturday, charging that those five words represented "one of the sleaziest moments of the campaign to date."
Mr. Herbert is far from alone in this stunning assessment -- a measure of the fevers that have swept so many journalists away in the course of this campaign.
Mr. Obama, in the meantime, has now found occasion to try going on the attack against Mrs. Clinton as he has been urged -- though not without trepidation from supporters worried about the effect on his image as an inspirational leader and voice of a new politics. Could he even do such things? Yes he could.
As he showed in an angry speech this week, in which he lashed out at Mrs. Clinton for raising the possibility that he could serve as vice president, the worriers were right. The candidate will have to find, at the very least, an attack mode other than the preening and petulance on display Monday.
For all of Mr. Obama's celebrated speeches, his capacity to attract and arouse crowds, we know mostly his public persona -- a presence confident, forward-looking, thoughtful. Of his actual attitudes, social and political, his views about the nation he plans to lead, those lengthy speeches have revealed remarkably little, other than a belief that American hearts are filled to bursting with their yearning for change. We shall see.
His closest adviser, Michelle Obama, has left little doubt about her views of American society, and its people. These views have received relatively scant coverage, other than in the brief period that followed her observation on the campaign trail in Wisconsin a few weeks back, when the wife of the candidate told crowds that she was, for the first time in her life, "proud" of her country. It was an attention-getting pronouncement quickly amended and recast, once the uproar of amazement began to be heard.
Everyone can have an untoward moment under the pressures of campaigning. It was obvious, nonetheless, that this was no blip, no failure to express her real thought. She said exactly what she'd wanted to say. And for doing so Mrs. Obama expected no amazed response. The comment reflected her deeply held, grim view of American society, one she was accustomed to sharing with others who thought likewise. Why should it not have come tripping from the tongue?
It was, furthermore, just one of numerous such revelatory statements she has regularly made. In speeches on the campaign trail she has held forth on her view of America, which is, as she describes it, a country that is "downright mean" and "driven by fear." She recently waxed irate over the American attention to security interests, arguing that we should be "changing the conversation" and building diplomatic relations "instead of protecting ourselves against terrorists." A minor note, to be sure, though it's to be hoped that a President Obama will not turn to this closest adviser for her views on the national defense.
A New Yorker profile published last week quotes numerous stump speech pronouncements, among them Mrs. Obama's assertion that most Americans' lives have gotten worse since she was a girl. "So if you want to pretend like there was some point in the last couple of decades when your life was easy, I want to meet you."
In short, not only is existence in America a desperate proposition for most citizens -- anyone claiming to have led a satisfactory one not sunk in the hell that is American life is, quite simply, lying. America is, she has elsewhere informed audiences, a nation whose "souls are broken."
It is a vision striking for its consistent hostility to any notion that Americans have cause for optimism and pride in their country: striking, too, for the stark and obvious absence, in this graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School, of any sense of the reasons Americans might revere their nation and consider themselves fortunate to be its citizens.
Doubtless we shall hear more about Mrs. Obama's views as the campaign goes on. In the meantime, we can only imagine how this will all play out in the event of an Obama presidency. First Lady Michelle Obama would certainly encounter foreign reporters who have attentively covered the campaign and who have questions to ask. One of them may well be, "Madame First Lady, would you care to tell us more about your oft-stated view of America as a nation whose soul is broken? And a word, if you would about the desperate lives lived by most Americans?"
The response would be interesting to hear.
Ms. Rabinowitz is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.
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Question: What was Barack's father's family name? Hussein or Obama?
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It appears that Obama's father was Barack Hussein Obama, making him the Sr. and Obama the Jr.
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What is confusing to me here is that in Euro America, the second name is the middle name and the third name is the family name, whereas in Latino names, the second name is the family name and the third name is the maternal family name.
Thus my name is Marc Frederick Denny in Euro, but in Latino it is Marc Denny S____. (left bland for security reasons)
What is the case in Barack's case?
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/03/14/oprahs-boards-burning-with-wright-responses-wright-accuses-america-of-creating-the-hiv-virus/
Oprah’s boards burning with Wright responses; Wright accuses America of creating the HIV virus
POSTED AT 11:47 AM ON MARCH 14, 2008 BY ED MORRISSEY
As I noted earlier, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has more than one high-profile member in his congregation. Besides presidential hopeful Barack Obama, Wright also preaches his message to Oprah Winfrey, one of the most successful and beloved media personalities in America. She has an active on-line community at Oprah.com, and her forums have had almost 300 posts from members in the past 24 hours after the revelations of race-baiting and hatred at Trinity United Church. Most talk about their concern over the content of Wright’s sermons:
I have to agree with Dick Morris [who appeared on Fox’s O’Reilly Factor last night]. We both intensely dislike Hillary and Bill. But, it needs to be said that Rev. Wright strikes me as a very dangerous, divisive, and anti-American racist. …
This is extremely troubling. Rev. Wright is one of the worst I’ve seen anywhere in America. He is truly dangerous. .. .. .. Obama’s failure to distance himself from this very dangerous anti-American will become more damaging in the next few days. …
I was upset as well. It’s beyond inflammatory and much worse than anything Geraldine Ferrarro said, yet I don’t hear a peep out of Obama. What is pastor said is beyond disgusting. To blame the US for what happened on 9/11. And I am NO fan of the Clintons, but those things he said about Hillary and Bill…and did you “see” the tapes or just hear them? This would certainly explain Michelle Obama’s anger.
Let’s wait and see if the mainstream media steps up to the plate. They took great glee in attacking Mitt Romney and his LDS faith, let’s see if they go after Obama. …
Obama should not be held responsible for what Rev. Wright says from the pulpit. However, being a member of a church that is racist is not much different than being a white person who belongs to a country club that doesn’t admit Blacks. …
The threads also pointed to an allegation made by Wright that the US created the HIV virus, presumably for deliberate infection of certain populations. In a speech made at Howard University in January 2006, he offered the following conspiracy theories:
Mr. Wright thundered on: “America is still the No. 1 killer in the world. . . . We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns, and the training of professional killers . . . We bombed Cambodia, Iraq and Nicaragua, killing women and children while trying to get public opinion turned against Castro and Ghadhafi . . . We put [Nelson] Mandela in prison and supported apartheid the whole 27 years he was there. We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God.”
His voice rising, Mr. Wright said, “We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians and branding anybody who spoke out against it as being anti-Semitic. . . . We care nothing about human life if the end justifies the means. . . .”
Concluding, Mr. Wright said: “We started the AIDS virus . . . We are only able to maintain our level of living by making sure that Third World people live in grinding poverty. . . .”
It isn’t so much the anger that Wright manifests that will be off-putting to mainstream Americans of all creeds and colors, but the conspiracy-theory lunacy that he spews. Almost all Americans gave up on supremacy theories decades ago; most of those who espoused them are dead. No one has argued in the mainstream in any way, shape, or form for that kind of nonsense since the Dixiecrat movement died out in the 1960s. An ill-worded valediction for Strom Thurmond six years ago drew so much condemnation that it forced Trent Lott out of his leadership position in the Senate, although to be fair, former Klan member Robert Byrd remains in the Senate — as a Democrat.
Most Americans would find the notion that we are crypto-supremacists insulting and offensive. And yet two of the most popular people in the US choose to attend the church of a minister who apparently makes that a recurring theme of his ministry. In Obama’s case, he has given over $22,000 to support Wright and his message in 2006 alone.
Given the intense media interest in Mormon underwear and LDS doctrine in the fall of 2007, one might expect a little more scrutiny of the much more political and racially-charged message coming from the pulpit of the Trinity United Church. It looks like that may have already begun, and the reputations of both Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey rest on how quickly and adeptly they can distance themselves from the debacle.
Update: Barack Obama tried pushing back, but this seems rather weak:
Q: I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but it’s all over the wire today (from an ABC News story), a statement that your pastor (the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago’s South Side) made in a sermon in 2003 that instead of singing “God Bless America,” black people should sing a song essentially saying “God Damn America.”
A: I haven’t seen the line. This is a pastor who is on the brink of retirement who in the past has made some controversial statements. I profoundly disagree with some of these statements.
Q: What about this particular statement?
A: Obviously, I disagree with that. Here is what happens when you just cherry-pick statements from a guy who had a 40-year career as a pastor. There are times when people say things that are just wrong. But I think it’s important to judge me on what I’ve said in the past and what I believe.
Cherry-pick? Perhaps Senator Obama can explain the context that would justify “God damn America” and the accusation that America created HIV. That dog won’t hunt.
Howard Dean left his church over a bike path. We laughed at the superficiality of that choice, but Obama has a much better reason to repudiate Trinity — and Wright’s supposed retirement won’t come nearly in time to rescue him from this problem.
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March 15, 2008, 0:15 a.m.
Uncle Jeremiah
Barack Obama and his cookie-cutter race huckster.
By Mark Steyn
The Reverend Jeremiah Wright thinks that, given their treatment by white America, black Americans have no reason to sing “God Bless America.” “The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America,” he told his congregation. “God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human.”
I’m not a believer in guilt by association, or the campaign vaudeville of rival politicians insisting this or that candidate disassociate himself from remarks by some fellow he had a 30-second grip’n’greet with a decade ago. But Jeremiah Wright is not exactly peripheral to Barack Obama’s life. He married the Obamas and baptized their children. Those of us who made the mistake of buying the senator’s last book, The Audacity of Hope, and assumed the title was an ingeniously parodic distillation of the great sonorous banality of an entire genre of blandly uplifting political writing discovered circa page 127 that in fact the phrase comes from one of the Reverend Wright’s sermons. Jeremiah Wright has been Barack Obama’s pastor for 20 years — in other words, pretty much the senator’s entire adult life. Did Obama consider God Damn America as a title for his book but it didn’t focus-group so well?
Ah, well, no, the senator told ABC News. The Reverend Wright is like “an old uncle who says things I don’t always agree with.” So did he agree with goofy old Uncle Jeremiah on September 16th 2001? That Sunday morning, Uncle told his congregation that the United States brought the death and destruction of 9/11 on itself. “We nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye,” said the Reverend Wright. “We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards.”
Is that one of those “things I don’t always agree with”? Well, Senator Obama isn’t saying, responding merely that he wasn’t in church that morning. Okay, fair enough, but what would he have done had he happened to have shown up on September 16th? Cried “Shame on you!” and stormed out? Or, if that’s a little dramatic, whispered to Michelle that he didn’t want their daughters hearing this kind of drivel while rescue workers were still sifting through the rubble and risen from his pew in a dignified manner and led his family to the exit? Or would he have just sat there with an inscrutable look on his face as those around him nodded?
All Senator Obama will say is that “I don’t think my church is actually particularly controversial.” And in that he may be correct. There are many preachers who would be happy to tell their congregations “God damn America.” But Barack Obama is not supposed to be the candidate of the America-damners: He’s not the Reverend Al Sharpton or the Reverend Jesse Jackson or the rest of the racial-grievance mongers. Obama is meant to be the man who transcends the divisions of race, the candidate who doesn’t damn America but “heals” it — if you believe, as many Democrats do, that America needs healing.
Yet since his early twenties he’s sat week after week listening to the ravings of just another cookie-cutter race huckster.
What is Barack Obama for? It’s not his “policies,” such as they are. Rather, Senator Obama embodies an idea: He’s a symbol of redemption and renewal, and a lot of other airy-fairy abstractions that don’t boil down to much except making upscale white liberals feel good about themselves and get even more of a frisson out of white liberal guilt than they usually do. I assume that’s what Geraldine Ferraro was getting at when she said Obama wouldn’t be where he was today (i.e., leading the race for the Democratic nomination) if he was white. For her infelicity, the first woman on a presidential ticket got bounced from the Clinton campaign and denounced by MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann for her “insidious racism” indistinguishable from “the vocabulary of David Duke.”
Oh, for cryin’ out loud. Enjoyable as it is to watch previously expert wielders of identity-politics hand-grenades blow their own fingers off, if Geraldine Ferraro’s an “insidious racist,” who isn’t?
The song the Reverend Wright won’t sing is by Irving Berlin, a contemporary of Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin and Lorenz Hart, all the sophisticated rhymesters. But only Berlin could have written without embarrassment “God Bless America.” He said it directly, unaffectedly, unashamedly — in seven words:
God Bless America
Land that I love.
Berlin was a Jew and he suffered slights: He grew up in the poverty of New York’s Lower East Side. When he made his name and fortune, his marriage to a Park Avenue heiress resulted in her expulsion from the Social Register. In the Thirties, her sister moved in with a Nazi diplomat and proudly flaunted her diamond swastika to Irving. But Berlin spent his infancy in Temun, Siberia (until the Cossacks rode in and razed his village) and he understood the great gift he’d been given:
God Bless America
Land that I love.
The Reverend Wright can’t say those words. His shtick is:
God damn America
Land that I loathe.
I understand the Ellis Island experience of Russian Jews was denied to blacks. But not to Obama. His experience surely isn’t so different to Berlin’s — except that Barack got to go to Harvard. Obama’s father was a Kenyan, he spent his childhood in Indonesia, and he ought to thank his lucky stars that he’s running for office in Washington rather than Nairobi or Jakarta. Instead, his whiney wife Michelle says that her husband’s election as president would be the first reason to have “pride” in America, and complains that this country is “downright mean” and that she’s having difficulty finding money for their daughters’ piano lessons and summer camp. Between them, Mr. and Mrs. Obama earn $480,000 a year (not including book royalties from The Audacity of Hype), but they’re whining about how tough they have it to couples who earn 48 grand — or less. Yes, we can. But not on a lousy half-million bucks a year.
God has blessed America, and blessed the Obamas in America, and even blessed the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, whose bashing of his own country would be far less lucrative anywhere else on the planet. The “racist” here is not Geraldine Ferraro but the Reverend Wright, whose appeals to racial bitterness are supposed to be everything President Obama will transcend. Right now, it sounds more like the same-old same-old.
God Bless America
Land that I love.
Take it away, Michelle.
© 2008 Mark Steyn
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZjE3NDc3YTU0ZGM5NGEzZTdkNjcyZjBiNDVjMjU5MGQ=
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Somewhere, HRC is rubbing her icy talons together and cackling with malevolent glee. :evil:
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http://online.wsj.com/article_print/...093135111.html
March 14, 2008
OPINION
Obama and the Minister
By RONALD KESSLER
March 14, 2008; Page A19
In a sermon delivered at Howard University, Barack Obama's longtime minister, friend and adviser blamed America for starting the AIDS virus, training professional killers, importing drugs and creating a racist society that would never elect a black candidate president.
The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., pastor of Mr. Obama's Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, gave the sermon at the school's Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel in Washington on Jan. 15, 2006.
Trinity United Church of Christ/Religion News Service
Sen. Barack Obama and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright
"We've got more black men in prison than there are in college," he began. "Racism is alive and well. Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run. No black man will ever be considered for president, no matter how hard you run Jesse [Jackson] and no black woman can ever be considered for anything outside what she can give with her body."
Mr. Wright thundered on: "America is still the No. 1 killer in the world. . . . We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns, and the training of professional killers . . . We bombed Cambodia, Iraq and Nicaragua, killing women and children while trying to get public opinion turned against Castro and Ghadhafi . . . We put [Nelson] Mandela in prison and supported apartheid the whole 27 years he was there. We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God."
His voice rising, Mr. Wright said, "We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians and branding anybody who spoke out against it as being anti-Semitic. . . . We care nothing about human life if the end justifies the means. . . ."
Concluding, Mr. Wright said: "We started the AIDS virus . . . We are only able to maintain our level of living by making sure that Third World people live in grinding poverty. . . ."
Considering this view of America, it's not surprising that in December Mr. Wright's church gave an award to Louis Farrakhan for lifetime achievement. In the church magazine, Trumpet, Mr. Wright spoke glowingly of the Nation of Islam leader. "His depth on analysis [sic] when it comes to the racial ills of this nation is astounding and eye-opening," Mr. Wright said of Mr. Farrakhan. "He brings a perspective that is helpful and honest."
After Newsmax broke the story of the award to Farrakhan on Jan. 14, Mr. Obama issued a statement. However, Mr. Obama ignored the main point: that his minister and friend had spoken adoringly of Mr. Farrakhan, and that Mr. Wright's church was behind the award to the Nation of Islam leader.
Instead, Mr. Obama said, "I decry racism and anti-Semitism in every form and strongly condemn the anti-Semitic statements made by Minister Farrakhan. I assume that Trumpet magazine made its own decision to honor Farrakhan based on his efforts to rehabilitate ex-offenders, but it is not a decision with which I agree." Trumpet is owned and produced by Mr. Wright's church out of the church's offices, and Mr. Wright's daughters serve as publisher and executive editor.
Meeting with Jewish leaders in Cleveland on Feb. 24, Mr. Obama described Mr. Wright as being like "an old uncle who sometimes will say things that I don't agree with." He rarely mentions the points of disagreement.
Mr. Obama went on to explain Mr. Wright's anti-Zionist statements as being rooted in his anger over the Jewish state's support for South Africa under its previous policy of apartheid. As with his previous claim that his church gave the award to Mr. Farrakhan because of his work with ex-offenders, Mr. Obama appears to have made that up.
Neither the presentation of the award nor the Trumpet article about the award mentions ex-offenders, and Mr. Wright's statements denouncing Israel have not been qualified in any way. Mr. Obama nonetheless told the Jewish leaders that the award to Mr. Farrakhan "showed a lack of sensitivity to the Jewish community." That is an understatement.
As for Mr. Wright's repeated comments blaming America for the 9/11 attacks because of what Mr. Wright calls its racist and violent policies, Mr. Obama has said it sounds as if the minister was trying to be "provocative."
Hearing Mr. Wright's venomous and paranoid denunciations of this country, the vast majority of Americans would walk out. Instead, Mr. Obama and his wife Michelle have presumably sat through numerous similar sermons by Mr. Wright.
Indeed, Mr. Obama has described Mr. Wright as his "sounding board" during the two decades he has known him. Mr. Obama has said he found religion through the minister in the 1980s. He joined the church in 1991 and walked down the aisle in a formal commitment of faith.
The title of Mr. Obama's bestseller "The Audacity of Hope" comes from one of Wright's sermons. Mr. Wright is one of the first people Mr. Obama thanked after his election to the Senate in 2004. Mr. Obama consulted Mr. Wright before deciding to run for president. He prayed privately with Mr. Wright before announcing his candidacy last year.
Mr. Obama obviously would not choose to belong to Mr. Wright's church and seek his advice unless he agreed with at least some of his views. In light of Mr. Wright's perspective, Michelle Obama's comment that she feels proud of America for the first time in her adult life makes perfect sense.
Much as most of us would appreciate the symbolism of a black man ascending to the presidency, what we have in Barack Obama is a politician whose closeness to Mr. Wright underscores his radical record.
The media have largely ignored Mr. Obama's close association with Mr. Wright. This raises legitimate questions about Mr. Obama's fundamental beliefs about his country. Those questions deserve a clearer answer than Mr. Obama has provided so far.
Mr. Kessler, a former Wall Street Journal and Washington Post reporter, is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com and the author of "The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack" (Crown Forum, 2007).
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http://antiprotester.blogspot.com/2008/03/barack-obama-agrees-with-reverend.html
He was for the rev., before he was against him...
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The NY Times does its part for the BO candidacy
In the capsule version of the Barack Obama story, his mother is simply the white woman from Kansas. The phrase comes coupled alliteratively to its counterpart, the black father from Kenya. On the campaign trail, he has called her his “single mom.” But neither description begins to capture the unconventional life of Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro, the parent who most shaped Mr. Obama.
Kansas was merely a way station in her childhood, wheeling westward in the slipstream of her furniture-salesman father. In Hawaii, she married an African student at age 18. Then she married an Indonesian, moved to Jakarta, became an anthropologist, wrote an 800-page dissertation on peasant blacksmithing in Java, worked for the Ford Foundation, championed women’s work and helped bring microcredit to the world’s poor.
She had high expectations for her children. In Indonesia, she would wake her son at 4 a.m. for correspondence courses in English before school; she brought home recordings of Mahalia Jackson, speeches by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And when Mr. Obama asked to stay in Hawaii for high school rather than return to Asia, she accepted living apart — a decision her daughter says was one of the hardest in Ms. Soetoro’s life.
“She felt that somehow, wandering through uncharted territory, we might stumble upon something that will, in an instant, seem to represent who we are at the core,” said Maya Soetoro-Ng, Mr. Obama’s half-sister. “That was very much her philosophy of life — to not be limited by fear or narrow definitions, to not build walls around ourselves and to do our best to find kinship and beauty in unexpected places.”
Ms. Soetoro, who died of ovarian cancer in 1995, was the parent who raised Mr. Obama, the Illinois senator running for the Democratic presidential nomination. He barely saw his father after the age of 2. Though it is impossible to pinpoint the imprint of a parent on the life of a grown child, people who knew Ms. Soetoro well say they see her influence unmistakably in Mr. Obama.
They were close, her friends and his half-sister say, though they spent much of their lives with oceans or continents between them. He would not be where he is today, he has said, had it not been for her. Yet he has also made some different choices — marrying into a tightly knit African-American family rooted in the South Side of Chicago, becoming a churchgoing Christian, publicly recounting his search for his identity as a black man.
Some of what he has said about his mother seems tinged with a mix of love and regret. He has said his biggest mistake was not being at her bedside when she died. And when The Associated Press asked the candidates about “prized keepsakes” — others mentioned signed baseballs, a pocket watch, a “trophy wife” — Mr. Obama said his was a photograph of the cliffs of the South Shore of Oahu in Hawaii where his mother’s ashes were scattered.
“I think sometimes that had I known she would not survive her illness, I might have written a different book — less a meditation on the absent parent, more a celebration of the one who was the single constant in my life,” he wrote in the preface to his memoir, “Dreams From My Father.” He added, “I know that she was the kindest, most generous spirit I have ever known, and that what is best in me I owe to her.”
In a campaign in which Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, has made liberal use of his globe-trotting 96-year-old mother to answer suspicions that he might be an antique at 71, Mr. Obama, who declined to be interviewed for this article, invokes his mother’s memory sparingly. In one television advertisement, she appears fleetingly — porcelain-skinned, raven-haired and holding her toddler son. “My mother died of cancer at 53,” he says in the ad, which focuses on health care. “In those last painful months, she was more worried about paying her medical bills than getting well.”
‘A Very, Very Big Thinker’
He has described her as a teenage mother, a single mother, a mother who worked, went to school and raised children at the same time. He has credited her with giving him a great education and confidence in his ability to do the right thing. But, in interviews, friends and colleagues of Ms. Soetoro shed light on a side of her that is less well known.
“She was a very, very big thinker,” said Nancy Barry, a former president of Women’s World Banking, an international network of microfinance providers, where Ms. Soetoro worked in New York City in the early 1990s. “I think she was not at all personally ambitious, I think she cared about the core issues, and I think she was not afraid to speak truth to power.”
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Her parents were from Kansas — her mother from Augusta, her father from El Dorado, a place Mr. Obama first visited in a campaign stop in January. Stanley Ann (her father wanted a boy so he gave her his name) was born on an Army base during World War II. The family moved to California, Kansas, Texas and Washington in restless pursuit of opportunity before landing in Honolulu in 1960.
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Courtesy of the Obama Family
Ms. Soetoro, right, during her trip to Indonesia from 1988 to 1992. She married an Indonesian, moved to Jakarta and became an anthropologist.
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Ms. Soetoro during her field trip from 1988 to 1992. She died in 1995 of cancer.
In a Russian class at the University of Hawaii, she met the college’s first African student, Barack Obama. They married and had a son in August 1961, in an era when interracial marriage was rare in the United States. Her parents were upset, Senator Obama learned years later from his mother, but they adapted. “I am a little dubious of the things that people from foreign countries tell me,” the senator’s grandmother told an interviewer several years ago.
The marriage was brief. In 1963, Mr. Obama left for Harvard, leaving his wife and child. She then married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian student. When he was summoned home in 1966 after the turmoil surrounding the rise of Suharto, Ms. Soetoro and Barack followed.
Those choices were not entirely surprising, said several high school friends of Ms. Soetoro, whom they remembered as unusually intelligent, curious and open. She never dated “the crew-cut white boys,” said one friend, Susan Blake: “She had a world view, even as a young girl. It was embracing the different, rather than that ethnocentric thing of shunning the different. That was where her mind took her.”
Her second marriage faded, too, in the 1970s. Ms. Soetoro wanted to work, one friend said, and Mr. Soetoro wanted more children. He became more American, she once said, as she became more Javanese. “There’s a Javanese belief that if you’re married to someone and it doesn’t work, it will make you sick,” said Alice G. Dewey, an anthropologist and friend. “It’s just stupid to stay married.”
That both unions ended is beside the point, some friends suggested. Ms. Soetoro remained loyal to both husbands and encouraged her children to feel connected to their fathers. (In reading drafts of her son’s memoir, Mr. Obama has said, she did not comment upon his depiction of her but was “quick to explain or defend the less flattering aspects of my father’s character.”)
“She always felt that marriage as an institution was not particularly essential or important,” said Nina Nayar, who later became a close friend of Ms. Soetoro. What mattered to her, Ms. Nayar said, was to have loved deeply.
By 1974, Ms. Soetoro was back in Honolulu, a graduate student and raising Barack and Maya, nine years younger. Barack was on scholarship at a prestigious prep school, Punahou. When Ms. Soetoro decided to return to Indonesia three years later for her field work, Barack chose not to go.
“I doubted what Indonesia now had to offer and wearied of being new all over again,” he wrote in his memoir. “More than that, I’d arrived at an unspoken pact with my grandparents: I could live with them and they’d leave me alone so long as I kept my trouble out of sight.” During those years, he was “engaged in a fitful interior struggle. I was trying to raise myself to be a black man in America.” Ms. Soetoro-Ng recalled her mother’s quandary. “She wanted him to be with her,” Ms. Soetoro-Ng said. But she added: “Although it was painful to be separated from him for his last four years of high school, she recognized that it was perhaps the best thing for him. And she had to go to Indonesia at that time.”
That time apart was hard for both mother and son.
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“She longed for him,” said Georgia McCauley, who became a friend of Ms. Soetoro in Jakarta. Barack spent summers and Christmas vacations with his mother; they communicated by letters, his illustrated with cartoons. Her first topic of conversation was always her son, her female friends said. As for him, he was grappling with questions of racial identity, alienation and belonging.
“There were certainly times in his life in those four years when he could have used her presence on a more daily basis,” Ms. Soetoro-Ng said. “But I think he did all right for himself.”
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Fluent in Indonesian, Ms. Soetoro moved with Maya first to Yogyakarta, the center of Javanese handicrafts. A weaver in college, she was fascinated with what Ms. Soetoro-Ng calls “life’s gorgeous minutiae.” That interest inspired her study of village industries, which became the basis of her 1992 doctoral dissertation.
"She loved living in Java,” said Dr. Dewey, who recalled accompanying Ms. Soetoro to a metalworking village. “People said: ‘Hi! How are you?’ She said: ‘How’s your wife? Did your daughter have the baby?’ They were friends. Then she’d whip out her notebook and she’d say: ‘How many of you have electricity? Are you having trouble getting iron?’ ”
She became a consultant for the United States Agency for International Development on setting up a village credit program, then a Ford Foundation program officer in Jakarta specializing in women’s work. Later, she was a consultant in Pakistan, then joined Indonesia’s oldest bank to work on what is described as the world’s largest sustainable microfinance program, creating services like credit and savings for the poor.
Visitors flowed constantly through her Ford Foundation office in downtown Jakarta and through her house in a neighborhood to the south, where papaya and banana trees grew in the front yard and Javanese dishes like opor ayam were served for dinner. Her guests were leaders in the Indonesian human rights movement, people from women’s organizations, representatives of community groups doing grass-roots development.
“I didn’t know a lot of them and would often ask after, ‘Who was that?’ ” said David S. McCauley, now an environmental economist at the Asian Development Bank in Manila, who had the office next door. “You’d find out it was the head of some big organization in with thousands of members from central Java or someplace, somebody that she had met some time ago, and they would make a point of coming to see her when they came to Jakarta.”
An Exacting Idealist
As a mother, Ms. Soetoro was both idealistic and exacting. Friends describe her as variously informal and intense, humorous and hardheaded. She preached to her young son the importance of honesty, straight talk, independent judgment. When he balked at her early-morning home schooling, she retorted, “This is no picnic for me either, buster.”
When Barack was in high school, she confronted him about his seeming lack of ambition, Mr. Obama wrote. He could get into any college in the country, she told him, with just a little effort. (“Remember what that’s like? Effort?”) He says he looked at her, so earnest and sure of his destiny: “I suddenly felt like puncturing that certainty of hers, letting her know that her experiment with me had failed.”
Ms. Soetoro-Ng, who herself became an anthropologist, remembers conversations with her mother about philosophy or politics, books, esoteric Indonesian woodworking motifs. One Christmas in Indonesia, Ms. Soetoro found a scrawny tree and decorated it with red and green chili peppers and popcorn balls.
“She gave us a very broad understanding of the world,” her daughter said. “She hated bigotry. She was very determined to be remembered for a life of service and thought that service was really the true measure of a life.” Many of her friends see her legacy in Mr. Obama — in his self-assurance and drive, his boundary bridging, even his apparent comfort with strong women. Some say she changed them, too.
“I feel she taught me how to live,” said Ms. Nayar, who was in her 20s when she met Ms. Soetoro at Women’s World Banking. “She was not particularly concerned about what society would say about working women, single women, women marrying outside their culture, women who were fearless and who dreamed big.”
The Final Months
After her diagnosis, Ms. Soetoro spent the last months of her life in Hawaii, near her mother. (Her father had died.) Mr. Obama has recalled talking with her in her hospital bed about her fears of ending up broke. She was not ready to die, he has said. Even so, she helped him and Maya “push on with our lives, despite our dread, our denials, our sudden constrictions of the heart.”
She died in November 1995, as Mr. Obama was starting his first campaign for public office. After a memorial service at the University of Hawaii, one friend said, a small group of friends drove to the South Shore in Oahu. With the wind whipping the waves onto the rocks, Mr. Obama and Ms. Soetoro-Ng placed their mother’s ashes in the Pacific, sending them off in the direction of Indonesia
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http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=29302_Video-_Obama_Lavishes_Praise_on_Rev._Jeremiah_Wright&only
What did Obama know, and when did he know it?
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Notable & Quotable
March 17, 2008
WSJ
Gerald Posner writing at HuffingtonPost.com:
I'm still in the Barack camp. But, as a vocal supporter, I'd like just a couple of answers about the flap over Reverend Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr, the former pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, the Chicago megachurch where the Obamas have been members for 20 years.
Guilt by association is totally unwarranted. Barack is not responsible for Wright's views. However, how he responds to those views -- and whether he is being straight with us, the voters -- is critical as to whether he should lead our country.
The key issue for me, as both a supporter and as a reporter, revolves around what I view as Wright's most incendiary comments, those implying that America -- because of its own actions -- deserved the 9/11 terror attacks.
Wright made his comments on September 16, only 5 days after the deadly strikes in New York and Washington. He said, in part, "We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. . . ."
. . . .If the parishioners of Trinity United Church were not buzzing about Reverend Wright's post 9/11 comments, then it could only seem to be because those comments were not out of character with what he preached from the pulpit many times before. In that case, I have to wonder if it is really possible for the Obamas to have been parishioners there -- by 9/11 they were there more than a decade -- and not to have known very clearly how radical Wright's views were. If, on the other hand, parishioners were shocked by Wright's vitriol only days after more than 3,000 Americans had been killed by terrorists, they would have talked about it incessantly. Barack -- a sitting Illinois State Senator -- would have been one of the first to hear about it.
Can't you imagine the call or conversation? "Barack, you aren't going to believe what Revered Wright said yesterday at the church. You should be ready with a comment if someone from the press calls you up."
But Barack now claims he never heard about any of this until after he began his run for the presidency, in February, 2007.
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http://michellemalkin.com/2008/03/17/jeremiah-wrights-greatest-hits/
A chicken comes home to roost.
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http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/dpatton/2008/dp_03171.shtml
The Barack Obama Double Standard
By Doug Patton
March 17, 2008
Imagine in 1999, that a videotape had come to light showing the pastor of Texas Gov. George W. Bush's church making vicious, hateful comments about America and cruel, racist statements about Americans of color.
Suppose this preacher had given a lifetime achievement award to former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, and had traveled to Europe with Duke to meet with neo-Nazi terrorists.
Now try to envision that the candidate's family had attended this church for more than twenty years, that George and Laura Bush had been married there, by this pastor, and that the Bush daughters had been baptized by him.
Picture George Bush titling his autobiography after a phrase in one of this minister's sermons, writing that the man was his mentor, and then putting him on the presidential campaign staff as a trusted advisor and confidant.
Say it came to light that for several years George W. Bush had been friends with Eric Rudolph, the notorious Olympic Park bomber and anti-abortion terrorist. Furthermore, let's suppose that Bush had remained friends with Rudolph over the years and still considered him a colleague today.
Now imagine Laura Bush, on the campaign trail for her husband, telling supporters and the national media that America is "mean" and that for the first time in her adult life she was proud of her country.
Is there a doubt that Republican officeholders would have run from the Bush campaign like rats from a burning barn, that he would have become the political leper of the 2000 campaign? And what about the media? They virtually crucified candidate Bush that year for daring to give a speech at Bob Jones University, which had once banned interracial dating. I cannot imagine the field day they would have had with something like this.
And yet excuses are made for Barack Obama, who now finds himself in exactly this situation. Obama's pastor of more than two decades - the man who married Barack and Michelle Obama, who christened their daughters, who inspired the title of the candidate's book, "The Audacity of Hope," - is now at the center of a storm that would have destroyed the candidacy of any Republican the day the story broke.
Rev. Jeremiah Wright, pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago for the last 36 years, has been caught on tape denouncing the United States and the white race in terms that should shock and disgust every thinking American. Wright and the church swear allegiance to the "mother country" - Africa. (Presumably this includes the Obama family.)
Rather than trying to infuse his congregation with hope and encouragement, Wright poisons them with vitriol about how the U.S. government has tried to commit genocide against the black community using drugs and the AIDS virus as weapons of choice.
"Don't say God bless America," Wright screams in one sermon. "God damn America!"
Wright, representing the church, bestowed a lifetime achievement award on Louis Farrakhan, the racist leader of the Nation of Islam. In the 1980s, Wright traveled to Libya with Farrakhan to meet with Muammar Gaddafi.
If Barack Obama has not been paying attention in church, it is apparent that his wife, Michelle, has. Campaigning for her husband recently, she said that for the first time in her adult life, she is finally proud of her country. In a separate speech, she said America is "a mean country."
Obama is friends with William Ayers, an admitted domestic terrorist with the Weather Underground, which declared war on the United States and claimed responsibility for bombing several government buildings, including the Pentagon and the State Department building, in the 1970s. In an interview with The New York Times, ironically published on the morning of September 11, 2001, Ayers was quoted as saying, "I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do enough."
Now a tenured professor at the University of Chicago (only in America!), Ayers met Barack Obama in the 1990s. They have remained friends ever since.
We are judged not just by our words, but by the company we keep. The litmus test should not be whether or not everyone a candidate knows is ideal. That is an impossible standard. The true measure of a man is in his ability to choose friends with which he can be proud to stand shoulder to shoulder, not those about whom he must equivocate and for whom he must apologize.
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Doug Patton is a freelance columnist who has served as a political speechwriter and public policy advisor. His weekly columns are published in newspapers across the country and on selected Internet web sites, including Human Events Online, TheConservativeVoice.com and GOPUSA.com, where he is a senior writer and state editor. Readers may e-mail him at dougpatton@cox.net.
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http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=29309_Obamas_Church_Web_Site_Disappears_the_Black_Value_System_(Update-_They_Missed_a_PDF)&only
Redacted!
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Ah, if only I were a reporter at the press conference. "Senator Obama, if you are elected president, would you stop the US government from spreading the HIV virus to the African-American community?"
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120579535818243439.html
The Obama Bargain
By SHELBY STEELE
March 18, 2008
Geraldine Ferraro may have had sinister motives when she said that Barack Obama would not be "in his position" as a frontrunner but for his race. Possibly she was acting as Hillary Clinton's surrogate. Or maybe she was simply befuddled by this new reality -- in which blackness could constitute a political advantage.
AP
Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama, June 4, 2007.
But whatever her motives, she was right: "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position." Barack Obama is, of course, a very talented politician with a first-rate political organization at his back. But it does not detract from his merit to say that his race is also a large part of his prominence. And it is undeniable that something extremely powerful in the body politic, a force quite apart from the man himself, has pulled Obama forward. This force is about race and nothing else.
The novelty of Barack Obama is more his cross-racial appeal than his talent. Jesse Jackson displayed considerable political talent in his presidential runs back in the 1980s. But there was a distinct limit to his white support. Mr. Obama's broad appeal to whites makes him the first plausible black presidential candidate in American history. And it was Mr. Obama's genius to understand this. Though he likes to claim that his race was a liability to be overcome, he also surely knew that his race could give him just the edge he needed -- an edge that would never be available to a white, not even a white woman.
How to turn one's blackness to advantage?
The answer is that one "bargains." Bargaining is a mask that blacks can wear in the American mainstream, one that enables them to put whites at their ease. This mask diffuses the anxiety that goes along with being white in a multiracial society. Bargainers make the subliminal promise to whites not to shame them with America's history of racism, on the condition that they will not hold the bargainer's race against him. And whites love this bargain -- and feel affection for the bargainer -- because it gives them racial innocence in a society where whites live under constant threat of being stigmatized as racist. So the bargainer presents himself as an opportunity for whites to experience racial innocence.
This is how Mr. Obama has turned his blackness into his great political advantage, and also into a kind of personal charisma. Bargainers are conduits of white innocence, and they are as popular as the need for white innocence is strong. Mr. Obama's extraordinary dash to the forefront of American politics is less a measure of the man than of the hunger in white America for racial innocence.
His actual policy positions are little more than Democratic Party boilerplate and hardly a tick different from Hillary's positions. He espouses no galvanizing political idea. He is unable to say what he means by "change" or "hope" or "the future." And he has failed to say how he would actually be a "unifier." By the evidence of his slight political record (130 "present" votes in the Illinois state legislature, little achievement in the U.S. Senate) Barack Obama stacks up as something of a mediocrity. None of this matters much.
Race helps Mr. Obama in another way -- it lifts his political campaign to the level of allegory, making it the stuff of a far higher drama than budget deficits and education reform. His dark skin, with its powerful evocations of America's tortured racial past, frames the political contest as a morality play. Will his victory mean America's redemption from its racist past? Will his defeat show an America morally unevolved? Is his campaign a story of black overcoming, an echo of the civil rights movement? Or is it a passing-of-the-torch story, of one generation displacing another?
Because he is black, there is a sense that profound questions stand to be resolved in the unfolding of his political destiny. And, as the Clintons have discovered, it is hard in the real world to run against a candidate of destiny. For many Americans -- black and white -- Barack Obama is simply too good (and too rare) an opportunity to pass up. For whites, here is the opportunity to document their deliverance from the shames of their forbearers. And for blacks, here is the chance to document the end of inferiority. So the Clintons have found themselves running more against America's very highest possibilities than against a man. And the press, normally happy to dispel every political pretension, has all but quivered before Mr. Obama. They, too, have feared being on the wrong side of destiny.
And yet, in the end, Barack Obama's candidacy is not qualitatively different from Al Sharpton's or Jesse Jackson's. Like these more irascible of his forbearers, Mr. Obama's run at the presidency is based more on the manipulation of white guilt than on substance. Messrs. Sharpton and Jackson were "challengers," not bargainers. They intimidated whites and demanded, in the name of historical justice, that they be brought forward. Mr. Obama flatters whites, grants them racial innocence, and hopes to ascend on the back of their gratitude. Two sides of the same coin.
But bargainers have an Achilles heel. They succeed as conduits of white innocence only as long as they are largely invisible as complex human beings. They hope to become icons that can be identified with rather than seen, and their individual complexity gets in the way of this. So bargainers are always laboring to stay invisible. (We don't know the real politics or convictions of Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan or Oprah Winfrey, bargainers all.) Mr. Obama has said of himself, "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views . . ." And so, human visibility is Mr. Obama's Achilles heel. If we see the real man, his contradictions and bents of character, he will be ruined as an icon, as a "blank screen."
Thus, nothing could be more dangerous to Mr. Obama's political aspirations than the revelation that he, the son of a white woman, sat Sunday after Sunday -- for 20 years -- in an Afrocentric, black nationalist church in which his own mother, not to mention other whites, could never feel comfortable. His pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is a challenger who goes far past Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson in his anti-American outrage ("God damn America").
How does one "transcend" race in this church? The fact is that Barack Obama has fellow-traveled with a hate-filled, anti-American black nationalism all his adult life, failing to stand and challenge an ideology that would have no place for his own mother. And what portent of presidential judgment is it to have exposed his two daughters for their entire lives to what is, at the very least, a subtext of anti-white vitriol?
What could he have been thinking? Of course he wasn't thinking. He was driven by insecurity, by a need to "be black" despite his biracial background. And so fellow-traveling with a little race hatred seemed a small price to pay for a more secure racial identity. And anyway, wasn't this hatred more rhetorical than real?
But now the floodlight of a presidential campaign has trained on this usually hidden corner of contemporary black life: a mindless indulgence in a rhetorical anti-Americanism as a way of bonding and of asserting one's blackness. Yet Jeremiah Wright, splashed across America's television screens, has shown us that there is no real difference between rhetorical hatred and real hatred.
No matter his ultimate political fate, there is already enough pathos in Barack Obama to make him a cautionary tale. His public persona thrives on a manipulation of whites (bargaining), and his private sense of racial identity demands both self-betrayal and duplicity. His is the story of a man who flew so high, yet neglected to become himself.
Mr. Steele, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and the author of "A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win" (Free Press, 2007).
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Here's BO's speech in response to the gathering firestorm over his reverend's rabblerousing and related matters:
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OBAMA SPEECH IN FULL: A MORE PERFECT UNION
Tuesday, March 18th, 2008/ 10:17:53 ET
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”
Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.
The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.
Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.
And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.
This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.
This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.
I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.
It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.
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Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.
This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.
And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.
On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.
Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way
But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:
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“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”
That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.
Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.
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Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.
A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.
This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.
But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.
And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.
In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.
Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.
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This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.
But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.
For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.
Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.
The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.
In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
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That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.
This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.
I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.
There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.
There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.
And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.
She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.
She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.
Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.
Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”
“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
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But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/03/18/juan-williams-obama-avoided-responsibility/
Speaking truth to the panderers.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/03/18/obamas-speech-remainders/
Hypocrisy, thy name is Obama.
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Newt was on Hannity tonight so I recorded it so I could watch that segment. He pithily dissected the bimbette that Fox had as subsitute punching bag for Alan Colmes many times, including a comment that if BO had not spotted his Reverend's politics after 20 years he certainly wasn't ready to be President :lol:
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Discovering Obama
March 19, 2008; Page A16
The political tide for Barack Obama was inconceivable as recently as a few months ago, and it may still carry him into the White House. A mere three years out of the state legislature, the Illinois Senator has captured the Democratic imagination with his charisma, his silver tongue, and most of all, his claims to transcend the partisan and racial animosities of the day.
But the suddenness of Mr. Obama's rise allowed him, until recently, to evade the scrutiny that usually attends Presidential campaigns. If nothing else, the uproar over Reverend Jeremiah Wright has changed that. In Philadelphia yesterday, the Senator tried to explain his puzzling 20-year attendance at Reverend Wright's Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, while also using his nearly 5,000-word address to elaborate on the themes that have energized his candidacy. It was an instructive moment, though not always in the way the Senator intended.
AP
Mr. Obama, of course, is in the midst of a chiefly political crisis. No one honestly believes he shares his minister's rage, or his political and racial beliefs, which have been seen all over cable news and reveal a deep disgust with America. Mr. Obama's fault, rather, was to maintain a two-decade entanglement with Mr. Wright without ever seeming to harbor qualms about the causes espoused by his mentor and spiritual guide.
Such complacency couldn't simply be waved off, as the Senator tried initially to do, because it drills into the core of his political appeal: that he represents new thinking and an attempt to end cultural and racial polarization. Mr. Wright imperils the possibility inherent in the first black candidate who has a genuine shot at the Presidency, in part because race is only an element of the Senator's political character, not its definition.
So yesterday Mr. Obama sought to rehabilitate his image by distancing himself from Mr. Wright's race-paranoia. He talked about his own multiracial background -- son of a white mother and Kenyan father -- and said, "I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible."
Mr. Wright's remarks "expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country," Mr. Obama continued, and are "not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity" -- his way of broadening out the discussion to include his political message.
Less uplifting was his attempt to pair Mr. Wright's extremism with Geraldine Ferraro's recent remarks as "the other end" of the spectrum on race. Mr. Wright's sermons are rooted in a racial separatism and black liberation theology that is a distinct minority even among African-Americans. Ms. Ferraro was, at worst, saying that Mr. Obama is helped because many Americans want to vote for someone who is black.
It is also notable that Mr. Obama situated Mr. Wright within what the Senator sees as the continuing black-white conflict and the worst excesses of racial injustice like Jim Crow. He dwelled on a lack of funding for inner-city schools and a general "lack of economic opportunity." But Mr. Obama neglected the massive failures of the government programs that were supposed to address these problems, as well as the culture of dependency they ingrained. A genuine message of racial healing would also have given more credit to the real racial gains in American society over the last 40 years.
The Senator noted that the anger of his pastor "is real; it is powerful," and in fact it is mirrored in "white resentments." He then laid down a litany of American woe: "the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man who has been laid off," the "shuttered mill," those "without health care," the soldiers who have fought in "a war that never should have been authorized and never should've been waged," etc. Thus Mr. Obama's message is we "need unity" because all Americans are victims, racial and otherwise; he even mentioned working for change by "binding our particular grievances."
And the cause of all this human misery? Why, "a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many." Mr. Obama's villains, in other words, are the standard-issue populist straw men of Wall Street and the GOP, and his candidacy is a vessel for liberal policy orthodoxy -- raise taxes, "invest" more in social programs, restrict trade, retreat from Iraq.
Needless to say, this is not an agenda rooted in bipartisanship or even one that has captured a national Presidential majority in more than 40 years. It would be unfortunate if Mr. Obama's candidacy were toppled by racial neuroses, and his speech yesterday may have prevented that. But it also revealed the extent to which his ideas are neither new nor transcendent.
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March 20, 2008, 5:00 a.m.
The Wright Stand
Judgment, character and Barack Obama.
By Peter Wehner
Several years ago my wife and children attended a Presbyterian church in Washington, D.C. We liked and respected the senior pastor, we had close friends in the congregation, and we felt spiritually nourished by the congregants and the worship. Two of our children were baptized there.
Not long after the attacks of September 11, my wife and I heard two different visitors — one in remarks during a church service, the other while teaching an adult Sunday-school class — that were derogatory of and inflammatory toward Israel.
Upon hearing the words of these two people — which I found both shocking and disquieting — I immediately raised concerns with the senior pastor. He tried to reassure me and then put me in touch with an associate pastor who was in charge of a ministry to Palestinian Christians (one I had been previously unaware of). I engaged in conversations and written correspondence with the associate pastor and the head of the board of elders over this issue; in the process, I discovered that our church hosted an annual conference which featured only speakers who were highly critical of the state of Israel. For the first time it became clear to me that the church we attended was deeply biased against the Jewish state. When what we deemed to be adequate counter steps were not taken, we left the church, in good measure because of this matter and how it was handled.
I thought of this episode in our lives in the aftermath of learning about the bigoted and vicious anti-American statements by Barack Obama’s pastor, friend, and spiritual adviser, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr. of United Trinity Church of Christ.
I don’t for a moment believe that Senator Obama shares Wright’s manifold and manifest hatreds. What bothers me — particularly as one who has had good things to say about Obama in the past — is why Obama apparently never raised any concerns with Wright about his rhetoric or the black liberation theology being practiced at United Trinity. This was the obvious and appropriate thing to do.
Reverend Wright clearly preaches from a particular cast of mind, one with which Obama was surely familiar. If Obama isn’t willing to voice his concerns and objections with Wright and stand up for his country as it is being slandered by his pastor, what can we expect from Obama when he is asked to stand up against some of the world’s worst dictators?
The options aren’t particularly good for Senator Obama. He either agreed with the views and core beliefs of Reverend Wright, which would essentially disqualify him as a serious candidate for the presidency; or he didn’t agree with Wright but for decades sat passively by and accepted Wright’s teaching and rants. Didn’t Obama consider, even once, pulling Wright aside and pointing out — as any true friend would, in a civil but forceful way — that hailstones of hate simply have no place in a church and that the “social gospel” is not synonymous with preaching bigotry and anti-Americanism?
Beyond that, Senator Obama’s speech on Tuesday, for all the praise it has garnered in many quarters, created additional doubts about Obama’s candor and his willingness to speak up and speak out against a charismatic, forceful, and pernicious figure.
ABC News reports that earlier this month Obama, at a community meeting in Nelsonville, Ohio, said, “I don’t think my church is actually particularly controversial.” Obama went on to say, “[Wright] has said some things that are considered controversial because he’s considered that part of his social gospel; so he was one of the leaders in calling for divestment from South Africa and some other issues like that.”
Last Friday, as Senator Obama was making the round on cable TV trying to explain Wright’s remarks that were being replayed over and over again, Obama indicated that he had never heard his pastor of 20 years make any comments that were anti-American until last week. But in his Philadelphia speech two days ago, Senator Obama seemed to change his explanation:
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely — just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country.
This is where things begin to get sticky for Obama. In half-a-month we’ve gone from Wright and his church being essentially non-controversial; to Obama implying that the venomous statements by Wright came as news to him; to admitting that he was in the pews when Wright spoke as a “an occasionally fierce critic” of American domestic and foreign policy. Those remarks were so fierce that even Obama, himself an orthodox liberal who has scorched the Bush administration, was clearly made uncomfortable by what Wright said.
It also begs the question: What exactly did Wright say that Obama strongly disagreed with? Was Wright in fact presenting a “profoundly distorted view of this country”? The odds are a good deal better than even that he was. But Obama has yet to answer those questions — and he probably won’t, at least with any specificity, unless he’s forced to do so. This story, which seemingly changes in every re-telling, is beginning to resemble nothing so much as Bill Clinton’s evolving explanation about his draft notice. It was then that most of America was introduced to “Slick Willie.”
Senator Obama’s speech on Tuesday was a brilliant effort to deflect attention away from what remains the core issue: what did Obama hear, when did he hear it, and what did he do about it? The answers, as best we can tell at this stage, is that Obama heard some very harsh things said from the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ; that Obama heard them said a long time ago and probably repeatedly; and that he did little or nothing about it. This from a man who tells us at almost every stop along the campaign trail that he has the “judgment to lead.”
One always wants to be careful about making sweeping conclusions about any individual, particularly one as interesting and compelling as Senator Obama. All of us, in replaying our lives, would change certain things. We would all hope to show more integrity, more courage, more honor. Nevertheless, in a presidential campaign we have to judge based on the available evidence. And given his deep and long-standing association with Reverend Wright, it is fair to ask whether Senator Obama — a gifted writer and speaker and a man of obvious intelligence and appeal — has the appropriate judgment and character to lead this nation. Spending 20 years at Trinity United Church of Christ under the leadership of Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. doesn’t tell us everything we need to know about Barack Obama — but it may well tell us enough.
— Peter Wehner, former deputy assistant to the president, is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OTU2N2ViMGFkN2VmMzdmMTk1YzVlMDc0NzUyODQyMmQ=
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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oew-meyers20mar20,1,5615767.story?track=rss
From the Los Angeles Times
BLOWBACK
Obama blew it
What the candidate should have said about race.
By Michael Meyers
March 20, 2008
Tim Rutten's column, "Obama's Lincoln moment" and The Times editorial, "Obama on race" both miss the mark.
In my considered judgment as a race and civil rights specialist, I would say that Barack Obama's "momentous" speech on race settled on merely "explaining" so-called racial differences between blacks and whites -- and in so doing amplified deep-seated racial tensions and divisions. Instead of giving us a polarizing treatise on the "black experience," Obama should have reiterated the theme that has brought so many to his campaign: That race ain't what it used to be in America.
He should have presented us a pathway out of our racial boxes and a road map for new thinking about race. He should have depicted his minister, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., as a symbol of the dysfunctional angry men who are stuck in the past and who must yield to a new generation of color-blind, hopeful Americans and to a new global economy in which we will look on our neighbors' skin color no differently than how we look on their eye color.
In fact, I'd say that considering the nation's undivided attention to this all-important speech, which gave him an unrivaled opportunity to lift us out of racial and racist thinking, Obama blew it.
I waited in vain for our hybrid presidential candidate to speak the simple truth that there is no such thing as "race," that we all belong to the same race -- the human race. I waited for him to mesmerize us with a singular and focused appeal to hold all candidates to the same standards no matter their race or their sex or their age. But instead Obama gave us a full measure of racial rhetoric about how some of us with an "untrained ear" -- meaning whites and Asians and Latinos -- don't understand and can't relate to the so-called black experience.
Well, I am black, and I can't relate to a "black experience" that shields and explains old-style black ministers who rant and rave about supposed racial differences and about how America ought to be damned. I long ago broke away from all associations and churches that preached the gospel of hate and ethnic divisiveness -- including canceling my membership in 100 Black Men of America Inc., when they refused my motion to admit women and whites. They still don't. I was not going to stay in any group that assigned status or privileges of membership based solely on race or gender.
We and our leaders -- especially our candidates for the highest office in the land -- must repudiate all forms of racial idiocy and sexism, and be judged by whether we still belong to exclusionary or hateful groups. I don't know any church that respects, much less reflects, my personal beliefs in the absolute equality of all people, so I choose not to belong to any of them. And I would never -- as have some presidential candidates -- accept the endorsement of preachers of the gospel according to the most racist and sexist of doctrines.
But someone's race or religion is not mine or anybody else's concern. I couldn't care less that Wright is a Christian or that Louis Farrakhan professes to be a Muslim. I couldn't care less whether the hateful minister who endorsed John McCain is, deep inside, a decent man or a fundamentalist. But I do care about these pastors' divisive and crazed words; I do care that their "sermons" exploit and pander to the worst fears and passions of people based on perceptions and misperceptions about race. I hate that these preachers' sermons prejudge people's motives or behavior based on their race or ethnicity. I hate the haters, and I expected Obama to make a straightforward speech about what has become the Hate Hour -- and the most segregated hour -- in America on Sunday mornings.
I expected Obama, who up to now had been steering a perfect course away from the racial boxes of the past, to challenge racial labels and so-called black experiences. We're all mixed up, and if we haven't yet been by the process of miscegenation, trans-racial adoptions and interracial marriage, we sure ought to get used to how things will be in short order.
That would have been the forward-looking message of a visionary candidate. But Obama erred by looking backward -- as far back as slavery. What does slavery have to do with the price of milk at the grocery store? He referenced continuing segregation, especially segregated public schools, but stopped short. What is he going to do about them? How does he feel about public schools for black boys or single-sex public schools and classes? What does the gospel according to Wright say about such race-based and gender-specific schemes for getting around our civil rights laws?
We can't be united as a nation if we continue to think racially and give credence to racial experiences and differences based on ethnicity, past victim status and stereotypical categories. All of these prejudices surrounding tribe-against-tribe are old-hat and dysfunctional -- especially the rants of ministers, of whatever skin color or religion, who appeal to our base prejudices and to superstitions about our supposed racial differences. The man or woman who talks plainly about our commonality as a race of human beings, about our future as one nation indivisible, rather than about our discredited and disunited past, is, I predict, likely to finish ahead of the pack and do us a great public service.
Michael Meyers is executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition and a former assistant national director of the NAACP. These views are his own.
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Words fail , , ,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khuu-RhOBDU
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There is much I disagree with here, but I always consider what Peggy Noonan has to say-- especially so in this case; after all she was an outstanding speechwriter for Ronald Reagan-- which is why I suspect she is so soft on BO.
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A Thinking Man's Speech
March 21, 2008
I thought Barack Obama's speech was strong, thoughtful and important. Rather beautifully, it was a speech to think to, not clap to. It was clear that's what he wanted, and this is rare.
It seemed to me as honest a speech as one in his position could give within the limits imposed by politics. As such it was a contribution. We'll see if it was a success. The blowhard guild, proud member since 2000, praised it, and, in the biggest compliment, cable news shows came out of the speech not with jokes or jaded insiderism, but with thought. They started talking, pundits left and right, black and white, about what they'd experienced of race in America. It was kind of wonderful. I thought, Go, America, go, go.
You know what Mr. Obama said. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright was wrong. His sermons were "incendiary," and they "denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation." Mr. Obama admitted that if all he knew of Mr. Wright were what he saw on the "endless loop . . . of YouTube," he wouldn't like him either. But he's known him 20 years as a man who taught him Christian faith, helped the poor, served as a Marine, and leads a community helping the homeless, needy and sick. "As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me." He would not renounce their friendship.
Most significantly, Mr. Obama asserted that race in America has become a generational story. The original sin of slavery is a fact, but the progress we have lived through the past 50 years means each generation experiences race differently. Older blacks, like Mr. Wright, remember Jim Crow and were left misshapen by it. Some rose anyway, some did not; of the latter, a "legacy of defeat" went on to misshape another generation. The result: destructive anger that is at times "exploited by politicians" and that can keep African-Americans "from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition." But "a similar anger exists within segments of the white community." He speaks of working- and middle-class whites whose "experience is the immigrant experience," who started with nothing. "As far as they're concerned, no one handed them anything, they've built it from scratch." "So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town," when they hear of someone receiving preferences they never received, and "when they're told their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced," they feel anger too.
This is all, simply, true. And we are not used to political figures being frank, in this way, in public. For this Mr. Obama deserves deep credit. It is also true the particular whites Obama chose to paint -- ethnic, middle class -- are precisely the voters he needs to draw in Pennsylvania. It was strategically clever. But as one who witnessed busing in Boston first hand, and whose memories of those days can still bring tears, I was glad for his admission that busing was experienced as an injustice by the white working class. Next step: admitting it was an injustice, period.
* * *
The primary rhetorical virtue of the speech can be found in two words, endemic and Faulkner. Endemic is the kind of word political consultants don't let politicians use because 72% of Americans don't understand it. This lowest-common-denominator thinking, based on dizzy polling, has long degraded American discourse. When Obama said Mr. Wright wrongly encouraged "a view that sees white racism as endemic," everyone understood. Because they're not, actually, stupid. As for Faulkner -- well, this was an American politician quoting William Faulkner: "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." This is a thought, an interesting one, which means most current politicians would never share it.
The speech assumed the audience was intelligent. This was a compliment, and I suspect was received as a gift. It also assumed many in the audience were educated. I was grateful for this, as the educated are not much addressed in American politics.
Here I point out an aspect of the speech that may have a beneficial impact on current rhetoric. It is assumed now that a candidate must say a silly, boring line -- "And families in Michigan matter!" or "What I stand for is affordable quality health care!" -- and the audience will clap. The line and the applause make, together, the eight-second soundbite that will be used tonight on the news, and seen by the people. This has been standard politico-journalistic procedure for 20 years.
Mr. Obama subverted this in his speech. He didn't have applause lines. He didn't give you eight seconds of a line followed by clapping. He spoke in full and longish paragraphs that didn't summon applause. This left TV producers having to use longer-than-usual soundbites in order to capture his meaning. And so the cuts of the speech you heard on the news were more substantial and interesting than usual, which made the coverage of the speech better. People who didn't hear it but only saw parts on the news got a real sense of what he'd said.
If Hillary or John McCain said something interesting, they'd get more than an eight-second cut too. But it works only if you don't write an applause-line speech. It works only if you write a thinking speech.
They should try it.
* * *
Here's what didn't work. Near the end of the speech, Mr. Obama painted an America that didn't summon thoughts of Faulkner but of William Blake. The bankruptcies, the dark satanic mills, the job loss and corporate corruptions. There is of course some truth in his portrait, but why do appeals to the Democratic base have to be so unrelievedly, so unrealistically, bleak?
This connected in my mind to the persistent feeling one has -- the fear one has, actually -- that the Obamas, he and she, may not actually know all that much about America. They are bright, accomplished, decent, they know all about the yuppie experience, the buppie experience, Ivy League ways, networking. But they bring along with all this -- perhaps defensively, to keep their ideological views from being refuted by the evidence of their own lives, or so as not to be embarrassed about how nice fame, success, and power are -- habitual reversions to how tough it is to be in America, and to be black in America, and how everyone since the Reagan days has been dying of nothing to eat, and of exploding untreated diseases. America is always coming to them on crutches.
But most people didn't experience the past 25 years that way. Because it wasn't that way. Do the Obamas know it?
This is a lot of baggage to bring into the Executive Mansion.
Still, it was a good speech, and a serious one. I don't know if it will help him. We're in uncharted territory. We've never had a major-party presidential front-runner who is black, or rather black and white, who has given such an address. We don't know if more voters will be alienated by Mr. Wright than will be impressed by the speech about Mr. Wright. We don't know if voters will welcome a meditation on race. My sense: The speech will be labeled by history as the speech that saved a candidacy or the speech that helped do it in. I hope the former.
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As a speech writer, Peggy Noonan is impressed mostly with the speech, given the situation Obama was in. She doesn't address the underlying problems that a) Wright's form of hate speech is popular with a segment and b) Obama chose to associate himself and his family with it. Or that he threw his Grandmother who chose to raise him 'under the bus' in the speech and called her "a typical white woman" in a radio interview since.
Another view:
Obama's Speech
By Thomas Sowell
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Did Senator Barack Obama's speech in Philadelphia convince people that he is still a viable candidate to be President of the United States, despite the adverse reactions to statements by his pastor, Jeremiah Wright?
The polls and the primaries will answer that question.
The great unasked question for Senator Obama is the question that was asked about President Nixon during the Watergate scandal; What did he know and when did he know it?
Although Senator Obama would now have us believe that he is shocked, shocked, at what Jeremiah Wright said, that he was not in the church when pastor Wright said those things from the pulpit, this still leaves the question of why he disinvited Wright from the event at which he announced his candidacy for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination a year ago.
Either Barack Obama or his staff must have known then that Jeremiah Wright was not someone whom they wanted to expose to the media and to the media scrutiny to which that could lead.
Why not, if it is only now that Senator Obama is learning for the first time, to his surprise, what kinds of things Jeremiah Wright has been saying and doing?
No one had to be in church the day Wright made his inflammatory and obscene remarks to know about them.
The cable news journalists who are playing the tapes of those sermons were not there. The tapes were on sale in the church itself. Obama knew that because he had bought one or more of those tapes.
But even if there were no tapes, and even if Obama never heard from other members of the church what their pastor was saying, he spent 20 years in that church, not just as an ordinary member but also as someone who once donated $20,000 to the church.
There was no way that he didn't know about Jeremiah Wright's anti-American and racist diatribes from the pulpit.
Someone once said that a con man's job is not to convince skeptics but to enable people to continue to believe what they already want to believe.
Accordingly, Obama's Philadelphia speech -- a theatrical masterpiece -- will probably reassure most Democrats and some other Obama supporters. They will undoubtedly say that we should now "move on," even though many Democrats have still not yet moved on from George W. Bush's 2000 election victory.
Like the Soviet show trials during their 1930s purges, Obama's speech was not supposed to convince critics but to reassure supporters and fellow-travelers, in order to keep the "useful idiots" useful.
Best-selling author Shelby Steele's recent book on Barack Obama ("A Bound Man") has valuable insights into both the man and the circumstances facing many other blacks -- especially those who were never part of the black ghetto culture but who feel a need to identify with it for either personal, political or financial reasons.
Like religious converts who become more Catholic than the Pope, such people often become blacker-than-thou. For whatever reason, Barack Obama chose a black extremist church decades ago -- even though there was no shortage of very different churches, both black and white -- in Chicago.
Some say that he was trying to earn credibility on the ghetto streets, to facilitate his work as a community activist or for his political career. We may never know why.
But now that Barack Obama is running for a presidential nomination, he is doing so on a radically different basis, as a post-racial candidate uniquely prepared to bring us all together.
Yet the past continues to follow him, despite his attempts to bury it and the mainstream media's attempts to ignore it or apologize for it.
Shelby Steele depicts Barack Obama as a man without real convictions, "an iconic figure who neglected to become himself."
Senator Obama has been at his best as an icon, able with his command of words to meet other people's psychic needs, including a need to dispel white guilt by supporting his candidacy.
But President of the United States, in a time of national danger, under a looming threat of nuclear terrorism? No.
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http://michellemalkin.com/2008/03/22/where-will-obama-be-for-easter/
Religious experience.
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I find myself riffing in my head on this little episode on BO's ability to deal with extremism in his own church as a parable for his probably approach to dealing with Muslim extremism.
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Train-wreck.
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March 24, 2008, 5:00 a.m.
The Obama Crash and Burn
If he acts as if the Wright controversy is behind him, it's over for Obama.
By Victor Davis Hanson
The latest polls reflecting Obama’s near-collapse should serve as a morality tale of John Edwards’s two Americas — the political obtuseness of the intellectual elite juxtaposed to the common sense of the working classes.
For some bizarre reason, Obama aimed his speech at winning praise from National Public Radio, the New York Times, and Harvard, and solidifying an already 90-percent solid African-American base — while apparently insulting the intelligence of everyone else.
Indeed, the more op-eds and pundits praised the courage of Barack Obama, the more the polls showed that there was a growing distrust that the eloquent and inspirational candidate has used his great gifts, in the end, to excuse the inexcusable.
The speech and Obama’s subsequent interviews neither explained his disastrous association with Wright, nor dared open up a true discussion of race — which by needs would have to include, in addition to white racism, taboo subjects ranging from disproportionate illegitimacy and drug usage to higher-than-average criminality to disturbing values espoused in rap music and unaddressed anti-Semitism. We learn now that Obama is the last person who wants to end the establishment notion that a few elite African Americans negotiate with liberal white America over the terms of grievance and entitlement — without which all of us really would be transracial persons, in which happiness and gloom hinge, and are seen to do so, on one’s own individual success or failure.
Instead there were the tired platitudes, evasions, and politicking. The intelligentsia is well aware of how postmodern cultural equivalence, black liberation theory, and moral relativism seeped into Obama’s speech, and thus was not offended by an “everybody does it” and “who’s to judge?/eye of the beholder” defense. But to most others the effect was Clintonian. Somehow Obama could not just say,
There is nothing to be offered for Rev. Wright except my deepest apologies for not speaking out against his venom far earlier. We in the African-American community know better than anyone the deleterious effects of racist speech, and so it is time for Rev. Wright and myself to part company, since we have profoundly different views of both present- and future-day America.
The more the pundits gushed about the speech, the more the average Americans thought, “Wait a minute — did he just say what I thought he said?” It’s not lost on Joe Q. Public that Obama justified Wright’s racism by offering us a “landmark” speech on race that:
(1) Compared Wright’s felony to the misdemeanors of his grandmother, Geraldine Ferraro, the Reagan Coalition, corporate culture, and the kitchen sink.
(2) Established the precedent that context excuses everything, in the sense that what good a Wright did (or an Imus did) in the past outweighs any racist outburst of the present.
(3) Claimed that the voice of the oppressed is not to be judged by the same rules of censure as the dominant majority that has no similar claim on victim status.
What is happening, ever so slowly, is that the public is beginning to realize that it knows even less after the speech than it did before about what exactly Obama knew (and when) about Wright’s racism and hatred.
Even elites will wake up to the fact that they’ve been had, in a sense, once they deconstruct the speech carefully and fathom that their utopian candidate just may have managed to destroy what was once a near-certain Democratic sweep in the fall. And a number of African-Americans will come to resent that they are being lumped into a majority akin to the Rev. Wright, millions of whom the majestic Sen. Obama has nobly chosen not to “disown,” despite their apparently similar embarrassing racialism.
Over the past four days, I asked seven or eight random (Asian, Mexican-American, and working-class white) Americans in southern California what they thought of Obama’s candidacy — and framed the question with, “Don’t you think that was a good speech?” The answers, without exception, were essentially: “Forget the speech. I would never vote for Obama after listening to Wright.” In some cases, the reaction was not mild disappointment, but unprintable outrage.
The blame, such as it is, for all this goes to the Obama campaign “pros,” who, in their apparent arrogance over Obamania (a phenomenon due to the candidate’s charisma, not their own savvy), simply went to sleep and let the senator and his wife resort to their natural self-indulgence — itself the offspring of the Obamas’ privilege and insularity. Any amateur handler could have scanned that speech and taken out just 8-10 phrases, called for a tougher stance on Wright, a genuine apology, and put the issue behind them.
Now it’s too late. Like Hillary’s tear, one only gets a single chance at mea culpa and staged vulnerability — and he blew it.
Where are we now? At the most fascinating juncture in the last 50 years of primary-election history.
Superdelegates can’t “steal” the election from Obama’s lock on the delegate count. And they can’t easily debase themselves by abandoning Obama after their recent televised confessionals about abandoning Hillary.
But they can count and compute — and must try to deal with these facts:
(1) Obama is crashing in all the polls, especially against McCain, against whom he doesn’t stack up well, given McCain’s heroic narrative, the upswing in Iraq, and the past distance between McCain and the Bush administration;
(2) Hillary may not just win, but win big in Pennsylvania (and maybe the other states as well), buttressing her suddenly not-so-tired argument about her success in the mega-, in-play purple states. Michigan and Florida that once would have been lost by Hillary in a fair election, now would be fairly won — and Clinton is as willing to replay both as Obama suddenly is not; and
(3) The sure thing of Democrats winning big in the House and Senate is now in danger of a scenario in which a would-be Senator or Representative explains all autumn long that the party masthead really does not like Rev. Wright, whose massive corpus of buffoonery no doubt is still to be mined. (The problem was never “snippets,” but entire speeches devoted to hatred and anger, often carefully outlined in a point-by-point format).
What is the remedy?
I would go buy about 10,000 American flags to blanket every Obama appearance, have a 4x4 lapel-button flag custom-made for the senator, have Michelle finish every appearance by leading a chorus of “God Bless America,” draft every middle-of-the-road crusty drawling Democratic veteran (the knightly Harris Wofford doesn’t cut it) to criss-cross the country — and try to Trotskyize Rev. Wright from the campaign.
Oh, and no need for any more Obama half-conversations about race and “typical white person” clarifications. All that does far more damage to the country than even to Obama himself.
— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and author, most recently, of A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NjBjODFmNmMxZWU2ZGE5YjBhMjZlYmQ2MmM2MzNiZTc=
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The Inkblot
By JAMES TARANTO
March 24, 2008
On Friday we noted that Barack Obama's "spiritual mentor," the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, had reprinted a Hamas op-ed in his church bulletin. It turns out that Obama issued a quiet condemnation of Wright's editorial decision, as the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports:
"I have already condemned my former pastor's views on Israel in the strongest possible terms, and I certainly wasn't in church when that outrageously wrong Los Angeles Times piece was re-printed in the bulletin," Obama said in a statement emailed to JTA late Thursday, and referring to critics who noted that Obama had been in church when Wright had made controversial statements. "Hamas is a terrorist organization, responsible for the deaths of many innocents, and dedicated to Israel's destruction, as evidenced by their bombarding of Sderot in recent months. I support requiring Hamas to meet the international community's conditions of recognizing Israel, renouncing violence, and abiding by past agreements before they are treated as a legitimate actor."
That could hardly be clearer, could it? But a year-old article from ElectronicIntifada.com suggests that Obama has, fairly recently, held views on the subject that are completely at variance with those he now espouses. The author, Ali Abunimah, is a co-founder of the site:
I first met Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama almost ten years ago when, as my representative in the Illinois state senate, he came to speak at the University of Chicago. He impressed me as progressive, intelligent and charismatic. I distinctly remember thinking "if only a man of this calibre could become president one day." . . .
Over the years since I first saw Obama speak I met him about half a dozen times, often at Palestinian and Arab-American community events in Chicago including a May 1998 community fundraiser at which Edward Said was the keynote speaker. In 2000, when Obama unsuccessfully ran for Congress I heard him speak at a campaign fundraiser hosted by a University of Chicago professor. On that occasion and others Obama was forthright in his criticism of US policy and his call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
The last time I spoke to Obama was in the winter of 2004 at a gathering in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. He was in the midst of a primary campaign to secure the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat he now occupies. But at that time polls showed him trailing.
As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, "Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front." He referred to my activism, including columns I was contributing to the The [sic] Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and US policy, "Keep up the good work!"
Abunimah argued that Obama, in an effort "to woo wealthy pro-Israel campaign donors," had made an "about-face":
He is merely doing what he thinks is necessary to get elected and he will continue doing it as long as it keeps him in power.
It is possible that Obama had a sincere change of heart--that he came to see the merits of the Israeli side of the argument. It is also possible that Obama has no sincere views on the subject--that when he was traveling in radical-chic Chicago circles, he told people like Abunimah what they wanted to hear, and now that he has gone national, he has switched to telling a more mainstream Democratic constituency what it wants to hear.
But what does Obama really believe--about the Middle East, about Wright's "black liberation theology" or about any other complicated and sensitive topic? The question is a Rorschach inkblot; the answer reveals more about one's emotional response to Obama than about Obama's intellectual response to the world.
If Obama makes you feel good about yourself, you will give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that his beliefs are similar to yours. See, for example, Obama enthusiast Marty Peretz expounding on Obama's sympathy for the Jewish state, or Douglas Kmiec, a judicial conservative and onetime Romney adviser, explaining that even though Obama has shown no sign of agreeing with him on "important fundamentals," he is "convinced based upon [Obama's] public pronouncements and his personal writing that on each of these questions he is not closed to understanding opposing points of view, and as best as it is humanly possible, he will respect and accommodate them."
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Blind Faith
The statements of clergymen like Jeremiah Wright aren't controversial and incendiary; they're wicked and stupid.
By Christopher Hitchens
It's been more than a month since I began warning Sen. Barack Obama that he would become answerable for his revolting choice of a family priest. But never mind that; the astonishing thing is that it's at least 11 months since he himself has known precisely the same thing. "If Barack gets past the primary," said the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to the New York Times in April of last year, "he might have to publicly distance himself from me. I said it to Barack personally, and he said yeah, that might have to happen." Pause just for a moment, if only to admire the sheer calculating self-confidence of this. Sen. Obama has long known perfectly well, in other words, that he'd one day have to put some daylight between himself and a bigmouth Farrakhan fan. But he felt he needed his South Side Chicago "base" in the meantime. So he coldly decided to double-cross that bridge when he came to it. And now we are all supposed to marvel at the silky success of the maneuver.
You often hear it said, of some political or other opportunist, that he would sell his own grandmother if it would suit his interests. But you seldom, if ever, see this notorious transaction actually being performed, which is why I am slightly surprised that Obama got away with it so easily. (Yet why do I say I am surprised? He still gets away with absolutely everything.)
Looking for a moral equivalent to a professional demagogue who thinks that AIDS and drugs are the result of a conspiracy by the white man, Obama settled on an 85-year-old lady named Madelyn Dunham, who spent a good deal of her youth helping to raise him and who now lives alone and unwell in a condo in Honolulu. It would be interesting to know whether her charismatic grandson made her aware that he was about to touch her with his grace and make her famous in this way. By sheer good fortune, she, too, could be a part of it all and serve her turn in the great enhancement.
This flabbergasting process, made up of glibness and ruthlessness in equal proportions, rolls on unstoppably with a phalanx of reporters and men of the cloth as its accomplices. Look at the accepted choice of words for the ravings of Jeremiah Wright: controversial, incendiary, inflammatory. These are adjectives that might have been—and were—applied to many eloquent speakers of the early civil rights movement. (In the Washington Post, for Good Friday last, the liberal Catholic apologist E.J. Dionne lamely attempted to stretch this very comparison.) But is it "inflammatory" to say that AIDS and drugs are wrecking the black community because the white power structure wishes it? No. Nor is it "controversial." It is wicked and stupid and false to say such a thing. And it not unimportantly negates everything that Obama says he stands for by way of advocating dignity and responsibility over the sick cults of paranoia and victimhood.
That same supposed message of his is also contradicted in a different way by trying to put Geraldine Ferraro on all fours with a thug like Obama's family "pastor." Ferraro may have sounded sour when she asserted that there can be political advantages to being black in the United States—and she said the selfsame thing about Jesse Jackson in 1984—but it's perfectly arguable that what she said is, in fact, true, and even if it isn't true, it's absurd to try and classify it as a racist remark. No doubt Obama's slick people were looking for a revenge for Samantha Power (who, incidentally, ought never to have been let go for the useful and indeed audacious truths that she uttered in Britain), but their news-cycle solution was to cover their own queasy cowardice in that case by feigning outrage in the Ferraro matter. The consequence, which you can already feel, is an inchoate resentment among many white voters who are damned if they will be called bigots by a man who associates with Jeremiah Wright. So here we go with all that again. And this is the fresh, clean, new post-racial politics?
Now, by way of which vent or orifice is this venom creeping back into our national bloodstream? Where is hatred and tribalism and ignorance most commonly incubated, and from which platform is it most commonly yelled? If you answered "the churches" and "the pulpits," you got both answers right. The Ku Klux Klan (originally a Protestant identity movement, as many people prefer to forget) and the Nation of Islam (a black sectarian mutation of Quranic teaching) may be weak these days, but bigotry of all sorts is freely available, and openly inculcated into children, by any otherwise unemployable dirtbag who can perform the easy feat of putting Reverend in front of his name. And this clerical vileness has now reached the point of disfiguring the campaigns of both leading candidates for our presidency. If you think Jeremiah Wright is gruesome, wait until you get a load of the next Chicago "Reverend," one James Meeks, another South Side horror show with a special sideline in the baiting of homosexuals. He, too, has been an Obama supporter, and his church has been an occasional recipient of Obama's patronage. And perhaps he, too, can hope to be called "controversial" for his use of the term house nigger to describe those he doesn't like and for his view that it was "the Hollywood Jews" who brought us Brokeback Mountain. Meanwhile, the Republican nominee adorns himself with two further reverends: one named John Hagee, who thinks that the pope is the Antichrist, and another named Rod Parsley, who has declared that the United States has a mission to obliterate Islam. Is it conceivable that such repellent dolts would be allowed into public life if they were not in tax-free clerical garb? How true it is that religion poisons everything.
And what a shame. I assume you all have your copies of The Audacity of Hope in paperback breviary form. If you turn to the chapter entitled "Faith," beginning on Page 195, and read as far as Page 208, I think that even if you don't concur with my reading, you may suspect that I am onto something. In these pages, Sen. Obama is telling us that he doesn't really have any profound religious belief, but that in his early Chicago days he felt he needed to acquire some spiritual "street cred." The most excruciatingly embarrassing endorsement of this same viewpoint came last week from Abigail Thernstrom at National Review Online. Overcome by "the speech" that the divine one had given in Philadelphia, she urged us to be understanding. "Obama's description of the parishioners in his church gave white listeners a glimpse of a world of faith (with 'raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor … dancing, clapping, screaming, and shouting') that has been the primary means of black survival and uplift." A glimpse, huh? What the hell next? A tribute to the African-American sense of rhythm?
To have accepted Obama's smooth apologetics is to have lowered one's own pre-existing standards for what might constitute a post-racial or a post-racist future. It is to have put that quite sober and realistic hope, meanwhile, into untrustworthy and unscrupulous hands. And it is to have done this, furthermore, in the service of blind faith. Mark my words: This disappointment is only the first of many that are still to come.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the author of God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/03/26/some-obama-fabulism-as-well/
Some Obama fabulism as well?
POSTED AT 11:30 AM ON MARCH 26, 2008 BY ED MORRISSEY
We have had a field day with the Tuzla Dash and the exposure of Hillary Clinton as a fabulist over the last few days, although I have been writing about this since December. In truth, though, finding a Clinton untruth is something akin to shooting fish in a barrel. At this stage, political investors have, as they say in Wall Street, factored dishonesty into the Clinton stock price.
However, Barack Obama has promised a new kind of politics. Unfortunately, he has the same problems with calculating birth dates as Hillary does. In his speech commemorating the 42nd anniversary of the march on Selma, Alabama, he credited the march with his existence — even though he was almost 4 years old at the time:
What happened in Selma, Alabama and Birmingham also stirred the conscience of the nation. It worried folks in the White House who said, “You know, we’re battling Communism. How are we going to win hearts and minds all across the world? If right here in our own country, John, we’re not observing the ideals set fort in our Constitution, we might be accused of being hypocrites.” So the Kennedy’s decided we’re going to do an air lift. We’re going to go to Africa and start bringing young Africans over to this country and give them scholarships to study so they can learn what a wonderful country America is.
This young man named Barack Obama got one of those tickets and came over to this country. He met this woman whose great great-great-great-grandfather had owned slaves; but she had a good idea there was some craziness going on because they looked at each other and they decided that we know that the world as it has been it might not be possible for us to get together and have a child. There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Alabama, because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born. So don’t tell me I don’t have a claim on Selma, Alabama. Don’t tell me I’m not coming home to Selma, Alabama.
The first march on Selma took place on March 7, 1965 (there were three of them). At the time, Barack Obama was three and a half years old. Now, Obama also mentions the Birmingham march as part of this speech — but that took place in May 1963. Obama would have been 20 months old when Dr. King led that demonstration.
That’s not the only bit of fabulism here. Obama’s birthdate is August 4, 1961. It doesn’t take a doctor or a math whiz to calculate his conception as sometime in 1960 — before John Kennedy took office. In fact, it might have taken place on Election Day, when Kennedy won the presidency. That would tend to indicate that Mom and Dad met sometime before the African airlift that Obama credits for his birth.
So what does that mean? It could mean that his father and mother found hope in America even before the election of John Kennedy. It might mean that hope and change had already started because a broad class of Americans had already found racism intolerable and had started working to end it. It certainly doesn’t mean that Obama owes his existence to the marches on Selma and Birmingham, and his appropriation of those marches reeks of something other than hope, change, or “new politics”.
Perhaps the Democrats need to add positions to the staff of presidential candidates, just to handle the difficult task of calculating birth dates and world events. Between Obama’s Selma conception and Hillary’s Mount Everest naming, the Democrats look hopelessly inept at history on both a global and personal scale. (h/t: HA reader Stoo)
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BO's paternal grandmother
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/27/obamas-grandmother-in-al_n_93792.html
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Where Does Obama Invest His Money?
March 27, 2008 10:26 p.m.
Barack Obama gave a major economic speech Thursday in New York, where the financial markets have been rattled in recent weeks, to put it mildly. That makes it all the more curious that Mr. Obama's tax returns, which he released this week, apparently show that he and his wife Michelle have next to no stake in the investor class.
Ryan Ellis of the American Shareholders Association has examined the Obama returns for calendar years 2001 to 2006 and found that, in all of those years, the couple reported a mere $1,188 in dividends in 2006 and another $2,754 in dividends in 2005. In the previous years, they reported no dividends of any kind.
Indeed, even though Michelle Obama had income from the University of Chicago's Hospital System that exceeded $1 million during the period the tax returns were filed, she appears to have neither a 401(k) plan nor an IRA for retirement contributions. In another sign the Obama household wasn't into building a nest egg, the couple cashed out $6,260 from a pension or 401(k) plan in 2000.
Given all this, Mr. Ellis asks why the Senator is so "hell-bent on pursuing punitive taxes on capital that would wreck America's retirement savings?" His answer: Perhaps it's "because, by and large, he doesn't have any skin in the game."
-- John Fund
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I came across two negative pieces about Obama that I hesitantly share here. First is a site called http://www.audacityofhypocrisy.com/?page_id=15 which has a 68 item list of statements where they think the candidate is less than fully forthcoming (okay, they use the word 'liar' quite a bit). Second is a cute video that takes Obama to task on 5 of his claims: http://www.townhall.com/video/TheFivewithAmandaCarpenter/1450_033108Five
Even if each of these claims is somewhat petty by today's political standards, you can't IMO avoid seeing that this candidate is a more-of-the same politician, not something new. Worst case is that something from Rezko to Rev. Wright or something we don't know yet will bring him down - like so many others.
Speaking of audacity, if Hillary Clinton had moved to her real home state of Illinois instead of becoming a pretend-Yankee fan, she wouldn't likely have Senator Obama to deny her now.
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I'm on lousy connection during a very busy few days, so I have not had time to read the URLs in Doug's post; I post only to note that I have read that BO has once again come out against CCW. :x :x :x
Also here is this-- of which I have no idea what to make:
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Stalking Jim Scoutten
Posts: 81
Interesting Article on Obama...
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Interesting article in IsraaelInsider...
Is Barack Obama a Muslim wolf in Christian wool?
By Reuven Koret March 27, 2008
The glib handling of criticism of his relationship with the anti-American ("God Damn America!") and anti-Israel ("a dirty word for Negroes") Reverend James Wright may have bought him a little time. But the legacy of dissimulation about his long-concealed identity is about to come crashing down around the ears of Barack Hussein Obama, courtesy of the assembled testimony of his family, friends, classmates and teachers.
The accumulated research indicates that Obama was in his childhood a devout Muslim, the son of a devout Muslim, the step-son of a devout Muslim and the grandson and namesake ("Hussein") of a devout Muslim. He was registered in school as a Muslim and demonstrated his ability to chant praise to Allah in impressive Arab-accented tones even as an adult. Just as he has not disavowed his "uncle" Jeremiah, neither has he disavowed his Muslim faith that he was born into, raised with, celebrated and never abandoned. He just covered it over with a thin veneer of his own self-styled "Christianity."
Although as an adult he would register as a Christian, and occasionally attend a Christian Church (but apparently not often enough to listen to the preaching of his pastor, or so he would claim) this was a necessary step for a man who from earliest boyhood has nurtured the precocious ambition to be President of the United States.
He was entered into the Roman Catholic, Franciscus Assisi Primary School, in Jakarta, Indonesia, on January 1, 1968, registered under the name Barry Soetoro, an Indonesian citizen whose religion was listed as Islam. Catholic schools accept non-Catholics worldwide. Non-Catholic students are typically excused from religious instruction and ceremony.
In kindergarten, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled 'I Want to Become President.'"Iis Darmawan, 63, Senator Obama's kindergarten teacher, remembers him as an exceptionally tall and curly haired child who quickly picked up the local language and had sharp math skills. He wrote an essay titled, 'I Want To Become President,' the teacher said." [AP, 1/25/07]
Three years later, in 1971, Obama enrolled in the Besuki Primary School, a government school, as Barry Soetoro, Muslim. In third grade, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled 'I Want To Be a President.' His third grade teacher: Fermina Katarina Sinaga "asked her class to write an essay titled 'My dream: What I want to be in the future.' Senator Obama wrote 'I want to be a President,' she said." [The Los Angeles Times, 3/15/07]
All Indonesian students are required to study religion at school and a young Barry Soetoro, being a Muslim, would have been required to study Islam daily in school.
He would have been taught to read and write Arabic, to recite his prayers properly, to read and recite from the Quran and to study the laws of Islam.
In his autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," Obama mentions studying the Koran and describes the public school as "a Muslim school."
"In the Muslim school, the teacher wrote to tell mother I made faces during Koranic studies."
According to Tine Hahiyary, one of Obama's teachers and the principal from 1971 through 1989, Barry actively took part in the Islamic religious lessons during his time at the school. "I remembered that he had studied "mengaji" (recitation of the Quran)" Tine said.
The author of the Laotze blog writes from Jakarta: "The actual usage of the word 'mengaji' in Indonesian and Malaysian societies means the study of learning to recite the Quran in the Arabic language rather than the native tongue. "Mengagi" is a word and a term that is accorded the highest value and status in the mindset of fundamentalist societies here in Southeast Asia. To put it quite simply, 'mengaji classes' are not something that a non practicing or so-called moderate Muslim family would ever send their child to. To put this in a Christian context, this is something above and beyond simply enrolling your child in Sunday school classes."
"The fact that Obama had attended mengaji classes is well known in Indonesia and has left many there wondering just when Obama is going to come out of the closet."
"As I've stated before, the evidence seems to quite clearly show that both Ann Dunham and her husband Lolo Soetoro Mangunharjo were in fact devout Muslims themselves and they raised their son as such."
The Obama Campaign told the LA Times he wasn't a "practicing Muslim." (3/14/2007). But his official website says: "Obama Has Never Been A Muslim, And Is a Committed Christian" (11/12/2007)
That's not what his friends and classmates have said. Classmate Rony Amiris describes young Barry as enjoying playing football and marbles and of being a very devout Muslim. Amir said, "Barry was previously quite religious in Islam. We previously often asked him to the prayer room close to the house. If he was wearing a sarong, he looked funny," said Rony.
Amiris, now the manager of Bank Mandiri, Jakarta, recently said, "Barry was previously quite religious in Islam. His birth father, Barack Hussein Obama was a Muslim economist from Kenya. Before marrying Ann Dunham, Hussein Obama was married to a woman from Kenya who had seven children. All the relatives of Barry's father were very devout Muslims"
Emirsyah Satar, CEO of Garuda Indonesia, was quoted as saying, "He (Obama) was often in the prayer room wearing a 'sarong', at that time."
"He was quite religious in Islam but only after marrying Michelle, he changed his religion."
So Obama, according to his classmates and friends was a Muslim until the confluence of love and ambitious, caused him to adopt the cloak of Christianity: to marry Michelle and to run for President of the United States.
In "Dreams," Obama sheds light on his formative years and the political views of his mother, an anthropologist and Islamophile who hated America and subsequently "went native." (It was her mother -- Barry's "other" grandmother who cared for him in his druggie teenage years -- that he would describe as a "typical white person" who was, he said scoldingly, fearful of black men and prone to making stereotypical racial remarks.)
Obama Senior also had three sons by another woman who are all Muslim. Although Obama claims Senior was an atheist, Senior was buried as a Muslim.
Barack Obama's brother Roy opted for Islam over Christianity, as the Senator recounted in his book when describing his 1992 wedding. "The person who made me proudest of all," Obama wrote, "was Roy. Actually, now we call him Abongo, his Luo name, for two years ago he decided to reassert his African heritage. He converted to Islam, and has sworn off pork and tobacco and alcohol."Abongo "argues that the black man must "liberate himself from the poisoning influences of European culture." He urged his younger brother to embrace his African heritage.
In Kenya while he was a Senator, Obama stumped for his cousin, opposition leader Raila Odinga, the son of Senior's sister, a direct first cousin and nephew of Obama's father.
On August 29, 2007, Raila Odinga and Shiekh Abdullah Abdi, chairman of the National Muslim Leaders Forum of Kenya signed a Memorandum of Understanding in which it pledges the support of Kenyan Moslems for Raila's election. In return, as President of Kenya, Raila agrees ... within 6 months re-write the Constitution of Kenya to recognize Shariah as the only true law sanctioned by the Holy Quran for Muslim declared regions [and] within one year to facilitate the establishment of a Shariah court in every Kenyan divisional headquarters -- everywhere in Kenya, not just in "Muslim declared regions" -- and to popularize Islam, the only true religion ... by ordering every primary school in Kenya in the regions to conduct daily Madrassa classes.
an interview with the New York Times, published on April 30th, Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama's younger half sister, told the Times, "My whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim."
Obama describes his new found "Christian" faith as: (1) Suspicious of dogma (2) Without any monopoly on the truth (3) Nontransferable to others (4) Infused with a big healthy dose of doubt, and (5) Indulgent of and compatible with all other religions.
On February 27th, speaking to Kristof of The New York Times, Barack Hussein Obama said the Muslim call to prayer is "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset."
In an interview with Nicholas Kristof, published in The New York Times, Obama recited the Muslim call to prayer, the Adhan, "with a first-class [Arabic] accent."
The opening lines of the Adhan (Azaan) is the Shahada:
"Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme!
Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme!
I witness that there is no god but Allah
I witness that there is no god but Allah
I witness that Muhammad is his prophet? "
According to Islamic scholars, reciting the Shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith, makes one a Muslim. This simple yet profound statement expresses a Muslim's complete acceptance of, and total commitment to, the message of Islam. Obama chanted it with pride and finesse.
An American Expat in Southeast Asia blog, written by an American who has lived in Indonesia for 20 years and has met with both the Taliban and al-Qaeda, contains the following:
"Barack Hussein Obama might have convinced some Americans that he is no longer a Muslim, but so far he has not convinced many in the world's most populous Muslim country who still see him as a Muslim and a crusader for Islam and world peace."
"Barack Hussein Obama's race, his staunch opposition to the war in Iraq, his sympathy to Islam and Muslims worldwide and his Muslim heritage receive the Indonesian media coverage. There is no mention of his apostasy."
"A good example of how some of the Indonesian media is reporting on Obama's religion can be found in the following."
"What I found interesting in the article was the use of the word 'mengaku' when refering to Obama's conversion from Islam to Christianity. The word 'mengaku' in Indonesian means "claimed" and as such leaves the insinuation to the native Indonesian reader being that Obama might actually still be a Muslim.
But this is how Indonesians see Obama, they don't see him as an apostate at all, they see him as a crusader for the cause of Islam."
Obama wants it both ways, has always wanted it both ways. Black and white, Indonesian and American, Muslim and Christian. He loves playing one off the other, using one to hide the other even as the traces of the truth may be assembled to reveal the whole cloth of deception and self-promotion he has been weaving so skillfully since his childhood. No wonder he is a man of change. He IS a changeling, a veritable chameleon, adapting and amending his life story to fit the circumstances.
The charm may have worked once. It still works on some. It won't work forever in the age of the Internet. The fog of ambiguity and dissimulation is dissipated by the harsh, unforgiving and scrutiny of the blogosphere and its unlimited access to historical facts and time-stamped testimony.
Many have been puzzled why Obama could claim not to be familiar with Wright's rants. It turns out the TrinityChurch, like many African-American churches, happily accepts believing Muslims within its congregation. And evidently many Muslims have no problems surrounding themselves with an anti-American, anti-Israel preacher who week in and week out wins the amens of his adoring congregation.
On Feb 15/08, Usama K. Dakdok, President of The Straight Way of GraceMinistry called Obama's Church and reported the following conversation: " I then asked the person who answered what I needed to do to join. She told me that I needed to attend two Sunday School classes in a row and then I would walk the aisle. I replied, "That sounds easy. One last question please. If I am Muslim and I believe in the Prophet Mohammed, peace be unto him and I also believe in Jesus, peace be unto him, do I have to give up my Islamic faith to be a member in your church? She answered: "No, we have many Muslim members in our church."
http://web.israelinsider.com/Article...tics/12745.htm
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Like I said above, I have no idea what to make of this, but we know extraordinarily little of a man who stands a serious shot at being president.
Question: Was BO ever baptised? When? Where?
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I am not such a Coulter fan anymore since her remarks on Donny Deutsh about Jews, but she does raise my eyebrows with these excerpts from a book I didn't know BO wrote:
http://www.anncoulter.com/
This part does make me a little uncomfortable. Are whites just being conned by BO and is he really another angry Black man more akin to Jesse Jackson and Jeremiah Wright. For me I would have to hear more proof this guy has risen above this anger and as far as I am concerned reverse bigotry to even consider him as my President. If anyone thinks Hillary's attacks on BO are severe then I would agree with those who say "we ain't seen nothing yet" and wait till "the Republicans go at him". This piece is just for openers (I guess):
***When his mother expresses concern about Obama's high school friend being busted for drugs, Obama says he patted his mother's hand and told her not to worry.
This, too, prompted Obama to share with his readers a life lesson on how to handle white people: "It was usually an effective tactic, another one of those tricks I had learned: People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves. They were more than satisfied, they were relieved -- such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young black man who didn't seem angry all the time."***
***OBAMA'S DIMESTORE 'MEIN KAMPF'
April 2, 2008
If characters from "The Hills" were to emote about race, I imagine it would sound like B. Hussein Obama's autobiography, "Dreams From My Father."
Has anybody read this book? Inasmuch as the book reveals Obama to be a flabbergasting lunatic, I gather the answer is no. Obama is about to be our next president: You might want to take a peek. If only people had read "Mein Kampf" ...
Nearly every page -- save the ones dedicated to cataloguing the mundane details of his life -- is bristling with anger at some imputed racist incident. The last time I heard this much race-baiting invective I was ... in my usual front-row pew, as I am every Sunday morning, at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.
Obama tells a story about taking two white friends from the high school basketball team to a "black party." Despite their deep-seated, unconscious hatred of blacks, the friends readily accepted. At the party, they managed not to scream the N-word, but instead "made some small talk, took a couple of the girls out on the dance floor."
But with his racial hair-trigger, Obama sensed the whites were not comfortable because "they kept smiling a lot." And then, in an incident reminiscent of the darkest days of the Jim Crow South ... they asked to leave after spending only about an hour at the party! It was practically an etiquette lynching!
So either they hated black people with the hot, hot hate of a thousand suns, or they were athletes who had come to a party late, after a Saturday night basketball game.
In the car on the way home, one of the friends empathizes with Obama, saying: "You know, man, that really taught me something. I mean, I can see how it must be tough for you and Ray sometimes, at school parties ... being the only black guys and all."
And thus Obama felt the cruel lash of racism! He actually writes that his response to his friend's perfectly lovely remark was: "A part of me wanted to punch him right there."
Listen, I don't want anybody telling Obama about Bill Clinton's "I feel your pain" line.
Wanting to punch his white friend in the stomach was the introductory anecdote to a full-page psychotic rant about living by "the white man's rules." (One rule he missed was: "Never punch out your empathetic white friend after dragging him to a crappy all-black party.")
Obama's gaseous disquisition on the "white man's rules" leads to this charming crescendo: "Should you refuse this defeat and lash out at your captors, they would have a name for that, too, a name that could cage you just as good. Paranoid. Militant. Violent. Nigger."
For those of you in the "When is Obama gonna play the 'N-word' card?" pool, the winner is ... Page 85! Congratulations!
When his mother expresses concern about Obama's high school friend being busted for drugs, Obama says he patted his mother's hand and told her not to worry.
This, too, prompted Obama to share with his readers a life lesson on how to handle white people: "It was usually an effective tactic, another one of those tricks I had learned: People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves. They were more than satisfied, they were relieved -- such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young black man who didn't seem angry all the time."
First of all, I note that this technique seems to be the basis of Obama's entire presidential campaign. But moreover -- he was talking about his own mother! As Obama says: "Any distinction between good and bad whites held negligible meaning." Say, do you think a white person who said that about blacks would be a leading presidential candidate?
The man is stark bonkersville.
He says the reason black people keep to themselves is that it's "easier than spending all your time mad or trying to guess whatever it was that white folks were thinking about you."
Here's a little inside scoop about white people: We're not thinking about you. Especially WASPs. We think everybody is inferior, and we are perfectly charming about it.
In college, Obama explains to a girl why he was reading Joseph Conrad's 1902 classic, "Heart of Darkness": "I read the book to help me understand just what it is that makes white people so afraid. Their demons. The way ideas get twisted around. I helps me understand how people learn to hate."
By contrast, Malcolm X's autobiography "spoke" to Obama. One line in particular "stayed with me," he says. "He spoke of a wish he'd once had, the wish that the white blood that ran through him, there by an act of violence, might somehow be expunged."
Forget Rev. Jeremiah Wright -- Wright is Booker T. Washington compared to this guy.
COPYRIGHT 2008 ANN COULTER
DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE
4520 Main Street, Kansas City, MO 64111
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/04/11/obama-on-small-town-voters-bitter-xenophobic-religious/
The audacity of contempt.
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http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JohnHawkins/2008/04/11/20_questions_for_barack_obama
20 Questions for Barack Obama
By John Hawkins
Friday, April 11, 2008
So far, because the mainstream media is smitten with him, Barack Obama has been able to get by running a campaign based on hope, change, unity, love, and rainbows made of cuddly kittens.
However, before we get around to coronating Barack as our new President/Cult of Unity Leader, there are a few questions he should have to answer before America starts drinking his Kool-Aid.
Granted, many members of our esteemed press seem to consider it crass to expect Obama to actually answer questions about unimportant things like his agenda, his character, and what he actually wants to do when he becomes the leader of the free world. That's why he would probably get away with doing what slick politicians like him always do when they're asked tough questions: lie, misdirect, and dodge.
But still, wouldn't it be great if there were some members of the mainstream media that at least had enough integrity to ask him the tough questions in the first place? Ok, you can stop laughing now. Let me put it another way: if there are any Hillary Clinton fans in the press who'd like to help derail Obama so that your preferred liberal candidate can win, start putting questions like these to him:
* You've made unifying the American public and putting our political divisions behind us one of the central themes of your campaign. Yet, National Journal ranked you as the single most liberal senator in 2007. So, which liberal beliefs of yours are you willing to give up for unity's sake?
* Along the same lines, John McCain has been behind numerous pieces of prominent bi-partisan legislation. So, if voters are looking for a candidate who can unify the country, wouldn't he be a better choice than you?
* If you didn't agree with Jeremiah Wright's racist and anti-American views, why did you take your own children to his church and expose them to what he had to say?
* If I may steal a question from Peter Weher, "With which elements, if any, of black liberation theology — as represented by Reverend Wright and Trinity United Church of Christ — do you strongly disagree? Do you think any of the core tenets of black liberation theology are racist?"
* Could black voters trust a white candidate to fairly represent their interests even if he attended an anti-black church and was close friends with a prominent white minister who was famously hostile to black Americans?
* John Conyers has said that he intends to "move legislation that could lead the federal government to apologize for slavery and pay reparations" if you become President. Would you support that legislation?
* Given our budget deficit, how can you justify giving away 845 billion dollars of our tax money to other nations over the next 13 years via your Global Poverty Act?
* In 2004, you said that you opposed the Defense of Marriage Act, which is designed to keep gay marriage from being imposed on the country by judicial fiat. Do you think the American people and their representatives should have a right to decide whether or not they want gay marriage in their states? If the answer is "yes," how can you possibly square that with your opposition to the Defense of Marriage Act?
* Given that you're pro-partial birth abortion, would you support overturning the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003?
* You claim to support the 2nd Amendment, but why should people believe you when, in 1996, you supported "banning the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns?"
* Many people believe your plan for Iraq would be viewed as a huge victory for Al-Qaeda in much of the world, would lead to the collapse of democracy in that country, would boost Iran's standing in the region, and would lead to genocide on a massive scale. Do you believe that those things won't happen or do you believe that those are prices we should be willing to pay to leave Iraq?
* You've often spoken about what the positive effects of pulling out of Iraq will be, but what do you think the negative consequences of your choice to lose the war in Iraq will be?
* Given that we're fighting a war on terror, why do you think it's appropriate for you to continue to personally associate with terrorists like William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn who bombed buildings on American soil, attempted to murder Army officers, and even today, publicly say that they have no regrets about their actions?
* Can you give a more convincing explanation for why you no longer wear a flag pin and why you famously chose not to hold your hand over your heart for our National Anthem?
* Your campaign has suggested that you should receive half the delegates from the state of Michigan even though your name wasn't even on the ballot. Given that your supporters helped thwart a re-vote, isn't that extraordinarily hypocritical, arrogant, and undemocratic of you?
* Given your past history of using cocaine, which is extremely addictive, would you be willing to regularly take drug tests during the campaign and when you're in the White House to insure Americans that you're not still using?
* You claimed that you "never saw or approved" an "Illinois voter group's detailed questionnaire" that had you taking some embarrassingly liberal stands "on gun control, the death penalty and abortion." You chalked up those answers on the questionnaire to an overzealous aide. Yet, it turned out that you were blatantly lying and were actually interviewed for the questionnaire and even sent in your own handwritten notes. So, if you're willing to tell such a bald-faced lie to cover up your liberal positions, why should the American people believe you now when you claim, on issue after issue, to have flip flopped to a more moderate position than you held just a few years back?
* You personally, along with your campaign, have continuously and consistently lied and claimed that John McCain wants to fight a war in Iraq for the next 100 years. However, what he actually said -- and has repeated many times is, "Maybe (we'll be in Iraq for) 100 (years)...We've been in Japan for 60 years, we've been in South Korea for 50 years, that'd be fine with me as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed." Why have you continued to knowingly lie about this issue and why should voters trust what you say if you're going to deliberately try to mislead them in this fashion?
* After engaging in a crooked land deal with Tony Rezko, a man who donated $10,000 from (an) alleged kickback scheme to your campaign, how can voters trust you to act in an ethical fashion in the White House?
* According to an April 23, 2007 article from the Chicago Sun-Times called "Barack Obama and his slumlord patron, "Obama, who has worked as a lawyer and a legislator to improve living conditions for the poor, took campaign donations from Rezko even as Rezko's low-income housing empire was collapsing, leaving many African-American families in buildings riddled with problems -- including squalid living conditions, vacant apartments, lack of heat, squatters and drug dealers." Do you have any regrets about teaming up with a slumlord to further your own political career on the backs of the very poor people you claimed to be helping?
John Hawkins is a professional blogger who runs Conservative Grapevine and Right Wing News.
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Some very good ones in there GM.
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Some very good ones in there GM.
Too bad the MSM is too busy bowing and scraping before him to ask any of those questions..... :roll:
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http://www.slate.com/id/2188487/?from=rss#foursins
What's the Matter With Obama?
THE FOUR SINS OF "CLING."
By Mickey Kaus
Updated Monday, April 14, 2008, at 5:19 AM ET
Nein, bitter: There would seem to be four distinct, major problems with Obama's "cling" gaffe.
1) It lumps together things Obama wants us to think he thinks are good (religion) with things he undoubtedly thinks are bad (racism, anti-immigrant sentiment). I suppose it's logically possible to say 'these Pennsylvania voters are so bitter and frustrated that they cling to both good things and bad things,." but the implication is that these are all things he thinks are unfortunate and need explaining (because, his context suggests, they prevent voters from doing the right thing and voting for ... him). Yesterday at the CNN "Compassion Forum" Obama said he wasn't disparaging religion because he meant people "cling" to it in a good way! Would that be the same way they "cling" to "antipathy to people who aren't like them"--the very next phrase Obama uttered? Is racism one of those "traditions that are passed on from generation to generation" that "sustains us"? Obama's unfortunate parallelism makes it hard for him to extricate him from the charge that he was dissing rural Pennsylvanians' excess religiosity.
2.) Even if Obama wasn't equating anything on his list with anything else, he did openly accuse Pennsylvanians of being racists ("antipathy to people who aren't like them").
3) He's contradicted his own positions--at least on trade and (says Instapundit) guns.. Isn't Obama the one trying to tar Hillary as a supporter of NAFTA? Is that just 'boob bait.'
4.) Yes, he's condescending. It's not just that in explaining everyone to everyone Obama winds up patronizing everyone. He doesn't patronize everyone equally. Specifically, he regards the views of these Pennsylvanians as epiphenomena--byproducts of economic stagnation--in a way he doesn't regard, say, his own views as epiphenomena.** Once the Pennsylvanians get some jobs back, they'll change and become as enlightened as Obama the San Franciscans to whom he was talking. That's the clear logic of his argument. Superiority of this sort--not crediting the authenticity and standing of your subject's views--is a violation of social equality, which is a more important value for Americans than money equality. Liiberals tend to lose elections when they forget that.
Please note that Obama's characterization of Pennsylvanians as "bitter" doesn't even make the top four. (See Instapundit: "Bitter is the least of it" Patrick Hynes: "it's not about the bitter.") At this point, the MSM and Hillary are only doing Obama a favor by focusing on the "bitter" dispute. ... Anyway, maybe he meant "bitter" in a good way!
P.S.: Andrew Sullivan and John Rosenberg both say that Obama's "cling" argument comes from Thomas Frank's economistic "What's the Matter with Kansas?"--which seems semi-tragic to me. The great achievement of Republicanism over the past decade, I'm convinced, was getting average Americans to think that it was the Democrats who were the snobs. The person who convinced me of this (in a highly persuasive lecture) was Thomas Frank. Now Frank's theories--if you follow Rosenberg--are on the verge of convincing millions of average Americans that the Republicans were right, at least about the likely Dem nominee. ...
See also this 2004 interview, in which Obama appears totally aware of the condescension problem--though I don't think he avoids it there either. His now-familiar go-to idea--that men spend time hunting and women go to church because of deindustrialization, as opposed to because they like to hunt and believe in their religion--seems inherently condescending (see below).
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**--You might argue that this was the same 'it-will-go-away' attitude Obama had toward the anger of parishioners of Rev. Wrights's church--which would reinforce the "he condescends to everyone" theory of Obama. But the parallel isn't there. Obama describes ongoing black anger about racism as an artifact of racism--it's an epiphenomenon only in the sense that it will eventually disappear when its legitimate cause disappears. Obama describes white anger--indeed white anger, white racism, white religiosity, white NRA membership and white opposition to comprehensive immigration reform--as an artifact of something unrelated, namely the loss of good industrial jobs. It''s fundamentally inauthentic, Obama suggests, because (unlike black anger) it isn't caused by what those who express it say it is caused by.
And Obama never describes his own views as the products of anything except an accurate perception of reality. Come to think of it, has he ever expressed any doubt about--let alone apologized for--his views? He certainly didn't apologize in his "race" speech. He presents himself as near ominscient, the Archimedian point from which everyone else's beliefs and behavior can be assessed and explained, and to which almost everyone's beliefs will revert after the revolution. ... sorry, I mean after President Obama has restored hope! ... 10:59 P.M. link
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Saturday, April 12, 2008
Watch that Myth: Hillary Clinton had apparently stopped losing ground in PA polls before Obama's "cling" fling in Frisco. It's a bit unfair to say that 'Obama had been gaining ground until ...," though I think I've heard that nascent myth being spread at least three times today. ... P.S.: Obama's lead on Rasmussen (11 points a week ago) has gone and disappeared. Note that the slide began pre-gaffe. ... 7:29 P.M.
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Strike 2.5--They're bitter, left-behind, and have their little traditions: Don't think this digs Obama out of his hole. Might even dig it a bit deeper. ... 9:23 A.M.
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Friday, April 11, 2008
Ann Coulter is reading Obama's autobiography and comes up with a not-implausible interpretation of the famous Racist Grandma incident:
As recounted in Obama's autobiography, the only evidence that his grandmother feared black men comes from Obama's good-for-nothing, chronically unemployed white grandfather, who accuses Grandma of racism as his third excuse not to get dressed and drive her to work.
10:17 P.M.
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Cling Along with Barack: The always-suspect Michael Lind nevertheless sends around a useful commentary on Obama's gruesomely off-key condscension toward downscale Rustbelt voters:
According to Obama, working class (white) people "cling to guns" because they are bitter at losing their manufacturing jobs.
Excuse me? Hunting is part of working-class American culture. Does Obama really think that working-class whites in Pennsylvania were gun control liberals until their industries were downsized, whereas they all rushed to join the NRA ...
I used to think working class voters had conservative values because they were bitter about their economic circumstances--welfare and immigrants were "scapegoats," part of the false consciousness that would disappear when everyone was guaranteed a good job at good wages. Then I left college. ...
P.S.: Because Obama's comments are clearly a Category II Kinsley Gaffe--in which the candidate accidentally says what he really thinks--it will be hard for Obama to explain away. [He could say he was tired and it was late at night?--ed But he was similarly condescending in his big, heartfelt, well-prepared "race speech" when he explained white anger over welfare and affirmative action as a displacement of the bitterness that comes when whites
are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition ...
Obama's new restatement confirms the Marxist Deskwork interpretation of the race speech, removing any honest doubt as to his actual attitude.
Rather than trying to spin his way out, wouldn't it be better for Obama to forthrightly admit his identity? Let's have a national dialogue about egghead condescension!]
P.P.S.: Note that guns are not the only thing Obama says "white working class" people "cling" to for economic reasons:
t's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations. [E.A.]
Hmm. Isn't Obama the one who has been clinging to religion lately? Does he cling to his religion for authentic reasons while those poor Pennsylvania slobs cling to it as a way to "explain their frustrations"? ... They worship an awesome God in the blue states because they're bitter about stagnant wages! I think that's what he said in his 2004 convention address ... 4:41 P.M. link
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The Whistle Blower and the Wind Surfer
Everyone knows that Barack Obama got caught on tape accusing Pennsylvania primary voters of being people who "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them." What isn't well known is that his campaign tried to prevent Mayhill Fowler, the HuffingtonPost.com blogger who broke the story, from getting into the San Francisco mansion where the candidate made the remarks.
Unlike three other events Mr. Obama attended in the Bay Area on April 6 that were priced at the legal contribution limit of $2,300, the soiree at the home of developer Alex Mehran was priced at only $1,000 because it was pitched to donors who had already given to Team Obama. Ms. Fowler somehow snagged an invitation even though the well-known blogger had been turned away from a previous Obama fundraising event a couple of months earlier.
"There's a very basic [fundraiser] rule -- you don't let press in, and anyone with an interest in reporting shouldn't get in," an Obama source told the San Francisco Chronicle. The paper reports that "Obama campaign higher-ups were said to be livid, with fingers pointing at a local fundraising consultant for the slip-up."
They shouldn't be angry. In an age of citizen journalism -- when literally anyone can carry an MP3 recorder and cell phone video camera into an event -- nothing any longer is completely private. And it's not as if Ms. Fowler qualified as an Obama enemy. A previous donor to the Obama campaign, she paid her $1,000 to attend the San Francisco event. Last Friday, she candidly admitted to CNN: "I was not initially going to write about Senator Obama's remarks about Pennsylvanians, because, frankly, I didn't want to bring down the campaign. I gave it more thought and I decided that the remarks bothered me enough that I wanted to write them up."
That admission is a signal that Mr. Obama's remarks really do represent a problem for him since they disturbed even an ardent supporter enough for her to report them.
-- John Fund
Quote of the Day I
"I used to think working class voters had conservative values because they were bitter about their economic circumstances -- welfare and immigrants were 'scapegoats,' part of the false consciousness that would disappear when everyone was guaranteed a good job at good wages. Then I left college...." -- Slate.com blogger Mickey Kaus, mocking Barack Obama's condescending attitude about working class voters, guns and religion.
Quote of the Day II
"Poor wording was not the problem; on the contrary, it was his precision that was so unfortunate, and his ability to pack half a dozen unintended insults into a single sentence uncanny. And in San Francisco, no less? Roger Ailes couldn't have planned it better, unless he'd maybe followed up the event with some impromptu windsurfing in the bay" -- columnist Melinda Henneberger, a former New York Times reporter, writing at Slate.com about Barack Obama's comments.
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John Fund is one of the most astute journalists in my view.
As for Obama I feel he is fooling a lot of people most of the time.
I suspect his public persona is a fraud and the real BO is an angry guy who really is an American despising liberal.
I for one no longer trust him as far as I can say "Clinton".
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He's for hope, and change! What more do you need to know? :roll:
Forgive me if this has already been posted in this thread, but I felt it important to show everyone that you are in fact correct about the hope and change:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuNxPLNISrY
:-D
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THE FOUNDATION
“Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities... With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck.” —Thomas Jefferson
PATRIOT PERSPECTIVE
No ObamaNation Part 2: Disciple of Hate
By Mark Alexander
(Part 2 of 3 on Barack Hussein Obama)
Part One of this series, “Barack who?”, provided insights into how Obama’s tragic childhood formed the pathological foundation for his narcissistic ambition.
This essay examines how Afrocentric Liberation Theology and its message of hate have wedded Obama’s anger and ambition and defined his worldview. This radical belief system is, after all, a hybrid of black supremacist doctrine and “social gospel” Marxism.
In advance of the Pennsylvania primary, Obama displayed his disdain for middle America’s faith and values at a closed-door San Francisco fundraiser: “You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest... it’s not surprising they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
In other words, according to Obama, their faith is a byproduct of bitterness. While this sentiment might have been a hit with the chardonnay-sipping elite of Marin County, it hasn’t played well in Peoria. Or in Pennsylvania, which holds its crucial presidential primary on 22 April.
In the parlance of psychology, this assessment would be classified as projection. Indeed, Obama’s “faith” does have bitter origins, and he assumes, errantly, that such bitterness is the root of all faith.
He also alluded to bitterness in mid-March: “We’ve got a tragic history when it comes to race in this country. We’ve got a lot of pent-up anger and bitterness... The anger is real. It is powerful, and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.”
To date, Obama has passed on charm alone, all fragrance, no substance. So little is known about Obama that when it was discovered that his mentor, the man he identifies as most influential in his life, has discipled him in Afrocentric Liberation Theology for more than 20 years, that presented an excellent opportunity to gain real insight into Barack Hussein Obama.
That mentor is Jeremiah Wright, just retired as head holy man of Trinity United Church (TUC) of radical black political theology. Wright officiated at Obama’s wedding, baptized their two daughters and is credited by Obama for the title of his book, The Audacity of Hope.
So who is this mentor, this chief spiritual advisor to Obama?
Here is a portrait of Wright in his own words from the pulpit: “The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government gives [black people] drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strikes law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, g*d d*** America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. G*d d*** America for treating our citizens as less than human. G*d d*** America for as long as she acts like she is god and she is supreme.”
Wright calls America “the US-KKK-A” and says the nation is “controlled by and run by rich white people. Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run. We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in god. And. And-and! God! Has got! To be sick! Of this sh*t!”
“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”
Lest anyone mistake who he felt was to blame for 9/11, and who he felt deserved punishment, Wright elaborated in 2005: “White America got a wake-up call after 9/11. White America and the Western world came to realize that people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just disappeared as the great white West kept on its merry way of ignoring black concerns.”
How did Obama respond when asked about his pastor’s false and vicious tirade? “It sounds like he was trying to be provocative,” he said.
It worked.
On Israel, Wright claims: “The Israelis have illegally occupied Palestinian territories for over 40 years now. Divestment has now hit the table again as a strategy to wake the business community and wake up Americans concerning the injustice and the racism under which the Palestinians have lived because of Zionism.”
Perhaps that explains Hamas’ endorsement of Obama?
In December 2007, Wright presented the TUC’s “Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award” to a man who “truly epitomized greatness,” Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam and a consummate anti-Semite. “When Minister Farrakhan speaks, Black America listens,” says Wright. “His depth on analysis when it comes to the racial ills of this nation is astounding and eye opening. He brings a perspective that is helpful and honest.”
Recently, Wright compared Obama to Jesus, saying, “Barack knows what it means to be a black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people. Hillary can never know that. Hillary ain’t never been called a nigger.”
TUC’s mission statement, since removed from its website, noted the congregation’s “Commitment to the black values system,” or as Wright notes, “Similar to the Gospel movement in Nicaragua during the whole liberation theology movement.” The statement continues, “Commitment to the black community... black family... adherence to the black work ethic... supporting black institutions... pledging allegiance to all black leadership who have embraced the black values system.”
That is a very dark mission statement.
A current mission statement notes, “Our roots in the Black religious experience and tradition are deep, lasting and permanent. We are an African people, and remain ‘true to our native land,’ the mother continent, the cradle of civilization.”
Wright was, himself, a disciple of James Cone, one of the original champions of Black Liberation Theology, who wrote the following in his seminal work, Black Theology and Black Power: “Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community. Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.”
Wright quotes Cone on TUC’s website: “The time has come for white America to be silent and listen to black people... All white men are responsible for white oppression... Theologically, Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man ‘the devil’.”
When asked if he would leave TUC (as if that would make everything copacetic), Obama said, “This is somebody who I have known for 20 years [who] led me to Christ. He is a biblical scholar. He is a well regarded preacher and somebody who is known for talking about the social gospel.”
In other words, “No.”
But when pressed, Obama invoked his own version of Bill Clinton’s “I didn’t inhale” defense. Indeed, after 20 years of being fed the Wright stuff, Obama said, “I did not hear such incendiary language myself, personally, either in conversations with him or when I was in the pew.” Yeah, right.
Clinton’s disclaimer registers much higher on the truth meter.
A prominent member of Wright’s congregation says, “He has impacted the life of Barack Obama so much so that he wants to portray that feeling he got from Rev. Wright onto the country because we all need something positive.”
Wright himself told The New York Times a year ago, “If Barack gets past the primary, he might have to publicly distance himself from me. I said it to Barack personally, and he said ‘yeah, that might have to happen’.”
Translation: Any distance between Obama and Wright is contrived purely for political expedience. All the bitterness and hatred is seething right under the surface.
Now that Obama’s wafer-thin layer of shellac is peeling away, some moderate Demos, and more than a few superdelegates—who hitched their wagon to this most Leftwing of Lefties—are concerned that Obama is leading their party into a black hole. As they learn more, however late, about Obama’s black-nationalist and Marxist roots, they correctly see his election prospects growing dimmer.
At this point, Hillary Clinton is looking better to moderates, but her only chance to become the Demos’ nominee is to turn almost all of the superdelegates at convention, and her campaign can do that only with a bombshell.
(Next week—No Obamanation Part 3: Barack the Radical)
Quote of the week
“There is [a] class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs—partly because they want sympathy, and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs... There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don’t want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.”—Booker T. Washington in his 1911 book, My Larger Education
On cross-examination
“In Barack Obama’s America, rich people who vote on cultural issues rather than economic self-interest are principled and self-sacrificing. People of more modest means who do so are credulous and bitter... With Barack Obama’s ‘postracial’ appeal having proved illusory but Democrats likely to nominate him for president anyway, the party faces a difficult problem: how to persuade Americans to vote for the spiritual protégé of a man who espouses crackpot anti-American and antiwhite views.”—James Taranto
Open query
“Why did you give $22,500 just two years ago [and more than $26,000 in 2007] to a church run by a man of the past who infects the younger generation with precisely the racial attitudes and animus you say you have come unto us to transcend?... This contextual analysis of Wright’s venom, this extenuation of black hate speech as a product of white racism, is not new. It’s the Jesse Jackson politics of racial grievance, expressed in Ivy League diction and Harvard Law nuance. That’s why the speech made so many liberal commentators swoon: It bathed them in racial guilt while flattering their intellectual pretensions. An unbeatable combination.”—Charles Krauthammer
Patriot Post
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George Will:
Obama is American liberalism's evolutionary end result. Blame America first because it is a downright mean country. So now we must all come together to make it into something that would Michelle could be proud of:
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/will041508.php3
If one believes this, and I am becoming convinced that it is true then in my view this guy cannot be allowed to run this country.
He is bluffing us. Let's all work together, compromise, we are one nation etc etc. But what we are working for is his vision of America. And that vision is extraordinarily liberal.
Can BO prove to me otherwise?
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I thought Will did a very good job there of articulating and organizing certain points. Good find.
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Definitely a hit piece, but interesting nonetheless; another example of unsavory support for BO.
http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Art...6-765A3D7EDCD7
Terrorist Fundraisers for Obama By Patrick Poole
FrontPageMagazine.com | Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Two years ago, Hatem El-Hady was the chairman of the Toledo, Ohio-based Islamic charity, Kindhearts, which was closed by the US government in February 2006 for terrorist fundraising and all its assets frozen. Today, El-Hady has redirected his fundraising efforts for his newest cause - Barack Obama for President.
El-Hady has his own dedicated page on Barack Obama's official website, chronicling his fundraising on behalf of the Democratic Party presidential candidate (his Obama profile established on February 19, 2008 - two years to the day after Kindhearts was raided by the feds). Not only that, but he has none other than Barack Obama's wife, Michelle Obama, listed as one of his friends (one of her 224 listed friends).
But his leadership of Kindhearts is not the only thing that has brought him scrutiny by federal law enforcement officials. Last summer, El-Hady was questioned by the FBI concerning his knowledge of possible conspirators in a UK-based terror plot.
Hatem El-Hady's interest in "change" is understandable. Following the closure of Kindhearts, he said in response to the government's closure of his organization:
"It's dirty politics," said Dr. Hatem Elhady, chairman of the board of KindHearts, which raised $5.1 million in 2004. "They do not like the way things are going in Palestine. They do not like the election results. But that is not our problem. Our problem is providing aid to people in desperate need of help."
The Department of Justice had a very different version of events. According to the DOJ, Kindhearts assumed the role of lead terrorist fundraising in the US after the government had closed other such Islamic "charities":
"KindHearts is the progeny of Holy Land Foundation and Global Relief Foundation, which attempted to mask their support for terrorism behind the façade of charitable giving," said Stuart Levey, Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.
Not only was Kindhearts engaged in providing funds for HAMAS in Lebanon and the West Bank, it had hired as a fundraising specialist the man identified as the designated HAMAS bag man in the US, Mohammed El-Mezain.
And as investigative reporter Joe Kaufman revealed, "The Black Hearts of Kindhearts", a number of other Kindhearts officials were tied to terrorist fundraising and support:
KindHearts’ Director of Domestic Programs, Khalifah Ramadan. Ramadan was a training and evaluation consultant for the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), two large Muslim organizations based in the United States that have links to overseas terror groups.
KindHearts’ Representaive, Omar Shahin. Shahin was an Imam for the Islamic Center of Tucson (ICT), the former home of numerous terror operatives, including Wael Jelaidan, who later helped found Al-Qaeda.
KindHearts’ Representative, Wagdy Ghuneim. Ghuneim, an Egyptian cleric, has been featured in KindHearts fundraising dinners for 2002, 2003 and 2004. During a rally at Brooklyn College, in May of 1998, Ghuneim attempted to persuade the crowd to support violent jihad and labeled Jews as “descendants of the apes.”
KindHearts’ Representative, Hatem Bazian. Bazian is an Islamic Studies instructor and a member of the faculty of Near Eastern Studies at UC Berkley. In April of 2004, during a San Francisco anti-war rally, Bazian, a native Palestinian, called for an “intifada” against the United States. This was just two months prior to Bazian being featured in a KindHearts Fundraising Dinner, entitled ‘Palestinians in agony!’
KindHearts’ Manager in Lebanon, Haytham Maghawri (a.k.a. Haytham Fawri). Maghawri, the past Social Services Director for HLF, according to the Treasury Department, “collected [KindHearts] funds and sent them to Hamas and other Salafi groups.” [One of the recipients of KindHearts funding was Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) Usama Hamdan, a leader of Hamas in Lebanon.]
And two months before Kindhearts closure by the US government, Beila Rabinowitz had revealed that the South Asia Division Coordinator for Kindhearts, Zulfiqar Ali Shah, had known ties to al-Qaeda, even conducting a 10-day tour with officials for the Tablighi Jamaat organization, which the New York Times had described as "a springboard for militancy" and a "recruitment" center for Al-Qaeda.
Barack Obama has promised change. And as indicated by the public support that his candidacy has received by accused terrorist fundraiser Hatem El-Hady, Obama's version of change that terrorists and their US supporters can believe in.
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http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/29729_Michelle_Obamas_Name_Removed_from_Terrorist_Fundraisers_Web_Page_-_Update-_Terror_Fundraisers_Page_Disappears!
Change!
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Barack Obama's Muslim Childhood By Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com | Tuesday, April 29, 2008
As Barack Obama's candidacy comes under increasing scrutiny, his account of his religious upbringing deserves careful attention for what it tells us about the candidate's integrity.
Obama asserted in December, "I've always been a Christian," and he has adamantly denied ever having been a Muslim. "The only connection I've had to Islam is that my grandfather on my father's side came from that country [Kenya]. But I've never practiced Islam." In February, he claimed: "I have never been a Muslim. … other than my name and the fact that I lived in a populous Muslim country for 4 years when I was a child [Indonesia, 1967-71] I have very little connection to the Islamic religion."
"Always" and "never" leave little room for equivocation. But many biographical facts, culled mainly from the American press, suggest that, when growing up, the Democratic candidate for president both saw himself and was seen as a Muslim.
Obama's Kenyan birth father: In Islam, religion passes from the father to the child. Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. (1936–1982) was a Muslim who named his boy Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. Only Muslim children are named "Hussein".
Obama's Indonesian family: His stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, was also a Muslim. In fact, as Obama's half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng explained to Jodi Kantor of the New York Times: "My whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim." An Indonesian publication, the Banjarmasin Post reports a former classmate, Rony Amir, recalling that "All the relatives of Barry's father were very devout Muslims."
Barack Obama's Catholic school in Jakarta.
The Catholic school: Nedra Pickler of the Associated Press reports that "documents showed he enrolled as a Muslim" while at a Catholic school during first through third grades. Kim Barker of the Chicago Tribune confirms that Obama was "listed as a Muslim on the registration form for the Catholic school." A blogger who goes by "An American Expat in Southeast Asia" found that "Barack Hussein Obama was registered under the name ‘Barry Soetoro' serial number 203 and entered the Franciscan Asisi Primary School on 1 January 1968 and sat in class 1B. … Barry's religion was listed as Islam."
The public school: Paul Watson of the Los Angeles Times learned from Indonesians familiar with Obama when he lived in Jakarta that he "was registered by his family as a Muslim at both schools he attended." Haroon Siddiqui of the Toronto Star visited the Jakarta public school Obama attended and found that "Three of his teachers have said he was enrolled as a Muslim." Although Siddiqui cautions that "With the school records missing, eaten by bugs, one has to rely on people's shifting memories," he cites only one retired teacher, Tine Hahiyari, retracting her earlier certainty about Obama's being registered as a Muslim.
Barack Obama's public school in Jakarta.
Koran class: In his autobiography, Dreams of My Father, Obama relates how he got into trouble for making faces during Koranic studies, thereby revealing he was a Muslim, for Indonesian students in his day attended religious classes according to their faith. Indeed, Obama still retains knowledge from that class: Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times, reports that Obama "recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them [to Kristof] with a first-rate accent."
Mosque attendance: Obama's half-sister recalled that the family attended the mosque "for big communal events." Watson learned from childhood friends that "Obama sometimes went to Friday prayers at the local mosque." Barker found that "Obama occasionally followed his stepfather to the mosque for Friday prayers." One Indonesia friend, Zulfin Adi, states that Obama "was Muslim. He went to the mosque. I remember him wearing a sarong" (a garment associated with Muslims).
Piety: Obama himself says that while living in Indonesia, a Muslim country, he "didn't practice [Islam]," implicitly acknowledging a Muslim identity. Indonesians differ in their memories of him. One, Rony Amir, describes Obama as "previously quite religious in Islam."
Obama's having been born and raised a Muslim and having left the faith to become a Christian make him neither more nor less qualified to become president of the United States. But if he was born and raised a Muslim and is now hiding that fact, this points to a major deceit, a fundamental misrepresentation about himself that has profound implications about his character and his suitability as president.
Mr. Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org), director of the Middle East Forum, is the Taube/Diller distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. © All rights reserved by Daniel Pipes.
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Article of Ayers, including recent foto of him standing on US flag:
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/August-2001/No-Regrets/
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Membrana Obama
By JAMES TARANTO
May 9, 2008
(Note: We'll be traveling and thus absent the early part of next week.)
For all the hype about Barack Obama being some new kind of politician, in one respect he is very similar to recent Democratic presidential nominees: He takes criticism very badly, responding to it by getting both defensive and nasty. It is a most unattractive quality.
CNN reports on a case in point:
"This is offensive, and I think it's disappointing," Obama told [Wolf] Blitzer, when asked his thoughts about McCain's comments that the terrorist organization Hamas wants Obama to be president. "Because John McCain always says 'I am not going to run that kind of politics,' and to engage in that kind of smear is unfortunate, particularly because my policy toward Hamas has been no different than his.
"I've said it's a terrorist organization and we should not negotiate with them unless they recognize Israel, renounce violence, and unless they are willing to abide by previous accords between the Palestinians and the Israelis. So for him to toss out comments like that I think is an example of him losing his bearings as he pursues this nomination. We don't need name calling in this debate."
Commentary's Abe Greenwald has the background on the so-called smear:
Jennifer [Rubin, a Commentary blogress] is too modest to mention it, but she played a considerable role in the "smear" to which Obama [yesterday] referred. It was during a blogger conference call on April 25 that she, in fact, asked John McCain to comment on Hamas's preference for Obama above the other presidential candidates. As it happens, I was on that call as well. And it's worth noting the nature of McCain's response to Jennifer. He began his reply by saying, "All I can tell you, Jennifer, is that I think it's very clear who Hamas wants to be the next President of the United States."
Considering the situation, this is about the most delicately phrased response that one could have expected. It was not in the least a smear. Jennifer introduced Hamas's very real preference into the conversation. John McCain essentially chose to let the facts speak for themselves.
As we noted last month, Hamas leader Ahmed Yousef did in fact endorse Obama, in an interview with WABC-AM's John Batchelor. McCain's statement that "it's very clear who Hamas wants to be the next president" is far less of a smear than Obama's characterization of McCain as having "lost his bearings," plainly an attempt to stereotype the septuagenarian McCain as suffering from dementia. No wonder Hillary Clinton does so well among superannuated primary voters.
Obama's perturbability in the face of criticism was also evident in his response to the various comments by Jeremiah Wright*. Sept. 11 was chickens coming home to roost? Hey, we all have uncles who say crazy things. "God damn America"? He meant it in the best possible way. Barack Obama is acting like a politician? That got him angry, although it was almost as indisputably accurate as McCain's statement about Hamas.
One difference between Obama's and McCain's policies toward Hamas, as The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb points out, is that Obama is eager to meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the public face of Iran's revolutionary Islamic regime, which is the terror group's chief patron. The purpose of the meeting is unclear, but Obama seems to suggest that he would somehow charm Ahmadinejad into submission. Can there be any doubt, though, that Ahmadinejad is now taking note of how easily rattled his prospective interlocutor is?
* The man of whom Barack Obama says, "He was never my quote-unquote spiritual adviser," although he served on the Obama campaign's quote-unquote spiritual advisory committee.
Elect Me, I'm Electable
Yesterday we noted Hillary Clinton's unfortunate comment in an interview with USA Today: "There was just an AP article posted that found how Senator Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans is weakening again. . . . I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on."
Peggy Noonan quotes an Obama supporter as saying of Mrs. Clinton's remark, "Even Richard Nixon didn't say white, even with the Southern strategy." We suppose Nixon was a smoother politician than Mrs. Clinton, and using the word "white" was (as we told her yesterday) a mistake. But there is a reason she is speaking in these terms.
The Tampa Tribune's William March reports that Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz released a statement making essentially the same point, although without being explicitly racial about it:
Senator Clinton continues to demonstrate that she has what it takes to win the Presidency . . . while Senator Obama does well in areas and demographic groups that the Democratic nominee will win anyway.
It isn't only Mrs. Clinton's side that is insulting Democratic voters. These remarks are of a piece with Barack Obama's statement about "bitter" working-class Pennsylvanians. Jay Cost of RealClearPolitics had an insightful take on that:
Mr. Obama presumed to explain the behavior of the voters he is courting. We might not know for sure exactly how he was explaining them, but we know that he was trying to. This is something that is best left to political scientists, not candidates. They should never speak of voters in any but the most flattering terms. Otherwise, there is a risk of alienating them. When you analyze people, you are signaling that you are separate from them. You are an "other." What is more, nobody likes to feel that they are being analyzed. The analyst can come across as haughty. "Who the hell does he think he is to explain me?"
Why are they insulting voters? Because at the moment, they are not trying to appeal to voters but to so-called superdelegates, the elected and party officials who will actually decide the Democratic nominee. Both candidates are trying to persuade the superdelegates that they have better prospects in November, and that is why they are referring to the voters in the third person.
In the olden days, of course, these conversations would have taken place in smoke-filled rooms, not in public. Being dragged through this is a fitting punishment for the woman who banned smoking in the White House.
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Obama Promises Germany-Plus
By GABOR STEINGART
May 10, 2008; Page A9
When I begin to feel homesick for Germany, I have discovered a cheap and easy way out. I simply turn on the TV and listen to a Barack Obama stump speech.
The promised land of universal health care, secure pensions, a lot of green-collar jobs and stable bridges brings me back to my home country. My grandma, who has worked in a post office all her life, enjoys her pension without having ever observed the stock market. Everyone who travels through the countryside can see thousands of windmills, but never a collapsed bridge. And the best: My mom, my friends and everyone around them have access to first-class medical services.
Sometimes it appears to me that Mr. Obama wants to trump all that. He has promised not only a $160 billion program for new green-collar jobs, a higher minimum wage, affordable health care for everybody, a massive investment in infrastructure and tax-free status for pensioners who make less than $50,000. All these nice things come with no tax increase for 95% of Americans. Wow! That's Germany-plus!
I've been in the U.S. for a while, but if I remember my home country correctly, all the German comforts come with a price. My grandma has paid 10% of her salary to the public pension system, and her employer has matched the contribution. For our health insurance everyone has to sacrifice 7% of his or her earnings, which again is matched by the company. Fashionable windmills go along with extra taxes for fuel. A gallon of regular gas in Munich or Berlin costs – fasten your seat belt – more than $8.
Not all of my fellow Germans are happy with this, but the overwhelming majority of my fellow countrymen made their decision a long time ago. They prefer big government. They have learned to live with growth rates far behind and an unemployment rate far above the U.S.
Maybe I am being unfair to Mr. Obama. But it seems to me that the agent of change was window-shopping in Germany without looking at the price tag. You should ask him for the bill.
Mr. Steingart is the senior correspondent in Washington, D.C., for Der Spiegel news magazine and author of the "The War for Wealth – The True Story of Globalization" (McGraw Hill, 2008).
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“In his victory speech after the North Carolina primary, Sen. Barack Obama...[defended] his stated intent to meet with America’s enemies without preconditions...: ‘I trust the American people to understand that it is not weakness, but wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but to our enemies, like Roosevelt did, and Kennedy did, and Truman did.’ That he made this statement, and that it passed without comment by the journalists covering his speech indicates either breathtaking ignorance of history on the part of both, or deceit. I assume the Roosevelt to whom Sen. Obama referred is Franklin D. Roosevelt. Our enemies in World War II were Nazi Germany, headed by Adolf Hitler; fascist Italy, headed by Benito Mussolini, and militarist Japan, headed by Hideki Tojo. FDR talked directly with none of them before the outbreak of hostilities, and his policy once war began was unconditional surrender. FDR died before victory was achieved, and was succeeded by Harry Truman. Truman did not modify the policy of unconditional surrender. He ended that war not with negotiation, but with the atomic bomb. Harry Truman also was president when North Korea invaded South Korea in June, 1950. President Truman’s response was not to call up North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung for a chat. It was to send troops... Sen. Obama is on both sounder and softer ground with regard to John F. Kennedy. The new president held a summit meeting with Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev in Vienna in June, 1961. Elie Abel, who wrote a history of the Cuban missile crisis (The Missiles of October), said the crisis had its genesis in that summit... Mr. Abel wrote, ‘There is no evidence to support the belief that Khrushchev ever questioned America’s power. He questioned only the president’s readiness to use it.’... It’s worth noting that Kennedy then was vastly more experienced than Sen. Obama is now. A combat veteran of World War II, Jack Kennedy served 14 years in Congress before becoming president. Sen. Obama has no military and little work experience, and has been in Congress for less than four years... History is an elective few liberals choose to take these days... The lack of historical knowledge among journalists is merely appalling. But in a presidential candidate it’s dangerous. As Sir Winston Churchill said: ‘Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it’.” —Jack Kelly
Patriot Post
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May 10, 2008
Jews can't vote for Obama and be pro-Israel at the same time
By Ted Belman
ted-4.jpgIn the poll of Jewish voters (conducted April 1-30), it showed
Obama getting 61% of the Jewish vote against John McCain (32%). Yet in the
same poll Hillary Clinton beat Obama among Jewish voters 62% - 38%. So
obviously Jews are lifelong democrats who will vote for Obama, whom they
rejected in the primaries, rather than vote for McCain. Thus, for them,
party loyalty is preferable to Israel loyalty.
Recently I posted two articles by Yarom Ettinger, former Israeli Ambassador
to the US, The Prospects of a Palestinian State and National Interests of
the United States and It's American interests, stupid, both of which clearly
demonstrate that keeping Israel strong is to keep America strong. Thus to be
pro-Israel is to be pro-America.
Now some would argue that most Jewish Americans are not one issue voters but
they must realize that to favour a basket of issues or the Democratic Party
above favouring Israel, makes them less pro-Israel and thus less
pro-American. This I am sure will get howls of protest from the J-Street
Lobby which represents progressive Jewry, who would have you believe that by
forcing Israel to capitulate, they are acting in the best interests of
Israel and the US. I hope you don't buy their thinking. These articles fly
in the face of such thinking. Consider them carefully it is important.
While most Jews favour Obama in a run off with McCain because he is a
Democrat, they ignore how pro-Palestinian and anti-American he is.
Let me list the ways.
- Obama said "Nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people,"
- Obama said "If there is an Arab American family [in the US] being
rounded up without benefit of an attorney, those are my civil liberties!"
- Everyone on Obama's foreign policy team, McPeak, Hamilton, Kurtzer,
Brezezinski, are anti- Israel and The Israel Lobby. Their policies are
closely aligned with Carter's and Baker's.
- Obama has been in bed with Jew haters and Islamic jihad for years.
Farrakhan and his dear friend Reverend Wright, Obama's spiritual guru, is a
vile Jew hater.
- Obama is the first Presidential candidate endorsed by Hamas. He is
the toast of the Islamic world. Obama's church posted a Hamas manifesto.
- Obama has been endorsed by William Ayers (Weatherman Underground
bomber, unrepentant domestic terrorist) (Member Communist Party USA, Early
mentor to Obama) Jeremiah Wright (Black Liberation militant, racist, and
Pastor) Tony Rezko (Corrupt Financier, ties to Terror Financing) Louis
Farrakhan (Nation of Islam Leader, racist, anti-American) Hamas Terrorist
Organization (Islamic Terrorist Organization) Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades
(Islamic Terror Irganization) Raila Odinga (Fundamental Islamic Candidate,
Kenya, Obama's Cousin) Daniel Ortega (Marxist Sandinista Leader. Nicaragua
Raul Castro (Hard-line Communist Leader, Communist Party Illinois (US
Communist Political Party) Socialist Party USA (Marxist Socialist Political
Party) The New Black Panther Party (Black Militant Organization,
anti-American and racist Mosques are preaching for Obama (muslims vote
inshallah!)
- We know from this blog entry by the pro-Palestinian blogger Ali
Abunimah at The Electronic Intifadah, that Obama has moved to a move
pro-Israel position as his national aspirations developed. "The last time I
spoke to Obama was in the winter of 2004 at a gathering in Chicago's Hyde
Park neighborhood," Abunimah writes. "He was in the midst of a primary
campaign to secure the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate
seat he now occupies. But at that time polls showed him trailing. "As he
came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He
responded warmly, and volunteered, "Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about
Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when
things calm down I can be more up front.' He referred to my activism,
including columns I was contributing to the The Chicago Tribune critical of
Israeli and US policy, 'Keep up the good work!"
- Ralph Nader agrees."(Obama) has run a brilliant tactical campaign.
But his better instincts and his knowledge have been censored by himself..He
was pro-Palestinian when he was in Illinois before he ran for the state
Senate, during he ran-during the state Senate."
- Obama served as a paid director on the board of a nonprofit
organization that granted funding to a controversial Arab group that mourns
the establishment of Israel as a "catastrophe." (Obama has also reportedly
spoken at fundraisers for Palestinians living in what the United Nations
terms refugee camps.). The co-founder of that Arab group, Columbia
University professor Rashid Khalidi, is a harsh critic of Israel who
reportedly worked on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization when it
was labeled a terror group by the State Department. Khalidi held a
fundraiser in 2000 for Obama's failed bid for a seat in the U.S. House of
Representatives.
- Ten years ago Obama went to a pro-Palestinian dinner at which Edward
Said was the guest speaker and they sat at the same table.
- Obama employed and continues to employ several Farrakhan acolytes in
high positions on his Illinois and U.S. Senate campaign and office staffs.
- Obama very recently and previously referred to the "cycle of
violence" in the Middle East. He thereby equates Arab criminal violence with
legitimate Israeli self-defence.
- Obama's Church reprinted the outrageous claim that Israel planned an
"ethnic bomb" to kill blacks and Arabs.
All items listed above cannot be characterized as a smear as they are all
true.
How can Jews ignore all this or dismiss it as inconsequential? I don't get
it.
ADDENDUM ( found this article after writing mine.)
A Curious Kind of Friendship; Barack Obama's dubious record on Israel
MARK HEMINGWAY, NRO
On April 21, Barack Obama found himself at a diner in Scranton, Pa. The
Illinois senator hadn't been available to the press in ten days, so a
reporter approached him.
Perhaps Obama was in a bad mood because he foresaw a drubbing - the next
day, Pennsylvanian primary voters went for Hillary. Or maybe he just didn't
like the reporter's question: "Senator, did you hear about Jimmy Carter's
trip? He said he could get Hamas to negotiate."
Looking down at his breakfast, the senator snapped back, "Why can't I just
eat my waffle?"
The week before, two important things had happened. One, Obama had declined
to condemn Carter's meeting with Hamas, though Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice had opposed the trip. Two, the Palestinian terrorist group
took the unusual step of endorsing him. When asked about the endorsement,
Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, was flattered that Hamas compared
his candidate to JFK: "We all agree that John Kennedy was a great president,
and it's flattering when anybody says that Barack Obama would follow in his
footsteps."
Republican nominee John McCain quickly took note. "We need change in
America, but not the kind of change that wins kind words from Hamas," he
said.
The day following Wafflegate, Obama told the press it was a "bad idea" for
Carter to meet with Hamas, as it gave the group "a legitimacy that was
unnecessary."
It's understandable that Obama would rather do just about anything than talk
about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Questions about Obama's support for
Israel have percolated in Jewish publications and elsewhere for more than a
year, and now they threaten to spill over into the mainstream media. In
March, speaking to reporters in Texas, Obama defended his record: "Nobody
has ever been able to point to statements that I made or positions that I've
taken that are contrary to the long-term security interests in Israel and in
any way diminish the special relationship we have with that country."
Trouble is, this claim is simply not true.
Obama has been battling the perception that he is insufficiently supportive
of Israel since last year, when he told the Des Moines Register, "Nobody is
suffering more than the Palestinian people." An Iowa Democrat and member of
the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), David Adelman, called
Obama's comments "deeply troubling." Obama claimed the remark was taken out
of context, but the Politico noted that talk of Obama's comment was one of
many reasons that a "real, if kind of inchoate, skepticism" dominated
discussions of Obama at AIPAC's annual policy conference in March of last
year.
Whatever the context of that specific remark, many subsequent revelations
have given ample reason for skepticism: Obama has repeatedly claimed to
support Israel, but his record doesn't jibe with his rhetoric. Last year, he
announced he would vote against an amendment in the Senate declaring Iran's
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps - which has long supported Hezbollah
terrorists and otherwise abetted the murder of Israelis - a terrorist group.
The resolution passed 76-22, with the support of Hillary Clinton, Illinois
senator Dick Durbin, and a host of other reliable liberals. Obama missed the
vote while campaigning in New Hampshire, but he attacked Clinton on the
issue, saying the non-binding amendment might exacerbate tensions with Iran.
What's more, his life is marked by ties to anti-Israeli causes. A recent
report in the Los Angeles Times detailed Obama's close relationship with
Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia University. In the
late 1970s Khalidi worked with WAFA, the official news agency of the
Palestinian Liberation Organization; during this period, the PLO and its
factions
engaged in acts of terrorism. In 2005 Khalidi gained national attention when
he argued that, under international law, Palestinians have a right to
violently resist Israeli occupation.
While teaching at the University of Chicago, Khalidi co-founded the Arab
American Action Network (AAAN), an organization with a history of churning
out anti-Israeli propaganda. AAAN's current projects include "The Arab
American Oral History Project." The group's website asks, "Do you have
photos, letters or other memories you could share about Al-Nakba-1948?" "Al
Nakba" translates as "the catastrophe," and 1948 is the year in which Israel
became a
state.
Khalidi held a fundraiser for Obama's failed congressional bid in 2000,
while Obama was a state senator representing the liberal Hyde Park area of
Chicago. In 2003, Obama attended a tribute dinner for Khalidi where,
according to the Los Angeles Times, a speaker likened "Zionist settlers on
the West Bank" to Osama bin Laden.
The largess flowed in both directions. From 1999 to 2002 Obama served on the
board of directors of the Woods Fund, a grant-making foundation with assets
of $68 million whose nominal goal is "to increase opportunities for less
advantaged people and communities in the [Chicago] metropolitan area."
According to tax forms and annual reports, in 2001 and 2002 the Woods Fund
gave AAAN a total of $75,000 in grants. Bill Ayers, a former (and
unrepentant) member of the left-wing terrorist group the Weather
Underground, sat on the board with
Obama.
The aforementioned Politico article also noted "[anti-Israeli] sentiment .
.. circulating largely on private email lists and in chatter about a posting
on the pro-Palestinian blog Electronic Intifada, which claimed (with little
evidence) that Obama was once on the Palestinian side." For some time
Electronic Intifada co-founder Ali Abunimah has been saying that, in private
conversations, Obama expressed unequivocal pro-Palestinian views. Abunimah
is an activist in Chicago's Palestinian community, and is on the board of
AAAN, with which he has a long history of involvement. Given Obama's own
involvement with Khalidi and AAAN, Abunimah's claim to have had such
conversations with Obama seems plausible.
There have also been flaps over campaign advisers. Zbigniew Brzezinski,
Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, has recently endorsed and
campaigned with Obama. Brzezinski was singled out recently for defending The
Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, a book arguing that "the United States
has been willing to set aside its own security in order to advance the
interests of another state [Israel]." After a campaign press release
described Robert Malley, an adviser to the Clinton administration on the
Arab-Israeli conflict, as an Obama adviser, the campaign sought to distance
itself from Malley - whom New Republic editor-in-chief Marty Peretz has
called "a rabid hater of Israel."
When it comes to Israel, perhaps the most controversial member of Obama's
campaign is his chief military adviser and national-campaign co-chairman,
Gen. Merrill McPeak. In 1976, McPeak wrote an article for Foreign Affairs
criticizing Israel for not returning to its 1967 borders and handing the
Golan Heights back to Syria. McPeak accused Jewish and evangelical voters of
placing their interest in Israel above U.S. interests in a 2003 interview
with the
Oregonian. When asked what was holding back world peace, McPeak responded,
"New York City. Miami. We have a large vote . . . here in favor of Israel.
And no politician wants to run against it." Obama disavowed McPeak's stance
on Israel, but stands behind the campaign's relationship with the general.
Then there's Obama's pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright: "The Israelis have
illegally occupied Palestinian territories for over 40 years now. . . . [We
need to] wake Americans up concerning the injustice and the racism under
which the Palestinians have lived because of Zionism." Last year, the
bulletin at Wright 's church reprinted an article by a Hamas official.
Given Obama's past and current relationships, the Jewish community is taking
his rhetoric with hefty portions of sodium chloride. One well-known Jewish
Democratic strategist says that with Obama running, McCain could equal or
even surpass the 39 percent of the Jewish vote that Ronald Reagan captured
against Jimmy Carter in 1980. This could be a major factor in swing states
with significant Jewish populations, notably Florida and Pennsylvania.
According to Pennsylvania-primary exit polls, Jews went for Hillary, 62 to
38 percent.
There are two ways of looking at all this. Perhaps Obama is privately
hostile to Israel. Or perhaps he comes from a Hyde Park milieu so leftist
that he saw these relationships as normal political connections. In a sense
it doesn't matter: Regardless of why Obama tolerates terrorist sympathizers,
the fact that he has a history of doing so could destroy his candidacy. On
the national stage, and particularly in the Democratic party, Jews play a
prominent role.
"A normal liberal politician wouldn't get near this - the political instinct
would be, 'I don't want to touch this' - but none of it offended his
sensibilities," the Jewish Democratic strategist said. "He sat there in
rooms where Israel was likened to Osama bin Laden. He didn't walk out."
Posted by Ted Belman @ 12:07 pm |
-
- Obama said "If there is an Arab American family [in the US] being
rounded up without benefit of an attorney, those are my civil liberties!"
**I'd like to know when and where any American citizens of arab ancestry were "rounded up" and not given legal representation. Sounds like typical CAIR propaganda.** :roll:
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/05/19/iran-not-a-serious-threat/
Iran not a “serious threat”?
POSTED AT 9:15 AM ON MAY 19, 2008 BY ED MORRISSEY
Barack Obama gave an interesting description of Iran and the threat it poses to the United States and our national interests at an appearance in Oregon last night. “They don’t pose a serious threat to us in the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us,” Obama told a cheering audience, explaining why he doesn’t think we need to worry about “tiny” countries like Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, and Iran. Obama also displays a weird sense of history when he suggests that the Berlin Wall fell because we engaged Mikhail Gorbachev:
Wow. Where to begin with this silliness?
Let’s start with the Soviet Union. We talked with the Soviet Union because they also had nuclear weapons. Obama seems to forget that the entire point of our Iran policy is to prevent being put in the position of having to cut deals with a terrorist-supporting, radical Islamist non-rational state. When the enemy already has the capability of destroying you several times over, negotiations are needed to keep one side from initiating a war. Only an idiot would think that the negotiations intended on disarming the Soviets, or they us. The same dynamic applies to our engagement with Mao Zedong and Red China; Mao was smart enough to hold himself out as a potential partner in a power balance against the Soviets.
The Soviet Union collapsed economically; they did not just decide to capitulate. The Berlin Wall did not fall as a result of negotiations, but because the regime propping it up ceased to exist. Why did the Soviet Union collapse? Because Ronald Reagan won an economic war with Moscow, forcing it to spend more and more and falling further and further behind. The Strategic Defense Initiative provided the coup de grace to the Soviets, who knew they could never match us in missile defense, and tried negotiating an end to the economic war instead, with disastrous results.
That would be the same SDI that Democrats staunchly opposed, sneeringly called “Star Wars” and proclaiming it a threat to peaceful coexistence. They wanted a decades-long series of summits instead of the end of communism, which sounds strikingly familiar in Obama’s speech. Reagan had to fight the Democrats to beat the Soviets, not through presidential-level diplomacy but through economic isolation and military strength.
Listen to Obama talk about the “common interests” supposedly shared between the US and the Iranian mullahcracy. What interests would those be? The destruction of Israel, the denial of the Holocaust, the financial and military support of Hamas and Hezbollah, or the killing of American soldiers in Iraq? And please point out the presidential-level, unconditional contacts that brought down the Berlin Wall. Our “common interests” didn’t exist between the East German and American governments; they existed between the people of East Germany and America in the promise of real freedom. When the Soviet power structure imploded, it was the people of East Germany who tore down the wall, not Mikhail Gorbachev, who watched it happen impotently.
Furthermore, the danger in Iranian nuclear weapons has nothing to do with the capacity of its Shahab-3 ballistic missiles. Iran’s sponsorship of terrorist organizations will allow them to partner with any small group of lunatics who want to smuggle a nuclear weapon into any Western city — London, Rome, Washington DC, Los Angeles, take your pick. That’s the problem with nuclear proliferation; it doesn’t take a large army to threaten annihilation any longer, which is why we work so hard to keep those weapons out of the hands of non-rational actors like Iran. The Soviets may have been evil, but they were rational, and we could count on their desire to survive to rely on the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction. The Iranians believe that a worldwide conflagration will have Allah deliver the world to Islam, so a nuclear exchange may fall within their policy, and that’s assuming we could establish their culpability for a sneak nuclear attack to the extent where a President Obama would order a nuclear reprisal.
This speech reveals Obama to have no grasp of history, no grasp of strategic implications of a nuclear Iran, and no clue how to secure the nation and handle foreign policy.
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Obama and the Jews
May 20, 2008; Page A21
America's Jews account for a mere 2% of the U.S. population. But they have voted the Democratic ticket by margins averaging 78% over the past four election cycles, and their votes are potentially decisive in swing states like Florida and Pennsylvania. They also contribute an estimated half of all donations given to national Democratic candidates.
So whatever his actual convictions, it is a matter of ordinary political prudence that Barack Obama "get right with the Jews." Since Jews tend to be about as liberal as the Illinois senator on most domestic issues, what this really means is that he get right with Israel.
AP
And so he has.
Over his campaign's port side have gone pastor Jeremiah Wright ("Every time you say 'Israel' Negroes get awfully quiet on you because they [sic] scared: Don't be scared; don't be scared"); former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski ("I think what the Israelis are doing today [2006] for example in Lebanon is in effect – maybe not in intent – the killing of hostages"); and former Clinton administration diplomat Robert Malley (an advocate and practitioner of talks with Hamas).
The campaign has also managed to clarify, or perhaps retool, Mr. Obama's much-quoted line that "nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people." What the senator was actually saying, he now tells us, is that "nobody has suffered more than the Palestinian people from the failure of the Palestinian leadership to recognize Israel, to renounce violence, and to get serious about negotiating peace and security for the region."
Still more forthrightly, Mr. Obama recently told the Atlantic Monthly that "the idea of a secure Jewish state is a fundamentally just idea, and a necessary idea, given not only world history but the active existence of anti-Semitism, the potential vulnerability that the Jewish people could still experience."
I can think of no good reason to doubt the sincerity of Mr. Obama's comments. Nor, from the standpoint of American Jewry, is there anything to be gained from doing so: The fastest way to turn whatever dark suspicions Jews may have of Mr. Obama into a self-fulfilling prophecy is to spurn his attempts at outreach.
Yet the significant question isn't whether Mr. Obama is "pro-Israel," in the sense that his heart is in the right place and he isn't quite Jimmy Carter. What matters is whether his vision for U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East – and the broader world view that informs it – will have ancillary effects favorable to Israel's core interests.
Take Hamas and Hezbollah, which pose the nearest threats to Israel's security. Mr. Obama has insisted he opposes negotiating with Hamas "until they recognize Israel, renounce terrorism and abide by previous agreements." He also calls Hezbollah a "destabilizing organization."
But if Mr. Obama's litmus test for his choice of negotiating partners is their recognition of Israel and their renunciation of terrorism, then what is the sense in negotiating without preconditions with Iran and Syria?
Alternatively, if the problem with Hamas and Hezbollah is that neither holds the reins of government, what happens when they actually do? Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary elections in January 2006; Hezbollah sits in the Lebanese cabinet. Would Mr. Obama be willing to parley if, in the course of his administration, either group should come to power?
Or take Iran, which Israelis universally see as their deadliest enemy. Yes, there are arguments to be made in favor of presidential-level negotiations between Washington and Tehran – perhaps as a last-ditch effort to avert military strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. But does anyone seriously think Mr. Obama would authorize such strikes?
Instead, Mr. Obama says he favors "tough diplomacy," including tighter sanctions on Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps. Last fall, however, he was one of only 22 senators to oppose a Senate resolution calling for the IRGC to be designated as a terrorist organization, a vote that made him a dove even within the Democratic Party. Mr. Obama argued at the time the amendment would give the administration a pretext to go to war with Iran. It was an odd claim for a nonbinding resolution.
Or take Iraq. Israelis are now of two minds as to the wisdom of the invasion of Iraq, mainly because they fear it has weakened America's hand vis-à-vis Iran. Maybe. But is it so clear that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq wouldn't further strengthen Iran's hand, and consolidate the so-called Shiite crescent stretching from southern Iraq to the hills overlooking northern Israel?
Finally, there is Israel itself. In the Atlantic interview, Mr. Obama declared that "my job in being a friend to Israel is partly to hold up a mirror and tell the truth," particularly in respect to the settlements. Yes, there are mirrors that need to be held up to those settlements, as there are to those Palestinians whose terrorism makes their dismantlement so problematic. Perhaps there is also a mirror to be held up to an American foreign-policy neophyte whose amazing conceit is that he understands Israel's dilemmas better than Israelis themselves.
Write to bstephens@wsj.com
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/05/20/on-budgeting-and-asymmetrical-threats/
More on Barry-O's cluelessness.....
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**explaining why he doesn’t think we need to worry about “tiny” countries like Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, and Iran**
BO doesn't say it, but he also thinking Israel in the same sentence.
A nuclear Iran will likely spur a regional arms race:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1210668683868&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
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Obama and the Jews
May 20, 2008; Page A21
So whatever his actual convictions, it is a matter of ordinary political prudence that Barack Obama "get right with the Jews." Since Jews tend to be about as liberal as the Illinois senator on most domestic issues, what this really means is that he get right with Israel.
AP
And so he has.
It certainly may be that some of Obama's Pro Israel Support is politically expedient.
However, Obama's ties to Jewish Community began way before he ran for President. Obama has had a lot of Jewish Support since the primary contest of his senate run. He spoke at several Pro Israel events and was given the maximum donation allowed by at least two Pro Israel 527 Groups as well as other individual contributions from the Jewish Community. Admittedly some of the thinking at the time for the large support he received was that he was definitely going to win anyway. One of challengers in the primaries was rumored to beat his wife and the other was involved in a sex scandal. The hubris that makes Obama think h knows how to handle Israel's problems better than Israelis themselves is widespread in politicians and commentators. It is shared by anyone who waltzes in the region holds some peace talks and thinks that is going solve problems that are hundreds or thousands of years old.
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Rachel,
It is great to have another opinion on this board. Thanks for you ideas. :)
"And so he has"
Or, so he and his Jewish supporters are trying to claim. And this may be true! But it remains to be seen.
Personally, I don't trust this guy. He has a long history of being a very liberal guy trying to move to the center. He also has a long history of associating with those who are, lets say it gently, not fond of Jews, or Israel.
A person's historical actions, beliefs, and the way that they have lived are far far more characteristic of their true beliefs than any expedient things they say for political purposes. Could he truly have altered his beliefs? I doubt it. Will he truly strive to work towards protecting Israel once elected? Maybe. Will he negotiate with Israel's enemies? Almost certainly he will. Will this be good for Israel? That is the great question. It ain't his life in danger if Iran unleashes nuclear weapons on Israel. It ain't his life on the line by *trusting* Iran whose total history is hell bent on driving Jews out of Israel - dead or alive.
Do you think he will really risk American lives and his political life to save Jews? I am to say the least, very, very skeptical. I feel Israel was far safer with Bush/Cheney then the left. Just my opinion. But as we speak Iran is closing in on nucs. And all the talking has done nothing to stop that - nor will it. Only a political collapse from within Iran or war will stop this IMO.
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Rachel,
It is great to have another opinion on this board. Thanks for you ideas. :)
......Do you think he will really risk American lives and his political life to save Jews? I am to say the least, very, very skeptical. I feel Israel was far safer with Bush/Cheney then the left.
CCP,
Thanks for the Welcome! Did Bush risk American lives and his political life to save Jews? Would McCain? I admit Bush is probably stronger on Israel than Obama but I think he was/is terrible for the country. I would definitely vote against someone who I felt was bad for Israel( which I think would be bad for the US as well) but I am not a one issue voter. I already voted for Obama over Alan Keys who said some beautiful things about Israel but who I think is a total nut job. According to Aipac( who is extremely concerned about Iranian nukes) and Alan Dershowitz Obama is good on Israel. What has Bush done about the Iranian Nuke problem? What would McCain do? Do you see an easy simple solution? I am not hearing a good solution on either side. I definitely like McCain much better than Bush or Kerry but I am not so found of his current and former religious endorses and it is not the only issue we disagree about. Neither Party is a great fit for me because my views on social issues and my views on security issues don't mesh well with either.
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***Did Bush risk American lives and his political life to save Jews?***
Yes, I think that was part of the calculation in invading Iraq. Obviously it hasn't worked as well as thought, but he certainly is risking American lives right now. And I think if he had more political backing he would bomb the shit out of Iran's nuclear facilities, but America has turned weak.
******Would McCain?***
In my mind I believe he would, absolutely.
As for Alan Dershowitz he can't see without his Democrat/liberal colored glasses. So of course he will back the Democrat - he *always* does. I have never heard him say a kind word for any Republican. He could be an editorialist for the NYT.
Is/was Bush terrible for the country? All I can say is the whole Republican party has been a disgrace the last 5 years - since 911 IMO. I am a truly disappointed Republican.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/05/23/vets-for-freedom-obama-will-go-to-iran-but-not-iraq/
Obama's priorities.
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POTOMAC WATCH
By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
The Obama Learning Curve
May 23, 2008
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden took to the airwaves this week to "help" the rookie Barack Obama out of a foreign-policy jam. Oh sure, admitted Mr. Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee had given the "wrong" answer when he said he'd meet unconditionally with leaders of rogue states. But on the upside, the guy "has learned a hell of a lot."
Somewhere Mr. Obama was muttering an expletive. But give Mr. Biden marks for honesty. As Mr. Obama finishes a week of brutal questioning over his foreign-policy judgments, it's become clear he has learned a lot – and is learning still.
Right now, for instance, he's learning how tough it can be to pivot to a general-election stance on the crucial issue of foreign policy. He's also learning Democrats won't be able to sail through a national-security debate by simply painting John McCain as the second coming of George Bush.
Remember how Mr. Obama got here. In a July debate, the Illinois senator was asked if he'd meet, "without preconditions," the "leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea." It was an unexpected question, and Mr. Obama rolled with his gut: "I would," he said, riffing that the Bush administration's policy of not negotiating with terror-sponsoring states was "ridiculous."
Hillary Clinton, who still had the aura of inevitability, and who was already thinking ahead to a general election, wouldn't bite. At that point, any initial misgivings the Obama campaign had about the boss's answer disappeared. Mr. Obama hadn't got much traction differentiating himself from Mrs. Clinton over Iraq, but this was a chance to get to her left, to cast her to liberal primary voters as a warmonger. Which he did, often, committing himself ever more to a policy of unfettered engagement.
Today's Obama, all-but-nominee, is pitching to a broad American audience less keen to legitimize Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who provides weapons that kill American soldiers. The senator clumsily invited this debate when he took great umbrage to President Bush's recent criticism of appeasers (which, in a wonderfully revealing moment, Democrats instantly assumed meant them). Mr. Obama has since been scrambling to neutralize his former statement.
A week ago, in Oregon, he adopted the "no-big-deal" approach, telling listeners Iran was just a "tiny" country that, unlike the Soviet Union, did not "pose a serious threat to us." But this suggested he'd missed that whole asymmetrical warfare debate – not to mention 9/11 – so by the next day, he'd switched to the "blame-Republicans" line. Iran was in fact "the greatest threat to the United States and Israel and the Middle East for a generation" – but all because of President Bush's Iraq war.
This, however, revived questions of why he'd meet with said greatest-threat leader, so his advisers jumped in, this time to float the "misunderstood" balloon. Obama senior foreign policy adviser Susan Rice, channeling Bill Clinton, said it all depended on what the definition of a "leader" is. "Well, first of all, he said he'd meet with the appropriate Iranian leaders. He hasn't named who that leader will be." (Turns out, Mr. Obama has said he will meet with . . . Mr. Ahmadinejad.)
Former Sen. Tom Daschle, channeling Ms. Rice, explained it also depended on what the definition of a precondition is: "It's important to emphasize again when we talk about preconditions, we're just saying everything needs to be on the table. I would not say that we would meet unconditionally." This is called being against preconditions before you were for them.
And so it goes, as Mr. Obama shifts and shambles, all the while telling audiences that when voting for president they should look beyond "experience" to "judgment." In this case, whatever his particular judgment on Iran is on any particular day.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. Democrats entered this race confident national security wouldn't be the drag on the party it has in the past. With an unpopular war and a rival who supports that war, they planned to wrap Mr. McCain around the unpopular Mr. Bush and be done with it. Mr. Obama is still manfully marching down this road, today spending as much time warning about a "third Bush term" as he does reassuring voters about a first Obama one.
Then again, 9/11 and five years of Iraq debate have educated voters. Mr. McCain is certainly betting they can separate the war from the urgent threat of an Iranian dictator who could possess nukes, and whose legitimization would encourage other rogues in their belligerence. This is a debate the Arizonan has been preparing for all his life and, note, Iranian diplomacy is simply the topic du jour.
Mr. McCain has every intention of running his opponent through the complete foreign-policy gamut. Explain again in what circumstances you'd use nuclear weapons? What was that about invading Pakistan? How does a policy of engaging the world include Mr. Ahmadinejad, but not our ally Colombia and its trade pact?
It explains too the strong desire among the McCain camp to get Mr. Obama on stage for debates soon. There's a feeling Mr. Obama is still climbing the foreign-policy learning curve. And they see mileage in his issuing a few more gut reactions.
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***Did Bush risk American lives and his political life to save Jews?***
Yes, I think that was part of the calculation in invading Iraq. Obviously it hasn't worked as well as thought, but he certainly is risking American lives right now. And I think if he had more political backing he would bomb the shit out of Iran's nuclear facilities, but America has turned weak.
******Would McCain?***
In my mind I believe he would, absolutely.
As for Alan Dershowitz he can't see without his Democrat/liberal colored glasses. So of course he will back the Democrat - he *always* does. I have never heard him say a kind word for any Republican. He could be an editorialist for the NYT.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3444393,00.html
Chief of staff of former secretary of state reveals that large number of senior Israeli officials warned Bush administration that invasion of Iraq would be destabilizing to region. 'The Israelis were telling us Iraq is not the enemy - Iran is the enemy,' he says
Yitzhak Benhorin
Instead invading Iraq to protect Israelis ( I am not arguing against the invasion of Iraq) why didn't Bush invade Iran move the embassy to Jerusalem. The idea that Bush invaded Iraq for Israel is generally used as anti-Israel attack and I don't think there is much truth to it.
The Dershowitz quote I was referring to was ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/22/us/politics/22jewish.html?_r=1&bl&ex=1211688000&en=2f1c1073322ca17f&ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin
"Mr. Dershowitz, who supports Mrs. Clinton, says he tells voters that Mr. Obama, Mrs. Clinton and Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, are all pro-Israel and to reject false personal attacks on Mr. Obama."
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Hi Rachel
Thanks for the good points.
That the Iraq invasion was risky was the opinion of some people - true. Just look at Pat Buchanan. He was against it from day 1.
Yet Israel still factored in the equation to invade. Neocons some of whom are Jewish certainly thought that toppling Iraq would give the US a bulkhead against Iran and Syria. So the intent was certainly there though the result so far, has not gone as planned. Unless we shrink from it now which BO certainly wants to do IMO. BO is trying to back track now but there is absolutely no similarity to MCCain iron resolve to win this. Some people do think accepting our losses, and retreating now may be our best option. Americans will have to decide which direction to take and the lines are drawn.
As for Dershowitz I saw this quote too the other day. I was surprised. I would say it is the first time in decades I have ever heard him say anything positive about a Republican.
Your points are valid but as matter of opinion I still stand on mine.
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By the way. With regards to Keyes and Dershowitz I recall a debate between these two some years back.
I haven't actually tried this link but hopefully it works if you have the time and the interest.
I thought Dershowitz won hands down. He shot Alan's arguments full of holes, and ran circles around him. I would be the first to say he was superb!
On the other hand I know someone who was a law student at Harvard and I recall asking him what it was like to study with some of the world's great minds. I specifically asked about Dershowitz. The response took me by surprise:
"What a pompous jerk".
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http://www.presidential-candidate-videos.com/watch/?vid=30802
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May 24, 2008
Barry Rubin: The Fall of Lebanon
Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, explains why May 21, 2008 is a date that should live in infamy.
“If you have tears, prepare to shed them now…. Oh, what a fall was there… Then I, and you, and all of us fell down.” .--William Shakespeare, “Julius Caesar,” Act 3, Scene 1 May 21, 2008, is a date—like December 7 (1941) and September 11 (2001)—that should now live in infamy. Yet who will notice, mourn, or act the wiser for it?
On that day, the Beirut spring was buried under the reign of Hizballah.
Speaking on October 5, 1938, after Britain and France effectively turned Czechoslovakia over to Nazi Germany, Winston Churchill said, “What everybody would like to ignore or forget must nevertheless be stated, namely, that we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat….”
In contrast, Assistant Secretary of State David Welch said that the agreement over Lebanon was, "A necessary and positive step." At least when one sells out a country one should recognize this has happened rather than pretend otherwise. But this is precisely what took place at Munich, when the deal made was proclaimed as a concession that brought peace and resolved Germany’s last territorial demand in the region.
Churchill knew better and his words perfectly suit the situation in Lebanon today:
“The utmost [Western diplomacy] has been able to gain for Czechoslovakia…has been that the German dictator, instead of snatching the victuals from the table, has been content to have them served to him course by course.”
Yes, that’s it exactly. On every point, Hizballah, Iran, and Syria, got all they wanted from Lebanon’s government: its surrender of sovereignty. They have veto power over the government; one-third of the cabinet; election changes to ensure victory in the next balloting; and they will have their candidate installed as president.
The majority side is not giving up but is trying to comfort itself on small mercies. The best arguments it can come up with are that now everyone knows Hizballah is not patriotic, treats other Lebanese as enemies, and cannot seize areas held by Christian and Druze militias. It isn’t much to cheer about.
Nevertheless, as in 1938, a lot of the media is proclaiming it as a victory of some kind, securing peace and stability in Lebanon.
Not so. If Syria murders more Lebanese journalists, judges, or politicians, no one will investigate. No one dare diminish Hizballah’s de facto rule over large parts of the country. No one dare stop weapons pouring over the border from Syria and Iran. In fact, why should they continue to be smuggled in secretly? No one dare interfere if and when Hizballah, under Syrian and Iranian guidance, decide it is time for another war with Israel.
This defeat was not only total, it was totally predictable. Just as Churchill said:
“If only Great Britain. France and Italy [today we would add the United States, of course,] had pledged themselves two or three years ago to work in association for maintaining peace and collective security, how different might have been our position…. But the world and the parliaments and public opinion would have none of that in those days. When the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now that it is thoroughly out of hand we apply too late the remedies which then might have affected a cure.”
Instead there was a lack “of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong….” Actually, though, as Churchill knew, when he spoke these faults were still not corrected. The folly continued.
And so is what comes next? Back to Churchill:
“All is over. Silent, mournful, abandoned, broken, Czechoslovakia recedes into the darkness.” That country suffered because it put its faith in the Western democracies and the League of Nations (now the United Nations). In particular, she was betrayed by France whom the Czechs then, and the Lebanese today, trusted to help them.
The UN Security Council on May 22 endorsed the Lebanon agreement even though it totally contradicted the Council’s own resolution ending the Hizballah-Israel war, thus betraying the commitments made to Israel about stopping arms smuggling, disarming Hizballah, and keeping that group from returning to south Lebanon. The UN’s total reversal of its demands from two years ago—constituting a total victory for Hizballah—did not bring a flicker of shame or even recognition that this in fact had happened.
All this is a victory for terrorism. It is quite true that the Lebanese Shia—like the German minority in Czechoslovakia which Hitler promoted—has genuine grievances and that Hizballah has real support in its own community. But how did it overcome the other communities, the other political forces in Lebanon? Through assassination and bombing (albeit done by Syria’s surrogates rather than directly), by intimidation and fear, by demagoguery and war.
Iran and Syria help their allies; the West doesn’t. And so the message was: We can kill you; your friends cannot save you. Look at their indifference! Despair and die.
And here, regarding the future, we can only quote Churchill’s speech extensively:
“In future the Czechoslovak State cannot be maintained as an independent entity. I think you will find that in a period of time which may be measured by years, but may be measured only by months, Czechoslovakia will be engulfed in the Nazi regime. Perhaps they may join it in despair or in revenge. At any rate, that story is over and told. But we cannot consider the abandonment and ruin of Czechoslovakia in the light only of what happened only last month. It is the most grievous consequence of what we have done and of what we have left undone in the last five years - five years of futile good intentions, five years of eager search for the line of least resistance….”
Lebanon will not disappear as a country on the map, of course—contrary to the Iranian alliance’s intentions toward Israel—but it is now going to be part of the Iranian bloc. This is not only bad for Lebanon itself but also terrifying for other Arab regimes. The Saudis deserve credit for trying to save Lebanon. But what will happen now as the balance of power shifts? They are less inclined to resist and more likely to follow the West’s course and adopt an appeasement policy.
Again, Churchill in 1938:
“Do not let us blind ourselves to that. It must now be accepted that all the countries of Central and Eastern Europe will make the best terms they can with the triumphant Nazi power. The system of alliances in Central Europe upon which France has relied for her safety has been swept away, and I can see no means by which it can be reconstituted. The road down the Danube Valley to the Black Sea, the road which leads as far as Turkey, has been opened.
In less than four years, that is where German armies were marching, thankfully a situation far worse than we can expect in the Middle East. Yet the trend toward appeasement and surrender could well be similar. Churchill said:
“In fact, if not in form, it seems to me that all those countries of Middle Europe… will, one after another, be drawn into this vast system of power politics--not only power military politics but power economic politics--radiating from Berlin, and I believe this can be achieved quite smoothly and swiftly and will not necessarily entail the firing of a single shot.”
His specific example was Yugoslavia whose government within three years was ready to join Germany’s bloc. (It was prevented from doing so only by a British-organized coup but was then invaded and overrun by the German army.)
Only the names of the countries need be changed to make Churchill’s point apply to the present:
“You will see, day after day, week after week [that]…many of those countries, in fear of the rise of the Nazi power,” will give in. There had been forces “which looked to the Western democracies and loathed the idea of having this arbitrary rule of the totalitarian system thrust upon them, and hoped that a stand would be made.” But they would now be demoralized. But they would now be demoralized, at best less active in resisting; at worst. going over to the other side.
Churchill knew that his country’s leader had good intentions but that wasn’t enough. His analysis of British thinking applies well both to Europe, to President George Bush’s current policy, and very well to the thinking of Senator Barack Obama:
“The prime minister desires to see cordial relations between this country and Germany. There is no difficulty at all in having cordial relations between the peoples. Our hearts go out to them. But they have no power. But never will you have friendship with the present German government. You must have diplomatic and correct relations, but there can never be friendship between the British democracy and the Nazi power, that power which…vaunts the spirit of aggression and conquest, which derives strength and perverted pleasure from persecution, and uses, as we have seen, with pitiless brutality the threat of murderous force. That power cannot ever be the trusted friend of the British democracy.”
Churchill understood that his nation’s enemies took their ideology seriously and that their ambitions and methods were incompatible with his country.
And finally, Churchill understood the trend: things will get worse and would even make it politically incorrect to criticize the enemy:
“In a very few years, perhaps in a very few months, we shall be confronted with demands with which we shall no doubt be invited to comply. Those demands may affect the surrender of territory or the surrender of liberty. I foresee and foretell that the policy of submission will carry with it restrictions upon the freedom of speech and debate in Parliament, on public platforms, and discussions in the press, for it will be said--indeed, I hear it said sometimes now - that we cannot allow the Nazi system of dictatorship to be criticized by ordinary, common English politicians. Then, with a press under control, in part direct but more potently indirect, with every organ of public opinion doped and chloroformed into acquiescence, we shall be conducted along further stages of our journey.”
In short, what could be called “Germanophobia” or seen as war-mongering in resisting German demands and aggression would be…verboten, something often seen in contemporary debates when political correctness trumps democratic society and pimps for dictatorial regimes and totalitarian ideology..
Churchill predicted victory but only if the free countries—and even some not so free whose interests pushed them to oppose the threat—were strong and cooperated:
“Do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.”
Wow. Well if you don’t see yet the parallelism with the current time let me continue on my own. Lebanon's brief period of independence has ended. Lebanon is now incorporated--at least in part and probably more in the future--into the Iranian bloc.
Only three years ago, after the assassination of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, almost certainly ordered at the highest level of the Syrian government, a popular mass movement called the Beirut spring helped push out the Syrian military. The resulting government was called "pro-Western" in the newscasts, but it might have well been called pro-Lebanon.
Forget about the Israel-Palestinian (and now Israel-Syrian) negotiations or the latest reports from Iraq or Afghanistan. What has happened in Lebanon is far more significant. When all these other developments are long forgotten, the expansion of the Syrian-Iranian zone of influence to Lebanon will be the most important and lasting event.
Basically, the supporters of the Lebanese government--the leadership of the majority of the Sunni Muslim, Christian, and Druze communities--capitulated to the demands of Hizballah. And who can blame them? With a steady drumbeat of terrorist acts and assassinations, with the Hizballah offensive seizing Sunni west Beirut, with the lack of support from the West, they concluded that the battle was unwinnable.
Politicians, intellectuals, academics, and officials in the West live comfortable lives. Their careers prosper often in direct relationship to their misunderstanding, misexplaining, and misacting in the Middle East.
Then, too, all too many of them have lived up to every negative stereotype the Islamists hold of them: greedy for oil and trade; cowardly in confronting aggression, easily fooled, very easily divided, and losing confidence in their own societies and civilization.
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In a statement of almost incredible stupidity, the New York Times stated:
“Everybody knew President Bush was aiming at Senator Barack Obama last week when he likened those who endorse talks with `terrorists and radicals’ to appeasers of the Nazis.”
During the Cold War, I remember that it was said that if a Soviet official or supporter began a statement like that—everyone knows—what followed invariably is a lie. So it is in this case. For several years, the main criticism of Bush has been his strategy of pressure and isolation on Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hizballah, and assorted terrorists. There have been hundreds of op-eds, eds, speeches, reports, and other formats on this point. It is the administration’s number-one problem. Suddenly, it applies only to Senator Barack Obama. What rubbish.
Equally, the principle issue is not just one of contacts with extremist forces but how much toughness, pressure and isolation as opposed to concessions (of which negotiations are one) and compromises are offered. For example, there have been numerous ongoing contacts with Iran over the nuclear issue for years, supported by the Bush administration. They have all failed. For someone to come and say that negotiations have not been tried is pretty ridiculous. The hidden element there is really as follows:
--The real fault is with us, not them.
--You haven’t offered enough.
--And the assessment that no agreement is possible because of the other side’s aims and behavior is always unacceptable. This implies that even if you talk with them and get nowhere, you just have to keep listening to grievances, avoiding giving offense, trying, conceding, and apologizing.
In this context, what better example could there be of this dangerous malady than Obama, the apparent Democratic nominee and possible future president of the United States?
According to Obama at an Oregon rally, Iran does not “pose a serious threat” to the United States. His reasoning is as disturbing—or more so—than his conclusion. Obama explained that Iran has less to spend on defense and if it “tried to pose a serious threat to us they wouldn’t . . . stand a chance.”
We can now feel secure that the Iranians won’t load their soldiers onto landing craft and storm the New Jersey beaches. Unfortunately, that isn’t their military strategy. Perhaps Obama doesn’t understand that the average B-1 bomber costs less than a suicide bomber. Has he heard about asymmetric warfare?
Forget that. Has he heard of terrorism, the Marine barracks’ bombing, or September 11?
According to Obama:
"Iran, they spend one one-hundredth of what we spend on the military. I mean if Iran tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn't stand a chance. And we should use that position of strength that we have to be bold enough to go ahead and listen. That doesn't mean we agree with them on everything. That doesn't, we might not compromise with them on any issues. But, at least we should find out are there areas of potential common interest and we can reduce some of the tension that have caused us so many problems around the world."
One cannot pretend away the implications of this paragraph. Let’s list them:
--No understanding that Iran follows strategies designed to circumvent that problem of unequal power including terrorism, guerrilla war, deniable attacks, long wars of attrition, the use of surrogates, and so on.
--The only way Obama sees for using the U.S. “position of strength” is to listen to their grievances, as if we are not familiar with them. In short, the only thing you can do when stronger is to get weaker. Presumably the same applies when you are the weaker party.
--Why is he so totally unaware that dialogue has been tried? A decade with the PLO, longer with Hizballah by other Lebanese, four straight years of European engagement with Tehran over the nuclear issue, multiple U.S. delegations to talk with the Syrians, and so on. Was nothing learned from this experience?
--And what happens afterward if Obama’s dialogue doesn’t work? What cards would he have left? What readiness to try another course? Perhaps by then the Iranians will have nuclear weapons and other gains negating that “position of strength” so fecklessly frittered away.
--What possible issues can the United States find to compromise with Iran? Let’s say: give them Lebanon (oh, we already did that); ignore their sponsorship of terrorism; give them Iraq; give them Israel; withdraw U.S. forces from the region, accept their having nuclear arms. What?
--Why should the United States be able to reduce tensions through negotiations when Iran wants tensions? There is an important hint here: if the United States makes concessions it might buy off tensions. Since Iran and the others know about Obama’s all-carrots-no-sticks worldview, they will make him pay a lot to get the illusion of peace and quiet.
--There is no hint, not the slightest, of his understanding the option of using power to intimidate or defeat Iran, or as a way to muster allies. If Obama had the most minimal comprehension of these issues, he would fake it with some blah-blah about how America would combine toughness with flexibility, deterrence with compromise, steadfastness in order to gain more from the other side in negotiations. A critical element in peace-keeping, peace-making, and negotiations is to act tough and be strong in order to have leverage. Even in responding to criticisms, Obama has only talked about whether negotiations are conditional or unconditional and at what level they should be conducted. He is oblivious to the fact that the chief executive does things other than negotiations.
--If this is Obama’s strategy while Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons what would he do in dealing with a Tehran owning them?
Make no mistake, Obama is channelling Neville Chamberlain—precisely because what he says shows his parallel thinking. Many people may get a chill listening to Obama but it certainly isn’t a Churchill. Apologists, sympathizers, and wishful-thinkers keep endowing this would-be emperor with beautiful suits of clothes. He doesn’t have any.
And at present, even more if Obama wins, the threat is of an Iran that’s aggressive precisely because it knows that it will not have to confront U.S. forces. Tehran knows that it can sponsor terrorism directly against U.S. forces in Iraq, and also against Israel and Lebanon, because that level of assault will not trigger American reaction.
Yet anyone who doesn’t want to get into war with Iran should be all the more eager to talk about sanctions, pressures, deterrence, building alliances and backing allies; in short, combating Iran indirectly to avoid having to confront it directly.
All the more so now, however, Syria won’t split away from Iran; Iran won’t give up on its nuclear program; Hamas won’t moderate; Hizballah won’t relent. Why should they when they not only believe their own ideologies but also think they are winning? In each case, too, they are banking on an Obama victory—whether accurately or otherwise-- to bring them even more.
A lot of positive factors could be cited to show why Iran and its allies will ultimately lose. But it can happen in an easier way or a harder, longer way. There are too many Chamberlains and not enough Churchills, perhaps none at all. Things are bad, very bad, for the West right now. The beginning of repairing those strategic fortunes is to recognize that fact.
All quotes taken from the full text at http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=1189.
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An Atomic Assist
By Amir Taheri
New York Post | Friday, May 23, 2008
BUOYED by their modest electoral success last month, critics of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's provocative foreign policy were preparing to launch a series of attacks on him in the Islamic Majlis, Iran's ersatz parliament. But then Ahmadinejad got an unexpected boost from Barack Obama.
Ali Larijani, Iran's former nuclear negotiator and now a Majlis member, was arguing that the Islamic Republic would pay a heavy price for Ahmadinejad's rejection of three UN Security Council resolutions on nukes. Then the likely Democratic presidential nominee stepped in.
Obama announced that, if elected, he wouldn't ask Iran to comply with UN resolutions as a precondition for direct talks with Ahmadinejad: "Preconditions, as it applies to a country like Iran, for example, was a term of art. Because this administration has been very clear that it will not have direct negotiations with Iran until Iran has met preconditions that are essentially what Iran views, and many other observers would view, as the subject of the negotiations; for example, their nuclear program."
"Talking without preconditions" would require America to ignore three unanimous Security Council resolutions. Before starting his unconditional talks, would Obama present a new resolution at the Security Council to cancel the three that Ahmadinejad doesn't like? Or would the new US president act in defiance of the United Nations - further weakening the Security Council's authority?
President Bush didn't set the preconditions that Obama promises to ignore. They were agreed upon after the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran was in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Acting in accordance with its charter, the IAEA referred the issue to the Security Council.
Dismissing the preconditions as irrelevant would mean snubbing America's European allies plus Russia and China, all of whom participated in drafting and approving the resolutions that Ahmadinejad doesn't like.
Such a move would make a mockery of multilateral diplomacy - indeed, would ignore such diplomacy in exactly the way that critics claim the Bush administration has.
Obama clearly hasn't asked British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy what they think of the United States' suddenly changing course and granting Ahmadinejad's key demand in advance.
Maybe Obama hasn't been properly briefed about the "preconditions" he gets so worked up about. He cites Iran's "nuclear program" as a precondition. Wrong: No one has asked, or could ask, Iran to stop its nuclear program - period. On the contrary, Iran's participation in in the Non-Proliferation Treaty gives it the right to seek help from other signatories, including the US, to access the latest technology in developing its nuclear industry - for peaceful purposes.
The Security Council isn't asking the Islamic Republic to do something dishonorable, humiliating or illegal. All it's asking Ahmadinejad to do is to stop cheating - something the Islamic Republic itself has admitted it has done for 18 years. The Security Council has invited Iran to "suspend" - not even to scrap - a uranium-enrichment program clearly destined for making bombs, in violation of the NPT.
Iran has not a single nuclear-power station and thus doesn't need enriched uranium - except for making bombs. Its sole nuclear plant is scheduled to be finished by the end of 2009. But that can't use the type of uranium that Iran is enriching; the station requires fuel of a different "formula," supplied by Russia, which is building the project, for the next 10 years. (And the Russians have offered to provide fuel for the plant's entire lifetime of 37 years.)
Another precondition asks Tehran to explain why it is building a heavy-water plant at Arak - when it has absolutely no plans for plutonium-based nuclear-power stations. The Arak plant's only imaginable use is to produce material for nuclear warheads.
Finally, the IAEA and the Security Council are asking Tehran to allow international inspectors access to all sites related to the nuclear project - access that Iran is obliged to provide under the NPT.
In short, the minimum show of goodwill on Ahmadinejad's part would be to comply with the UN resolutions before he goes to the White House for talks with President Obama on other issues.
Obama's words on "preconditions" have helped ease domestic pressure on Ahmadinejad to comply with the United Nations and the IAEA. The Iranian president is telling his domestic critics to shut up until after the US election. Why, after all, should he make concessions that a putative President Obama has already dismissed as unnecessary?
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Recollection of Obama Uncle’s War Service Missing Key Details
by FOXNews.com
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Barack Obama is getting called out again for his knowledge of history, including his own family’s, after declaring to veterans on Memorial Day that his uncle helped liberate the Auschwitz death camp at the end of World War II.
Two problems with the tale: Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet Army, and Obama’s American mother was an only child.
Speaking in Las Cruces, N.M., on Monday, the Democratic presidential candidate said he did not serve, but comes from a family that did sacrifice for the nation. He was speaking about the many members of the military who suffer post traumatic stress disorder and should be given better care.
“I had a uncle who was one of the, who was part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps and the story in our family is that when he came home, he just went up into the attic and he didn’t leave the house for six months, right. Now obviously something had really affected him deeply but at that time there just weren’t the kinds of facilities to help somebody work through that kind of pain,” he said.
However, a quick check on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Web site shows that Soviet forces were the first to approach Auschwitz, which was in Poland.
“On Jan. 27, 1945, the Soviet army entered Auschwitz and liberated more than 7,000 remaining prisoners,” the site reads.
U.S. forces did liberate several camps, including Ohrdruf Concentration Camp on April 4, 1945; Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp on April 11, 1945; Buchenwald on April 12, 1945; Dachau on April 29, 1945; and Mauthausen on May 5, 1945.
Obama was raised in part by his grandparents, and his father served in the second World War. A request for clarification has been made to the Obama campaign.
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**Oh, if only this were true.....**
May 28, 2008, 4:00 a.m.
Ahmadinejad Sets Lance Straight
Cookies with the tyrant.
By Robert Ferrigno
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad watched as two of his bodyguards checked the young, room service fellow, doing a quick spectrographic scan of the tea and biscuits on his silver cart to insure they hadn’t been poisoned.
“Is the suite to your liking, your Excellency?” asked Millard Holt, counsel for Rapp, Tapp, and Tippytoe, chief lobbyists for the state of Iran. “We always recommend the Four Seasons to all our clients —”
“Are you a Jew?” asked Ahmadinejad.
“No… no, I’m not,” said Holt, his voice high and nasal “I’m here to brief you prior to meeting President Obama, Excellency. Our source within the White House has informed us that the president’s opening remarks will be very conciliatory, very favorable to our interests. He’s going to call for increased trade, a stepdown of all U.S. military exercises in the region, an exchange of scholars —”
“You look like a Jew,” said Ahmadinejad.
The room-service fellow, a lanky long-haired blonde in a white uniform, rolled the cart over, laid out bone china cups on the coffee table. He had a Snoopy gold earring stud.
“Well . . . hmmm . . . a Jew?” Holt adjusted the perfect Windsor knot in his necktie. “I hate to disagree with your Excellency, but my family came over on the Mayflower — ”
“What is this Mayflower?” demanded Ahmadinejad.
“A sailing ship that brought the original settlers to America,” said Holt, puffing up slightly, his smooth cheeks the color of rare veal. “The Founding Fathers, if you will — ”
“Your family owned a slave ship,” sneered Ahmadinejad, as though he had cracked the code. “I knew you were a Jew.” He flicked his fingers in dismissal. “Out of my sight.”
The room-service fellow stood frozen, the silver teapot in his hand. “Whoa.”
“You there,” said Ahmadinejad, addressing him. “What’s your name?”
“Lance.”
“Lance?” said Ahmadinejad. “Like a spear?”
“I guess.” Lance flipped his head, swung his hair out of his eyes. “If, it makes you feel better, I didn’t know what the Mayflower was either.”
“Sit down, Lance. I want to talk with you about President Obama. You’re not a Jew, are you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You would know if you were, I can assure you. Now sit, sit.” Ahmadinejad stroked his beard as Lance seated himself across from him. “These conciliatory — he made air quotes with his fingers — “proposals of Obama’s, they’re a ruse, designed to convince us that he is weak and out of his depth. Well, it won’t work.”
“I’m not really supposed to hang out with the guests,” said Lance. “I used to be a lifeguard, and the pool manager really ripped me for that.”
“I’m sure no one here will rip you, in spite of what your Zionist newspapers print.”
“Cool.” Lance pointed at the almond crescents. “Can I have a cookie?”
“Of course.” Ahmadinejad clapped his hands and two of his bodyguards sprang forward. One poured them tea, the other served cookies. “Do you agree with my appraisal of your president, Lance?”
“I wasn’t really listening, no offense.” Powdered sugar drifted onto Lance’s chin as he chewed. “I was going to vote for Big O, because like everybody was, but I got really wasted the night before and figured, heck, he can make it without me.”
“Obama is popular with young people, isn’t he?” said Ahmadinejad. “I too am popular with the young people in my country.”
“Where’s that?”
Ahmadinejad looked at his bodyguards, decided Lance was serious. “Iran.”
“Axis of Evil, Axis of Evil,” chanted Lance. He suddenly grinned. “Psyche.”
“Ha ha.” Ahmadinejad dropped three sugar cubes into his mint tea, gently stirred. “Let me be equally honest. Your young president, he is very crafty. Very dangerous.”
“You are talking about President Obama, right?” Lance slurped his tea, made a face. “Can I get a Red Bull?”
“A Red Bull for the young American,” Ahmadinejad said to one of his bodyguards, his dark eyes never leaving Lance’s. “So . . . tell me, are you CIA?”
“A spy?’ Lance shook his head. “Wish I was though. James Bond rocks, especially the new one . . . what’s his name?”
“Daniel Craig,” said Ahmadinejad.
“Right. Guy’s got a real sixpack.”
“A splendid sixpack,” agreed Ahmadinejad.
Lance looked around. “I should probably go. My supervisor’s gonna —”
“Stay a while longer.” Ahmadinejad leaned closer, whispering. “I’ve had many heated discussions with the Council of Mullahs. They are convinced that your new president is a naïve fool, easily pressured, easily duped . . . how do you say? A baby with a Snickers bar? Lance, I think that Snickers bar is filled with plastic explosive and whoever steals it from that baby is going to be very surprised and very sorry.”
“You want a Snickers? There’s one in the mini-bar.”
Ahmadinejad fingered his prayers beads, clickety-clack, clickety-clack. “The whole idea of us meeting without any preconditions, a superpower yielding such a huge advantage without hesitation . . . I must tell you, it is unheard of. I saw the Grand Ayatollah himself shouting landslide and clapping his hands with delight as your election returns were announced, but Lance, I, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, I was not clapping.”
“I think I heard something about that preconditions thing . . . ” Lance reached for the can of Red Bull the bodyguard brought. He took a long swallow, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Didn’t Larry King ask him . . . or Chris Mathews?”
Ahmadinejad nodded. “You are much more knowledgeable than you appear. Yes, Chris Mathews asked Obama about our upcoming talks, and your president said of course there were preconditions, he was going to insist that I first name the Three Stooges.”
“I think that was a joke, dude.”
“You would be thinking wrong, Lance. It was a trap. He didn’t say the original Three Stooges. He left it ambiguous. So if I said Moe, Larry and Curly, your Big O could call off the meeting or embarrass me in front of the cameras, saying the correct answer was Moe, Larry and Shemp.”
Lance reached for another almond crescent. “Or Curly Joe.”
“Indeed.” Ahmadinejad offered the plate of cookies. “What do you think Obama’s true intentions are?”
“Probably just wants to hang out with you. Show people he’s trying.”
“No, no, no,” said Ahmadinejad, finger wagging. “He told the New York Times that he didn’t think my country was a threat, at least not like the former Soviet Union.”
“I got to tell you, Mahmoud, right? I got to tell you, Mahmoud, that was reassuring, because that last guy in the White House, he totally hated on you. Scared me —”
“Lance. Pay attention. Your president, he’s an educated man, is he not?”
“Big O’s Harvard all the way. Dude must have just smoked his SATs.”
Ahmadinejad held up a fist. “We currently have eight thousand centrifuges producing weapons-grade plutonium, and that’s not counting the ones I can’t tell you about.” He raised one finger. “We train Hezbollah, which has killed thousands of Americans and Israelis.” He raised another finger. “We supply upgraded IEDs to Iraqi freedom fighters to kill your countrymen.” He raised a third finger. “We’ve promised to wipe Israel off the map.” A fourth finger. “And Obama considers us no threat? How dare he?”
“I never thought of it that way. He’s totally disrespecting you, dude.”
“You understand, Lance. Try telling that to the Grand Ayatollah, see where that gets you.”
“Someplace bad I bet, right?”
“Your new president is a creation of the CIA,” said Ahmadinejad, expansive now. He stretched out his slippered feet, tugged at his wispy beard. “Obama pretends to be the naïf with the glittering smile, the schoolmarm asking children not to run in the hall: Let’s talk things over. Let’s turn the thermostat down. Let’s share your toys. Let’s be friends.”
“Won’t you be my neighbor?” sing-songed Lance.
Ahmadinejad clicked his teacup against Lance’s can of Red Bull in a toast. “This isn’t the first time the CIA has installed an American president.”
“That Nixon guy?”
“Nixon?” Ahmadinejad had a high-pitched laugh. “No, Ronald Reagan. You’re too young to remember, but the newscasts were full of stories about the handsome but bumbling actor who had been elected president, the cowboy who kept jellybeans on his desk in the oval office and rode a horse every chance he could.” He set his teacup down with a clatter. “One of the great talking heads dismissed Ronald Reagan as an amiable dunce. An amiable dunce. It worked too. Completely fooled Gorbachev. By the time Reagan got through with him, the Soviet Union was in ruins and Gorbachev was out of a job.”
“Wow.”
“Wow, indeed.” Ahmadinejad stood up, shook Lance’s hand. “Have you heard about the Hidden Imam?”
“Who?”
“I must pray now,” said Ahmadinejad, “but the next time we speak, I shall tell you of the Twelfth Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, and his plan for the world.”
“No, dude, Scientology gives me headaches.”
“Goodbye, Lance.”
The bodyguards ushered Lance out into the hallway. A few minutes later, he was in the stairwell, shaking his head as he debriefed to his handler. “Tell Big O we’re going to have to come up with a new narrative. Ahmadinejad is wise to the whole thing.”
— Robert Ferrigno is author, most recently, of Sins of the Assassin.
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NmQzMGRjMGRiYTNkZjM3NjM3YzE3YTkyYTMwZGFlNzI=
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e Obama We Don't Know
June 4, 2008; Page A20
With Barack Obama clinching the Democratic Party nomination, it is worth noting what an extraordinary moment this is. Democrats are nominating a freshman Senator barely three years out of the Illinois legislature whom most of America still hardly knows. The polls say he is the odds-on favorite to become our next President.
Think about this in historical context. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were relatively unknown, but both had at least been prominent Governors. John Kerry, Walter Mondale, Al Gore and even George McGovern were all long-time Washington figures. Republican nominees tend to be even more familiar, for better or worse. In Mr. Obama, Democrats are taking a leap of faith that is daring even by their risky standards.
AP
No doubt this is part of his enormous appeal. Amid public anger over politics as usual, the Illinois Senator is unhaunted by Beltway experience. His personal story – of mixed race, and up from nowhere through Harvard – resonates in an America where the two most popular cultural icons are Tiger Woods and Oprah. His political gifts are formidable, especially his ability to connect with audiences from the platform.
Above all, Mr. Obama has fashioned a message that fits the political moment and the public's desire for "change." At his best, he offers Americans tired of war and political rancor the promise of fresh national unity and purpose. Young people in particular are taken by it. But more than a few Republicans are also drawn to this "postpartisan" vision.
Mr. Obama has also shown great skill in running his campaign. No one – including us – gave him much chance of defeating the Clinton machine. No doubt he benefited from the desire of even many Democrats to impeach the polarizing Clinton era. But he also beat Hillary and Bill at their own game. He raised more money, and he outworked them in the small-state caucuses that provided him with his narrow delegate margin. Even now, he is far better organized in swing states than is John McCain's campaign. All of this speaks well of his preparation for November, and perhaps for his potential to govern.
Yet govern how and to what end? This is the Obama Americans don't know. For all of his inspiring rhetoric about bipartisanship, his voting record is among the most partisan in the Senate. His policy agenda is conventionally liberal across the board – more so than Hillary Clinton's, and more so than that of any Democratic nominee since 1968.
We can't find a single issue on which Mr. Obama has broken with his party's left-wing interest groups. Early on he gave a bow to merit pay for teachers, but that quickly sank beneath the waves of new money he wants to spend on the same broken public schools. He takes the Teamsters line against free trade, to the point of unilaterally rewriting Nafta. He wants to raise taxes even above the levels of the Clinton era, including a huge increase in the payroll tax. Perhaps now Mr. Obama will tack to the center, but somehow he will have to explain why the "change" he's proposing isn't merely more of the same, circa 1965.
There is also the matter of judgment, and the roots of his political character. We were among those inclined at first to downplay his association with the Trinity United Church. But Mr. Obama's handling of the episode has raised doubts about his candor and convictions. He has by stages moved from denying that his 20-year attendance was an issue at all; to denying he'd heard Rev. Jeremiah Wright's incendiary remarks; to criticizing certain of those remarks while praising Rev. Wright himself; to repudiating the words and the reverend; and finally this weekend to leaving the church.
Most disingenuously, he said on Saturday that the entire issue caught him by surprise. Yet he was aware enough of the political risk that he kept Rev. Wright off the stage during his announcement speech more than a year ago.
A 2004 Chicago Sun-Times interview with Mr. Obama mentioned three men as his religious guides. One was Rev. Wright. Another was Father Michael Pfleger, the Louis Farrakhan ally whose recent remarks caused Mr. Obama to resign from Trinity, but for whose Chicago church Mr. Obama channeled at least $225,000 in grants as a state senator. Until recently, the priest was connected to the campaign, which flew him to Iowa to host an interfaith forum. Father Pfleger's testimony for the candidate has since been scrubbed from Mr. Obama's campaign Web site. A third mentor was Illinois state Senator James Meeks, another Chicago pastor who has generated controversy for mixing pulpit and politics.
The point is not that Mr. Obama now shares the radical views of these men. The concern is that by the Senator's own admission they have been major moral influences, and their views are starkly at odds with the candidate's vision as a transracial peacemaker. Their patronage was also useful as Mr. Obama was making his way in Chicago politics. But only now, in the glare of a national campaign, is he distancing himself from them. The question is what in fact Mr. Obama does believe.
The young Senator has been a supernova exploding into our politics, more phenomenon than conventional candidate. His achievement in winning the Democratic nomination has been impressive. Now comes a harder audience. The presidency has to be earned, and Americans have a right to know much more about the gifted man who is the least tested and experienced major party nominee in modern times.
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"The presidency has to be earned, and Americans have a right to know much more about the gifted man who is the least tested and experienced major party nominee in modern times."
Well based on the company he keeps and the numerous back peddling change of positions (for example dealing with Palastinians) one would have to be, as radio host Mark Levin says, "Helen Keller" not to see that this guy is basically a far lefty who associates with communists.
Everyone could not only see and hear the preachers at his church, but we could also see the delight and glee and excitement of it's members at their words. Of course he sat there for 20 years. He agreed with it.
This is a huge problem for him. He cannot convince otherwise at this point. Unfortunately others especially the young will be taken in by their perception that he is charming. "We must do this, we must do that, we have to do this, we have to do that..." That's all I ever hear him say. Oh really? we must, we have to? Why because you say?
Tax like mad. Redistribute wealth to buy himself votes. Spend like crazy. Weaken our influence around the world because we are "nice" and want to be liked. Weaken our military. Massively expand the reach and scope of government in our lives. Expand the dependency of people on government. All the while go around promoting yourself as a uniter not a divider yadda yadda yadda...
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Why Obama Must Go to Iraq
By PETE HEGSETH
June 5, 2008
Earlier this year, I spent five days in Iraq, walking the same streets in Baghdad where I had served two years earlier as an infantry platoon leader in the 101st Airborne Division.
The visit reinforced for me not only the immense complexity of the war – so often lost in our domestic political debate – but also the importance of taking the time to visit Iraq to talk with the soldiers and Marines serving on the front lines in order to grasp the changing dynamics of a fluid battlefield.
Chad Crowe
It is for this reason that the failure of Sen. Barack Obama to travel to Iraq over the past two and a half years is worrisome, and a legitimate issue in this presidential election.
Since his election to the United States Senate in 2004, Mr. Obama has traveled to Iraq just once – in January 2006. This was more than a year before Gen. David Petraeus took command and the surge began. It was also several months before Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government came into office. Although Mr. Obama frequently criticizes the Iraqi leader on the campaign trail, he has never actually met him.
Mr. Obama's conduct is strikingly different from that of Sen. John McCain, who has been to Iraq eight times since 2003 – including three times since surge forces began to arrive in Baghdad. The senior senator from Arizona has made it his mission to truly understand what is happening on the ground, in all its messy reality.
Mr. Obama has dismissed the value of such trips, suggesting they are stage-managed productions designated to obfuscate, not illuminate, the truth. This has become an all-too-common sentiment within the Democratic Party leadership, especially since the surge began to transform conditions on the ground for the better. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has denied that there is any value in visiting the troops in Iraq, and has never done so.
In fairness, there are a number of Democrats who visit Iraq frequently – namely Sens. Joe Biden, who has made eight Iraq trips, and Jack Reed, with 10 trips. Mr. Obama's absence and cynicism stands in stark contrast to their serious approach. It is especially problematic given his intention to become our next commander in chief.
As anyone who has spent time on the ground in Iraq – speaking with troops of all ranks and backgrounds – can tell you, it is hardly a mission impossible to get them out to speak bluntly and openly about the problems they face.
Indeed, Mr. McCain's own frequent and vociferous criticisms of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his warnings, as early as 2003, that the Bush administration was pursuing a flawed strategy in Iraq, were directly informed by his firsthand interactions during his trips to Iraq. Troops and commanders warned him that we lacked sufficient forces to defeat al Qaeda and Iranian-backed militias, and they were correct.
In turn, Mr. McCain's early advocacy for the surge and his prescient conviction that it would succeed were rooted not only in his extensive knowledge of military affairs, but in his close consultations with troops serving in the theater. They recognized that the new strategy was succeeding far before the mainstream media in the U.S. was willing to acknowledge these gains.
That Mr. Obama apparently doubts his ability to distinguish spin from reality, and to draw bad news out of subordinates, does not bode well for his possible future as our nation's chief executive. As I'm sure he will discover, if he wins the White House, these are among the most important skills for a president to possess.
Even more astonishing than Mr. Obama's absence from Iraq, however, is the fact that he has apparently never sought out a single one-on-one meeting with Gen. Petraeus. The general has made repeated trips back to Washington, but Mr. Obama has shown no interest in meeting privately with him. It's enough to make you wonder who exactly Mr. Obama listens to when it comes to Iraq?
Mr. Obama frequently decries the danger of "dogmatists" and "ideologues" in public policy, yet he himself has proven consistently uninterested in putting himself in situations where he might be confronted with the hard complexities of this war. It suggests a dangerous degree of detachment and overconfidence in his own judgment.
After all, Mr. Obama was among those in January 2007 who stridently opposed the surge and confidently predicted its failure – even going so far as to vote against funding our soldiers in the field unless the Bush administration abandoned this new approach. It is now clear that Mr. Obama's judgment on the surge was spectacularly wrong.
Yet rather than admit his mistake, Mr. Obama has instead tried to downplay or disparage the gains our troops have achieved in the past 12 months, clinging to a set of talking points that increasingly seem as divorced from reality as some in the Bush administration were at the darkest moments of the war.
Mr. Obama continues to insist that "Iraq's political leaders have made no progress in resolving the political differences at the heart of their civil war" – despite the passage of numerous pieces of benchmark legislation by the Iraqi Parliament and unequivocal evidence of grassroots reconciliation across the country.
Mr. Obama also continues to claim that America has "simply thrown U.S. troops at the problem, and it has not worked" – despite the dramatic reduction in violence in precisely those areas of Iraq where American forces have surged, and since handed over to Iraqi Security Forces.
And of course, Mr. Obama persists in his pledge to withdraw all combat forces from Iraq, on a fixed timeline, beginning the moment he enters office – regardless of the recommendations of our commanders on the ground, regardless of conditions on the ground, and regardless, in short, of reality.
America is longing for an informed and principled debate about the future of Iraq. However, such a debate seems unlikely if the Democratic nominee for president won't take the time to truly understand the dynamics on the ground, let alone meet with commanders.
The time for talking points is over. Too much is at stake. When will Mr. Obama finally return to Iraq and see the situation for himself?
Mr. Hegseth, chairman of Vets for Freedom, served in Iraq with the 101st Airborne Division and returned as an embedded reporter.
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The Audacity of Death
By DANIEL ALLOTT
June 5, 2008
According to Barack Obama, Gianna Jessen shouldn't exist.
Miss Jessen is an exquisite example of what antiabortion advocates call a "survivor." Well into her third trimester of pregnancy, Gianna's biological mother was injected with a saline solution intended to induce a chemical abortion at a Los Angeles County abortion center. Eighteen hours later, and precious minutes before the abortionist's arrival, Gianna emerged. Premature and with severe injuries that resulted in cerebral palsy. But alive.
Had the abortionist been present at her birth, Gianna would have been killed, perhaps by suffocation. As it was, a startled nurse called an ambulance, and Gianna was rushed to a nearby hospital, where, weighing just two pounds, she was placed in an incubator, then, months later, in foster care.
Gianna survived then, and thrives now, because, as she told me recently with a laugh, "I guess I don't die easy." Which is what the abortionist might have thought as he signed his victim's birth certificate. Gianna's medical records state that she was "born during saline abortion."
* * *
As an Illinois state senator, Barack Obama twice opposed legislation to define as "persons" babies who survive late-term abortions. Babies like Gianna. Mr. Obama said in a speech on the Illinois Senate floor that he could not accept that babies wholly emerged from their mother's wombs are "persons," and thus deserving of equal protection under the Constitution's 14th Amendment.
A federal version on the same legislation passed the Senate unanimously and with the support of all but 15 members of the House. Gianna was present when President Bush signed the Born Alive Infants Protection Act in 2002.
When I asked Gianna to reflect on Mr. Obama's candidacy, she paused, then said, "I really hope the American people will have their eyes wide open and choose to be discerning. . . . He is extreme, extreme, extreme."
"Extreme" may not be the impression the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have bought Mr. Obama's autobiography have been left with. In "The Audacity of Hope," Mr. Obama's presidential manifesto, he calls abortion "undeniably difficult," "a very difficult issue," "never a good thing" and "a wrenching moral issue."
He laments his party's "litmus test" for "orthodoxy" on abortion and other issues, and even admits, "I do not presume to know the answer to that question." That question being the moral status of the fetus, who he nonetheless concedes has "moral weight."
Those statements are seriously made but, alas, cannot be taken at all seriously. Mr. Obama has compiled a 100% lifetime "pro-choice" voting record, including votes against any and all restrictions on late-term abortions and parental involvement in teenagers' abortions.
To Mr. Obama, abortion, or "reproductive justice," is "one of the most fundamental rights we possess." And he promises, "the first thing I'd do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act," which would overturn hundreds of federal and state laws limiting abortion, including the federal ban on partial-birth abortion and bans on public funding of abortion.
Then there's Mr. Obama's aforementioned opposition to laws that protect babies born-alive during botched abortions. If partial-birth abortion is, as Democratic icon Daniel Patrick Moynihan labeled it, "too close to infanticide," then what is killing fully-birthed babies?
* * *
On the campaign trail, Mr. Obama seldom speaks about abortion and its related issues. But his few moments of candor are illuminative. When speaking extemporaneously, Mr. Obama will admit things like "I don't want [my daughters] punished with a baby." Or he'll say that voting for legislation allowing Terri Schiavo's family to take its case from state courts to federal courts in an effort to stop her euthanasia was his "biggest mistake" in the Senate. Biggest mistake?
Worst of all are Mr. Obama's accusations against antiabortion advocates. He recently compared his relationship with unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers, a member of a group responsible for bombing government buildings, to his friendship with stalwart pro-life physician and senator Tom Coburn.
In his campaign book, Mr. Obama accuses "most anti-abortion activists" of secretly desiring more partial-birth abortions "because the image the procedure evokes in the mind of the public has helped them win converts to their position."
All this explains why the National Abortion Rights Action League voted unanimously to endorse Mr. Obama over Hillary Clinton, as did abortion activist Frances Kissling, who called Mrs. Clinton "not radical enough on abortion."
It's surprising that 18- to 30-year-olds, the most pro-life demographic in a generation, are the same voting bloc from which Barack Obama, the most antilife presidential candidate ever, draws his most ardent supporters.
What's not surprising is that Gianna Jessen, who turned 31 last month, plans not to support Obama.
In "The Audacity of Hope," Mr. Obama denounces abortion absolutism on both ends of the ideological spectrum. That is audacious indeed considering Obama's record, which epitomizes the very radicalism and extremism he denounces.
Mr. Allott is senior writer at American Values, a Washington-area public policy organization.
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http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/30234_IBD-_Obamas_Plan_to_Disarm_America
Who needs a military when we have "Hope" and "Change"?
=======
edited by Marc to add the content:
Investors Business Daily looks at another policy statement from Barack Obama that has gotten almost no media coverage: Obama’s Plan To Disarm The U.S.
The Obamatons [Hey, that sounds familiar! – ed.] of the mainstream media have failed to report one of the most chilling campaign promises thus far uttered by the presumptive Democrat nominee for president.
He made it before the Iowa caucus to a left-wing pacifist group that seeks to reallocate defense dollars to welfare programs. The lobbying group, Caucus for Priorities, was so impressed by Obama’s anti-military offering that it steered its 10,000 devotees his way.
In a 132-word videotaped pledge (still viewable on YouTube), Obama agreed to hollow out the U.S. military by slashing both conventional and nuclear weapons.
The scope of his planned defense cuts, combined with his angry tone, is breathtaking. He sounds as if the military is the enemy, not the bad guys it’s fighting. Here is a transcript:
“I’m the only major candidate who opposed this war from the beginning; and as president, I will end it.
“Second, I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending. I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat systems.
“I will institute an independent defense priorities board to ensure that the Quadrennial Review is not used to justify unnecessary defense spending.
“Third, I will set a goal for a world without nuclear weapons. To seek that goal, I will not develop nuclear weapons; I will seek a global ban on the production of fissile material; and I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert, and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenal.”
You can bet that Obama will not make this sweeping indictment of our security forces again as he tries to move to the center in the general election. But this is what he thinks, and this is what he plans to do.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/06/07/video-hannity-on-the-obama-khalidi-connection/
Does Obama know anyone who isn't a terrorist, convicted felon or race-baiting anti-american bigot? Just asking.....
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/06/08/obama-community-blogs-bring-hope-change-to-enemies-of-jewish-lobby/
They "Hope" you don't see this, so they've "Change"'d the website. :-D
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http://www.policelink.com/news/26729-obama-uses-police-memorial-for-porta-potties
Obama Uses Police Memorial for Porta Potties
This photo by Officer Thomas Brennan shows the porta potties setup on the police memorial, with its flag still at half mast.
PoliceLink
May 30, 2008
PORTLAND, OR – Police officers in Portland, Oregon, are still waiting for an apology from Barack Obama after campaign staffers of his recent rally in Portland, Oregon, setup porta potties directly on top of the Portland Police Memorial, which honors the agency’s 25 fallen police officers.
The Obama rally drew a crowd of over 75,000 people.
Officer Thomas Brennan, who was working overtime at the rally, took a picture of the offending toilets, with the American flag still at half mast because of Police Officers Memorial Day, directly behind them. The local law enforcement memorial service had been held at the site only five days earlier.
Despite a large amount of open areas in the vicinity, the campaign staffers claimed the toilets were placed on the memorial for safety reasons to accommodate wheelchair access.
The Obama campaign has not responded to requests for an apology.
Want to express your outrage and ask for an apology? Contact Senator Obama here.
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Obama and the New Party
Quote:
Obama and the New Party
by Erick Erickson
Posted: 06/10/2008 Print This
Two weeks ago at RedState, we documented Obama’s 1996 endorsement by the New Party. A review of the New Party establishes that not only was the party an amalgamation of far left groups, but Barack Obama knew that when he sought the party’s endorsement.
Most of the New Party’s history has been lost in the digital age. It was established in 1992 and started to die out in 1998, well before Google and the modern web were established. But through lengthy searches of the Nexis archive and microfilm at the local university library, I’ve been able to piece this together.
The New Party was established in 1992 “by union activist Sandy Pope and University of Wisconsin professor Joel Rogers,” USA Today reported on November 16, 1992. The paper wrote that the new party was “self-described [as] ‘socialist democratic.’”
The seeds, however, had been sown all the way back in 1988. Quoting John Nichols in the March 22, 1998 issue of In These Times, “The roots of the New Party go back to the aftermath of Jesse Jackson’s run for president in 1988. At that time, Dan Cantor, who had served as labor coordinator for the Jackson campaign, and University of Wisconsin sociology professor Joel Rogers began talking about how to formulate an alternative between the increasingly indistinguishable Democratic-Republican monolith.”
Joel Rogers sought to use the idea of “fusion” as a way to get the New Party into power.
Fusion is a pretty simple concept. A candidate could run as both a Democrat and a New Party member to signal the candidate was, in fact, a left-leaning candidate, or at least not a center-left DLC type candidate. If the candidate -- let’s call him Barack Obama -- received only 500 votes in the Democratic Party against another candidate who received 1000 votes, Obama would clearly not be the nominee. But, if Obama also received 600 votes from the New Party, Obama’s New Party votes and Democratic votes would be fused. He would be the Democratic nominee with 1100 votes.
The fusion idea set off a number of third parties, but the New Party was probably the most successful. A March 22, 1998 In These Times article by John Nichols showed just how successful. “After six years, the party has built what is arguably the most sophisticated left-leaning political operation the country has seen since the decline of the Farmer-Labor, Progressive and Non-Partisan League groupings of the early part of the century …. In 1996, it helped Chicago’s Danny Davis, a New Party member, win a Democratic congressional primary, thereby assuring his election in the majority-black district …. The threat of losing New Party support, or of the New Party running its own candidates against conservative Democrats, would begin a process of forcing the political process to the left, [Joel] Rogers argued.”
Fusion, fortunately for the country, died in 1997. William Rehnquist, writing for a 6-3 Supreme Court, found the concept was not a protected constitutional right. It was two years too late to stop Obama.
On December 1, 1994, after the Gingrich revolution swept the Democrats from congress and forced Bill Clinton to triangulate, the Chicago Tribune ran an article by Steve Mills entitled “Looking for the Left: The Old Progressives and Marxists Still Breathe Idealist Fire, but They’re Too Splintered to Generate Any Heat.”
“‘The Left is in crisis, and it has been for some time,’ said Carl Davidson, the former national secretary for the radical Students for a Democratic Society. ‘I don’t know if it’s even bottomed out yet,’” he reported to Mr. Mills. Mills continued, “The Socialist Workers Party is in this corner; the International Socialist Organization is in this one. The [communist group Committee of Correspondence] is in another. The radicals, or even the liberals with some radical leanings -- so-called ‘soft radicals’ -- seem to find it hard to abandon individual issues for a broader movement.”
But, Mills reported, “It is amid this political confusion that The New Party would like to step in. ‘If there’s anything that defines the American Left, it’s fragmentation,’ said Dan Cantor, the party’s national organizer.… The New Party aims to change that. By uniting the progressives behind a cohesive ideology, one that, in theory at least, will have room for all the factions that now litter the landscape of the Left, The New Party is confident progressives can again be strong.”
In 1995, the New Ground, the newsletter of the Chicago Chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, noted, “In Chicago, the New Party's biggest asset and biggest liability is ACORN.
“Like most organizations, ACORN is a mixed bag. On one hand, in Chicago, ACORN is a group that attempts to organize some of the most depressed communities in the city. Chicago organizers for ACORN and organizers for SEIU Local 880 have been given modest monthly recruitment quotas for new New Party members. On the other hand, like most groups that depend on canvassing for fundraising, it's easy enough to find burned out and disgruntled former employees. And ACORN has not had the reputation for being interested in coalition politics -- until recently and, happily, not just within the New Party.”
Naturally, Barack Obama was an active part of ACORN at the time, helping it legally in court and helping it organize voters. By 1996, ACORN and the New Party were essentially the same body. Along with the Democratic Socialists of America, the New Party endorsed Barack Obama in his State Senate bid.
Obama began seeking the New Party endorsement in 1995. He had been running in a four way primary against his former boss, Senator Alice Palmer, herself a far left radical, and two other individuals. But an election law quirk gave Obama the upper hand. In order to get on the ballot, candidates had to collect signatures of voters. Printed names were not allowed. Obama challenged the petitions of his rivals and was able to get every one of them thrown off the ballot. By the time the ballot was drawn up for the 1996 election, Obama’s was the only name in the race.
Nonetheless, Obama still coveted the New Party endorsement. The New Party required candidates who received the endorsement sign a pledge of support for the party. Obama did not need to support a party that was, in effect, a front group for communists; yet he still chose to. The July issue of the New Ground noted that 15% of the New Party consisted of Democratic Socialists of America members and a good number of Committee of Correspondence members.
Barack Obama, not needing to, chose to affiliate himself with this band of quasi-communists. As the nation moves closer to the election, it is clear that Obama chose to affiliate with assorted anti-American radicals. Machiavelli once noted that we can know a leader by the people he surrounds himself with. What does that say about Barack Obama, who chose to surround himself with people committed to overthrowing the United States and capitalism?
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Friends of Barack
June 11, 2008; Page A22
WSJ
Barack Obama may have come up with a creative way to solve the housing recession: Let everyone buy property at a discount the way he did from Tony Rezko, and give everyone in America a discount mortgage the way Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide did for Fannie Mae's Jim Johnson. Team Obama's real estate and mortgage transactions are certainly a change from business as usual. They suggest old-fashioned back-scratching below even current Beltway standards.
A former CEO of mortgage financing giant Fannie Mae, Mr. Johnson is now vetting Vice Presidential candidates for Mr. Obama. But he is also a textbook case for poor disclosure as regulators sifted through the wreckage of Fannie's $10 billion accounting scandal. Despite an exhaustive federal inquiry, Mr. Johnson managed to avoid disclosing one very special perk: below-market interest-rate mortgages from Countrywide Financial, arranged by Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo. Journal reporters Glenn Simpson and James Hagerty broke the story this weekend.
Fannie Mae tells us that Mr. Johnson did not inform the company's board of these sweetheart mortgage deals, nor did his CEO successor Franklin Raines, who also received such loans. We can understand why. Fannie bought mortgages from loan originator Countrywide, and then packaged them into securities for sale or kept the loans and profited from the interest. Mr. Mozilo told Dow Jones in 1995 that he was "working very closely . . . with Jim Johnson of Fannie Mae to come up with a rational method of making the process more efficient by the use of credit scoring."
Since Fannie was buying Countrywide's loans, under terms set by Mr. Johnson and later Mr. Raines – or by people in their employ – the fact that Fannie's CEO had a separate personal financial relationship with Countrywide was an obvious conflict of interest. The company's code of conduct required prior approval of such arrangements. Neither Mr. Johnson nor Mr. Raines sought such approval, according to Fannie.
Even if they had received waivers from the board to enjoy these perks, conscientious board members would then have wanted to disclose the waivers to investors. Post-Enron, the Sarbanes-Oxley law requires such disclosures. But even in the late-1990s, when the Friends of Angelo loans began, board members would likely have raised red flags.
Former SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt tells us that "the best way to deal with issues like this is not to have these kinds of relationships. From both the Countrywide and the Fannie perspective, it is simply bad policy to permit loans to 'friends' on more favorable terms than others similarly situated would be able to get."
One question is whether Messrs. Johnson and Raines were using their position to pad their own incomes that were already fabulous thanks to an implicit taxpayer subsidy. (See the table nearby.) But the bigger issue is whether they steered Fannie policy into giving Mr. Mozilo and Countrywide favorable pricing, which means they helped to facilitate the mortgage boom and bust that Countrywide did so much to promote. A further federal probe would seem to be warranted, and we assume Barney Frank and his fellow mortgage moralists will want to dig into this palm-greasing from Capitol Hill.
The irony here is that Mr. Obama has denounced Mr. Mozilo as part of his populist case against corporate excess, calling Mr. Mozilo and a colleague in March "the folks who are responsible for infecting the economy and helping to create a home foreclosure crisis." Obama campaign manager David Plouffe also said in March that "If we're really going to crack down on the practices that caused the credit and housing crises, we're going to need a leader who doesn't owe these industries any favors." But now this protector of the working class has entrusted his first big task as Presidential nominee to the very man who received "favors" in return for enriching Mr. Mozilo.
Yesterday, ABC News asked Mr. Obama whether he should have more carefully vetted Mr. Johnson and Eric Holder, who is working with Mr. Johnson on veep vetting. Correspondent Sunlen Miller noted Mr. Johnson's loans from Countrywide and Mr. Holder's involvement as Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton Administration in the pardon of fugitive Marc Rich. Said Mr. Obama: "Everybody, you know, who is tangentially related to our campaign, I think, is going to have a whole host of relationships – I would have to hire the vetter to vet the vetters."
Vetting Mr. Johnson's finances would have been time well spent, judging by a May 2006 report from Fannie Mae's regulator, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (Ofheo). Even if Mr. Obama considers the advisers helping him select a running mate "tangentially related" to his campaign, he might have thought twice about any relationship with Mr. Johnson.
Addressing the company's too smooth (and fraudulent) reported earnings growth in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Ofheo reported: "Those achievements were illusions deliberately and systematically created by the Enterprise's senior management with the aid of inappropriate accounting and improper earnings management . . . By deliberately and intentionally manipulating accounting to hit earnings targets, senior management maximized the bonuses and other executive compensation they received, at the expense of shareholders."
* * *
The regulator described how, despite an internal Fannie analysis that valued Mr. Johnson's 1998 compensation at almost $21 million, the summary compensation table in the firm's 1999 proxy suggested his pay was no more than $7 million. Ofheo found that Fannie had actually drafted talking points to deflect such media questions as: "He's trying to hide how much he's made, isn't he?" and "Gimme a break. He's hiding his compensation."
To this list we would add one more, directed at Mr. Obama: Is this what you mean by bringing change to Washington?
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/06/13/the-dead-cat-bounce/
Me-yow! The question being, can McCain close the deal?
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"Factual Questions for Obama" by George F. Will
"Senator, concerning the criteria by which you will nominate judges, you
said: "We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize
what it's like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it's
like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old." Such
sensitivities might serve an admirable legislator, but what have they to
do with judging? Should a judge side with whichever party in a controversy
stirs his or her empathy? Is such personalization of the judicial function
inimical to the rule of law?
. Voting against the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts, you said:
Deciding "truly difficult cases" should involve "one's deepest values,
one's core concerns, one's broader perspectives on how the world works, and the
depth and breadth of one's empathy." Is that not essentially how Chief
Justice Roger Taney decided the Dred Scott case? Should other factors-say,
the language of the constitutional or statutory provision at issue-matter?
. You say, "The insurance companies, the drug companies, they're not going
to give up their profits easily when it comes to health care." Why should
they? Who will profit from making those industries unprofitable? When
pharmaceutical companies have given up their profits, who will fund
pharmaceutical innovations, without which there will be much preventable
suffering and death? What other industries should "give up their profits"?
. ExxonMobil's 2007 profit of $40.6 billion annoys you. Do you know that
its profit, relative to its revenue, was smaller than Microsoft's and many
other corporations'? And that reducing ExxonMobil's profits will injure people
who participate in mutual funds, index funds and pension funds that own 52
percent of the company?
. You say John McCain is content to "watch [Americans'] home prices
decline." So, government should prop up housing prices generally? How?
Why?
Were prices ideal before the bubble popped? How does a senator know ideal
prices? Have you explained to young couples straining to buy their first
house that declining prices are a misfortune?
. Telling young people "don't go into corporate America ," your wife,
Michelle, urged them to become social workers or others in "the helping
industry," not "the moneymaking industry." Given that the moneymakers pay
for 100 percent of American jobs, in both public and private sectors, is
it not helpful?
. Michelle, who was born in 1964, says that most Americans' lives have
"gotten progressively worse since I was a little girl." Since 1960, real
per capita income has increased 143 percent, life expectancy has increased by
seven years, infant mortality has declined 74 percent, deaths from heart
disease have been halved, childhood leukemia has stopped being a death
sentence, depression has become a treatable disease, air and water
pollution have been drastically reduced, the number of women earning a bachelor's
degree has more than doubled, the rate of homeownership has increased 10.2
percent, the size of the average American home has doubled, the percentage
of homes with air conditioning has risen from 12 to 77, the portion of
Americans who own shares of stock has quintupled . Has your wife perhaps
missed some pertinent developments in this country that she calls "just
downright mean"?
. You favor raising the capital gains tax rate to "20 percent or 25
percent." You say this will not "distort" economic decision making. Your
tax returns on your 2007 income of $4.2 million show that you and Michelle own
few stocks. Are you sure you understand how investors make decisions?
. During the ABC debate, you acknowledged that when the capital gains rate
was dropped first to 20 percent, then to 15 percent, government revenues
from the tax increased and they declined in the 1980s when it was
increased to 28 percent. Nevertheless, you said you would consider raising the rate
"for purposes of fairness." How does decreasing the government's financial
resources and punishing investors promote fairness? Are you aware that 20
percent of taxpayers reporting capital gains in 2006 had incomes of less
than $50,000?
. You favor eliminating the cap on earnings subject to the 12.4 percent
Social Security tax, which now covers only the first $102,000. A Chicago
police officer married to a Chicago public-school teacher, each with 20
years on the job, have a household income of $147,501, so you would take
another $5,642 from them. Are they undertaxed? Are they rich?
. This November, electorates in four states will vote on essentially this
language: "The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential
treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color,
ethnicity or national origin in the operation of public employment, public
education or public contracting." Three states- California , Washington
and Michigan -have enacted such language. You made a radio ad opposing the
Michigan initiative. Why? Are those states' voters racists?
. You denounce President Bush for arrogance toward other nations. Yet you
vow to use a metaphorical "hammer" to force revisions of trade agreements
unless certain weaker nations adjust their labor, environmental and other
domestic policies to suit you. Can you define cognitive dissonance?
. You want "to reduce money in politics." In February and March you raised
$95 million. See prior question
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I actually really like Michelle Obama. She is a strong woman who made her family her #1 priority. However, I wouldn't vote for President based on the first lady. I have always though Laura Bush was very classy as well .
"On the morning that the Times ran a front-page story about Michelle Obama's recalibrating her image in the wake of conservative attacks, the potential first lady appeared friendly, well spoken, likable, if understandably measured, on "The View." It was a big moment for her, what Times writer Jodi Kantor dubbed "the television equivalent of a Broadway debut." No scandal, no surprises, really, but there was the expected discussion of her pride comment, to which Obama responded:
"Of course I am proud of my country. Nowhere but America could my story be possible. I'm a girl who grew up on the South Side of Chicago, my father was a working-class guy who worked his shift all his life, and because of his hard work he sent not just me but my brother to Princeton ... I am proud of my country without a doubt."
In a first-lady lovefest, Michelle expressed her gratitude to Laura Bush for defending her about those comments, and she gave props to Hillary: "Hillary Clinton says she created 18 million cracks on a ceiling, and we need to keep pushing it and pushing it. Because it's only until women like her step out, take the risk, take those hits, and it's painful. And it's hurtful, but she has taken them so that my girls when they come along they won't have to feel it as badly."
Most important, however, is that Obama greeted the guests with her signature fist bump (also known, in some circles, as a terrorist fist jab!). She admitted, like the adorable square she is, "I got this from the young staff … it's the new high-five."
http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59twO1fJwtQ
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You are really buying the "re-imaging" of Michelle Obama? Really? :-o
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No-- I liked her before
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Back when she was bitter about having to pay student loans while just scraping by on 430,000 a year?
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/06/18/obama-pretty-psyched-for-a-nuremberg-trial-for-bin-laden/
Bad ideas, waiting to happen.
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I'm not saying she is perfect. She wouldn't be my role model in that particular case for being grateful. I just always thought she was a plus for Obama not a minus.
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http://michellemalkin.com/2008/06/18/bitter-half-alert-michelle-obamas-makeover-and-view-debut/
Michelle Malkin's take on Obama's "bitter-half".
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***Did Bush risk American lives and his political life to save Jews?***
Yes, I think that was part of the calculation in invading Iraq. Obviously it hasn't worked as well as thought, but he certainly is risking American lives right now. And I think if he had more political backing he would bomb the shit out of Iran's nuclear facilities, but America has turned weak.
******Would McCain?***
In my mind I believe he would, absolutely.
As for Alan Dershowitz he can't see without his Democrat/liberal colored glasses. So of course he will back the Democrat - he *always* does. I have never heard him say a kind word for any Republican. He could be an editorialist for the NYT.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3444393,00.html
Chief of staff of former secretary of state reveals that large number of senior Israeli officials warned Bush administration that invasion of Iraq would be destabilizing to region. 'The Israelis were telling us Iraq is not the enemy - Iran is the enemy,' he says
Yitzhak Benhorin
Instead invading Iraq to protect Israelis ( I am not arguing against the invasion of Iraq) why didn't Bush invade Iran move the embassy to Jerusalem. The idea that Bush invaded Iraq for Israel is generally used as anti-Israel attack and I don't think there is much truth to it.
The Dershowitz quote I was referring to was ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/22/us/politics/22jewish.html?_r=1&bl&ex=1211688000&en=2f1c1073322ca17f&ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin
"Mr. Dershowitz, who supports Mrs. Clinton, says he tells voters that Mr. Obama, Mrs. Clinton and Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, are all pro-Israel and to reject false personal attacks on Mr. Obama."
And here in lies the democrats strategy.......run against Bush (who, by the way isn't running in 2008). Clever.
As for the notion that Israel did not view Saddam Hussein as the enemy, that's preposterous, and Dershowitz is out of his mind. Am I the only one that remembers that Saddam Hussein was paying large sums of cash to the families of suicide bombers who killed Israeli citizens?
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I actually really like Michelle Obama. She is a strong woman who made her family her #1 priority. However, I wouldn't vote for President based on the first lady. I have always though Laura Bush was very classy as well .
"On the morning that the Times ran a front-page story about Michelle Obama's recalibrating her image in the wake of conservative attacks, the potential first lady appeared friendly, well spoken, likable, if understandably measured, on "The View." It was a big moment for her, what Times writer Jodi Kantor dubbed "the television equivalent of a Broadway debut." No scandal, no surprises, really, but there was the expected discussion of her pride comment, to which Obama responded:
"Of course I am proud of my country. Nowhere but America could my story be possible. I'm a girl who grew up on the South Side of Chicago, my father was a working-class guy who worked his shift all his life, and because of his hard work he sent not just me but my brother to Princeton ... I am proud of my country without a doubt."
In a first-lady lovefest, Michelle expressed her gratitude to Laura Bush for defending her about those comments, and she gave props to Hillary: "Hillary Clinton says she created 18 million cracks on a ceiling, and we need to keep pushing it and pushing it. Because it's only until women like her step out, take the risk, take those hits, and it's painful. And it's hurtful, but she has taken them so that my girls when they come along they won't have to feel it as badly."
Most important, however, is that Obama greeted the guests with her signature fist bump (also known, in some circles, as a terrorist fist jab!). She admitted, like the adorable square she is, "I got this from the young staff … it's the new high-five."
http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59twO1fJwtQ
"For the first time in my adult life I am really proud to be an American" -Michelle Obama
I think it's time America put the kool-aid down and became honest about who and what Barry and Michelle Obama really are....they far left radicals who also appears to have embraced a black nationalist ideology when it was politically convenient on the local level in Hyde Park Chicago. Over the years Barry has surrounded himself with left wing terrorists, black seperatists and assorted fringe fruitcakes and nutjobs, and now he wants to simply avoid any discussion of that. And strangely the media is content to oblige him by NOT discussing anything Barry feels uncomfortable with.
Barry has convinced a significant number of American citizens that he should be president because he is 'clean and articulate' and can come up with interesting variations of saying he's about 'hope and change' in very inspiring speeches....that actually saying NOTHING at ALL! Now those brain-washed kool-aid drinkers speak of Obama as if he were a MESSIANIC FIGURE!
PUT THE KOOL-AID DOWN AMERICA!
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http://www.nypost.com/php/pfriendly/print.php?url=http://www.nypost.com/seven/06192008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/obama_vs__osama_116128.htm
OBAMA VS. OSAMA
By RALPH PETERS
June 19, 2008 -- NAME-BRAND journalists have let Barack Obama make any claim he chooses about Iraq, Afghanistan or coping with terrorism without pinning him down for details.
Yet many of his comments and positions seem stunningly naive about national security. Given that this man may become our next president, shouldn't he explain how he'd do the many impressive things he's promised?
This week, Obama claimed, again, that he'd promptly capture Osama bin Laden. OK, tell me how: Specifically, which concrete measures would he take that haven't been taken? How would he force our intelligence agencies to locate bin Laden? And he can't just respond, "That's classified."
He also claimed that fighting terrorism is a law-enforcement problem, not a military one (should we send the NYPD to Mosul and Kandahar?), and that the answer to terrorism is the approach taken after the 1993 World Trade Center attack, featuring conventional trials and prison terms.
That flaccid post-'93 response only encouraged terrorists - who are unfazed by the prospect of a US prison, where the quality of life's better than it was at home. The Clinton administration's hesitancy and softness gave us the subsequent attacks on the Khobar Towers housing complex in Saudi Arabia, on our embassies in East Africa, on the USS Cole and, ultimately, the events of 9/11.
The senator needs to tell us why it would be different now.
Obama has also said he'd send our troops into Pakistan, although he'll withdraw rapidly from Iraq. His unwillingness to discuss the consequences of a hasty retreat from Baghdad is one thing - but invading Pakistan would be an order of magnitude worse.
A substantial number of Iraq's 26 million citizens did welcome us. In Pakistan, with its 170 million Muslims and some of the most rugged terrain on earth, anti-Americanism prevails. Any US military incursion would be greeted with outrage and demands for a military response.
Nor does Obama appear to grasp that armies need fuel, ammunition, food, spare parts and other supplies. Nearly everything for our troops in landlocked Afghanistan, from bottled water to medical supplies, now comes via Pakistani ports, roads and railroads. If those long, difficult routes were cut, how would President Obama supply our troops? And no, it can't all be done by air.
Oh, Pakistan has nukes, too.
Also this week, Obama's advisers stated that, if apprehended, Osama bin Laden should be tried in a conventional US courtroom. My fellow Americans, do you believe that?
Do you believe that this arch-terrorist, publicly proud of his responsibility for 9/11, should be given all the rights of a US citizen and a public platform to engage in propaganda?
What the full-rights-for-terrorists advocates fail to comprehend is that our judicial processes - so dear to us - are viewed by terrorists as a means to advance their cause, to embarrass us, to reveal our intelligence methods and to perpetuate their martyr myth.
Harsh as it may sound, a dead terrorist is dead, but an imprisoned terrorist is a cause (and not just for his fellow radicals). Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is forgotten, but our Guantanamo prisoners are pop stars.
Obama appears out of his depth on all this, but the gushingly friendly media have given him a pass on every groundless claim or gaffe. It's time for journalists to start asking him tough questions - to press him when he doesn't give serious answers. Isn't that their job?
Those who knew Obama in his university days claim that he couldn't be persuaded to study history. It shows. And his lifelong lack of interest in the military is self-evident.
The response that "he has knowledgeable advisers" isn't enough. Obama's military and counterterror "experts" compose a unique collection of the dismissed, the discredited and the dysfunctional. Most appear to be out to settle personal grudges rather than to advance our nation's security.
Let's hope that just one high-profile journalist pushes Obama on the following questions:
* How would you find Osama bin Laden? What, specifically, would you do differently?
* What would be the rules for capturing or killing Osama?
* How would you manage the consequences of the military incursion into Pakistan you've threatened? Are you willing to go to war with Pakistan?
* What would be the specific results of a swift troop withdrawal from Iraq?
* Why would a judicial approach to defeating terrorists work this time when it failed to protect us in the past?
* Do you truly believe that self-admitted terrorists, when captured, deserve the full legal privileges of US citizens?
If this highly talented candidate has glaring gaps in his understanding of the world, voters deserve to know. If his campaign promises have no substance, we deserve to know that, too.
I support John McCain for president, but I live by the values that guided me as an Army officer: I will support my commander in chief as chosen by the American people, no matter who he (or, one day, she) may be. But until the people make their choice, both candidates should be held to the same tough standards of truth in advertising.
Sen. Obama, tell us how.
Ralph Peters' new book, "Looking for Trouble," will be published in July.
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...far left radicals who also appears to have embraced a black nationalist ideology when it was politically convenient on the local level in Hyde Park Chicago. Over the years Barry has surrounded himself with left wing terrorists, black seperatists and assorted fringe fruitcakes and nutjobs...
So the thing I always wonder when people make this argument is, "What are you afraid of?"
Do you really think that somehow, IF he's voted into office, the US is going to suddenly become a far left, radical, black separatist state? That people are suddenly going turn to Islam? I just don't get the fear factor. Do you honestly think that career politicians are going to take whatever bill he puts in front of them and ignore their constituents? That the entire country will suddenly go all glassy eyed and let the administration run all over them? I just don't buy it.
What is the concern? His questionable acquaintances? His lack of a moral compass? His willingness to do/say/try anything to get elected? If those are the arguments, we might as well empty the US Congress and start over.
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The man's mentor, Frank something, is/was a formal member of the US Communist Party; there is his friendship with unrepentant Weather underground terrorists, there is his association with Rev Wright's church (which praises and honors Louis Farrakan), his wife's shame in our country, etc etc etc. Then there is the matter of the man's voting record, and his positions.
Does not the confluence of all these things raise a warning flag for you as to the man's inner compass? And does not our President's inner compass matter?
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Crafty,
I am not defending or supporting the senator.
Honesty and integrity are two things that I find lacking in the majority of our politicians. Actually, I can't think of a political figure in the past 20 years without major character/personality deficits, questionable business practices, or who is not morally ambiguous at best. Politics is a business. And that business is all about staying in office, no matter what.
Obama's background is questionable at the very least, but just as politically transparent as any number of other politicians. His constituents are made up of a mix of lower/mid/upper class voters, of different races. His associations are strictly political capital. Of course he's going to attend a particular type of church, if that is going to get make him popular or get him votes. If you want to be popular with a certain crowd (in his case, liberal voters) you hang out with the people that can help you get popular. And guess what? It will, at some point, come back to bite you in the ass.
Do I think he should be commended on him choice of friends or business partners? No. Does he know some sketchy people? Hell yes. Is that o.k.? Hell no. But really, honestly, how many political figures don't have skeletons in their closet (or living room for that matter)? Do Obama's associations make him anymore questionable than any number of other politicians? I'd say it's about a 50/50 on that one. I mean, just look at the amazing political scandals of the past 12 months, on both sides of the aisle.
I am more concerned about this perception that by virtue of Obama's past, his administration is somehow going to ride roughshod all over the country. Do people really believe that an individual has that much power in today's day and age? I mean, checks and balances? Anyone? And if they do hold this belief, where did it come from? Why would Obama's presidency be any more politically effective/powerful/dangerous than the current administration's? And if people do have concerns about unchecked presidential power, perhaps they should have been complaining (as some have in these forums) over the past 8 years.
I would ask those who are concerned about who gets voted-in the following:
When was the last time a president came into office with unchecked power, completely changed the fabric of our society, our political standing in the world, and ignored anything that the voting public or Congress said? I'm going to go with....never.
I just find the "sky is falling" scenarios ridiculous. IF Obama gets voted in, we are not going turn into a communist, socialized medicine, far left, terrorist loving society. Let's give ourselves a little more credit than that.
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SB Mig, Take your last post on Obama and apply those same questions to Mcain and what say ye?
I honestly think you find very little scandal, charecter flaws or skeletons in his closet.......
Not that he's impeccable, but so far the biggest thing I've heard negative about him is that he has a bad temper :|
Yea there are some questionable right wing extremist pastors that try to align themselves with him.....the thing is though, is that he has no personal association to them.......Please though do expound on the negatvies that you know of on John Mcain......
TG
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"When was the last time a president came into office with unchecked power, completely changed the fabric of our society, our political standing in the world, and ignored anything that the voting public or Congress said? I'm going to go with....never."
Ummm how about LBJ? :lol: :-P :cry:
The point I think you have not considered yet is that if elected BO will head an overwhelimingly Demogogue Congress-- one determined e.g. to socialize 15% of GDP (health care). This alone is a dramatic change. The point is that there will be little to no countervailing political power. BO and the Demogogues look to raise taxes dramatically. This too is a big change-- one that will be catastropic IMHO. BO and the Demogogues want to re-apply the Carter solutions to the energy challenges of our time-- this too will lead to disaster.
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Just so I clearly understand you point not voting for Senator McCain is the same as joining a cult and drinking cyanide? It is not possible that someone could make a logical informed choice to vote differently?
I don't think anyone was arguing SH was good for Israel. The issue being Palestinian suicide bombers are extremely painful but they are not an existential threat to Israel the way a nuclear Iran would be.
"Not that he's impeccable, but so far the biggest thing I've heard negative about him is that he has a bad temper"
Does a bad temper excuse calling his a wife a trollop and a four letter word? How does adultery fit into having a moral compass?
Michelle Obama never said she was ashamed of her country. The opposite of "really proud" is not shame. It was not great comment but not the same as saying she was ashamed of her country
There are logical thoughtful reasons to vote for McCain. Variations of Barak is evil and scary because he greeted is wife with a terrorist fist pump or accepted $200 from someone from Weather Underground etc are not really great arguments
We can play this game with McCain and argue about his moral compass which is much less interesting than arguing the issues
"John McCain has called off a fundraiser(but kept the money) at the home of a Texas oilman who joked about rape during a 1990 gubernatorial run in the state.
The Texan, Republican Clayton Williams, made the joke during his failed campaign against Democrat Ann Richards. Williams compared rape to the weather, saying, "As long as it's inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it."
"He also compared Richards to the cattle on his ranch, saying he would "head her and hoof her and drag her through the dirt."
:The campaign said it would not return money Williams had raised for McCain because the contributions came from other individuals supporting McCain and not from Williams. Williams told his hometown newspaper, the Midland Reporter-Telegram, that he had raised more than $300,000 for McCain."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/14/mccain-cancels-event-over_n_107139.html
On a positive note no matter who wins --we will at least have a president who believes in evolution .
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Will Obama stop the US gov't from giving black people the HIV virus if he's elected president?
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Do you honestly think Obama believes the government gave black people HIV ? Do you honestly think most of Obama's supporter believe that. I'm positive Neo Nazi/KKK vote will all be for McCain . It is not really a good reason to vote for Obama.
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http://michellemalkin.com/2008/06/19/louis-farrakhans-newspaper-defends-poor-michelle-obama/
Looks like the Nation of Islam is a fan of Michelle Obama too!
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Do you honestly think Obama believes the government gave black people HIV ? Do you honestly think most of Obama's supporter believe that. I'm positive Neo Nazi/KKK vote will all be for McCain . It is not really a good reason to vote for Obama.
Obama sure didn't mind bathing in that hatred for 20 years and exposing his young daughters to it. Is black racism more palatable to you than white racism? As far as neo-nazis, they want to see Obama elected in the belief that this will be the cause of the race war they've been waiting for. So, actually by supporting Obama, one is supporting racist loons of both the black and white kind.
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- Hatewatch | Southern Poverty Law Center - http://www.splcenter.org/blog -
President Obama? Many White Supremacists are Celebrating
Posted By Mark Potok On June 11, 2008 @ 11:56 am In Anti-Black, Hate Groups, Klan, National Alliance, White Supremacist | 78 Comments
With the nomination of Barack Obama as the Democratic presidential candidate clinched, large sections of the white supremacist movement are adopting a surprising attitude: Electing America’s first black president would be a very good thing.
It’s not that the assortment of neo-Nazis, Klansmen, anti-Semites and others who make up this country’s radical right have suddenly discovered that a man should be judged based on the content of his character, not his skin. On the contrary. A growing number of white supremacists, and even some of those who pass for intellectual leaders of their movement, think that a black man in the Oval Office would shock white America, possibly drive millions to their cause, and perhaps even set off a race war that, they hope, would ultimately end in Aryan victory.
“He will make things so bad for white people that hopefully they will finally realize how stupid they were for admiring these jigaboos all these years,” “Darthvader” wrote on the neo-Nazi [1] Vanguard News Network web forum. “I believe in the motto ‘Worse is Better’ and Obama certainly fits that description.” Just last week, [2] Ron Doggett (right), a Virginian who has been a key activist in the Klan, the paramilitary White People’s Party and the neo-Nazi National Alliance, chimed in with this: “I hope Obama wins because in four years, white people just might be pissed off enough to actually do something. … White people aren’t going to do a thing until their toys are taken away from them. So things have to be worse for things to be better.”
“Oh man,” enthused “Centimanus” on the white nationalist [3] Stormfront website. “I am gleefully, sadistically looking forward to Obama as president. … It will be a beautiful day when the masses look at the paper and truly realize they have lost their own country. Added “Fulimnata”: “To the average white man and woman, they could look at Obama and see plain as day that whites are not in control.” Another message, from “TheLastOfMyKind,” agreed: “Could it be that the nomination of Obama finally sparks a sense of unity in white voters? I would propose that this threat of black, muslim [sic] rule may very well be the thing that finally scares some sense back into complacent whites throughout the nation.” “Actually,” said another poster, “if Obama were to win, it would be the best thing that ever happened to the Klan. They would have massive growth.” And “TeutonicLegion” said that “a whole bunch of people will join us and find these boards” if Obama becomes president.
Even [4] David Duke (right), the neo-Nazi and former Klan boss who is the closest thing the movement has to a real intellectual these days, sees clear advantages in an Obama victory in the fall. “Obama will be a signal, a clear signal for millions of our people,” Duke wrote in an essay entitled [5] “A Black Flag for White America” last week. “Obama is like that new big dark spot on your arm that finally sends you to the doctor for some real medicine. … Obama is the pain that let’s [sic] your body know that something is dreadfully wrong. Obama will let the American people know that there is a real cancer eating away at the heart of our country and Republican aspirin will not only not cure it, but only masks the pain and makes you think you don’t need radical surgery. … My bet is that whether Obama wins or loses in November, millions of European Americans will inevitably react with new awareness of their heritage and the need for them to defend and advance it.”
Opinion on the radical right is far from unanimous on the topic of a possible Obama victory. Many of those writing on the topic — perhaps half of those who have posted recently — think an Obama presidency would destroy the country and oppose it mightily. On the other hand, there is virtually no enthusiasm on the radical right for presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, who is widely seen by white supremacists as a sellout, particularly on the issue of nonwhite immigration into the United States. But increasing numbers think that a bad situation with a black president will be good for their movement.
“Thomas Dixon Jr.,” a Stormfront poster using the name of the racist author who wrote the classic novel [6] The Clansman, put it like this: “As WLP [William Luther Pierce, the late leader of the neo-Nazi National Alliance] would say… ‘What is bad for the system is good for us.’” “Obama,” added “The Patriot” in the same thread, “would be better for our cause in the long run, no doubt about it.”
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IMO Racism no matter the flavor is morally equivalent and maybe those who suffer it themselves should know bettter. Be kind to the stranger because you were a stranger in a strand land etc. Practically it is worse for the person in power to be racist than those not in power to be racist because of the size of the impact.
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Rachel,
I assume you are now retracting "I'm positive Neo Nazi/KKK vote will all be for McCain ."
Yes?
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Rachel,
I assume you are now retracting "I'm positive Neo Nazi/KKK vote will all be for McCain ."
Yes?
Yes-- Obviously the facts are against me in that case . I often try to fact check things before I post them just in case my memory fails me but that was not something I thought I would need to look up.
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http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/2008/06/021450print.html
June 18, 2008
Obama, Islamophobe? Muslims barred from picture at Obama event
Once again he throws a billion Muslims under the bus by tacitly acknowledging that they carry just a bit too much political baggage for him.
(But it's OK -- he apologized.)
"Muslims barred from picture at Obama event," by Ben Smith at Politico, June 18 (thanks to all who sent this in):
Two Muslim women at Barack Obama's rally in Detroit Monday were barred from sitting behind the podium by campaign volunteers seeking to prevent the women's headscarves from appearing in photographs or on television with the candidate.
The campaign has apologized to the women, all Obama supporters who said they felt betrayed by their treatment at the rally.
"This is of course not the policy of the campaign. It is offensive and counter to Obama's commitment to bring Americans together and simply not the kind of campaign we run," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton. "We sincerely apologize for the behavior of these volunteers."
Building a human backdrop to a political candidate, a set of faces to appear on television and in photographs, is always a delicate exercise in demographics and political correctness. Advance staffers typically pick supporters out of a crowd to reflect the candidate's message.
When Obama won North Carolina amid questions about his ability to connect with white voters, for instance, he stood in front of a group of middle-aged white women waving small American flags. Across the aisle, a Hispanic New Hampshire Democrat, Roberto Fuentes, told Politico that he was recently asked, and declined, to contribute to the "diversity" of the crowd behind Senator John McCain at a Nashua event.
But for Obama, the old-fashioned image-making contrasts with his promise to transcend identity politics, and to embrace all elements of America. The incidents in Michigan, which has one of the largest Arab and Muslim populations in the country, also raise an aspect of his campaign that sometimes rubs Muslims the wrong way: The candidate has vigorously denied a false, viral rumor that he himself is Muslim. But the denials seem to some at times to imply that there something wrong with the faith, though Obama occasionally adds that he means no disrespect to Islam.
"I was coming to support him, and I felt like I was discriminated against by the very person who was supposed to be bringing this change, who I could really relate to," said Hebba Aref, a 25-year-old lawyer who lives in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills. "The message that I thought was delivered to us was that they do not want him associated with Muslims or Muslim supporters."...
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http://www.debbieschlussel.com/archives/2008/06/muslim_grievanc.html#
Obama supporters! Just not in the photos....
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Ummm how about LBJ?
I'll have to defer to my elders on this one as I was not around.l.. :wink:
As to McCain's character, cheating on his first wife in order to marry the younger ex-cheerleader doesn't quite put him on my "mr. nice guy list". And although cleared of wrongdoing in the Keating Five debacle, he was a known a business associate of Keating, so I'm going the conservative-Obama-guilt-by-association route with that one...
GM - I mean, really, with the "get the Muslims out of the picture" story? Obama has no more control over who is placed behind him than I do. From the same article:
Across the aisle, a Hispanic New Hampshire Democrat, Roberto Fuentes, told Politico that he was recently asked, and declined, to contribute to the "diversity" of the crowd behind Senator John McCain at a Nashua event.
Does this mean that not enough Hispanics like McCain and he wanted one in the shot to prove he's into diversity? Or that he loves Hispanics and just couldn't live without one in the picture? No. The handlers want the shot to look good. Period. It has nothing to do with the speaker. I've worked a number of events for politicians from local to executive level, and I guarantee that just about anyone can show up. And when they do, the crowd handlers will place them very specifically for maximum effect. But stupid handlers are stupid handlers, and in Obama's case they were just plain clueless.
Between now and November, both campaigns are going to make amazing gaffes. Unfortunately, our voting public is more focused on flag pins, who called their wife what name, who wrote a paper on what in college, and where someone went to elementary school than they are on the actual issues. Politicians play to our ignorance, not our intelligence, and most people are happy to do the lemming walk.
Can you imagine if our "news" shows (and that goes for both sides) and bloggers (who I shudder to even call journalists) actually spent time debating the candidates stances on the issues? But that wouldn't make for good television, would it?
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Do you honestly think Obama believes the government gave black people HIV ? Do you honestly think most of Obama's supporter believe that. I'm positive Neo Nazi/KKK vote will all be for McCain . It is not really a good reason to vote for Obama.
You're positive of that why? Because McCain is white? The reality is that Neo-Nazis/KKK are anti-government in general....and for all practical matters are in agreement with the Nation of Islam on most topics, especially when it pertains to their anti-semetic views.
Does Obama believe it? Can't say if he truly believes it or has just used it to gain political support in Chicago area politics......but it's clear most of his supporters/pastor etc believe, or at least CLAIM to believe it, so the difference about whether Obama believes it or not is moot as he surrounded himself with people who believe it and proclaim it as true.
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...far left radicals who also appears to have embraced a black nationalist ideology when it was politically convenient on the local level in Hyde Park Chicago. Over the years Barry has surrounded himself with left wing terrorists, black seperatists and assorted fringe fruitcakes and nutjobs...
So the thing I always wonder when people make this argument is, "What are you afraid of?"
Do you really think that somehow, IF he's voted into office, the US is going to suddenly become a far left, radical, black separatist state? That people are suddenly going turn to Islam? I just don't get the fear factor. Do you honestly think that career politicians are going to take whatever bill he puts in front of them and ignore their constituents? That the entire country will suddenly go all glassy eyed and let the administration run all over them? I just don't buy it.
First of all
A) Where did you get 'Islam' from my post?
B) So your argument is really going to be 'Who cares, what's the worst damage he could do?'?!
"What is the concern? His questionable acquaintances? His lack of a moral compass? His willingness to do/say/try anything to get elected? If those are the arguments, we might as well empty the US Congress and start over."
ALL OF THE ABOVE! What do you think he's running for? THE MOST POWERFUL OFFICE ON THE PLANET! And your argument is REALLY going to be 'HEY, WHAT'S THE WORST HE COULD DO?!' That's kind of sad.
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The man's mentor, Frank something, is/was a formal member of the US Communist Party; there is his friendship with unrepentant Weather underground terrorists, there is his association with Rev Wright's church (which praises and honors Louis Farrakan), his wife's shame in our country, etc etc etc. Then there is the matter of the man's voting record, and his positions.
Does not the confluence of all these things raise a warning flag for you as to the man's inner compass? And does not our President's inner compass matter?
Sad to say, Crafty......but there are a large number of Kool-aid drinkers in this country who have jumped on the 'Cult of Obama Personality' bandwagon, and who are willing to IGNORE any inconvenient truths! Not just disagree with the facts, but flat out DECLARE THEM IRRELAVENT!
'What's the worst damage that he could do.....he and Michelle look like a cute couple, and that's good enough fore me!'
These folks think they're voting on American IDOL Crafty! I'm truly frightened.....not of Obama, but at the stupidity of my fellow citizens!
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Crafty,
I am not defending or supporting the senator.
Honesty and integrity are two things that I find lacking in the majority of our politicians. Actually, I can't think of a political figure in the past 20 years without major character/personality deficits, questionable business practices, or who is not morally ambiguous at best. Politics is a business. And that business is all about staying in office, no matter what.
Obama's background is questionable at the very least, but just as politically transparent as any number of other politicians. His constituents are made up of a mix of lower/mid/upper class voters, of different races. His associations are strictly political capital. Of course he's going to attend a particular type of church, if that is going to get make him popular or get him votes. If you want to be popular with a certain crowd (in his case, liberal voters) you hang out with the people that can help you get popular. And guess what? It will, at some point, come back to bite you in the ass.
Do I think he should be commended on him choice of friends or business partners? No. Does he know some sketchy people? Hell yes. Is that o.k.? Hell no. But really, honestly, how many political figures don't have skeletons in their closet (or living room for that matter)? Do Obama's associations make him anymore questionable than any number of other politicians? I'd say it's about a 50/50 on that one. I mean, just look at the amazing political scandals of the past 12 months, on both sides of the aisle.
I am more concerned about this perception that by virtue of Obama's past, his administration is somehow going to ride roughshod all over the country. Do people really believe that an individual has that much power in today's day and age? I mean, checks and balances? Anyone? And if they do hold this belief, where did it come from? Why would Obama's presidency be any more politically effective/powerful/dangerous than the current administration's? And if people do have concerns about unchecked presidential power, perhaps they should have been complaining (as some have in these forums) over the past 8 years.
I would ask those who are concerned about who gets voted-in the following:
When was the last time a president came into office with unchecked power, completely changed the fabric of our society, our political standing in the world, and ignored anything that the voting public or Congress said? I'm going to go with....never.
I just find the "sky is falling" scenarios ridiculous. IF Obama gets voted in, we are not going turn into a communist, socialized medicine, far left, terrorist loving society. Let's give ourselves a little more credit than that.
Your equivocation is a defense......simply saying 'Yeah, well, but all politicians' is a DODGE! Not ALL politicians are running for President of the United States. Moreover, the faux parity i've seen offered by the MSM attempting to carry Obama's water is ridiculous.........ask a question about Obama's RELIGIOUS guru of 20 years gets a silly attempt to create false parity with McCain and John Hagee or some guy who introduced him once at a speech. It's absurd.
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SB Mig, Take your last post on Obama and apply those same questions to Mcain and what say ye?
I honestly think you find very little scandal, charecter flaws or skeletons in his closet.......
Not that he's impeccable, but so far the biggest thing I've heard negative about him is that he has a bad temper :|
Yea there are some questionable right wing extremist pastors that try to align themselves with him.....the thing is though, is that he has no personal association to them.......Please though do expound on the negatvies that you know of on John Mcain......
TG
Maybe he used a racial slur to one of his torturers at the Hanoi Hilton once.
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Just so I clearly understand you point not voting for Senator McCain is the same as joining a cult and drinking cyanide? It is not possible that someone could make a logical informed choice to vote differently?
I don't think anyone was arguing SH was good for Israel. The issue being Palestinian suicide bombers are extremely painful but they are not an existential threat to Israel the way a nuclear Iran would be.
"Not that he's impeccable, but so far the biggest thing I've heard negative about him is that he has a bad temper"
Does a bad temper excuse calling his a wife a trollop and a four letter word? How does adultery fit into having a moral compass?
Michelle Obama never said she was ashamed of her country. The opposite of "really proud" is not shame. It was not great comment but not the same as saying she was ashamed of her country
There are logical thoughtful reasons to vote for McCain. Variations of Barak is evil and scary because he greeted is wife with a terrorist fist pump or accepted $200 from someone from Weather Underground etc are not really great arguments
We can play this game with McCain and argue about his moral compass which is much less interesting than arguing the issues
"John McCain has called off a fundraiser(but kept the money) at the home of a Texas oilman who joked about rape during a 1990 gubernatorial run in the state.
The Texan, Republican Clayton Williams, made the joke during his failed campaign against Democrat Ann Richards. Williams compared rape to the weather, saying, "As long as it's inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it."
"He also compared Richards to the cattle on his ranch, saying he would "head her and hoof her and drag her through the dirt."
:The campaign said it would not return money Williams had raised for McCain because the contributions came from other individuals supporting McCain and not from Williams. Williams told his hometown newspaper, the Midland Reporter-Telegram, that he had raised more than $300,000 for McCain."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/14/mccain-cancels-event-over_n_107139.html
On a positive note no matter who wins --we will at least have a president who believes in evolution .
NOT voting for John McCain has nothing to do with it........but I THROUGHLY believe buying in to this Obama cult of personality has PLENTY of analogy with Jim Jones.......you take a charismatic one term senator who missed more votes than he was present for, who throws the words 'Hope and Change' around without actually explaining what they mean.......and then a bunch of of people start believe he's some sort of Messiah?! PLEASE! I expect him very shortly to start walking in to the audience and HEALING PEOPLE WITH HIS BARE HANDS!
Again, the silliness of this discussion is that ANY discussion of 'OBAMA' merely finds the retort of 'Well, what about McCain?' Well WHAT ABOUT HIM? He's not my first choice......but one things for sure, he spent YEARS in a HANOI HELLHOLE when he was OFFERED a chance to leave, but without his fellow prisoners......HE stayed, and that tells me McCain is at least a LOYAL and HONORABLE MAN!
Obama? He spent his youth doing drugs and then discovered that he could embrace identity politics and use it to buy him wealth and POWER!
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IMO Racism no matter the flavor is morally equivalent and maybe those who suffer it themselves should know bettter. Be kind to the stranger because you were a stranger in a strand land etc. Practically it is worse for the person in power to be racist than those not in power to be racist because of the size of the impact.
And yet.....isn't electing someone president giving them power? I'm starting to suspect that what Obama does or does not believe in, is or is not, or what he WILL do in office is entirely irrelavent to his supporters. I suspect the REALITY, and you can correct me if i'm TRULY wrong......the reality is how 'Voting for Obama' makes his supporters FEEL about themselves as 'enlightented human beings'. That's why any discussion of him is utterly ignored, because it isn't about HIM......it's really about THEM and what they feel voting for Obama says about them as a HUMAN BEING! In their minds they 'feel' voting for Obama is 'right'......and any rational discussion of the man is entirely side-stepped because their EMOTIONS have already made up their minds.
Now i've already pretty much acccepted the idea that Obama is going to win........the Republican party allowed the MSM to pick it's candidate, John McCain, who is really nothing but a strawman candidate they wanted for Obama or Hillary. McCain generates zero excitement from his base, while Obama leaves his mesmerized by his messianic bearing. So he's going to be elected president....ONCE!
So i'm not really even INTERESTED in discussing John McCain.....i'm FAR more interested in what has turned presumably intelligent human beings in to SUCKERS for this guy Obama!
"I cried all night. I’m going to be crying for the next four years. What Barack Obama has accomplished is the single most extraordinary event that has occurred in the 232 years of the nation’s political history. ...The event itself is so extraordinary that another chapter could be added to the Bible to chronicle its significance." -Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.
http://obamamessiah.blogspot.com/
Yeah, Jesse......i've got a feeling we're ALL going to end up crying for the next four years!
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SB,
I'll concede that it was some campaign staffer or staffers that did the selection of the backdrop. Still, I find it telling who was there for the photo op and their agendas, as articulated in the Debbie Schlussel article.
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Sgtmac,
First of all
A) Where did you get 'Islam' from my post?
I did not get it from your post. I inserted it, as a more extreme example of how some people are portraying an Obama administration. It has nothing to do with you, and if you're offended, I apologize.
B) So your argument is really going to be 'Who cares, what's the worst damage he could do?'?!
Apparently, you haven't read any of my posts in detail. The questioned I posed was "What do people really think he is capable of doing?", to which I have yet to receive an answer. I just don't buy that the guy is somehow going to re-work the fabric of our country and make it a socialist, terrorist loving state, as some have argued. This is not the same as saying he's going to be a good/great president, or asking "What's the worst he could do."
My argument (and if you read all my posts re: the subject, you would have gleaned as much) is that all politicians are crooked, and we should start paying attention to that fact on both sides of the aisle.
And, I ask, "Do people really believe that our elected officials and their constituents are going to let Obama do whatever he wants?"
I do want to know what's the worst he could do, but not in the rhetorical. What do people think Obama is truly capable of? Is he dangerous? On what do you base that opinion? I want to know.
Your equivocation is a defense......simply saying 'Yeah, well, but all politicians' is a DODGE!
Again, what dodge? In the post that you refer to, I say:
Do I think he should be commended on him choice of friends or business partners? No. Does he know some sketchy people? Hell yes. Is that o.k.? Hell no.
I'm not defending the senator. I'm pointing out that politicians do whatever it takes to make the connections to get into office. Do I have a problem with that? Yes. If you want to intepret that as a defense of Obama's character, whatever.
Again, the silliness of this discussion is that ANY discussion of 'OBAMA' merely finds the retort of 'Well, what about McCain?'
Didn't mention McCain once, except when asked by Tom. And if you don't think that both sides don't play the "what about the other guy" game, you are not paying attention.
"So i'm not really even INTERESTED in discussing John McCain"
Really? Well, I find that kind of sad, because it tells me that you've lost faith in the process. I find the political system deeply flawed, but that doesn't mean I'm disengaging from it.
the reality is how 'Voting for Obama' makes his supporters FEEL about themselves as 'enlightented human beings'.
Where do you get this? I've met more than a handful of Obama supporters, and I have yet to come across this sentiment.
I'm concerned about Kool-Aid drinkers as well. I just happen to think everyone does it, on both sides of the aisle. That doesn't mean I support it, condone it, or want to drink any. Anyways, I like lemonade.
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Do you honestly think Obama believes the government gave black people HIV ? Do you honestly think most of Obama's supporter believe that. I'm positive Neo Nazi/KKK vote will all be for McCain . It is not really a good reason to vote for Obama.
You're positive of that why? Because McCain is white? The reality is that Neo-Nazis/KKK are anti-government in general....and for all practical matters are in agreement with the Nation of Islam on most topics, especially when it pertains to their anti-semetic views.
I incorrectly though that partly because McCain is white and partly because neo nazi/kkk do usually vote Republican and run for office as Republicans-- they are the extreme right
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[/quote]
I incorrectly though that partly because McCain is white and partly because neo nazi/kkk do usually vote Republican and run for office as Republicans-- they are the extreme right
[/quote]
"Neo nazi/kkk do usually vote republican" ???? You base this on what, exactly?
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Apparently, you haven't read any of my posts in detail. The questioned I posed was "What do people really think he is capable of doing?", to which I have yet to receive an answer. I just don't buy that the guy is somehow going to re-work the fabric of our country and make it a socialist, terrorist loving state, as some have argued. This is not the same as saying he's going to be a good/great president, or asking "What's the worst he could do."
My argument (and if you read all my posts re: the subject, you would have gleaned as much) is that all politicians are crooked, and we should start paying attention to that fact on both sides of the aisle.
And, I ask, "Do people really believe that our elected officials and their constituents are going to let Obama do whatever he wants?"
I do want to know what's the worst he could do, but not in the rhetorical. What do people think Obama is truly capable of? Is he dangerous? On what do you base that opinion? I want to know.
Again, what you're saying, despite your protestations otherwise is 'Hey, what's the worst he could do?'...........as the MOST POWERFUL PERSON ON THE PLANET?!
Really? Well, I find that kind of sad, because it tells me that you've lost faith in the process. I find the political system deeply flawed, but that doesn't mean I'm disengaging from it.
I see you only put part of what I said in that quote.....discussing McCain isn't necessary in order to discuss Obama.....and bringing up McCain on your part is an attempt to divert attention away from the point of this thread, which is Obama. THAT is the context of that quote.
And if you believe that the POTUS is irrelavent, why are you bothering to vote at all? Because the notion of 'What's the worst he could do?' suggests YOU'VE lost faith in the process......which is supported by the assertion 'all politicians are crooked'.
Where do you get this? I've met more than a handful of Obama supporters, and I have yet to come across this sentiment.
I get this from the rabid emotional attachment that folks have made with Obama....it's not a rational choice that they wish to defend with 'He will do this, he will do that!' They've decided on him, they're not sure why (or they're not being honest) and any discussion of why is met with 'Oh yeah, well McCain!'.
I'm concerned about Kool-Aid drinkers as well. I just happen to think everyone does it, on both sides of the aisle. That doesn't mean I support it, condone it, or want to drink any. Anyways, I like lemonade.
Yeah? Who is the Messianic figure that Conservatives have crowned Saint? Even Reagan was a man......not in the same league as Saint Obama the Faultless!
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I incorrectly though that partly because McCain is white and partly because neo nazi/kkk do usually vote Republican and run for office as Republicans-- they are the extreme right
[/quote]
"Neo nazi/kkk do usually vote republican" ???? You base this on what, exactly?
[/quote]
I based this on conversations I have had with people who do voter analysis. For example in his first term Bush got something like 82% percent of the vote in Periora . A chunk of that from analysis of precincts was thought to be from Matt Hale supporters. In Peroria Bush would have won anyway but 82% is incredibly high. I don't have written support or the original analysis so YMMV.
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Left-Wing Racism Remembered
By Floyd and Mary Beth Brown
FrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, May 19, 2008
Did you know…Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican? Every civil rights law, beginning in the 1860s through the 1950s and 1960s, was fought against by Democrats? Or the KKK had links to the Democratic Party? Not only are these questions addressed by the National Black Republicans Association (NBRA), but also more surprising facts.
A few months ago, we had the privilege to meet the chairwoman of NBRA, a brave and gusty woman named Frances Rice. “The double standard looms large when Democrats practice racism,” says Rice. “Those who search in the Republican Party haystack for the racist needles, ignore the mountain of evidence about racism in the Democrat Party.”
Rice does not initially appear to be the type of person who would strike out and dare to challenge a giant, but that’s just what this modern day “David” has done. Rice said her organization is working to set the record straight and “wake up” black voters and “shed the light of truth on the racist past and failed socialism of the Democratic Party.”
Little did we know Rice would soon be feeling the intense, sizzling heat of the national spotlight for reminding people and speaking the truth that the Democratic Party wishes we would all forget.
Last week, when Democrats became aware of NBRA’s Fall 2007 magazine being distributed at a black-voter event in Tallahassee, the liberal media and Democratic Party giants alike began firing their attacks. One headline in a newspaper read, “Magazine stirs race politics” and wrote that the magazine “pushes racial buttons by highlighting low points in the history of the Democratic Party.” A reporter from the The Miami Herald decried The Black Republican magazine, calling its comments “strident” and saying Democrats were “outraged.”
Sometimes the truth hurts.
Rice cites renowned liberal historian and author Dr. Eric Foner in her well-documented expose, “The Ku Klux Klan was the Terrorist Arm of the Democratic Party”. In “A Short History of Reconstruction,” Professor Foner wrote: “Founded in 1866 as a Tennessee social club, the Ku Klux Klan spread into nearly every Southern state, launching a ‘reign of terror’ against Republican leaders black and white.” Again, it was Foner who said, “In effect, the Klan was a military force serving the interests of the Democratic party…and all who desired the restoration of white supremacy.”
Several other articles, including one titled “Why Martin Luther King, Jr. Was a Republican,” also raised the ire of “giants.” Frances Rice says she knew MLK’s family and “there’s no way they were Democrats” in the 1960s. Not only did King vote for Eisenhower in 1956, but this was a time when racist southern Democrats such as Bull Connor used vicious dogs and fire hoses to break up protests; after all, segregation and discrimination were the law of the land in the South.
One who saw firsthand Connor’s atrocities was our nation’s first female black secretary of state, Condi Rice. Not only did she witness the brutality inflicted on the peaceful protestors at the 1963 Children’s March in Birmingham, but Condi’s neighborhood experienced threats of violence. One of her childhood friends was killed in a church bombing by the Ku Klux Klan along with three other girls. Secretary Rice’s family repeatedly faced discrimination. A prime example of this was when John, her father, tried to register to vote with the Democratic Party. They told him that to register as Democrat he must first guess the number of beans in their jar. Not one to accept such insulting treatment, John Rice headed over to the Republican register and promptly became a Republican.
“’Racism’” is the trump card in the indictment of Republicans,” points out Dr. Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institute. “But the cold fact is that the whole Jim Crow era in the South was dominated by Democrats.”
The mission of the NBRA is “to be a resource for the black community on Republican ideals and promote the traditional values of the black community which are the core values of the Republican Party: strong families, faith in God, personal responsibility, quality education, and equal opportunities for all.”
We saw evidence of one of their bold campaigns in Florida. Prominently displayed on a gigantic billboard was the proclamation that “Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican” along with a photo of the civil rights leader, the organization’s name and Web site. It was hard to miss. Currently NBRA has identical signs in several other states and hopes to go nationwide. To help and donate go to: www.NBRA.info
The Republican Party, the party of Abraham Lincoln, fought to free blacks from slavery. Now the daunting goal of NBRA is to “return black Americans to their Republican Party roots by enlightening them about how Republicans fought for their freedom and civil rights and are now fighting for their educational and economic advancement".
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"the reality is how 'Voting for Obama' makes his supporters FEEL about themselves as 'enlightented human beings'."
"Where do you get this? I've met more than a handful of Obama supporters, and I have yet to come across this sentiment."
Exhibit A: My sister and brother-in-law :lol:
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Now BO's handlers have him out there saying "don't be afraid". "They will try to scare you", etc etc
This is another psychological play on the minds of the gullible. There are countless examples in history of demagogues who used the same psychology to lure people into their path to destruction.
He is absolutely a leftist communist-like demagogue pretending to be what he is not.
I can't say he worse than HC but he is certainly just as much a fraud. Woops, I am sorry for the "personal" negative attack, BO.
OK you want to talk about issues. Then stop lying about your plans and your goals.
Whether the public can be educated about his communist bent will be up to McCain and his handlers (since all Presidential campaigns have armies of handlers thanks to the Clintons who have shown that endless manipulation of perception can even keep them popular).
It doesn't help to have a leftist media (except for Fox and some radio talk shows).
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GM,
Some see these events as one of the reasons African Americans began to leave the Republican party:
Robert Moton and the Colored Advisory Commission
In 1922, former President and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court William Howard Taft selected Robert Russa Moton to give the chief address at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial. At the time, many considered Moton to be the most powerful African American in the country. In elite, white political and financial circles, his status was unparalleled.
In race relations, Moton advocated accommodation, not confrontation. He firmly believed that the best way to advance the cause of African Americans was to convince white people of black people's worth through their exemplary behavior. Never one to rock the boat, he didn't fight segregation or challenge white authority.
A protégé of Booker T. Washington, Moton had succeeded him as principal of Tuskegee Institute. From this position, Moton worked long and hard to win the trust of white politicians and philanthropists and secure donations for Tuskegee and other African American institutions and organizations.
His power in the country stemmed from the money he could raise from whites who appreciated his conservative views and methods. In addition to his access to leaders in Washington, Moton sat on the boards of major philanthropic organizations with the likes of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller Jr., and his influence was considerable. When Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck and Company, provided the funding to build more than 6,000 "Rosenwald" schools for rural Southern African Americans, Moton's skills were clearly in play behind the scenes.
Over the years, Moton's words and deeds impressed Herbert Hoover, who invited Moton to visit him anytime he was in Washington. However, during the Great Flood of 1927, it was Hoover who found himself calling on Moton for assistance. Secretary of Commerce during the Coolidge administration, Hoover had his eye on the presidency. When President Coolidge placed Hoover in command of all flood relief operations during the disaster, it seemed to be the perfect vehicle to raise his national profile and revive his reputation as the "Great Humanitarian."
Drawing on lessons he had learned feeding the starving European victims of World War I, Hoover swept into action. He cut through bureaucratic red tape, got aid to victims devastated by the flood and was dubbed a hero by the national press. There was only one thing that could tarnish Hoover's glowing image -- the treatment of African Americans in the Washington County levee camps. Hoover had visited the area and had approved the local flood relief committee's decision, under the leadership of Will Percy, to keep the African American refugees on the levee. But as conditions deteriorated in the camps, word slowly filtered North, and the scandal threatened to derail Hoover's presidential ambitions.
Hoover's friends urged him to get what they called "the big Negroes" in the Republican Party to quiet his critics, and Hoover turned to Robert Moton for the job. Hoover formed the Colored Advisory Commission, led by Moton and staffed by prominent African Americans, to investigate the allegations of abuses in the flood area.
The commission conducted a thorough investigation and reported back to Moton on the deplorable conditions. Moton presented the findings to Hoover, and advocated immediate improvements to aid the flood's neediest victims. But the information was never made public. Hoover had asked Moton to keep a tight lid on his investigation. In return, Hoover implied that if he were successful in his bid for the presidency, Moton and his people would play a role in his administration unprecedented in the nation's history. Hoover also hinted that as president he intended to divide the land of bankrupt planters into small African American-owned farms.
Motivated by Hoover's promises, Moton saw to it that the Colored Advisory Commission never revealed the full extent of the abuses in the Delta, and Moton championed Hoover's candidacy to the African American population. However, once elected President in 1928, Hoover ignored Robert Moton and the promises he had made to his black constituency. In the following election of 1932, Moton withdrew his support for Hoover and switched to the Democratic Party. In an historic shift, African Americans began to abandon the Republicans, the party of Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, and turned to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Democratic Party instead.
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http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2008/06/is_obamas_great_seal_illegal_1.asp
Change!
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SB Mig:
Great piece of history! If you don't put it on the Race thread on the "Science etc" forum for posterity, I will.
Marc
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Crafty,
Done...
GM,
“’Racism’” is the trump card in the indictment of Republicans,” points out Dr. Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institute. “But the cold fact is that the whole Jim Crow era in the South was dominated by Democrats.”
And?
If the Dems were so bad back then, why have they managed to maintain a lock on the African American electorate for so long? And why have Republicans struggled to bring African Americans "back" to the party?
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http://www.townhall.com/Common/PrintPage.aspx?g=fec88e70-0648-453d-9a14-0e65f8354ffb&t=c
Obama or Not, America Still a 'Racist Nation'
Larry Elder
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Republicans show more optimism about race relations than do Democrats. A June 2007 Gallup Poll asked Republicans and Democrats to rate relations between blacks and whites. Among Democrats, 67 percent said relations were "somewhat good" or "very good," while 77 percent of Republicans gave those answers. Similarly, 22 percent of Republicans ranked black/white race relations as "somewhat bad" or "very bad," yet 31 percent of Democrats gave those pessimistic responses.
As I wrote in my new book, "Stupid Black Men: How to Play the Race Card -- and Lose," a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll asked which type of presidential candidate would you not vote for, even if that candidate agreed with you on most issues. More Democrats (17 percent) than Republicans (13 percent) wouldn't vote for a Mormon. For a 72-year-old candidate -- again, more Democrats (19 percent) than Republicans (12 percent) refused to vote for someone that age. Likewise more Democrats (4 percent) than Republicans (3 percent) ruled out voting for a black candidate.
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., a black Clinton supporter, explained why whites vote for Obama. According to Cleaver, "This is (their) chance to demonstrate that we have been able to get this boogeyman called race behind us. And so they are going to vote for him, whether he has credentials or not, whether he has any experience …"
Here's where things get interesting.
As to the argument that an Obama election would show an America overcoming its history of racial injustice, Cleaver says no, it would show the opposite. "Yet Cleaver asserts," according to an Associated Press article, "that Obama as president could actually hamper efforts to curb racial injustice. He said future concerns about race 'would be met with rejection because we've already demonstrated that we're not a racist nation.'"
In other words, whites cleverly intend to vote for Obama -- not because they consider him qualified or the better candidate, but so that they can diminish future allegations of alleged racism and racial injustice. But Cleaver sees through the plot. To Cleaver, America remains a "racist nation." And Obama as president simply pulls the wool over the eyes of America, minimizing the continued and future victims of racism, while giving America's racists free rein to continue their deviousness.
Former Democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, another Clinton supporter, makes the opposite argument. Ferraro claims that Obama's race gives him an advantage that obscures his otherwise thin resume. "If Obama was a white man," said Ferraro, "he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman of any color, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."
Black state Sen. Robert Ford, D-S.C., also a Clinton supporter, takes the Cleaver position. In explaining his refusal to support Obama, Ford said, "It's a slim possibility for (Obama) to get the nomination, but then everybody else is doomed. Every Democrat running on that ticket next year would lose because he's black and he's top of the ticket. We'd lose the House and the Senate and the governors and everything. I'm a gambling man. I love Obama. But I'm not going to kill myself."
Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton can now breathe easier. If Obama loses, blame race. If Obama wins, blame race. Either way, Obama's election, as regards race relations, means nothing. So Jackson and Sharpton and the rest of the like-minded traveling circus can remain in the business of ferreting out, exploiting and often exaggerating allegations of racism for face time on TV and continued relevance.
In 1911, former slave Booker T. Washington prophetically wrote about "black leaders" like Cleaver, Jackson and Sharpton: "There is (a) class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs -- partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. … There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public."
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Crafty,
Done...
GM,
“’Racism’” is the trump card in the indictment of Republicans,” points out Dr. Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institute. “But the cold fact is that the whole Jim Crow era in the South was dominated by Democrats.”
And?
If the Dems were so bad back then, why have they managed to maintain a lock on the African American electorate for so long? And why have Republicans struggled to bring African Americans "back" to the party?
Look at the "black leadership" that Obama and the left have wedded themselves to. Black conservatives are blasted as "Uncle Toms" and sellouts. Look at Obama's "spiritual advisor", who when he wasn't shouting "God damn America" was smearing Clarence Thomas and Condoleeza Rice. The dems love "diversity", just as long as everyone marches in ideological lockstep. HRC can do her verbal minstrel show in speaking to black audiences and gets a free pass while President Bush has minorities in high ranking positions in his two terms and gets nothing but derision in exchange. Lip service to minorities from the dems wins approval while actual steps towards a colorblind society from republicans is ignored. Much like the utter hypocrisy of dems who "care about the environment" while jet setting around the world and living in sprawling mansions, because the dems give lips service to the professional race hucksters like Jackson and Sharpton and their lot, then real action isn't needed or demanded. It isn't logical, but this is the way things are today.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2007/04/30/hillarys-fake-multilingual-schtick/
Hillary’s fake “multilingual” schtick
POSTED AT 3:46 PM ON APRIL 30, 2007 BY BRYAN
If you’re a Southerner, Hillary Carpetbagger thinks that you speak a for-een language. That’ll win over those red states.
Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday she sees her sometimes Southern accent as a virtue.
“I think America is ready for a multilingual president,” Clinton said during a campaign stop at a charter school in Greenville, S.C.
The New York senator — who said she’s been thinking about critics who’ve suggested that she tried to put on a fake Southern accent in Selma, Ala. — noted that she’s split her life between Arkansas, Illinois and the East Coast.
Clinton added a Southern lilt to her voice last week when addressing a civil rights group in New York City headed by the Rev. Al Sharpton. On Monday, dealing with a microphone glitch at a fundraiser for young donors, she quoted former slave and underground railroad leader Harriet Tubman.
It’s not a “Southern lilt” that Hillary adds, or not just a Southern lilt. She always adds it when speaking in black churches. What the reporter is passing off as falling into an old habit is just a shameless pander. And a bad one at that.
I’m sure Hillary is joking about being “multilingual,” but that’s the kind of joke that would get a Republican in trouble. So would faking the accent. And besides, as a joke it’s not even funny. And why do Democrats tend to joke about what “America is ready for” anyway? Liberal political humor, when it comes, nearly always has an annoying top-down, know-it-all, we’re-your-betters quality about it.
Hillary’s phony accent has been good for a Hot Air joke, though. I’m sure she’ll be good for quite a few jokes between now and election day.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/06/21/whos-playing-the-race-card/
Preemptive strike!
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Crafty,
Done...
GM,
“’Racism’” is the trump card in the indictment of Republicans,” points out Dr. Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institute. “But the cold fact is that the whole Jim Crow era in the South was dominated by Democrats.”
And?
If the Dems were so bad back then, why have they managed to maintain a lock on the African American electorate for so long? And why have Republicans struggled to bring African Americans "back" to the party?
The truth? Though it is entitlements and government programs post-1960's that is largely responsible for destroying the fabric of black america.....those entitlements are also addictive to those who are short-sighted. Entitlements are a drug, an opiate used to keep a people loyal while simultaneously keeping them in bondage.
Moreover, telling the TRUTH about entitlements is NEVER a popular position......especially to those receiving them. A pleasant lie is ALWAYS more palatable than the TRUTH! There's your answer.
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**And Michelle Obama panders to this lunacy, without criticism.**
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33695-2005Jan24?language=printer
washingtonpost.com
Study: Many Blacks Cite AIDS Conspiracy
Prevention Efforts Hurt, Activists Say
By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 25, 2005; Page A02
More than 20 years after the AIDS epidemic arrived in the United States, a significant proportion of African Americans embrace the theory that government scientists created the disease to control or wipe out their communities, according to a study released today by Rand Corp. and Oregon State University.
That belief markedly hurts efforts to prevent the spread of the disease among black Americans, the study's authors and activists said. African Americans represent 13 percent of the U.S. population, according to Census Bureau figures, yet they account for 50 percent of new HIV infections in the nation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nearly half of the 500 African Americans surveyed said that HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is man-made. The study, which was supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, appears in the Feb. 1 edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.
More than one-quarter said they believed that AIDS was produced in a government laboratory, and 12 percent believed it was created and spread by the CIA.
A slight majority said they believe that a cure for AIDS is being withheld from the poor. Forty-four percent said people who take the new medicines for HIV are government guinea pigs, and 15 percent said AIDS is a form of genocide against black people.
At the same time, 75 percent said they believe medical and public health agencies are working to stop the spread of AIDS in black communities. But the responses, which varied only slightly by age, gender, education and income level, alarmed the researchers.
"As a researcher knowing that these beliefs were out there, I wasn't as surprised as people I share the study with," said Laura Bogart, a behavioral scientist for the Rand Corp., who co-authored the study with Sheryl Thorburn, associate professor in the College of Health and Human Sciences at Oregon State.
"But the findings are striking, and a wake-up call to the prevention community," Bogart said. "The prevention community has not addressed conspiracy beliefs in the context of prevention. I think that a lot of people involved in prevention may not be from the community where they are trying to prevent HIV."
The findings were also no surprise to Na'im Akbar, a professor of psychology at Florida State University who specializes in African American behavior.
"This is not a bunch of crazy people running around saying they're out to get us," Akbar said. The belief "comes from the reality of 300 years of slavery and 100 years of post-slavery exploitation."
Akbar cited the Tuskegee experiment conducted by the federal government between 1932 and 1972. In it, scientists told black men they were being treated for syphilis but actually withheld treatment so they could study the course of the disease.
Today, he said, African Americans are more likely to live in communities near pollution sources, such as freeways and oil refineries, and far from health care centers. "There are a lot of indicators that our lives are not valued," Akbar said.
Phill Wilson, executive director of the Black AIDS Institute in Los Angeles, said past discrimination is no longer an excuse for embracing conspiracies that allow HIV to fester.
"It's a huge barrier to HIV prevention in black communities," Wilson said. "There's an issue around conspiracy theory and urban myths. Thus we have an epidemic raging out of control, and African Americans are being disproportionately impacted in every single sense."
Black women made up 73 percent of new HIV cases among women in 2003, and black men represented 40 percent of new cases, according to the most recent federal figures available. Among gay men, blacks represented 30 percent of new infections, and adolescents ages 18 to 24 accounted for nearly 80 percent of new HIV cases.
"The whole notion of conspiracy theories and misinformation . . . removes personal responsibility," Wilson said. "If there is this boogeyman, people say, 'Why should I use condoms? Why should I use clean needles?' And if I'm an organization, 'Why should I bother with educating my folks?' The syphilis study was real, but it happened 40 years ago, and holding on to it is killing us."
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**And Michelle Obama panders to this lunacy, without criticism.**
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33695-2005Jan24?language=printer
washingtonpost.com
Study: Many Blacks Cite AIDS Conspiracy
Prevention Efforts Hurt, Activists Say
By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 25, 2005; Page A02
More than 20 years after the AIDS epidemic arrived in the United States, a significant proportion of African Americans embrace the theory that government scientists created the disease to control or wipe out their communities, according to a study released today by Rand Corp. and Oregon State University.
That belief markedly hurts efforts to prevent the spread of the disease among black Americans, the study's authors and activists said. African Americans represent 13 percent of the U.S. population, according to Census Bureau figures, yet they account for 50 percent of new HIV infections in the nation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nearly half of the 500 African Americans surveyed said that HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is man-made. The study, which was supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, appears in the Feb. 1 edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.
More than one-quarter said they believed that AIDS was produced in a government laboratory, and 12 percent believed it was created and spread by the CIA.
A slight majority said they believe that a cure for AIDS is being withheld from the poor. Forty-four percent said people who take the new medicines for HIV are government guinea pigs, and 15 percent said AIDS is a form of genocide against black people.
At the same time, 75 percent said they believe medical and public health agencies are working to stop the spread of AIDS in black communities. But the responses, which varied only slightly by age, gender, education and income level, alarmed the researchers.
"As a researcher knowing that these beliefs were out there, I wasn't as surprised as people I share the study with," said Laura Bogart, a behavioral scientist for the Rand Corp., who co-authored the study with Sheryl Thorburn, associate professor in the College of Health and Human Sciences at Oregon State.
"But the findings are striking, and a wake-up call to the prevention community," Bogart said. "The prevention community has not addressed conspiracy beliefs in the context of prevention. I think that a lot of people involved in prevention may not be from the community where they are trying to prevent HIV."
The findings were also no surprise to Na'im Akbar, a professor of psychology at Florida State University who specializes in African American behavior.
"This is not a bunch of crazy people running around saying they're out to get us," Akbar said. The belief "comes from the reality of 300 years of slavery and 100 years of post-slavery exploitation."
Akbar cited the Tuskegee experiment conducted by the federal government between 1932 and 1972. In it, scientists told black men they were being treated for syphilis but actually withheld treatment so they could study the course of the disease.
Today, he said, African Americans are more likely to live in communities near pollution sources, such as freeways and oil refineries, and far from health care centers. "There are a lot of indicators that our lives are not valued," Akbar said.
Phill Wilson, executive director of the Black AIDS Institute in Los Angeles, said past discrimination is no longer an excuse for embracing conspiracies that allow HIV to fester.
"It's a huge barrier to HIV prevention in black communities," Wilson said. "There's an issue around conspiracy theory and urban myths. Thus we have an epidemic raging out of control, and African Americans are being disproportionately impacted in every single sense."
Black women made up 73 percent of new HIV cases among women in 2003, and black men represented 40 percent of new cases, according to the most recent federal figures available. Among gay men, blacks represented 30 percent of new infections, and adolescents ages 18 to 24 accounted for nearly 80 percent of new HIV cases.
"The whole notion of conspiracy theories and misinformation . . . removes personal responsibility," Wilson said. "If there is this boogeyman, people say, 'Why should I use condoms? Why should I use clean needles?' And if I'm an organization, 'Why should I bother with educating my folks?' The syphilis study was real, but it happened 40 years ago, and holding on to it is killing us."
There seems to exist a belief in victimhood......one certain 'groups and individuals' seem to wish to exacerbate for political POWER!
In other words, to believe that you have control over the world around you as an individual, takes your support away from those who practice IDENTITY POLITICS! So the PIMPS of identity politics have to foster a MYTH that YOU as an individual are a POWERLESS VICTIM of forces beyond your control......and only your political SUPPORT of a larger than life Messiah (ENTER OBAMA STAGE RIGHT) can SAVE YOU from those EVIL FORCES OF THE WORLD!
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Well this the same sick stuff the gays do, blame Ronald Reagan for the spread of aids - while they are spreading it around themselves around in orgies at gay baths and along turnpike exits and public parks and (apparently) public bathrooms.
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Obama's Social Security Fine Print
By DONALD L. LUSKIN
June 25, 2008; Page A15
Last week, Barack Obama revealed his plan to shore up Social Security's shaky finances by raising the income level on which the payroll tax is applied. Currently, incomes above $102,000 are exempt, with that threshold rising every year indexed to wage inflation. Mr. Obama would keep that limit in place, but then assess payroll taxes on incomes above $250,000, which his campaign claims would apply to only the richest 3% of Americans.
Mr. Obama angered liberals last year when he admitted that there was a "Social Security crisis." But at least Mr. Obama's base should be appeased now that his solution to the "crisis" is to soak the rich. One liberal columnist actually noted with glee the fact that this would take us back to top tax rates not seen since the 1970s.
According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, Mr. Obama's new tax would siphon off 0.4% of gross domestic product annually. Combined with Mr. Obama's other tax-hike initiatives, "the total tax on labor would be close to 60 percent. In high-tax states like California and New York, the top rate would be even higher."
Would it help Social Security's financing problems? Mr. Obama has no idea. One of his senior economic advisers admitted to me that no one on the campaign has run any detailed models or performed any rigorous analysis. When one proposes an enormous tax increase, shouldn't there at least be a spreadsheet somewhere?
But the most alarming thing about Mr. Obama's proposal is that the $250,000 threshold, above which the payroll tax would be applied, refers to household income, not individual income. So it's quite deceptive when he claims that the $250,000 threshold will "ensure that lifting the payroll tax cap does not ensnare any middle class Americans."
Suppose your household consists of you and your spouse, each earning wages of $150,000 per year. Currently, you are each subject to the payroll tax up to $102,000 of wages, so together you are taxed on $204,000. Under the Obama plan, you'd be taxed again on another $50,000 of wages.
At the current payroll tax rate of 12.4% – 6.2% from wage-earners and 6.2% from their employers – your household would be looking at a tax hike of $6,200 per year. You probably didn't consider yourself rich before, and you certainly won't after paying that tax bill.
But that tax bill could be higher still. While the payroll tax has always been calculated just on wages from labor, Mr. Obama hasn't decided yet what forms of income will be included in the $250,000 threshold. It's an open question whether it might include interest on savings and capital gains income.
And neither has Mr. Obama said whether the rich – and, truth be told, the middle class – paying his new higher taxes will get correspondingly higher Social Security benefits when they retire. Throughout the history of the Social Security program, there has always been a connection between what you contribute in taxes and what you get back in benefits. If Mr. Obama uncaps the wages subject to tax, but doesn't uncap benefits, then he has severed the link between them. Social Security would stand revealed not as a work-related contributory retirement system, but simply as a tax-funded welfare and income-redistribution program.
And for all that, Mr. Obama's proposal won't help Social Security's long-run solvency problems.
According to the Social Security Administration actuaries, uncapping all wages subject to the payroll tax (not just those above $250,000) doesn't make much difference to the system's long-run solvency. If the increased payroll tax payments earn increased benefits, then only about one third of the system's 75-year shortfall is addressed. Even if there is no corresponding benefit increase, only about half the shortfall is addressed.
Remember, that inadequate result is what you get when all wages are subject to payroll taxes. Mr. Obama's plan – even with his household definition of $250,000 income – would collect far less than that. No wonder Mr. Obama's economic advisers aren't interested in doing any detailed analysis.
Worst of all, even the small contribution to Social Security solvency that Mr. Obama's plan might make is entirely illusory. In fact, the more taxes his plan collects, the worse Social Security's long-term situation gets. That's because all plans based on collecting taxes and saving them in the Social Security Trust Fund for future benefit payments rely on the U.S. government being able to redeem the Treasury bonds that trust fund holds.
There's only one place that the money to redeem those bonds can come from: taxes. So ironically, any tax dollars collected today will have to be collected all over again – plus interest. You like the idea of paying more taxes today for Mr. Obama's Social Security plan? Then just wait 20 years or so, because you'll get to pay more taxes all over again.
Mr. Luskin is chief investment officer of Trend Macrolytics LLC.
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Unabashedly Unprincipled
Obama’s repositionings are legion — and make even the Clintons look scrupulous.
By Charles Krauthammer
To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies. — Obama spokesman Bill Burton, Oct. 24, 2007
That was then: Democratic primaries to be won, netroot lefties to be seduced. With all that (and Hillary Clinton) out of the way, Obama now says he’ll vote in favor of the new FISA bill that gives the telecom companies blanket immunity for post-9/11 eavesdropping.
Back then, in the yesteryear of primary season, he thoroughly trashed the North American Free Trade Agreement, pledging to force a renegotiation, take “the hammer” to Canada and Mexico, and threaten unilateral abrogation.
Today, the hammer is holstered. Obama calls his previous NAFTA rhetoric “overheated” and essentially endorses what one of his senior economic advisers privately told the Canadians: The anti-trade stuff was nothing more than populist posturing.
Nor is there much left of his primary season pledge to meet “without preconditions” with Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. There will be “preparations,” you see, which are being spun by his aides into the functional equivalent of preconditions.
Obama’s long march to the center has begun.
And why not? What’s the downside? He won’t lose the left, or even mainstream Democrats. They won’t stay home on Nov. 4. The anti-Bush, anti-Republican sentiment is simply too strong. Election Day is their day of revenge — for the Florida recount, for Swift-boating, for all the injuries, real and imagined, dealt out by Republicans over the last eight years.
Normally, flip-flopping presidential candidates have to worry about the press. Not Obama. After all, this is a press corps that heard his grandiloquent Philadelphia speech — designed to rationalize why “I can no more disown (Jeremiah Wright) than I can disown my white grandmother” — then wiped away a tear and hailed him as the second coming of Abraham Lincoln. Three months later, with Wright disowned, grandma embraced and the great “race speech” now inoperative, not a word of reconsideration is heard from his media acolytes.
Worry about the press? His FISA flip-flop elicited a few grumbles from lefty bloggers, but hardly a murmur from the mainstream press. Remember his pledge to stick to public financing? Now flush with cash, he is the first general-election candidate since Watergate to opt out. Some goo-goo clean-government types chided him, but the mainstream editorialists who for years had been railing against private financing as hopelessly corrupt and corrupting, evinced only the mildest of disappointment.
Indeed, the New York Times expressed a sympathetic understanding of Obama’s about-face by buying his preposterous claim that it was a pre-emptive attack on McCain’s 527 independent expenditure groups — notwithstanding the fact that (a) as Politico’s Jonathan Martin notes, “there are no serious anti-Obama 527s in existence nor are there any immediate plans to create such a group” and (b) the only independent ad of any consequence now running in the entire country is an AFSCME-MoveOn.org co-production savaging McCain.
True, Obama’s U-turn on public financing was not done for ideological reasons, it was done for Willie Sutton reasons: That’s where the money is. It nonetheless betrayed a principle that so many in the press claimed to hold dear.
As public financing is not a principle dear to me, I am hardly dismayed by Obama’s abandonment of it. Nor am I disappointed in the least by his other calculated and cynical repositionings. I have never had any illusions about Obama. I merely note with amazement that his media swooners seem to accept his every policy reversal with an equanimity unseen since the Daily Worker would change the party line overnight — switching sides in World War II, for example — whenever the wind from Moscow changed direction.
The truth about Obama is uncomplicated. He is just a politician (though of unusual skill and ambition). The man who dared say it plainly is the man who knows Obama all too well. “He does what politicians do,” explained Jeremiah Wright.
When it’s time to throw campaign finance reform, telecom accountability, NAFTA renegotiation or Jeremiah Wright overboard, Obama is not sentimental. He does not hesitate. He tosses lustily.
Why, the man even tossed his own grandmother overboard back in Philadelphia — only to haul her back on deck now that her services are needed. Yesterday, granny was the moral equivalent of the raving Reverend Wright. Today, she is a featured prop in Obama’s fuzzy-wuzzy get-to-know-me national TV ad.
Not a flinch. Not a flicker. Not a hint of shame. By the time he’s finished, Obama will have made the Clintons look scrupulous.
— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist.
© 2008, The Washington Post Writers Group
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YWJlOWU0Y2I4YTI0M2JmMTljM2Q4OGRkMjllZDc5MWQ=
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Indeed.
I've noted that whenever he says "As I have always said , , ," he is about to lie about what he previously said. Most recent example, his comments yesterday on Heller. How on earth can someone say the Second is an individual right AND have supported the DC law? And what about all his previous statements of arch-liberal nature? Oh, barf. :x
Anyway, here's this:
Monsieur Obama's Tax Rates
FROM TODAY'S WALL STREET JOURNAL EUROPE
June 27, 2008
Celebrity chef Alain Ducasse insists that his change of citizenship this week from high-tax France to no-income-tax Monaco wasn't a financial decision but an "affair of the heart." Right. But even if he's being sincere, plenty of other Frenchmen have moved abroad to escape their country's confiscatory taxes.
Americans should be so lucky: Theirs is the only industrialized country that taxes its people even if they live overseas. That hasn't been a big problem as long as U.S. tax rates have been relatively low. But with Barack Obama promising to lift rates to French-like levels, this taxman-cometh policy could turn Americans into the world's foremost fiscal prisoners.
And make no mistake, taxes under a President Obama could be truly à la française. The top marginal tax rate, including federal, state and local levies, could approach 60% for self-employed New Yorkers and Californians. Not even France's taxes are that high now that President Nicolas Sarkozy has capped the total that high-earning Frenchmen like Mr. Ducasse can pay in income, social and wealth taxes at 50% of earnings.
Mr. Sarkozy set this "fiscal shield" because he knows that tax rates affect behavior. When he visited London this year, he observed that the British capital is now home to so many French bankers and other professionals seeking tax relief that it's the seventh-largest French city. Those expatriates choose not to use their creativity and investment capital to benefit France and its economy.
Senator Obama's plans to raise income, Social Security and capital-gains taxes amount to a belief that people don't react to punitive tax rates. If so, he needn't worry about people leaving the country and could let them pay taxes in whichever part of the globe they choose to live in. Once Americans are paying French-style tax rates, they ought to have the same freedom to move as Alain Ducasse.
See all of today's editorials and op-eds, plus video
WSJ
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Wow.....it's awesome that Obama wants to throw spitballs in the dark with taxes and hope it accomplishes......something? :?
Well, he does promise 'Hope and Change'........he doesn't promise whether or not that 'change' is going to be for the better.
Obama's 'Change' mantra reminds me of the old doctor joke.
Doctor: Well, I have good news and bad news.
Family: Well, what's the good news, Doctor?
Doctor: The good news is the patient is stable.
Family: Well, what's the bad news?
Doctor: The bad news is he's dead.
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The smoothness with which he morphed from gun grabber to Individual Constitutional right with "reasonable" regulation is scary.
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Another doctor joke:
"You want the good or the bad news first?"
"Good news."
"My son just got accepted to Harvard Medical school."
"What's the bad news?"
"You're paying for it."
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Bush's Third Term
July 2, 2008; Page A12
We're beginning to understand why Barack Obama keeps protesting so vigorously against the prospect of "George Bush's third term." Maybe he's worried that someone will notice that he's the candidate who's running for it.
Most Presidential candidates adapt their message after they win their party nomination, but Mr. Obama isn't merely "running to the center." He's fleeing from many of his primary positions so markedly and so rapidly that he's embracing a sizable chunk of President Bush's policy. Who would have thought that a Democrat would rehabilitate the much-maligned Bush agenda?
Take the surveillance of foreign terrorists. Last October, while running with the Democratic pack, the Illinois Senator vowed to "support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies" that assisted in such eavesdropping after 9/11. As recently as February, still running as the liberal favorite against Hillary Clinton, he was one of 29 Democrats who voted against allowing a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee reform of surveillance rules even to come to the floor.
Two weeks ago, however, the House passed a bill that is essentially the same as that Senate version, and Mr. Obama now says he supports it. Apparently legal immunity for the telcos is vital for U.S. national security, just as Mr. Bush has claimed. Apparently, too, the legislation isn't an attempt by Dick Cheney to gut the Constitution. Perhaps it is dawning on Mr. Obama that, if he does become President, he'll be responsible for preventing any new terrorist attack. So now he's happy to throw the New York Times under the bus.
Next up for Mr. Obama's political blessing will be Mr. Bush's Iraq policy. Only weeks ago, the Democrat was calling for an immediate and rapid U.S. withdrawal. When General David Petraeus first testified about the surge in September 2007, Mr. Obama was dismissive and skeptical. But with the surge having worked wonders in Iraq, this week Mr. Obama went out of his way to defend General Petraeus against MoveOn.org's attacks in 2007 that he was "General Betray Us." Perhaps he had a late epiphany.
Look for Mr. Obama to use his forthcoming visit to Iraq as an excuse to drop those withdrawal plans faster than he can say Jeremiah Wright "was not the person that I met 20 years ago." The Senator will learn – as John McCain has been saying – that withdrawal would squander the gains from the surge, set back Iraqi political progress, and weaken America's strategic position against Iran. Our guess is that he'll spin this switcheroo as some kind of conditional commitment, saying he'll stay in Iraq as long as Iraqis are making progress on political reconciliation, and so on. As things improve in Iraq, this would be Mr. Bush's policy too.
Mr. Obama has also made ostentatious leaps toward Mr. Bush on domestic issues. While he once bid for labor support by pledging a unilateral rewrite of Nafta, the Democrat now says he favors free trade as long as it works for "everybody." His economic aide, Austan Goolsbee, has been liberated from the five-month purdah he endured for telling Canadians that Mr. Obama's protectionism was merely campaign rhetoric. Now that Mr. Obama is in a general election, he can't scare the business community too much.
Back in the day, the first-term Senator also voted against the Supreme Court nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito. But last week he agreed with their majority opinion in the Heller gun rights case, and with their dissent against the liberal majority's ruling to ban the death penalty for rape. Mr. Obama seems to appreciate that getting pegged as a cultural lefty is deadly for national Democrats – at least until November.
This week the great Democratic hope even endorsed spending more money on faith-based charities. Apparently, this core plank of Mr. Bush's "compassionate conservatism" is not the assault on church-state separation that the ACLU and liberals have long claimed. And yesterday, Mr. Obama's campaign unveiled an ad asserting his support for welfare reform that "slashed the rolls by 80 percent." Never mind that Mr. Obama has declared multiple times that he opposed the landmark 1996 welfare reform.
* * *
All of which prompts a couple of thoughts. The first is that Mr. Obama doesn't seem to think American political sentiment has moved as far left as most of the media claim. Another is that the next President, whether Democrat or Republican, is going to embrace much of Mr. Bush's foreign and antiterror policy whether he admits it or not. Think Eisenhower endorsing Truman's Cold War architecture.
Most important is the matter of Mr. Obama's political character – and how honest he is being about what he truly believes. His voting record in the Senate and in Illinois, as well as his primary positions, would make him the most liberal Presidential candidate since George McGovern in 1972. But he clearly doesn't want voters to believe that in November. He's still the Obama Americans don't know.
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I've actually told patients "good" and "bad" news for years:
They come in with a stuffed nose, sore throat, and often a cough.
After examining them I would tell them the "good" news, "you don't have pneumonia or strep throat. You have a cold".
The bad news is,
"there is not a darn thing I can do about it."
So the patient doesn't walk away thinking I am a smart alek I state the truth, that it is amazing that modern medicine still has no decent treatment for the common cold.
I get different responses but usually the patient is relieved.
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http://www.townhall.com/Common/PrintPage.aspx?g=e818e768-97ba-43ff-8bf0-ae02961990fb&t=c
Obama Flips and Flops
Charles Krauthammer
Friday, July 04, 2008
WASHINGTON -- You'll notice Barack Obama is now wearing a flag pin. Again. During the primary campaign, he refused to, explaining that he'd worn one after 9/11 but then stopped because it "became a substitute for, I think, true patriotism."
So why is he back to sporting pseudo-patriotism on his chest? Need you ask? The primaries are over. While seducing the hard-core MoveOn Democrats that delivered him the caucuses -- hence, the Democratic nomination -- Obama not only disdained the pin. He disparaged it. Now that he's running in a general election against John McCain, and in dire need of the gun-and-God-clinging working-class votes he could not win against Hillary Clinton, the pin is back. His country 'tis of thee.
In last week's column, I thought I had thoroughly chronicled Obama's brazen reversals of position and abandonment of principles -- on public financing of campaigns, on NAFTA, on telecom immunity for post-9/11 wiretaps, on unconditional talks with Ahmadinejad -- as he moved to the center for the general election campaign. I misjudged him. He was just getting started.
Last week, when the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the District of Columbia's ban on handguns, Obama immediately declared that he agreed with the decision. This is after his campaign explicitly told the Chicago Tribune last November that he believes the D.C. gun ban is constitutional.
Obama spokesman Bill Burton explains the inexplicable by calling the November -- i.e., the primary season -- statement "inartful." Which suggests a first entry in the Obamaworld dictionary -- "Inartful: clear and straightforward, lacking the artistry that allows subsequent self-refutation and denial."
Obama's seasonally adjusted principles are beginning to pile up: NAFTA, campaign finance reform, warrantless wiretaps, flag pins, gun control. What's left?
Iraq. The reversal is coming, and soon.
Two weeks ago, I predicted that by Election Day Obama will have erased all meaningful differences with McCain on withdrawal from Iraq. I underestimated Obama's cynicism. He will make the move much sooner. He will use his upcoming Iraq trip to acknowledge the remarkable improvements on the ground and to abandon his primary season commitment to a fixed 16-month timetable for removal of all combat troops.
The shift has already begun. Thursday, he said that his "original position" on withdrawal has always been that "we've got to make sure that our troops are safe and that Iraq is stable." And that "when I go to Iraq ... I'll have more information and will continue to refine my policies."
The flip is almost complete. All that's left to say is that the 16-month time frame remains his goal but he will, of course, take into account the situation on the ground and the recommendation of his generals in determining the ultimate pace of the withdrawal.
Done. And with that, the Obama of the primaries, the Obama with last year's most liberal voting record in the Senate, will have disappeared into the collective memory hole.
Obama's strategy is obvious. The country is in a deep malaise and eager for change. He and his party already have the advantage on economic and domestic issues. Obama, therefore, aims to clear the deck by moving rapidly to the center in those areas where he and his party are weakest, namely national security and the broader cultural issues. With these -- and most importantly his war-losing Iraq policy -- out of the way, the election will be decided on charisma and persona. In this corner: the young sleek cool hip elegant challenger. In the other corner: the old guy. No contest.
After all, that's how he beat Hillary. She originally ran as a centrist, expecting her nomination to be a mere coronation. At the first sign of serious opposition, however, she panicked and veered left. It was a fatal error. It eliminated all significant ideological and policy differences with Obama -- her desperate attempts to magnify their minuscule disagreement on health care universality became almost comical -- making the contest entirely one of personality. No contest.
As Obama assiduously obliterates all differences with McCain on national security and social issues, he remains rightly confident that Bush fatigue, the lousy economy and his own charisma -- he is easily the most dazzling political personality since John Kennedy -- will carry him to the White House.
Of course, once he gets there he will have to figure out what he really believes. The conventional liberal/populist stuff he campaigned on during the primaries? Or the reversals he is so artfully offering up now?
I have no idea. Do you? Does he?
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Now the Clintons are out there army of bullshit artists appear to doing the same for Bo. Here it comes. "I went to Iraq and the generals told me it will take some time. Therefore, *I* may decide *we* need to stay a bit longer to.....
and as always the undecided stooges will forget or not care what he said before or how he lived his entire life and simply go for it like they always did for the skinny Santa and his accomplice with the hips the size of a hippos. The Clintons have proved to the human race that there are plenty of people who can easily be manipulated no matter what as long as you say whatever they want to hear.
If I hear one more pundint say that McCain can still win if only he does...
Folks the game is over. If McCain isn't going to say whatever the wind blowing that day says he ought to its over. Lets not give the American people more credit than they deserve. Many voters are not smart.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080704/ap_on_el_pr/obama_iraq;_ylt=AsQjTtiNZjEqvQsBlhUpOMCs0NUE
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The Jesse Jackson thing is as far as I am concerned no big deal. So he said what he said and he thought it was off the record.
Is there any person on Earth who may not have said or thought something they would rather not be for public consumption?
It is hardly a scandal. So it was crude - so what! IT fits with Rev. Jackson's decades long actions, public positions, etc. It is really nothing new. Jackson got a raw deal on this one although I disagree with the philosophy of his premise - that more Black fathers need to take more responsibility for their children and stop playing the blame and victim game.
That said, owever, the bigger issue never mentioned (to my knowledge) is that this hardly hurts BO. It helps him.
Notice BO to my knowledge never said anything about Black fatherhood before he won the crat nomination. Only after, when he makes the obvious effort to appeal more to the "center" group of voters.
He already has the party nomination locked up. He already has a stranglehold on the Black vote. Almost nothing he says will change that. It is a given.
So now he tries to appeal to the more conservatives from all groups who agree with Bill Cosby. So now he looks like the one who is saying what many think needs to be said in the Black "community". He is again changing his image as more mainstream. He is just another suburban Joe with traditional American/family values. Look at that overdone video of him and his children.
And now he separates himself from the old angry Black school Jess Jackson (to some extent).
And the liberal media will be playing right along. In public he will "accept" JJ's apology and play the high road. In private he and his advisors are saying and thinking that JJ's remarks were terrific, perfectly timed and help BO "rise above it all". Off the record they are thanking JJ.
EOM
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***his premise - that more Black fathers need to take more responsibility for their children and stop playing the blame and victim game.***
This is the opposite of JJ's premise. I meant his philosophy is *not* this and that Blacks are victims of racist Whites and they are not responsible for any of it - unlike others who feel that absent fathers need to start taking responsibility irregardless of the cause.
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In fairness to BO, I am under the impression that he touched on these themes in his speech at the 2004 Dem convention.
JJ is a demogogic race baiting extortionist. That said, I agree-- no big deal here. Indeed its fun to see someone being caught being themself. :lol:
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An interesting take on the Jackson "slip"
When The Man is One of Us
Sure, Jesse is an old fool who doesn't know how to act. But his latest gaffe shows how none of us is really ready for this moment.
July 10, 2008--On one level, it is easy to dismiss the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.'s crudely worded metaphorical threat to castrate Barack Obama for supposedly talking down to black people as the raving of an increasingly irrelevant, former big shot suffused with resentment at the rising star who pushed him off stage.
That, after all, is the sort of talk we'd expect from a lynch mob, not a civil rights leader who does not seem to realize that the times have passed him by. Even his son and namesake, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., agrees that his dad is doing more harm these days than good. Pronouncing himself outraged and disappointed by his father's ugly words about Obama, Jackson Jr. issued a statement that, in effect, ordered dear old dad to "keep hope alive" and shut up.
That's good advice, and one can only hope that Jackson Sr. accepts it. But in a deeper sense, his stunningly inappropriate comments symbolize the social, political and psychological vertigo that all of us, and especially black Americans, are experiencing because of Obama's success. We are all, including Obama, in a place we never really thought we would be, and it has knocked us off our feet. We don't know how to act. We don't have a plan. We're searching for our equilibrium. And until we regain our footing, we can expect all sorts of bizarre behavior from people who ought to know better. Hold on to your hat.
We haven't really been in a place this confusing since 1954, when the NAACP's crusade against segregation culminated in the Brown vs. Board decision and the walls came tumbling down. It's fair to say that we were so focused on winning that fight that we weren't prepared for the victory or its aftermath. We've spent nearly 60 years since then trying to figure out what kind of relationship we want to have with America and with each other. For the most part, we, like Jackson Sr., have seen ourselves as outsiders battling for justice and a seat at the table. Our default has been to protest. And while that mindset has served us well, it has, in a flash, been made damn near obsolete by the prospect, even the likelihood, that one of us may soon become the most powerful man in the world. If that happens, how can we seriously argue that we're being held back by anything but the limits we place on ourselves?
That, it seems to me, accounts in part for the frustration some of us are feeling by what we interpret as Obama's move to the center. We are simply not accustomed to one of our own playing real, power politics. Some of us see his call for an expansion of George Bush's half-hearted commitment to faith-based social programs as mere politics, what Jackson Sr. castigated as "talking down to black people." We explain Obama's support for the compromise Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Supreme Court's upholding of a citizen's right to bear arms as attempts to inoculate himself against Republican attacks.
And, of course, they are.
But they, like Obama's Father's Day speech urging black men to take more responsibility for their children, are more than political posturing. They represent the first stirrings of a new consensus that places more emphasis on a public discussion of personal responsibility than on protest, on publicly delving into our own shortcomings and dysfunctional behavior.
There's nothing new about this kind of self-examination, but in the past we've conducted it mainly in private, in barbershops and beauty parlors, and churches. We've bristled when whites in power like Daniel Patrick Moynihan, joined in the critique of, for example, our soaring rate of out-of-wedlock births. We've moaned about the negative consequences of washing dirty laundry in public. But such a self-protective mindset no longer makes sense because Obama is one of us, who has taken part in our private handwringing about the self-inflicted wounds that bedevil segments of the black community. He hasn't said anything most of us haven't heard or said at the dinner table. But now, because Obama is who he is, the whole world is listening in to the conversation.
The attention makes us uncomfortable and disoriented. So does the prospect that one of us might soon be in charge of trying to fix this mess instead of simply complaining about it.
We're not really ready for the day when The Man becomes a black man.
It's a dizzying idea that is going to take some getting used to. And until we do, we'll stumble about, like Jesse Jackson Sr., saying all kinds of crazy things as we slip and slide on the new paradigm.
Jack White is a former columnist with TIME magazine.
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at ;east in public. It would certainly have been news. Here is his 2004 speech. No where does he speak of personal responsibility for kids. If I am wrong please show me.
Barack Obama
2004 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address
"The Audacity of Hope"
delivered 27 July 2004, Fleet Center, Boston
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[AUTHENTICITY CERTIFIED: Text version below transcribed directly from audio. (2)]
Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Dick Durbin. You make us all proud.
On behalf of the great state of Illinois, crossroads of a nation, Land of Lincoln, let me express my deepest gratitude for the privilege of addressing this convention.
Tonight is a particular honor for me because, let’s face it, my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely. My father was a foreign student, born and raised in a small village in Kenya. He grew up herding goats, went to school in a tin-roof shack. His father -- my grandfather -- was a cook, a domestic servant to the British.
But my grandfather had larger dreams for his son. Through hard work and perseverance my father got a scholarship to study in a magical place, America, that shone as a beacon of freedom and opportunity to so many who had come before.
While studying here, my father met my mother. She was born in a town on the other side of the world, in Kansas. Her father worked on oil rigs and farms through most of the Depression. The day after Pearl Harbor my grandfather signed up for duty; joined Patton’s army, marched across Europe. Back home, my grandmother raised a baby and went to work on a bomber assembly line. After the war, they studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through F.H.A., and later moved west all the way to Hawaii in search of opportunity.
And they, too, had big dreams for their daughter. A common dream, born of two continents.
My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or ”blessed,” believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success. They imagined -- They imagined me going to the best schools in the land, even though they weren’t rich, because in a generous America you don’t have to be rich to achieve your potential.
They're both passed away now. And yet, I know that on this night they look down on me with great pride.
They stand here -- And I stand here today, grateful for the diversity of my heritage, aware that my parents’ dreams live on in my two precious daughters. I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on earth, is my story even possible.
Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our Nation — not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That is the true genius of America, a faith -- a faith in simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles; that we can tuck in our children at night and know that they are fed and clothed and safe from harm; that we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door; that we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe; that we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution, and that our votes will be counted -- at least most of the time.
This year, in this election we are called to reaffirm our values and our commitments, to hold them against a hard reality and see how we're measuring up to the legacy of our forbearers and the promise of future generations.
And fellow Americans, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, I say to you tonight: We have more work to do -- more work to do for the workers I met in Galesburg, Illinois, who are losing their union jobs at the Maytag plant that’s moving to Mexico, and now are having to compete with their own children for jobs that pay seven bucks an hour; more to do for the father that I met who was losing his job and choking back the tears, wondering how he would pay 4500 dollars a month for the drugs his son needs without the health benefits that he counted on; more to do for the young woman in East St. Louis, and thousands more like her, who has the grades, has the drive, has the will, but doesn’t have the money to go to college.
Now, don’t get me wrong. The people I meet -- in small towns and big cities, in diners and office parks -- they don’t expect government to solve all their problems. They know they have to work hard to get ahead, and they want to. Go into the collar counties around Chicago, and people will tell you they don’t want their tax money wasted, by a welfare agency or by the Pentagon. Go in -- Go into any inner city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can’t teach our kids to learn; they know that parents have to teach, that children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white. They know those things.
People don’t expect -- People don't expect government to solve all their problems. But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a slight change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all.
They know we can do better. And they want that choice.
In this election, we offer that choice. Our Party has chosen a man to lead us who embodies the best this country has to offer. And that man is John Kerry.
John Kerry understands the ideals of community, faith, and service because they’ve defined his life. From his heroic service to Vietnam, to his years as a prosecutor and lieutenant governor, through two decades in the United States Senate, he's devoted himself to this country. Again and again, we’ve seen him make tough choices when easier ones were available.
His values and his record affirm what is best in us. John Kerry believes in an America where hard work is rewarded; so instead of offering tax breaks to companies shipping jobs overseas, he offers them to companies creating jobs here at home.
John Kerry believes in an America where all Americans can afford the same health coverage our politicians in Washington have for themselves.
John Kerry believes in energy independence, so we aren’t held hostage to the profits of oil companies, or the sabotage of foreign oil fields.
John Kerry believes in the Constitutional freedoms that have made our country the envy of the world, and he will never sacrifice our basic liberties, nor use faith as a wedge to divide us.
And John Kerry believes that in a dangerous world war must be an option sometimes, but it should never be the first option.
You know, a while back -- awhile back I met a young man named Shamus in a V.F.W. Hall in East Moline, Illinois. He was a good-looking kid -- six two, six three, clear eyed, with an easy smile. He told me he’d joined the Marines and was heading to Iraq the following week. And as I listened to him explain why he’d enlisted, the absolute faith he had in our country and its leaders, his devotion to duty and service, I thought this young man was all that any of us might ever hope for in a child.
But then I asked myself, "Are we serving Shamus as well as he is serving us?"
I thought of the 900 men and women -- sons and daughters, husbands and wives, friends and neighbors, who won’t be returning to their own hometowns. I thought of the families I’ve met who were struggling to get by without a loved one’s full income, or whose loved ones had returned with a limb missing or nerves shattered, but still lacked long-term health benefits because they were Reservists.
When we send our young men and women into harm’s way, we have a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they’re going, to care for their families while they’re gone, to tend to the soldiers upon their return, and to never ever go to war without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace, and earn the respect of the world.
Now -- Now let me be clear. Let me be clear. We have real enemies in the world. These enemies must be found. They must be pursued. And they must be defeated. John Kerry knows this. And just as Lieutenant Kerry did not hesitate to risk his life to protect the men who served with him in Vietnam, President Kerry will not hesitate one moment to use our military might to keep America safe and secure.
John Kerry believes in America. And he knows that it’s not enough for just some of us to prosper -- for alongside our famous individualism, there’s another ingredient in the American saga, a belief that we’re all connected as one people. If there is a child on the south side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child. If there is a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for their prescription drugs, and having to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it’s not my grandparent. If there’s an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties.
It is that fundamental belief -- It is that fundamental belief: I am my brother’s keeper. I am my sister’s keeper that makes this country work. It’s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams and yet still come together as one American family.
E pluribus unum: "Out of many, one."
Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us -- the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of "anything goes." Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America -- there’s the United States of America.
The pundits, the pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an "awesome God" in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.
In the end -- In the end -- In the end, that’s what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of hope?
John Kerry calls on us to hope. John Edwards calls on us to hope.
I’m not talking about blind optimism here -- the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don’t think about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about something more substantial. It’s the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker’s son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too.
Hope -- Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope!
In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation. A belief in things not seen. A belief that there are better days ahead.
I believe that we can give our middle class relief and provide working families with a road to opportunity.
I believe we can provide jobs to the jobless, homes to the homeless, and reclaim young people in cities across America from violence and despair.
I believe that we have a righteous wind at our backs and that as we stand on the crossroads of history, we can make the right choices, and meet the challenges that face us.
America! Tonight, if you feel the same energy that I do, if you feel the same urgency that I do, if you feel the same passion that I do, if you feel the same hopefulness that I do -- if we do what we must do, then I have no doubt that all across the country, from Florida to Oregon, from Washington to Maine, the people will rise up in November, and John Kerry will be sworn in as President, and John Edwards will be sworn in as Vice President, and this country will reclaim its promise, and out of this long political darkness a brighter day will come.
Thank you very much everybody. God bless you. Thank you.
Book/CDs by Michael E. Eidenmuller, Published by McGraw-Hill (2008)
Also in this database: Barack Obama - A More Perfect Union; Barack Obama - Announcement for the U.S. Presidency
Windows Media Video Source: Linked directly to www.BarackObama.com
Copyright Status: Text, Audio, Video and Images (AP) = Restricted, seek permission.
Top 100 American Speeches
Online Speech Bank
© Copyright 2001-2008.
American Rhetoric.
HTML transcription by Michael E. Eidenmuller.
All rights reserved.
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http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2008/05/16/2008-05-16_middle_name_hussein_is_only_one_reason_t.html
Friday, May 16th 2008, 4:00 AM
Middle name Hussein is only one reason terror thugs like Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama wants it both ways.
Any American who uses his full name is trying to scare voters, his wife charges. But Obama says he understands why Islamic terror group Hamas looks at his middle name and trusts him.
Ditto for his plan to meet with Iran's madman president and other rogue leaders. Obama sees his open-door policy as evidence he will end President Bush's "cowboy diplomacy." When Bush slammed that plan Thursday as "appeasement," Obama accused him of a "false political attack."
It's a legitimate attack, because Obama's kumbaya foreign policy is dangerous. And his name, including the Hussein part, is fair game because Obama has declared it an international advantage.
He can want it both ways, but he can't have it.
The trouble started when Hamas adviser Ahmed Yousef said, "We like Mr. Obama" and added, "we hope he wins the election."
That's an endorsement, plain and simple. When John McCain jumped in, promising to be Hamas' "worst enemy," Obama got huffy and accused McCain of "divisive fear-mongering."
That's par for the Obama course. Michelle Obama once said anyone using her husband's full name is throwing the "ultimate fear bomb. When all else fails, be afraid of his name."
Maybe we should be afraid. Consider what Obama says in an interview in the current Atlantic magazine.
Asked by writer Jeffrey Goldberg if he was "flummoxed" by the Hamas support, Obama responds no and says: "It's conceivable that there are those in the Arab world who say to themselves, 'This is a guy who spent some time in the Muslim world, has a middle name of Hussein and appears more worldly and has called for talks with people, and so he's not going to be engaging in the same sort of cowboy diplomacy as George Bush,' and that's something they're hopeful about."
He adds: "That's a perfectly legitimate perception as long as they're not confused about my unyielding support for Israel's security."
In fact, there is confusion. Some of it goes to his long relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose church magazine printed anti-Israel views. There is no evidence Obama objected.
The Atlantic interview adds to the confusion. While Obama stresses the importance of Israel to Jews, he also seems to parrot liberal nonsense that blames the entire Mideast conflict on Israeli settlements.
He even links Israeli parents' concern for their children's safety to settlements, posing the question: "Is settlement policy conducive to relieving that over the long term, or is it just making the situation worse?"
WRONG QUESTION. The right one is why should Israel or anyone else meet with Hamas, which won't recognize Israel's right to exist and fires rockets into civilian areas? Hamas' vow to destroy Israel has nothing to do with settlements or borders.
One question has been answered, though. Now we know why Hamas prefers Barack Hussein Obama. He's told us himself.
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CCP:
Concerning BO and personal responsibility for kids in his 2004 speech, what about this passage?
"Go in -- Go into any inner city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can’t teach our kids to learn; they know that parents have to teach, that children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white. They know those things."
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/07/14/obama-immigration-enforcement-terror/
Somehow, Obama makes McCain look good on illegal immigration. Amazing!
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From Thomas Sowell, "Are Facts Obsolete?":
In an election campaign in which not only young liberals, but also some people who are neither young nor liberals, seem absolutely mesmerized by the skilled rhetoric of Barack Obama, facts have receded even further into the background than usual.
As the hypnotic mantra of "change" is repeated endlessly, few people even raise the question of whether what few specifics we hear represent any real change, much less a change for the better.
Raising taxes, increasing government spending and demonizing business? That is straight out of the New Deal of the 1930s.
The New Deal was new then but it is not new now. Moreover, increasing numbers of economists and historians have concluded that New Deal policies are what prolonged the Great Depression.
Putting new restrictions of international trade, in order to save American jobs? That was done by Herbert Hoover, when he signed the Hawley-Smoot tariff when the unemployment rate was 9 percent. The next year the unemployment rate was 16 percent and, before the Great Depression was over, unemployment hit 25 percent.
One of the most naive notions is that politicians are trying to solve the country's problems, just because they say so-- or say so loudly or inspiringly.
Politicians' top priority is to solve their own problem, which is how to get elected and then re-elected. Barack Obama is a politician through and through, even though pretending that he is not is his special strategy to get elected.
Some of his more trusting followers are belatedly discovering that, as he "refines" his position on various issues, now that he has gotten their votes in the Democratic primaries and needs the votes of others in the coming general election.
Perhaps a defining moment in showing Senator Obama's priorities was his declaring, in answer to a question from Charles Gibson, that he was for raising the capital gains tax rate. When Gibson reminded him of the well-documented fact that lower tax rates on capital gains had produced more actual revenue collected from that tax than the higher tax rates had, Obama was unmoved.
The question of how to raise more revenue may be the economic issue but the political issue is whether socking it to "the rich" in the name of "fairness" gains more votes.
Since about half the people in the United States own stocks-- either directly or because their pension funds buy stocks-- socking it to people who earn capital gains is by no means socking it just to "the rich." But, again, that is one of the many facts that don't matter politically.
What matters politically is the image of coming out on the side of "the people" against "the privileged."
If you are a nurse or mechanic who will be depending on your pension to take care of you when you retire-- as Social Security is unlikely to do-- you may not think of yourself as one of the privileged. But unless you connect the dots between capital gains tax rates and your retirement income, you may fall under the spell of the well-honed Obama rhetoric.
Obama is for higher minimum wage rates. Does anyone care what actually happens in countries with higher minimum wage rates? Of course not.
Economists may point to studies done in countries around the world, showing that higher minimum wage rates usually mean higher unemployment rates among lower skilled and less experienced workers.
That's their problem. A politician's problem is how to look like he is for "the poor" and against those who are "exploiting" them. The facts are irrelevant to maintaining that political image.
Nowhere do facts matter less than in foreign policy issues. Nothing is more popular than the notion that you can deal with dangers from other nations by talking with their leaders.
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain became enormously popular in the 1930s by sitting down and talking with Hitler, and announcing that their agreement had produced "peace in our time"-- just one year before the most catastrophic war in history began.
Senator Obama may gain similar popularity by advocating similar policies today-- and his political popularity is what it's all about. The consequences for the country come later.
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At best he is trying to have it both ways. He says blacks already know they need to take responsibility:
***they know that parents have to teach***
If that were the case than what is the problem? Why can't blacks do what millions of immigrants are doing? I think he is again removing responsibility from blacks who bask in victim hood, and laying the blame on something or someone else. But I am not sure who or what.
Take this phrase:
***turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white***
I am not sure exactly who he is laying the blame on. Where is this *slander* coming from, that according to BO is the source of Blacks' woes?
We've already heard some Blacks never ending way to blame whitey by turning the argument around and claim it is now the white controlled media that exploits Black gangs who are now the role model for so many black (and white) kids around the country. It's not the gangbangers - it is the white assholes who exploit them to make money by promoting them.
(If this isn't the most crazy and twisted argument to avoid taking responsibility I've ever heard.)
Anyway, again this guy seems to be playing it both ways.
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Barack Obama purges Web site critique of surge in Iraq
BY JAMES GORDON MEEK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
Monday, July 14th 2008, 8:10 PM
WASHINGTON - Barack Obama's campaign scrubbed his presidential Web site over the weekend to remove criticism of the U.S. troop "surge" in Iraq, the Daily News has learned.
The presumed Democratic nominee replaced his Iraq issue Web page, which had described the surge as a "problem" that had barely reduced violence.
"The surge is not working," Obama's old plan stated, citing a lack of Iraqi political cooperation but crediting Sunni sheiks - not U.S. military muscle - for quelling violence in Anbar Province.
The News reported Sunday that insurgent attacks have fallen to the fewest since March 2004.
Obama's campaign posted a new Iraq plan Sunday night, which cites an "improved security situation" paid for with the blood of U.S. troops since the surge began in February 2007.
It praises G.I.s' "hard work, improved counterinsurgency tactics and enormous sacrifice."
Campaign aide Wendy Morigi said Obama is "not softening his criticism of the surge. We regularly update the Web site to reflect changes in current events."
GOP rival John McCain zinged Obama as a flip-flopper. "The major point here is that Sen. Obama refuses to acknowledge that he was wrong," said McCain, adding that Obama "refuses to acknowledge that it [the surge] is succeeding."jmeek@nydailynews.com
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Obama's 'Judgment'
July 18, 2008
Barack Obama departs for Iraq as early as this weekend, with a media entourage as large as some of his rallies. He'll no doubt learn a lot, in addition to getting a good photo op. What we'll be waiting to hear is whether the would-be Commander in Chief absorbs enough to admit he was wrong about the troop surge in Iraq.
Mr. Obama has made a central basis of his candidacy the "judgment" he showed in opposing the Iraq war in 2002, even if it was a risk-free position to take as an Illinois state senator. The claim helped him win the Democratic primaries. But the 2007 surge debate is the single most important strategic judgment he has had to make on the more serious stage as a Presidential candidate. He vocally opposed the surge, and events have since vindicated Mr. Bush. Without the surge and a new counterinsurgency strategy, the U.S. would have suffered a humiliating defeat in Iraq.
Yet Mr. Obama now wants to ignore that judgment, and earlier this week his campaign erased from its Web site all traces of his surge opposition. Lest media amnesia set in, here is what the Obama site previously said:
"The problem – the Surge: The goal of the surge was to create space for Iraq's political leaders to reach an agreement to end Iraq's civil war. At great cost, our troops have helped reduce violence in some areas of Iraq, but even those reductions do not get us below the unsustainable levels of violence of mid-2006. Moreover, Iraq's political leaders have made no progress in resolving the political differences at the heart of their civil war."
Mr. Obama's site now puts a considerably brighter gloss on the surge. Yet the candidate himself shows no signs of rethinking. In a foreign-policy address Tuesday, the Senator described the surge, in effect, as a waste of $200 billion, an intolerable strain on military resources and a distraction from what he sees as a more important battle in Afghanistan. He faulted Iraq's leaders for failing to make "the political progress that was the purpose of the surge." And his 16-month timetable for near-total withdrawal apparently remains firm.
It would be nice if Mr. Obama could at least get his facts straight. Earlier this month, the U.S. embassy in Baghdad reported that the Iraqi government had met 15 of the 18 political benchmarks set for it in 2006. The Sunni bloc in Iraq's parliament is returning to the government after a year's absence. Levels of sectarian violence have held steady for months – at zero. (In January 2007, Mr. Obama had predicted on MSNBC that the surge would not only fail to curb sectarian violence, but would "do the reverse.") If this isn't sufficient evidence of "genuine political accommodation," we'd like to know what, in his judgment, is.
The freshman Senator also declared that "true success will take place when we leave Iraq to a government that is taking responsibility for its future – a government that prevents sectarian conflict, and ensures that the al Qaeda threat which has been beaten back by our troops does not re-emerge."
Yet the reason Iraq is finally getting that kind of government is precisely because of the surge, which neutralized al Qaeda and gave Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki the running room to confront Moqtada al-Sadr's Shiite Mahdi Army. And the reason the U.S. can now contemplate more troop withdrawals is because the surge has created the conditions that mean the U.S. would not be leaving a security vacuum. On Wednesday, Mr. Maliki's government assumed security responsibility in yet another province, meaning a majority of provinces are now under full Iraqi control.
Mr. Obama acknowledges none of this. Instead, his rigid timetable for withdrawal offers Iraq's various groups every reason to seek their security in local militias such as the Mahdi Army or even al Qaeda, thereby risking a return to the desperate situation it confronted in late 2006.
The Washington Post has criticized this as obstinate, and Democratic foreign policy analyst Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution reacted this way: "To say you're going to get out on a certain schedule – regardless of what the Iraqis do, regardless of what our enemies do, regardless of what is happening on the ground – is the height of absurdity."
Mr. Obama does promise to "consult with commanders on the ground and the Iraqi government" in implementing his plans. But he would have shown more sincerity on this score had he postponed Tuesday's address until after he visited Iraq and had a chance to speak with those generals and Iraqis. The timing of his speech made it appear not that he is open to what General David Petraeus tells him, but that he wants to limit the General's military options.
Mr. Bush has often been criticized for refusing to admit his Iraq mistakes, but he proved that wrong in ordering the surge that reversed his policy and is finally winning the war. The next President will now take office with the U.S. in a far better security position than 18 months ago. Mr. Obama could help his own claim to be Commander in Chief, and ease doubts about his judgment, if he admits that Mr. Bush was right.
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****Mr. Obama could help his own claim to be Commander in Chief, and ease doubts about his judgment, if he admits that Mr. Bush was right****
Sure he is going to do that. :roll:
Well we all know that won't happen and BO has already taken his "out" position with statements to the effect that the surge only proves him right in that Iraqis "need" to take responsibility, and we then "need" to remove troops and pull out, and we "must" focus on the true problem by sending in the NYC police to capture Bin Laden in Afghanistan, blah blah blah.
And the war has cost lives, too much money that could have been spent sending every child to Harvard, give every homeless person a good job and a condo, get everyone off drugs, "free" health care for everyone, blah blah blah.
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It appears Jesse Jackson called BO a "nigger".
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/07/17/jackson-also-used-n-word-in-taped-conversation-critical-of-obama/
Oy vey.
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Yeah, I'm already sick hearing all the defenders justifying the Rev-uh-rund, with the "It's ok for black people...." double standard. :roll:
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/07/18/gaffemaster-alert-the-pearl-harbor-bomb/
Gaffemaster Alert: The Pearl Harbor Bomb
POSTED AT 10:10 AM ON JULY 18, 2008 BY ED MORRISSEY
Barack Obama must have gone off script again in West Lafayette, Indiana on Wednesday. When addressing the crowd on national security, Obama mangled the attack on Pearl Harbor. For a Hawaii native, this tops the Young Gaffer list of historical fumbles (via Dean Barnett):
But it is wonderful to be back in Indiana. In a few moments, we’ll open up the discussion. But I want to offer a few comments about some of the emerging threats that we face in the 21st century and offer some ideas about how we can face those threats.
Throughout our history, America’s confronted constantly evolving danger, from the oppression of an empire, to the lawlessness of the frontier, from the bomb that fell on Pearl Harbor, to the threat of nuclear annihilation. Americans have adapted to the threats posed by an ever-changing world.
Just to clarify: a whole lot of bombs fell on Pearl Harbor. And the threat wasn’t the bomb, it was the empire that send massive waves of planes to drop them on our Pacific Fleet. Those bombs fell because we didn’t adapt to the threat, and in fact we kept telling ourselves that we could talk the Japanese out of their policy of aggression and empire. We came within a few aircraft carriers of losing the Pacific out of our willful blindness to the nature of the Japanese.
The same can be said for the “nuclear annihilation” Obama also mentions. The threat wasn’t nuclear annihilation as such; that was part of the threat, not the entire threat itself. The real threat came from another kind of empire, one that wanted to conquer from within as well as without — and the American Left after 1969 spent most of its time arguing that they threat didn’t really exist, that Soviet Communism wanted peaceful coexistence, and that socialism and Communism was the achievement of Utopia. After Jimmy Carter’s disastrous cheek-kissing with Leonid Brezhnev and the invasion of Afghanistan that followed, America woke up and put adults in charge - and within a decade, the Soviet Union collapsed of its own contradictions and rot.
This gaffe goes beyond placing Auschwitz and Treblinka in western Germany or putting American troops in Poland during World War II. It speaks to a fundamental superficiality of Obama, a man who seizes tropes and themes with little understanding of their significance or their details. Obama reveals himself as a man who doesn’t understand threats at all, and whose instinctive responses would make them far worse.
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"and played a little basketball during the visit"
with the troops in Afghanistan.
Well thank God for that. What a laugh. :wink:
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/07/18/gaffemaster-alert-the-pearl-harbor-bomb/
Gaffemaster Alert: The Pearl Harbor Bomb
POSTED AT 10:10 AM ON JULY 18, 2008 BY ED MORRISSEY
Barack Obama must have gone off script again in West Lafayette, Indiana on Wednesday. When addressing the crowd on national security, Obama mangled the attack on Pearl Harbor. For a Hawaii native, this tops the Young Gaffer list of historical fumbles (via Dean Barnett):
But it is wonderful to be back in Indiana. In a few moments, we’ll open up the discussion. But I want to offer a few comments about some of the emerging threats that we face in the 21st century and offer some ideas about how we can face those threats.
Throughout our history, America’s confronted constantly evolving danger, from the oppression of an empire, to the lawlessness of the frontier, from the bomb that fell on Pearl Harbor, to the threat of nuclear annihilation. Americans have adapted to the threats posed by an ever-changing world.
Just to clarify: a whole lot of bombs fell on Pearl Harbor. And the threat wasn’t the bomb, it was the empire that send massive waves of planes to drop them on our Pacific Fleet. Those bombs fell because we didn’t adapt to the threat, and in fact we kept telling ourselves that we could talk the Japanese out of their policy of aggression and empire. We came within a few aircraft carriers of losing the Pacific out of our willful blindness to the nature of the Japanese.
The same can be said for the “nuclear annihilation” Obama also mentions. The threat wasn’t nuclear annihilation as such; that was part of the threat, not the entire threat itself. The real threat came from another kind of empire, one that wanted to conquer from within as well as without — and the American Left after 1969 spent most of its time arguing that they threat didn’t really exist, that Soviet Communism wanted peaceful coexistence, and that socialism and Communism was the achievement of Utopia. After Jimmy Carter’s disastrous cheek-kissing with Leonid Brezhnev and the invasion of Afghanistan that followed, America woke up and put adults in charge - and within a decade, the Soviet Union collapsed of its own contradictions and rot.
This gaffe goes beyond placing Auschwitz and Treblinka in western Germany or putting American troops in Poland during World War II. It speaks to a fundamental superficiality of Obama, a man who seizes tropes and themes with little understanding of their significance or their details. Obama reveals himself as a man who doesn’t understand threats at all, and whose instinctive responses would make them far worse.
I am not sure about this idea that I must always agree or support "America, right or wrong". Somehow, we always justify our actions because "we are the good guys" and never even look at the opposite side's perspective.
You said, take Japan for example. "...we couldn't talk the Japanese out of their policy of aggression and empire." Mind you, England had an empire, France had an "empire"; frankly, what were we doing in the Philippines? But we never objected to their/our empires. A little racism maybe??? Or was it a money issue like it usually is in America? Or like a kid in the sandbox who was there first and wants to keep all the good toys...
But my real Japan question/point is that in July 1941 we placed a tight embargo on Japan's oil. Now for example let's say someone did that to us today. And remember, Japan has no natural resources to speak of - it is a small island dependend upon trade. Now if someone did that to us today, how long would it last before we came out shooting? And I bet we would justify it based upon those $%^#$% other guys placing an embargo upon our oil. We would bomb the heck out of them and say they are the bad guys and that they started it; somehow we would justify our actions. But fairness should work two ways.
Or we sabre rattle and vehemently criticize various Arab states for providing guns and resources to our enemies in Iraq, but wasn't it our guns and supplies that helped the Afghanistan's defeat the Russians. Now it's OK if we provide weapons, supplies and money, against the Russians, but it's not OK if someone does the same thing against us??? Isn't there some hypocrisy there? Now I'm not saying we shouldn't object and stop them, just don't do it on moral grounds and act like we are innocent.
I think one should try to be a little objective rather than always assume our way is the only way and always the best way. I always hated the expressions, "America, right or wrong", or "America, love it or leave it". Sometimes we are wrong and sometimes things need to change. And sometimes, just because we are the biggest kid on the block, it doesn't make it right to always use force.
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JDN,
BO said this????
Are you kidding????
He is clearly a leftist American hating liberal.
How can a guy who thinks like this even be on a major party ticket????
This is nuts - Of course other countries will love him. He wants to give it all away to them.
Maybe Republicans should over play this hand too soon and then let the crats spin it all around.
Let BO continue his big mouth and then let all see him for what he is in September. Maybe it is better not to show the cards anyway because you know the crats will go back to their little "war rooms" and prepare new talking points and then hit the airwaves with the same jerks as always neutralizing and BS the truth away.
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JDN,
Before you defend Imperial Japan, you might want to read up on the "Rape of Nanjing/Nanking".
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Strike my previous post. I thought JDN's comments were BO's. Notwithstanding I don't agree with JDN's comments and to some extent is comparing apples to oranges.
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And I thought the Clintons are narcisissitic. :?
And Krauthammer has a good point. What in tarnation is a guy who has never done anything on the international stage doing giving a speech in Germany as though he is the savior of the world? I don't recall, have we ever had this kind of show from someone who is *running for* but never been President? I suppose we'll have a snapshot of the Pope kissing his opulent hand if he swings through Europe while on what has become the savior of the world tour. The Clintons must be pissed - he is hogging their show.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/17/AR2008071701839.html
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JDN,
Before you defend Imperial Japan, you might want to read up on the "Rape of Nanjing/Nanking".
You are right.
But, if you want to bring the subject up, Pearl Harbor was an attack on a Naval Base...a military
operation against military personnel.
But what was My Lai...etc..............And from what I heard from my slightly older friends,
who did serve in Vietnam, we didn't follow the Geneva Convention....And do you really
think Naplam discriminated between troops and woman and children???
And the fire bombing of Tokyo??? 250,000 mostly women and children dead???
Were pretty good at killling woman and children. But maybe that's just war?
And the atomic bombs, again 500,000 dead, again mostly woman and children???
There were few if any troops in Hiroshima or Nagasaki. There was no industrial complex there.........
Just families.
Please don't act so noble. We do what it takes to win, but we are no better than anyone
else.
Not to mention putting in prison American Citizens by the thousands whose only "crime"
was that they were of Japanese ancestry. Odd, my Grandfather (a doctor) was a German
living in Wisconsin but he never go arrested. Nor did my Mother. A little bit of racism again???
America likes to blame the "other guy" especially if they are Black or Asian or Islamic or Mexican.
America likes to to take the high road, but usually (WWII Europe was different) we have
a monetary self interest, not idealism at heart. We just like to "justify" our wars, paint the
other guy as the "bad guy" rather than calling a spade a spade. It's more politically correct.
And it sure sells better.
As for Obama, I am not saying he is a panacea. But McCain? Too old, that is a big deal to me,
and frankly, if his daddy wasn't an high ranking admiral, McCain would be a nobody. He is
an opportunist. He dumps his wife for a younger and more important, richer (and smart) woman.
All his life he has succeeded through using people. Yes, he has experience, and frankly,
he is not a bad guy, but.....couldn't the Republicans do better???
But back to America. Nothing wrong, we simply do what we need to do that being what's good for
America. But please don't cloak it behind righteousness, goodness, and democracy. We do it
because it benefits America. Period. As does everyone else; we just happen to be the biggest
and baddest kid on the block. That doesn't always make us right.
As for CCP I take full credit; don't blame OR give credit to Obama :-)
Again, as for CCP I agree, I don't know what in the world Obama is doing giving a major speech in Germany.
I agree, maybe he should win the election first??? By no means a given - I think it will be close.
Again, as for CCP, you got to love it; Obama as President, Hilary as the Vice President, and
Bill (Mr. President) as the VP's wife. Would you want to be President??? :roll:
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***Again, as for CCP, you got to love it; Obama as President, Hilary as the Vice President, and
Bill (Mr. President) as the VP's wife. Would you want to be President???***
It will certainly keep Rush Limbaugh rolling in dough.
I would like to have the qualities to be President. But I don't. First and foremost I like my sleep.
I have a feeling BO is going to choose Colin Powell as his running mate. I think Powell would do it from what I read.
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JDN,
Before you defend Imperial Japan, you might want to read up on the "Rape of Nanjing/Nanking".
You are right.
But, if you want to bring the subject up, Pearl Harbor was an attack on a Naval Base...a military
operation against military personnel.
**So what? Ask the people of any place occupied by the Japanese during WWII how they were treated. See how the Japanese treated western POWs.**
But what was My Lai...etc..............And from what I heard from my slightly older friends,
who did serve in Vietnam, we didn't follow the Geneva Convention....And do you really
think Naplam discriminated between troops and woman and children???
**It's funny how the left gets so excited about innocents killed by the US in combat, yet is so deliberately ignorant of masses of people murdered by communists. Once the democrats forced the abandonment of the S. Vietnamese and the communists took over, the "peace movement" gave a collective shrug. Masses of brown people in mass graves don't bother the left, unless it can be used as a propaganda weapon against America.**
And the fire bombing of Tokyo??? 250,000 mostly women and children dead???
Were pretty good at killling woman and children. But maybe that's just war?
**Maybe it is. War is brutal and horrible. Do you have a better option?**
And the atomic bombs, again 500,000 dead, again mostly woman and children???
There were few if any troops in Hiroshima or Nagasaki. There was no industrial complex there.........
Just families.
**If I have to choose between dead enemy civilians and dead US troops, i'd choose for dead enemies. I make no apologies if that's the only choice.**
Please don't act so noble. We do what it takes to win, but we are no better than anyone
else.
**Doing what it takes to win doesn't mean we are like everyone else. We rebuilt Germany and Japan and western europe and protected them from the soviets as well.**
Not to mention putting in prison American Citizens by the thousands whose only "crime"
was that they were of Japanese ancestry. Odd, my Grandfather (a doctor) was a German
living in Wisconsin but he never go arrested. Nor did my Mother. A little bit of racism again???
America likes to blame the "other guy" especially if they are Black or Asian or Islamic or Mexican.
**You'll note that this was done by that liberal icon FDR, over the objections of J. Edgar Hoover. Are you asserting that only America has racism?**
America likes to to take the high road, but usually (WWII Europe was different) we have
a monetary self interest, not idealism at heart. We just like to "justify" our wars, paint the
other guy as the "bad guy" rather than calling a spade a spade. It's more politically correct.
And it sure sells better.
**WWII, pacific theater wasn't justified? What other wars do you not find justified?**
As for Obama, I am not saying he is a panacea. But McCain? Too old, that is a big deal to me,
and frankly, if his daddy wasn't an high ranking admiral, McCain would be a nobody.
**McCain could have done anything, including a safe career in the navy without flying dangerous missions over N. Vietnam. He could have been released early from NVA captivity, but chose to stay with his men. His son chose to enlist with the Marines and has seen combat in Iraq, yet McCain has never discussed this in public. Too old? That sounds like blatant ageism to me.**
He is
an opportunist. He dumps his wife for a younger and more important, richer (and smart) woman.
All his life he has succeeded through using people. Yes, he has experience, and frankly,
he is not a bad guy, but.....couldn't the Republicans do better???
**Yeah, let's not examine Obama's opportunism. The grandmother that raised him after his father abandoned him was "just a typical white person", right? His pastor and spiritual mentor "God damn America" Wright fit neatly under his bus when he found too much political liability. Does Tony Rezko's creative financing of Obama's home bother you at all?**
But back to America. Nothing wrong, we simply do what we need to do that being what's good for
America. But please don't cloak it behind righteousness, goodness, and democracy. We do it
because it benefits America. Period. As does everyone else; we just happen to be the biggest
and baddest kid on the block. That doesn't always make us right.
**We have done, and do many things for the cause of freedom. Many people across the world have a better life because of America. No nation in human history has had more power and has used it more justly than this nation. If there is a better country, why aren't you living there?**
As for CCP I take full credit; don't blame OR give credit to Obama :-)
Again, as for CCP I agree, I don't know what in the world Obama is doing giving a major speech in Germany.
I agree, maybe he should win the election first??? By no means a given - I think it will be close.
Again, as for CCP, you got to love it; Obama as President, Hilary as the Vice President, and
Bill (Mr. President) as the VP's wife. Would you want to be President??? :roll:
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***Again, as for CCP, you got to love it; Obama as President, Hilary as the Vice President, and
Bill (Mr. President) as the VP's wife. Would you want to be President???***
It will certainly keep Rush Limbaugh rolling in dough.
I would like to have the qualities to be President. But I don't. First and foremost I like my sleep.
I have a feeling BO is going to choose Colin Powell as his running mate. I think Powell would do it from what I read.
Actually CCP I didn't mean it personally. What I meant was I don't think anyone would want to be President with Hilary as VP and worse, her husband being a former President, lurking around in the background and stealing the show.
As for Colin Powell, I think he is an outstanding individual, but I would be very surprised if Obama chose a black running mate. Our country is not there yet; a black President and a black VP would never win. But Powell is great, heck, if McCain chose Powell for VP that is a good reason to vote for McCain.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/07/20/obama-flunks-history-again/
Obama uber alles.
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Ahhh GM, this is getting fun.
Taking in order:
1. Don't get your first point regarding treatment of GI's (it was bad) in relationship to my point about targeting a military target. My point was that the Japanese didn't target civilians like the USA did.
2. "Masses of brown people" (I haven't heard that in a while) "in mass graves don't bother the left..." actually it does, but at that point, the war was over - we had our butts kicked. As for "mass graves" what do you think Napalm does? Or fire bombing? Or nuclear war? It leaves mass graves of civilians.
3. Yep, war is brutal; no disagreement there. A better option? Find someone smarter than me. But I think it was/is wrong to focus on killing civilians like America did through fire bombing and nuclear. Why not stick to the military targets? It's a little more humane.
4. "choose between dead enemy civilians and dead US Troops, I'd choose for dead enemy civilians. I make no apologies if that's the only choice." I guess this is the main difference between you and I. I mean why not kill the woman and children in Iraq on sight if it saved a few American soldiers? Heck, by your definition if it helps the war effort, maybe we should target woman and children if it saves a American lives. Do anything to win, huh? If we lost WWII who do you think would have been on trial as war criminals. We are lucky, we either win and act noble, or we lose (Vietnam) and run fast.
5. We rebuilt German and Japan and western Europe... Hmmm, and you think we did that only out of love and kindness??? Please... We, the USA needed the deterrence against Russia. Also, we needed trading partners; who was left? And we needed military bases to protect the US. We never gave a hoot about Japan's defense; it was mostly for our benefit to stop Communism. I mean look at Japan; if it wasn't for our demanding (spoils of war?) huge property worth billions of dollars in Japan for our military bases right after WWII we would have been kicked out a long time ago. Would you believe it; Japan even pays us billions of dollars to keep our troops there - we are sort of like mercenaries. And this was all done from agreements enforced upon them after the war 50+ years ago. And our troops still can't keep their pants on off base. If the Japanese people voted today, we would be sent packing.
As for my "noble" comment, what would America do? Would WE allow a foreign power to station troops on our property? Ha, we don't even allow them in our hemisphere. We like two sets of rules, one for us and one for everyone else. Russia is recently upset we are planning a missile system in their backyard, but we say, "don't worry...." but if they tried to do that in Mexico we would send troops to stop them if necessary. Again, two sets of "convenient" rules. Again, a benefit of being the biggest kid in the sandbox, but that doesn't make it right.
6. Japanese American Citizens in Prison camps. Actually, a lot of Democrats and Republicans supported putting the Japanese in prison camps. But the German's were safe in America despite all their atrocities during the war. Now that's true racism. And yes, other countries have racism too, they just don't deny it or ignore it like we do and act noble about it. It's the hypocrisy I hate.
7. "Too old" That sounds like blatant ageism to me". I love old people, but Yep, I think he is too old to be our President. And yep, it is blatant ageism. IBM wouldn't hire him to be their president; he's too old. Microsoft wouldn't hire him to be their president, he's told old....... Heck, no major USA or International Company or Consulting firm would hire him to be their president because he is too old. Simply put, he's past his prime for the job. And I can't think of a job that is more important. We need someone at their best. So why would America hire him to be our President?
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Ahhh GM, this is getting fun.
Taking in order:
1. Don't get your first point regarding treatment of GI's (it was bad) in relationship to my point about targeting a military target. My point was that the Japanese didn't target civilians like the USA did.
**Really? WWII started with Pearl Harbor? That's a very ethnocentric position to take. Let me help you out. Most scholars point out the start of the 2nd Sino-Japanese war on 7/7/1937, which would eventually expand throughout asia and the pacific. America entered the war after Pearl Harbor. You might want to read up on Japan's targeting and treatment of the peoples it conquered long before the US fired a single shot in the war. It won't exactly fit your "It's all America's fault" paradigm, but it would serve you to learn more than the typical leftist talking points if you wish to make your case.**
2. "Masses of brown people" (I haven't heard that in a while) "in mass graves don't bother the left..." actually it does, but at that point, the war was over - we had our butts kicked. As for "mass graves" what do you think Napalm does? Or fire bombing? Or nuclear war? It leaves mass graves of civilians.
**Again, more missing history. Where were the anti-war protesters when the communists murdered roughly 2.5 million innocents after the democrats in congress cut off funding to the South Vietnamese and Cambodia's Lon Nol governments? Ever hear Jane Fonda or any other leftist luminary weep for the innocents they helped murder and oppress? Where was the concerned then? Why don't you know about the Japanese atrocities in asia? The racism you wish to project on others?
The US won every military engagement in Vietnam. The left in America was all the NVA had going for them. At the worst, we could have had a partitioned Vietnam like we have a partitioned Korea, with at least half of the nation free. Not good enough for the "peace movement". Where is the remorse? Where is the regret?**
3. Yep, war is brutal; no disagreement there. A better option? Find someone smarter than me. But I think it was/is wrong to focus on killing civilians like America did through fire bombing and nuclear. Why not stick to the military targets? It's a little more humane.
**The US fights it's wars with the resources and technology it has. No other nation in history has gone to the lengths the US has in modern times to try to spare, feed and treat innocents while engaging in war. Don't agree? Who, when and where?**
4. "choose between dead enemy civilians and dead US Troops, I'd choose for dead enemy civilians. I make no apologies if that's the only choice." I guess this is the main difference between you and I. I mean why not kill the woman and children in Iraq on sight if it saved a few American soldiers? Heck, by your definition if it helps the war effort, maybe we should target woman and children if it saves a American lives. Do anything to win, huh? If we lost WWII who do you think would have been on trial as war criminals. We are lucky, we either win and act noble, or we lose (Vietnam) and run fast.
**Exactly my point. It would have been easier to subdue Iraqi villages by using Saddam's playbook of cutting off food, water, electricity and then mass killings until resistance ended. No Iraqis need be alive to pump oil. Yet instead we build schools, infastructure and treat the sick and wounded and created a semi-decent government instead of tyranny. Why go to such trouble if America is just a machivellian brute?
The US military didn't lose Vietnam. The left undercut the war and the Vietnamese paid dearly. Not that it seems to bother you.**
5. We rebuilt German and Japan and western Europe... Hmmm, and you think we did that only out of love and kindness??? Please... We, the USA needed the deterrence against Russia.
**In 1945, the US was in full wartime economy mode. US forces spanned the world. Only America had the bomb. Patton had wanted to move to finish off the shattered soviets, yet instead we de-militarized to such a degree that by 1950 we were barely able to deal with the Korean war. Not exactly what an empire would do, right?**
Also, we needed trading partners; who was left? And we needed military bases to protect the US. We never gave a hoot about Japan's defense; it was mostly for our benefit to stop Communism. I mean look at Japan; if it wasn't for our demanding (spoils of war?) huge property worth billions of dollars in Japan for our military bases right after WWII we would have been kicked out a long time ago. Would you believe it; Japan even pays us billions of dollars to keep our troops there - we are sort of like mercenaries. And this was all done from agreements enforced upon them after the war 50+ years ago. And our troops still can't keep their pants on off base. If the Japanese people voted today, we would be sent packing.
**The Japanese DO vote today. Do you know anything about asia at all? You seem very comfortable smearing our troops. Let's examine the facts:
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/print/nn20080716a5.html
High crime rate a 'misperception': U.S. commander
By REIJI YOSHIDA
Staff writer
The rate of off-base crimes committed by members of the United States military in Japan is much lower than the rate for Japanese in general, but a "misperception" that the opposite is true still persists, the commander of U.S. Forces Japan said Tuesday.
Meet the general: Lt. Gen. Edward Rice, commander of U.S. Forces Japan, gives a group interview in Tokyo on Tuesday. REIJI YOSHIDA PHOTO
"We are able to keep the off-base serious crime rate for U.S. service members to approximately half that of the overall Japanese population," Lt. Gen. Edward Rice told reporters in a group interview in Tokyo.
Rice emphasized that "a balanced view" is needed to discuss crimes involving U.S. service members in Japan.
The U.S. Air Force later released a statement saying the crime rate among U.S. forces personnel in Japan is in fact less than one-third of the overall rate in the country. The figures for the U.S. military personnel cover crimes committed outside the bases.
During the interview, Rice also stressed that U.S. forces have been implementing a number of programs to ensure correct behavior by U.S. military personnel since the alleged rape of a 14-year-old girl in Okinawa by a marine in February.
U.S. forces have been coming under particularly strong criticism from the opposition parties in the Diet, which now control the House of Councilors. In April, the upper chamber made a decision to reject a budget bill for host-nation support, the first time it had ever done so. The budget eventually went into effect in May because it had already been approved by the more powerful Lower House, whose decisions on foreign treaties prevail under the Constitution.
Rice declined to make any direct comments on the political situation in Japan but said he believes spending for the U.S. military here is "a good investment" for Japan's security and that of the region.
"It would cost many times more . . . to be able to provide the equivalent level of security for Japan and Japanese people," Rice said. "I think it becomes clear that at the end of the day this is really a bargain for the Japanese people."
According to a 2004 report compiled by the U.S. Department of Defense, Japan contributed direct financial support worth $3.23 billion and indirect support worth $1.18 billion to the U.S. military in fiscal 2002.
The Japan Times: Wednesday, July 16, 2008
As for my "noble" comment, what would America do? Would WE allow a foreign power to station troops on our property? Ha, we don't even allow them in our hemisphere.
**Really? Which hemisphere would you find Cuba in?**
We like two sets of rules, one for us and one for everyone else. Russia is recently upset we are planning a missile system in their backyard, but we say, "don't worry...." but if they tried to do that in Mexico we would send troops to stop them if necessary. Again, two sets of "convenient" rules. Again, a benefit of being the biggest kid in the sandbox, but that doesn't make it right.
6. Japanese American Citizens in Prison camps. Actually, a lot of Democrats and Republicans supported putting the Japanese in prison camps.
**Yes, but FDR authorized and signed Executive Order 9066.**
But the German's were safe in America despite all their atrocities during the war. Now that's true racism.
** http://www.archives.gov/genealogy/immigration/enemy-aliens-overview.html You must have missed this part of WWII history as well.**
And yes, other countries have racism too, they just don't deny it or ignore it like we do and act noble about it.
**Really? Please give some examples of countries you admire and would cite as examples of your point.**
It's the hypocrisy I hate.
**You mean hypocrisy, like someone who enjoys the wealth and freedoms of America while bashing the military and the nation?**
7. "Too old" That sounds like blatant ageism to me". I love old people, but Yep, I think he is too old to be our President. And yep, it is blatant ageism. IBM wouldn't hire him to be their president; he's too old. Microsoft wouldn't hire him to be their president, he's told old....... Heck, no major USA or International Company or Consulting firm would hire him to be their president because he is too old. Simply put, he's past his prime for the job. And I can't think of a job that is more important. We need someone at their best. So why would America hire him to be our President?
Funny, my wife's asian culture, and my Native American culture teach respecting our elders. You wish to use the modern corporate culture as your yardstick. Interesting.
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Higher Folly
Diplomas won’t make jihadis go away.
By Michelle Malkin
In all the brouhaha over the New Yorker’s satirical cover cartoon of Barack and Michelle Obama, a truly “tasteless and offensive” passage in the magazine’s feature article got lost. The magazine piece quotes Obama’s recommendations for how to stop jihad, which he had previously published in a local Chicago newspaper eight days after 9/11. It’s a self-parody of blind, deaf, and dumb Kumbaya liberalism:
We must also engage, however, in the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such madness. The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent, is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion, or ethnicity. It may find expression in a particular brand of violence, and may be channeled by particular demagogues or fanatics. Most often, though, it grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair.
Is this man for real? Osama bin Laden’s murderous legions are plenty able to “imagine” the “suffering of others.” Go watch an al-Qaeda beheading snuff video. Just Google it or surf YouTube. Imagining the suffering of infidels is covered amply in basic Jihadi Training 101.
You’ll note, too, that Obama’s fresh instinct in the week after the 9/11 attack was to diagnose it as a “tragedy” stemming from lack of “empathy” and “understanding” — instead of as the deliberate, carefully planned evil act of the long-waged Islamic war on the West that it was.
As for Obama’s continued delusion about the “climate of poverty and ignorance” that supposedly breeds Muslim terrorists, can American politicians ever rid themselves of this unreality-based trope? This belief is part and parcel of the same idiocy that led the State Department to embrace “spa days” for Muslims to “build bridges” with the Arab world and President Bush to open up our aviation schools to more Saudi students to “improve understanding.”
John McCain also alluded to education-as-cure for Islamic terrorism at the L.A. World Affairs Council in March, when he declared, “In this struggle, scholarships will be far more important than smart bombs.” Just what we need: more student visas for the jihadi-infested nation that sent us the bulk of the 9/11 hijackers.
Author and National Review Online blogger Mark Steyn’s sharp rejoinder to McCain then applies to Obama now: “There’s plenty of evidence out there that the most extreme ‘extremists’ are those who’ve been most exposed to the west — and western education: from Osama bin Laden (summer school at Oxford, punting on the Thames) and Mohammed Atta (Hamburg University urban planning student) to the London School of Economics graduate responsible for the beheading of Daniel Pearl. The idea that handing out college scholarships to young Saudi males and getting them hooked on Starbucks and car-chase movies will make this stuff go away is ridiculous — and unworthy of a serious presidential candidate.”
Ayman al-Zawahiri didn’t need more education or wealth to steer him away from Islamic imperialism and working toward a worldwide caliphate. He has a medical degree. So does former Hamas biggie Abdel al-Rantissi. Seven upper-middle-class jihadi doctors were implicated in the 2007 London/Glasgow bombings. Suspected al-Qaeda scientist Aafia Siddiqui, still wanted by the FBI for questioning, is a Pakistani who studied microbiology at MIT and did graduate work in neurology at Brandeis.
And as I’ve reported before and must reiterate for the hard of hearing in Washington, lowering academic standards at American colleges helped al-Qaeda mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed further the jihadi cause. In the early 1980s, he enrolled at tiny Chowan College in Murfreesboro, N.C., which had dropped its English requirements to attract — ahem — wealthy Middle Easterners.
At Chowan, Mohammed bonded with other Arab Muslim foreign students known as the “Mullahs” for their religious zeal. Mohammed then transferred to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, where he earned his degree in mechanical engineering along with 30 other Muslims.
Mohammed applied his Western learning to oversee the 1993 World Trade Center bombing plot (six Americans dead), the U.S.S. Cole attack (17 American soldiers dead) and the 9/11 attacks (3,000 dead). He has also been linked to the 1998 African-embassy bombings (212 dead, including 12 Americans), the plot to kill the pope, the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl and the Bali nightclub blast that killed nearly 200 tourists, including two more Americans.
Perhaps bleeding-heart Obama thinks a master’s degree in social work would have convinced poverty-stricken, helpless, ignorant, despairing Mohammed to change his mind?
© 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZDM4MWE4NDA1NjRiYTY5MjFkM2RiOGQ5MDdjY2IzYmE=
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/18/AR2008071802612_pf.html
Snubbed by Obama
By Christoph von Marschall
Sunday, July 20, 2008; B07
Barack Obama is on his way to Europe, where an adoring public awaits. But I wonder if the reception would be quite so enthusiastic if Obama's fans across the Atlantic knew a dirty little secret of his remarkable presidential campaign: Although Obama portrays himself as the best candidate to engage the rest of the world and restore America's image abroad, and many Americans support him for that reason, so far he has almost completely refused to answer questions from foreign journalists. When the press plane leaves tonight for his trip, there will be, as far as I know, no foreign media aboard. The Obama campaign has refused multiple requests from international reporters to travel with the candidate.
As a German correspondent in Washington, I am accustomed to the fact that American politicians spare little of their limited time for reporters from abroad. This is understandable: Our readers, viewers and listeners cannot vote in U.S. elections. Even so, Obama's opponents have managed to make at least a small amount of time for international journalists. John McCain has given many interviews. Hillary Clinton gave a few. President Bush regularly holds round-table interviews with media from the countries to which he travels. Only Obama dismisses us so consistently.
This spring Obama allowed at least one foreign reporter on trips to Ohio and Texas. But as the campaign has progressed, access has become more difficult for foreign correspondents. E-mail inquiries get no reply, phone calls are not returned. My colleagues and I know: We are last in line. We don't matter.
In September 2007, I gave a lecture in Iowa titled "The U.S. in the World: How They See Us." People in the audience asked me about the working conditions of foreign journalists and were surprised to learn how little access Obama had given us. Several Iowans wrote to his campaign to protest. In contrast to me, they did hear back: In a letter dated Nov. 24, the campaign assured one of these people that Obama cares about the foreign media and wants to increase openness. The letter even said that my contact information had been forwarded to the campaign's communications department.
There was no follow-up.
Since I followed the Obama campaign in its early stages and published a sympathetic (and widely read) book in German about the Illinois senator, I probably have more access than most. I know the Obama "policy advisers" in Washington think tanks and the like; sometimes I manage a fleeting encounter with the senator's press staff at campaign events. Yet I can only dream of an interview with the candidate. To my knowledge, no foreign journalist has had one. A reported interview in France's Politique Internationale last summer turned out to be a fake. In February, Obama gave Israel's Yediot Ahronot written answers to written questions about his views on Israel and the Middle East.
Perhaps Obama considers members of the foreign media a risk rather than an opportunity. His campaign learned the hard way how comments to foreigners can resonate at home -- recall adviser Austan Goolsbee's hints to a Canadian diplomat that Obama's critique of NAFTA was just campaign rhetoric, or former aide Samantha Power's "monster" remark about Hillary Clinton to the Scotsman. Or perhaps we're witnessing the arrogance that comes from being so close to power. One of his campaign advisers told me recently: "Why should we take the time for foreign media, since there is Obamania around the world?"
Obama is indeed popular in my country and elsewhere in Europe. But Europeans have the same questions about his experience and character that Americans do. Unlike U.S. citizens, we can't vote in the election; its results, though, will affect our lives, much as it will affect theirs. Surely a man who has said he would talk with U.S. adversaries such as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can spend a few moments with journalists from friendlier countries.
The writer is Washington bureau chief of Der Tagesspiegel, a Berlin-based daily newspaper.
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Assuming we entered the Iraq war to free the Iraqi people from a dictatorship and establish democracy
for the people of Iraq, then I guess we all agree Obama's foreign policy plan. It also is the will
of the Iraqi people.
I am sure we all read this weekend how Nouri Maliki "praised the Democratic presidential candidate's
plan for withdrawing U.S. troops over a 16 month period." Embracing Obama's plan, he said, "that,
we think, would the right time frame for a withdrawal." Further, he said that the best time
for withdrawal would be, "as soon as possible". He further said, "...the people and the government
are in general agreement: The tenure of the colalition troops in Iraq should be limited."
Quite clear; even the Iraqi's want us out ASAP. And even the Iraqi's want us out in 16 months or
less. We've overstayed our welcome. It's like having guests; I love to have guests; I tell them please stay for
a week or two, but after a month or so I am looking for a way to kick them out. They are no longer welcome.
Now it's odd, McCain believes "our withdrawal must be conditioned on the opinion of the U.S. commander's
on the ground as to when they think it is the right time". Frankly, I don't get it. We came, we ousted the dictator,
and we established elections. The freely elected government now wants us out - period, regardless
of what the U.S. commander's on the ground want. Iraq wants us to leave; is that clear enough? And who cares
what the U.S. commander's on the ground want? The country and the decisions belong to the Iraqi's not the U.S.
It's 100% the Iraqi's choice right? Even if they want us 100% out, ASAP, no remaining bases, etc. it's THEIR 100% choice, right? Frankly, while we can advise, we don't get a vote on the matter. It's their country. Not ours - we are guests. And our welcome is over. It's really quite simple; it is time to get out and as to whether we are ready or not doesn't matter.
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See posts 514 and 515 in the "2008 Presidential Campaign" thread.
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http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/30709_Just_Another_Blatantly_Antisemitic_Post_at_the_Obama_Blog_Site_Thats_All
Progressive! Glad to see Obama's webmasters are so dilligent. :roll:
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/07/23/obama-a-nuclear-iran-would-be-a-game-changing-situation/
So, what's his position?
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http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/print/021066.php
JULY 23, 2008
THE FINE LINE BETWEEN PANDERING AND LYING
Barack Obama held a press conference in Sderot, Israel today. I wouldn't have blamed him if he had stuck to a reasonable degree of pandering, but check out this question and answer from the press conference:
QUESTION: Senator Obama, you said in AIPAC convention that the (INAUDIBLE) Jerusalem could continue to be the capital city. Then you changed it and clarified later on in the -- (INAUDIBLE) wonder.
How could you be sure if your other statesmen, that you are going to be committed to the security and safety of Israel and you're not going to change it even when you're the President of the United States?
OBAMA: First of all, I didn't change my statement.
I continued to say that Jerusalem will be the capital of Israel. And I have said that before and I will say it again. And I also have said that it is important that we don't simply slice the city in half. But I've also said that that's a final status issue. That's an issue that has to be dealt with with the parties involved, the Palestinians and the Israelis. And it's not the job of the United States to dictate the form in which that will take, but rather to support the efforts that are being made right now to resolve these very difficult issues that have a long history.
Let's pause here. Characteristically, Obama claims that he "didn't change [his] statement." But this is a fantasy. At the AIPAC convention, Obama made the ringing declaration that "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided." "Must." Within 24 hours, however, his advisers scurried to take back Obama's commitment to an undivided Jerusalem, saying that he meant only that Jerusalem shouldn't "be divided by barbed wire and checkpoints as it was in 1948-1967," and that, in fact, Obama was open to Jerusalem also being the capital of the Palestinian state.
In Sderot today, Obama didn't say anything about Jerusalem being the Palestinian capital, but he essentially repeated, not his original call for a Jerusalem that "must" be "undivided," but his mushier fall-back position. In doing so, he not only failed to acknowledge, but specifically denied, that this was a change from his AIPAC call for a Jerusalem that "must remain undivided."
Obama continued:
Now, in terms of knowing my commitments, you don't have to just look at my words, you can look at my deeds. Just this past week, we passed out of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, which is my committee, a bill to call for divestment from Iran, as a way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don't obtain a nuclear weapon.
But Obama is not a member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. Obama just made that up so he could count the committee's action as one of "my deeds."
If committed by a Republican, this would be a gaffe of historic proportions. Even a Senator as inattentive to his duties as Obama certainly knows what committees he serves on. For him to fabricate the claim, out of whole cloth, that the Senate Banking Committee is "[his] committee," strikes me as another sign of Obama's megalomania. That, plus more evidence that he is totally at sea without a teleprompter.
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The mind boggles , , ,
One small ray of hope on the horizon: Apparently the spread in the daily polls between McC and BO remains rather unchanged at about 3-4 points to BO's favor-- despite all the media favoratism.
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despite all the media favoratism
You ain't kidding.
:cry:
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A Brit from the chattering class gets it right:
http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles-new/?p=602
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***He disavowed his long-time mentor, pastor Jeremiah Wright, only when his extreme views could no longer be ignored — despite the fact that Wright is a supporter of Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the black power Nation of Islam.***
Yes indeed. And Jewish voters will vote for him anyway - despite his close association with people who despise Jews.
Did you see him lay the wreath at the Holocaust memorial wearing a yamukah. He appeared to hate doing it but went through the motions. Placate the [stupid] Jews - wear their yami, lay the wreath, pretend he cares, proclaim Israel a miracle, and get this over with. That was what I saw.
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My prediction: He's going to lose.
He realizes what won him the primaries will lose him the election and as he jettisons previously held positions while denying having done so, he loses credibility. His speech yesterday sounded in part like "Bush Lite". When he gets specific (e.g. Germans, you should send more troops to Afg.) it falls flat.
Here's an example from this morning's chattering class at the NY Times:
Marc
=======================================
Playing Innocent Abroad
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By DAVID BROOKS
Published: July 25, 2008
Radical optimism is America’s contribution to the world. The early settlers thought America’s founding would bring God’s kingdom to earth. John Adams thought America would emancipate “the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.” Woodrow Wilson and George W. Bush preached their own gospels of world democracy.
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David Brooks
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The Conversation
Times columnists David Brooks and Gail Collins discuss the 2008 presidential race.
All Conversations » Barack Obama is certainly a true American. In the first major foreign policy speech of his campaign, delivered in Chicago last year, he vowed a comprehensive initiative to “ensure that every child, everywhere, is taught to build and not to destroy.” America, he said, must promote dignity across the world, not just democracy. It must “lead the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good.”
In Berlin on Thursday, it was more of the same. Speaking before a vast throng (and a surprising number of Yankees hats), he vowed to help “remake the world.” He offered hope that a history-drenched European continent could “choose its own tomorrow free from the shadows of yesterday.” He envisioned “a new dawn in the Middle East.”
Obama’s tone was serious. But he pulled out his “this is our moment” rhetoric and offered visions of a world transformed. Obama speeches almost always have the same narrative arc. Some problem threatens. The odds are against the forces of righteousness. But then people of good faith unite and walls come tumbling down. Obama used the word “walls” 16 times in the Berlin speech, and in 11 of those cases, he was talking about walls coming down.
The Berlin blockade was thwarted because people came together. Apartheid ended because people came together and walls tumbled. Winning the cold war was the same: “People of the world,” Obama declared, “look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together and history proved there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.”
When I first heard this sort of radically optimistic speech in Iowa, I have to confess my American soul was stirred. It seemed like the overture for a new yet quintessentially American campaign.
But now it is more than half a year on, and the post-partisanship of Iowa has given way to the post-nationalism of Berlin, and it turns out that the vague overture is the entire symphony. The golden rhetoric impresses less, the evasion of hard choices strikes one more.
When John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan went to Berlin, their rhetoric soared, but their optimism was grounded in the reality of politics, conflict and hard choices. Kennedy didn’t dream of the universal brotherhood of man. He drew lines that reflected hard realities: “There are some who say, in Europe and elsewhere, we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin.” Reagan didn’t call for a kumbaya moment. He cited tough policies that sparked harsh political disagreements — the deployment of U.S. missiles in response to the Soviet SS-20s — but still worked.
In Berlin, Obama made exactly one point with which it was possible to disagree. In the best paragraph of the speech, Obama called on Germans to send more troops to Afghanistan.
The argument will probably fall on deaf ears. The vast majority of Germans oppose that policy. But at least Obama made an argument.
Much of the rest of the speech fed the illusion that we could solve our problems if only people mystically come together. We should help Israelis and Palestinians unite. We should unite to prevent genocide in Darfur. We should unite so the Iranians won’t develop nukes. Or as Obama put it: “The walls between races and tribes, natives and immigrants, Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.”
The great illusion of the 1990s was that we were entering an era of global convergence in which politics and power didn’t matter. What Obama offered in Berlin flowed right out of this mind-set. This was the end of history on acid.
Since then, autocracies have arisen, the competition for resources has grown fiercer, Russia has clamped down, Iran is on the march. It will take politics and power to address these challenges, the two factors that dare not speak their name in Obama’s lofty peroration.
The odd thing is that Obama doesn’t really think this way. When he gets down to specific cases, he can be hard-headed. Last year, he spoke about his affinity for Reinhold Niebuhr, and their shared awareness that history is tragic and ironic and every political choice is tainted in some way.
But he has grown accustomed to putting on this sort of saccharine show for the rock concert masses, and in Berlin his act jumped the shark. His words drift far from reality, and not only when talking about the Senate Banking Committee. His Berlin Victory Column treacle would have made Niebuhr sick to his stomach.
Obama has benefited from a week of good images. But substantively, optimism without reality isn’t eloquence. It’s just Disney.
Paul Krugman is off today.
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/gerard_baker/article4392846.ece
July 25, 2008
He ventured forth to bring light to the world
The anointed one's pilgrimage to the Holy Land is a miracle in action - and a blessing to all his faithful followers
Gerard Baker
And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness.
The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family, offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a little blow.
When he was twelve years old, they found him in the temple in the City of Chicago, arguing the finer points of community organisation with the Prophet Jeremiah and the Elders. And the Elders were astonished at what they heard and said among themselves: “Verily, who is this Child that he opens our hearts and minds to the audacity of hope?”
In the great Battles of Caucus and Primary he smote the conniving Hillary, wife of the deposed King Bill the Priapic and their barbarian hordes of Working Class Whites.
Background
Obama fears the Blair effect as tour continues
The Europhiles are not the future, Mr Obama
The Bugle - Barack Obama is coming to Europe!
Our leaders go after some Obama magic
And so it was, in the fullness of time, before the harvest month of the appointed year, the Child ventured forth - for the first time - to bring the light unto all the world.
He travelled fleet of foot and light of camel, with a small retinue that consisted only of his loyal disciples from the tribe of the Media. He ventured first to the land of the Hindu Kush, where the
Taleban had harboured the viper of al-Qaeda in their bosom, raining terror on all the world.
And the Child spake and the tribes of Nato immediately loosed the Caveats that had previously bound them. And in the great battle that ensued the forces of the light were triumphant. For as long as the Child stood with his arms raised aloft, the enemy suffered great blows and the threat of terror was no more.
From there he went forth to Mesopotamia where he was received by the great ruler al-Maliki, and al-Maliki spake unto him and blessed his Sixteen Month Troop Withdrawal Plan even as the imperial warrior Petraeus tried to destroy it.
And lo, in Mesopotamia, a miracle occurred. Even though the Great Surge of Armour that the evil Bush had ordered had been a terrible mistake, a waste of vital military resources and doomed to end in disaster, the Child's very presence suddenly brought forth a great victory for the forces of the light.
And the Persians, who saw all this and were greatly fearful, longed to speak with the Child and saw that the Child was the bringer of peace. At the mention of his name they quickly laid aside their intrigues and beat their uranium swords into civil nuclear energy ploughshares.
From there the Child went up to the city of Jerusalem, and entered through the gate seated on an ass. The crowds of network anchors who had followed him from afar cheered “Hosanna” and waved great palm fronds and strewed them at his feet.
In Jerusalem and in surrounding Palestine, the Child spake to the Hebrews and the Arabs, as the Scripture had foretold. And in an instant, the lion lay down with the lamb, and the Israelites and Ishmaelites ended their long enmity and lived for ever after in peace.
As word spread throughout the land about the Child's wondrous works, peoples from all over flocked to hear him; Hittites and Abbasids; Obamacons and McCainiacs; Cameroonians and Blairites.
And they told of strange and wondrous things that greeted the news of the Child's journey. Around the world, global temperatures began to decline, and the ocean levels fell and the great warming was over.
The Great Prophet Algore of Nobel and Oscar, who many had believed was the anointed one, smiled and told his followers that the Child was the one generations had been waiting for.
And there were other wonderful signs. In the city of the Street at the Wall, spreads on interbank interest rates dropped like manna from Heaven and rates on credit default swaps fell to the ground as dead birds from the almond tree, and the people who had lived in foreclosure were able to borrow again.
Black gold gushed from the ground at prices well below $140 per barrel. In hospitals across the land the sick were cured even though they were uninsured. And all because the Child had pronounced it.
And this is the testimony of one who speaks the truth and bears witness to the truth so that you might believe. And he knows it is the truth for he saw it all on CNN and the BBC and in the pages of The New York Times.
Then the Child ventured forth from Israel and Palestine and stepped onto the shores of the Old Continent. In the land of Queen Angela of Merkel, vast multitudes gathered to hear his voice, and he preached to them at length.
But when he had finished speaking his disciples told him the crowd was hungry, for they had had nothing to eat all the hours they had waited for him.
And so the Child told his disciples to fetch some food but all they had was five loaves and a couple of frankfurters. So he took the bread and the frankfurters and blessed them and told his disciples to feed the multitudes. And when all had eaten their fill, the scraps filled twelve baskets.
Thence he travelled west to Mount Sarkozy. Even the beauteous Princess Carla of the tribe of the Bruni was struck by awe and she was great in love with the Child, but he was tempted not.
On the Seventh Day he walked across the Channel of the Angles to the ancient land of the hooligans. There he was welcomed with open arms by the once great prophet Blair and his successor, Gordon the Leper, and his successor, David the Golden One.
And suddenly, with the men appeared the archangel Gabriel and the whole host of the heavenly choir, ranks of cherubim and seraphim, all praising God and singing: “Yes, We Can.”
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July 25, 2008, 7:45 a.m.
It’s America, Obama
A modest dissent to the citizen of the world.
By Victor Davis Hanson
What disturbed me about Barack Obama's Berlin speech were some reoccurring utopian assumptions about cause and effect — namely, that bad things happen almost as if by accident, and are to be addressed by faceless, universal forces of good will.
Unlike Obama, I would not speak to anyone as “a fellow citizen of the world,” but only as an ordinary American who wishes to do his best for the world, but with a much-appreciated American identity, and rather less with a commonality indistinguishable from those poor souls trapped in the Sudan, North Korea, Cuba, or Iran. Take away all particular national identity and we are empty shells mouthing mere platitudes, who believe in little and commit to even less. In this regard, postmodern, post-national Europe is not quite the ideal, but a warning of how good intentions can run amuck. Ask the dead of Srebrenica, or the ostracized Danish cartoonists, or the archbishop of Canterbury with his supposed concern for transcendent universal human rights.
With all due respect, I also don't believe the world did anything to save Berlin, just as it did nothing to save the Rwandans or the Iraqis under Saddam — or will do anything for those of Darfur; it was only the U.S. Air Force that risked war to feed the helpless of Berlin as it saved the Muslims of the Balkans. And I don't think we have much to do in America with creating a world in which “famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands.” Bad, often evil, autocratic governments abroad cause hunger, often despite rich natural landscapes; and nature, in tragic fashion, not “the carbon we send into atmosphere,” causes “terrible storms,” just as it has and will for millennia.
Perhaps conflict-resolution theory posits there are no villains, only misunderstandings; but I think military history suggests that culpability exists — and is not merely hopelessly relative or just in the eye of the beholder. So despite Obama’s soaring moral rhetoric, I am troubled by his historical revisionism that, “The two superpowers that faced each other across the wall of this city came too close too often to destroying all we have built and all that we love.”
I would beg to differ again, and suggest instead that a mass-murdering Soviet tyranny came close to destroying the European continent (as it had, in fact, wiped out millions of its own people) and much beyond as well — and was checked only by an often lone and caricatured US superpower and its nuclear deterrence. When the Soviet Union collapsed, there was no danger to the world from American nuclear weapons “destroying all we have built” — while the inverse would not have been true, had nuclear and totalitarian communism prevailed. We sleep too lightly tonight not because democratic Israel has obtained nuclear weapons, but because a frightening Iran just might.
When Obama shouts,
Will we reject torture and stand for the rule of law? Will we welcome immigrants from different lands, and shun discrimination against those who don't look like us or worship like we do, and keep the promise of equality and opportunity for all of our people?
it is the world, not the U.S., that needs to listen most. In this regard I would have preferred Sen. Obama of mixed ancestry to have begun with “In the recent tradition of African-American Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice,” rather than the less factual, “I don't look like the Americans who've previously spoken in this great city.”
I want also to shout back that the United States does stand for the rule of law, as even the killers of Guantanamo realize with their present redress of grievances, access to complex jurisprudence, and humane treatment — all in a measure beyond what such terrorists would receive anywhere else. It is the United States that takes in more immigrants than does any country in the world, and thus is the prime destination of those who flee the miseries of this often wretched globe.
American immigration policies are humane, not only in easy comparison to the savagery shown the “other” in Africa or the Middle East, but fair and compassionate in comparison to what we see presently accorded aliens in Mexico, France, and, yes, Germany. Again, in all this fuzziness — this sermonizing in condescending fashion reminiscent at times of the Pennsylvania remonstration — there is the whiff of American culpability, but certainly not much of a nod to American exceptionalism. Politicians characteristically say to applauding audiences abroad what they wish to hear. True statesmen often do not.
In terms of foreign affairs, I think Americans will finally come to vote for a candidate, who with goodwill, a lot of humility, and a little grace, can persuade the world that universal moral progress, freedom, and material prosperity best advance under the aegis of free markets, constitutional government, and individual freedom, rather than for someone who seems to think, in naïve fashion, that these are necessarily shared and natural human practices, or are presently in force outside the West — or will arise due to dialogue or international good intentions.
— Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTAzZWIwOWYzMTg1YzkyOTllODM2YmU0OTdjZGVhNjg=
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World Citizen Obama
By Frank J Gaffney Jr.
FrontPageMagazine.com | Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s single most illuminating statement in the course of a just-completed overseas tour was his self-description during the stop in Berlin as a “citizen of the world.” Widely interpreted as nothing more than an innocuous expression of solidarity with his adoring, post-nationalist hosts, this declaration is actually just the latest indication that Senator Obama embraces a vision of his own country and its role in the world that should be exceedingly worrisome to America’s citizenry.
The appellation “Citizen” has a checkered past. French revolutionaries used it first to distinguish the common man from the reviled aristocracy, then to enforce their reign of terror on both. Orson Welles entitled his classic film modeled on the life of William Randolph Hearst Citizen Kane – depicting an unscrupulous demagogue who, despite his privileged background, nearly obtained high elective office on a populist platform.
Now Citizen Obama uses a turn of phrase with no less troubling overtones. The notion of world citizenship has become a staple of transnationalists who seek to subordinate national sovereignty and constitutional arrangements to a higher power. They are working to replace, for example, our directly elected representatives operating in a carefully constructed system of checks-and-balances, with rule by unaccountable elites in the form of international bureaucracies, judiciaries and even so-called “norms.”
Citizens of the world can have their rights circumscribed or even eliminated without their consent. For instance, in March the Organization of the Islamic Conference – what amounts to a Muslim mafia organization – demanded that the UN Human Rights Council (dominated by the OIC’s members) amend the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The effect was to alter the foundational freedom of expression so as to prohibit speech that offends adherents to Islam.
World citizens embrace the idea that the United Nations and other multinational organizations are imbued with a moral authority not found in nation-states like ours. When he was the Democratic Party standard-bearer, Senator John Kerry famously described American foreign and defense policy as only being legitimate when it passed a “global test” – in other words, approval by the international community.
Today, the Democrats’ incipient nominee subscribes to the view that, as he put it in Berlin, “The burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together.” Global citizenship amounts to code for subordinating American interests to our putative responsibilities as a member of the international community. The former can be pursued only to the extent our fellow global citizens – or, more precisely, their unelected, unaccountable spokesmen in Turtle Bay, Geneva, The Hague or other seats of “world government” – approve.
To further such a subordination of American power, the transnationalists have long sought to enmesh the United States in a web of treaties and institutions. These include: the World Trade Organization (which now routinely rules against U.S. companies and economic interests while giving a pass to Communist China’s); the International Criminal Court (which has just established an ominous precedent for U.S. officials by indicting the sitting – albeit opprobrious – president of Sudan); and the Law of the Sea Treaty (described by its admirers as a “constitution of the oceans,” it assigns unprecedented responsibilities for control of the oceans and even activities ashore to international organs).
Of course, the notion that there truly is such a thing as an “international community” is a conceit of the transnationalists. In practice, decisions are made by majorities usually dominated by the world’s authoritarians – Russia, China, the so-called “non-aligned” of the developing world and, increasingly, the Islamist states. The subordination of U.S. freedom of action, let alone national security, to such a world citizenry is a formula for disaster.
A riveting insight into this reality was provided a few months back when the National Rifle Association’s Wayne LaPierre addressed a meeting in New Orleans, the scene following Hurricane Katrina of the forceful disarmament of law-abiding U.S. citizens. Mr. LaPierre showed a video which included a chilling statement from a senior UN official to the effect that, while she understood Americans were reluctant to part with their firearms, they had better get used to being “citizens of the world” just like everybody else.
For many in Sen. Obama’s audiences, references to “global citizenship” must sound about as benign as his mantra about promoting “change we can believe in.” It all has a sort of Rodney King-like quality to it: “Can’t we all just get along?”
In fact, the terminology Citizen Obama uses reveals an attachment to a radical transformation of not just our foreign policy but of the nature of our country itself. The “change” he has in mind could prove fatal to our sovereignty and constitutional form of government.
Questions about the appropriate role of America in the world and how it conducts its relationships with foreign powers are, of course, essential topics in any presidential campaign. That is particularly true at a moment when the United States finds itself engaged in a global war with a totalitarian ideology, Islamofascism, that has embedded itself in many allied countries and enjoys strong support from most of our foes.
It falls most immediately to Senator John McCain to highlight Citizen Obama’s radical answers to these questions and ultimately to U.S. voters to determine whether they want a global citizen in the White House or a president of, by and for the American people.
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is the founder, president, and CEO of The Center for Security Policy. During the Reagan administration, Gaffney was the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy, and a Professional Staff Member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, chaired by Senator John Tower (R-Texas). He is a columnist for The Washington Times, Jewish World Review, and Townhall.com and has also contributed to The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New Republic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, The Los Angeles Times, and Newsday.
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http://www.redstate.com/diaries/brianfaughnan/2008/jul/24/enthusiasm-for-obama-on-the-wane-2/
Sept/Oct is really when the polls start to matter.
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http://www.nypost.com/php/pfriendly/print.php?url=http://www.nypost.com/seven/07292008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/os_tour_de_farce_122049.htm
O'S TOUR DE FARCE
By AMIR TAHERI
July 29, 2008 --
TERMED a "learning" trip, Sen. Barack Obama's eight- day tour of eight nations in the Middle East and Europe turned out to be little more than a series of photo ops to enhance his international credentials.
"He looked like a man in a hurry," a source close to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said last week. "He was not interested in what we had to say."
Still, many Iraqis liked Obama's claim that the improved situation in Iraq owed to Iraqi efforts rather than the Gen. David Petraeus-led surge. In public and private comments, Obama tried to give the impression that the Iraqis would've achieved the same results even without the greater resources America has poured into the country since 2007.
In private, though, Iraqi officials admit that Obama's analysis is "way off the mark." Without the surge, the Sunni tribes wouldn't have switched sides to help flush out al Qaeda. And the strong US military presence enabled the new Iraqi army to defeat Iran-backed Shiite militias in Basra and Baghdad.
Nevertheless, in public at least, no Iraqi politician wants to appear more appreciative of American sacrifices than the man who may become the next US president.
Iraqis were most surprised by Obama's apparent readiness to throw away all the gains made in Iraq simply to prove that he'd been right in opposing the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein. "He gave us the impression that the last thing he wanted was for Iraq to look anything like a success for the United States," a senior Iraqi official told me. "As far as he is concerned, this is Bush's war and must end in lack of success, if not actual defeat."
Even so, Obama knows that most Americans believe they're still at war with an enemy prepared to use terror against them. So he can't do what his antiwar base wants - declare an end to the War on Terror and the start of a period of love and peace in which "citizens of the world" build bridges between civilizations.
That's why Obama is trying to adopt Afghanistan as "his" war. He claims that Bush's focus on Iraq has left Afghanistan an orphan in need of love and attention. Even though US military strategy is to enable America to fight two major wars simultaneously, Obama seems to believe that only one war is possible at a time.
But what does that mean practically?
Obama says he wants to shift two brigades (some of his advisers say two battalions) from Iraq to Afghanistan. But where did that magical figure come from? From NATO, which has been calling on its members to provide more troops since 2006.
NATO wants the added troops mainly to improve the position of its reserves in Afghanistan. The alliance doesn't face an actual shortage of combat units - it's merely facing a rotation schedule that obliges some units to stay in the field for up to six weeks longer than is normal for NATO armies.
Overall, NATO hopes that its members will have no difficulty providing the 5,000 more troops it needs for a "surge." So there's no need for the US to abandon Iraq in order to help Afghanistan.
The immediate effect of Obama's plan to abandon Iraq and send more troops to Afghanistan is to ease pressure on other NATO members to make a greater contribution. Even in Paris, some critics think that President Nicolas Sarkozy should postpone sending more troops until after the US presidential election. "If President Obama can provide all the manpower needed in Afghanistan, there is no need for us to commit more troops," said a Sarkozy security adviser.
Obama's move would suit Sarkozy fine because he's reducing the size of the French army and closing more than 80 garrisons. Other Europeans would also be pleased. German Chancellor Angela Merkel will soon face a difficult general election in which her main rivals will be calling for an end to "the Afghan adventure."
Today, with the sole exception of Spain (where the mildly anti-American Socialist Party is in power), pro-US parties govern Europe. These parties feel pressure from the Bush administration to translate their pro-American claims into actual support for the Afghanistan war effort. By promising to shoulder the burden, Obama is letting the European allies off the hook.
Obama doesn't seem to have noticed the European scene's subtleties. Despite his claim that he came to listen, he seems to have heard nothing of interest during his 10,000-mile trip.
Having announced his strategy before embarking on his "listening tour," he couldn't be expected to change his mind simply because facts on the ground offered a different picture.
In Paris, a friendly reporter asked the Illinois senator if there was anything that he'd heard or seen during his visit that might persuade him to alter any aspect of his polices. Obama's answer was clear: no.
Amir Taheri's next book, "The Persian Night: Iran Under the Khomeinist Revolution," is due out this fall.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-bolton26-2008jul26,0,4549608.story
One world? Obama's on a different planet
The senator's Berlin speech was radical and naive.
By John R. Bolton
July 26, 2008
SEN. BARACK OBAMA said in an interview the day after his Berlin speech that it "allowed me to send a message to the American people that the judgments I have made and the judgments I will make are ones that are going to result in them being safer."
If that is what the senator thought he was doing, he still has a lot to learn about both foreign policy and the views of the American people. Although well received in the Tiergarten, the Obama speech actually reveals an even more naive view of the world than we had previously been treated to in the United States. In addition, although most of the speech was
substantively as content-free as his other campaign pronouncements, when substance did slip in, it was truly radical, from an American perspective.
These troubling comments were not widely reported in the generally adulatory media coverage given the speech, but they nonetheless deserve intense scrutiny. It remains to be seen whether these glimpses into Obama's thinking will have any impact on the presidential campaign, but clearly they were not casual remarks. This speech, intended to generate the enormous publicity it in fact received, reflects his campaign's carefully calibrated political thinking. Accordingly, there should be no evading the implications of his statements. Consider just the following two examples.
First, urging greater U.S.-European cooperation, Obama said, "The burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together." Having earlier proclaimed himself "a fellow citizen of the world" with his German hosts, Obama explained that the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Europe proved "that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one."
Perhaps Obama needs a remedial course in Cold War history, but the Berlin Wall most certainly did not come down because "the world stood as one." The wall fell because of a decades-long, existential struggle against one of the greatest totalitarian ideologies mankind has ever faced. It was a struggle in which strong and determined U.S. leadership was constantly questioned, both in Europe and by substantial segments of the senator's own Democratic Party. In Germany in the later years of the Cold War, Ostpolitik -- "eastern politics," a policy of rapprochement rather than resistance -- continuously risked a split in the Western alliance and might have allowed communism to survive. The U.S. president who made the final successful assault on communism, Ronald Reagan, was derided by many in Europe as not very bright, too unilateralist and too provocative.
But there are larger implications to Obama's rediscovery of the "one world" concept, first announced in the U.S. by Wendell Willkie, the failed Republican 1940 presidential nominee, and subsequently buried by the Cold War's realities.
The successes Obama refers to in his speech -- the defeat of Nazism, the Berlin airlift and the collapse of communism -- were all gained by strong alliances defeating determined opponents of freedom, not by "one-worldism." Although the senator was trying to distinguish himself from perceptions of Bush administration policy within the Atlantic Alliance, he was in fact sketching out a post-alliance policy, perhaps one that would unfold in global organizations such as the United Nations. This is far-reaching indeed.
Second, Obama used the Berlin Wall metaphor to describe his foreign policy priorities as president: "The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down."
This is a confused, nearly incoherent compilation, to say the least, amalgamating tensions in the Atlantic Alliance with ancient historical conflicts. One hopes even Obama, inexperienced as he is, doesn't see all these "walls" as essentially the same in size and scope. But beyond the incoherence, there is a deeper problem, namely that "walls" exist not simply because of a lack of understanding about who is on the other side but because there are true differences in values and interests that lead to human conflict. The Berlin Wall itself was not built because of a failure of communication but because of the implacable hostility of communism toward freedom. The wall was a reflection of that reality, not an unfortunate mistake.
Tearing down the Berlin Wall was possible because one side -- our side -- defeated the other. Differences in levels of economic development, or the treatment of racial, immigration or religious questions, are not susceptible to the same analysis or solution. Even more basically, challenges to our very civilization, as the Cold War surely was, are not overcome by naively "tearing down walls" with our adversaries.
Throughout the Berlin speech, there were numerous policy pronouncements, all of them hazy and nonspecific, none of them new or different than what Obama has already said during the long American campaign. But the Berlin framework in which he wrapped these ideas for the first time is truly radical for a prospective American president. That he picked a foreign audience is perhaps not surprising, because they could be expected to welcome a less-assertive American view of its role in the world, at least at first glance. Even anti-American Europeans, however, are likely to regret a United States that sees itself as just one more nation in a "united" world.
The best we can hope for is that Obama's rhetoric was simply that, pandering to the audience before him, as politicians so often do. We shall see if this rhetoric follows him back to America, either because he continues to use it or because Sen. John McCain asks voters if this is really what they want from their next president.
John R. Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of "Surrender Is Not an Option."
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“Here comes the orator! With his flood of words, and his drop of reason.” —Benjamin Franklin
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Obama Takes His Own Law Exams. How did he do?
By Emily Bazelon
Posted Wednesday, July 30, 2008, at 7:02 PM ET
www.slate.com
Could this guy really be running for president? I asked myself this question about Barack Obama after reading his, at turns, quite angry memoir Dreams From My Father. I'm asking it again today after reading through the exams he gave when he was a constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago—and in particular the model answers he wrote up for his own questions.
It's not that the book or the class materials scream fomenting liberal or fomenting anything. If they did, you'd have heard about it already. These writings are tempered and thoughtful and sophisticated and nuanced, as the law professors asked to comment on the exams point out on the Web site of the New York Times, which posted the exams. Obama either kept sharp or out-there views out of the classroom because he had an eye on his political future or because he wanted to make sure his students felt comfortable expressing opposing ideas. (For what it's worth, most of the professors I took classes from in law school did the same, at least in front of the lectern.)
But even more than his memoir, Obama's exam answers offer complex ruminations on some of the most contentious social and legal questions out there. Can a state pass a law barring doctors from treating unmarried couples for infertility, with a special slap at gay couples embedded in the statute? Can a city in which black students are failing open a special career academy for black boys?
Can a presidential candidate really afford to sail into these roiling waters, however skillfully? Obama gets away with it—if he does, come November—primarily because … law exams are hard! The questions are long fact patterns that branch out in all directions. The answers rely on tracking the facts through a series of doctrinal moves and countermoves—this Supreme Court case sends me north, but then this other one turns east, or is that ruling heading upside down? You can write a lot that's descriptive rather than proscriptive. As in, "The courts have never recognized unmarried persons as a 'suspect class.' "
At one point, Obama asks his students to sound off about their own policy views. But after asking whether the hypothetical "Ujamaa School" for black boys is "good public policy," he doesn't write out his own potentially enlightening model answer. Instead he retreats to finding it "interesting" that a slim majority of students came down on Ujamaa's side, "based on a justifiable skepticism in the prospect of truly integrated schools and an equally justified concern over the desperate condition of many inner city schools." Isn't it lucky that cagey politics is consistent with respectfully deferring to students' views?
More revealing, however, are passages in Obama's 1996 discussion about whether a lesbian couple could successfully challenge the constitutionality of his made-up "Preservation of Family Values Act," which would block the women from conceiving via in vitro fertilization. Obama writes of a "troubling" issue: "the Court's tendency, in cases since Roe, to embrace notions of 'tradition' as a means of curtailing the potential expansiveness of rights recognized under the Due Process Clause." Then he starts duking it out with Justice Antonin Scalia. As Chapman University law professor John Eastman points out in the NYT discussion, Obama calls Scalia's approach to defining the scope of substantive due process rights "cramped." And then he parries. Scalia would argue, he thinks, that the right to procreate applies only in the context of a "monogamous, heterosexual marriage." But how do you square that with the court's abortion jurisprudence and with Eiesenstadt v. Baird, the 1972 case that gave unmarried couples the right to have contraception? Scalia isn't just cramped; when Obama reads the justice against his colleagues, he also finds him to be wrong.
This mano a mano repeats in Obama's answer to a 1997 exam question about whether a state ban on cloning violates the constitutional rights of parents who want to clone their daughter, who is in a vegetative state, after turning off her life support. Obama channels Scalia here by pointing out that the justice might argue that cloning isn't even "procreation," according to the dictionary definition of that term. He goes on, "In the absence of any deeply rooted tradition, Scalia would argue," the Supreme Court should mind its own business and let the state ban stand. But whether a majority of the court would "embrace such a cramped reading"—that word of distaste again—Obama says, "is not entirely clear." In some ways, the argument for upholding the cloning law is stronger than the one for upholding the fertility-treatment ban in the earlier exam, because the science behind cloning is so much less certain than for in vitro and because there's no anti-gay impulse at issue. But Obama doesn't give Scalia an inch. The justice gets his due, and then he gets stuffed into the box for judges who talk loudly but don't carry a majority.
And then there's this flourish in Obama's model answer to his 1996 question: He picks up on a suggestion from some of his students "that courts do not use the tools of Equal Protection or substantive Due Process doctrine … to guide their analysis, but rather, use these labels to justify, after the fact, what are inescapably decisions based on policy calculation, ethical and political considerations, and the idiosyncratic values of particular justices." Here's another similar sentiment, "What is safe to say is that the views of particular justices on the desirability of rearing in [sic] children in homosexual households would play a big part in the decision."
Whoa. So here are the roots of Obama's statements that he will pick judges who have "heart" and "empathy" because he thinks that in a small but key set of cases, a judge must fall back on "his or her own perspectives, his ethics, his or her moral bearings." Obama is not a man, or a lawyer, who believes that at least in these hellishly difficult matters of constitutional interpretation, judges are truly guided by legal precedent, or abstract reasoning, or anything other than their gut and the outcome they prefer. This is not the way most politicians talk about the court. Certainly not John McCain. And it's not clear that Obama's candor about the role of the judicial gut is a political winner. "These are tricky questions," Obama confides to his law students at another point in his exam answers. No kidding.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/07/31/hope-and-change-obama-loses-eight-points-in-four-days/
**This gives me HOPE the polls will continue to CHANGE!** :evil:
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What Is a 'Windfall' Profit?
August 4, 2008
The "windfall profits" tax is back, with Barack Obama stumping again to apply it to a handful of big oil companies. Which raises a few questions: What is a "windfall" profit anyway? How does it differ from your everyday, run of the mill profit? Is it some absolute number, a matter of return on equity or sales -- or does it merely depend on who earns it?
Enquiring entrepreneurs want to know. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama's "emergency" plan, announced on Friday, doesn't offer any clarity. To pay for "stimulus" checks of $1,000 for families and $500 for individuals, the Senator says government would take "a reasonable share" of oil company profits.
Mr. Obama didn't bother to define "reasonable," and neither did Dick Durbin, the second-ranking Senate Democrat, when he recently declared that "The oil companies need to know that there is a limit on how much profit they can take in this economy." Really? This extraordinary redefinition of free-market success could use some parsing.
Take Exxon Mobil, which on Thursday reported the highest quarterly profit ever and is the main target of any "windfall" tax surcharge. Yet if its profits are at record highs, its tax bills are already at record highs too. Between 2003 and 2007, Exxon paid $64.7 billion in U.S. taxes, exceeding its after-tax U.S. earnings by more than $19 billion. That sounds like a government windfall to us, but perhaps we're missing some Obama-Durbin business subtlety.
Maybe they have in mind profit margins as a percentage of sales. Yet by that standard Exxon's profits don't seem so large. Exxon's profit margin stood at 10% for 2007, which is hardly out of line with the oil and gas industry average of 8.3%, or the 8.9% for U.S. manufacturing (excluding the sputtering auto makers).
If that's what constitutes windfall profits, most of corporate America would qualify. Take aerospace or machinery -- both 8.2% in 2007. Chemicals had an average margin of 12.7%. Computers: 13.7%. Electronics and appliances: 14.5%. Pharmaceuticals (18.4%) and beverages and tobacco (19.1%) round out the Census Bureau's industry rankings. The latter two double the returns of Big Oil, though of course government has already became a tacit shareholder in Big Tobacco through the various legal settlements that guarantee a revenue stream for years to come.
In a tax bill on oil earlier this summer, no fewer than 51 Senators voted to impose a 25% windfall tax on a U.S.-based oil company whose profits grew by more than 10% in a single year and wasn't investing enough in "renewable" energy. This suggests that a windfall is defined by profits growing too fast. No one knows where that 10% came from, besides political convenience. But if 10% is the new standard, the tech industry is going to have to rethink its growth arc. So will LG, the electronics company, which saw its profits grow by 505% in 2007. Abbott Laboratories hit 110%.
If Senator Obama is as exercised about "outrageous" profits as he says he is, he might also have to turn on a few liberal darlings. Oh, say, Berkshire Hathaway. Warren Buffett's outfit pulled in $11 billion last year, up 29% from 2006. Its profit margin -- if that's the relevant figure -- was 11.47%, which beats out the American oil majors.
Or consider Google, which earned a mere $4.2 billion but at a whopping 25.3% margin. Google earns far more from each of its sales dollars than does Exxon, but why doesn't Mr. Obama consider its advertising-search windfall worthy of special taxation?
The fun part about this game is anyone can play. Jim Johnson, formerly of Fannie Mae and formerly a political fixer for Mr. Obama, reaped a windfall before Fannie's multibillion-dollar accounting scandal. Bill Clinton took down as much as $15 million working as a rainmaker for billionaire financier Ron Burkle's Yucaipa Companies. This may be the very definition of "windfall."
General Electric profits by investing in the alternative energy technology that Mr. Obama says Congress should subsidize even more heavily than it already does. GE's profit margin in 2007 was 10.3%, about the same as profiteering Exxon's. Private-equity shops like Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins, which recently hired Al Gore, also invest in alternative energy start-ups, though they keep their margins to themselves. We can safely assume their profits are lofty, much like those of George Soros's investment funds.
The point isn't that these folks (other than Mr. Clinton) have something to apologize for, or that these firms are somehow more "deserving" of windfall tax extortion than Big Oil. The point is that what constitutes an abnormal profit is entirely arbitrary. It is in the eye of the political beholder, who is usually looking to soak some unpopular business. In other words, a windfall is nothing more than a profit earned by a business that some politician dislikes. And a tax on that profit is merely a form of politically motivated expropriation.
It's what politicians do in Venezuela, not in a free country.
See all of today's editorials and op-eds, plus video commentary
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http://michellemalkin.com/2008/08/04/oops-democrat-on-vp-shortlist-underscores-obamas-inexperience/
Self-inflicted wounds are the best! :evil:
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/08/06/obama-really-doesnt-like-a-debate/
Don't dare question his imperiousness.
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Obama's Muslim-Outreach Adviser Resigns
By GLENN R. SIMPSON and AMY CHOZICK
August 6, 2008; Page A4
The Muslim-outreach coordinator to the presidential campaign of Barack Obama has resigned amid questions about his involvement in an Islamic investment fund and various Islamic groups.
Mr. Asbahi said he did not want to distract Obama's campaign.
Chicago lawyer Mazen Asbahi, who was appointed volunteer national coordinator for Muslim American affairs by the Obama campaign on July 26, stepped down Monday after an Internet newsletter wrote about his brief stint on the fund's board, which also included a fundamentalist imam.
"Mr. Asbahi has informed the campaign that he no longer wishes to serve in his volunteer position, and we are in the process of searching for a new national Arab American and Muslim American outreach coordinator," spokesman Ben LaBolt said in a statement.
A corporate lawyer at the firm of Schiff Hardin LLP, Mr. Asbahi tendered his resignation after he and the Obama campaign received emailed inquiries about his background from The Wall Street Journal. He did not respond to the email or a message left at his law office; the campaign released a letter in which Mr. Asbahi said he did not want to be a distraction.
The Obama campaign is trying to strike a balance between courting Muslim American voters and dispelling rumors intended by some to link the candidate to radical Islam. Sen. Obama is a Christian.
Until Mr. Asbahi joined the campaign, Sen. Obama did not have a Muslim-outreach coordinator and had relied on the Democratic National Committee's efforts. The campaign has long had its own outreach efforts to Catholic, evangelical Christian and Jewish voters. Some Muslim voters have complained about the disparity. An Obama aide says Mr. Asbahi was brought on in part to bridge that perceived gap and to reach out to Muslim communities in Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, states seen as among the most competitive this fall.
"We need Muslim Americans to get excited about the Campaign, and there's a lot to get excited about!" Mr. Asbahi wrote in a statement posted on a blog when he was appointed. "Sure, there have been mis-steps," he added.
In 2000, Mr. Asbahi briefly served on the board of Allied Assets Advisors Fund, a Delaware-registered trust. Its other board members at the time included Jamal Said, the imam at a fundamentalist-controlled mosque in Illinois.
"I served on that board for only a few weeks before resigning as soon as I became aware of public allegations against another member of the board," Mr. Asbahi said in his resignation letter. "Since concerns have been raised about that brief time, I am stepping down...to avoid distracting from Barack Obama's message of change."
The eight-year-old connection between Mr. Asbahi and Mr. Said was raised last week by the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report, which is published by a Washington think tank and chronicles the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood, a world-wide fundamentalist group based in Egypt. Other Web sites, some pro-Republican and others critical of fundamentalist Islam, also have reported on the background of Mr. Asbahi. He is a frequent speaker before several groups in the U.S. that scholars have associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Justice Department named Mr. Said an unindicted co-conspirator in the racketeering trial last year of several alleged Hamas fund-raisers, which ended in a mistrial. He has also been identified as a leading member of the group in news reports going back to 1993.
Mr. Said is the imam at the Bridgeview Mosque in Bridge-view, Ill., outside Chicago. He left the board of the Islamic fund in 2005, Securities and Exchange Commission filings state. A message left for Mr. Said at the mosque was not returned.
Allied Asset Advisors is a subsidiary of the North American Islamic Trust. The trust, which is supported financially by the government of Saudi Arabia, holds title to many mosques in the U.S. and promotes a conservative brand of Islam compatible with the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood and also akin to the fundamentalist style predominant in Saudi Arabia. Allied executives did not respond to inquiries.
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB121797906741214995.html?mod=special_page_campaig n2008_leftbox
Allied Asset Advisors is a subsidiary of the North American Islamic Trust. The trust, which is supported financially by the government of Saudi Arabia, holds title to many mosques in the U.S. and promotes a conservative brand of Islam compatible with the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood and also akin to the fundamentalist style predominant in Saudi Arabia.
This is a big problem.
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The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee's choice of the word "change" as his campaign's central slogan is not the product of focus-group studies, or the brainstorming sessions of his political consultants.
One of Obama's main inspirations was a man dedicated to revolutionary change that he was convinced "must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, nonchallenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future."
Saul Alinsky, circa 1946: Like Obama, he wanted "change."
Sen. Obama was trained by Chicago's Industrial Areas Foundation, founded in 1940 by the radical organizer Saul Alinsky. In the 1980s, Obama spent years as director of the Developing Communities Project, which operated using Alinsky's strategies, and was involved with two other Alinsky-oriented entities, Acorn and Project Vote.
On the Obama campaign Web site can be found a photo of him teaching in a University of Chicago classroom with "Power Analysis" and "Relationships Built on Self Interest" written on the blackboard — key terms utilized in the Alinsky method.
The far-left Alinsky had no time for liberalism or liberals, declaring that "a liberal is (someone) who puts his foot down firmly on thin air." He wanted nothing less than transformational radicalism. "America was begun by its radicals," he wrote. "America was built by its radicals. The hope and future of America lies with its radicals." And so, "This is the job for today's radical — to fan the embers of hopelessness into a flame to fight. To say, '. . . let us change it together!' "
Alinsky students ranged "from militant Indians to Chicanos to Puerto Ricans to blacks from all parts of the black power spectrum, from Panthers to radical philosophers, from a variety of campus activists, S.D.S. and others, to a priest who was joining a revolutionary party in South America."
Capitalism always was considered the enemy. "America's corporations are a spiritual slum," he wrote, "and their arrogance is the major threat to our future as a free society." Is it surprising that an Alinsky disciple such as Obama can promise so blithely to increase taxes on CEOs?
Obama calls his years as an Alinskyesque community organizer in Chicago "the best education I ever had, and where I learned the true meaning of my Christian faith." But as radicalism expert Richard Lawrence Poe has noted, "Camouflage is key to Alinsky-style organizing. In organizing coalitions of black churches in Chicago, Obama caught flak for not attending church himself. He became an instant churchgoer."
Indeed, Alinsky believed in sacrificing ethics and morals for the great cause. "Ethical standards must be elastic to stretch with the times," Alinsky wrote in his last book, "Rules for Radicals," adding that "all values are relative in a world of political relativity."
Published a year before Alinsky's death in 1972, "Rules for Radicals" includes a dedication in which he gives "an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical . . . who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer."
Alinsky's writings even explain what often seems like Obama's oversized ego. In New Hampshire in January, for example, the senator told an audience that "a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany . . . and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Obama."
It was a bizarre spectacle, but consider that Alinsky believed that "anyone who is working against the haves is always facing odds, and in many cases heavy odds. If he or she does not have that complete self-confidence (or call it ego) that he can win, then the battle is lost before it is even begun."
According to Alinsky, "Ego must be so all-pervading that the personality of the organizer is contagious, that it converts the people from despair to defiance, creating a mass ego."
Alinsky also readily admitted that he didn't trust the people themselves. "It is the schizophrenia of a free society that we outwardly espouse faith in the people but inwardly have strong doubts whether the people can be trusted," he wrote. "Seeking some meaning in life," the middle class, according to Alinsky, "turn to an extreme chauvinism and become defenders of the 'American' faith."
This is evocative of Obama's remark during the primaries that small-town Americans are "bitter" and "cling to guns or religion."
Obama is also following Alinsky's instructions to the hard left for attaining power in America. In the last chapter of "Rules for Radicals," titled "The Way Ahead," is found this declaration: "Activists and radicals, on and off our college campuses — people who are committed to change — must make a complete turnabout."
Alinsky noted that "our rebels have contemptuously rejected the values and way of life of the middle class. They have stigmatized it as materialistic, decadent, bourgeois, degenerate, imperialistic, war-mongering, brutalized and corrupt."
According to Alinsky, "They are right," but he cautioned his comrades that "the power and the people are in the big middle-class majority." Therefore, an effective radical activist "discards the rhetoric that always says 'pig' " in reference to police officers, plus other forms of disguise, "to radicalize parts of the middle class."
Obama's rhetorical window-dressing is easily recognizable as Alinskyesque camouflage. New annual spending of more than $340 billion, as estimated by the National Taxpayers Union, is merely a wish to "recast" the safety net woven by FDR and LBJ, as Obama describes it in his writings. The free market is disparaged as a "winner-take-all" economy. Big tax increases masquerade as "restoring fairness to the economy."
Barack Obama's "Change We Can Believe In" is simply socialism — imposed by stratagem because Americans have never believed in Marxist economics. Saul Alinsky understood this, and his ghost is alive and well — and threatening to haunt the White House.
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Talk About Audacity!
By JAMES TARANTO
August 19, 2008
Speaking before the Veterans of Foreign Wars this morning, Barack Obama delivered an amazing show of chutzpah. John McCain had addressed the VFW yesterday, and as the Associated Press reports, he was predictably critical of Obama:
McCain . . . said Obama "tried to legislate failure" in the Iraq war and had put his ambition to be president above the interests of the United States. He said the Illinois senator did this by pushing for a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq and by voting in the Senate against a major appropriations bill to help fund the troop increase.
Here is Obama's reply:
"One of the things that we have to change in this country is the idea that people can't disagree without challenging each other's character and patriotism. I have never suggested that Sen. McCain picks his positions on national security based on politics or personal ambition. I have not suggested it because I believe that he genuinely wants to serve America's national interest. Now, it's time for him to acknowledge that I want to do the same. . . ."
Of course, if Obama were to accuse McCain of picking his positions on national security based on politics or personal ambition, everyone would laugh, because it obviously is not true. By contrast, there is quite a bit of evidence that Obama has placed political expediency above national security (for an excellent example, see our item yesterday on his shifting explanations for his original opposition to the liberation of Iraq).
In politics one often hears the charge of hypocrisy: My opponent criticizes me for X, but he has done Y, which is just as bad or worse. Obama's argument here, though, is roughly opposite in form. He concedes that McCain is above reproach on this particular subject and therefore demands that McCain treat him as if he were beyond reproach. Obama's acknowledgment of a McCain virtue is well and good, but it does not mitigate or excuse his own shortcoming.
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Barack Obama through Muslim Eyes
by Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com
August 25, 2008
How do Muslims see Barack Hussein Obama? They have three choices: either as he presents himself – someone who has "never been a Muslim" and has "always been a Christian"; or as a fellow Muslim; or as an apostate from Islam.
Reports suggests that while Americans generally view the Democratic candidate having had no religion before converting at Reverend Jeremiah Wrights's hands at age 27, Muslims the world over rarely see him as Christian but usually as either Muslim or ex-Muslim.
Lee Smith of the Hudson Institute explains why: "Barack Obama's father was Muslim and therefore, according to Islamic law, so is the candidate. In spite of the Quranic verses explaining that there is no compulsion in religion, a Muslim child takes the religion of his or her father. … for Muslims around the world, non-American Muslims at any rate, they can only ever see Barack Hussein Obama as a Muslim." In addition, his school record from Indonesia lists him as a Muslim
Thus, an Egyptian newspaper, Al-Masri al-Youm, refers to his "Muslim origins." Libyan ruler Mu‘ammar al-Qaddafi referred to Obama as "a Muslim" and a person with an "African and Islamic identity." One Al-Jazeera analysis calls him a "non-Christian man," a second refers to his "Muslim Kenyan" father, and a third, by Naseem Jamali, notes that "Obama may not want to be counted as a Muslim but Muslims are eager to count him as one of their own."
A conversation in Beirut, quoted in the Christian Science Monitor, captures the puzzlement. "He has to be good for Arabs because he is a Muslim," observed a grocer. "He's not a Muslim, he's a Christian," replied a customer. Retorted the grocer: "He can't be a Christian. His middle name is Hussein." Arabic discussions of Obama sometimes mention his middle name as a code, with no further comment needed.
"The symbolism of a major American presidential candidate with the middle name of Hussein, who went to elementary school in Indonesia," reports Tamara Cofman Wittes of the Brookings Institution from a U.S.-Muslim conference in Qatar, "that certainly speaks to Muslims abroad." Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times found that Egyptians "don't really understand Obama's family tree, but what they do know is that if America — despite being attacked by Muslim militants on 9/11 — were to elect as its president some guy with the middle name ‘Hussein,' it would mark a sea change in America-Muslim world relations."
Some American Muslim leaders also perceive Obama as Muslim. The president of the Islamic Society of North America, Sayyid M. Syeed, told Muslims at a conference in Houston that whether Obama wins or loses, his candidacy will reinforce that Muslim children can "become the presidents of this country." The Nation of Islam's Louis Farrakhan called Obama "the hope of the entire world" and compared him to his religion's founder, Fard Muhammad.
But this excitement also has a dark side – suspicions that Obama is a traitor to his birth religion, an apostate (murtadd) from Islam. Al-Qaeda has prominently featured Obama's stating "I am not a Muslim" and one analyst, Shireen K. Burki of the University of Mary Washington, sees Obama as "bin Laden's dream candidate." Should he become U.S. commander in chief, she believes, Al-Qaeda would likely "exploit his background to argue that an apostate is leading the global war on terror … to galvanize sympathizers into action."
Mainstream Muslims tend to tiptoe around this topic. An Egyptian supporter of Obama, Yasser Khalil, reports that many Muslims react "with bewilderment and curiosity" when Obama is described as a Muslim apostate; Josie Delap and Robert Lane Greene of the Economist even claim that the Obama-as-apostate theme "has been notably absent" among Arabic-language columnists and editorialists.
That latter claim is inaccurate, for the topic is indeed discussed. At least one Arabic-language newspaper published Burki's article. Kuwait's Al-Watan referred to Obama as "a born Muslim, an apostate, a convert to Christianity." Writing in the Arab Times, Syrian liberal Nidal Na‘isa repeatedly called Obama an "apostate Muslim."
In sum, Muslims puzzle over Obama's present religious status. They resist his self-identification as a Christian while they assume a baby born to a Muslim father and named "Hussein" began life a Muslim. Should Obama become president, differences in Muslim and American views of religious affiliation will create problems.
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Aug. 25, 2008 update: This is the fourth in a series of articles I have published on Barack Obama's ties to Islam. The prior three:
"Was Barack Obama a Muslim?" FrontPageMag.com, December 24, 2007. Raises questions about Obama's childhood religion and considers some implications.
"Confirmed: Barack Obama Practiced Islam." FrontPageMag.com, January 7, 2008. Replies to a critique of the prevous article by "Media Matters for America."
"Barack Obama's Muslim Childhood." Jerusalem Post, May 1, 2008. Pulls together existing information on Obama's childhood religion.
http://www.danielpipes.org/article_p...5&v=1151079121
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I notice that often on this forum "Front Page Magazine" is quoted (cut and pasted). Albeit interesting, it is hardly the pinnacle of the sources available in the search for impartial and unbiased truth. Rather it is an extreme right wing biased magazine who definitely seems to only have a radical conservative agenda.
As for the issue of faith, IF Obama was or is Muslim, why is that, by itself, good or bad? IF Obama was or is a Jew, why is that good or bad? IF Obama was or is a Christian, why is that good or bad? Fine men and women, peace seeking men and women exist in all of these faiths. Evil exists in all faiths. As does good. Our country was founded on the principle of freedom of religion. We are not a "Christian" Nation, but a free nation - you can choose your religion without worry. That is the cornerstone of our country. We preach tolerance; why promote articles of religious hate?
I have read many inflammatory and seemingly hateful articles on Obama being possibly Muslim. Does that seem right? If he was a Jew would such articles be tolerated? I hope not. Yet Romney is being criticized for being Mormon. Again, is that right? I mean if you don't like the man, fine, yet I know many fine Mormons, Jews, Muslims, et al. What's the problem? Kennedy had to go through this because he was Catholic - I had hoped/thought America was finally past such obvious bigotry. IF you think Obama is/was a Muslim so what? IF you like him, like what he says and the direction he suggests, vote for him. IF not, don't, vote for McCain, another person, or simply abstain. But if a Buddist or Hindu was running, and you liked them, you should vote for them. Don't base your decision on the color of their skin or their own belief in their God. That is not the American way.
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Don't base your decision on the color of their skin or their own belief in their God. That is not the American way.
I'd love to believe that, but I don't think we're quite there yet.
Remember this gem?
http://freakgirl.com/blog/ive-had-enough-of-hussein/10741 (http://freakgirl.com/blog/ive-had-enough-of-hussein/10741)
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I notice that often on this forum "Front Page Magazine" is quoted (cut and pasted). Albeit interesting, it is hardly the pinnacle of the sources available in the search for impartial and unbiased truth. Rather it is an extreme right wing biased magazine who definitely seems to only have a radical conservative agenda.
**Do me a favor and define what "radical conservatism" is to you.**
As for the issue of faith, IF Obama was or is Muslim, why is that, by itself, good or bad? IF Obama was or is a Jew, why is that good or bad? IF Obama was or is a Christian, why is that good or bad? Fine men and women, peace seeking men and women exist in all of these faiths. Evil exists in all faiths. As does good.
**Were you this upset when Mitt Romney's mormonism was getting skewered from the left? You'll note that christianity's core theology allowed for the evolution of secular government and freedom of religion as a right, concepts not found in islam.**
Our country was founded on the principle of freedom of religion. We are not a "Christian" Nation, but a free nation - you can choose your religion without worry. That is the cornerstone of our country. We preach tolerance; why promote articles of religious hate?
**Where in the article do you see religious hate? It's an examination of the muslim perception of Obama's "muslim" identity.**
I have read many inflammatory and seemingly hateful articles on Obama being possibly Muslim. Does that seem right?
**Post-9/11, the US population has taken a hard look at islam and amazingly, it's not very popular. :roll:
In addition, I doubt very much that Obama is a practicing muslim, he's been less than honest in addressing the topic. I personally find Obama's adult choice in a racist version of christianity much more disturbing than any exposure to islam he may have as a child.**
If he was a Jew would such articles be tolerated?
**What's the current count on Americans murdered by jews motivated by a vision of the world dominated by Judaism ?**
I hope not. Yet Romney is being criticized for being Mormon. Again, is that right? I mean if you don't like the man, fine, yet I know many fine Mormons, Jews, Muslims, et al. What's the problem? Kennedy had to go through this because he was Catholic - I had hoped/thought America was finally past such obvious bigotry. IF you think Obama is/was a Muslim so what?
**My objection is Obama's lack of candor on the subject. As a child, no one gets to choose their religion.**
IF you like him, like what he says and the direction he suggests, vote for him. IF not, don't, vote for McCain, another person, or simply abstain. But if a Buddist or Hindu was running, and you liked them, you should vote for them. Don't base your decision on the color of their skin or their own belief in their God. That is not the American way.
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**Do me a favor and define what "radical conservatism" is to you.**
"radical" conservatism. A poor choice; I apologize; "radical" is not appropriate in this instance.
And YES I was equally upset when Romney "was getting skewered from the left. Wrong is wrong;
whatever guise it takes.
As for Christianity's core theology allowing for secular government; historically, I am not sure about
that. Sorry, got to go, but I did owe an apology for "radical".
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**The bold is my emphasis. I suggest you follow the link and read the whole article.**
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199009/muslim-rage
SEPTEMBER 1990 ATLANTIC MONTHLY
Why so many Muslims deeply resent the West, and why their bitterness will not easily be mollified
BY BERNARD LEWIS
The Roots of Muslim Rage
In one of his letters Thomas Jefferson remarked that in matters of religion "the maxim of civil government" should be reversed and we should rather say, "Divided we stand, united, we fall." In this remark Jefferson was setting forth with classic terseness an idea that has come to be regarded as essentially American: the separation of Church and State. This idea was not entirely new; it had some precedents in the writings of Spinoza, Locke, and the philosophers of the European Enlightenment. It was in the United States, however, that the principle was first given the force of law and gradually, in the course of two centuries, became a reality.
If the idea that religion and politics should be separated is relatively new, dating back a mere three hundred years, the idea that they are distinct dates back almost to the beginnings of Christianity. Christians are enjoined in their Scriptures to "render ... unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things which are God's." While opinions have differed as to the real meaning of this phrase, it has generally been interpreted as legitimizing a situation in which two institutions exist side by side, each with its own laws and chain of authority—one concerned with religion, called the Church, the other concerned with politics, called the State. And since they are two, they may be joined or separated, subordinate or independent, and conflicts may arise between them over questions of demarcation and jurisdiction.
This formulation of the problems posed by the relations between religion and politics, and the possible solutions to those problems, arise from Christian, not universal, principles and experience. There are other religious traditions in which religion and politics are differently perceived, and in which, therefore, the problems and the possible solutions are radically different from those we know in the West. Most of these traditions, despite their often very high level of sophistication and achievement, remained or became local—limited to one region or one culture or one people. There is one, however, that in its worldwide distribution, its continuing vitality, its universalist aspirations, can be compared to Christianity, and that is Islam.
Islam is one of the world's great religions. Let me be explicit about what I, as a historian of Islam who is not a Muslim, mean by that. Islam has brought comfort and peace of mind to countless millions of men and women. It has given dignity and meaning to drab and impoverished lives. It has taught people of different races to live in brotherhood and people of different creeds to live side by side in reasonable tolerance. It inspired a great civilization in which others besides Muslims lived creative and useful lives and which, by its achievement, enriched the whole world. But Islam, like other religions, has also known periods when it inspired in some of its followers a mood of hatred and violence. It is our misfortune that part, though by no means all or even most, of the Muslim world is now going through such a period, and that much, though again not all, of that hatred is directed against us.
We should not exaggerate the dimensions of the problem. The Muslim world is far from unanimous in its rejection of the West, nor have the Muslim regions of the Third World been the most passionate and the most extreme in their hostility. There are still significant numbers, in some quarters perhaps a majority, of Muslims with whom we share certain basic cultural and moral, social and political, beliefs and aspirations; there is still an imposing Western presence—cultural, economic, diplomatic—in Muslim lands, some of which are Western allies. Certainly nowhere in the Muslim world, in the Middle East or elsewhere, has American policy suffered disasters or encountered problems comparable to those in Southeast Asia or Central America. There is no Cuba, no Vietnam, in the Muslim world, and no place where American forces are involved as combatants or even as "advisers." But there is a Libya, an Iran, and a Lebanon, and a surge of hatred that distresses, alarms, and above all baffles Americans.
At times this hatred goes beyond hostility to specific interests or actions or policies or even countries and becomes a rejection of Western civilization as such, not only what it does but what it is, and the principles and values that it practices and professes. These are indeed seen as innately evil, and those who promote or accept them as the "enemies of God."
This phrase, which recurs so frequently in the language of the Iranian leadership, in both their judicial proceedings and their political pronouncements, must seem very strange to the modern outsider, whether religious or secular. The idea that God has enemies, and needs human help in order to identify and dispose of them, is a little difficult to assimilate. It is not, however, all that alien. The concept of the enemies of God is familiar in preclassical and classical antiquity, and in both the Old and New Testaments, as well as in the Koran. A particularly relevant version of the idea occurs in the dualist religions of ancient Iran, whose cosmogony assumed not one but two supreme powers. The Zoroastrian devil, unlike the Christian or Muslim or Jewish devil, is not one of God's creatures performing some of God's more mysterious tasks but an independent power, a supreme force of evil engaged in a cosmic struggle against God. This belief influenced a number of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish sects, through Manichaeism and other routes. The almost forgotten religion of the Manichees has given its name to the perception of problems as a stark and simple conflict between matching forces of pure good and pure evil.
The Koran is of course strictly monotheistic, and recognizes one God, one universal power only. There is a struggle in human hearts between good and evil, between God's commandments and the tempter, but this is seen as a struggle ordained by God, with its outcome preordained by God, serving as a test of mankind, and not, as in some of the old dualist religions, a struggle in which mankind has a crucial part to play in bringing about the victory of good over evil. Despite this monotheism, Islam, like Judaism and Christianity, was at various stages influenced, especially in Iran, by the dualist idea of a cosmic clash of good and evil, light and darkness, order and chaos, truth and falsehood, God and the Adversary, variously known as devil, Iblis, Satan, and by other names.
The Rise of the House of Unbelief
In Islam the struggle of good and evil very soon acquired political and even military dimensions. Muhammad, it will be recalled, was not only a prophet and a teacher, like the founders of other religions; he was also the head of a polity and of a community, a ruler and a soldier. Hence his struggle involved a state and its armed forces. If the fighters in the war for Islam, the holy war "in the path of God," are fighting for God, it follows that their opponents are fighting against God. And since God is in principle the sovereign, the supreme head of the Islamic state—and the Prophet and, after the Prophet, the caliphs are his vicegerents—then God as sovereign commands the army. The army is God's army and the enemy is God's enemy. The duty of God's soldiers is to dispatch God's enemies as quickly as possible to the place where God will chastise them—that is to say, the afterlife.
Clearly related to this is the basic division of mankind as perceived in Islam. Most, probably all, human societies have a way of distinguishing between themselves and others: insider and outsider, in-group and out-group, kinsman or neighbor and foreigner. These definitions not only define the outsider but also, and perhaps more particularly, help to define and illustrate our perception of ourselves.
In the classical Islamic view, to which many Muslims are beginning to return, the world and all mankind are divided into two: the House of Islam, where the Muslim law and faith prevail, and the rest, known as the House of Unbelief or the House of War, which it is the duty of Muslims ultimately to bring to Islam. But the greater part of the world is still outside Islam, and even inside the Islamic lands, according to the view of the Muslim radicals, the faith of Islam has been undermined and the law of Islam has been abrogated. The obligation of holy war therefore begins at home and continues abroad, against the same infidel enemy.
Like every other civilization known to human history, the Muslim world in its heyday saw itself as the center of truth and enlightenment, surrounded by infidel barbarians whom it would in due course enlighten and civilize. But between the different groups of barbarians there was a crucial difference. The barbarians to the east and the south were polytheists and idolaters, offering no serious threat and no competition at all to Islam. In the north and west, in contrast, Muslims from an early date recognized a genuine rival—a competing world religion, a distinctive civilization inspired by that religion, and an empire that, though much smaller than theirs, was no less ambitious in its claims and aspirations. This was the entity known to itself and others as Christendom, a term that was long almost identical with Europe.
The struggle between these rival systems has now lasted for some fourteen centuries. It began with the advent of Islam, in the seventh century, and has continued virtually to the present day. It has consisted of a long series of attacks and counterattacks, jihads and crusades, conquests and reconquests. For the first thousand years Islam was advancing, Christendom in retreat and under threat. The new faith conquered the old Christian lands of the Levant and North Africa, and invaded Europe, ruling for a while in Sicily, Spain, Portugal, and even parts of France. The attempt by the Crusaders to recover the lost lands of Christendom in the east was held and thrown back, and even the Muslims' loss of southwestern Europe to the Reconquista was amply compensated by the Islamic advance into southeastern Europe, which twice reached as far as Vienna. For the past three hundred years, since the failure of the second Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683 and the rise of the European colonial empires in Asia and Africa, Islam has been on the defensive, and the Christian and post-Christian civilization of Europe and her daughters has brought the whole world, including Islam, within its orbit.
For a long time now there has been a rising tide of rebellion against this Western paramountcy, and a desire to reassert Muslim values and restore Muslim greatness. The Muslim has suffered successive stages of defeat. The first was his loss of domination in the world, to the advancing power of Russia and the West. The second was the undermining of his authority in his own country, through an invasion of foreign ideas and laws and ways of life and sometimes even foreign rulers or settlers, and the enfranchisement of native non-Muslim elements. The third—the last straw—was the challenge to his mastery in his own house, from emancipated women and rebellious children. It was too much to endure, and the outbreak of rage against these alien, infidel, and incomprehensible forces that had subverted his dominance, disrupted his society, and finally violated the sanctuary of his home was inevitable. It was also natural that this rage should be directed primarily against the millennial enemy and should draw its strength from ancient beliefs and loyalties.
Europe and her daughters? The phrase may seem odd to Americans, whose national myths, since the beginning of their nationhood and even earlier, have usually defined their very identity in opposition to Europe, as something new and radically different from the old European ways. This is not, however, the way that others have seen it; not often in Europe, and hardly ever elsewhere.
Though people of other races and cultures participated, for the most part involuntarily, in the discovery and creation of the Americas, this was, and in the eyes of the rest of the world long remained, a European enterprise, in which Europeans predominated and dominated and to which Europeans gave their languages, their religions, and much of their way of life.
For a very long time voluntary immigration to America was almost exclusively European. There were indeed some who came from the Muslim lands in the Middle East and North Africa, but few were Muslims; most were members of the Christian and to a lesser extent the Jewish minorities in those countries. Their departure for America, and their subsequent presence in America, must have strengthened rather than lessened the European image of America in Muslim eyes.
In the lands of Islam remarkably little was known about America. At first the voyages of discovery aroused some interest; the only surviving copy of Columbus's own map of America is a Turkish translation and adaptation, still preserved in the Topkapi Palace Museum, in Istanbul. A sixteenth-century Turkish geographer's account of the discovery of the New World, titled The History of Western India, was one of the first books printed in Turkey. But thereafter interest seems to have waned, and not much is said about America in Turkish, Arabic, or other Muslim languages until a relatively late date. A Moroccan ambassador who was in Spain at the time wrote what must surely be the first Arabic account of the American Revolution. The Sultan of Morocco signed a treaty of peace and friendship with the United States in 1787, and thereafter the new republic had a number of dealings, some friendly, some hostile, most commercial, with other Muslim states. These seem to have had little impact on either side. The American Revolution and the American republic to which it gave birth long remained unnoticed and unknown. Even the small but growing American presence in Muslim lands in the nineteenth century—merchants, consuls, missionaries, and teachers—aroused little or no curiosity, and is almost unmentioned in the Muslim literature and newspapers of the time.
The Second World War, the oil industry, and postwar developments brought many Americans to the Islamic lands; increasing numbers of Muslims also came to America, first as students, then as teachers or businessmen or other visitors, and eventually as immigrants. Cinema and later television brought the American way of life, or at any rate a certain version of it, before countless millions to whom the very name of America had previously been meaningless or unknown. A wide range of American products, particularly in the immediate postwar years, when European competition was virtually eliminated and Japanese competition had not yet arisen, reached into the remotest markets of the Muslim world, winning new customers and, perhaps more important, creating new tastes and ambitions. For some, America represented freedom and justice and opportunity. For many more, it represented wealth and power and success, at a time when these qualities were not regarded as sins or crimes.
And then came the great change, when the leaders of a widespread and widening religious revival sought out and identified their enemies as the enemies of God, and gave them "a local habitation and a name" in the Western Hemisphere. Suddenly, or so it seemed, America had become the archenemy, the incarnation of evil, the diabolic opponent of all that is good, and specifically, for Muslims, of Islam. Why?
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Suddenly, or so it seemed, America had become the archenemy, the incarnation of evil, the diabolic opponent of all that is good, and specifically, for Muslims, of Islam. Why?
I think that should read "...for radical Muslims, of Islam." As the author states earlier in the article, "There are still significant numbers, in some quarters perhaps a majority, of Muslims with whom we share certain basic cultural and moral, social and political, beliefs and aspirations..."
As for why the hatred of America, we offer what radical Islamists do not: freedom of expression, freedom of religion, the right to vote (for men and women), freedom of thought, freedom of movement. All things that are frightening to any radical theology.Theirs just happens to be one that is willing to do whatever it takes to abolish those freedoms.
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Suddenly, or so it seemed, America had become the archenemy, the incarnation of evil, the diabolic opponent of all that is good, and specifically, for Muslims, of Islam. Why?
I think that should read "...for radical Muslims, of Islam." As the author states earlier in the article, "There are still significant numbers, in some quarters perhaps a majority, of Muslims with whom we share certain basic cultural and moral, social and political, beliefs and aspirations..."
**The problem being that Elvis is sighted more often than this hoped for majority of peaceful muslims. What criteria do you use to define a radical muslim from an orthodox muslim?**
As for why the hatred of America, we offer what radical Islamists do not: freedom of expression, freedom of religion, the right to vote (for men and women), freedom of thought, freedom of movement. All things that are frightening to any radical theology.Theirs just happens to be one that is willing to do whatever it takes to abolish those freedoms.
Our system of government is utterly contrary to sharia law. The problem is that sharia law is the law of allah and to ignore god's law and make your own is not acceptable in classic islamic theology.
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**The problem being that Elvis is sighted more often than this hoped for majority of peaceful muslims. **
Don't post an article in which the author himself states that "The Muslim world is far from unanimous in its rejection of the West, nor have the Muslim regions of the Third World been the most passionate and the most extreme in their hostility", and then say that contrary to the author's assertions, peaceful Muslims don't exist. It comes off as hypocritical.
The problem is that the extremists are more visible than their peaceful brethren. Depending on who's numbers you use, there are between .700 billion and 1.2 billion Muslims in the world. IF they were ALL extremists bent on the destruction of the western world, the speed at which they would accomplish this mission would accelerate exponentially.
Are there Muslims who hate us? Yes. Are there Muslims willing to do whatever it takes to destroy our way of life? Yes.
Are we trying to deal with them? Yes, with varying degrees of success. Should more people be paying attention to extremists. Yes.
We get it.
WE ALL AGREE ON THAT POINT.
I am just so sick of the "All Muslims are out to get us argument". They're not. IF you've done any travelling outside of the US, you realize that most people, in most countries, are trying to do one thing (no matter what their religion): live their lives. They can't be bothered with thoughts of world domination, submission of the great devil, or how to plan the downfall of any country. They're trying to put food on the table, raise their kids, and keep their jobs. Period. No matter what the guy in the pulpit says.
In every religion, there are people that show up to church/temple/synagogue/mosque and believe it and live it 100%. There are those who take it to the extreme. There are those who make an appearance cuz it's what they're supposed to do. There are those that make an appearance because they have to. IF everyone in every religion followed the tenets of their religion to the word, we ALL be screwed. But not everyone does, because not everyone can be bothered. A lot of religions say a lot of things about a lot of things. Most people listen, say, "That's nice.", or "Hmmm, interesting.", or "Whatever...", and go on about their day.
"The Muslims are coming" is getting old. Some of them are. We're working on it. The rest could probably give a flying f*ck. (Pardon my language)
As for my use of radical instead of orthodox...whatever. Radical, extremist, ultra orthodox, medium strength orthodox, orthodox, isolationist, fundamentalist Islamists hate us. And they always will. And they are in the minority. And as I said, we're working on it.
I hate that this rant is the last thing I post before my vacation, but such is life. I'll check back in sometime around late September.
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**The problem being that Elvis is sighted more often than this hoped for majority of peaceful muslims. **
Don't post an article in which the author himself states that "The Muslim world is far from unanimous in its rejection of the West, nor have the Muslim regions of the Third World been the most passionate and the most extreme in their hostility", and then say that contrary to the author's assertions, peaceful Muslims don't exist. It comes off as hypocritical.
**I'm not saying there are not any, i'm pointing out that that whatever the number globally, they are mostly silent. Those that aren't mostly live the lives of mob informants, even in europe or north america.**
The problem is that the extremists are more visible than their peaceful brethren. Depending on who's numbers you use, there are between .700 billion and 1.2 billion Muslims in the world. IF they were ALL extremists bent on the destruction of the western world, the speed at which they would accomplish this mission would accelerate exponentially.
**Again, i'm not saying ALL.**
Are there Muslims who hate us? Yes. Are there Muslims willing to do whatever it takes to destroy our way of life? Yes.
Are we trying to deal with them? Yes, with varying degrees of success. Should more people be paying attention to extremists. Yes.
We get it.
WE ALL AGREE ON THAT POINT.
**I'm glad we can all agree on this point.**
I am just so sick of the "All Muslims are out to get us argument". They're not. IF you've done any travelling outside of the US, you realize that most people, in most countries, are trying to do one thing (no matter what their religion): live their lives. They can't be bothered with thoughts of world domination, submission of the great devil, or how to plan the downfall of any country. They're trying to put food on the table, raise their kids, and keep their jobs. Period. No matter what the guy in the pulpit says.
**During the heights of Hitler's power, most Germans weren't nazis. Not much solace in knowing that for the internal/external victims of the nazi war machine.**
In every religion, there are people that show up to church/temple/synagogue/mosque and believe it and live it 100%. There are those who take it to the extreme. There are those who make an appearance cuz it's what they're supposed to do. There are those that make an appearance because they have to. IF everyone in every religion followed the tenets of their religion to the word, we ALL be screwed. But not everyone does, because not everyone can be bothered. A lot of religions say a lot of things about a lot of things. Most people listen, say, "That's nice.", or "Hmmm, interesting.", or "Whatever...", and go on about their day.
"The Muslims are coming" is getting old. Some of them are. We're working on it. The rest could probably give a flying f*ck. (Pardon my language)
As for my use of radical instead of orthodox...whatever. Radical, extremist, ultra orthodox, medium strength orthodox, orthodox, isolationist, fundamentalist Islamists hate us. And they always will. And they are in the minority. And as I said, we're working on it.
I hate that this rant is the last thing I post before my vacation, but such is life. I'll check back in sometime around late September.
**Enjoy your vacation.**
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/08/27/video-behind-the-scenes-at-invesco-and-the-regal-stage/
"Barry-O and the temple of Hubris"
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**The bold is my emphasis. I suggest you follow the link and read the whole article.**
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199009/muslim-rage
SEPTEMBER 1990 ATLANTIC MONTHLY
Why so many Muslims deeply resent the West, and why their bitterness will not easily be mollified
BY BERNARD LEWIS
The Roots of Muslim Rage
If the idea that religion and politics should be separated is relatively new, dating back a mere three hundred years, the idea that they are distinct dates back almost to the beginnings of Christianity. Christians are enjoined in their Scriptures to "render ... unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things which are God's." While opinions have differed as to the real meaning of this phrase, it has generally been interpreted as legitimizing a situation in which two institutions exist side by side, each with its own laws and chain of authority—one concerned with religion, called the Church, the other concerned with politics, called the State. And since they are two, they may be joined or separated, subordinate or independent, and conflicts may arise between them over questions of demarcation and jurisdiction.
An interesting observation, but I believe Christianity has been watered down. I am not sure Church and State are "distinct". Dating from Biblical times, civil disobedience was promoted if the word of the LORD was different than that of the government. The Crusades again tried to impose Christianity upon the Middle East.
Christians are commanded to "make disciples of ALL nations and ethnic groups. And Jesus commanded, either you are gathering with ME or you are against ME. Many Christian theologians have said that Christians have a clear choice to accept God's blessing and love or His wrath as the price of rebellion against HIS will in government here on earth. Either you follow his word or you are damned. And it is your duty to spread his word...
In Palms it says, "The earth is the LORDs and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein." And, "Let them know that you whose name is the LORD that you alone are the most high over the earth. Clearly, the LORD is a higher power and should be obeyed versus government.
And in Matthew 28: 18-19 "And Jesus came and said to them, ALL authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of ALL nations, baptizing them...
And in 2 Corinthians 10:5 it says, "Casting down imaginations and everything high that exalteth itself against the knowledge of GOD and bringing into captivity every thought to the OBEDIENCE of Christ."
My point; if your read the Bible, it is actually rather aggressive; "either you are for ME or against ME!" And backing it up, especially in the Old Testament there are numerous examples of the LORD striking down or destroying those that oppose him or his word.
Yes, render on to Caesar that which is Caesar'a and unto the LORD that which is the LORD's. But the point, IF there is a conflict, ALWAYS obey the LORD, forget about Caesar.
Perhaps the Koran has good and bad as well?
Is it really that different?
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Yes. Forgive my brevity, but I really need to get my run in before work.
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Barack Obama, Aspiring Commissar
By the Editors
While the Obama coronation proceeds apace in Denver, it is in Chicago that Americans are getting a disturbing demonstration of his thuggish methods of stifling criticism.
Stanley Kurtz, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is a Harvard-educated social anthropologist and frequent contributor to National Review, among other publications. He is widely respected for his meticulous research and measured commentary. For months, he has been doing the job the mainstream media refuses to do: examining the background and public record of Barack Obama, the first-term senator Democrats are about to make their nominee for president despite the shallowness of his experience and achievement.
Kurtz has written extensively, and with characteristic attention to factual detail, about Obama’s early career as a “community organizer,” his cultivation of benefactors in the most radical cauldrons of Chicago politics, his long-time pastor’s immersion in Black Liberation Theology, his ties to anti-American zealots, and the years in the Illinois state legislature this self-styled agent of change spent practicing the by-the-numbers left-wing politics of redistribution and race-consciousness, remaining soft on crime and extreme on abortion.
This has led Kurtz, naturally, to scrutinize the relationship between Obama and one of his early political sponsors, William Ayers. Ayers, as we have previously detailed, is a confessed terrorist who, having escaped prosecution due to surveillance violations that came to light during his decade on the lam after a bombing spree, landed an influential professorship in education at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). As he has made clear several times before and after helping to launch Obama’s political career, Ayers remains defiantly proud of bombing the Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol, and other targets. He expresses regret only that he didn’t do more. Far from abandoning his radical politics, he has simply changed methods: the classroom, rather than the detonator, is now his instrument for campaigning against an America he portrays as racist and imperialist.
Obama supporters risibly complain that shining a light on the Obama/Ayers relationship is a “smear” and smacks of “guilt by association.” A presidential candidate’s choice to associate himself with an unrepentant terrorist would be highly relevant in any event — does anyone think the Obamedia would keep mum if John McCain had a long-standing relationship with David Duke or an abortion-clinic bomber?
But we are talking about more than a mere “association.”
Bluntly, Obama has lied about his relationship with Ayers, whom he now dismisses as “a guy who lives in my neighborhood.” Ayers and Obama have made joint appearances together; they have argued together for “reforms” of the criminal justice system to make it more criminal-friendly; Obama gushed with praise for Ayers’ 1997 polemical book on the Chicago courts; and they sat together for three years on the board of the Woods Fund, a left-wing enterprise that distributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to their ideological allies. Most significant, they worked closely together on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC).
The CAC was a major education reform project, proposed by Ayers, which was underwritten by a $49.2 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation, complemented by another $100 million in private and public funding. The project ran for about five years, beginning in 1995. As the liberal researcher Steve Diamond has recounted, Ayers ran its operational arm, the “Chicago School Reform Collaborative.” Obama, then a 33-year-old, third-year associate at a small law firm, having no executive experience, was brought in to chair the board of directors, which oversaw all “fiscal matters.”
By the time the CAC’s operations were wound down in 2001 it had doled out more than $100 million in grants but had failed to achieve any improvement in the Chicago schools. What little is known about the grants Obama oversaw is troubling. As Diamond relates, one of the first CAC awards in 1995 was $175,000 for the “Small Schools Workshop,” which had been founded by Ayers and was then headed by Mike Klonsky. It was only the beginning of the CAC’s generous funding of Klonsky — a committed Maoist who had been an Ayers comrade in the radical Students for a Democratic Society (the forerunner of Ayers’ Weatherman terrorist organization), and who hosted a “social justice” blog on the Obama campaign website until his writings were hastily purged in June after Diamond called attention to them.
The CAC records, said to comprise 70 linear feet of files, have long been maintained at the library of the UIC, the public university where Ayers teaches. This summer, Kurtz made an appointment to review them and, after being assured access, was blocked from seeing them by library administrators, who stammered about needing permission from the “donor” — whom they declined to identify. Kurtz energetically raised public awareness to the stonewalling, and the library finally relented this week. That is, as Barack Obama prepares to accept the Democrats’ nomination tonight, the records of his only significant executive experience just became available for review on Tuesday.
Kurtz began his review, and on Wednesday was invited on Milt Rosenberg’s radio program to discuss it. Rosenberg is a Chicago institution. His program, “Extension 720,” has aired for more than 30 years — a civil forum where knowledgeable guests from across the political spectrum discuss important issues in revealing two-hour interviews. What happened Wednesday night was stunning, as even the normally unflappable Rosenberg observed.
The Obama campaign — which has emissaries appearing everywhere — declined Rosenberg’s invitation to have a representative appear on the program and respond to Kurtz’s factual assertions. The campaign did, however, issue an “Obama Action Wire” that encouraged supporters to contact the program (telephone information was provided) and use scripted “talking points” to disrupt Kurtz’s appearance, which it deemed “unacceptable.” As the Politico’s Ben Smith reported, the campaign also urged supporters to demand that Rosenberg scrap the appearance of Kurtz, whom the campaign libeled as a “smear-merchant” and a “slimy character assassin.” The rant was reminiscent of the work of the left-wing media “watch-dog” Media Matters for America.
Other than denigrating Kurtz for being conservative, Obama’s operatives have provided no response to the substance of his claims. In their only pretense of engaging him, they accuse him of telling “a flat out lie” that Ayers recruited Obama for the CAC. Though it is a reasonable inference that Ayers recruited Obama, the careful Kurtz has stopped short of making it — observing only that Obama offers no explanation of how he was recruited if not through Ayers, his friend and the CAC’s driving force.
The station, WGN, has made a stream of the broadcast available online, here, and it has to be heard to be believed. Obama’s robotic legions dutifully jammed the station’s phone lines and inundated the program with emails, attacking Kurtz personally. Pressed by Rosenberg to specify what inaccuracies Kurtz was guilty of, caller after caller demurred, mulishly railing that “we just want it to stop,” and that criticism of Obama was “just not what we want to hear as Americans.” Remarkably, as Obama sympathizers raced through their script, they echoed the campaign’s insistence that it was Rosenberg who was “lowering the standards of political discourse” by having Kurtz on, rather than the campaign by shouting him down.
Kurtz has obviously hit a nerve. It is the same nerve hit by the American Issues Project, whose television ad calling for examination of the Obama/Ayers relationship has prompted the Obama campaign to demand that the Justice Department begin a criminal investigation. Obama fancies himself as “post-partisan.” He is that only in the sense that he apparently brooks no criticism. This episode could be an alarming preview of what life will be like for the media should the party of the Fairness Doctrine gain unified control of the federal government next year.
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MmUwOTllNmMzZDNlMTljMGFmY2JkZTllYmQyOTY0ODY=
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/08/27/video-behind-the-scenes-at-invesco-and-the-regal-stage/
"Barry-O and the temple of Hubris"
After seeing the finished product. It reaffirms my belief that Michelle Malkin and hotair.com if full of crap.
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Well, now that his holiness is done with the "temple", he can ship it to his impoverished half-brother in Kenya. I guess Tony Rezko is too busy to get this other Obama a house.....
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August 27, 2008, 7:30 a.m.
Obama’s Friend, America’s Enemy
By the Editors
Have you ever been a friend or business associate of a terrorist? Not someone who, to your shock and horror, turned out secretly to have bombed government buildings. No, the question is whether you’ve ever befriended an unreconstructed radical whose past was well known to you when you entered his orbit and walked through doors he opened for you. Have you been chummy with an unapologetic terrorist who, years after you’d known and worked closely with him, was still telling the New York Times he regretted only failing to carry out more attacks — and that America still “makes me want to puke”?
Barack Obama has.
An organization called the American Issues Project, backed by Dallas investor Harold Simmons, is running a campaign ad which highlights Obama’s troubling relationship with William Ayers. Ayers is a former member of the Weathermen terrorist organization that bombed the Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol, various police headquarters, and other targets in the early 1970s.
The Obama campaign’s rejoinder is three-pronged: The first shot was an Obama response ad, which fails to offer any substantive explanation of why Obama maintains ties to Ayers. Obama’s second move was to launch a heavy-handed effort to pressure television stations into rejecting the ad by promising financial retaliation against the stations and their advertisers — which effort has apparently succeeded in intimidating Fox and CNN. The capper is a desperate call for the Justice Department to muzzle political speech through the prospect of a criminal investigation — a demand that provides a disturbing sneak peak into what life would be like under an Obama Justice Department.
Needless to say, none of this is justified. If Obama has a good explanation for his ties to Ayers, he ought to give it. In the meantime, raising questions about that relationship is entirely legitimate.
Obama’s campaign has acknowledged that the candidate and Ayers are friends. Though Obama has more recently minimized Ayers as “just a guy who lives in my neighborhood,” it is clear that the relationship was much deeper than that. Ayers and his fellow-terrorist wife, Bernadine Dohrn (who has spoken admiringly of the infamous Manson Family murders), are icons in Chicago’s hard-left circles, to which Obama sought entrée as a young “community organizer.” In 1995, they hosted a fundraiser that helped launch his career in Chicago politics.
Ayers has never abandoned his indictment of America as an imperialist hotbed of racism and economic exploitation. He has merely shifted methods from violent extortion to academic indoctrination. Through his perch as a professor of education at the University of Illinois, he has been a ceaseless critic of the criminal-justice system (he is essentially opposed to imprisoning even the most violent criminals) and a proponent of what he calls “education reform” but what is actually the use of the classroom to proselytize for the Left’s political agenda.
Writing in the Chicago Tribune in 1997, Obama called A Kind and Just Parent, Ayers’ polemic on the Chicago court system, “a searing and timely account.” Michelle Obama, then a dean at the University of Illinois, invited Ayers to participate in a panel with her husband, then a state senator who, the program explained, was “working to block proposed legislation that would throw more juvenile offenders into the adult system.”
Obama apologists dismiss all this as “guilt by association” based on a single joint appearance. But it was far from the only one.
In fact, by 1997 Obama and Ayers were collaborators on a far more significant level. They sat together for several years on the board of the Woods Fund, a left-wing Chicago charitable organization. There, they doled out tens of thousands of dollars to such beneficiaries as the Trinity Church (where Obama was a longtime member and where another Obama mentor, Jeremiah Wright, preached a radical, anti-American brand of Black Liberation Theology) and the Arab American Action Network (co-founded by Rashid Khalidi, a Yasser Arafat apologist who has supported attacks against Israel and now directs Columbia University’s notorious Middle East Institute, founded by Edward Said).
Even more intriguing, in 1995 Ayers won a $49.2 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation — matched two-to-one by public and private contributions — to promote “reform” in the Chicago school system. He quickly brought in Obama, then all of 33 and bereft of any executive experience, to chair the board. With Ayers directing the project’s operational arm and Obama overseeing its financial affairs until 1999, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge distributed more than $100 million to ideological allies with no discernible improvement in public education.
Until this week, moreover, the University of Illinois at Chicago, where Ayers works, was blocking access to the project’s files (examination of which was being sought by frequent National Review contributor Stanley Kurtz), until finally relenting under public pressure. Less than three months from Election Day, analysis of the records from Barack Obama’s only significant executive experience is just beginning.
The mainstream media has been derelict on the Obama/Ayers relationship. Perhaps now, finally, it will get the scrutiny it deserves.
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZDI4YzUyYmI1ZjA1OWUzMDA5ZDIzNTI4NTk5ZmYwYWY=
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Anyone have any intel on BO's relationship with Frank Marshall Davis?
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http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1511
In the 1970s the Obama family became friendly with Frank Marshall Davis (1905-1987), a black writer and fellow Hawaiian resident. Davis wrote for the Honolulu Record (a Communist newspaper) and was a known member of the Soviet-controlled Communist Party USA (CPUSA). He soon became the young Barack Obama's mentor and advisor.
In Dreams From My Father, Obama writes about Davis but does not reveal the latter's full name, identifying him only as "a poet named Frank" -- a man with much "hard-earned knowledge" who had known "some modest notoriety once" but was now "pushing eighty." (Several sources -- including Professor Gerald Horne, Dr. Kathryn Takara, and libertarian writer Trevor Loudon -- have confirmed that Obama's "Frank" was indeed Frank Marshall Davis.)
Obama in his book recounts how, just prior to heading off to Occidental College (in California) in 1979, he spent some time with "Frank and his old Black Power dashiki self." Obama writes that "Frank" told him that college was merely "an advanced degree in compromise," and cautioned the young man not to "start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that sh--."
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http://www.foreignpolicy.com
The Myth of Moderate Islam
By Steven A. Cook
Posted June 2008
Supporting moderation in all things Islamic may seem like a no-brainer, but woe betide the policymaker who tries to turn a plausible idea into a workable strategy.
FAYEZ NURELDINE/AFP/Getty Images
Categorize this: Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi wants Egyptians to pray less, but he also supports suicide bombings against Israelis.
Of all the cures commonly proposed for the many ailments afflicting the Middle East, there is one tonic nearly everyone seems to agree on: boosting moderate Islam.
It sounds eminently reasonable. If Islamic extremism is the problem, moderate Islam must be the solution. It follows that Western governments should therefore find ways to make the moderates more powerful and encourage the extremists to become more moderate. Allow Islamists to compete and accumulate power, the argument goes, and they will have little incentive to radicalize. Furthermore, assuming the mundane tasks of day-to-day governance will compel even the most extreme groups to focus more on filling potholes than on destroying the Great Satan.
But this belief is dead wrong. Not only is it impossible to agree on a working definition of the word “moderate,” but there is scant evidence that extremists really do moderate once they assume power.
Consider, for example, Hezbollah. The Shiite organization provides state-like services such as education and healthcare for the people of south Beirut and southern Lebanon. The organization, which has had representatives in the Lebanese Parliament since 1992, has often demonstrated a surprising degree of pragmatism. It took part in a May 2005 electoral alliance with several of its adversaries in order to maximize electoral returns in crucial districts. Just a few months earlier, during Lebanon’s “independence uprising,” which pushed Hezbollah’s ally, Syria, out of Lebanon, the organization struck a tone of national unity.
But this spring, Hezbollah revealed the extent to which it remains a militant group. Its cadres took over west Beirut in a powerful display of force intended to show that it has no intention of giving up its guns. Much of Hezbollah’s political power is based on the potent idea of “national resistance” to Israeli aggression. If Hezbollah disarmed, it would be no different from Lebanon’s myriad political factions jockeying for advantage. It is precisely the organization’s militancy that provides Hezbollah with a significant political advantage over its rivals. Why give that up?
The same can be said of Hamas. Two years after its electoral victory, a year after its forcible takeover of Gaza, and despite reported strains and splits within the organization, there are few signs that the Palestinian Islamist group has moderated. The clearest sign that Hamas had altered its worldview would be to accept the international community’s conditions. But why would it? If Hamas were to accept Israel’s right to exist, renounce armed struggle, and honor previously signed agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, it would cease being Hamas and effectively become a shadow of its rival, Fatah. The Islamists have not only beaten Fatah on the battlefield, but have also, and more importantly, sold a winning narrative about the ineffectiveness of dialogue with Israel. In Palestinian politics, bowing to international demands is hardly rational.
The other common, but misleading argument about moderate Islam asserts that if only the voices of moderation were given broader exposure, the extremist ideologies of al Qaeda and other groups would find fewer adherents. Although this seems sensible, good luck trying to define “moderate Islam.”
Take Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an influential TV star in the Arab world. His weekly Al Jazeera show, Sharia and Life, attracts millions of viewers. Qaradawi holds progressive positions on family law, the status of women, and political reform. He recently told Egyptian government employees to “pray less” to improve their productivity. Many Arabs regard him as staunchly moderate. Yet the sheikh has also placed his theological imprimatur on suicide bombings against Israelis, arguing that since all Israelis serve in the military at one time or another, they are all legitimate targets. For those analysts who call for support of moderate Islam, it is hard to believe Qaradawi is whom they have in mind.
Or take Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Inside the Beltway, many Middle East hands are quietly rooting for the ayatollah and former president to win the next Iranian presidential election. Sure, he seems like a moderate in comparison to the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but Rafsanjani is the guy who once implored Iranians to kill Westerners wherever they could find them, declaring, “It is not difficult to kill Americans or Frenchmen. It is a bit difficult to kill [Israelis]. But there are so many [Americans and Frenchmen] everywhere in the world.”
If there was ever a problem in defining moderate Islam, however, Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) epitomizes it. The party seems to be the paragon of moderate Islamism, undertaking a wide range of reforms and staking its political legacy on Ankara’s entry into the European Union. Yet, Turkey’s archsecularists and a fair number of analysts in the West regard the party with deep suspicion. Citing the AKP’s recent effort to lift the ban on women wearing head scarves at publicly funded universities as only the most egregious example, they argue that the party’s real agenda is to Islamize Turkish society. Whose side should the United States take here?
Given the wildly different criteria for what constitutes “a moderate,” policymakers will run in circles trying to determine who is a moderate and worthy of support, and who is not. One person’s moderate is another person’s radical, and another person’s moderate is little more than a patsy of the West. A policy built on support for moderate Islam is only asking for trouble.
A smarter position is to avoid theological discussions altogether. As with all faiths, there will be heated debates between competing groups within Islam over the proper interpretation of sacred texts and the relationship between religion and politics. Yet because these arguments are so opaque to outsiders, policymakers should resist the urge to jump in. Given that moderation is in the eye of the beholder, Washington should not have an ideological litmus test for whom it wishes to engage. Rather, policymakers should focus on identifying those who can contribute pragmatic solutions to the many problems we confront in the region, “moderate” or not.
Steven A. Cook is the Douglas Dillon fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Ruling But Not Governing: The Military and Political Development in Egypt, Algeria, and Turkey (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007).
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**The bold is my emphasis. I suggest you follow the link and read the whole article.**
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199009/muslim-rage
SEPTEMBER 1990 ATLANTIC MONTHLY
Why so many Muslims deeply resent the West, and why their bitterness will not easily be mollified
BY BERNARD LEWIS
The Roots of Muslim Rage
If the idea that religion and politics should be separated is relatively new, dating back a mere three hundred years, the idea that they are distinct dates back almost to the beginnings of Christianity. Christians are enjoined in their Scriptures to "render ... unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things which are God's." While opinions have differed as to the real meaning of this phrase, it has generally been interpreted as legitimizing a situation in which two institutions exist side by side, each with its own laws and chain of authority—one concerned with religion, called the Church, the other concerned with politics, called the State. And since they are two, they may be joined or separated, subordinate or independent, and conflicts may arise between them over questions of demarcation and jurisdiction.
An interesting observation, but I believe Christianity has been watered down. I am not sure Church and State are "distinct". Dating from Biblical times, civil disobedience was promoted if the word of the LORD was different than that of the government. The Crusades again tried to impose Christianity upon the Middle East.
Christians are commanded to "make disciples of ALL nations and ethnic groups. And Jesus commanded, either you are gathering with ME or you are against ME. Many Christian theologians have said that Christians have a clear choice to accept God's blessing and love or His wrath as the price of rebellion against HIS will in government here on earth. Either you follow his word or you are damned. And it is your duty to spread his word...
In Palms it says, "The earth is the LORDs and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein." And, "Let them know that you whose name is the LORD that you alone are the most high over the earth. Clearly, the LORD is a higher power and should be obeyed versus government.
**Does this mean christians should create a theocratic state? That's a huge leap.**
And in Matthew 28: 18-19 "And Jesus came and said to them, ALL authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of ALL nations, baptizing them...
**Which in general christians interpret as requiring missionary work, including feeding the poor, clothing them, educating them and tending to the sick. Not imposing a Christian theology.**
And in 2 Corinthians 10:5 it says, "Casting down imaginations and everything high that exalteth itself against the knowledge of GOD and bringing into captivity every thought to the OBEDIENCE of Christ."
My point; if your read the Bible, it is actually rather aggressive; "either you are for ME or against ME!" And backing it up, especially in the Old Testament there are numerous examples of the LORD striking down or destroying those that oppose him or his word.
Yes, render on to Caesar that which is Caesar'a and unto the LORD that which is the LORD's. But the point, IF there is a conflict, ALWAYS obey the LORD, forget about Caesar.
Perhaps the Koran has good and bad as well?
Is it really that different?
Yes, it's very different. Jesus specifically resisted earthly power. His disciples wanted to form an army to push out the Romans. Jesus told them his kingdom was in the spiritual realm, not the earth. Jesus was tempted in the desert by Satan, who offered him all earthly wealth and power. Christian theology recognizes the divide of the physical/material from the spiritual.
Islam recognizes no division. Mohammed was a military/political leader who had people murdered for daring to make fun of him. He married a 6 year old girl, robbed caravans and tortured his enemies to death. Muslims consider him to be a perfect human being, an example of how to live one's life as a muslim. The early "revelations" from allah were pretty benign for the most part, including "There is no compulsion in religion" often touted by those who don't understand the theology, or those wishing to deceive non-muslims. Those tolerant, non-violent parts of the qu'ran were from when Mohammed was powerless. Once he had an army, the earlier verses were abrogated by the verses commanding that non-muslims were to be made to bow to a islamic theocracy.
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GM; It seems odd for me to be defending Islam and "criticizing Christianity since I am a practicing Christian, truly believe in God's power and attend Church on most Sundays.That said, I beg to differ with your conclusions/questions/comments.
To ignore God's (Christian God) Law and make your own is also not acceptable is classic Christian theology.
I am not a theologian, but I'll try to express my opinion. However, I think if your read the Bible, a theocratic state is thought to be ideal. Israel is a theocratic state; while perhaps not Christians, the Old Testament has a strong influence. The Catholic Church (I am not Catholic) at one time and I bet even today if asked privately would support a Christian theocratic state. Our founding fathers decided not to be a Christian Nation, but rather a nation for all religions; rather wise of them.
And "go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them..." has nothing to do with feeding the poor, tending to the sick, etc.
albeit all good. It is very clear, MAKE DISCIPLES all nations, i.e. convert them to Christianity period. That is the sole objective of missionary work; feeding the poor, educating them, tending to the sick gives them the inside track to conversion, but their objective is to convert people. The rest is just a means to an end.
Yes, Jesus resisted earthly power; he looked upon his power as absolute far greater than any earthly power. As for material things, they simply are not needed if you have the Lord in your heart and look forward to heaven; your final reward. Live a good life, fight for the Lord, make disciples of all nations and you will be rewarded in heaven; is that much different than Islam?
I am not an expert on the Qu'ran (I read it a long time ago and need to do again), but then again, the Bible, especially the Old Testament is full of versus and chapters telling how God punished the disbelieving. Actually, especially in the Old Testament, God is Love, but God is also a God of wrath; don't mess with him or oppose him or thousands will die and not a tear will be shed.
The Bible has become watered down. But if you simply read the Bible, it's a "you are with Me or against Me" story; period; it is very black and white. Those that are not with Me and don't believe in Me and/or have a false God are condemned to Hell. And no tears are to be shed for them. And if one city after another of non believers is destroyed, well, that's their fault for not believing and following God's word. And in the Bible a lot of cities of non believers were destroyed by the Lord.
That being said, I am truly grateful for the wisdom of our founding fathers not to make the U.S. a Christian Nation, but rather a nation that welcomes and tolerates all faiths. I do not think any state should be a theocratic state, yet like Israel, I understand the attraction.
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GM; It seems odd for me to be defending Islam and "criticizing Christianity since I am a practicing Christian, truly believe in God's power and attend Church on most Sundays.That said, I beg to differ with your conclusions/questions/comments.
To ignore God's (Christian God) Law and make your own is also not acceptable is classic Christian theology.
I am not a theologian, but I'll try to express my opinion. However, I think if your read the Bible, a theocratic state is thought to be ideal. Israel is a theocratic state; while perhaps not Christians,
**Israel is a parliamentary democracy, not a theocracy. Most Israelis are secular Jews.**
the Old Testament has a strong influence. The Catholic Church (I am not Catholic) at one time and I bet even today if asked privately would support a Christian theocratic state. Our founding fathers decided not to be a Christian Nation, but rather a nation for all religions; rather wise of them.
And "go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them..." has nothing to do with feeding the poor, tending to the sick, etc.
albeit all good. It is very clear, MAKE DISCIPLES all nations, i.e. convert them to Christianity period. That is the sole objective of missionary work; feeding the poor, educating them, tending to the sick gives them the inside track to conversion, but their objective is to convert people. The rest is just a means to an end.
**I disagree. I've spoken to more than a few that have gone on missions and they tend to cite such things as:
"On the last day, Jesus will say to those on His right hand, "Come, enter the Kingdom. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was sick and you visited me." Then Jesus will turn to those on His left hand and say, "Depart from me because I was hungry and you did not feed me, I was thirsty and you did not give me to drink, I was sick and you did not visit me." These will ask Him, "When did we see You hungry, or thirsty or sick and did not come to Your help?" And Jesus will answer them, "Whatever you neglected to do unto one of these least of these, you neglected to do unto Me!"**
Yes, Jesus resisted earthly power; he looked upon his power as absolute far greater than any earthly power. As for material things, they simply are not needed if you have the Lord in your heart and look forward to heaven; your final reward. Live a good life, fight for the Lord, make disciples of all nations and you will be rewarded in heaven; is that much different than Islam?
**Yes, Mohammed created a political-theological entity with the mandate to make all submit to islam.**
I am not an expert on the Qu'ran (I read it a long time ago and need to do again), but then again, the Bible, especially the Old Testament is full of versus and chapters telling how God punished the disbelieving. Actually, especially in the Old Testament, God is Love, but God is also a God of wrath; don't mess with him or oppose him or thousands will die and not a tear will be shed.
**The key difference being that in Christianity (at least modern christianity), humans are not tasked with being direct agents of god's wrath. If god chooses to unleash biblical plagues, christians aren't expected to brew up bioweapons to fulfill god's desires. Reading the qu'ran without reading the sunna and ahadith and commentaries doesn't lend to getting a good grasp of islamic theology.**
The Bible has become watered down. But if you simply read the Bible, it's a "you are with Me or against Me" story; period; it is very black and white. Those that are not with Me and don't believe in Me and/or have a false God are condemned to Hell. And no tears are to be shed for them. And if one city after another of non believers is destroyed, well, that's their fault for not believing and following God's word. And in the Bible a lot of cities of non believers were destroyed by the Lord.
**There is a big difference between the old testament and the new theologically. And again, modern christianity does not teach that christianity should be spread at swordpoint. Islam has been spread at swordpoint since it's inception and is being spread around the world by violence, as we speak.**
That being said, I am truly grateful for the wisdom of our founding fathers not to make the U.S. a Christian Nation, but rather a nation that welcomes and tolerates all faiths. I do not think any state should be a theocratic state, yet like Israel, I understand the attraction.
**Again, Israel is a secular parliamentary democracy, not a theocracy. A core element of christian theology that allows for freedom of religion is the concept of free will. God gives free will and thus humans are free to accept or reject him. Allah does not grant free will.**
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September 05, 2008
Why Obama's "Community Organizer" Days Are a Joke
By Michelle Malkin
Rudy Giuliani had me in stitches during his red-meat keynote address at the GOP convention. I laughed out loud when Giuliani laughed out loud while noting Barack Obama's deep experience as a "community organizer." I laughed again when VP nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin cracked: "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."
Team Obama was not amused. (Neither were the snarky left-wingers on cable TV who are now allergic to sarcasm.) They don't get why we snicker when Obama dons his Community Organizer cape. Apparently, the jibes rendered Obama's advisers sleepless. In a crack-of-dawn e-mail to Obama's followers hours after Giuliani and Palin spoke, campaign manager David Plouffe attempted to gin up faux outrage (and, more importantly, donations) by claiming grave offense on the part of community organizers everywhere. Fumed Plouffe:
"Both Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin specifically mocked Barack's experience as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago more than two decades ago, where he worked with people who had lost jobs and been left behind when the local steel plants closed. Let's clarify something for them right now. Community organizing is how ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies."
Let me clarify something. Nobody is mocking community organizers in church basements and community centers across the country working to improve their neighbors' lives. What deserves ridicule is the notion that Obama's brief stint as a South Side rabble-rouser for tax-subsidized, partisan nonprofits qualifies as executive experience you can believe in.
What deserves derision is "community organizing" that relies on a community of homeless people and ex-cons to organize for the purpose of registering dead people to vote, shaking down corporations and using the race card as a bludgeon.
As I've reported previously, Obama's community organizing days involved training grievance-mongers from the far-left ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). The ACORN mob is infamous for its bully tactics (which they dub "direct actions"); Obama supporters have recounted his role in organizing an ambush on a government planning meeting about a landfill project opposed by Chicago's minority lobbies.
With benefactors like Obama in office, ACORN has milked nearly four decades of government subsidies to prop up chapters that promote the welfare state and undermine the free market, as well as some that have been implicated in perpetuating illegal immigration and voter fraud. Since I last detailed ACORN's illicit activities in this column in June (see "The ACORN Obama knows," June 19, 2008), the group continues to garner scrutiny from law enforcement:
Last week, Milwaukee's top election official announced plans to seek criminal investigations of 37 ACORN employees accused of offering gifts to sign up voters (including prepaid gas cards and restaurant cards) or falsifying driver's license numbers, Social Security numbers or other information on voter registration cards.
Last month, a New Mexico TV station reported on the child rapists, drug offenders and forgery convicts on ACORN's payroll. In July, Pennsylvania investigators asked the public for help in locating a fugitive named Luis R. Torres-Serrano, who is accused "of submitting more than 100 fraudulent voter registration forms he collected on behalf of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now to county election officials." Also in July, a massive, nearly $1 million embezzlement scheme by top ACORN officials was exposed.
ACORN's political arm endorsed Obama in February and has ramped up efforts to register voters across the country. In the meantime, completely ignored by the mainstream commentariat and clean-election crusaders, the Obama campaign admitted failing to report $800,000 in campaign payments to ACORN. They were disguised as payments to a front group called "Citizen Services, Inc." for "advance work."
Jim Terry, an official from the Consumer Rights League, a watchdog group that monitors ACORN, noted: "ACORN has a long and sordid history of employing convoluted Enron-style accounting to illegally use taxpayer funds for their own political gain. Now it looks like ACORN is using the same type of convoluted accounting scheme for Obama's political gain." With a wave of his magic wand, Obama amended his FEC forms to change the "advance work" to "get-out-the-vote" work.
Now, don't you dare challenge his commitment to following tax and election laws. And don't you even think of entertaining the possibility that The One exploited a nonprofit supposedly focused on helping low-income people for political gain.
He was just "organizing" his "community." Guffaw.
Copyright 2008, Creators Syndicate Inc.
Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/09/why_obamas_community_organizer.html at September 05, 2008 - 10:07:16 PM CDT
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[
**Israel is a parliamentary democracy, not a theocracy. Most Israelis are secular Jews.**
**I disagree. I've spoken to more than a few that have gone on missions and they tend to cite such things as:
"On the last day, Jesus will say to those on His right hand, "Come, enter the Kingdom. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was sick and you visited me." Then Jesus will turn to those on His left hand and say, "Depart from me because I was hungry and you did not feed me, I was thirsty and you did not give me to drink, I was sick and you did not visit me." These will ask Him, "When did we see You hungry, or thirsty or sick and did not come to Your help?" And Jesus will answer them, "Whatever you neglected to do unto one of these least of these, you neglected to do unto Me!"**
I disagree: I think you misunderstood. While food is nice and so is water/wine, and that may help conversions, however, the Kingdom of heaven is for those who believe; period. How "nice" you are is just frosting on the cake, but "believe in me and you will be saved". And so you can do all the good works you want, but if you don't truly believe and follow the Lord, you are damned. It is very cut and dried; there is no grey. That being said, if you truly believe, then you will help the hungry and thirsty and those that are fed and given water may be more prone to believe. But the point is without belief, regardless of all your good works, you are going to hell. Nobody gets invited to heaven without belief regardless of what good works they did.
As for Israel, is it truly a parliamentary democracy"? hmmm I am a big fan of Israel, I only wish them well, but a true "democracy" it is not. If that was true, then the Palestinians should soon be in charge; one man one vote? Isn't that a democracy? And while "most Israelis are secular Jews" they are still Jews. It is a Jewish State. I think most Israelis would admit they are a Jewish State and be proud of it.
[/quote]
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I've known more than a few Americans that were Jewish and supporters of Israel, but Jewish only in a secular manner with very little religious observance, if any.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Israel
Wikipedia isn't a great source, but it's quick.
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I mentioned this article a month or two ago but no one seemed interested;
but it does make some good points about "democracy" in Israel.
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20071206gd.html
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Gentlemen:
A quick yip from the road: several of today's posts belong in other threads.
Thank you,
Marc
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Time to move :-) I understand.
But GM, I am curious about your response to the above article on the conundrum
of democracy in Israel. And Rachel's opinion as well would be appreciated.
Post where ever you think appropriate.
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I'm thinking that would be the "Israel" thread. :lol: I too hope for Rachel's input.
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Crafty, perhaps you could move the last four to six posts to the
Israel forum? And perhaps reference posts even further above of GM's regarding democracy in Israel?
This will move it to the top of the list and perhaps attract Rachel's attention? As well as others
interested in Israel but perhaps not Obama.
Or?
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Done.
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Hello
I thought I would pass on a link to a satirical Obama song on my space. I know the composer. He is trying to get it out to as many people as he can. He is not wanting anything for it just an audience. Enjoy. Feel free to download it and pass it around or give out the link.
www.myspace.com/poorjamesandtheswampcrows
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REVIEW & OUTLOOK
ObamaTax 3.0
September 9, 2008; Page A24
The good news is that Barack Obama said on ABC Sunday that he might not go through with his plans to increase taxes.
The bad news is that the economy has to be mired in recession to avoid the largest tax increase in the nation's history.
Our check of the Dow Jones Factiva database suggests that other than viewers of ABC's "This Week," only three or four newspapers carried an account of Senator Obama's amended tax plan. While it's possible that the story of a deferred tax increase could shock the media into paralysis, we take it as an encouraging sign. The education of Barack Obama continues apace.
For the record, here is what he told ABC's George Stephanopoulos.
Mr. Stephanopoulos: "So even if we're in a recession next January, you come into office, you'll still go through with your tax increases?"
Senator Obama: "No, no, no, no, no. What I've said, George, is that even if we're still in a recession, I'm going to go through with my tax cuts. That's my priority."
Mr. Stephanopoulos: "But not the increases?"
Senator Obama: "I think we've got to take a look and see where the economy is. The economy is weak right now. The news with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, I think, along with the unemployment numbers indicates that we're fragile. I want to accelerate those tax cuts through a second stimulus package, get more money into the pockets of ordinary Americans, see if we can stabilize the housing market, and then we're going to have to reevaluate at the beginning of the year to see what kind of hole we're in."
* * *
Even individuals staring down the barrel of Mr. Obama's tax increases should not wish for an economic recession to give them a reprieve. The relevant point is that it was early last year, when the "Bush economy" was still humming, that Senator Obama first proposed pushing taxes sharply upward on "the wealthy," while giving what he calls "tax cuts" (actually they are credits, not rate reductions) to "the middle class."
At the time, Mr. Obama was the long shot in the Democratic Presidential sweepstakes, and it made some political sense to reassure the party's intensely liberal primary voters with class-war boilerplate on taxes.
Under ObamaTax 1.0, he would have repealed all the Bush tax cuts, lifted the cap on wages subject to the payroll tax, put the top marginal rate up to 39.8% and raised the rate on capital gains and dividends to at least 25% from 15% now. The official campaign line was that tax rates really don't matter to economic growth.
Summer arrived, the Clinton challenge was history and with the general election ahead came ObamaTax 2.0. It posited that the top rate on capital gains now would be 20%, described on this page August 14 by economic advisers Jason Furman and Austan Goolsbee as "almost a third lower than the rate President Reagan set in 1986." This was progress.
Now with the big vote less than 60 days off and John McCain pounding him as a tax-raiser and pulling ahead in some polls, the Democratic nominee has decided to release ObamaTax 3.0, the most interesting upgrade so far. If the economy is still weak in January, a President Obama might defer all of the planned increases.
Several interpretations of this shift are possible, none of which reflect badly on Senator Obama's political learning curve.
At the bloodless level of simply wishing to win, the Obama camp may have concluded that in the sprint to November it is a losing strategy to be the election's only doctrinaire tax raiser. A tight race tends to focus political minds, and none forget Walter Mondale's catastrophic promise in his 1984 acceptance speech: "Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won't tell you. I just did."
Beyond this lies the economic reality of jacking up income, investment and payroll taxes on "the wealthy" amid a flat or falling economy. In the standard narrative, these taxpayers exist as fat cats atop hedge funds, banks and megacorporations. Let's toss into the vat the top-tier managers of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Beltway's own fat-cat sinecure.
The reality is that the creators of new jobs in the economy are more likely to be rising entrepreneurs or filers under Subchapter S, who typically pay taxes at individual rates. Hanging three or four tax millstones around their productive necks in January if the economy is weak will likely produce unimpressive growth and job numbers in the first year of the new Obama Presidency, and likely beyond. That in turn could drag down the Democrats in Congress who will get credit for voting these higher taxes into law.
Thus Mr. Obama's unambiguous answer Sunday to whether he'd insist on his tax increases if the economy is in an official recession: "No, no, no, no, no." It seems Mr. McCain is right that taxes do matter.
Mr. Obama's most ardent primary supporters may not like it, but we'll take the five "Nos" as evidence that Senator Obama may be learning the difference between liberal doctrine and sensible governance.
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Gotta love this. Now we should give a hoot what the "world" thinks. In a way I would be more likely to choose what the world does not want. I vote for a President for my country not for the benefit of other countries. What a joke. Does any one else question the motives of this stuff - I believe the world wants OBama because he is weak and will cave to their wishes. Seems simple to me. So if anything we should not vote for him based on this. This should be twisted around by the cans.
****World wants Obama as president: poll
Posted 4 hours 34 minutes ago
US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama may be struggling to nudge ahead of his Republican rival in polls at home, but people across the world want him in the White House, a BBC poll said.
All 22 countries covered in the poll would prefer to see Senator Obama elected US president ahead of Republican John McCain.
In 17 of the 22 nations, people expect relations between the US and the rest of the world to improve if Senator Obama wins.
More than 22,000 people were questioned by pollster GlobeScan in countries ranging from Australia to India and across Africa, Europe and South America.
The margin in favour of Senator Obama ranged from 9 per cent in India to 82 per cent in Kenya, while an average of 49 per cent across the 22 countries preferred Senator Obama compared with 12 per cent preferring Senator McCain. Some four in 10 did not take a view.
"Large numbers of people around the world clearly like what Barack Obama represents," GlobeScan chairman Doug Miller said.
"Given how negative America's international image is at present, it is quite striking that only one in five think a McCain presidency would improve on the Bush administration's relations with the world."
In the United States, three polls taken since the Republican party convention ended on Thursday (local time) show Senator McCain with a lead of 1 to 4 percentage points - within the margin of error - and two others show the two neck-and-neck.
The countries most optimistic that an Obama presidency would improve relations were America's NATO allies, including Australia (62 per cent).
A similar BBC/Globescan poll conducted ahead of the 2004 U.S presidential election found that, of 35 countries polled, 30 would have preferred to see Democratic nominee John Kerry, rather than the incumbent George Bush, who was elected.
A total of 23,531 people in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Lebanon, Mexico, Nigeria, Panama, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Singapore, Turkey, the UAE, Britain and the United States were interviewed face-to-face or by telephone in July and August 2008 for the poll.
- Reuters****
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The Foreign Policy Difference
By FOUAD AJAMI
September 10, 2008
The candidacy of Barack Obama seems to have lost some of its luster of late, and I suspect this has something to do with large questions many Americans still harbor about his view of the dangerous world around us. Those questions were not stilled by the choice of Joe Biden as his running mate.
Martin Kozlowski
To be sure, the Delaware senator is a man of unfailing decency and deep legislative experience; and his foreign policy preferences are reflective of the liberal internationalist outlook that once prevailed in the Democratic Party. To his honor and good name, Sen. Biden took a leading role in pushing for the use of American military power in the Balkans when the Muslims of Bosnia were faced with grave dangers a dozen years ago. Patriotism does not embarrass this man in the way it does so many in the liberal elite. But as Bob Woodward is the latest to remind us, it is presidents, not their understudies, who shape the destiny of nations.
So the Obama candidacy must be judged on its own merits, and it can be reckoned as the sharpest break yet with the national consensus over American foreign policy after World War II. This is not only a matter of Sen. Obama's own sensibility; the break with the consensus over American exceptionalism and America's claims and burdens abroad is the choice of the activists and elites of the Democratic Party who propelled Mr. Obama's rise.
Though the staging in Denver was the obligatory attempt to present the Obama Democrats as men and women of the political center, the Illinois senator and his devotees are disaffected with American power. In their view, we can make our way in the world without the encumbrance of "hard" power. We would offer other nations apologies for the way we carried ourselves in the aftermath of 9/11, and the foreign world would be glad for a reprieve from the time of American certitude.
The starkness of the choice now before the country is fully understood when compared to that other allegedly seminal election of 1960. But the legend of Camelot and of the New Frontier exaggerates the differences between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy. A bare difference of four years separated the two men (Nixon had been born in 1913, Kennedy in 1917). Both men had seen service in the Navy in World War II. Both were avowed Cold Warriors. After all, Kennedy had campaigned on the missile gap -- in other words the challenger had promised a tougher stance against the Soviet Union. (Never mind the irony: There was a missile gap; the U.S. had 2,000 missiles, the Soviet Union a mere 67.)
The national consensus on America's role abroad, and on the great threats facing it, was firmly implanted. No great cultural gaps had opened in it, arugula was not on the menu, and the elites partook of the dominant culture of the land; the universities were then at one with the dominant national ethos. The "disuniting of America" was years away. American liberalism was still unabashedly tethered to American nationalism.
We are at a great remove from that time and place. Globalization worked its way through the land, postmodernism took hold of the country's intellectual life. The belief in America's "differentness" began to give way, and American liberalism set itself free from the call of nationalism. American identity itself began to mutate.
The celebrated political scientist Samuel Huntington, in "Who Are We?," a controversial book that took up this delicate question of American identity, put forth three big conceptions of America: national, imperial and cosmopolitan. In the first, America remains America. In the second, America remakes the world. In the third, the world remakes America. Back and forth, America oscillated between the nationalist and imperial callings. The standoff between these two ideas now yields to the strength and the claims of cosmopolitanism. It is out of this new conception of America that the Obama phenomenon emerges.
The "aloofness" of Mr. Obama that has become part of the commentary about him is born of this cultural matrix. Mr. Obama did not misspeak when he described union households and poorer Americans as people clinging to their guns and religion; he was overheard sharing these thoughts with a like-minded audience in San Francisco.
Nor was it an accident that, in a speech at Wesleyan University, he spoke of public service but excluded service in the military. The military does not figure prominently in his world and that of his peers. In his acceptance speech at the Democratic Party convention, as was the case on the campaign trail, he spoke of his maternal grandfather's service in Patton's army. But that experience had not been part of his own upbringing.
When we elect a president, we elect a commander in chief. This remains an imperial republic with military obligations and a military calling. That is why Eisenhower overwhelmed Stevenson, Reagan's swagger swept Carter out of office, Bush senior defeated Dukakis, etc.
The exception was Bill Clinton, with his twin victories over two veterans of World War II. We had taken a holiday from history -- but 9/11 awakened us to history's complications. Is it any wonder that Hillary Clinton feigned the posture of a muscular American warrior, and carried the working class with her?
The warrior's garb sits uneasily on Barack Obama's shoulders: Mr. Obama seeks to reassure Americans that he and his supporters are heirs of Roosevelt and Kennedy; that he, too, could order soldiers to war, stand up to autocracies and rogue regimes. But the widespread skepticism about his ability to do so is warranted.
The crowds in Berlin and Paris that took to him knew their man. He had once presented his willingness to negotiate with Iran as the mark of his diplomacy, the break with the Bush years and the Bush style. But he stepped back from that pledge, and in a blatant echo of President Bush's mantra on Iran, he was to say that "no options would be off the table" when dealing with Iran. The change came on a visit to Israel, the conversion transparent and not particularly convincing.
Mr. Obama truly believes that he can offer the world beyond America's shores his biography, his sympathies with strangers. In the great debate over anti-Americanism and its sources, the two candidates couldn't be more different. Mr. Obama proceeds from the notion of American guilt: We called up the furies, he believes. Our war on terror and our war in Iraq triggered more animus. He proposes to repair for that, and offers himself (again, the biography) as a bridge to the world.
Mr. McCain, well, he's not particularly articulate on this question. But he shares the widespread attitude of broad swaths of the country that are not consumed with worries about America's standing in foreign lands. Mr. McCain is not eager to be loved by foreigners. In November, the country will have a choice between a Republican candidate forged in the verities of the 1950s, and a Democratic rival who walks out of the 1990s.
For Mr. McCain, the race seems a matter of duty and obligation. He is a man taking up this quest after a life of military and public service, the presidency as a capstone of a long career. Mr. McCain could speak with more nuance about the great issues upon us. When it comes to the Islamic world, for example, it's not enough merely to evoke the threat of radical Islamism as the pre-eminent security challenge of our time. But his approach and demeanor have proven their electoral appeal before.
For Mr. Obama, the race is about the claims of modernism. There is "cool," and the confidence of the meritocracy in him. The Obama way is glib: It glides over the world without really taking it in. It has to it that fluency with political and economic matters that can be acquired in a hurry, an impatience with great moral and political complications. The lightning overseas trip, the quick briefing, and above all a breezy knowingness. Mr. Obama's way is the way of his peers among the liberal, professional elite.
Once every four years, ordinary Americans go out and choose the standard-bearer of their nationalism. Liberalism has run away with elite culture. Nationalism may be out of fashion in Silicon Valley. But the state -- and its citadel, the presidency -- is an altogether different calling.
Mr. Ajami is professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University. He is also an adjunct research fellow of the Hoover Institution.
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Well the mostt recent panicky comments from the Bama man ain't helping his case that he is ready to lead.
This is not made up. This is not a lie. He said it. It came straight from HIS mouth. This guy can't take the heat or the truth about himself. And I don't believe a guy who calls Wright his father figure and mentor actually loves this country as much as he actually loves himself. And that goes for Michelle too. Now if only McCain can continue to show emotion and passion like he did in his speech and Palin doesn't mess up - the game is over. If you asked me this before the Rep convention I would have never thought it. It is a miracle - so far - but still have a long way to go. As Mark Levin says - watch for the last minute political hit on Palin - that she used her influence to get a state trooper fired - he says this will be the Dems October "surprise" hit on Palin. I don't think it will work though.
*****Obama accuses McCain camp of lies, phony outrage By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer
3 minutes ago
NORFOLK, Va. - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Wednesday accused Republican John McCain's campaign of using "lies and phony outrage and Swift-boat politics" in claiming he used a sexist comment against vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
Calling it "the latest made-up controversy by the John McCain campaign," Obama responded to the Republicans' charge that he was referring to Palin when he used the phrase "lipstick on a pig" at a campaign stop Tuesday.
"I don't care what they say about me. But I love this country too much to let them take over another election with lies and phony outrage and Swift-boat politics. Enough is enough," he said.
Obama's reference was to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, an outside group that in 2004 made unsubstantiated allegations about Democratic nominee John Kerry's decorated military record in Vietnam.
On Tuesday, Obama criticized McCain's economic policies as similar to those of President Bush, saying: "You can put lipstick on a pig ... it's still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's still going to stink after eight years."
The McCain campaign contended that the comments were directed at Palin, the GOP's first woman on a presidential ticket. In her acceptance speech last week, she had referred to herself in a joke about lipstick being the only difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull.
Accusing Obama of "smearing" Palin in "offensive and disgraceful" comments, the McCain campaign demanded an apology — though McCain himself used the folksy metaphor a few times last year, including once to describe Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's health care plan.
The McCain campaign on Wednesday issued an Internet ad that said Obama was talking about Palin and said of Obama: "Ready to lead? No. Ready to smear? Yes."
Obama began a discussion of education at a Norfolk high school on Wednesday by assailing McCain's campaign.
"What their campaign has done this morning is the same game that has made people sick and tired of politics in this country. They seize on an innocent remark, try to take it out of context, throw up an outrageous ad because they know that it's catnip for the news media," Obama said.
Obama's campaign has accused the GOP camp of engaging in a "pathetic attempt to play the gender card." In an e-mail to reporters Wednesday, the campaign noted two other instances of McCain using the phrase "lipstick on a pig" and its use by other Republicans such as House Minority Leader John Boehner and Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl.****
___
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The lipstick - hockey mom - pitbull joke is old and funny because there's truth in it. It's derogatory to the pitbull but only self deprecating to the hockey mom. Parents who commit to kid hockey programs spend thousands a year on ice time, coaching and equipment, drive their SUV's daily at all hours through all weather to the arenas and away games forsaking whatever they would be doing without kids or hockey. When they get there they don't just sit there and clap politely for the nice plays like it's a senior golf event or a slide show at the library. They holler and scream and scold and tell their kids they don't hustle enough while they demand to the coaches their kid deserves more ice time. Same goes for the parents in plenty of other sports. The joke was a headsup to the fact that she was not going to sit pretty next to McCain and stay out of the mix. And she didn't.
Lipstick on a pig is also an old phrase, it's sexist, and both candidates have used it.
The difference was the timing and the crowd instantly got it. McCain's crowd doesn't roar if he calls socialized heathcare a pig or a turkey. Obama's turn of phrase was roll on the floor funny ONLY IF he intended to get moveon.org nasty with his new opponent who recently tweaked him in front of $40 million. Obama didn't intend to do that or have it read that way IMO. It was a gaffe.
Liberals went into a feeding frenzy over George Allen's "Mucaca". He was just trying to put some kind of name on his stalker, but the guy's look was ethnic and the made up name sounded ethnic and the instant news cycle spin turned it into a condescending slur. Sen. Allen was supposed to be the next Reagan. He's out and his replacement is a Dem.
Obama should know that phrase at this time will be taken wrong, he should apologize and find a new cliche. (Doesn't he carry the unabridged cliche collection with him?) Instead this will haunt him.
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"Lipstick on a pig is , , , sexist,"
Why :?
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"Lipstick on a pig is , , , sexist,"
Why :?
One etymology I've heard is that the phrase was a '50's term coined to describe an esthetically unpleasing woman who dons a dress and makeup to poorly conceal that fact. IMO, McPalin are overplaying this hand; they should just stand back and let BHO stutter. Indeed, he's starting to come off like a meth freak reciting his mantra: "swift boating," "change," "diversion," "phony," ohhhhhhmmmm.
Think Mark Steyn has it right:
Pig in a poke [Mark Steyn]
I agree with Mark K that Governor Palin, who kills elk for breakfast, shouldn't be seen to complain Obama-like about how beastly and mean her opponents are. Years ago in Britain there was a dialogue-free commercial in which a cute chick looked into the camera and put on her lipstick while the soundtrack played some smooth sax instrumental of "Put On A Happy Face". That's what Sarah should do: Put on a happy face.
That said...
If you read Obama's books, you know that his preferred voice is a detached, slightly unknowable cool. He is, in that sense, like an iconic movie star running for president. But, two months out from the big vote, doing a gazillion appearances and interviews a day, you can't get by on just the detached cool, and whatever's underneath starts to show.
We already know that Obama is pretty terrible when he's off the prompter.
We also know that an amazing number of the media-Democrat elite openly loathe Sarah Palin, and everything about her from her alleged Eighties hair to her hillbilly fecundity. Oh, sure, if you press them, they'll talk about per diems and the bridge to nowhere for a bit, but they'd much rather trash her personally - reviling her as both an uptight fundamentalist and a whip-wielding dominatrix in the same publication on the same day. Given what's been expressed publicly by Maureen Dowd, Gloria Steinem et al, is it likely that in private the upper echelons of the Obama campaign are immune to the gleeful contempt for Palin expressed by almost all other prominent "liberals"?
And that's the issue. The problem is not whether Obama's sexist but whether he's disciplined enough to keep the public from glimpsing the less attractive elements of liberal-elite condescension. Where now the iconic cool of the snows of Iowa?
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The Dems keep pushing this Swift Boat buzz line as though most Americans are upset about the questions raised about Kerry during the last campaign. I really wonder if anyone but the choir really cares.
And now we hear comparisons of Kerry with McCain as though they are the one in the same because they both admiringly served during VietNam. But that is where the comparison ends. The "Swift Boating" of Kerry was not a criticism of his serving but a criticism of his coming back to the US and denigrating this country, and other service men. McCain never did that. Additionally Kerry also questionably got a purlple heart and some sort of recognition for bravery while he was a Senator for what sounded like a scratch. One thing some Americans may never forgive is someone who has a history of denigrating this country and then later having the nerve to run for the Presidency. Correct me if I am wrong but that is why Kerry lost. And that may be why the Bama loses (if he does). Perhaps more this than his "inexperience".
Obama accuses Republicans of 'swift boat politics'Story Highlights
NEW: Sen. John McCain's camp says Sen. Barack Obama using "schoolyard insults"
Obama slams Republicans for making people "sick and tired of politics"
McCain campaign critical of Obama's line about "lipstick on a pig"
Obama launches "Alaska Mythbusters"; McCain starts "Palin Truth Squad"
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(CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama on Wednesday accused Sen. John McCain's campaign of engaging in "lies" and "swift boat politics" in regard to his comment about "lipstick on a pig."
Sen. Barack Obama dismisses GOP criticism about his reference to "lipstick on a pig."
1 of 2 "Spare me the phony outrage. Spare me the phony talk about change," Obama said at the start of an education event in Norfolk, Virginia.
"We have real problems in this country right now. The American people are looking to us for answers, not distractions, not diversions, not manipulations. They want real answers to the real problems we are facing.
"I don't care what they say about me. But I love this country too much to let them take over another election with lies and phony outrage and swift boat politics. Enough is enough," he said, referring to how Swift Boat Veterans for Truth launched attacks against Sen. John Kerry in the 2004 presidential race.
Obama said the McCain campaign was doing the type of thing that makes people "sick and tired of politics." Watch Obama dismiss "the latest made-up controversy" »
Responding to Obama's comments, McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said, "Barack Obama can't campaign with schoolyard insults and then try to claim outrage at the tone of the campaign.
"His talk of new politics is as empty as his campaign trail promises, and his record of bucking his party and reaching across the aisle simply doesn't exist."
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Obama's heated response came after the McCain campaign said the Democrat owes the GOP vice presidential nominee, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, an apology for invoking an adage on the campaign trail Tuesday: "That's not change," Obama said, saying McCain's policy views were similar to President Bush's. "That's just calling something the same thing something different. You know you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig."
McCain's campaign said Obama's remarks were offensive and a slap at Palin -- despite the fact that the senator from Arizona used the phrase last year to describe a policy proposal of Sen. Hillary Clinton's. Watch how tensions are rising on the campaign trail »
Within minutes, the McCain campaign announced a conference call focusing on the remark, which it said was a deliberate reference to Palin's line: "You know the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick." Read more about the "lipstick" controversy
Palin used the line in the opening remarks of her acceptance speech at last week's GOP convention, and she frequently uses it on the campaign trail.
Earlier Wednesday, Obama's campaign announced it was launching "Alaska Mythbusters," a group of Alaskans that the campaign says will "set the record straight" about Palin.
Former Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles and Bob Weinstein, mayor of the city that would have been home to the "Bridge to Nowhere," planned to discuss Palin's record in a conference call later Wednesday.
Obama's group comes the day after McCain deployed the "Palin Truth Squad" to fight future attacks on his vice presidential nominee.
It was launched as The Washington Post reported Tuesday that Palin had billed the state a per diem for 312 days she spent at home and requested reimbursement for plane rides and hotel rooms for her husband and children.
The newspaper noted that officials said the claims were justified under existing state regulations. The McCain campaign said that Palin had reduced yearly travel expenses by roughly 80 percent of the amount spent by her predecessor, former Gov. Frank Murkowski.
Meanwhile, after Obama made his remarks criticizing Republicans, he moved on to discussing his plan for the education system. At the Virginia event, Obama repeated proposals he laid out Tuesday, which included doubling funding for charter schools and investing in early-childhood education. Read more about Obama's plan for public education
Obama has put a lot of emphasis on Virginia, a Republican stronghold he hopes to turn blue.
Obama kicked off his general election campaign in Virginia in June.
Virginia hasn't voted for a Democrat since President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, but for more than a year, Obama's campaign has cited the state's 13 electoral votes as part of its argument that he can reshuffle the electoral map this fall.
Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine was long considered one of Obama's top vice presidential contenders, and the state played a big role at the Democratic National Convention last month, with Kaine's predecessor, Mark Warner, delivering the keynote address.
Following his Virginia event, Obama was set to tape an appearance for the "Late Show With David Letterman" and then head to Washington to speak before the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute Gala.
Obama's running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, was in New Hampshire for a town hall meeting. New Hampshire is also a tossup state, with four electoral votes at stake.
On the Republican side McCain and Palin were in Fairfax, Virginia, for a rally.
The campaign moved the rally from a northern Virginia high school to a nearby park following complaints from some officials, who said that holding a partisan event on school grounds violated local school board policy.
However, McCain's campaign said Wednesday that the main reason for moving the event was to accommodate the demand for tickets.
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I don't remember Kerry "denigrating this country" and later having run for President. Like McCain, I do remember him serving his country and fighting in Vietnam. I do remember Kerry received more than one Purple Heart. And, I do remember he returned to America after serving his country and opposed the war as did hundreds of thousands of Americans. Also, I understand he spoke of atrocities being committed by American soldiers. Perhaps true - I don't know.
Frankly, given that he had served, I found his opposition to the war much more credible than the average "love child" smoking dope and preaching peace. Of course one can oppose war still love your country. Also, one should stand up and criticize atrocities if they are being committed. And one can still honorably run for President having done so. Our freedom includes the right of free speech to oppose government policies that we disagree with. Freedom of speech is basic to our society and it is a very valuable freedom that cannot be found in China, Russia, or many other places in the world today. I don't get your point; of course someone can vocally oppose the war today and still run for president at a later date. And they may be a great president.
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**The left lied and millions died.**
http://michellemalkin.com/2008/03/12/hot-air-tv-sen-john-kerry-confronted-about-winter-soldier-ii/
Hot Air TV: Sen. John Kerry confronted about Winter Soldier II
By Michelle Malkin • March 12, 2008 11:12 PM
Cross-posted at Hot Air…scroll down for updates…
Grab the popcorn. We’ve got another joint YAF/Hot Air TV production for you, just in time for the anti-war confab known as “Winter Soldier II” that kicks off in Washington, D.C. tomorrow and runs through Sunday. YAF’s Jason Mattera, our intrepid special correspondent who cornered Jack Murtha in September, is back in the halls of Congress.
This week, Jason caught up with the original Winter Soldier, Sen. John Kerry, and confronted him about his unsubstantiated, troop-smearing testimony. Jason also tried to get him to autograph this picture. Watch:
***
Here’s the transcript:
Opening slate: On January 31, 1971, John Kerry organized the “Winter Soldier Investigations,” a media event that falsely accused American soldiers of routinely raping, torturing, and murdering innocent Vietnamese civilians.
Second slate: From March 13-16, 2008, “Iraq Veterans Against the War” has coordinated a second Winter Soldier Investigations in an effort to assail the U.S. Military in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Third slate: On March 11, 2008, Jason Mattera of Young America’’s Foundation confronted Senator Kerry (D-MA) about Winter Soldier II and the Senator’’s shady past.
MATTERA: Hey, Sen. Kerry! Jason Mattera with Young America’s Foundation. How are you?
KERRY: Jason. How are you?
MATTERA: I was wondering: Do you have any advice for the new group of activists who are organizing Winter Soldier II?
KERRY: I haven’t [unintelligble] what they’re doing or where they’re at. I just don’t…
MATTERA: Do you think this crop of anti-war activists, do you there’ll be any frauds like Al Hubbard?
KERRY: I have no idea. I hope not.
MATTERA: Do you think that they will make slanderous accusations–accusing the troops of raping women, pillaging villaging, just like you did to the Fulbright committee?
KERRY: Uh, I didn’t make those.
MATTERA: You didn’t?
Audio clip, John Kerry, 4/22/71: [They told the stories at times] they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.
Kerry claims Winter Soldier Investigations were substantiated by further investigation.
MATTERA: Did you ever verify those –
KERRY (crosstalk): I’ve been misquoted about that hundreds of times.
MATTERA: So you never substantiated those charges before you–
KERRY: I proposed–I gave them to the committee because I felt that they ought to be investigated and that’s exactly what I said. These are the–many of those charges, incidentally, were subsequently verified by different entities.
Slate: No criminal charges were filed as a result of any of the [Army’s Criminal Investigative Division] investigations into Winter Soldier.
FrontPageMag.com, February 25, 2008
Slate: Much of the testimony that will be heard during the three days could not be corroborated by the Free Press in the ten days it had to run down each account.
Detroit Free Press, January 31, 1971
MATTERA: Could you sign the picture of the dedication the North Vietnamese created in helping–claiming you helped them win the war?
KERRY: No. No.
MATTERA: Do you have any thoughts?
KERRY (puts hand on Jason’s shoulder): Who do you represent?
MATTERA: Young America’s Foundation.
KERRY: Ohhh.
MATTERA: Does it bother you that the North Vietnamese created a memorial dedicated to you?
KERRY: It’s not dedicated to me.
Slate: At the Communists War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, John Kerry’s picture hangs in a section dedicated to the anti-war activists who helped the Vietnamese Communists win the Vietnam War.
End slate:
Reputations ruined.
Lives torn apart.
Servicemen maligned.
We can’t let lies like Kerry’s go unchallenged again.
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Pig comment sexist? I wrote that because I find the term to be a visual put-down. How do I say nicely - we aren't talking about farm animals and we aren't talking about supermodels - millions and millions of women not comfortable with their looks put on billions of dollars of makeup/lipstick with millions of hours in front of the mirror and they attain mixed results, to put it lightly. The phrase in question doesn't make me visualize a painted farm animal; it makes me visualize the unpleasant sight of one of these unsuccessful makeover experiments, like one of the male actors in an SNL parody all lipsticked up and in a dress with a false front and a pretend high voice, not pulling off the beauty of an attractive woman.
Guys my age mostly think Palin is hot. But the hate blogs were all over her hair during the speech from another decade and though trimmer than Hillary, she wasn't the exact figure (months after childbirth) as her beauty queen photos. More importantly, feminists think she is a pig or other creature for being a woman and holding non-liberal-feminist views. Obama was NOT directly talking about her but he had VERY recently been talking about her and the crowd instantly got the unintended double-triple meaning, slamming Palin while he was slamming 'failed' policies and apparently pigs. JMHO.
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Obama's comment makes sense when you consider how muslims feel about pigs..... :evil:
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Reliability of this site unknown to me. Any other sightings of the infomation herein?
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/4821
Obama Had Close Ties to Top Saudi Adviser at Early Age
By Online Thursday, September 4, 2008
New evidence has emerged that Democratic presidential candidateBarack Obama was closely associated as early as age 25 to a key adviser to a Saudi billionaire who had mentored the founding members of the Black Panthers.
By: Kenneth R. Timmerman WorthyNews.com 9-3-8
In a videotaped interview this year on New York’s all news cable channel NY1, a prominent African-American businessman and political figure made the curious disclosures about Obama. (See Video Clip Below)
Percy Sutton, the former borough president of Manhattan, off-handedly revealed the unusual circumstances about his first encounter with the young Obama.
“I was introduced to (Obama) by a friend who was raising money for him,” Sutton told NY1 city hall reporter Dominic Carter.
“The friend’s name is Dr. Khalid al-Mansour, from Texas,” Sutton said. “He is the principal adviser to one of the world’s richest men. He told me about Obama.”
Sutton, the founder of Inner City Broadcasting, said al-Mansour contacted him to ask a favor: Would Sutton write a letter in support of Obama’s application to Harvard Law School?
“He wrote to me about him,” Sutton recalled. “And his introduction was there is a young man that has applied to Harvard. I know that you have a few friends up there because you used to go up there to speak. Would you please write a letter in support of him?”
Sutton said he acted on his friend al-Mansour’s advice.
“I wrote a letter of support of him to my friends at Harvard, saying to them I thought there was a genius that was going to be available and I certainly hoped they would treat him kindly,” Sutton told NY1.
Sutton did not say why al-Mansour was helping Obama, how he discovered him, or from whom he was raising money on Obama’s behalf.
A Sutton aide told Newsmax that Sutton, 88, is ailing and is unlikely to do additional TV interviews in the near future. The aide could not provide additional comment for this story.
As it turned out, Obama did attend Harvard Law School after graduating from Columbia University inNew York and doing a stint as a community organizer in Chicago.
The New York Times described how transformative his Harvard experience became for the youngObama: “He arrived there as an unknown, Afro-wearing community organizer who had spent years searching for his identity; by the time he left, he had his first national news media exposure, a book contract and a shot of confidence from running the most powerful legal journal in the country.”
The details of Obama’s academic performance are well known: At Harvard, Obama rose to academic distinction becoming the editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduating magna cum laude.
Less known are the reasons al-Mansour, an activist African-American Muslim, would be a key backer for a young man from Hawaii seeking to attend the most Ivy of the Ivy League law schools.
Khalid al-Mansour a.k.a. Don Warden
In an exclusive interview with Newsmax from his home in San Antonio, Texas, al-Mansour said he would not comment specifically on the statement by Percy Sutton because he was afraid anything he said would get “distorted.”
“I was determined I was never going to be in that situation,” he said. “Bloggers are saying this is the new Rev. Wright — in drag! — and he is a nationalist, racist, and worse than Rev. Wright. So any statement that I made would only further this activity which is not in the interest of Barack.”
But in the lengthy interview, al-Mansour confirmed that he frequently spoke on university campuses, including Columbia, where Percy Sutton suggested he met Obama in the late 1980s, and confirmed his close relationship with Prince Alwaleed.
“I am not surprised to learn about this,” said Niger Innis, spokesman of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). “It is clear that Barack Obama’s ties to the left are familial, generational, and have lasted for several years.”
Although many Americans have never heard of Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour (his full name), he is well known within the black community as a lawyer, an orthodox Muslim, a black nationalist, an author, an international deal-maker, an educator, and an outspoken enemy of Israel.
A graduate of Howard University with a law degree from the University of California, al-Mansour sits on numerous corporate boards, including the Saudi African Bank and Chicago-based LaGray Chemical Co. LaGray, which was formed to do business in Africa, counts former Nigerian President GeneralAbdusalam Abubakar on its advisory board.
He also sits on the board of the non-profit African Leadership Academy, along with top McCain for President adviser Carly Fiorina, and organized a tribute to the President of Ghana at the Clinton White House in 1995, along with pop star Michael Jackson.
But his writings and books are packed with anti-American rhetoric reminiscent of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s disgraced former pastor.
In a 1995 book, “The Lost Books of Africa Rediscovered,” he alleged that the United States was plotting genocide against black Americans.
The first “genocide against the black man began 300 years ago,” he told an audience in Harlem at a book-signing, while a second “genocide” was on the way “to remove 15 million Black people, considered disposable, of no relevance, value or benefit to the American society.”
In the 1960s, when he founded the African American Association in the San Francisco Bay area, he was known as Donald Warden.
According to the Social Activism Project at the University of California at Berkley, Warden, a.k.a.Khalid al-Mansour, was the mentor of Black Panther Party founder Huey Newton and his cohort, Bobby Seale.
Newton later had a falling out with Warden, who was described in a 1994 book as “the most articulate spokesperson for black nationalism” at the time.
The falling out wasn’t purely political, according to author Hugh Pearson.
“Sometimes Newton and the other members of (Warden’s) security detail got into fights with young whites who didn’t like what Warden had to say about whites. Rather than ‘throw down’ along with the security detail, Warden refused to fight,” Pearson wrote in “Shadow of the Panther: Huey Newton and the Price of Black Power in America.”
U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee of California entered an official statement of appreciation of Warden and his Black Panther colleagues in the African-American Association in the Congressional Record on April 23, 2007.
“Among the founding members (of the Association) were community leaders such as Khalid Al-Mansour(known then as Don Warden); future Judges Henry Ramsey and Thelton Henderson; future Congressman and Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, and future Black Panthers Huey Newton and Bobby Seale,” the Democratic representative’s statement said.
Al-Mansour’s more recent videotaped speeches focus on Muslim themes, and abound with anti-Semitic theories and anti-Israel vitriol.
“Today, the Palestinians are being brutalized like savages,” he told an audience in South Africa. “If you protest you will go to jail, and you may be killed. And they say they are the only democratic country in the Middle East. ... They are lying on God.”
He accused the Jews of “stealing the land the same way the Christians stole the land from the Indians in America.”
The Saudi Connection
But al-Mansour’s sponsorship of Obama as a prospective Harvard law student is important for another reason beyond his Islamic and anti-American rhetoric and early Black Panther ties.
At the time Percy Sutton, a former lawyer for Malcolm X and a former business partner of al-Mansour, says he was raising money for Obama’s graduate school education, al-Mansour was representing top members of the Saudi Royal family seeking to do business and exert influence in the United States.
In 1989, for example — just one year after Obama entered Harvard Law School — The Los Angeles Times revealed that al-Mansour had been advising Saudi billionaires Abdul Aziz and Khalid al-Ibrahimin their secret effort to acquire a major stake in prime oceanfront property in Marina del Rey, Calif., through “an elaborate network of corporate shells in California, the Caribbean and Europe.”
At the same time, he was also advising Prince Alwaleed bin Talal in his U.S. investments, and sits on the board of his premier investment vehicle, Kingdom Holdings.
Prince Alwaleed, 53, is the nephew if King Abdallah of Saudi Arabia. Forbes magazine ranked him this year as the 19th richest person on the planet, with a fortune in excess of $23 billion. He owns large chunks of Citigroup and News Corp., the holding company that controls Fox News.
He is best known in the United States for his offer to donate $10 million to help rebuild downtownManhattan after the 9/11 attacks. But after the prince made a public comment suggesting that U.S.policies had contributed to causing the attacks, Mayor Rudy Giuliani handed back his check.
“I entirely reject that statement,” Giuliani said. “There is no moral equivalent for this (terrorist) act. There is no justification for it. The people who did it lost any right to ask for justification for it when they slaughtered 4,000 or 5,000 innocent people.”
Since then, Prince Alwaleed’s Kingdom Foundation has given millions of dollars to Muslim charities in the United States, including several whose leaders have been indicted on terrorism-related charges in federal courts.
He also has given tens of millions of dollars to Harvard and other major U.S. universities, to establish programs in Islamic studies.
The casual statement by Percy Sutton to NY1 is the first time anyone has hinted at a relationship between Obama and the Saudi royal family.
Although al-Mansour glosses over his ties to the Saudi mega-billionaire in some of his public talks, he has represented the Saudi’s interests in the United States, in Britain, and in Africa for more than a quarter century, according to public records.
He told Newsmax that he has personally introduced Prince Alwaleed to “51 of the 53 leaders of Africa,” traveling from country to country on the Saudi prince’s private jet.
He knows virtually every black leader in America, from the business community, to community activists, to the worlds of politics and entertainment.
When Michael Jackson was on the ropes in the mid-1990s following a series of lawsuits by the parents of children accusing him of sexual abuse, al-Mansour introduced him to Prince Alwaleed, whose Kingdom Entertainment signed a joint venture with Jackson in 1996.
“Jackson and Alwaleed became pals in 1994, when a mutual friend from Alwaleed’s college days inCalifornia arranged a lunch meeting aboard the prince’s yacht in Cannes,” Time magazine reported about the new partnership in 1997.
The mutual friend was al-Mansour.
“As a black American, I am exceedingly proud at the American people’s response to Barack Obama’scandidacy,” said CORE’s Niger Innis. “But to deny that he has long-standing ties to left-wing elements in our polity is to deny reality. If you want to be president of the United States, it is not racism if you ask these kind of questions, and he has to come up with an answer, hopefully the truth.”
Sutton gives no clues as to why al-Mansour would be raising money to help Obama go to law school.Obama has said during his campaign that he paid his way through Harvard with student loans.
For Jesse Lee Peterson, founder of the Los Angeles-based Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny (BOND), these latest revelations about Obama’s ties to Saudi financiers were an important wake-up call.
“To me, this opened up more questions about Barack Obama and his relationship to the Muslim world,” Peterson told Newsmax.
“A lot of people are caught up with the emotional aspect of Barack Obama, the movie star aspect, the false promises that he’s going to take care of everyone and their Mama.”
But when the full story of Obama’s ties to radical preachers such as Wright and to black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan comes out, Peterson believes that Obama’s star power will fade.
“I think there’s more to this story and to Barack Obama than we realize,” Peterson said. “As all the truth comes out before the election, I don’t think he has a chance. I can’t see American’s taking that kind of risk.”
The Obama campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
Percy Sutton Reveals Association Between Khalid al-Mansour and Obama at Age 25
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Interesting that this sort of analysis is coming from the other side of the pond rather than being homegrown.
Barack Obama under fire for ignoring advice on how to beat John McCain
Barack Obama and his senior advisers are under fire for ignoring the advice of Democratic senators and governors who are concerned that they do not know how to beat John McCain.
By Tim Shipman in Washington
Last Updated: 9:29PM BST 13 Sep 2008
Mr Obama has never won an electoral contest against a strong Republican candidate
The Democratic presidential candidate's slump in the polls has sparked pointed private criticism that he is squandering a once-in-a-generation chance to win back the White House.
Party elders also believe the Obama camp is in denial about warnings from Democratic pollsters that his true standing is four to six points lower than that in published polls because of hidden racism from voters - something that would put him a long way behind Mr McCain.
The Sunday Telegraph has learned that senators, governors and union leaders who have experience of winning hard-fought races in swing states have been bombarding Obamas campaign headquarters with telephone calls offering advice. But many of those calls have not been returned.
A senior Democratic strategist, who has played a prominent role in two presidential campaigns, told The Sunday Telegraph: "These guys are on the verge of blowing the greatest gimme in the history of American politics. They're the most arrogant bunch Ive ever seen. They won't accept that they are losing and they won't listen."
After leading throughout the year, Mr Obama now trails Mr McCain by two to three points in national polls.
Party leaders and commentators say that the Democrat candidate spent too much of the summer enjoying his own popularity and not enough defining his positions on the economy - the number one issue for voters - or reaching out to those blue collar workers whose votes he needs if he is to beat Mr McCain.
Others concede that his trip to Europe was a distraction that enhanced his celebrity status rather than his electability on Main Street, USA.
Since Sarah Palin was unveiled as Mr McCain's running mate, the Obama camp has faced accusations that it has been pushed off message and has been limp in responding to attacks.
A Democratic National Committee official told The Sunday Telegraph: "I really find it offensive when Democrats ask the Republicans not to be nasty to us, which is effectively what Obama keeps doing. They know thats how the game is played."
Mr Obama tried to answer that critique on Friday when he responded in kind, issuing an attack advert depicting his Republican opponent as out of touch and mocking the 72-year-old Mr McCain's confession that he does not know how to use email.
He rammed home the point during a rally in New Hampshire, pointing out Mr McCains recent admission that he was divorced from some of the challenges of ordinary Americans.
Mr Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, called it the first day of the rest of the campaign.
But that was the fourth time in the last nine months that Mr Obamas team have been forced to declare that the gloves are coming off. And Mr Plouffe's dismissal of Democratic doubts as hand-wringing and bed-wetting only served to reinforce the growing doubts about what some see as a bunker mentality among Obamas inner circle - where outside advice, even from highly experienced people, is not welcomed.
The Democratic strategist told The Sunday Telegraph: "They think they know best. They don't return calls. There are governors and senators calling them up with ideas. They don't get back to them.
"These are senior people from the border states and the South who know how to beat Republicans, and they're being ignored. They ignored everyone during the primaries and they came through it, so they think they can do the same again."
Mr Obama has never won an electoral contest against a strong Republican candidate. David Axelrod, his chief strategist has been hailed as a political genius for beating the Clinton machine, but Democrats now point out that he has never run a successful campaign in the heartland states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Virginia, which will decide the election. His expertise is in mobilising young, educated and black voters in urban areas.
Mark Cunningham of the New York Post summed up the private views of many: "If it suddenly seems like the Obama campaign doesn't have any idea what it's doing, maybe that's because it doesn't."
Party elders are also studying internal polling material which warns the Obama camp that his true standing is worse than it appears in polls because voters lie to polling companies about their reluctance to vote for a black candidate. The phenomenon is known in the US as the Bradley effect, after Tom Bradley, a black candidate for governor of California who lost after leading comfortably in polls.
The strategist said: "I've seen memos where they've been told to factor in four to six points for the Bradley effect, but they're in denial about it.
They say the polls also underestimate the enthusiasm of young voters and African Americans and they believe that balances things out. But that's a wing and a prayer stuff. There's previous evidence for the Bradley effect."
Other Democrats are openly mocking of Mr Obama's much vaunted "50-state strategy", in which he spends money campaigning throughout the US in the hope that it will force Mr McCain to divert funds to previously safe states. Critics say a utopian belief in bringing the nation together has trumped the cold electoral calculus that is necessary to triumph in November.
Doug Schoen, a former pollster for Bill Clinton, last week declared it insanity not to concentrate resources on the swing states.
The Democratic strategist said: "My Republican friends think its mad. Before Sarah Palin came along we were investing money in Alaska, for Christ's sake, that could have been spent in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
"It assumes Republicans are stupid and, when it comes to winning elections, they're not."
The one thing everyone agrees the Obama camp have woken up to is the toxic effect on their chances of Mrs Palin's arrival on the national scene. Polls show that white women voters, attracted to her down home virtues, now support Mr McCain by a margin of 12 points, the same lead among white women that George W. Bush enjoyed over John Kerry in 2004. Until recently, Mr Obama led among that group of voters by six points.
A senior aide to one of the most powerful Democrats in the House of Representatives voiced the fears of many: "Palin doesn't just play to the Republican base. She has much broader appeal."
The aide said that her repeated mockery of Mr Obama's boasts about his time as a community organiser in Chicago are "the most effective criticisms of Barack Obama we have yet seen." He said: "Americans in small and medium size towns dont know what the hell a community organiser is. Real Americans graduate from high school or college and get a job that pays a wage. Campus radicals go off and organise a community."
Peggy Noonan, the former Reagan speechwriter, blamed the defection of women voters from Mr Obama on the atom bomb of ritual abuse by left-wing bloggers and Democratic officials, painting Mrs Palin as a bad mother and religious weirdo.
Ms Noonan wrote: "The snobbery of it, the meanness of it, reminded the entire country, for the first time in a decade, what it is they don't like about the Left."
The Republican strategist Dan Schnur said that the effect was to repel blue collar, family-oriented voters. "They didn't like Obama in the primaries and voted for Hillary. And they still don't like him now so they're voting for Palin.
"Obama can still win these voters over, but his difficulty in establishing an emotional connection with them is probably his greatest challenge between now and election day."
On Thursday Mr Obama did take advice from Bill Clinton, who is understood to have suggested ways to show those workers that he cares, an area where the former president excelled.
But it is a measure of his plight that the man who derailed the ambitions of Mrs Clinton, the most powerful woman in Democratic politics, now needs help from her husband to overcome the popularity of another alpha female who may be an even greater risk to his White House ambitions.
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Concerning "the Bradley Effect" and the accuracy of polls. I've read ttat pollsters call land lines, which tends to miss younger voters-- who tend to be pro BO.
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Obama has pretty consistently overpolled. The youth vote doesn't.
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Ain't this priceless? No doubt the MSM will be all over this , , ,
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WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence.
According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.
"He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari said in an interview.
Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of US troops - and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its "state of weakness and political confusion."
"However, as an Iraqi, I prefer to have a security agreement that regulates the activities of foreign troops, rather than keeping the matter open." Zebari says.
Though Obama claims the US presence is "illegal," he suddenly remembered that Americans troops were in Iraq within the legal framework of a UN mandate. His advice was that, rather than reach an accord with the "weakened Bush administration," Iraq should seek an extension of the UN mandate.
While in Iraq, Obama also tried to persuade the US commanders, including Gen. David Petraeus, to suggest a "realistic withdrawal date." They declined.
Obama has made many contradictory statements with regard to Iraq. His latest position is that US combat troops should be out by 2010. Yet his effort to delay an agreement would make that withdrawal deadline impossible to meet.
Supposing he wins, Obama's administration wouldn't be fully operational before February - and naming a new ambassador to Baghdad and forming a new negotiation team might take longer still.
By then, Iraq will be in the throes of its own campaign season. Judging by the past two elections, forming a new coalition government may then take three months. So the Iraqi negotiating team might not be in place until next June.
Then, judging by how long the current talks have taken, restarting the process from scratch would leave the two sides needing at least six months to come up with a draft accord. That puts us at May 2010 for when the draft might be submitted to the Iraqi parliament - which might well need another six months to pass it into law.
Thus, the 2010 deadline fixed by Obama is a meaningless concept, thrown in as a sop to his anti-war base.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the Bush administration have a more flexible timetable in mind.
According to Zebari, the envisaged time span is two or three years - departure in 2011 or 2012. That would let Iraq hold its next general election, the third since liberation, and resolve a number of domestic political issues.
Even then, the dates mentioned are only "notional," making the timing and the cadence of withdrawal conditional on realities on the ground as appreciated by both sides.
Iraqi leaders are divided over the US election. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani (whose party is a member of the Socialist International) sees Obama as "a man of the Left" - who, once elected, might change his opposition to Iraq's liberation. Indeed, say Talabani's advisers, a President Obama might be tempted to appropriate the victory that America has already won in Iraq by claiming that his intervention transformed failure into success.
Maliki's advisers have persuaded him that Obama will win - but the prime minister worries about the senator's "political debt to the anti-war lobby" - which is determined to transform Iraq into a disaster to prove that toppling Saddam Hussein was "the biggest strategic blunder in US history."
Other prominent Iraqi leaders, such as Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi and Kurdish regional President Massoud Barzani, believe that Sen. John McCain would show "a more realistic approach to Iraqi issues."
Obama has given Iraqis the impression that he doesn't want Iraq to appear anything like a success, let alone a victory, for America. The reason? He fears that the perception of US victory there might revive the Bush Doctrine of "pre-emptive" war - that is, removing a threat before it strikes at America.
Despite some usual equivocations on the subject, Obama rejects pre-emption as a legitimate form of self -defense. To be credible, his foreign-policy philosophy requires Iraq to be seen as a failure, a disaster, a quagmire, a pig with lipstick or any of the other apocalyptic adjectives used by the American defeat industry in the past five years.
Yet Iraq is doing much better than its friends hoped and its enemies feared. The UN mandate will be extended in December, and we may yet get an agreement on the status of forces before President Bush leaves the White House in January.
Source NY Post
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The List: Obama’s 10 Worst Ideas
Posted September 2008
Both John McCain and Barack Obama have many smart policy proposals, but not all of them are ready for prime time. This week, FP looks at 10 Obama ideas that should have never seen the light of day. Next week? McCain on the hot seat.
Renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement
What he said: “I will make sure that we renegotiate. … I think we should use the hammer of a potential opt-out as leverage to ensure that we actually get labor and environmental standards that are enforced.” —Democratic primary debate in Cleveland, Feb. 26, 2008
Why it’s a bad idea: Trade agreements take years to negotiate, and Mexico and Canada would almost certainly seek new concessions of their own in a new round. Obama is right to argue that more economic development in Mexico will lower illegal immigration; he’s wrong to think that bashing NAFTA is the right way to address the Rust Belt’s economic woes. Happily, since the Ohio primary, Obama has backed off his harshest criticisms of the agreement.
Opposing the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement
What he said: “And I’ll also oppose the Colombia Free Trade Agreement if President Bush insists on sending it to Congress because the violence against unions in Colombia would make a mockery of the very labor protections that we have insisted be included in these kinds of agreements.” —Speech to Philadelphia AFL-CIO, April 2, 2008
Why it’s a bad idea: Although Obama cited antilabor violence, the murder rate for union members in Colombia last year was 4 per 100,000, well below the rate for the general population. The deal carries little to no cost for the United States; economists actually predict modest increases in U.S. exports. The upshot for an important ally in the war on drugs, however, is high, and consolidating Colombia’s commitment to open trade with the United States is a worthy goal.
Talking Openly About Bombing Pakistan
What he said: “If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.” —Speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, Washington, D.C., Aug. 1, 2007
Why it’s a bad idea: Engaging in military strikes in Pakistan happens to be established policy. But, as none other than Joe Biden pointed out last August, “It’s not something you talk about. … The last thing you want to do is telegraph to the folks in Pakistan that we are about to violate their sovereignty.”
Sitting Down with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
What he said: Asked if he’d be “willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea,” Obama replied: “I would.” —Democratic primary debate, Charleston, S.C., July 23, 2007
Why it’s a bad idea: Engaging rogue states can be a savvy move, and even the Bush administration has negotiated with Pyongyang and sent envoys to meetings with Iran. But sitting down with heads of state without precondition? That’s another thing entirely, especially when it comes to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As Carnegie Endowment expert Karim Sadjadpour told the Wall Street Journal, “Only two things can rehabilitate Ahmadinejad politically: bombing Iran or major efforts to engage.” No wonder Obama’s foreign-policy team has walked back its candidate’s off-the-cuff remarks.
Pushing the Patriot Employer Act
What he said: “When I am president … I’ll pass the Patriot Employer Act that I’ve been fighting for ever since I ran for the Senate—we will end the tax breaks for companies who ship our jobs overseas, and we will give those breaks to companies who create good jobs with decent wages right here in America.” —Speech in Janesville, Wis., Feb. 13, 2008
Why it’s a bad idea: British economists Willem Buiter and Anne Sibert slam the bill as, “reactionary, populist, xenophobic and just plain silly.” That’s a bit much. A little populist pandering is hardly a threat to the global economic order—the bill offers employers a small tax credit if they meet six conditions, including the probably unworkable provision that they keep their headquarters in the United States. It’s never smart economic policy to reward companies for placing limitations on their own profitable activities, but as The Economist put it, “Obama deserves a slap on the wrist” for this one, not a full-throated indictment.
Promoting Coal-to-Liquid Fuels
What he said: “The people I meet in town hall meetings back home would rather fill their cars with fuel made from coal reserves in Southern Illinois than with fuel made from crude reserves in Saudi Arabia. We already have the technology to do this in a way that’s both clean and efficient. What we’ve been lacking is the political will.” —Statement introducing the Coal-to-Liquid Fuel Promotion Act of 2006, June 7, 2006
Why it’s a bad idea: Obama’s energy policy has much to commend it. But borrowing an idea from World War II Germany and apartheid South Africa? Bad move. Coal-to-liquid fuels produce nearly twice the greenhouse gases of ordinary petroleum, experts say, and it’s foolish to subsidize an industry that easily could go under if oil prices fall. Under withering fire from environmentalists, the Obama camp clarified his position in June 2007 as, “nless and until this technology is perfected, Senator Obama will not support the development of any coal-to-liquid fuels unless they emit at least 20% less life-cycle carbon than conventional fuels.” It’s since been dropped from campaign materials.
Eliminating Income Taxes for Seniors Making Under $50,000
What he said: “I’ll make retirement more secure for America’s seniors by eliminating income taxes for any retiree making less than $50,000 per year.” —Speech on Nov. 7, 2007, in Bettendorf, Iowa
Why it’s a bad idea: Most seniors already pay no income taxes. That’s because they already get preferential treatment in the tax code. Plus, why are seniors more deserving of tax relief than struggling young families? The Tax Policy Center—run by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute—criticized the idea in a recent report, saying that because government spending on seniors is already set to balloon due to retiring baby boomers, “it seems inappropriate to target special income tax breaks to this group.”
Boosting Ethanol Subsidies
What he said: “[Ethanol] ultimately helps our national security, because right now we’re sending billions of dollars to some of the most hostile nations on earth.” —Statement at the opening of a VeraSun Energy ethanol processing plant in Charles City, Iowa, August 2007
Why it’s a bad idea: As economist Paul Krugman has written, corn-based ethanol is “bad for the economy, bad for consumers, bad for the planet—what’s not to love?” World Bank economist Donald Mitchell blames biofuels, including ethanol, for a 75 percent increase in global food prices since 2002 that has led to economic distress and rioting in such countries as Haiti, Egypt, and Somalia. There’s also little evidence that they do much to prevent global warming. A recent study published in Science demonstrated that the farmland needed to grow corn for ethanol results in deforestation on a massive scale, negating any benefit the reduction in carbon emissions might have. So why does the senator support such a wasteful and damaging subsidy, even voting for the recent farm bill’s billions in pork for ethanol producers? “ecause Illinois … is a major corn producer,” he said in April. At least he’s honest.
Taxing Oil Companies Extra
What he said: “I’ll make oil companies like Exxon pay a tax on their windfall profits, and we’ll use the money to help families pay for their skyrocketing energy costs and other bills.” —Speech in Raleigh, N.C., June 9, 2008
Why it’s a bad idea: He’s attacking the symptom, not the disease. It’s certainly hard to defend oil companies making record profits while consumers are struggling to fill their tanks, but Big Oil has very little control over day-to-day gas prices, which are set by global supply and demand and, of course, OPEC. By discouraging oil companies from making big profits, such a tax could potentially discourage them from making investments in new refineries and finding new oil sources, resulting in fewer jobs and even higher prices at the pump. Jimmy Carter tried this in 1980, and it only increased U.S. dependence on foreign oil. Singling out one particular industry for punishment because it is politically unpopular doesn’t make much economic sense, either.
Opening the Strategic Petroleum Reserve
What he said: “We should sell 70 million barrels of oil from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve for less-expensive crude, which in the past has lowered gas prices within two weeks.” —Speech in Lansing, Mich., Aug. 4, 2008
Why it’s a bad idea: Obama was right in July when he said that the strategic oil reserve “has to be reserved for a genuine emergency.” Selling oil from the 700 million barrel reserve would increase domestic supply and could drive down prices in the short term, but encouraging consumers to use more oil isn’t going to fix anything. And depleting the reserve would leave the United States vulnerable to a supply disruption caused by a natural disaster or further unrest in the Middle East. Obama swapped common sense for this dangerous boondoggle in August after McCain started to hammer him on offshore drilling. So much for tough truths.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4461&page=1
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"Why it’s a bad idea: Obama was right in July when he said that the strategic oil reserve “has to be reserved for a genuine emergency.” Selling oil from the 700 million barrel reserve would increase domestic supply and could drive down prices in the short term, but encouraging consumers to use more oil isn’t going to fix anything. And depleting the reserve would leave the United States vulnerable to a supply disruption caused by a natural disaster or further unrest in the Middle East. Obama swapped common sense for this dangerous boondoggle in August after McCain started to hammer him on offshore drilling. So much for tough truths."
I had a conversation once with someone who worked on the SPR and he said that you can only empty and refill the caverns but so many times (6?) without them degrading.
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I would have to add that raising the capital gains tax rate would be in my top ten right behind surrendering our national security.
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Attached is a .pdf of the motions filed. I did a quick search and found this story. Here's the link if you want to see it yourself: http://www.obamacrimes.com/index.php/component/content/article/1-main/1-philip-j-berg-esq-files-federal-lawsuit-requesting-obama-be-removed-as-a-candidate-as-he-does-not-meet-the-qualifications-for-president
all the best,
jvs
Philip J. Berg, Esq. Files Federal Lawsuit Requesting Obama Be Removed as a Candidate as he does not meet the Qualifications for President
Thursday, 21 August 2008 23:09 administrator
For Immediate Release: - 08/21/08
Suit filed 08/21/08, No. 08-cv-4083
Contact information at the end of this press release. Documents filed with the court and a copy of this press release can be downloaded at the end of this press release.
(Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania – 08/21/08) - Philip J. Berg, Esquire, [Berg is a former Deputy Attorney General of Pennsylvania; former candidate for Governor and U.S. Senate in Democratic Primaries; former Chair of the Democratic Party in Montgomery County; former member of Democratic State Committee; an attorney with offices in Montgomery County, PA and an active practice in Philadelphia, PA, filed a lawsuit in Federal Court today, Berg vs. Obama, Civil Action No. 08-cv-4083, seeking a Declaratory Judgment and an Injunction that Obama does not meet the qualifications to be President of the United States. Berg filed this suit for the best interests of the Democratic Party and the citizens of the United States.
1. Where was Obama born? Hawaii; an island off of Hawaii; Kenya; Canada; or ?
2. Was he a citizen of Kenya, Indonesia and/or Canada?
3. What was the early childhood of Obama in Hawaii; in Kenya; in Indonesia when he was adopted; and later, back to Hawaii?
4. An explanation as to the various names utilized by Obama that include: Barack Hussein Obama; Barry Soetoro; Barry Obama; Barack Dunham; and Barry Dunham.
5. Illinois Bar Application – Obama fails to acknowledge use of names other than Barack Hussein Obama, a blatant lie.
If Obama can prove U.S. citizenship, we still have the issue of muti-citizenship with responsibilities owed to and allegance to other countries.
Berg continued:
“Eighteen million Democratic Primary voters donated money, volunteered their time and energy, worked very hard and then not only supported Senator Clinton, but voted for her and often recruited other supporters as well. All the efforts of supporters of legitimate citizens were for nothing because this man lied and cheated his way into a fraudulent candidacy and cheated legitimately eligible natural born citizens from competing in a fair process and the supporters of their citizen choice for the nomination.
Voters donated money, goods and services to elect a nominee and were defrauded by Senator Obama's lies and obfuscations. He clearly shows a conscience of guilt by his actions in using the forged birth certificate and the lies he's told to cover his loss of citizenship. We believe he does know, supported this belief by his actions in hiding his secret, in that he failed to regain his citizenship and used documents to further his position as a natural born citizen. We would also show he proclaims himself a Constitutional scholar and lecturer, but did not learn he had no eligibility to become President except by means of lying, obfuscations and deceptions. His very acts proves he knew he was no longer a natural born citizen. We believe he knew he was defrauding the country or else why use the forged birth certificate of his half sister?
Americans lost money, goods and services donated in their support of a candidate who supposedly was a natural born citizen simply because the DNC officers and party leaders looked the other way and did not demand credentials to answer the questions and prove whether or not Senator Obama was a legitimately natural born citizen, even in light of recent information that has surfaced on websites on the Internet suggesting Senator Obama may not be eligible to become President and questioning his status of multiple citizenships and questionable loyalties! If the DNC officers and.or leaders had performed one ounce of due diligence we would not find ourselves in this emergency predicament, one week away from making a person the nominee who has lost their citizenship as a child and failed to even perform the basic steps of regaining citizenship through an oath of allegiance at age eighteen [18] as prescribed by Constitutional laws!
The injunctrive relief must be granted because failing to do so, this inaction defrauds everyone who voted in the Democratic Primary for a nominee that is a fair representation of the voters. Failure to grant injunctive relief would allow a corrupted, fraudulent nomination process to continue. It not only allows, but promotes an overwhelming degree of disrespect and creates such a lack of confidence in voters of the primary process itself, so that it would cement a prevailing belief that no potential candidate has to obey the laws of this country, respect our election process, follow the Constitution, or even suffer any consequence for lying and defrauding voters to get onto the ballot when they have no chance of serving if they fraudulently manage to get elected! It is unfair to the country for candidates of either party to become the nominee when there is any question of their ability to serve if elected.
All judges are lawyers and held to a higher standard of practice than a regular lawyer. It is this Judicial standard that demands injunctive relief prayed for here. This relief is predicated upon one of the most basic premises of practicing law which states no lawyer can allow themselves to be used in furthering a criminal enterprise. And by that gauge alone, failing to give injunctive relief to the 18 million supporters of the other candidate, a true natural born citizen eligible to serve if elected, this court must not allow itself to be used to further the criminal and fraudulent acts to continue and be rewarded by becoming the Democratic Nominee. Failure to give the injunctive relief prayed for will insure that a corrupted Presidential election process will only guarantee a show of unfair preference of one group of people over another group by not demanding the same rules be applied to all groups equally and fairly, especially in light of the fact that both candidates are each considered a minority.
Philip J. Berg, Esquire
555 Andorra Glen Court, Suite 12
Lafayette Hill, PA 19444-2531
Cell (610) 662-3005
(610) 825-3134
(800) 993-PHIL [7445]
Fax (610) 834-7659
philjberg@obamacrimes.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
# # #
Attachments: File Description File size
Complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief 142 Kb
Memorandum in support of temporary restraining order This document contains a complete narrative of the facts. 164 Kb
Plaintiff's motion for temporary restraining order Plaintiff's motion for temporary restraining order 108 Kb
Temporary Restraining Order 79 Kb
ObamaCrimes Press Release 200820821 Press Release 20080821 Announcing the filing of Obama qualifications Lawsuit 45 Kb
Last Updated ( Thursday, 11 September 2008 11:56 )
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Obama is a US citizen. He was born in Hawaii and this lawsuit is silly and going nowhere. God help us if he's elected, but he is eligible to be president.
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Michelle's Princeton thesis: http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/thesis.asp
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Thanks for posting links to Michelle's thesis. They did a nice job of getting this out without fanfare; this has been available since March? I read it along with the commentary. Overall, it is a very boring read. It is mostly a math study trying to find relationships among a number of variables she created. The main impression I get is that the student had to make up a study about something so a lot of tedious writing is just the course requirement. If all this was out of genuine curiosity I would scared about how race obsessed it is. I don't know anything about race at Princeton at that time but it strikes me as odd that everything is black or white, not Asian, Arab or Hispanic for example. Of course that would have made the study more complex but it seems everyone non-black is called white.
When blacks assimilate and join whites in society, she would still call it white culture, not mixed.
One main curiosity in the study is how a variety of variables affect the motivation of Princeton educated blacks to go back and help lower class blacks in black neighborhoods. Not much is concluded. The political question would be how you would help lower class blacks but that is not part of the study.
In getting to know the Obamas, the next thing I would like to study is Barack's teachings of constitutional law. I know Crafty studied law under a supreme court justice and I studied economics under the chief economic adviser to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, it is fascinating to hear people of history or of the future first hand. I would like to learn about the content of the lectures of Prof. Obama. I have heard they were not controversial but still I would like to look for clues in his teachings about how he would find Chief Justice Roberts unsuitable for example.
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WSJ
Obama and Ayers
Pushed Radicalism
On Schools
By STANLEY KURTZArticle
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Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never written about his most important executive experience. From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001. The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists.
AP
Bill Ayers.
The CAC was the brainchild of Bill Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground in the 1960s. Among other feats, Mr. Ayers and his cohorts bombed the Pentagon, and he has never expressed regret for his actions. Barack Obama's first run for the Illinois State Senate was launched at a 1995 gathering at Mr. Ayers's home.
The Obama campaign has struggled to downplay that association. Last April, Sen. Obama dismissed Mr. Ayers as just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood," and "not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis." Yet documents in the CAC archives make clear that Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama were partners in the CAC. Those archives are housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago and I've recently spent days looking through them.
The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was created ostensibly to improve Chicago's public schools. The funding came from a national education initiative by Ambassador Walter Annenberg. In early 1995, Mr. Obama was appointed the first chairman of the board, which handled fiscal matters. Mr. Ayers co-chaired the foundation's other key body, the "Collaborative," which shaped education policy.
The CAC's basic functioning has long been known, because its annual reports, evaluations and some board minutes were public. But the Daley archive contains additional board minutes, the Collaborative minutes, and documentation on the groups that CAC funded and rejected. The Daley archives show that Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers worked as a team to advance the CAC agenda.
One unsettled question is how Mr. Obama, a former community organizer fresh out of law school, could vault to the top of a new foundation? In response to my questions, the Obama campaign issued a statement saying that Mr. Ayers had nothing to do with Obama's "recruitment" to the board. The statement says Deborah Leff and Patricia Albjerg Graham (presidents of other foundations) recruited him. Yet the archives show that, along with Ms. Leff and Ms. Graham, Mr. Ayers was one of a working group of five who assembled the initial board in 1994. Mr. Ayers founded CAC and was its guiding spirit. No one would have been appointed the CAC chairman without his approval.
The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland's ghetto.
In works like "City Kids, City Teachers" and "Teaching the Personal and the Political," Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. His preferred alternative? "I'm a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist," Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk's, "Sixties Radicals," at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC.
CAC translated Mr. Ayers's radicalism into practice. Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with "external partners," which actually got the money. Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn).
Mr. Obama once conducted "leadership training" seminars with Acorn, and Acorn members also served as volunteers in Mr. Obama's early campaigns. External partners like the South Shore African Village Collaborative and the Dual Language Exchange focused more on political consciousness, Afrocentricity and bilingualism than traditional education. CAC's in-house evaluators comprehensively studied the effects of its grants on the test scores of Chicago public-school students. They found no evidence of educational improvement.
CAC also funded programs designed to promote "leadership" among parents. Ostensibly this was to enable parents to advocate on behalf of their children's education. In practice, it meant funding Mr. Obama's alma mater, the Developing Communities Project, to recruit parents to its overall political agenda. CAC records show that board member Arnold Weber was concerned that parents "organized" by community groups might be viewed by school principals "as a political threat." Mr. Obama arranged meetings with the Collaborative to smooth out Mr. Weber's objections.
The Daley documents show that Mr. Ayers sat as an ex-officio member of the board Mr. Obama chaired through CAC's first year. He also served on the board's governance committee with Mr. Obama, and worked with him to craft CAC bylaws. Mr. Ayers made presentations to board meetings chaired by Mr. Obama. Mr. Ayers spoke for the Collaborative before the board. Likewise, Mr. Obama periodically spoke for the board at meetings of the Collaborative.
The Obama campaign notes that Mr. Ayers attended only six board meetings, and stresses that the Collaborative lost its "operational role" at CAC after the first year. Yet the Collaborative was demoted to a strictly advisory role largely because of ethical concerns, since the projects of Collaborative members were receiving grants. CAC's own evaluators noted that project accountability was hampered by the board's reluctance to break away from grant decisions made in 1995. So even after Mr. Ayers's formal sway declined, the board largely adhered to the grant program he had put in place.
Mr. Ayers's defenders claim that he has redeemed himself with public-spirited education work. That claim is hard to swallow if you understand that he views his education work as an effort to stoke resistance to an oppressive American system. He likes to stress that he learned of his first teaching job while in jail for a draft-board sit-in. For Mr. Ayers, teaching and his 1960s radicalism are two sides of the same coin.
Mr. Ayers is the founder of the "small schools" movement (heavily funded by CAC), in which individual schools built around specific political themes push students to "confront issues of inequity, war, and violence." He believes teacher education programs should serve as "sites of resistance" to an oppressive system. (His teacher-training programs were also CAC funded.) The point, says Mr. Ayers in his "Teaching Toward Freedom," is to "teach against oppression," against America's history of evil and racism, thereby forcing social transformation.
The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming "guilt by association." Yet the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago.
Mr. Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
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Obama's Foreign Policy Stance (Open Access)
Stratfor Today » September 24, 2008 | 1013 GMT
Editor’s Note: This is part two of a four-part report by Stratfor founder and Chief Intelligence Officer George Friedman on the U.S. presidential debate on foreign policy, to be held Sept. 26. Stratfor is a private, nonpartisan intelligence service with no preference for one candidate over the other. We are interested in analyzing and forecasting the geopolitical impact of the election and, with this series, seek to answer two questions: What is the geopolitical landscape that will confront the next president, and what foreign policy proposals would a President McCain or a President Obama bring to bear? For media interviews, e-mail pr@stratfor.com or call 512-744-4309.
By George Friedman
Barack Obama is the Democratic candidate for president. His advisers in foreign policy are generally Democrats. Together they carry with them an institutional memory of the Democratic Party’s approach to foreign policy, and are an expression of the complexity and divisions of that approach. Like their Republican counterparts, in many ways they are going to be severely constrained as to what they can do both by the nature of the global landscape and American resources. But to some extent, they will also be constrained and defined by the tradition they come from. Understanding that tradition and Obama’s place is useful in understanding what an Obama presidency would look like in foreign affairs.
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U.S. Foreign Policy — The Presidential Debate
Part One: The New President and the Foreign Policy Landscape
Part Three: McCain’s Foreign Policy Stance
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U.S. Foreign Policy: The Presidential Debate
The 2008 U.S. Presidential Race
The most striking thing about the Democratic tradition is that it presided over the beginnings of the three great conflicts that defined the 20th century: Woodrow Wilson and World War I, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and World War II, and Harry S. Truman and the Cold War. (At this level of analysis, we will treat the episodes of the Cold War such as Korea, Vietnam or Grenada as simply subsets of one conflict.) This is most emphatically not to say that had Republicans won the presidency in 1916, 1940 or 1948, U.S. involvement in those wars could have been avoided.
Patterns in Democratic Foreign Policy
But it does give us a framework for considering persistent patterns of Democratic foreign policy. When we look at the conflicts, four things become apparent.
First, in all three conflicts, Democrats postponed the initiation of direct combat as long as possible. In only one, World War I, did Wilson decide to join the war without prior direct attack. Roosevelt maneuvered near war but did not enter the war until after Pearl Harbor. Truman also maneuvered near war but did not get into direct combat until after the North Korean invasion of South Korea. Indeed, even Wilson chose to go to war to protect free passage on the Atlantic. More important, he sought to prevent Germany from defeating the Russians and the Anglo-French alliance and to stop the subsequent German domination of Europe, which appeared possible. In other words, the Democratic approach to war was reactive. All three presidents reacted to events on the surface, while trying to shape them underneath the surface.
Second, all three wars were built around coalitions. The foundation of the three wars was that other nations were at risk and that the United States used a predisposition to resist (Germany in the first two wars, the Soviet Union in the last) as a framework for involvement. The United States under Democrats did not involve itself in war unilaterally. At the same time, the United States under Democrats made certain that the major burdens were shared by allies. Millions died in World War I, but the United States suffered 100,000 dead. In World War II, the United States suffered 500,000 dead in a war where perhaps 50 million soldiers and civilians died. In the Cold War, U.S. losses in direct combat were less than 100,000 while the losses to Chinese, Vietnamese, Koreans and others towered over that toll. The allies had a complex appreciation of the United States. On the one hand, they were grateful for the U.S. presence. On the other hand, they resented the disproportionate amounts of blood and effort shed. Some of the roots of anti-Americanism are to be found in this strategy.
Third, each of these wars ended with a Democratic president attempting to create a system of international institutions designed to limit the recurrence of war without directly transferring sovereignty to those institutions. Wilson championed the League of Nations. Roosevelt the United Nations. Bill Clinton, who presided over most of the post-Cold War world, constantly sought international institutions to validate U.S. actions. Thus, when the United Nations refused to sanction the Kosovo War, he designated NATO as an alternative international organization with the right to approve conflict. Indeed, Clinton championed a range of multilateral organizations during the 1990s, including everything from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and later the World Trade Organization. All these presidents were deeply committed to multinational organizations to define permissible and impermissible actions.
And fourth, there is a focus on Europe in the Democratic view of the world. Roosevelt regarded Germany as the primary threat instead of the Pacific theater in World War II. And in spite of two land wars in Asia during the Cold War, the centerpiece of strategy remained NATO and Europe. The specific details have evolved over the last century, but the Democratic Party — and particularly the Democratic foreign policy establishment — historically has viewed Europe as a permanent interest and partner for the United States.
Thus, the main thrust of the Democratic tradition is deeply steeped in fighting wars, but approaches this task with four things in mind:
Wars should not begin until the last possible moment and ideally should be initiated by the enemy.
Wars must be fought in a coalition with much of the burden borne by partners.
The outcome of wars should be an institutional legal framework to manage the peace, with the United States being the most influential force within this multilateral framework.
Any such framework must be built on a trans-Atlantic relationship.
Democratic Party Fractures
That is one strand of Democratic foreign policy. A second strand emerged in the context of the Vietnam War. That war began under the Kennedy administration and was intensified by Lyndon Baines Johnson, particularly after 1964. The war did not go as expected. As the war progressed, the Democratic Party began to fragment. There were three factions involved in this.
The first faction consisted of foreign policy professionals and politicians who were involved in the early stages of war planning but turned against the war after 1967 when it clearly diverged from plans. The leading political figure of this faction was Robert F. Kennedy, who initially supported the war but eventually turned against it.
The second faction was more definitive. It consisted of people on the left wing of the Democratic Party — and many who went far to the left of the Democrats. This latter group not only turned against the war, it developed a theory of the U.S. role in the war that as a mass movement was unprecedented in the century. The view (it can only be sketched here) maintained that the United States was an inherently imperialist power. Rather than the benign image that Wilson, Roosevelt and Truman had of their actions, this faction reinterpreted American history going back into the 19th century as violent, racist and imperialist (in the most extreme faction’s view). Just as the United States annihilated the Native Americans, the United States was now annihilating the Vietnamese.
A third, more nuanced, faction argued that rather than an attempt to contain Soviet aggression, the Cold War was actually initiated by the United States out of irrational fear of the Soviets and out of imperialist ambitions. They saw the bombing of Hiroshima as a bid to intimidate the Soviet Union rather than an effort to end World War II, and the creation of NATO as having triggered the Cold War.
These three factions thus broke down into Democratic politicians such as RFK and George McGovern (who won the presidential nomination in 1972), radicals in the street who were not really Democrats, and revisionist scholars who for the most part were on the party’s left wing.
Ultimately, the Democratic Party split into two camps. Hubert Humphrey led the first along with Henry Jackson, who rejected the left’s interpretation of the U.S. role in Vietnam and claimed to speak for the Wilson-FDR-Truman strand in Democratic politics. McGovern led the second. His camp largely comprised the party’s left wing, which did not necessarily go as far as the most extreme critics of that tradition but was extremely suspicious of anti-communist ideology, the military and intelligence communities, and increased defense spending. The two camps conducted extended political warfare throughout the 1970s.
The presidency of Jimmy Carter symbolized the tensions. He came to power wanting to move beyond Vietnam, slashing and changing the CIA, controlling defense spending and warning the country of “an excessive fear of Communism.” But following the fall of the Shah of Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he allowed Zbigniew Brzezinski, his national security adviser and now an adviser to Obama, to launch a guerrilla war against the Soviets using Islamist insurgents from across the Muslim world in Afghanistan. Carter moved from concern with anti-Communism to coalition warfare against the Soviets by working with Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Afghan resistance fighters.
Carter was dealing with the realities of U.S. geopolitics, but the tensions within the Democratic tradition shaped his responses. During the Clinton administration, these internal tensions subsided to a great degree. In large part this was because there was no major war, and the military action that did occur — as in Haiti and Kosovo — was framed as humanitarian actions rather than as the pursuit of national power. That soothed the anti-war Democrats to a great deal, since their perspective was less pacifistic than suspicious of using war to enhance national power.
The Democrats Since 9/11
Since the Democrats have not held the presidency during the last eight years, judging how they might have responded to events is speculative. Statements made while in opposition are not necessarily predictive of what an administration might do. Nevertheless, Obama’s foreign policy outlook was shaped by the last eight years of Democrats struggling with the U.S.-jihadist war.
The Democrats responded to events of the last eight years as they traditionally do when the United States is attacked directly: The party’s anti-war faction contracted and the old Democratic tradition reasserted itself. This was particularly true of the decision to go to war in Afghanistan. Obviously, the war was a response to an attack and, given the mood of the country after 9/11, was an unassailable decision. But it had another set of characteristics that made it attractive to the Democrats. The military action in Afghanistan was taking place in the context of broad international support and within a coalition forming at all levels, from on the ground in Afghanistan to NATO and the United Nations. Second, U.S. motives did not appear to involve national self-interest, like increasing power or getting oil. It was not a war for national advantage, but a war of national self-defense.
The Democrats were much less comfortable with the Iraq war than they were with Afghanistan. The old splits reappeared, with many Democrats voting for the invasion and others against. There were complex and mixed reasons why each Democrat voted the way they did — some strategic, some purely political, some moral. Under the pressure of voting on the war, the historically fragile Democratic consensus broke apart, not so much in conflict as in disarray. One of the most important reasons for this was the sense of isolation from major European powers — particularly the French and Germans, whom the Democrats regarded as fundamental elements of any coalition. Without those countries, the Democrats regarded the United States as diplomatically isolated.
The intraparty conflict came later. As the war went badly, the anti-war movement in the party re-energized itself. They were joined later by many who had formerly voted for the war but were upset by the human and material cost and by the apparent isolation of the United States and so on. Both factions of the Democratic Party had reasons to oppose the Iraq war even while they supported the Afghan war.
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Understanding Obama’s Foreign Policy
It is in light of this distinction that we can begin to understand Obama’s foreign policy. On Aug. 1, Obama said the following: “It is time to turn the page. When I am President, we will wage the war that has to be won, with a comprehensive strategy with five elements: getting out of Iraq and on to the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan; developing the capabilities and partnerships we need to take out the terrorists and the world’s most deadly weapons; engaging the world to dry up support for terror and extremism; restoring our values; and securing a more resilient homeland.”
Obama’s view of the Iraq war is that it should not have been fought in the first place, and that the current success in the war does not justify it or its cost. In this part, he speaks to the anti-war tradition in the party. He adds that Afghanistan and Pakistan are the correct battlefields, since this is where the attack emanated from. It should be noted that on several occasions Obama has pointed to Pakistan as part of the Afghan problem, and has indicated a willingness to intervene there if needed while demanding Pakistani cooperation. Moreover, Obama emphasizes the need for partnerships — for example, coalition partners — rather than unilateral action in Afghanistan and globally.
Responding to attack rather than pre-emptive attack, coalition warfare and multinational postwar solutions are central to Obama’s policy in the Islamic world. He therefore straddles the divide within the Democratic Party. He opposes the war in Iraq as pre-emptive, unilateral and outside the bounds of international organizations while endorsing the Afghan war and promising to expand it.
Obama’s problem would be applying these principles to the emerging landscape. He shaped his foreign policy preferences when the essential choices remained within the Islamic world — between dealing with Iraq and Afghanistan simultaneously versus focusing on Afghanistan primarily. After the Russian invasion of Georgia, Obama would face a more complex set of choices between the Islamic world and dealing with the Russian challenge.
Obama’s position on Georgia tracked with traditional Democratic approaches:
“Georgia’s economic recovery is an urgent strategic priority that demands the focused attention of the United States and our allies. That is why Senator Biden and I have called for $1 billion in reconstruction assistance to help the people of Georgia in this time of great trial. I also welcome NATO’s decision to establish a NATO-Georgia Commission and applaud the new French and German initiatives to continue work on these issues within the EU. The Bush administration should call for a U.S.-EU-Georgia summit in September that focuses on strategies for preserving Georgia’s territorial integrity and advancing its economic recovery.”
Obama avoided militaristic rhetoric and focused on multinational approaches to dealing with the problem, particularly via NATO and the European Union. In this and in Afghanistan, he has returned to a Democratic fundamental: the centrality of the U.S.-European relationship. In this sense, it is not accidental that he took a preconvention trip to Europe. It was both natural and a signal to the Democratic foreign policy establishment that he understands the pivotal position of Europe.
This view on multilateralism and NATO is summed up in a critical statement by Obama in a position paper:
“Today it’s become fashionable to disparage the United Nations, the World Bank, and other international organizations. In fact, reform of these bodies is urgently needed if they are to keep pace with the fast-moving threats we face. Such real reform will not come, however, by dismissing the value of these institutions, or by bullying other countries to ratify changes we have drafted in isolation. Real reform will come because we convince others that they too have a stake in change — that such reforms will make their world, and not just ours, more secure.
“Our alliances also require constant management and revision if they are to remain effective and relevant. For example, over the last 15 years, NATO has made tremendous strides in transforming from a Cold War security structure to a dynamic partnership for peace.
“Today, NATO’s challenge in Afghanistan has become a test case, in the words of Dick Lugar, of whether the alliance can ‘overcome the growing discrepancy between NATO’s expanding missions and its lagging capabilities.’”
Obama’s European Problem
The last paragraph represents the key challenge to Obama’s foreign policy, and where his first challenge would come from. Obama wants a coalition with Europe and wants Europe to strengthen itself. But Europe is deeply divided, and averse to increasing its defense spending or substantially increasing its military participation in coalition warfare. Obama’s multilateralism and Europeanism will quickly encounter the realities of Europe.
This would immediately affect his jihadist policy. At this point, Obama’s plan for a 16-month drawdown from Iraq is quite moderate, and the idea of focusing on Afghanistan and Pakistan is a continuation of Bush administration policy. But his challenge would be to increase NATO involvement. There is neither the will nor the capability to substantially increase Europe’s NATO participation in Afghanistan.
This problem would be even more difficult in dealing with Russia. Europe has no objection in principle to the Afghan war; it merely lacks the resources to substantially increase its presence there. But in the case of Russia, there is no European consensus. The Germans are dependent on the Russians for energy and do not want to risk that relationship; the French are more vocal but lack military capability, though they have made efforts to increase their commitment to Afghanistan. Obama says he wants to rely on multilateral agencies to address the Russian situation. That is possible diplomatically, but if the Russians press the issue further, as we expect, a stronger response will be needed. NATO will be unlikely to provide that response.
Obama would therefore face the problem of shifting the focus to Afghanistan and the added problem of balancing between an Islamic focus and a Russian focus. This will be a general problem of U.S. diplomacy. But Obama as a Democrat would have a more complex problem. Averse to unilateral actions and focused on Europe, Obama would face his first crisis in dealing with the limited support Europe can provide.
That will pose serious problems in both Afghanistan and Russia, which Obama would have to deal with. There is a hint in his thoughts on this when he says, “And as we strengthen NATO, we should also seek to build new alliances and relationships in other regions important to our interests in the 21st century.” The test would be whether these new coalitions will differ from, and be more effective than, the coalition of the willing.
Obama would face similar issues in dealing with the Iranians. His approach is to create a coalition to confront the Iranians and force them to abandon their nuclear program. He has been clear that he opposes that program, although less clear on other aspects of Iranian foreign policy. But again, his solution is to use a coalition to control Iran. That coalition disintegrated to a large extent after Russia and China both indicated that they had no interest in sanctions.
But the coalition Obama plans to rely on will have to be dramatically revived by unknown means, or an alternative coalition must be created, or the United States will have to deal with Afghanistan and Pakistan unilaterally. This reality places a tremendous strain on the core principles of Democratic foreign policy. To reconcile the tensions, he would have to rapidly come to an understanding with the Europeans in NATO on expanding their military forces. Since reaching out to the Europeans would be among his first steps, his first test would come early.
The Europeans would probably balk, and, if not, they would demand that the United States expand its defense spending as well. Obama has shown no inclination toward doing this. In October 2007, he said the following on defense: “I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending. I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat systems, and I will institute an independent defense priorities board to ensure that the quadrennial defense review is not used to justify unnecessary spending.”
Russia, Afghanistan and Defense Spending
In this, Obama is reaching toward the anti-war faction in his party, which regards military expenditures with distrust. He focused on advanced war-fighting systems, but did not propose cutting spending on counterinsurgency. But the dilemma is that in dealing with both insurgency and the Russians, Obama would come under pressure to do what he doesn’t want to do — namely, increase U.S. defense spending on advanced systems.
Obama has been portrayed as radical. That is far from the case. He is well within a century-long tradition of the Democratic Party, with an element of loyalty to the anti-war faction. But that element is an undertone to his policy, not its core. The core of his policy would be coalition building and a focus on European allies, as well as the use of multilateral institutions and the avoidance of pre-emptive war. There is nothing radical or even new in these principles. His discomfort with military spending is the only thing that might link him to the party’s left wing.
The problem he would face is the shifting international landscape, which would make it difficult to implement some of his policies. First, the tremendous diversity of international challenges would make holding the defense budget in check difficult. Second, and more important, is the difficulty of coalition building and multilateral action with the Europeans. Obama thus lacks both the force and the coalition to carry out his missions. He therefore would have no choice but to deal with the Russians while confronting the Afghan/Pakistani question even if he withdrew more quickly than he says he would from Iraq.
The make-or-break moment for Obama will come early, when he confronts the Europeans. If he can persuade them to take concerted action, including increased defense spending, then much of his foreign policy rapidly falls into place, even if it is at the price of increasing U.S. defense spending. If the Europeans cannot come together (or be brought together) decisively, however, then he will have to improvise.
Obama would be the first Democrat in this century to take office inheriting a major war. Inheriting an ongoing war is perhaps the most difficult thing for a president to deal with. Its realities are already fixed and the penalties for defeat or compromise already defined. The war in Afghanistan has already been defined by U.S. President George W. Bush’s approach. Rewriting it will be enormously difficult, particularly when rewriting it depends on ending unilateralism and moving toward full coalition warfare when coalition partners are wary.
Obama’s problems are compounded by the fact that he does not only have to deal with an inherited war, but also a resurgent Russia. And he wants to depend on the same coalition for both. That will be enormously challenging for him, testing his diplomatic skills as well as geopolitical realities. As with all presidents, what he plans to do and what he would do are two different things. But it seems to us that his presidency would be defined by whether he can change the course of U.S.-European relations not by accepting European terms but by persuading them to accommodate U.S. interests.
An Obama presidency would not turn on this. There is no evidence that he lacks the ability to shift with reality — that he lacks Machiavellian virtue. But it still will be the first and critical test, one handed to him by the complex tensions of Democratic traditions and by a war he did not start.
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October 01, 2008, 7:00 a.m.
Obama’s Assault on the First Amendment
Stifling political debate with threats of prosecution is not the “rule of law” — it’s tyranny.
By Andrew C. McCarthy
In London last week, a frightful warning was sounded about encroaching tyranny. At an important conference, speaker after impassioned speaker warned of the peril to Western values posed by freedom-devouring sharia — the Islamic legal code. Like all tyrannies, sharia’s first target is speech: Suppress all examination of Muslim radicalism by threats of prosecution and libel actions, and smugly call it “the rule of law.”
But we may already be further gone than the London conferees feared. And without resort to the Islamicization that so startled them. For that, we can thank the campaign of Barack Obama.
I’ll be blunt: Sen. Obama and his supporters despise free expression, the bedrock of American self-determinism and hence American democracy. What’s more, like garden-variety despots, they see law not as a means of ensuring liberty but as a tool to intimidate and quell dissent.
We London conferees were fretting over speech codes, “hate speech” restrictions, “Islamophobia” provisions, and “libel tourism” — the use of less journalist-friendly defamation laws in foreign jurisdictions to eviscerate our First Amendment freedom to report, for example, on the nexus between ostensible Islamic charity and the funding of terrorist operations.
All the while, in St. Louis, local law-enforcement authorities, dominated by Democrat-party activists, were threatening libel prosecutions against Obama’s political opposition. County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch and City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, abetted by a local sheriff and encouraged by the Obama campaign, warned that members of the public who dared speak out against Obama during the campaign’s crucial final weeks would face criminal libel charges — if, in the judgment of these conflicted officials, such criticism of their champion was “false.”
The chill wind was bracing. The Taliban could not better rig matters. The Prophet of Change is only to be admired, not questioned. In the stretch run of an American election, there is to be no examination of a candidate for the world’s most powerful office — whether about his radical record, the fringe Leftism that lies beneath his thin, centrist veneer, his enabling of infanticide, his history of race-conscious politics, his proposals for unprecedented confiscation and distribution of private property (including a massive transfer of American wealth to third-world dictators through international bureaucrats), his ruinous economic policies that have helped leave Illinois a financial wreck, his place at the vortex of the credit market implosion that has put the U.S. economy on the brink of meltdown, his aggressive push for American withdrawal and defeat in Iraq, his easy gravitation to America-hating activists, be they preachers like Jeremiah Wright, terrorists like Bill Ayers, or Communists like Frank Marshall Davis. Comment on any of this and risk indictment or, at the very least, government harassment and exorbitant legal fees.
Nor was this an isolated incident.
Item: When the American Issues Project ran political ads calling attention to Obama’s extensive ties to Ayers, the Weatherman terrorist who brags about having bombed the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol, the Obama campaign pressured the Justice Department to launch an absurd criminal prosecution.
Item: When commentator Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy Center was invited on a Chicago radio program to discuss his investigation of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an “education reform” project in which Obama and Ayers (just “a guy who lives in my neighborhood”) collaborated to dole out over $100 million, the Obama campaign issued an Internet action alert. Supporters, armed with the campaign’s non-responsive talking points, dutifully flooded the program with calls and emails, protesting Kurtz’s appearance and attempting to shout him down.
Item: Both Obama and his running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, have indicated that an Obama administration would use its control of the Justice Department to prosecute its political opponents, including Bush administration officials responsible for the national security policies put in effect after nearly 3000 Americans were killed in the 9/11 attacks.
Item: There is a troubling report that the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Section, top officials of which are Obama contributors, has suggested criminal prosecutions against those they anticipate will engage in voter “intimidation” or “oppression” in an election involving a black candidate. (Memo to my former DOJ colleagues: In a system that presumes innocence even after crimes have undeniably been committed, responsible prosecutors don’t assume non-suspects will commit future law violations — especially when doing so necessarily undermines the First Amendment freedoms those prosecutors solemnly swear to uphold.)
Obama may very well win the November election but he, like Sen. McCain, should be forced to win it fair and square: by persuading Americans that he is the superior candidate after our free society has had its customary free and open debate.
One understandably feels little sympathy for McCain here. His years-long assault on the First Amendment under the guise of campaign-finance “reform” has led inexorably to the brazenness of Obama’s Chicago-style strong-arming. But the victim here is not McCain. The victim is democratic self-determination. The victim is our right to informed participation in a political community’s most important decisions. The victim is freedom.
The Justice Department’s job is to prosecute those actively undermining our freedom, not to intimidate citizens in the exercise of that freedom. Consequently, instead of threatening criminal investigations of phantom future civil-rights violations, it should be conducting criminal investigations into whether public officials in St. Louis are abusing their offices to affect a national election.
The federal Hatch Act (codified in Title 5 of the U.S. Code) prohibits executive officials (such as prosecutors and police) from using their offices to interfere with federal elections. The statute may be of limited utility in St. Louis since it principally targets federal officials. Still, state and local government may come within its ambit if their activities are funded in part by the national Leviathan — as many arms of municipal government are these days.
The same bright-line demarcation does not limit application of the federal extortion and fraud laws. The extortion provision (also known as the Hobbs Act and codified at Section 1951 of the federal penal code) makes it a felony for anyone, including public officials, to deprive people of their property by inducing fear of harm. Property interests have been held to include, for example, the right of union members to participate in a democratic process; the harm apprehended can be either physical or economic. Inducing voters to fear prosecution and imprisonment unless they refrain from exercising their fundamental right to engage democratic debate may well qualify.
An easier fit may be fraud, which under federal law (Section 1346 of the penal code) prohibits schemes to deprive citizens of their “intangible right of honest services” from their public officials. Prosecutors and police who abuse their enormous powers in order to promote the election of their preferred candidates violate their public trust.
Regardless of the legal landscape, however, it is the political consequences that matter. Day after day, Obama demonstrates that the “change” he represents is a severing of our body politic from the moorings that make us America. If we idly stand by while he and his thugs kill free political debate, we die too.
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=M2MxMWJlNzcwMDU3ZTJkYjRmZjU3N2U0OGNlZmE1ZDg=
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Obama’s Friends at Fannie Mae
by Lynn Woolley (more by this author)
Posted 10/01/2008 ET
To be sure, the nation’s current financial mess is a bipartisan disaster -- but how curious it was to hear Barack Obama at the first debate claim that he sounded warnings two years ago. Perhaps he did, but some us of would like to hear more about the warnings and the letter he says he wrote to the Secretary of the Treasury urging a meeting of all “stakeholders.”
After all, many of Sen. Obama’s friends, advisors and fellow Democrats have direct connections to the quasi-governmental agency at the center all this -- the Federal National Mortgage Association, better known as Fannie Mae.
Back in 2004, Fannie was embroiled in an accounting scandal and in October of that year, the House conducted hearings. According to the Wall Street Journal, the staunchest defenders of Fannie were members of the Congressional Black Caucus. By a strange coincidence, the Fannie Mae Foundation was making annual contributions to the Caucus. And get this – Maxine Waters (D-CA) “cooed all over Mr. Raines” and Clay Lacy (D-MO) “played the race card by calling the hearings a ‘political lynching’ of Mr. Raines.”
That would be Franklin Raines, an African American who stepped down as chairman and CEO of Fannie Mae on December 21, 2004. This followed an investigation by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that accused Fannie of cooking the books so that its officers could “earn” big bonuses. Two years ago, the OFHEO filed suit against Raines to try to recover the $50 million in payments that were made to him based on the faulty accounting. He settled for a small fine that was paid by Fannie’s insurance company.
Connection to Sen. Obama: Both Raines and Obama insist there is no connection, but he is likely a behind-the-scenes advisor. The Washington Post has reported that Raines had “taken calls from Barack Obama’s presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing policy matters” and that Raines is a member of Obama’s “political circle.” Obama did not request a correction until after a McCain ad quoted the paper.
Next is J. Timothy Howard, who resigned along with Raines and who was Fannie’s Chief Financial Officer. In that position, he was a key figure in shaping the company’s books to make it seem that Fannie had reached goals that would lead to executive bonuses. Howard was part of the Raines settlement. His connection to Barack Obama: Murky at best but likely since Howard is tied to Raines.
It’s interesting to note that by 2006, both Raines and Howard were being investigated by both the OFHEO and the SEC, by then headed by Christopher Cox, whom Sen. McCain now wants to see fired.
Then there is Jamie Gorelick, a Harvard lawyer who always seems to turn up in interesting places. You’ll remember her as a member of the 9/11 Commission and the criticism of her related to a “wall” that may have limited the ability of agencies to cooperate against terrorism. Turns out that she was Vice Chairman of Fannie Mae from 1997 until 2003 -- smack in the middle of the accounting scandal. On March 25, 2002, Business Week quoted her as saying about the agency, “We believe we are managed safely.” Gorelick was among those who received large bonuses.
Her connection to Obama: None that we know of other than her association with the Democratic Party.
Next is Jim Johnson, a Democratic figure dating back to the Carter years. He was CEO of Fannie Mae from 1991 until 1998 (preceding Raines) and was a subject of the OFHEO investigation. The investigation showed that Fannie had substantially underreported Johnson’s compensation, listing it as $6 million when it was really some $21 million.
Johnson is a strong Obama supporter who was tapped to head up the vice-presidential selection committee. He had to drop out when it was disclosed that he received a sweetheart loan from Countrywide Financial, as had Mr. Raines.
We should also mention former Clinton Commerce Secretary William Daley who served as a Fannie Mae board member collecting stock options and director’s fees and whose son Bill Jr. was a Fannie Mae lobbyist from 2002 until 2005. His connection to Obama: The Politico reports that he is serving as an advisor for the senator and he has been mentioned as a potential Treasury Secretary in an Obama administration.
Of course, Sen. Obama himself is second on the list of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae since 1989. Regardless of what he may have stated at the debate, the Washington Post editorialized on September 19, 2008, “In 2006, [McCain] pushed for stronger regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac while Mr. Obama was strangely silent.” Perhaps his $126,000 in contributions kept him that way.
Obama now claims to champion “Main Street” by fighting against so-called golden parachutes for CEO’s. That’s something he should know about since so many of his friends and advisors have hands-on experience with creating them.
Mr. Woolley is a Texas-based talk show host heard on KVCE AM 1160 weeknights at 8 p.m. Visit him at www.BeLogical.com.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?print=yes&id=28797
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Obama Was Willing to Lose in Iraq
A president cannot treat a war as if it's a game.By ROBERT MCFARLANEArticle
A profoundly important point is being missed in the campaign debate over which candidate was right on Iraq. In 2006, when conditions on the ground were trending downward and a decision was required either to continue the struggle or to cut our losses, Barack Obama stated that the proposed deployment of more forces, the "surge," was doomed to failure and instead called for a phased withdrawal of all forces within a defined period.
In short, Sen. Obama was willing to lose. It was an astonishing display of ignorance to be so cavalier about defeat, almost as if losing a war was tantamount to losing a set of tennis -- something without lasting consequence.
I recall very vividly April 30, 1975, the day we acknowledged defeat in the Vietnam War -- the day Ambassador Graham Martin and others were evacuated ignominiously from the roof of our embassy in Saigon. Only later did it become clear how damaging that defeat was.
There were consequences for all nations, especially small states who are vulnerable to great-power pressures. In the late 1970s it contributed to a greater Russian willingness to take risks and a more aggressive Soviet foreign policy. Indeed, in the years immediately following our defeat in Vietnam, an emboldened Soviet Union established a dominant influence in Angola, Ethiopia, South Yemen, Mozambique, Nicaragua and ultimately invaded Afghanistan with 100,000 troops.
Our loss also lessened our willingness to criticize the Soviet Union and thereby undermined the struggles of oppressed minorities inside that totalitarian state.
Losing a war also affects the behavior of allies who begin to wonder whether the United States can still muster the means and will to uphold its obligations, and to ask themselves whether they need at least to hedge their bets by being more conciliatory to adversaries. I recall very well the sudden rush of European foreign ministers to Moscow in the late '70s without so much as a preliminary discussion with their counterpart in Washington.
Further, losing a war also has a profound effect on the thinking within our military concerning how it was led, restricted, or abused in wartime. Painful reflection on a loss penetrates every level of the military and conditions its future relationship with civilian leaders -- as it surely did in the wake of the Vietnam War. Specifically, it led to the adoption, at military urging, of the Weinberger Doctrine, which asserted stringent criteria to be met in the future before any resort to the use of military force. These criteria included not committing forces to combat unless it was vital to our national interest, we had clearly defined political and military objectives, and unless the engagement had the support of the American people and Congress -- and then only as a last resort.
Allies and adversaries could see that these criteria were virtually impossible to fulfill, thus worrying the former and encouraging the latter. Yet such was the effect on senior military leaders of losing a war they knew they could have won. We are seeing some of the same disdain within the military toward our political leadership today as a consequence of how civilian leaders mismanaged the war in its first three-plus years.
Losing a war also affects our body politic. Americans have a low tolerance for foreign wars; losing one only reinforces their inclination to avoid foreign involvement and focus on matters here at home. Now is such a time. Yet can you imagine how much worse our political stability would be today -- faced with the financial and housing crises -- if we were also coming home from losing a war?
Consideration of these costs raises the question of whether we are forever bound to continue suffering losses if it becomes clear that we aren't winning. Considering the family of threats we face today, the question is specious. Notwithstanding the hubris and intelligence failure regarding Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program, which motivated our launching the Iraq war in the first place, and our failure to plan for the likely contingency of an insurgency arising, it is difficult to imagine circumstances anywhere in the world today where the U.S. military cannot prevail if properly employed.
This is not at all to say that we should be frivolous toward using military force -- quite the contrary. We are entering a time requiring consummate judgment and careful deliberation toward how to resolve the panoply of challenges before us. Indeed these challenges put a very high premium on coordinating the use of our political and economic resources with allies and avoiding war wherever possible.
The next president will enter office with the war in Iraq winding down but with the conflict in Afghanistan requiring urgent, focused attention. The stakes engaged there go well beyond restoring order in that country alone. How we emerge from Afghanistan will go far toward determining our ability to prevail in the global war against radical Islam, our ability to limit nuclear proliferation, and to bring order and the hope for a brighter future to the almost two billion people in South and Central Asia. These are issues of profound importance to the future security of our nation and our citizens. Losing is not an option, and no sensible leader should entertain the thought that it is.
Mr. McFarlane served as President Reagan's National Security Adviser from 1983-85.
Please add your comments to the Opinion Journal forum.
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http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/31470_Video-_Barack_Obamas_Questionable_Associates
More on the ring of scum that surrounds Obama.
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http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/31471_William_Ayers_Stepping_on_the_US_Flag_in_2001
Don't question the left's patriotism.
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http://obamagunban.com/
Obama on guns.
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http://www.newsweek.com/id/162403 (http://www.newsweek.com/id/162403)
Obama’s ‘Good Will’ Hunting
Michael Isikoff
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Oct 13, 2008
The Obama campaign has shattered all fund-raising records, raking in $458 million so far, with about half the bounty coming from donors who contribute $200 or less. Aides say that's an illustration of a truly democratic campaign. To critics, though, it can be an invitation for fraud and illegal foreign cash because donors giving individual sums of $200 or less don't have to be publicly reported. Consider the cases of Obama donors "Doodad Pro" of Nunda, N.Y., who gave $17,130, and "Good Will" of Austin, Texas, who gave more than $11,000—both in excess of the $2,300-per-person federal limit. In two recent letters to the Obama campaign, Federal Election Commission auditors flagged those (and other) donors and informed the campaign that the sums had to be returned. Neither name had ever been publicly reported because both individuals made online donations in $10 and $25 increments. "Good Will" listed his employer as "Loving" and his occupation as "You," while supplying as his address 1015 Norwood Park Boulevard, which is shared by the Austin nonprofit Goodwill Industries. Suzanha Burmeister, marketing director for Goodwill, said the group had "no clue" who the donor was. She added, however, that the group had received five puzzling thank-you letters from the Obama campaign this year, prompting it to send the campaign an e-mail in September pointing out the apparent fraudulent use of its name.
"Doodad Pro" listed no occupation or employer; the contributor's listed address is shared by Lloyd and Lynn's Liquor Store in Nunda. "I have never heard of such an individual," says Diane Beardsley, who works at the store and is the mother of one of the owners. "Nobody at this store has that much money to contribute." (She added that a Doodad's Boutique, located next door, had closed a year ago, before the donations were made.)
Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said the campaign has no idea who the individuals are and has returned all the donations, using the credit-card numbers they gave to the campaign. (In a similar case earlier this year, the campaign returned $33,000 to two Palestinian brothers in the Gaza Strip who had bought T shirts in bulk from the campaign's online store. They had listed their address as "Ga.," which the campaign took to mean Georgia rather than Gaza.) "While no organization is completely protected from Internet fraud, we will continue to review our fund-raising procedures," LaBolt said. Some critics say the campaign hasn't done enough. This summer, watchdog groups asked both campaigns to share more information about its small donors. The McCain campaign agreed; the Obama campaign did not. "They could've done themselves a service" by heeding the suggestions, said Massie Ritsch of the Center for Responsive Politics.
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http://www.city-journal.org/2008/eon0430jm.html
JOHN M. MURTAGH
Fire in the Night
The Weathermen tried to kill my family.
30 April 2008
During the April 16 debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, moderator George Stephanopoulos brought up “a gentleman named William Ayers,” who “was part of the Weather Underground in the 1970s. They bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol, and other buildings. He’s never apologized for that.” Stephanopoulos then asked Obama to explain his relationship with Ayers. Obama’s answer: “The notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was eight years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn’t make much sense, George.” Obama was indeed only eight in early 1970. I was only nine then, the year Ayers’s Weathermen tried to murder me.
In February 1970, my father, a New York State Supreme Court justice, was presiding over the trial of the so-called “Panther 21,” members of the Black Panther Party indicted in a plot to bomb New York landmarks and department stores. Early on the morning of February 21, as my family slept, three gasoline-filled firebombs exploded at our home on the northern tip of Manhattan, two at the front door and the third tucked neatly under the gas tank of the family car. (Today, of course, we’d call that a car bomb.) A neighbor heard the first two blasts and, with the remains of a snowman I had built a few days earlier, managed to douse the flames beneath the car. That was an act whose courage I fully appreciated only as an adult, an act that doubtless saved multiple lives that night.
I still recall, as though it were a dream, thinking that someone was lifting and dropping my bed as the explosions jolted me awake, and I remember my mother’s pulling me from the tangle of sheets and running to the kitchen where my father stood. Through the large windows overlooking the yard, all we could see was the bright glow of flames below. We didn’t leave our burning house for fear of who might be waiting outside. The same night, bombs were thrown at a police car in Manhattan and two military recruiting stations in Brooklyn. Sunlight, the next morning, revealed three sentences of blood-red graffiti on our sidewalk: FREE THE PANTHER 21; THE VIET CONG HAVE WON; KILL THE PIGS.
For the next 18 months, I went to school in an unmarked police car. My mother, a schoolteacher, had plainclothes detectives waiting in the faculty lounge all day. My brother saved a few bucks because he didn’t have to rent a limo for the senior prom: the NYPD did the driving. We all made the best of the odd new life that had been thrust upon us, but for years, the sound of a fire truck’s siren made my stomach knot and my heart race. In many ways, the enormity of the attempt to kill my entire family didn’t fully hit me until years later, when, a father myself, I was tucking my own nine-year-old John Murtagh into bed.
Though no one was ever caught or tried for the attempt on my family’s life, there was never any doubt who was behind it. Only a few weeks after the attack, the New York contingent of the Weathermen blew themselves up making more bombs in a Greenwich Village townhouse. The same cell had bombed my house, writes Ron Jacobs in The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. And in late November that year, a letter to the Associated Press signed by Bernardine Dohrn, Ayers’s wife, promised more bombings.
As the association between Obama and Ayers came to light, it would have helped the senator a little if his friend had at least shown some remorse. But listen to Ayers interviewed in the New York Times on September 11, 2001, of all days: “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” Translation: “We meant to kill that judge and his family, not just damage the porch.” When asked by the Times if he would do it all again, Ayers responded: “I don’t want to discount the possibility.”
Though never a supporter of Obama, I admired him for a time for his ability to engage our imaginations, and especially for his ability to inspire the young once again to embrace the political system. Yet his myopia in the last few months has cast a new light on his “politics of change.” Nobody should hold the junior senator from Illinois responsible for his friends’ and supporters’ violent terrorist acts. But it is fair to hold him responsible for a startling lack of judgment in his choice of mentors, associates, and friends, and for showing a callous disregard for the lives they damaged and the hatred they have demonstrated for this country. It is fair, too, to ask what those choices say about Obama’s own beliefs, his philosophy, and the direction he would take our nation.
At the conclusion of his 2001 Times interview, Ayers said of his upbringing and subsequent radicalization: “I was a child of privilege and I woke up to a world on fire.”
Funny thing, Bill: one night, so did I.
John M. Murtagh is a practicing attorney, an adjunct professor of public policy at the Fordham University College of Liberal Studies, and a member of the city council in Yonkers, New York, where he resides with his wife and two sons.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/10/06/videos-the-ayers-connection/
More on Obama's terror connection and the attempts to hide it.
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Well let's hope BO is the next coming of Abe Lincoln. I think we need old Abe right about now. (I'd rather not have FDR).
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Obama's character is pretty evident, and it ain't Lincolnesque.
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I agree with you. It's just that it isn't looking too good for McCain.
So what else can I do if we are getting BO than hope he won't be the angry leftist minority guy once he gets into office?
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Worst case, we look at it as a time to rebuild the republican brand, as the dems will really fcuk things up with both houses of congress and the white house. Don't give up yet though, once the public gets to look at Ocommie's ring of scum, he may well lose.
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http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=308271974461547
Print
Obama's Real Problem With Ayers
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, October 07, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Election '08: At an education forum in Venezuela, Bill Ayers showed the real issue is not his terrorist past. It's the socialist revolutionary agenda that he and Barack Obama want to impose on the nation's schools.
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Read More: Election 2008
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Still more evidence of how the media are in the tank for Obama was evident in Tom Brokaw's description of Ayers on Sunday's "Meet The Press."
"School reformer" is how Brokaw identified the co-founder of the Weather Underground, the radical organization that, among other activities, bombed government buildings, banks, police departments and military bases in the early 1970s.
Yeah, right: Ayers is a school reformer in the same sense, as City Journal's Sol Stern put it, as Joe Stalin was an agricultural reformer.
An idea of what Ayers has in mind for America's schools was provided in his own words not 40 years ago when Obama was eight years old, but less than two years ago in November 2006 at the World Education Forum in Caracas hosted by dictator Hugo Chavez.
With Chavez at his side, Ayers voiced his support for "the political educational reforms under way here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chavez. We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution. . . . I look forward to seeing how . . . all of you continue to overcome the failures of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane."
Ayers told the great humanitarian Chavez: "Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions large and small. La educacion es revolucion." It is that form of socialist revolution that Ayers, and Obama, have worked to bring to America.
Ayers, now a tenured Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago, works to educate teachers in socialist revolutionary ideology, urging that it be passed on to impressionable students.
As Stern points out, "Ayers and his education school comrades are explicit about the need to indoctrinate public school children in the belief that America is a racist, militarist country and that the capitalist system is inherently unfair and oppressive."
If Ayers was just another nutty professor, we'd be lucky. But he wields great influence in academic circles and has had Obama's ear. He's the author or editor of 15 books. Chicago's current mayor, Richard M. Daley, has employed Ayers as a teacher trainer for Chicago's public schools and consulted him on the city's education-reform plans.
Just last month, Ayers was elected vice-president for curriculum for the 25,000-member American Educational Research Association. AERA is the nation's largest organization of education-school professors and researchers.
In a recent interview on Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor," Obama upgraded Ayers' status from "a guy who lives in my neighborhood" to "somebody who worked on education issues in Chicago that I know."
Actually, Obama knew him quite well, having worked together on a school "reform" project called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.
In the 1990s, Ayers was instrumental in starting the Annenberg Challenge, securing a $50 million grant to reform the Chicago Public Schools, part of a national initiative funded by the late Ambassador Walter Annenberg.
Obama was given the Annenberg board chairmanship only months before his first run for office. He ran the fiscal arm that distributed grants to schools and raised matching funds.
Ayers participated in a second entity known as the Chicago School Reform Collaborative, the operational arm that worked with grant recipients.
During Obama's tenure as Annenberg board chairman, Ayers' own education projects received substantial funding.
One of Ayers' descriptions for a course called "Improving Learning Environments" says a prospective K-12 teacher needs to "be aware of the social and moral universe we inhabit and . . . be a teacher capable of hope and struggle, outrage and action, teaching for social justice and liberation."
John McCain needs to repeatedly point out the stealth socialism of Ayers' education agenda and Obama's complicity in it. Otherwise, we may one day see Ayers as Obama's secretary of education.
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In the 1990s, Ayers was instrumental in starting the Annenberg Challenge, securing a $50 million grant to reform the Chicago Public Schools, part of a national initiative funded by the late Ambassador Walter Annenberg.
Keep hearing about the Annenberg Challenge and William Ayers, so I did some research:
Along with being one of the world's greatest philanthropists, Walter Annenberg was also an avowed conservative. He's credited with introducing Ronald Reagan to Margaret Thatcher, spent regular New Year's with the Reagans, and was even appointed ambassador to the Court of St. James by Richard Nixon.
Given his background, I would hardly consider Annenberg an individual who was not concerned with the background of individuals to whom he endowed large sums of money. He was the one that gave the money what the article derisively calls a "school 'reform' project". In reality that "project" was as fully funded $49 million dollar initiative. Hardly small potatoes, and hardly the type of program you would put under the supervision of a socialist, unless you really didn't care. Annenberg doesn't seem to have been the type of person not to care, so what gives?
Ayers wrote the proposal for Chicago's A.C. (one of 18 such programs across the country), with two advisors to the national Annenberg Challenge.
Anyone care to shed some light on the apparent disinterest of the Annenberg Foundation on Ayers' background? Or was it that they just didn't care?
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Not sure what the man has to do with the way his foundation is handled. I note "ActivistCash.com" lists the following:
Funding To Activist Groups Total Donated Time Frame
World Wildlife Fund $78,333.00 1993 – 2000
Sierra Club $77,500.00 1999 – 2001
Environmental Defense $66,666.00 1993 – 1994
Natural Resources Defense Council $15,000.00 2002 – 2002
American Oceans Campaign $5,050.00 1999 – 2000
http://www.activistcash.com/foundation.cfm/did/246
I've noted a lot of left-leaning PBS programming was funded by Annenberg, I believe it donates to the Brady campaign and understands it funds Fact Check, which looks to me like it has a left leaning take on things, particularly where the 2nd amendment is involved.
As for what Ayers and Obama did with the Annenberg money, near as I can tell the answer is not much, beyond handing money to their cronies. I've not been able to find any sources that argue the money did anything to improve Chicago's abysmal school system, though there is evidence the money funded means of incorporating social activism into curriculums.
Seeing as Walter Annenberg died in 2002 at the age of 94, I suspect he hasn't been deeply involved in things of late.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/10/08/barone-of-course-ayers-is-relevant/
Barone: Of course Ayers is relevant
POSTED AT 12:00 PM ON OCTOBER 8, 2008 BY ED MORRISSEY
Greta van Susteren asked Michael Barone whether the topic of William Ayers has any relevance to Barack Obama’s candidacy last night after the debate. He replies that it’s at least as legitimate as Sarah Palin’s per diem, and gives three reasons for why it should get more attention:
Barone’s three reasons:
Obama stresses his commonality with the American people. Do most people feel comfortable working closely with unrepentant domestic terrorists who still want to overthrow the capitalist system in America?
Obama presses educational issues as part of his campaign. He spent years working with Ayers on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which pushed efforts to create primary educational organizations that would create political activists for the Left - and which largely failed in any of its intended purposes.
Obama has lied and obfuscated about his relationship with Ayers. Clearly, Ayers was not just “some guy in the neighborhood”, but a political adviser at least on educational issues who provided a key launch for Obama’s political career.
I think the latter two are more compelling than the first. Perhaps a better way of structuring the first point would be to relate it to Obama’s insistence that he has better judgment than John McCain to lead the nation. Can anyone believe that a man who worked with an unrepentant domestic terrorist for years and considered him “mainstream” has the judgment necessary for the Presidency?
Expect Sarah Palin to continue to lead the charge on this topic. She has effectively used the media scrutiny surrounding her to get national media coverage on Ayers, with surprising results. So far, the Obama campaign simply has not effectively rebutted it, and in fact has made the damage worse.
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An exhaustive analysis of Obama and Ayers' work with Annenberg funds, abstract provided below, can be downloaded here:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1262085#
The Authoritarian Radicals: Barack Obama, Bill Ayers and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge
Stephen F. Diamond
Santa Clara University - School of Law
September 1, 2008
Abstract:
The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was a $160 million dollar reform effort in the Chicago public school system led by, among others, Barack Obama and Bill Ayers. An analysis of the Challenge suggests that an authoritarian form of politics shared by Ayers and Obama was a critical part of the reform effort. This form of authoritarian radicalism has its roots in the American New Left and Black Power movements. The paper contrasts the authoritarian and anti-union approach of the Challenge with a democratic alternative.
Keywords: Law, poliitics, education, Obama, Ayers, Annenberg Challenge
JEL Classifications: None
Working Paper Series
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Sweet...
Thanks BBG
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Wait! There's more!
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JUDGE ORDERS OBAMA TO PRODUCE BIRTH CERTIFICATE
By Jon Christian Dryer
October 3, 2008
NewsWithViews.com
On September 29, 2008 US District Court Judge R. Barclay Surrick, the
federal magistrate for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ruled in the
matter of Philip J. Berg vs Barack Hussein Obama, et al as the world was
distracted by the $700 billion subprime mortgage crisis. Obama signed a
breathe of relief as the mainstream media chose to ignore the question:
"Can Senator Barack Hussein Obama legally seek the office of President of the
United States?"
The flap began in June when National Review's Jim Geraghty raised the
question and asked the Obama Campaign to release a copy of his birth
certificate in order to prove that he actually was born in the United
States. (Reports had previously surfaced claiming that Obama's Kenyan
grandmother, Sarah Hussein Obama, told reporters that Obama was not born
in Hawaii, but in Kenya. She reportedly told reporters that when her son,
Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. returned to Kenya he was accompanied by a
pregnant white wife who was close to term.)
Obama's family did not take to Stanley Ann Dunham Obama well according to
Sarah Obama because she was white. Shortly after she arrived in Kenya
Stanley Ann decided to return to Hawaii because she did not like how
Muslim men treated their wives in Kenya. However, because she was near term the
airline would not let her fly until after the birth of her baby. Obama's
grandmother said the baby was born in Kenya and that shortly after Barack
Hussein Obama, Jr. was born, Stanley Ann returned to Hawaii.
Purportedly, when she arrived back in Hawaii, Stanley Anne registered her
son's live birth as an event which had just happened-in Hawaii. This
supposition is based on the appearance, shortly after Nov. 6, 2007, of a
Hawaiian birth certificate that was issued, as a duplicate birth
certificate, by the State of Hawaii to a US Senator who requested it.
While the Internet screamed that the birth certificate, which appeared on
the Obama Campaign's "Fight The Smears" website and was also downloaded
and used by far left blogger Markos Zuniga on his website, Daily Kos, it was
not an electronic image concocted by Daily KOs as was hypothesized by a
self-described cyvbersleuth who uses the cyber pseudonym Techdude. It was
the real McCoy-even if it was issued as a political favor to a prospective
Democratic presidential candidate by a Democrat official in Hawaii. The
county clerk who issued the document, which purports to be a copy of an
original document, was date stamped "Nov. 6, 2007" on the reverse side of
the birth certificate in blue ink which bled through and is visible on the
front of the electronic image.
http://www.freedom21.com/deweese_su.asp>
Attorney Philip J. Berg, the former head of the Montgomery County.
Pennsylvania Democratic Party and a former member of the Democratic State
Convention and, reportedly a Hillary Clinton supporter, wanted to learn
the truth from the myriad of rumors that also suggested that Sen. Obama may
also have been a citizen of Indonesia. The only consistent part of the story
was Stanley Ann returning to Hawaii to claim he had been in the United States
and was a US citizen. In his ruling, Judge Surrick noted that the
"...cause came before the United States District Court Judge, Honorable R. Barclay
Surrick on defendant Barack Hussein Obama and the Democratic National
Committee's motion to dismiss." The order continued, "Having reviewed the
motion and plaintiff's opposition to said motion and for good cause shown,
it is hereby ordered that the motion to dismiss pursuant to F.R.C.P.
12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6) is denied. It is further order of this court that
the following discovery is to be turned over to plaintiff within three (3)
days.
1. Obama's "vault" version (certified copy of his "original" long version)
birth certificate; and
2. a certified copy of Obama's Certificate of Citizenship;
3. a certified copy of Obama's oath of allegiance."
In his original filing, Berg specifically asked for those three items.
Berg told the court that "...at the time Plaintiff's complaint was filed,
Plaintiff was requesting protections from the court in order to stop Obama
from being nominated by the DNC as the Democratic Presidential Nominee as
Obama is not eligible to serve as President of the United States. However,
Obama was nominated by the DNC...For that reason, Plaintiff must amend his
complaint and will be amending this complaint to file a First Amendment
complaint...."
Berg argued that he felt it was the role of the Federal Election
Commission to ensure that presidential and congressional candidates are eligible to
hold the positions for which they were seeking, and that those candidates
run a fair and legitimate campaign. "In vetting the presidential
candidate," Berg argued, "the DNC and the FEC are required to ensure the eligibility
requirements pursuant to our Constitution are met and the Presidential
nominee, if elected, is qualified and eligible to serve pursuant to our
United States Constitution. In order to be eligible to run for the Office
of President of the United States, you must be a "natural born" citizen.
"There appears to be no question that Defendant Obama's mother, Stanley
Ann Dunham, was a US citizen. It is also undisputed, however, that his father,
Barack Obama, Sr., was a citizen of Kenya. Obama's parents, according to
divorce recorded, were married on or about February 2, 1961.
"Defendant Obama claims he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. on August 4, 1961
and it is uncertain in which hospital he claims to have been born. Obama's
grandmother on his father's side, his half-brother and half-sister all
claim Obama was born not in Hawaii but in Kenya. reports reflect that Obama's
mother traveled to Kenya during her pregnancy; however, she was prevented
from boarding a flight from Kenya to Hawaii. at her late stage of
pregnancy (which apparently are normal restrictions, to avoid births during
flights). By these reports, Stanley Ann Dunham Obama gave birth to Obama in Kenya,
after which she flew home and registered Obama's birth. There are records
of a "registry of birth" for Obama, on or about August 8, 1961 in the public
records office in Hawaii."
Berg's investigators revealed that Obama's own half-sister Maya
Soetoro-with whom he was raised-seemed not to know where her own brother was born. In
the Nov., 2004 interview by the Rainbow Newsletter Maya Soetoro said Obama was
born on Aug. 4, 1961 at Queens Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. In
February, 2008 Maya was interviewed by the Star Bulletin. This time she
told reporters that Obama was born on August 4, 1961 at the Kaliolani Medical
Center for Women and Children. On June 9, 2008 Wayne Madsen, a journalist
with Online Journal published an article in which he said a research team
went to Mombassa, Kenya and located a Certificate registering the live
birth of Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. to his father, a Kenyan citizen and his
mother, a US citizen.
Berg's argument to the court was that under the US Nationality Act of
1940, Section 317 (b), a minor child follows the naturalization and citizenship
status of his or her custodial parent. In Obama's case, Berg argued, a
minor child follows the naturalization and citizenship status of his or her
custodial father. Obama's Indonesian stepfather, Lolo Soetora signed a
statement acknowledging Obama as his son, giving Obama natural Indonesian
citizenship, which explains the name "Barry Soetoro" and his citizenship
listed as Indonesian. Loss of US citizenship, under US law in effect in
1967 required that foreign citizenship be achieved through "application."
Which, according to Berg, is precisely what happened to Obama when his mother
married Soetoro and the family moved to Indonesia.
http://www.newswithviews.com/DonateNWV.htm>
When Obama and his mother moved to Indonesia, Obama had already been
enrolled in school-something that could not have happened under Indonesian
law if Soetoro had not signed an acknowledgment (the application)
affirming that Obama was his son, it deemed his son to an Indonesian State citizen.
(Citizenship of Republic of Indonesia, Law No. 9 of 1992 dated 31 mar.
1992, Indonesia Civil Code):"...State children of Indonesia include: (viii)
children who are born outside of legal marriage from foreign State citizen
mother who are acknowledged by father who is Indonesian State citizen as
his children and that acknowledgment is made prior to children reaching 18
years of age or prior to marriage; Republic of Indonesia Constitution, 1945."
Furthermore, under Indonesian law, if a resident Indonesian citizen
married a foreigner-in this case, Lolo Soetoro marrying Stanley Ann Obama-she was
required to renounce her US citizenship.
mailto:newsforyou-list-subscribe@newswithviews.com>
In his lawsuit, Berg demanded a copy of Obama's Certificate of
Citizenship, a document Obama must have applied for to regain his citizenship-which was
lost in Indonesia. He will have that document only if the proper paperwork
was filed with the US State Department when Obama returned to Hawaii in
1971 since that is the only way Obama could regain his US "natural born"
status.
Berg is convinced that Obama was never naturalized in the United States
after his return. Obama returned to his maternal grandparents in Hawaii
without his mother. Since she is the only one who could have filed for the
reinstatement of his citizenship, it is unlikely it ever happened. If it
did, his Certificate of Citizenship would affirm his right to seek the
office of President. Without it, Barack Obama is just another resident
alien who can't legally hold his seat in the US Senate.
C 2008 Jon C. Ryter - All Rights Reserved
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How did Obama's mother enter the US with a newborn without legal documentation? I very much doubt you could have just flown to Hawaii from Kenya without US Customs/ INS having documentation for the infant flying with you. If this did happen, there would be a federal paper trail documenting this.
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Jesus, I mean, really? Come on people. Now it's just starting to reek of desperation...
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My final post of the election season. I'm just plain burned out
http://tesibria.typepad.com/whats_your_evidence/
Fortunately the highlights are, well, highlighted
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THANK YOU SB_Mig!
It does REEK of desperation.
It's almost amusing except certain people are trying to be serious (desperate).
LOL
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Good find SB Mig. :cry: :lol:
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And now, America, we introduce the Great Obama! The world's most gifted political magician! A thing of wonder. A thing of awe. Just watch him defy politics, economics, even gravity! (And hold your applause until the end, please.)
To kick off our show tonight, Mr. Obama will give 95% of American working families a tax cut, even though 40% of Americans today don't pay income taxes! How can our star enact such mathemagic? How can he "cut" zero? Abracadabra! It's called a "refundable tax credit." It involves the federal government taking money from those who do pay taxes, and writing checks to those who don't. Yes, yes, in the real world this is known as "welfare," but please try not to ruin the show.
Ken FallinFor his next trick, the Great Obama will jumpstart the economy, and he'll do it by raising taxes on the very businesses that are today adrift in a financial tsunami! That will include all those among the top 1% of taxpayers who are in fact small-business owners, and the nation's biggest employers who currently pay some of the highest corporate tax rates in the developed world. Mr. Obama will, with a flick of his fingers, show them how to create more jobs with less money. It's simple, really. He has a wand.
Next up, Mr. Obama will re-regulate the economy, with no ill effects whatsoever! You may have heard that for the past 40 years most politicians believed deregulation was good for the U.S. economy. You might have even heard that much of today's financial mess tracks to loose money policy, or Fannie and Freddie excesses. Our magician will show the fault was instead with our failure to clamp down on innovation and risk-taking, and will fix this with new, all-encompassing rules. Presto!
Did someone in the audience just shout "Sarbanes Oxley?" Usher, can you remove that man? Thank you. Mr. Obama will now demonstrate how he gives Americans the "choice" of a "voluntary" government health plan, designed in such a way as to crowd out the private market and eliminate all other choice! Don't worry people: You won't have to join, until you do. Mr. Obama will follow this with a demonstration of how his plan will differ from our failing Medicare program. Oops, sorry, folks. The Great Obama just reminded me it is time for an intermission. Maybe we'll get to that marvel later.
We're back now. And just watch the Great Obama perform a feat never yet managed in all history. He will create that enormous new government health program, spend billions to transform our energy economy, provide financial assistance to former Soviet satellites, invest in infrastructure, increase education spending, provide job training assistance, and give 95% of Americans a tax (ahem) cut -- all without raising the deficit a single penny! And he'll do it in the middle of a financial crisis. And with falling tax revenues! Voila!
Moving along to a little ventriloquism. Study his mouth carefully, folks: It looks like he's saying "I'll stop the special interests," when in fact the words coming out are "Welcome to Washington, friends!" Wind and solar companies, ethanol makers, tort lawyers, unions, community organizers -- all are welcome to feed at the public trough and to request special favors. From now on "special interests" will only refer to universally despised, if utterly crucial, economic players. Say, oil companies. Hocus Pocus!
And for tonight's finale, the Great Obama will uphold America's "moral" obligation to "stop genocide" by abandoning Iraq! While teleported to the region, he will simultaneously convince Iranian leaders to peacefully abandon their nuclear pursuits (even as he does not sit down with them), fix Afghanistan with a strategy that does not resemble the Iraqi surge, and (drumroll!) pull Osama bin Laden out of his hat!
Tada!
You can clap now. (Applause. Cheers.) We'd like to thank a few people in the audience. Namely, Republican presidential nominee John McCain, who has so admirably restrained himself from running up on stage to debunk any of these illusions and spoil everyone's fun.
We know he's in a bit of a box, having initially blamed today's financial crisis on corporate "greed," and thus made it that much harder to call for a corporate tax cut, or warn against excessive regulation. Still, there were some pretty big openings up here this evening, and he let them alone! We'd also like to thank Mr. McCain for keeping all the focus on himself these past weeks. It has helped the Great Obama to just get on with the show.
As for that show, we'd love to invite you all back for next week's performance, when the Great Obama will thrill with new, amazing exploits. He will respect your Second Amendment rights even as he regulates firearms! He will renegotiate Nafta, even as he supports free trade! He will . . .
Write to kim@wsj.com
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The problem is the WSJ and the others who point these things out are probably preaching to the choir who already know and believe this.
The MSM either ignores this or puts it on page 35.
To me the trio of Pelosi, Reid, BO seems like the US as we have known it for 200 years is over.
I do agree that it is a problem when the top 1% own something like 90% of the wealth.
And it is similary a problem when 40% of the population does not pay taxes.
Yet we never hear this.
Until this is somehow addressed this country will continue to be divided IMHO.
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The problem is the WSJ and the others who point these things out are probably preaching to the choir who already know and believe this.
The MSM either ignores this or puts it on page 35.
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I disagree when watching CNN they discussed the above before and after the debate. Mind you it wasn;t as colorful as the WSJ article.
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And now, America, we introduce the Great Obama! The world's most gifted political magician! A thing of wonder. A thing of awe. Just watch him defy politics, economics, even gravity! (And hold your applause until the end, please.)
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As for that show, we'd love to invite you all back for next week's performance, when the Great Obama will thrill with new, amazing exploits. He will respect your Second Amendment rights even as he regulates firearms! He will renegotiate Nafta, even as he supports free trade! He will . . .
Write to kim@wsj.com
Damn? He can do all that stuff Crafty? Well, I am voting for him then! :-P
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Though some will find the following too inside baseball to be relevant, turn it around and imagine a white politician chairing a foundation that funds white supremacist educational efforts. . . .
Wright 101
Obama funded extremist Afrocentrists who shared Rev. Wright’s anti-Americanism
By Stanley Kurtz
It looks like Jeremiah Wright was just the tip of the iceberg. Not only did Barack Obama savor Wright’s sermons, Obama gave legitimacy — and a whole lot of money — to education programs built around the same extremist anti-American ideology preached by Reverend Wright. And guess what? Bill Ayers is still palling around with the same bitterly anti-American Afrocentric ideologues that he and Obama were promoting a decade ago. All this is revealed by a bit of digging, combined with a careful study of documents from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the education foundation Obama and Ayers jointly led in the late 1990s.
John McCain, take note. Obama’s tie to Wright is no longer a purely personal question (if it ever was one) about one man’s choice of his pastor. The fact that Obama funded extremist Afrocentrists who shared Wright’s anti-Americanism means that this is now a matter of public policy, and therefore an entirely legitimate issue in this campaign.
African Village
In the winter of 1996, the Coalition for Improved Education in [Chicago’s] South Shore (CIESS) announced that it had received a $200,000 grant from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. That made CIESS an “external partner,” i.e. a community organization linked to a network of schools within the Chicago public system. This network, named the “South Shore African Village Collaborative” was thoroughly “Afrocentric” in orientation. CIESS’s job was to use a combination of teacher-training, curriculum advice, and community involvement to improve academic performance in the schools it worked with. CIESS would continue to receive large Annenberg grants throughout the 1990s.
The South Shore African Village Collaborative (SSAVC) was very much a part of the Afrocentric “rites of passage movement,” a fringe education crusade of the 1990s. SSAVC schools featured “African-Centered” curricula built around “rites of passage” ceremonies inspired by the puberty rites found in many African societies. In and of themselves, these ceremonies were harmless. Yet the philosophy that accompanied them was not. On the contrary, it was a carbon-copy of Jeremiah Wright’s worldview.
Rites of Passage
To learn what the rites of passage movement was all about, we can turn to a sympathetic 1992 study published in the Journal of Negro Education by Nsenga Warfield-Coppock. In that article, Warfield-Coppock bemoans the fact that public education in the United States is shaped by “capitalism, competitiveness, racism, sexism and oppression.” According to Warfield-Coppock, these American values “have confused African American people and oriented them toward American definitions of achievement and success and away from traditional African values.” American socialization has “proven to be dysfuntional and genocidal to the African American community,” Warfield-Coppock tells us. The answer is the adolescent rites of passage movement, designed “to provide African American youth with the cultural information and values they would need to counter the potentially detrimental effects of a Eurocentrically oriented society.”
The adolescent rites of passage movement that flowered in the 1990s grew out of the “cultural nationalist” or “Pan-African” thinking popular in radical black circles of the 1960s and 1970s. The attempt to create a virtually separate and intensely anti-American black social world began to take hold in the mid-1980s in small private schools, which carefully guarded the contents of their controversial curricula. Gradually, through external partners like CIESS, the movement spread to a few public schools. Supporters view these programs as “a social and cultural ‘inoculation’ process that facilitates healthy, African-centered development among African American youth and protects them against the ravages of a racist, sexist, capitalist, and oppressive society.”
We know that SSAVC was part of this movement, not only because their Annenberg proposals were filled with Afrocentric themes and references to “rites of passage,” but also because SSAVC’s faculty set up its African-centered curriculum in consultation with some of the most prominent leaders of the “rites of passage movement.” For example, a CIESS teacher conference sponsored a presentation on African-centered curricula by Jacob Carruthers, a particularly controversial Afrocentrist.
Jacob Carruthers
Like other leaders of the rites of passage movement, Carruthers teaches that the true birthplace of world civilization was ancient “Kemet” (Egypt), from which Kemetic philosophy supposedly spread to Africa as a whole. Carruthers and his colleagues believe that the values of Kemetic civilization are far superior to the isolating and oppressive, ancient Greek-based values of European and American civilization. Although academic Egyptologists and anthropologists strongly reject these historical claims, Carruthers dismisses critics as part of a white supremacist conspiracy to hide the truth of African superiority.
Carruthers’s key writings are collected in his book, Intellectual Warfare. Reading it is a wild, anti-American ride. In his book, we learn that Carruthers and his like-minded colleagues have formed an organization called the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations (ASCAC), which takes as its mission the need to “dismantle the European intellectual campaign to commit historicide against African peoples.” Carruthers includes “African-Americans” within a group he would define as simply “African.” When forced to describe a black person as “American,” Carruthers uses quotation marks, thus indicating that no black person can be American in any authentic sense. According to Carruthers, “The submission to Western civilization and its most outstanding offspring, American civilization, is, in reality, surrender to white supremacy.”
Carruthers’s goal is to use African-centered education to recreate a separatist universe within America, a kind of state-within-a-state. The rites of passage movement is central to the plan. Carruthers sees enemies on every part of the political spectrum, from conservatives, to liberals, to academic leftists, all of whom reject advocates of Kemetic civilization, like himself, as dangerous and academically irresponsible extremists. Carruthers sees all these groups as deluded captives of white supremacist Eurocentric culture. Therefore the only safe place for Africans living in the United States (i.e. American blacks) is outside the mental boundaries of our ineradicably racist Eurocentric civilization. As Carruthers puts it: “...some of us have chosen to reject the culture of our oppressors and recover our disrupted ancestral culture.” The rites of passage movement is a way to teach young Africans in the United States how to reject America and recover their authentic African heritage.
America as Rape
Carruthers admits that Africans living in America have already been shaped by Western culture, yet compares this Americanization process to rape: “We may not be able to get our virginity back after the rape, but we do not have to marry the rapist....” In other words, American blacks (i.e. Africans) may have been forcibly exposed to American culture, but that doesn’t mean they need to accept it. The better option, says Carruthers, is to separate out and relearn the wisdom of Africa’s original Kemetic culture, embodied in the teachings of the ancient wise man, Ptahhotep (an historical figure traditionally identified as the author of a Fifth Dynasty wisdom book). Anything less than re-Africanization threatens the mental, and even physical, genocide of Africans living in an ineradicably white supremacist United States.
Carruthers is a defender of Leonard Jeffries, professor in the department of black studies at City College in Harlem, infamous for his black supremacist and anti-Semitic views. Jeffries sees whites as oppressive and violent “ice people,” in contrast to peaceful and mutually supportive black “sun people.” The divergence says Jeffries, is attributable to differing levels of melanin in the skin. Jeffries also blames Jews for financing the slave trade. Carruthers defends Jeffries and excoriates the prestigious black academics Carruthers views as traitorous for denouncing their African brother, Jeffries. Carruthers’s vision of the superior and peaceful Kemetic philosophy of Ptahhotep triumphing over Greco-Euro-American-white culture obviously parallels Jeffries’ opposition between ice people and sun people.
More of Carruthers’s education philosophy can be found in his newsletter, The Kemetic Voice. In 1997, for example, at the same time Carruthers was advising SSAVC on how to set up an African-centered curriculum, he praised the decision of New Orleans’ School Board to remove the name of George Washington from an elementary school. Apparently, some officials in New Orleans had decided that nobody who held slaves should have a school named after him. Carruthers touted the name-change as proof that his African-centered perspective was finally having an effect on public policy. At the demise of George Washington School, Carruthers crowed: “These events remind us of how vast the gulf is that separates the Defenders of Western Civilization from the Champions of African Civilization.”
According to Chicago Annenberg Challenge records, Carruthers’s training session on African-centered curricula for SSAVC teachers was a huge hit: “As a consciousness raising session, it received rave reviews, and has prepared the way for the curriculum readiness survey....” These teacher-training workshops were directly funded by the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Another sure sign of the ideological cast of SSAVC’s curriculum can be found in Annenberg documents noting that SSAVC students are taught the wisdom of Ptahhotep. Carruthers’s concerns about “menticide” and “genocide” at the hand of America’s white supremacist system seem to be echoed in an SSAVC document that says: “Our children need to understand the historical context of our struggles for liberation from those forces that seek to destroy us.”
When Jeremiah Wright turned toward African-centered thinking in the late 1980s and early 1990s (the period when, attracted by Wright’s African themes, Barack Obama first became a church member), many prominent thinkers from Carruthers’s Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations were invited to speak at Trinity United Church of Christ, Carruthers himself included. We hear echoes of Carruthers’s work in Wright’s distinction between “right brained” Africans and “left brained” Europeans, in Wright’s fears of U.S. government-sponsored genocide against American blacks, and in Wright’s embittered attacks on America’s indelibly white-supremacist history. In Wright’s Trumpet Newsmagazine, as in Carruthers’s own writings, blacks are often referred to as “Africans living in the diaspora” rather than as Americans.
Asa Hilliard
Chicago Annenberg Challenge records also indicate that SSAVC educators invited Asa Hilliard, a pioneer of African-centered curricula and a close colleague of Carruthers, to offer a keynote address at yet another Annenberg-funded teacher training session. Hilliard’s ties to Wright run still deeper than Carruthers’s. A close Wright mentor and friend, Hilliard died in 2007 while on a trip to Kemet (Egypt) with Wright and members of Wright’s congregation. Hillard was scheduled to deliver several lectures to the congregants, and to speak at a meeting of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilization, which he co-founded with Carruthers and other “African-centered” scholars. On that last trip, Hilliard accepted an appointment to the board of Wright’s new elementary school, Kwame Nkrumah Academy. Speaking of the need for such a school, Wright had earlier said, “We need to educate our children to the reality of white supremacy.” (For more on Wright’s Afrocentric school, see “Jeremiah Wright’s ‘Trumpet.’”)
Wright delivered the eulogy at Hilliard’s memorial service, with prominent members of ASCAC in the audience. To commemorate Hilliard, a special, two-cover double issue of Wright’s Trumpet Newsmagazine was published, with a picture of Hilliard on one side, and a picture of Louis Farrakhan on the other (in celebration of a 2007 award Farrakhan received from Wright). In short, the ties between Wright and Hilliard could hardly have been closer. Clearly, then, Wright’s own educational philosophy was mirrored at the Annenberg-funded SSAVC, which sought out Hilliard’s and Carruthers’s counsel to construct its curriculum.
Perhaps inadvertently, Wright’s eulogy for Hilliard actually established the fringe nature of his favorite African-centered scholars. In his tribute, Wright stressed how intensely “white Egyptologists recoiled at the very notion of everything Asa taught.” As Wright himself made plain, it seems virtually impossible to find respectable scholars of any political stripe who approve of the extremist anti-American version of Afrocentrism promoted by Hilliard and Carruthers.
Ayers’s Pals
An important exception to the rule is Bill Ayers himself, who not only worked with Obama to fund groups like this at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, but who is still “palling around” with the same folks. Discretely waiting until after the election, Bill Ayers and his wife, and fellow former terrorist, Bernardine Dohrn plan to release a book in 2009 entitled Race Course Against White Supremacy. The book will be published by Third World Press, a press set up by Carruthers and other members of the ASCAC. Representatives of that press were prominently present for Wright’s eulogy at Asa Hilliard’s memorial service. Less than a decade ago, therefore, when it came to education issues, Barack Obama, Bill Ayers, and Jeremiah Wright were pretty much on the same page.
Obama’s Knowledge
Given the precedent of his earlier responses on Ayers and Wright, Obama might be inclined to deny personal knowledge of the educational philosophy he was so generously funding. Such a denial would not be convincing. For one thing, we have evidence that in 1995, the same year Obama assumed control of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, he publicly rejected “the unrealistic politics of integrationist assimilation,” a stance that clearly resonates with both Wright and Carruthers. (See “No Liberation.”)
And as noted, Wright had invited Carruthers, Hilliard, and like-minded thinkers to address his Trinity congregants. Wright likes to tick off his connections to these prominent Afrocentrists in sermons, and Obama would surely have heard of them. Reading over SSAVC’s Annenberg proposals, Obama could hardly be ignorant of what they were about. And if by some chance Obama overlooked Hilliard’s or Carruthers’s names, SSAVC’s proposals are filled with references to “rites of passage” and “Ptahhotep,” dead giveaways for the anti-American and separatist ideological concoction favored by SSAVC.
We know that Obama did read the proposals. Annenberg documents show him commenting on proposal quality. And especially after 1995, when concerns over self-dealing and conflicts of interest forced the Ayers-headed “Collaborative” to distance itself from monetary issues, all funding decisions fell to Obama and the board. Significantly, there was dissent within the board. One business leader and experienced grant-smith characterized the quality of most Annenberg proposals as “awful.” (See “The Chicago Annenberg Challenge: The First Three Years,” p. 19.) Yet Obama and his very small and divided board kept the money flowing to ideologically extremist groups like the South Shore African Village Collaborative, instead of organizations focused on traditional educational achievement.
As if the content of SSAVC documents wasn’t warning enough, their proposals consistently misspelled “rites of passage” as “rights of passage,” hardly an encouraging sign from a group meant to improve children’s reading skills. The Chicago Annenberg Challenge’s own evaluators acknowledged that Annenberg-aided schools showed no improvement in achievement scores. Evaluators attributed that failure, in part, to the fact that many of Annenberg’s “external partners” had little educational expertise. A group that puts its efforts into Kwanzaa celebrations and half-baked history certainly fits that bill, and goes a long way toward explaining how Ayers and Obama managed to waste upwards of $150 million without improving student achievement.
However he may seek to deny it, all evidence points to the fact that, from his position as board chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Barack Obama knowingly and persistently funded an educational project that shared the extremist and anti-American philosophy of Jeremiah Wright. The Wright affair was no fluke. It’s time for McCain to say so.
— Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YTQ0YjhlOGVhYjQ0OWRhZjI2MmM4NTQ4NGM5Mjg0MzU=
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My thanks to Mark Levin talk radio host on 77AM dial 6 to 8 nightly for pointing this out.
1960's radical (unfortunately a socialist Jew aka Marx - since I am Jewish and disgusted whth these people) who started "COMMUNITY ORGAINZING" and whose philosophy is redistributing wealth influenced greatly the BO guy.
Some of BO's phrases are verbatum right out of this guys writings. "They cling to their guns and their religion" is undeniably taken right out of Alinsky's writings. To change those people you have to become one of them. In other words to change conservative America you have to pretend you are one of us. Thus BOs pretending to love and care for America and his hiding his past.
BO is a flaming liberal who will expand big government and change the freedoms that made and would keep this country great. This HAS to be what McCain emphasize all Americans listen to Mark Levin - not just right leaning citizens like me. And don't get me wrong. Levin is not pleased with McCain or W for that matter but the alternative is in his opinion a potential disaster for the future and direction of this country. I couldn't agree with him more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Alinsky
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re: the Saul Alinsky entry on Wikipedia
"This article or section has been nominated to be checked for its neutrality."
I know nothing about Alinsky, but in reading the talkback page, it seems the wikipedia posting is poorly sourced and severely contested.
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Then use something other than Wikipedia. There's plenty out there on him and his influence on BO bodes quite ill for America.
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Obama's 95% Illusion
It depends on what the meaning of 'tax cut' is.Article
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One of Barack Obama's most potent campaign claims is that he'll cut taxes for no less than 95% of "working families." He's even promising to cut taxes enough that the government's tax share of GDP will be no more than 18.2% -- which is lower than it is today.
APIt's a clever pitch, because it lets him pose as a middle-class tax cutter while disguising that he's also proposing one of the largest tax increases ever on the other 5%. But how does he conjure this miracle, especially since more than a third of all Americans already pay no income taxes at all? There are several sleights of hand, but the most creative is to redefine the meaning of "tax cut."
For the Obama Democrats, a tax cut is no longer letting you keep more of what you earn. In their lexicon, a tax cut includes tens of billions of dollars in government handouts that are disguised by the phrase "tax credit." Mr. Obama is proposing to create or expand no fewer than seven such credits for individuals:
- A $500 tax credit ($1,000 a couple) to "make work pay" that phases out at income of $75,000 for individuals and $150,000 per couple.
- A $4,000 tax credit for college tuition.
- A 10% mortgage interest tax credit (on top of the existing mortgage interest deduction and other housing subsidies).
- A "savings" tax credit of 50% up to $1,000.
- An expansion of the earned-income tax credit that would allow single workers to receive as much as $555 a year, up from $175 now, and give these workers up to $1,110 if they are paying child support.
- A child care credit of 50% up to $6,000 of expenses a year.
- A "clean car" tax credit of up to $7,000 on the purchase of certain vehicles.
Here's the political catch. All but the clean car credit would be "refundable," which is Washington-speak for the fact that you can receive these checks even if you have no income-tax liability. In other words, they are an income transfer -- a federal check -- from taxpayers to nontaxpayers. Once upon a time we called this "welfare," or in George McGovern's 1972 campaign a "Demogrant." Mr. Obama's genius is to call it a tax cut.
The Tax Foundation estimates that under the Obama plan 63 million Americans, or 44% of all tax filers, would have no income tax liability and most of those would get a check from the IRS each year. The Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis estimates that by 2011, under the Obama plan, an additional 10 million filers would pay zero taxes while cashing checks from the IRS.
The total annual expenditures on refundable "tax credits" would rise over the next 10 years by $647 billion to $1.054 trillion, according to the Tax Policy Center. This means that the tax-credit welfare state would soon cost four times actual cash welfare. By redefining such income payments as "tax credits," the Obama campaign also redefines them away as a tax share of GDP. Presto, the federal tax burden looks much smaller than it really is.
The political left defends "refundability" on grounds that these payments help to offset the payroll tax. And that was at least plausible when the only major refundable credit was the earned-income tax credit. Taken together, however, these tax credit payments would exceed payroll levies for most low-income workers.
It is also true that John McCain proposes a refundable tax credit -- his $5,000 to help individuals buy health insurance. We've written before that we prefer a tax deduction for individual health care, rather than a credit. But the big difference with Mr. Obama is that Mr. McCain's proposal replaces the tax subsidy for employer-sponsored health insurance that individuals don't now receive if they buy on their own. It merely changes the nature of the tax subsidy; it doesn't create a new one.
There's another catch: Because Mr. Obama's tax credits are phased out as incomes rise, they impose a huge "marginal" tax rate increase on low-income workers. The marginal tax rate refers to the rate on the next dollar of income earned. As the nearby chart illustrates, the marginal rate for millions of low- and middle-income workers would spike as they earn more income.
Some families with an income of $40,000 could lose up to 40 cents in vanishing credits for every additional dollar earned from working overtime or taking a new job. As public policy, this is contradictory. The tax credits are sold in the name of "making work pay," but in practice they can be a disincentive to working harder, especially if you're a lower-income couple getting raises of $1,000 or $2,000 a year. One mystery -- among many -- of the McCain campaign is why it has allowed Mr. Obama's 95% illusion to go unanswered.
Please add your comments to the Opinion Journal forum.
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re: the Saul Alinsky entry on Wikipedia
"This article or section has been nominated to be checked for its neutrality."
I know nothing about Alinsky, but in reading the talkback page, it seems the wikipedia posting is poorly sourced and severely contested.
Read Alinsky's book Rules for Radicals, which is about his most succinct expression of his philosophy.
I came up in the Chicago area under a bunch of Alinsky trained street workers; much of BHO's community organizer days has a familiar ring. Big difference from back in the day and current manifestations of Alinsky's tactics is that back in the day we knew it was political theater and that we were lying through our teeth. These days it seems like everybody has drunk the kool-aid and treats the theater like revealed truth.
Alinsky was a cynical SOB who knew full well that media manipulations and focus on singular, helpful aspects of a narrative were required to inspire direct action. I much prefer crusty old socialist goats who know what strings they are pulling to the current crop of True Believers. My politics have since taken a serious libertarian veer, but when I need to make something happen some of my tactics are still informed by Alinsky's cynical and pragmatic advice.
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October 17, 2008, 2:00 a.m.
Obama the Healer?
Casting McCain as a race-baiter is an extraordinary — and dishonorable — rhetorical feat.
By Charles Krauthammer
Let me get this straight: A couple of agitated yahoos in a rally of thousands yell something offensive and incendiary, and John McCain and Sarah Palin are not just guilty by association — with total strangers, mind you — but worse: guilty according to the New York Times of “race-baiting and xenophobia.”
But should you bring up Barack Obama’s real associations — 20 years with Jeremiah Wright, working on two foundations and distributing money with William Ayers, citing the raving Michael Pfleger as one who helps him keep his moral compass (Chicago Sun-Times, April 2004) and the long-standing relationship with the left-wing vote-fraud specialist ACORN — you have crossed the line into illegitimate guilt by association. Moreover, it is tinged with racism.
The fact that, when John McCain actually heard one of those nasty things said about Obama, he incurred the boos of his own crowd by insisting that Obama is “a decent person that you do not have to be scared (of) as president” makes no difference. It surely did not stop John Lewis from comparing McCain to George Wallace.
The search for McCain’s racial offenses is untiring and often unhinged. Remember McCain’s Berlin/celebrity ad that showed a shot of Paris Hilton? An appalling attempt to exploit white hostility at the idea of black men “becoming sexually involved with white women,” fulminated New York Times columnist Bob Herbert. He took to TV to denounce McCain’s exhumation of that most vile prejudice, pointing out McCain’s gratuitous insertion in the ad of “two phallic symbols,” the Washington Monument and the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Except that Herbert was entirely delusional. There was no Washington Monument. There was no Leaning Tower. Just photographs seen in every newspaper in the world of Barack Obama’s Berlin rally in the setting he himself had chosen, Berlin’s Victory Column.
Herbert is not the only fevered one. On Tuesday night, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC and Jonathan Alter of Newsweek fell over themselves agreeing that the “political salience” of the Republican attack on ACORN is, yes, its unstated appeal to racial prejudice.
This about an organization that is being accused of voter registration fraud in about a dozen states. In Nevada, the investigating secretary of state is a Democrat. Is he playing the race card too?
What makes the charges against McCain especially revolting is that he has been scrupulous in eschewing the race card. He has gone far beyond what is right and necessary, refusing even to make an issue of Obama’s deep, self-declared connection with the race-baiting Jeremiah Wright.
In the name of racial rectitude, McCain has denied himself the use of that perfectly legitimate issue. It is simply Orwellian for him to be now so widely vilified as a stoker of racism. What makes it doubly Orwellian is that these charges are being made on behalf of the one presidential candidate who has repeatedly, and indeed quite brilliantly, deployed the race card.
How brilliantly? The reason Bill Clinton is sulking in his tent is because he feels that Obama surrogates succeeded in painting him as a racist. Clinton has many sins, but from his student days to his post-presidency, his commitment and sincerity in advancing the cause of African-Americans have been undeniable. If the man Toni Morrison called the first black president can be turned into a closet racist, then anyone can.
And Obama has shown no hesitation in doing so to McCain. Just weeks ago, in Springfield, Missouri — and elsewhere — he warned darkly that George W. Bush and John McCain were going to try to frighten you by saying that, among other scary things, Obama has “a funny name” and “doesn’t look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills.”
McCain has never said that, nor anything like that. When asked at the time to produce one instance of McCain deploying race, the Obama campaign could not. Yet here was Obama firing a pre-emptive charge of racism against a man who had not indulged in it. An extraordinary rhetorical feat, and a dishonorable one.
What makes this all the more dismaying is that it comes from Barack Obama, who has consistently presented himself as a healer, a man of a new generation above and beyond race, the man who would turn the page on the guilt-tripping grievance politics of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
I once believed him.
— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist.
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OTUyNWJjODc2OTViNWJlODBhMzk3YzkxYmM0ZDRjNTk=
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http://www.verumserum.com/?p=2907
I guess the MSM is too busy trying to destroy Joe the Plumber, so they missed this linkage between Obama and his terrorist soulmate.
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GM,
Yes, it is really sickening for those of us left of center to see the MSM blatant and unrepentant bias.
I get really angry when the leftist lawyers pour over Joe plumbers tax records and dig up some probably bogus BS that he has been neglegent paying $1000 in backk taxes like that is some sort of scandal or he is a criminal because he probably couldn't wade through the sickening morass of tax laws and may not have been able to afford an accountant's fees to audit his taxes.
Mind you that 40 or 45% of people in the US don not pay taxes. Now that is a Goddam outrage!
How much was it determined that Charlala Rangel Owed? The same guy who will have an army of liberal lawyers getting him off the hook (led by the honorable Mr. Lanni Davis).
Of course once the Dems solidify control of our government (not theirs) the Charles Rangel scandel thing will disappear from the face of the Earth (to of course the more important "issues" that face our nation) and he will be appointed chairman of several committess get honors for his service and possibly a Noble Prize (aka Pau Krugman, Algore, et al).
The Republican party is wasted. Forget Reagan, Roosevelt. They are in the past, dead and buried, and most people today know nothing of Rossevelt and are already too young to remember Reagan.
We need more people like Newt who can look to the future and start thinking a whole new strategy that will save our country that is not big government. I just hope it is not too late by the time the libs have promised and given everything away to the lazy what is government going to do for me crowd. All people must pay taxes - if even $100/year.
Yet I do also agree with the left that it is a gigantic unsustainable problem that 1% of the population controls 90% of the wealth. Even if that number is exaggerated it is probably something of that order and that is fu2345ck up.
But endless and increasing give aways to those who take and do't create wealth is certainly not the answer.
6 to 18 months from now the giveaways will all be spent byt the 40% at the bottom and we will be right back to where we started.
I don't have the time to try to come up with the answer. We need new blood and thinkers in th Republican side who can.
And fro God's sake we need candidates who can articulate and speak on their feet. Not Bob Dole's, not George Bushes, and McCians.
IMO - The articulation skills of Clinton and BO were without a doubt the saviors of the Democratic party of the last 18 years. ( to the demise and chagrin of the speechless and hapless Republicans.
This must not happen again.
As for Sarah Palin - I feel she could have a great future if she gets the right handlers who sharpen her skills, base of knowledge and broaden her appeal to other women - althgough her stance on abortion remains an obstacle with many women.
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Quote: “ Yet I do also agree with the left that it is a gigantic unsustainable problem that 1% of the population controls 90% of the wealth. Even if that number is exaggerated it is probably something of that order and that is fu2345ck up.”
I have never been able to understand how a group of people can look at someone who has a lot and think to themselves they don’t deserve what they have lets take it away and give it to some one else. Maybe the argument would be they inherited it and never worked a day in their lives and therefore don’t deserve it. This is still very thin as an argument goes. Lets assume 1% controls 90% in this country. I have never felt that 1% has tried to keep me from achieving my dreams. How is the 1% holding anyone back in this country? I have however felt the taxes this government charges has prevented me from moving up the economic ladder. I don’t have a lot and would place myself in the low middle class or upper poor class. I work hard but every time I start to get some where the government comes out and takes what I need to move up. I am not opposed to taxes to help run our government. Some government is necessary to get us out of the state of nature, but it IS NOT THE BUSINESS OF GOVERNMENT TO REDISTRIBUTE WEALTH!!. I do strongly favor a fair tax on consumption instead of the present income tax we have now. I highly recommend the Fair Tax book by Neal Boortz. Anyway I digress. There is a saying wealth last 3 generations, the first makes it the second maintains it the third squanders it. Like so many problems we face the government has no business involved. If people are in a charitable mood then they can raise money for the people they deem need help but leave government out of it.
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Freki,
I am not against acheivement but poeple of great wealth do without any question have the deck stacked in their favor.
They can pay for the best research, accountants, lawyers, PACS, political connections, hire people to research their competition, set up accounts over sea, use their wealth to attract people with all the clout, best connections to politicians, get inside information and generally bribe people to get whatever they want them to do.
People from this board and previous boards I have posted know how my wife and I have been the victim of people in the music industry. My wife is a genius at writing music lyrics and she has for the last 10 years or more had them stolen in dozens of ways.
Policeman, lawyers, postal service, Fedex, UPs employees, lock smiths, bank personel, neighbors, air conditioning people, oplumbers, gardeners and on and on and on have been bribed to participate, look the other way or I guess be silent while they keep taking songs from our house via hacking into computers, bribing people with access or generally picking licks to get in our house. Thes well financed and connected professional crooks from the top of the music business to the bottom have certainly done everything in their power from even letting my wife Katherine from even getting credit or maoney from even one song.
Almost every singer in the business has sung her lyrics and most of them claim they wrote it. Bon Jovi, and you name them.
You apparantly have no idea what people with a lot of money can get away with the rest of us can't.
Neither did I till I saw the power of money first had as a relentless victim of it. If you have something someone with this kind of power has, or you step on the "wrong toes" they will likely be able to walk right over you.
The rich who keep getting richer *is a huge problem*. And yes they *certainly do* hold all the cards.
At the same time an increasingly growing class of people who seem quite content to sit back and let the rest of us who work hard every day and take care of their needs is *just as huge a problem*.
There must be some kind of way to balance both these extremes out but I don't know how. BO is full of shit imo and will simply expand the probelm by growing the class of "what are you going to do for me group".
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"The rich who keep getting richer *is a huge problem*. And yes they *certainly do* hold all the cards."
My understanding is that the data clearly show that IN AMERICA the children of the rich tend to p*ss it away and that the grandchildren of the rich or great grandchildren have to start all over.
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You apparantly have no idea what people with a lot of money can get away with the rest of us can't.
Neither did I till I saw the power of money first had as a relentless victim of it. If you have something someone with this kind of power has, or you step on the "wrong toes" they will likely be able to walk right over you.
My interpretation of your above quote is: you are afraid of the power of the wealthy so you want to take away their money. I feel government has no business redistributing wealth. The way to have a just society in through law. Our founding fathers mention the belief all men are created equal. I feel this means all men are bound by the law...no one is above the law. In other words we need government to raise us out of a state of nature. While I sometimes feel I would be happy in such a state I bet it would get old after about a week. :evil: If you feel you have been wronged there are lots of ways to go about seeking justice. How you do that is up to you, but you do not have a right to lash out at a class of society, to redistribute wealth. It is unconstitutional. I wish you and your wife all the best of luck. :-)
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Crafty
Freki,
I understand your views.
Truth is neither of you get it.
Truth is the power wealthy people have at their disposal is unjust and there is nothing ordinary people can do about it. That is the point. That is what you apparently don't get.
No I am not against a class of people.
And yes it is a problem when 1% of people control 90% of wealth. You think that is good?
And yes it is a problem when 40% pay no taxes.
The answer isn't necessarily wealth redistribution which is not what I am advocating.
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Gingrich Impressed With Powell Nod
Former House Speaker Says General's Endorsement 'Eliminated Experience Argument'
By MARY BRUCE
Oct. 19, 2008
Former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich reacted this morning to Colin Powell's endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., arguing, "What that just did in one sound bite... is it eliminated the experience argument."
Powell, the former secretary of state, announced his long-awaited endorsement Sunday morning, explaining that he is backing Obama "because of his ability to inspire, because of the inclusive nature of this campaign, because he is reaching out all across America, because of who he is and his rhetorical abilities we have to take that into account as well as his substance he has both style and substance he has met the standard of being a successful president, being an exceptional president."
In all-star roundtable edition of "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," former presidential adviser David Gergen categorized Powell's announcement as "the most important endorsement of the campaign so far."
Tom Friedman of The New York Times agreed, explaining, "Gen. Powell helps a lot, I think, especially at this moment, you know. That's a real affirmation that the country can trust Barack Obama as commander in chief, and Colin Powell still has a lot of cred[ibility] with Republicans and Democrats."
Gingrich, Gergen and Friedman were joined in the powerhouse roundtable by Democratic strategist Donna Brazile and Republican columnist George Will.
Brazile added, "this is an endorsement that has enormous dividend for Sen. Obama, not only in helping to erase any remaining doubts about his national security agenda, his experience, but also it says that he wants to govern in a different way, different than, say, past administrations where you relied on just his base or his party.
"It says that he's going to reach across the aisle, and perhaps this is a good way for Sen. Obama to put that message out in the closing weeks of the campaign."
The panelists also discussed the possibility of Obama falling prey to the "Bradley Effect," named for Tom Bradley, the African-American politician running for governor who ended up losing after having a huge lead in the polls.
"Twenty-six years has passed since the Bradley effect," Brazile explained. "I think we're looking at an Obama effect. He has increased, enlarged the electorate. He's bringing new people into the process. There is an enthusiasm gap that we've never seen before on the Democratic side, 20 percent more likely Democratic voters than Republican voters at this moment, so I think we -- I think the issue of race may be a factor, but it will not be as large a factor as it would have been, say, 12 years ago."
Gingrich agreed that "there is a racial effect on both sides, that African-Americans will disproportionately turn out and they will disproportionately vote for Obama, and they have disproportionately registered for a good reason. The Obama effect is real and legitimate. It's authentic."
And Will argued that Obama will gain more votes than he will lose on account of race. "It seems to me if we had these tools to measure, we'd find that Barack Obama gets two votes because he's black for every one he loses because he's black," he said.
Friedman added that the number of white voters who may ultimately support Obama may be underestimated.
"I think there are a lot of white voters telling pollsters, you know, we're going to vote for Obama, and they won't when the moment comes, but I think there is also a whole group of white Republicans who are telling their friends at the country club that I'm voting for McCain, and they're going to go...vote for Obama, because their kids are," he said.
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I agree that Powell's endorsement is very helpful for strenghtening the perception of one of BO's weak links.
Here's this from the PD WSJ:
Colin Powell attributed his endorsement of Barack Obama on "Meet the Press" yesterday not just to the unreadiness of Sarah Palin to serve as president but also to John McCain's reaction to the financial crisis, the general rightward tilt of the GOP and comments anonymous senior Republican officials privately made in recent months about Mr. Obama's faith.
In fact, Mr. Powell's estrangement from the GOP predates the McCain campaign and goes back to his speech on Feb. 5, 2003 making the case in the United Nations for war against Iraq.
The best reporting on this turning point was done by Karen DeYoung, an associate editor at the Washington Post. In a lengthy article published two years ago, she recounted how at one point Dick Cheney poked Mr. Powell in the chest and told him: "You've got high poll ratings; you can afford to lose a few points."
The rest is history: In the months after the invasion, when no stockpiled WMD were found in Iraq, Mr. Powell grew disenchanted with the White House and offered at least two dissenting public statements about WMD that drew a rebuke (including calls from Condoleezza Rice asking him how he was going to clean up the mess his comments created). When a special prosecutor was appointed to look into who leaked the name of CIA agent Valeria Plame, Mr. Powell never stepped forward with the leaker's name, even though he knew all along it was his own deputy Richard Armitage. Instead, Mr. Powell allowed the special prosecutor to spend months questioning White House staffers and journalists, eventually leading to the indictment of Cheney aide Lewis Libby for obstruction and perjury.
Shortly after Mr. Bush won re-election in 2004, Mr. Powell resigned and has spent much of the past year making noises about endorsing Mr. Obama, including praising the speech the Democratic presidential candidate gave on race in Philadelphia and defending his intention of holding presidential level talks with Iran. When asked about Mr. Powell's endorsement, John McCain yesterday said it "doesn't come as a surprise." Given the history, what's surprising is that it took Mr. Powell so long to leave the GOP.
-- Brendan Miniter
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/10/20/biden-obamas-inexperience-will-prompt-nations-to-test-us/
Wow! The most insightful thing I've ever seen coming from Joe Biden.
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On the Brit Hume Report tonight Krauthammer was saying the Biden must be a Republican mole :lol:
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Why is it that JKF is remembered for only the "missle crises" and not the Bay of Pigs.
Wasn't JKF the skipper who drove his PT boat right under the bow of a Japanese destroyer?
Wasn't he the guy who first sent advisors to Vietnam getting us involved over there?
I remember my history professor in college saying he couldn't really conclude whether JFK was a good President or not because he wasn't President long enough.
But all that said, BO is no JFK.
The Democrats of 1962 are not the Dems of 2008.
And at least Carter served in the Navy.
BO served in liberal academia and community organizing.
OF course we will likely have Joe the blowhard help him save us from foreign threats.
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As the economy heads downward and we look at the ending of this campaign of confusion, let's take a moment to look deeper into the 3-letter word Joe Biden calls 'j-o-b-s'.
Start by looking at the players in our economy. Most Americans don't file a federal tax return of any kind - that includes of course most children, some elderly, disabled along with people who just don't earn or only participate in the underground economy. Of those who do file a return, more than 30% pay NO federal income tax. Some other time let's discuss why that happened, but what a travesty.
At the 'rich' end of the spectrum we have people who make over 250,000, might someday make 250,000, plan on saving and investing 250,000 at sometime in their life, or ever plan to own or sell a capital asset. These people are ugly, filthy, rich and should be stopped, punished and demagogued. Not my view and I hope I didn't overstate their view - that of Obama, Biden and your favorite local class warfare baiting Democratic congressional member.
From a moral perspective, please tell me why is it okay to forcibly take extra from these people, because you can, to pay your own basic basic living expenses. It of course isn't.
From an equal rights, equal protection and constitutional perspective, why is it ever okay for the majority to shift their share of the public expense burden over to a minority, no matter how many voters in the majority or how few they can victimize in the minority? Does that pass YOUR test for consent of the governed??? Not for me, not even close!
What about from an efficiency standpoint in taxation or economic growth, do we really raise more money by putting higher marginal tax rates on those most able to scale down their productive activities? Of course not.
We have learned over and over and over again that the opposite approach is what grows the economy and grows federal revenues most efficiently. From the Kennedy tax rate cuts to the Reagan tax rate cuts to the Clinton-Gingrich capital gains tax rate cuts to the Bush tax rates cuts, what happened each time? Federal revenues surged! (Same for state revenues.)
Now back to the current downturn, this election, the groups of Americans described above and Joe Biden's now-famous 3-letter word called jobs. Who creates jobs? Americans who don't file a return? No. The 30+% that file but pay nothing in federal income taxes? Never. The majority of hard working, taxpaying Americans who work hard, pay their taxes and eek out a living? Not Likely.
The new jobs come from people trying to head into that area we call rich. Those who see a larger opportunity to grow their plumbing business, bakery or blacksmith shop to a higher revenue and income level and see a distinct possibility that the AFTER TAX likely returns are economically worth the enormous hassle, expense and unknown risks associated with adding each new employee.
This economy needs consistent new job creation in the millions. Do we get there by spreading wealth away from the people who earned it and over to the less productive or is it more effective to allow people some fruit from their labor and to invest more of what they earned back into their own business?
The right answer is obvious from my point of view, but I truly wonder which taxpayers the Obama voters and ACORN members think are going to create new jobs that this economy so desperately needs.
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Besides raising personal tax rates on the highest producers in the economy, Obama and the Democrats oppose and demagogue McCain's proposal to lower slightly the corporate tax rate which is now the highest in the western, developed world. In America, successful corporations are taxed at 35%, in Taiwan it is 25%, in Hong Kong it's 16.5% and in Ireland it's 12.5%. Even 'communist' China lowered its corpate tax rate from 33% to 25% effective just this year. Why is it such a stretch for the Democratic mind to see that companies that have choices can and will move jobs and operations to a friendlier business climate?
If taxes weren't enough, then look at trade. While Obama is offering to move economically backward and unilaterally re-write NAFTA (how do you unilaterally change an 'agreement'?), Canada is negotiating it's own new free trade agreement with the European Union. Trade raises income levels and job prospects on both sides. Bill Clinton knew that when he partnered with Gingrich and the Republicans to implement the beginning of Reagan's vision of a hemisphere-wide free trading zone, allowing economic freedom, opportunity and prosperity to flourish across borders. But not Obama. He comes from and caters to the protectionist, anti growth, furthest left wing of his own party.
The way I see it, it is economically unwise to follow the leadership void of the Bush administration and the excesses and incompetence of both the Republican and Reid-Pelosi-Obama congresses with an economic left turn backwards in time to anti-growth policies while our competitors across the globe have turned pro-growth. It just doesn't make sense. - Doug
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The Democrats of 1962 are not the Dems of 2008
And the Republicans of 2008 are not the Republicans of 1980...
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More's the pity in both cases.
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Would Obama Pass a Standard Security Clearance?
His troubling connections provide a grave answer.
Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles...B-F9F845F663D2
By: Daniel Pipes
With Colin Powell now repeating the lie that Barack Obama has "always been a Christian," despite new information further confirming Obama's Muslim childhood (such as the Indonesian school registration listing him as Muslim), one watches with dismay as the Democratic candidate manages to hide the truth on this issue.
Instead, then, let us review a related subject – Obama's connections and even indebtedness, throughout his career, to extremist Islam. Specifically, he has longstanding, if indirect ties to two institutions, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), listed by the U.S. government in 2007 as an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas-funding trial; and the Nation of Islam (NoI), condemned by the Anti-Defamation League for its "consistent record of racism and anti-Semitism."
First, Obama's ties to Islamists:
The Khalid al-Mansour connection: According to former Manhattan Borough president Percy Sutton, Al-Mansour "was raising money for" Obama's expenses at Harvard Law School. Al-Mansour, a black American (né Don Warden), became advisor to Saudi prince Al-Walid bin Talal, CAIR's largest individual donor. Al-Mansour holds standard Islamist views: he absolves the Islamist government in Sudan of sponsoring slavery, he denies a Jewish tie to Jerusalem, and he wrote a booklet titled "Americans Beware! The Zionist Plot Against S. Arabia." (Both Obama and al-Mansour deny Sutton's account.)
Kenny Gamble, or Luqman Abdul-Haqq, "amir" of the United Muslim Movement.
The Kenny Gamble (also known as Luqman Abdul-Haqq) connection: Gamble, a once-prominent pop music producer, cut the ribbon to the Obama campaign headquarters housed in a south Philadelphia building he owns. Gamble is an Islamist who buys large swaths of real estate in Philadelphia to create a Muslim-only residential area. Also, as the self-styled "amir" of the United Muslim Movement, he has many links to Islamist organizations, including CAIR and the Muslim Alliance in North America. (MANA's "amir" is Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.)
The Mazen Asbahi connection: The Obama campaign's first Muslim outreach coordinator resigned after it came to light that he had served on the board of a subsidiary of the Saudi-sponsored North American Islamic Trust, with Jamal Said, another unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007 Hamas funding trial. Asbahi has ties to CAIR's Chicago and Detroit offices, to the Islamic Society of North America, yet another unindicted co-conspirator in the Hamas funding trial, and to other Islamist organizations.
The Minha Husaini connection: The campaign's second Muslim outreach coordinator has an Islamist background, having served as an intern in the Muslim Public Service Network. Immediately upon her appointment by Obama, she met with a group of about thirty Muslims including such notorious figures as CAIR's Nihad Awad; the Muslim American Society's Mahdi Bray, who has publicly supported the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist groups; and Johari Abdul Malik of the Dar Al-Hijrah Mosque in Falls Church, Va., who has advised American Muslims: "You can blow up bridges, but you cannot kill people who are innocent on their way to work."
Second, Obama's ties to the Nation of Islam:
Louis Farrakhan, who calls Obama "the Messiah."
Obama's long-time donor and ally Antoin "Tony" Rezko partnered for nearly three decades with Jabir Herbert Muhammad, a son of NoI leader Elijah Muhammad, and says he gave Jabir and his family "millions of dollars over the years." Rezko also served as executive director of the Muhammad Ali Foundation, a rogue organization that, without Ali's permission, exploited the name of this CAIR awardee.
Jeremiah Wright, Obama's esteemed pastor for twenty years, came out of a Nation background, recently he accepted protection from an NoI security detail, and has praised Louis Farrakhan, the NoI's leader, as one of the "giants of the African American religious experience." Wright's church celebrated Farrakhan for his having "truly epitomized greatness."
Farrakhan himself endorsed Obama, calling him "the hope of the entire world," "one who can lift America from her fall," and even "the Messiah."
That Obama's biography touches so frequently on such unsavory organizations as CAIR and the Nation of Islam should give pause. How many of politicians have a single tie to either group, much less seven of them? John McCain charitably calls Obama "a person you do not have to be scared [of] as president of the United States," but Obama's multiple links to anti-Americans and subversives mean he would fail the standard security clearance process for Federal employees.
Islamic aggression represents America's strategic enemy; Obama's many insalubrious connections raise grave doubts about his fitness to serve as America's commander-in-chief.
Click to view Videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EcC0QAd0Ug
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIrWrxuR_GM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OowxMcVTjTE
Mr. Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.
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I'm no fan of McCain, and if it weren't for the likelihood of a couple Supreme Court nominations, I'd be hoping for a BHO win with Democratic Control of both House and Senate so that the GOP would be inspired to return to its more Libertarian roots and be poised to throw the bums out after what I anticipate would be 4 not particularly fruitful years. In short we wouldn't have had a Reagan if Jimmy Carter hadn't come first. . . .
October 22, 2008
The Second Coming of Jimmy Carter
By Rick Richman
Barack Obama is taking America down a path modeled by Jimmy Carter, and threatens to be as bad a president as his trailblazer. A unlikely guide unwittingly will help make the case.
David Brooks asserted in the New York Times last week that, after watching Barack Obama for two years, it is "easy to sketch out a scenario in which he could be a great president."
[Obama] has shown the same untroubled self-confidence day after day. . . .
Brooks connected these personality traits with the "unshakable serenity" of FDR and Reagan, which in turn led to the Brooksian "scenario" of potential Obamian greatness.
I have no idea what Brooks means by an "organized unconscious;" nor exactly what a "deep, bottom-up process" is; nor how Obama's "untroubled self-confidence" differs from George W. Bush's "untroubled self-confidence." Still less do I understand how these esoteric personality traits relate to seeing "reality unfiltered," as opposed to representing a filter of their own.
What interests me, however, is Brooks' belief that, based on personality traits he has observed for two years, he can predict a presidency reminiscent of FDR and Reagan.
Such a prediction -- made before the man takes office, before he has even made a single cabinet choice, much less made a presidential policy decision; before he has faced a single crisis, much less handled one successfully -- is transparently absurd. But more than that, it brings forth a sense of déjà vu.
We have been down this road before, with an inexperienced driver, and the car crashed.
On November 3, 1976, the day after Jimmy Carter's election, the New York Times ran a profile explaining his remarkable political victory -- how a one-term governor from Georgia, with no significant record, began planning his presidential campaign in the second year of his one-and-only four-year term, and then went on to secure the nomination from more experienced rivals and defeat a sitting president:
He believed passionately that if he could talk to enough voters about a "Government as good as the American people," he could win. . .
Words, skillfully used, could play dual roles for him. Liberals came to conceive of him as one of their own. Conservatives responded to him sympathetically as well. Blacks in Harlem voiced their support. Whites in Mississippi got behind him. . . .
[T]he theme was always visible: a government as good as the people. It was voiced a hundred different ways, but the impact on his listeners was constant.
Americans, he said, were entitled to decent, compassionate, honest, competent government because Americans are decent, compassionate, honest and competent.
In other words: Jimmy Carter won by constantly telling Americans that he was the one they were waiting for.
He made them think that by voting for him, it reflected well on them. He played on the electorate's hope for change, and he offered a blank slate on which that hope could be projected. His speeches were secular sermons that would later translate into presidential addresses about the need to transcend our inordinate fear of communism and to overcome our malaise that was hindering his policies.
Carter had built his campaign on something that was, at the time, unique in modern American politics: the thoughtful campaign autobiography. Written while he was governor, it was re-published in paperback in June 1976 and given a New York Times review, written by a member of the editorial board. The review extolled both the book and its author:
Jimmy Carter has contrived a new literary form, the campaign biography written as autobiography by the candidate himself. It is a skillful, simply-written blend of personal history, social description and political philosophy that makes fascinating reading. . . .
Critics, friendly as well as unfriendly, worry whether Jimmy Carter believes in anything larger than his own success. This book does not provide conclusive answers. . . . Basically, however, Carter reminds one of two earlier Presidents, Theodore Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. Although both were of a progressive bent, they were really neither liberal nor conservative by conviction. Rather, they believed in governing.
Carter was certified as the One in the closing benediction at the 1976 Democratic convention, given by no less a figure than the father of Martin Luther King, Jr. Televised on all three networks (the entire visual media at the time), the benediction heralded Jimmy Carter as someone sent to redeem the country: "Surely the Lord sent Jimmy Carter to come on out and bring America back where she belongs."
Thirty-two years later, no one associates Jimmy Carter with Roosevelt or Kennedy, or with "governing." Few people believe the Lord sent him, or that he brought America back where she belonged.
What were we thinking when we elected him? The answer is: some of the same things we are thinking now.
He was a blank slate to be filled with visions of Roosevelt and Kennedy. People thought his unique background and perspective would unite North and South, black and white. He had accomplished little in his political career, but he had written a thoughtful autobiography, with an audaciously hopeful title: "Why Not the Best?" He gave good speeches.
There was little substantive content to his campaign, which instead endlessly repeated his government-as-good-as-its-people mantra. His one specific proposal was "zero-based budgeting," under which each year the federal budget would start at zero and be analyzed by him line by line. He had no national or foreign policy experience.
But as a liberal governor from a Southern state, Carter was thought to have a remarkable "temperament." The New York Times thought he was a "keenly intelligent man" because the cover page of his autobiography featured quotations from Reinhold Niebuhr ("The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world"), Bob Dylan (about "a funny ol'world that's a-comin' along"), and Dylan Thomas ("A hand rules pity as a hand rules heaven").
Now flash forward thirty years. In April 2007, shortly after Obama announced his candidacy, David Brooks had a one-on-one interview with him. They were speaking about effective aid to Africa. As Brooks related the conversation the next day in "Obama, Gospel and Verse":
Out of the blue I asked, "Have you ever read Reinhold Niebuhr?"
Obama's tone changed. "I love him. He's one of my favorite philosophers."
So I asked, What do you take away from him?
"I take away," Obama answered in a rush of words, "the compelling idea that there's serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn't use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away ... the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard, and not swinging from naïve idealism to bitter realism."
My first impression was that for a guy who's spent the last few months fund-raising, and who was walking off the Senate floor as he spoke, that's a pretty good off-the-cuff summary of Niebuhr's "The Irony of American History." My second impression is that his campaign is an attempt to thread the Niebuhrian needle, and it's really interesting to watch.
A less credulous commentator might have noted that Obama had used 70 words and four sentences to express a cliché: we can't do everything, but we must do everything we can. He might have noted that "threading the Niebuhrian needle" is simply the Goldilocks principle applied to idealism and realism (not too much; not too little - just right). He might have observed that Obama spoke well but did not really say anything. But Obama already had him at "Niebuhr."
Nine months later, after Obama won the Iowa caucuses, a "vibrating" David Brooks (in Leon Wieseltier's observation) wrote that it was "a huge moment."
Whatever their political affiliations, Americans are going to feel good about the Obama victory, which is a story of youth, possibility and unity through diversity -- the primordial themes of the American experience. . . .
At first blush, his speeches are abstract, secular sermons of personal uplift -- filled with disquisitions on the nature of hope and the contours of change.
He talks about erasing old categories like red and blue (and implicitly, black and white) and replacing them with new categories, of which the most important are new and old. . . .
It was like the second coming of the 1976 Jimmy Carter -- the one who would unite North and South, black and white, and provide us a government as good as we were; it was the second coming of the man who knew Niebuhr! By last week, Brooks was speaking of FRD and Reagan.
If elected, Obama will be the least experienced president since Jimmy Carter. No one knows what Obama really thinks, much less what he will actually do, since he had one set of policies in the primaries and another during the general election, and his rhetoric is as unspecific as Carter's was (except Obama did say in the debates - twice - that he intended to go through the federal budget "line by line").
He has released no records from college or law school, nor his law firm client list, nor the files relating to his legislative experience in Illinois. He has acknowledged a history of drug use and the fact that he currently smokes, but he refuses to release any medical records. He has spent most of his still-unfinished first term in the Senate running for president, which his supporters argue is the executive experience that qualifies him for the presidency.
His own running mate has told us Obama could have made a better vice-presidential choice, and has warned us that Obama's inexperience will result in multiple international crises in his first six months. But Obama wrote an excellent autobiography, has an organized unconscious, and knows Niebuhr.
There is a good chance that if we elect him, we will one day ask: what were we thinking?
Rick Richman edits Jewish Current Issues.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/the_second_coming_of_jimmy_car.html at October 22, 2008 - 09:08:04 AM EDT
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**I know that the current narrative from the left/MSM is that the Weather Underground was just a youthful indiscretion to be ignored. Just a reminder of who they killed.**
Weather Underground: Honoring the Cops They Killed
From left: Sergeant Brian McDonnell, Officer Waverly Brown, Sergeant Edward O'Grady
Chris Cosgriff / PoliceLink
October 13, 2008
Editor’s Note: With the recent headlines mentioning the Weather Underground, the focus has been on who said what and who did what when. What has been overlooked, and seemingly forgotten, is the sacrifice of three real American heroes. This article’s only purpose is to honor those three fallen heroes.
If you’ve been keeping up with the presidential race then you’ve likely heard mention the accusations and denials from both campaigns about alleged ties between Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate for president, and Bill Ayers. Plenty has been written about their relationship from both sides of the campaign, and I have absolutely no interest in exploring that relationship further.
I am interested only in honoring the memories of three fallen police officers and holding responsible those who actually planned and committed these murderous attacks against the American people and our criminal justice system.
Ayers, who has long held a position as a college professor in Chicago, has a surprisingly nefarious past. He happens to be the founder of a domestic terrorist group called the Weather Underground, which he has written about extensively in his own memoir, Fugitive Days: A Memoir.
The Weather Underground was responsible for bombing several government targets throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, including the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, and a building used by the New York City Police Department. To finance their domestic terrorism activities the group also conducted “traditional” robberies, which occasionally led to murder.
What you don’t usually hear in modern-day news coverage of the group, is that three of those murders were of police officers killed in the line of duty.
On February 16, 1970, a bomb exploded at a San Francisco, California, Police Department substation, fatally wounding Sergeant Brian McDonnell. McDonnell died of his wounds two days later. A second officer, Robert Fogarty was partially blinded by the bomb’s shrapnel. Although the case has never officially been solved, members of the Weather Underground, including Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, were prime suspects.
On October 20, 1981, several members of the Weather Underground undertook the robbery of a bank to finance their terrorist activities. During the robbery the group murdered an armored car guard and two members of the Nyack, New York, Police Department – Officer Waverly Brown and Sergeant Edward O’Grady,. a Vietnam War veteran. Unlike with Sergeant McDonnell’s murder, this case was quickly solved and several members of the group were sentenced to lengthy prison terms.
Sergeant McDonnell, Officer Brown, and Sergeant O’Grady were just three of over a dozen law enforcement officers killed by radical, domestic terrorist groups during the 1970s and 1980s. Their memories may be forgotten by those who killed them and walk free – whether through lack of arrest and prosecution in McDonnell’s case or having served their sentences in Brown’s and O’Grady’s cases – but they will never be forgotten by their brothers and sisters in law enforcement.
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It was during the Ford-Carter race that I realized that I was a Republitarian. During the late 60s I had thought of myself as of the Left, but what I came to understand with my first exposure to economics at U of PA is that I had been "anit-authority", and that the Left was about massive govt. authoritarianism.
My friends were shocked when I declared for Ford over Carter! I remember the campaign and the election well. For me the BO as Carter 2 analogy works very well.
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"Bill Ayers and his wife were prime suspects" Heck I think anyone with long hair back then was a "prime suspect" to the police.
Note, the fact remains Ayers was never convicted of any crime. And how many years ago was this???
And whatever his past, Ayers is now and has been for a number of years a very respected professor and member of Chicago's academic elite.
If you are in Chicago of course you know this guy and perhaps have had interaction. I bet the list is long of respected people in Illinois who have had
contact with Ayers. For that matter I bet I could go to Harvard and find a few professors with a nefarious past. Just think of all the future leaders
of business and our country who might be influenced by these radicals. Shocking huh?
So what is your point? As the officer in the story pointed out, Ayers was innocent.
Does the voting public even care? Rather I think they care about the economy, keeping their house, the war,...
Odd, McCain/Palin would rather talk about Ayers than the economy. Is it because McCain/Palin are losing?
Desperate people do desperate things; that doesn't make it right or logical.
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"Bill Ayers and his wife were prime suspects" Heck I think anyone with long hair back then was a "prime suspect" to the police.
**The problem is you don't think. Ayers co-founded a terrorist group and wishes he'd "done more" terrorist acts. The group he helped found murdered cops and set off bombs.**
Note, the fact remains Ayers was never convicted of any crime.
**Neither has Bin Laden. Does this mean he has a tenure track position waiting for him?**
And how many years ago was this???
**No statute of limitations on murder. Just like the Klansmen that killed civil rights activists even earlier, justice can take decades but still comes calling. Would you minimize those deaths from that domestic terrorist group just as readily as you minimize the deaths from the Weather Underground?**
And whatever his past, Ayers is now and has been for a number of years a very respected professor and member of Chicago's academic elite.
**This just demonstrates how corrupt and immoral Chicago and academia are.**
If you are in Chicago of course you know this guy and perhaps have had interaction. I bet the list is long of respected people in Illinois who have had
contact with Ayers. For that matter I bet I could go to Harvard and find a few professors with a nefarious past. Just think of all the future leaders
of business and our country who might be influenced by these radicals. Shocking huh?
**That's part of the problem, most of academia is nothing but leftist indoctrination. Outside of the hard sciences, most academics are various shades of red.**
So what is your point? As the officer in the story pointed out, Ayers was innocent.
**Not convicted does not mean "innocent".**
Does the voting public even care? Rather I think they care about the economy, keeping their house, the war,...
Odd, McCain/Palin would rather talk about Ayers than the economy. Is it because McCain/Palin are losing?
Desperate people do desperate things; that doesn't make it right or logical.
**It appears that despite the fact that Obama couldn't get even a minimal security clearance for a low level federal job, many are willing to overlook his many serious character issues and connections to avowed enemies of this nation because he's "gonna save their house", then I guess we deserve what we'll get from putting him in a position of power.**
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http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/social_issues/jan-june07/civilrights_03-21.html
Justice Department Reopens Civil Rights Cases
The Justice Department has decided to prosecute about a dozen civil rights cases that are decades old. A guest explains why.
RAY SUAREZ: For many of the families of the beaten victims, the lynched and murdered during the 1960s civil rights movement, it's been justice delayed and denied, in some cases for 50 years.
State and federal law enforcement officials have successfully prosecuted several decades-old civil rights cases in recent years. In January, former Ku Klux Klan member James Seale was indicted for the kidnappings and murders of Charles Moore and Henry Dee in Meadville, Mississippi, in 1964.
But there are still hundreds of crimes for which no one was ever prosecuted. Now the Justice Department has announced a new initiative to reopen investigations into those so-called cold cases.
At a press conference last month in Washington, FBI Director Robert Mueller explained why, after so much time, it was still important to search for answers.
ROBERT MUELLER, FBI Director: In too many instances, the truth has been hidden for too long. Many individuals have, quite literally, gotten away with murder.
We cannot turn back the clock. We cannot right these wrongs. But we can try to bring a measure of justice to those who remain.
We know that some memories may fade, some evidence may be lost, and some witnesses may pass away. We know that, no matter how much work we devote to an investigation, we may not always get the result that we're hoping for. But in other cases, we will.
RAY SUAREZ: The unprosecuted cases include those of Lamar Smith, who was shot dead on the lawn of a Brookhaven, Miss., courthouse in 1955. Despite several eyewitness accounts of the shooting, no one was ever arrested.
William Lewis Moore was shot and killed in Attalla, Ala., in 1963, during a one-man march against segregation. Ballistics tests proved the identity of the gun owner, but no one was indicted.
And O'Neal Moore, a deputy sheriff in Bogalusa, La., was gunned down in his patrol car in 1965. Authorities arrested one suspect but released him two weeks later.
It's unclear which cases will be prosecuted first, but the Justice Department says several investigations are already under way.
Difficulty of pursuing old cases
RAY SUAREZ: For more now on reviving these investigations, we're joined by Jerry Mitchell, investigative reporter for the Clarion-Ledger in Mississippi. He's been covering the efforts to prosecute civil rights-era cases for some two decades.
Jerry Mitchell, it also appears that, in addition to government and traditional law enforcement involvement, you've got outsiders who are feeding information to these investigative bodies.
JERRY MITCHELL, The Clarion-Ledger: It's very true, and it's kind of been happening that way for some time, kind of in a piecemeal effort rather than some kind of centralized effort, with each jurisdiction kind of working on these cases.
You have families who have pushed these authorities to go forward with the cases and others, the media, for example. That's how this thing has kind of happened over all this time.
RAY SUAREZ: Now, I understand the attention has coalesced around some 74 cases, but, surprisingly, some of those cases are around 60 years old. What's the likelihood of finding a likely suspect, much less finding one who's still alive?
JERRY MITCHELL: It's going to be very difficult. I think in probably the majority of these cases, they probably are not going to be able to bring a case. Either suspects are going to be dead, witnesses are going to be dead, the trail's going to be just simply too cold, unfortunately.
Looking for evidence, witnesses
RAY SUAREZ: And did law enforcement agencies in those days take the kind of care of preserving chains of evidence, preserving photographs and footprint molds and that kind of thing?
JERRY MITCHELL: Well, at times. Not universally all didn't, but law enforcement has improved dramatically since those days. Now, the FBI did thoroughly investigate some of these cases, and, obviously, we have those photographs and things like that. The Mississippi burning case, the killings of Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney, there's something like 40,000 pages of documents, as well as photographs.
RAY SUAREZ: Now, a lot of people have talked about the trail going cold on some of these cases, but conversely, after this amount of time, are there people who are more willing to talk today than they were then?
JERRY MITCHELL: Absolutely. You have some of these Klansmen who have been afraid to come forward, who were Klansmen, say, in those days, and maybe are willing to come forward now. They want to, you know, rid their consciences of this guilt or whatever else they're feeling.
And so I think, definitely, there are converse things that happen, in terms of some positive, some negative, in terms of bringing these cases about.
Success rates for convictions
RAY SUAREZ: Now, some of the most notorious cases from those days have been retried decades later. But haven't there also been cases where grand juries have been unwilling to indict or juries unwilling to convict?
JERRY MITCHELL: There's been quite a bit of success in bringing these cases overall, I'd say. There have been 29 different killings from the civil rights era have been reexamined. There have been 27 arrests and overall there's been 22 convictions. So that's a pretty good ratio.
RAY SUAREZ: In some of the towns involved, people have been of more than one mind about whether this was worth doing.
JERRY MITCHELL: Absolutely.
RAY SUAREZ: One elderly attorney said, "Everybody thinks those days are behind us and we're moving forward in the correct direction." One African-American young man said, "Look, this kind of thing wouldn't happen today. I'm not sure we need to go back to those times."
JERRY MITCHELL: Right.
RAY SUAREZ: Why do this?
JERRY MITCHELL: Well, I think there are several reasons. One is, you know, there's no statute of limitations on murder, and there's a reason for that. There's a reason that murder doesn't have a statute of limitation, because information may come about -- you know, in Indiana, the daughter of a man who committed murder came forward after several decades. She was a child at the time.
You have, also, you know, the families themselves. I know I was talking to one woman one time whose daughter had been murdered -- it was not a civil rights activist. It was a white woman. And she had told me, "Why are you writing about these cases all the time? Why don't you just leave it alone?"
And she mentioned about her daughter being murdered, and the man she believed was the killer had been acquitted. So he couldn't be tried again. And I said, "Well, how would you feel if he could be tried again?" She said, "Well, I'd be all for it." And I said, "Well, don't you think these families feel the same way?"
Unexplained killings
RAY SUAREZ: Beyond the 74 that are the now-focus of this cold case squad, are there tens, dozens, scores more of these unexplained killings that we'll, in fact, never know what happened?
JERRY MITCHELL: Unfortunately, yes. I mean, I know that the Southern Poverty Law Center, they have, I think, a list of about 127 killings that we know of, and some of those we just have a name and maybe a date. We know very little more than that.
And so, obviously, those kind of cases are going to be extremely difficult to resurrect and bring about. But then there are the others that we know nothing about that didn't even make the list, unfortunately.
RAY SUAREZ: And, Jerry Mitchell, thanks for joining us.
JERRY MITCHELL: Thank you
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Ok, JDN. Defend and minimize the crimes of this domestic terrorist group just like you did for the other one. Long time ago, never convicted....
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Over to you JDN :evil: :lol:
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"This just demonstrates how corrupt and immoral Chicago and academics are" Gee, one of my best friends went to
the University of Chicago Law School. I don't think he's corrupt or immoral and he seemed to like and respect
most of his teachers. Another friend went to Northwestern. She loved it and raves about the school and
the professors she had. Note, she is a registered Republican and quite conservative. I think your statement is absurd
about Chicago and academia.
"... academia is nothing but leftist indoctrination. ..." Actually, I think academia represents all aspects (as it should)
of politics and religion. Most of my teachers happened to be toward the right.
"Not convicted does not mean "innocent". Actually it does. We have a basic right of being presumed "innocent" until convicted.
Being in Law Enforcement I thought you would know that.
"... could not get even a minimal security clearance for a low level job, ..." I noticed this ridiculous statement making the rounds
on conservative talk shows and blogs; it's all conjecture and not true to my knowledge. Or do you have an unbiased factual source (I know that's hard
for you GM) to indicate otherwise.
And actually it seems it's McCain when he gets "in a position of power" who is going to "save my house"; redo the loan and let the taxpayers eat the loss.
Even Obama is not that "liberal"; Obama suggested that the banks who made the bad loan eat the loss; makes sense to me and/or let the
homebuyer (who never should have bought the house in the first place) move out. Why is the taxpayer going to lower mortgages for deadbeats?
You made a deal; stick to it. And now you want to void the deal and reward deadbeats with taxpayer money? This is the Republican philosophy?
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Actually McCain got it from Hillary. :roll: :cry: Its part of why he is diving in the polls. Stupid ecnoomics, and pathetic populist pandering.
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"This just demonstrates how corrupt and immoral Chicago and academics are" Gee, one of my best friends went to
the University of Chicago Law School. I don't think he's corrupt or immoral and he seemed to like and respect
most of his teachers. Another friend went to Northwestern. She loved it and raves about the school and
the professors she had. Note, she is a registered Republican and quite conservative. I think your statement is absurd
about Chicago and academia.
"... academia is nothing but leftist indoctrination. ..." Actually, I think academia represents all aspects (as it should)
of politics and religion. Most of my teachers happened to be toward the right.
**When and where was this?**
"Not convicted does not mean "innocent". Actually it does. We have a basic right of being presumed "innocent" until convicted.
Being in Law Enforcement I thought you would know that.
**Just because someone has not been convicted does not mean they didn't commit the crime, it means they haven't been convicted in the criminal justice system. I've been face to face with lots of criminals that evaded conviction by claiming "not guilty by reason of insanity" for all sorts of horrific things. It sure doesn't mean they didn't do the crime, but they are not guilty by the legal standard. Al Capone was never convicted of murder, though he committed many.**
"... could not get even a minimal security clearance for a low level job, ..." I noticed this ridiculous statement making the rounds
on conservative talk shows and blogs; it's all conjecture and not true to my knowledge. Or do you have an unbiased factual source (I know that's hard
for you GM) to indicate otherwise.
**If you understood the background vetting process for federal employment and or law enforcement, you'd know this is indeed true.**
And actually it seems it's McCain when he gets "in a position of power" who is going to "save my house"; redo the loan and let the taxpayers eat the loss.
Even Obama is not that "liberal"; Obama suggested that the banks who made the bad loan eat the loss; makes sense to me and/or let the
homebuyer (who never should have bought the house in the first place) move out. Why is the taxpayer going to lower mortgages for deadbeats?
You made a deal; stick to it. And now you want to void the deal and reward deadbeats with taxpayer money? This is the Republican philosophy?
Not my philosophy.
So please address your minimization of domestic terrorism. Do you do so for all domestic terrorists, or do you favor some over others?
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"When and where was this"?
My legal friend graduated from Chicago Law School in the 70's.
My female friend graduated from Northwestern about 5 years ago.
I graduated from USC with a degree in economics also in the 70's.
SC is the west coast bastion of conservatism.
Was this your question?
Don't know about "reasons of insanity"; that I bet could be a whole other topic. But our legal system is all we have
(and frankly I think it's pretty good). You are innocent until proven guilty regardless of what people may think.
I do understand the vetting process; two FBI Agents came to my door a few months ago to inquire about a neighbor's son
who was under consideration (accepted) to become a Federal Prosecutor. Great kid; I said nice things. And frankly I have
read nothing to exclude Obama nor have I seen ANY reliable source saying he "could not get even a minimal security clearance for a low
level job". It's all conjecture and BS - your a smart guy; you know it's silly and absurd.
Glad we agree on the housing issue. I don't get it. Why can't McCain run on fiscal conservatism, experience, and a little mix of compassion?
It's not a bad story and he is a very qualified man. What's with all the waffling, pandering, etc.??? Heck if he had chosen a more qualified
VP (it's not ageism he's just old) I still might have voted for him.
As for "domestic terrorism" I don't approve and I say lock them up. And if guilty, they deserve to spend a long time in jail or worse. But I
want a legal and fair conviction, not speculation, rumor, and hate to dominate their so called "guilt". McCarthy did that and America suffered.
If they are innocent via our legal system then they are equal to both of us before the law and in society.
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"When and where was this"?
My legal friend graduated from Chicago Law School in the 70's.
My female friend graduated from Northwestern about 5 years ago.
I graduated from USC with a degree in economics also in the 70's.
SC is the west coast bastion of conservatism.
Was this your question?
Don't know about "reasons of insanity"; that I bet could be a whole other topic. But our legal system is all we have
(and frankly I think it's pretty good). You are innocent until proven guilty regardless of what people may think.
http://www.massbar.org/about-the-mba/press-room/journalists'-handbook/6-not-guilty-does-not-mean-innocent
Not Guilty Does Not Mean Innocent
All too often when I listen to the radio or read the newspapers, I hear or see "at arraignment, the defendant pled innocent" or "the defendant was found innocent by the jury." The word "innocent" is being misused. "Innocent" cannot and should not be substituted for "not guilty."
Technically, only three pleas can be entered by a defendant who is brought before the court to answer the charges against him. Under the Massachusetts Rules of Criminal Procedure, the defendant may plead not guilty, guilty or nolo contendere to any crime with which he is charged and over which the court has jurisdiction. The rules that are applicable to the criminal sessions of the trial court do not provide the defendant with the option of pleading innocent. There is no such plea available.
Similarly, the Massachusetts Rules of Criminal Procedure provide for only two possible verdicts that can be returned by a jury: guilty or not guilty. There is no verdict of innocent. And, not guilty does not mean innocent.
When a jury returns a verdict of not guilty, that means that the state has not convinced the jury beyond a reasonable doubt as to all the elements of the crime with which the defendant has been charged. For example, in a first degree murder case, the state must prove that the defendant deliberately and with malice unlawfully caused the death of another human being. If the defendant presents a valid defense that he killed the victim in self-defense, then the defendant is not innocent of homicide -- he did in fact kill another human being -- but he is "not guilty" of homicide because the state did not convince the jury that the defendant acted with premeditated malice aforethought.
Not guilty because of the law of evidence
There are other reasons that the defendant can be found not guilty although he committed the crime.
For example, suppose that a victim of rape is so terrified by the event that she cannot identify the defendant as her attacker. Tests prove that the defendant was the rapist but, for some reason, those tests cannot be admitted at trial. At trial the defendant presents an alibi defense that the jury believes. The jury may return a verdict of not guilty although the defendant did in fact commit the crime. Certainly, we do not think of the defendant as innocent.
Here is another example. Suppose that two defendants, A and B, are jointly tried for murder. Both A and B made confessions to the police in which each implicates himself but blames the other for the actual murder. The confessions are not introduced at trial because of a Supreme Court rule of law. The jury finds the defendants not guilty because the state was prevented by a rule of law from introducing enough evidence to prove them guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. They are not innocent of the crime.
Not guilty by reason of insanity
Another way in which a defendant may be found not guilty is if he is found "not guilty by reason of insanity." The insanity defense is based on the principle of Anglo-American law that before an individual can be punished for a wrongful act, he must have appreciated the criminality of his conduct.
The insanity defense has always been the subject of public debate. The debate resurfaced after John Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity after his trial for the attempted assassination of President Reagan. After the verdict, many bills were introduced in Congress to eliminate or restrict the defense and in October 1984, a new law was passed which makes the insanity defense one that the defendant must prove by clear and convincing evidence. Twelve states enacted a statute providing for an alternative verdict: guilty but mentally ill. These new statutes reflect the increasing public hostility toward acquitting defendants on the basis of the insanity defense. These defendants are not innocent; they are, in those 12 states, guilty but insane.
These examples show that the term not guilty should be used instead of innocent. Not guilty is the language of the rules providing for pleas and verdicts and is technically more accurate than innocent.
The legal system and legal terminology should be respected. I suggest that the media should make an effort to use the correct terminology when commenting on court cases. The word innocent should not be used promiscuously.
I do understand the vetting process; two FBI Agents came to my door a few months ago to inquire about a neighbor's son
who was under consideration (accepted) to become a Federal Prosecutor. Great kid; I said nice things. And frankly I have
read nothing to exclude Obama nor have I seen ANY reliable source saying he "could not get even a minimal security clearance for a low
level job". It's all conjecture and BS - your a smart guy; you know it's silly and absurd.
Security Clearance Guidelines
Allegiance to the United States
The Concern. An individual must be of unquestioned allegiance to the United States. The willingness to safeguard classified information is in doubt if there is any reason to suspect an individual's allegiance to the United States.
Conditions that could raise a security concern and may be disqualifying include:
a. Involvement in any act of sabotage, espionage, treason, terrorism, sedition, or other act whose aim is to overthrow the Government of the United States or alter the form of government by unconstitutional means;
b. Association or sympathy with persons who are attempting to commit, or who are committing, any of the above acts;
c. Association or sympathy with persons or organizations that advocate the overthrow of the United States Government, or any state or subdivision, by force or violence or by other unconstitutional means;
d. Involvement in activities which unlawfully advocate or practice the commission of acts of force or violence to prevent others from exercising their rights under the Constitution or laws of the United States or of any state.
___________________________
Security Clearance Guidelines
Foreign Influence
The Concern. A security risk may exist when an individual's immediate family, including cohabitants, and other persons to whom he or she may be bound by affection, influence, or obligation are not citizens of the United States or may be subject to duress. These situations could create the potential for foreign influence that could result in the compromise of classified information. Contacts with citizens of other countries or financial interests in other countries are also relevant to security determinations if they make an individual potentially vulnerable to coercion, exploitation, or pressure.
Conditions that could raise a security concern and may be disqualifying include:
a. An immediate family member, or a person to whom the individual has close ties of affection or obligation, is a citizen of, or resident or present in, a foreign country;
b. Sharing living quarters with a person or persons, regardless of their citizenship status, if the potential for adverse foreign influence or duress exists;
c. Relatives, cohabitants, or associates who are connected with any foreign government;
d. Failing to report, where required, associations with foreign nationals;
e, Unauthorized association with a suspected or known collaborator or employee of a foreign intelligence service;
f. Conduct which may make the individual vulnerable to coercion, exploitation, or pressure by a foreign government;
g. Indications that representatives or nationals from a foreign country are acting to increase the vulnerability of the individual to possible future exploitation, coercion or pressure;
h. A substantial financial interest in a country, or in any foreign owned or operated business that could make the individual vulnerable to foreign influence.
_________________________
Security Clearance Guidelines
Personal Conduct
The Concern. Conduct involving questionable judgment, untrustworthiness, unreliability, lack of candor, dishonesty, or unwillingness to comply with rules and regulations could indicate that the person may not properly safeguard classified information. The following will normally result in an unfavorable clearance action or administrative termination of further processing for clearance eligibility:
a. Refusal to undergo or cooperate with required security processing, including medical and psychological testing; or
b. Refusal to complete required security forms, releases, or provide full, frank and truthful answers to lawful questions of investigators, security officials or other official representatives in connection with a personnel security or trustworthiness determination.
Conditions that could raise a security concern and may be disqualifying also include:
a. Reliable, unfavorable information provided by associates, employers, coworkers, neighbors, and other acquaintances;
b. The deliberate omission, concealment, or falsification of relevant and material facts from any personnel security questionnaire, personal history statement, or similar form used to conduct investigations, determine employment qualifications, award benefits or status, determine security clearance eligibility or trustworthiness, or award fiduciary responsibilities;
c. Deliberately providing false or misleading information concerning relevant and material matters to an investigator, security official, competent medical authority, or other official representative in connection with a personnel security or trustworthiness determination;
d. Personal conduct or concealment of information that may increase an individual's vulnerability to coercion, exploitation or duress, such as engaging in activities which, if known, may affect the person's personal, professional, or community standing or render the person susceptible to blackmail;
e. A pattern of dishonesty or rule violations, including violation of any written or recorded agreement made between the individual and the agency.
f. Association with persons involved in criminal activity.
__________________________
Security Clearance Guidelines
Drug Involvement
The Concern.
a. Improper or illegal involvement with drugs, raises questions regarding an individual's willingness or ability to protect classified information. Drug abuse or dependence may impair social or occupational functioning, increasing the risk of an unauthorized disclosure of classified information.
b. Drugs are defined as mood and behavior altering substances and include:
(1) Drugs, materials, and other chemical compounds identified and listed in the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, as amended (e.g., marijuana or cannabis, depressants, narcotics, stimulants, and hallucinogens), and
(2) Inhalants and other similar substances.
c. Drug abuse is the illegal use of a drug or use of a legal drug in a manner that deviates from approved medical direction.
Conditions that could raise a security concern and may be disqualifying include:
a. Any drug abuse (see above definition);
b. Illegal drug possession, including cultivation, processing, manufacture, purchase, sale, or distribution;
c. Diagnosis by a credentialed medical professional (e.g., physician, clinical psychologist, or psychiatrist) of drug abuse or drug dependence;
d. Evaluation of drug abuse or drug dependence by a licensed clinical social worker who is a staff member of a recognized drug treatment program;
e. Failure to successfully complete a drug treatment program prescribed by a credentialed medical professional. Recent drug involvement, especially following the granting of a security clearance, or an expressed intent not to discontinue use, will almost invariably result in an unfavorable determination.
_______________________________________________________
Glad we agree on the housing issue. I don't get it. Why can't McCain run on fiscal conservatism, experience, and a little mix of compassion?
It's not a bad story and he is a very qualified man. What's with all the waffling, pandering, etc.??? Heck if he had chosen a more qualified
VP (it's not ageism he's just old) I still might have voted for him.
As for "domestic terrorism" I don't approve and I say lock them up. And if guilty, they deserve to spend a long time in jail or worse. But I
want a legal and fair conviction, not speculation, rumor, and hate to dominate their so called "guilt". McCarthy did that and America suffered.
If they are innocent via our legal system then they are equal to both of us before the law and in society.
**If instead of co-founding the Weather Underground, Bill Ayers had co-founded a KKK chapter that had murdered civil rights workers, and he was quoted as saying "I wish I'd done more" in 2001, would you still minimize his conduct and defend any politician that associated himself with him?**
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Why Does Obama's Pastor Matter?
By John Perazzo
FrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, February 04, 2008
Barack Obama, in a way that recalls John F. Kennedy, a politician to whom he's frequently compared, has carefully controlled and burnished his image to create the impression of an independent figure, free from dogma and ideological entanglements. But there is one man who threatens to undermine Obama's appealing narrative as a man above the ugly quarrels and divisive partisanship of the past: his longtime pastor and spiritual adviser, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
On March 1, 1972, Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. became the pastor of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC), a position he still holds to this day. Because he has been a revered figure in the life of presidential aspirant Barack Obama for two decades, Wright's political views, which he commonly draws from the tenets of liberation theology, are worthy of some scrutiny—if only to shed light on the teachings that have had enough resonance to retain Obama as a TUCC congregant since 1988. So great is Obama's respect for Wright, that the former sought the Reverend's counsel before formally declaring his candidacy for U.S. President. Moreover, Obama and his wife selected Wright to perform their wedding ceremony and to baptize their two daughters. These are honors of considerable magnitude, and it is reasonable to speculate that if we learn more about Rev. Wright, we may gain some insight into the personal qualities and belief systems Barack Obama holds in high regard.
When we read the writings, public statements, and sermons of Rev. Wright, we quickly notice his unmistakable conviction that America is a nation infested with racism, prejudice, and injustices that make life very difficult for black people. As he declared in one of his sermons: "Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run!... We [Americans] believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God."
In a similar spirit, Wright laments "the social order under which we [blacks] live, under which we suffer, under which we are killed."[1] Depicting blacks as a politically powerless demographic, he complains that "African Americans don't run anything in the Capital except elevators."[2] On its website, Wright's church portrays black people as victims who are still burdened by the legacy of their "pilgrimage through the days of slavery, the days of segregation, and the long night of racism," and who must pray for "the strength and courage to continuously address injustice as a people."
Wright detects what he views as racism in virtually every facet of American life. In the business world, for instance, he attributes the high unemployment rate of African Americans to "the fact that they are black."[3] Vis-à-vis the criminal justice system, he similarly explains that "the brothers are in prison" largely because of their skin color. "Consider the 'three strikes law,'" he elaborates. "There is a higher jail sentencing for crack than for cocaine because more African Americans get crack than do cocaine."[4] Notwithstanding Wright's implication that the harsh anti-crack penalties were instituted by racist legislators for the purpose of incarcerating as many blacks as possible, the Congressional Record shows that such was not at all the case. In 1986, when the strict, federal anti-crack legislation was being debated, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC)—deeply concerned about the degree to which crack was decimating the black community—strongly supported the legislation and actually pressed for even harsher penalties. In fact, a few years earlier CBC members had pushed President Reagan to create the Office of National Drug Control Policy.[5]
In Wright's calculus, white America's bigotry is to blame not only for whatever ills continue to plague the black community, but also for our country's conflicts with other nations. "In the 21st century," says Wright, "white America got a wake-up call after 9/11/01. White America and the western world came to realize that people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just 'disappeared' as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring black concerns."
Remarkably, no mention of jihad—the ageless Muslim tradition of aggressive, permanent warfare whose ultimate aim is to achieve Islam's dominion over the human race at large—managed to find its way into Wright's analysis. Rather, he assured us that the 9/11 atrocities were ultimately traceable to the doorstep of U.S. provocations. In fact, Wright apparently sees no reason to suspect that Islam may be incompatible in any way with Western traditions. "Islam and Christianity are a whole lot closer than you may realize," he has written. "Islam comes out of Christianity."[6]
Apart from America's purported racism, Wright also despises the nation's capitalist economic structure, viewing it as a breeding ground for all manner of injustice. "Capitalism as made manifest in the 'New World,'" says Wright, "depended upon slave labor (by African slaves), and it is only maintained by keeping the 'Two-Thirds World' under oppression."[7] This anti-capitalist perspective is further reflected in TUCC's "10-point vision," whose ideals include the cultivation of "a congregation working towards ECONOMIC PARITY." Dispelling any doubt that this is a reference to socialism and the wholesale redistribution of wealth, the TUCC mission statement plainly declares its goal of helping "the less fortunate to become agents of change for God who is not pleased with America's economic mal-distribution!"
This view is entirely consistent with Rev. Wright's devotion to the tenets of liberation theology, which is essentially Marxism dressed up as Christianity. Devised by Cold War-era theologians, it teaches that the gospels of Jesus can be understood only as calls for social activism, class struggle, and revolution aimed at overturning the existing capitalist order and installing, in its stead, a socialist utopia where today's poor will unseat their "oppressors" and become liberated from their material (and, consequently, their spiritual) deprivations. An extension of this paradigm is black liberation theology, which seeks to foment a similar Marxist revolutionary fervor founded on racial rather than class solidarity. Wright's mentor in this discipline is James Cone, author of the landmark text Black Power and Black Theology. Arguing that Christianity has been used by white society as an opiate of the (black) masses, Cone asserts that the destitute "are made and kept poor by the rich and powerful few," and that "[n]o one can be a follower of Jesus Christ without a political commitment that expresses one's solidarity with victims."
Many of Wright's condemnations of America are echoed in his denunciations of Israel and Zionism, which he has blamed for imposing "injustice and … racism" on the Palestinians. According to Wright, Zionism contains an element of "white racism." Likening Israel's treatment of Palestinians to South Africa's treatment of blacks during the apartheid era, Wright advocates divestment campaigns targeting companies that conduct business in, or with, Israel.
Given Wright's obvious low regard for the U.S. and Israel, it is by no means surprising that he reserves some of his deepest respect for the virulently anti-American, anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. "When Minister Farrakhan speaks, Black America listens," says Wright. "Everybody may not agree with him, but they listen … His depth on analysis when it comes to the racial ills of this nation is astounding and eye opening. He brings a perspective that is helpful and honest. Minister Farrakhan will be remembered as one of the 20th and 21st century giants of the African American religious experience. His integrity and honesty have secured him a place in history as one of the nation's most powerful critics. His love for Africa and African American people has made him an unforgettable force, a catalyst for change and a religious leader who is sincere about his faith and his purpose."
Wright's paean to Farrakhan was parroted in the November/December issue of TUCC's bimonthly magazine, the Trumpet, which featured an interview with the NOI "icon" who, according to the publication, "truly epitomized greatness." "Because of the Minister's influence in the African American community," the Trumpet announced that it was honoring him with an "Empowerment Award" as a "fitting tribute for a storied life well lived."
This seems an odd distinction to confer upon someone whose anti-American, anti-white, anti-Semitic statements are numerous. For example, in 1996 Farrakhan told a Tehran newspaper that God would "bestow upon Muslims" the honor of "destroy[ing] America." In February 1998, he sent a cordial and supportive letter to Saddam Hussein, calling him a "visionary" who had earned the Iraqi people's "love," and whose demise would "mean a setback for the goal of unity [among Muslims]." In July 2002, he declared that America, "with blood dripping from [its] hands," had no moral authority by which to overthrow Saddam. In February 2005, he condemned the United States for waging a war "against Islam," adding: "[T]here's no way that I, as a Muslim, could countenance my children or grandchildren fighting a war against fellow believers in any part of the world."
Farrakhan also has a long, well-documented history of venom-laced references to the white "blue-eyed devils" and Jewish "bloodsuckers" who purportedly decimate America's black communities from coast to coast. Moreover, he has referred to white people as "the skunks of the planet."
On a 1984 trip to meet with the Libyan dictator (and America's arch enemy) Muammar Qadhafi, Farrakhan was accompanied by none other than Jeremiah A. Wright.
Farrakhan has long considered Qadhafi to be his trusted "friend," "brother," and "fellow struggler in the cause of liberation for our people." In 1996, the NOI leader formed a partnership with Qadhafi, who pledged $1 billion to help Farrakhan develop a Muslim political lobby in the U.S. Said Qadhafi: "We agreed with Louis Farrakhan and his delegation to mobilize in a legal and legitimate form the oppressed minorities—and at their forefront the blacks, Arab Muslims and Red Indians—for they play an important role in American political life and have a weight in U.S. elections." "Our confrontation with America," added Qadhafi, "was [previously] like a fight against a fortress from outside, and today [with the NOI alliance] we found a breach to enter into this fortress and confront it."
Farrakhan's October 16, 1995 Million Man March ranks among the events about which Rev. Wright has written most extensively and passionately. Wright attended the rally with his son, and has described it as "a once in a lifetime, amazing experience."[8] When a number of prominent African Americans counseled fellow blacks to boycott the demonstration because of Farrakhan's well-documented history of hateful rhetoric, Wright derided those critics as "'Negro' leaders,"[9] "'colored' leaders," "Oreos," and "house niggras"[10] whose most noteworthy trait was their contemptible "Uncle Tomism."[11] "There are a whole boat load of 'darkies' who think in white supremacist terms," added Wright. "… Some 'darkies' think white women are superior to black women…. Some 'darkies' think white lawyers are superior to black lawyers. Some 'darkies' think white pastors are better than black pastors. There are a whole boatload of 'darkies' who think anything white and everyone white is better than whatever it is black people have."[12]
In the book titled When Black Men Stand up for God, a collection of sermons and reflections on the Million Man March, Wright identifies Kwanzaa founder Maulana Karenga as an attendee of the rally.[13] In the end notes that follow a transcript of one of Wright's sermons, Karenga is described as "an internationally acclaimed social activist and scholar in Pan African Studies"; "the founder and creator of Kwanzaa, the well-known African American holiday"; and "the director of Pan African Studies and Visiting Lecturer in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside."[14] Unmentioned is the fact that Karenga is a self-identified "African socialist" whose "Seven Principles of Blackness," which are observed during Kwanzaa, are not only the Marxist precepts of parity and proletariat unity, but are also identical to those of the 1970s domestic terrorist group, the Symbionese Liberation Army. Nor is it noted that in 1971 Karenga was convicted of torturing two women who were members of United Slaves, a black nationalist cult he had established.
On its website, Wright's church describes itself in distinctly racial terms, as being an "Unashamedly Black" congregation of "African people" who are "true to our native land, the mother continent, the cradle of civilization," and who participate in TUCC's "Black worship service and ministries which address the Black Community."
Some have suggested that such seemingly exclusionary assertions, coupled with Wright's own racially loaded statements and his close affiliation with Farrakhan, indicate that Wright is guilty of racism. But Wright casually dismisses this charge, stating: "I get tickled every time I hear a 'Negro' call me a racist. They don't even understand how to define the word. Racism means controlling the means."[15] In other words, Wright employs a rhetorical escape hatch that permits him to evade all charges of racism simply by claiming that only the "dominant" (i.e., white) demographic is capable of such ugliness. The implication is that no deed or utterance, however hateful or vile, is egregious enough to qualify any black person as a racist; that blacks are always the victims of racism, never its perpetrators.
American voters ought to have more than a passing interest in the fact that when Barack Obama formally joined TUCC in 1991, he tacitly accepted this same Jeremiah Wright as a spiritual mentor. Moreover, he pledged allegiance to the church's race-conscious "Black Value System" that encourages blacks to patronize black-only businesses, support black leaders, and avoid becoming "entrapped" by the pursuit of a "black middle-classness" whose ideals presumably would erode their sense of African identity and render them "captive" to white culture.
In addition, voters should examine carefully the question of whether Obama shares Wright's socialist economic preferences. They ought to be aware, for instance, that the Democratic candidate is on record as having said that his religious faith has led him to question "the idolatry of the free market." Moreover, Obama's voting record and his issue positions show him generally to favor high spending and increased government intervention in all realms of life.
When Rev. Wright's controversial statements and positions recently became more widely publicized, Obama said, "There are some things I agree with my pastor about, some things I disagree with him about." It is the duty of every American voter to determine exactly where those agreements and disagreements lie.
Notes:
[1] When Black Men Stand up for God (Chicago: African American Images), 1996, p. 17.
[2] Ibid., p. 102.
[3] Ibid., p. 17.
[4] Ibid., p. 17.
[5] John DiIulio, Jr., "My Black Crime Problem, and Ours," City Journal (Spring 1996), pp. 19-20.
[6] When Black Men Stand up for God, p. 16.
[7] Blow the Trumpet in Zion (Minneapolis: Fortress Press), 2005, pp. 8-9.
[8] When Black Men Stand up for God, p. 10.
[9] Ibid., pp. 11, 37.
[10] Ibid., p. 80.
[11] Ibid., p. 11.
[12] Ibid., p. 81.
[13] It should be noted that Wright's church has conducted Kwanzaa programs for its congregants. See When Black Men Stand up for God, p. iv.)
[14] When Black Men Stand up for God, p. 25.
[15] Ibid., p. 102.
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http://sweetness-light.com/archive/what-do-we-know-about-abongo-obama
What Do We Know About Abongo Obama?
From Mr. Obama’s first autobiography, “Dreams From My Father,” pp 203-4:
Despite these heartaches, Michelle and I decided to go ahead with our wedding plans. Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., performed the service in the sanctuary of Trinity United Church of Christ, on Ninety-fifth and Parnell. Everyone looked very fine at the reception, my new aunts admiring the cake, my new uncles admiring themselves in their rented tuxedos. Johnnie was there, sharing a laugh with Jeff and Scott, my old friends from Hawaii and Hasan, my roommate from college. So were Angela, Shirley, and Mona, who told my mother what a fine job she’d done raising me. (“You don’t know the half of it,” my mother replied with a laugh.) I watched Maya politely fending off the advances of some brothers who thought they were slick but who were, in fact, much too old for her and should have known better, but when I started to grumble, Michelle told me to relax, my little sister could handle herself. She was right, of course; I looked at my baby sister and saw a full-grown woman, beautiful and wise and looking like a Latin countess with her olive skin and long black hair and black bridesmaid’s gown. Auma was standing beside her, looking just as lovely, al-though her eyes were a little puffy-to my surprise she was the only one who cried during the ceremony. When the band started to play, the two of them sought out the protection of Michelle’s five — and six-year-old cousins, who impressively served as our official ring-bearers. Watching the boys somberly lead my sisters out onto the dance floor, I thought they looked like young African princes in their little kente-cloth caps and matching cumberbunds and wilted bow ties.
The person who made me proudest of all, though, was Roy. Actually, now we call him Abongo, his Luo name, for two years ago he decided to reassert his African heritage. He converted to Islam, and has sworn off pork and tobacco and alcohol. He still works at his accounting firm, but talks about moving back to Kenya once he has enough money. In fact, when we saw each other in Home Squared, he was busy building a hut for himself and his mother, away from our grandfather’s compound, in accordance with Luo tradition. He told me then that he had moved forward with his import business and hoped it would soon pay enough to employ Bernard and Abo full-time. And when we went together to stand by the Old Man’s grave, I noticed there was finally a plaque where the bare cement had been.
Abongo’s new lifestyle has left him lean and clear-eyed, and at the wedding, he looked so dignified in his black African gown with white trim and matching cap that some of our guests mistook him for my father. He was certainly the older brother that day, talking me through prenuptial jitters, patiently telling me for the fifth and sixth time that yes, he still had the ring, nudging me out the door with the observation that if I spent any more time in front of the mirror it wouldn’t matter how I looked because we were sure to be late.
Not that the changes in him are without tension. He’s prone to make lengthy pronouncements on the need for the black man to liberate himself from the poisoning influences of European culture, and scolds Auma for what he calls her European ways. The words he speaks are not fully his own, and in his transition he can sometimes sound stilted and dogmatic. But the magic of his laughter remains, and we can disagree without rancor. His conversion has given him solid ground to stand on, a pride in his place in the world. From that base I see his confidence building; he begins to venture out and ask harder questions; he starts to slough off the formulas and slogans and decides what works best for him. He can’t help himself in this process, for his heart is too generous and full of good humor, his attitude toward people too gentle and forgiving, to find simple solutions to the puzzle of being a black man.
Toward the end of the wedding, I watched him grinning widely for the video camera, his long arms draped over the shoulders of my mother and Toot, whose heads barely reached the height of his chest. “Eh, brother,” he said to me as I walked up to the three of them. “It looks like I have two new mothers now.” Toot patted him on the back. “And we have a new son,” she said, although when she tried to say “Abongo” her Kansas tongue mangled it hopelessly. My mother’s chin started to tremble again, and Abongo lifted up his glass of fruit punch for a toast.
“To those who are not here with us,” he said.
“And to a happy ending,” I said.
We dribbled our drinks onto the checkered-tile floor. And for that moment, at least, I felt like the luckiest man alive.
Perhaps this is also how Mr. Obama sees the Rev. Dr. Wright. Sure he says crazy hateful things, such as talking about “liberating himself from the poisoning influences of European culture.”
But the magic of his laughter remains.
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Some of the best comes towards the end
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/10/21/the-comprehensive-argument-against-barack-obama/
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Innocent
I think most people do or should go along with the Webster Dictionary's definition. Innocent: "Free from guilt or sin". The rest is just conjecture.
As for Security Clearance, I too have read the requirements. So? Nothing in there (although your biased personal opinion might differ) prohibits
Obama from having a Security Clearance. Further, as I requested and I suppose you are unable to provide, NO ONE in authority, i.e. anyone
from the US Senate, Homeland Security or the Justice Department has questioned or denied Obama's right to have a security clearance. Even McCain's
campaign has not posted to the contrary. That you or a few others don't like him and therefore say he isn't qualified is not relevant and it seems no one else
is taking it as being relevant either.
**If instead of co-founding the Weather Underground, Bill Ayers had co-founded a KKK chapter that had murdered civil rights workers, and he was quoted as saying "I wish I'd done more" in 2001, would you still minimize his conduct and defend any politician that associated himself with him?**
Actually, there would be no difference. The KKK and the Weather Underground are both equally despicable organizations. That being said, both deserve the same constitutional rights. You cannot have one
set of rules for situations you support and another set of rules just because you don't like someone's viewpoint. That kind of expedient hypocrisy will come back to haunt you one day. For the same reason I am not an
advocate of recent laws in EC's denying freedom of speech from either the right or left if done peacefully and all other laws are respected. Where do you draw the line and on what basis?
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I like the way this blog from Scott Grannis puts it:
My concerns with Obama
As a fan of free markets, liberty, and limited government, I have grave concerns about Obama as president. I acknowledge his depth of intellect, and I also note that he has changed his views on a wide range of subjects in the past year, moving more to the center from the extreme left. But there are a handful of core beliefs and characteristics of his that I find quite disturbing. Karl Rove pinned this down in his WSJ column today.
Wanting to raise taxes -- anyone's taxes -- in a slowdown is a warning sign of a misguided economic philosophy. Obama's proposal to redistribute wealth is a warning of indifference or hostility to enterprise.
Three years ago, Mr. McCain called for stricter oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, warning their risky practices threatened our economy and could cost taxpayers billions. Mr. Obama and congressional Democrats ignored these signs and opposed reform.
Obama's health-care plan is a warning that government will have more, not less, to say about your health care if he has his way.
Obama's dismissal of offshore drilling and opposition to nuclear power are warning signs for an economy whose growth depends on affordable energy.
The absence of a single significant instance in which Mr. Obama cooperated in a bipartisan manner in the Senate is a warning sign. And so is his refusal to break with his party or its interest groups on any issue of substance.
To these I would add: Obama's strong belief in man-made global warming is a warning that the government will assume much broader control over economic activity (e.g., via limits on CO2 emissions). Obama's advocacy of youth corps and community service is a warning that the government will have more power to indoctrinate the young. Obama's belief in the power of government to do good is a warning that he will invariably choose more regulation and more government bureaucracy rather than less as a solution to problems that crop up.
And all of this will detract from individual liberty and free markets as it grants more power to government.
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DANIEL J. FLYNN
Obama: The Oak Grown from Acorn
The radical group is front and center when it comes to voter fraud.
16 October 2008
Stealing Elections, Revised and Updated: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy, by John Fund (Encounter, 175 pp., $19.95)
Last week, well before news broke today of an FBI voter-fraud investigation of the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (Acorn), Nevada authorities raided the group’s Las Vegas headquarters. The offices of Nevada’s secretary of state and attorney general, both Democrats, seized computers, voter-registration cards, and employee information after Acorn submitted numerous fraudulent names and addresses as part of its voter-registration drive. “Some of these [forms] were facially fraudulent; we basically had the starting lineup for the Dallas Cowboys,” Ross Miller, Nevada’s secretary of state, explained. “Tony Romo is not registered to vote in Nevada.” Acorn’s Project Vote alleges that the raid is part of a nationally orchestrated effort to suppress voter turnout. “Project Vote has been attacked all over the country because we registered at least 1.2 million voters,” theorizes Nevada Acorn’s Bonnie Smith-Greathouse. “That could sway an election.”
And that’s just the point, argues John Fund in the updated and timely reissue of his Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy. Fund contends that recent changes in election laws have made it easier to “sway an election,” as Smith-Greathouse puts it—through cheating. “The United States has a haphazard, fraud-prone election system befitting a developing nation rather than the globe’s leading democracy,” Fund asserts. At times, Fund’s subject seems more fitting for a magazine exposé than for a book—until one confronts the sheer volume of examples he has compiled. Like a portrait of corruption from a century prior, Lincoln Steffens’s Shame of the Cities, Fund’s Stealing Elections adopts a muckraking style and spotlights a national problem by illuminating it on a city-by-city basis.
In the name of making every vote count, efforts to expand the electorate have resulted in tallying votes that shouldn’t be considered and negating valid votes. Over a century’s worth of reforms designed to protect the concept of “one man, one vote” have been undermined in just a few decades. Fund points out that most states now allow voters to obtain absentee ballots without establishing a need (such as status as a student, soldier, or diplomat, or showing that one would be out of state on Election Day). One state, Oregon, has eliminated polling places entirely. The raison d’être of the secret ballot—to protect the public from having votes bought or coerced—is thus discarded.
Same-day registration, which backers argue further democratizes elections, is, according to Stealing Elections, “not a reform at all but an added opportunity for mischief”—such as vote buying. The comical scheme of an Al Gore–supporting New York socialite offering free cigarettes to homeless Milwaukeeans in exchange for votes could only occur in a state with same-day registration. Voters registering multiple times under the Motor Voter law, some liberals’ hostility toward poll workers checking government-issued identifications, and lawyers invading locales with election disputes—all increase the chances that legitimate votes will wind up cast aside or canceled out by illegitimate ones.
Stealing Elections overflows with examples of electoral shenanigans. The controversial 2004 Democratic primary, for instance, in which Texas Secretary of State Henry Cuellar unseated Congressman Ciro Rodriguez, ran rife with peculiarities that affected the outcome. While Rodriguez boasted a slim 126-vote lead on election night, the recount in Zapata County turned up a missing ballot box with 304 votes, four-fifths of them for Cuellar. “Webb County reported that their recount came up with 115 more votes than they had first reported,” Fund writes. “Cuellar won every one of the newly discovered votes.” In San Antonio, an area the challenger carried decisively, election officials discovered voter-registration applications for 42 dead people.
On election night that same year, Washington State voters elected Republican Dino Rossi over Democrat Christine Gregoire. On Christmas Eve, state lawyers overturned the election after a third recount. “Nearly 2,000 more votes were counted in King County than the number of individual voters who appeared on the list of those who had cast a ballot,” Fund reports. In one Seattle precinct—where most of the voters had curiously registered just that past year—70 percent of voters listed a government administration building as their residential address. Election officials found hundreds of “lost” ballots, accepted the votes of hundreds of ineligible felons, and, in a few instances, counted the votes of those residing in graveyards. One ballot punched for Gregoire but listing Rossi in the “write-in” line was strangely added in the recount to the totals for Gregoire. Given the strange methodology employed by ballot counters, it’s not surprising that Gregoire is now Washington’s governor.
In St. Louis, dogs join the dead on the election rolls. In 2000, voters nationwide let out a collective gasp in the waning hours of Election Day. Lawyers for Jesse Jackson and Al Gore convinced judges in St. Louis to keep polls open in selected African-American neighborhoods, altering election law by extending voting hours for those most likely to support Gore. Along with the discovery of a voting machine in an abandoned lot the day after the election, and the revelation that 56,000 St. Louis voters had registered multiple times, Missouri voters also learned that “Robert Odom”—on whose behalf Gore-Lieberman lawyers had successfully sued to keep the polls open—had voted in the early afternoon, before the court order extending poll-closure times was issued. The lawsuit was clearly premeditated, as the evidence of computerized phone banks, all-too-ready with a get-out-the-vote message, made clear. The exclamation point to the Show Me State’s 2000 horror show was provided by Ritzy, the 13-year-old spaniel who had been on the voter rolls for eight years.
A common thread in many of the cases that Fund spotlights is the shadowy presence of Acorn. Two and a half years after the debacle in Seattle, Washington’s attorney general indicted seven Acorn workers for their role in what he called “the worst case of voter registration fraud” in the state’s history. In St. Louis, eight Acorn workers pled guilty to election fraud this past April. On the other side of Missouri, in 2006, four Kansas City Acorn workers were indicted after officials deemed nearly 15,000 of their 35,000 registrations phony.
In the mid-nineties, Barack Obama ran Acorn’s Project Vote campaign in Illinois. He sued the state of Illinois on the group’s behalf in 1995 to implement the Motor Voter law. “After he joined the board of the Woods Fund,” Stealing Elections notes, “Obama saw to it that substantial grants were given to Acorn.” Senator Obama has championed Acorn’s legislative priorities in Congress. His presidential campaign even donated more than $800,000 to Acorn. Obama is the oak grown from Acorn, a group so proud of its association that it boasts “Obama Organizing Fellows” and runs a “Camp Obama” training event. While Acorn boasts of its Obama association, the candidate, of course, is more reticent. That’s because he well knows that many non-dead, non-animal voters would not find a close association with such a group a desirable quality in a potential president.
“Once a community organizer, then a foundation grant-maker, and now a lobbyist for direct government funding, Barack Obama has been with Acorn throughout his career,” Fund writes. “In return, Acorn is pledging to spend $35 million this year registering voters—both real and fictive. Should Obama become president, look for Acorn to have a vastly more ambitious legislative agenda, and for Obama to be responsive.” Acorn, in other words, has a lot riding on Tony Romo voting early, often, and everywhere.
Daniel J. Flynn is the author of A Conservative History of the American Left. (Crown Forum, 2008).
http://www.city-journal.org/2008/bc1016df.html
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I'm afraid the country isn't interest in all the philosophy we are throwing around this board.
I will state one more time that as long as the country's wealth keeps getting concentrated to a smaller and smaller percentage of the population we will get exactly what we are seeing.
The Republicans of 2000 and later are not the Republicans of 1980 for this very reason.
Unregulated trickle down economics does not work for the majority of Americans who are working 60 hours per week, two peopel per household pulling in money, savings rates of effectively zero, and people still can't apy their bills.
Comprende????
Lawyers and philosophers can talk about ideals. constitutional abstracts all you want but the Republicans need to stop and rethink and retool what they are about. Reagan is dead and so is some at least of his theories.
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"I will state one more time that as long as the country's wealth keeps getting concentrated to a smaller and smaller percentage of the population we will get exactly what we are seeing."
Source?
That said, the question you raise is an interesting one. If you would like to pursue it, please do so in the Politics thread.
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Innocent
I think most people do or should go along with the Webster Dictionary's definition. Innocent: "Free from guilt or sin". The rest is just conjecture.
**We are discussing legal concepts, thus we are using legal terminology. If you don't understand it, fine. I gave you an article to read that explained the concept in layman's terms. I'm not sure how to simplify it even more.**
As for Security Clearance, I too have read the requirements. So? Nothing in there (although your biased personal opinion might differ) prohibits
Obama from having a Security Clearance.
**Really? Do I have to spoonfeed this to you, or are you not getting the point on purpose?**
Further, as I requested and I suppose you are unable to provide, NO ONE in authority, i.e. anyone
from the US Senate, Homeland Security or the Justice Department has questioned or denied Obama's right to have a security clearance.
**Do you know what the Hatch act is? Of course not. Here is a reference page for you to aquaint yourself with it. This will answer your question, if you actually bother to read it. http://www.osc.gov/ha_fed.htm **
Even McCain's
campaign has not posted to the contrary. That you or a few others don't like him and therefore say he isn't qualified is not relevant and it seems no one else
is taking it as being relevant either.
**Yeah, the MSM is busy running down a hot tip that Joe the Plumber had a parking ticket in 1977, so they haven't been able to do any really vetting of Obama. It's on their to-do list for late November/early December.**
**If instead of co-founding the Weather Underground, Bill Ayers had co-founded a KKK chapter that had murdered civil rights workers, and he was quoted as saying "I wish I'd done more" in 2001, would you still minimize his conduct and defend any politician that associated himself with him?**
Actually, there would be no difference. The KKK and the Weather Underground are both equally despicable organizations. That being said, both deserve the same constitutional rights.
**We are not discussing constitutional rights here, we are discussing Obama surrounding himself with people who openly express hatred of this country and at least one unrepentant terrorist and why this is important. If John McCain had started his political career in the living room of a unrepentant terrorist, do you think the left would think this was a valid issue? Nod your head yes. Of course. The MSM would be all over it. Not long ago, you were trying to spin Ayers as just a longhair being hassled by the man, man.
Here is a little insight into your "distinguished professor": http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/31662_Bill_Ayers_Terrorist_Group_Discussed_Genocide_of_Americans **
You cannot have one
set of rules for situations you support and another set of rules just because you don't like someone's viewpoint.
**Funny, that's what I pointed out to you when you were busy downplaying and attempting to minimize the actions of the Weather Underground.**
That kind of expedient hypocrisy will come back to haunt you one day.
**Go back and re-read your earlier posts and tell me who the hypocrite is.**
For the same reason I am not an
advocate of recent laws in EC's denying freedom of speech from either the right or left if done peacefully and all other laws are respected. Where do you draw the line and on what basis?
**Again, this is not about freedom of speech, it's about judging the candidates for the Presidency of this nation. I gurantee that a police applicant with a clean criminal history that is known to socialize with members of a local outlaw motorcycle gang won't be getting hired. If I got the sweetheart home purchase deal from a convicted felon, like Obama got from Tony Rezko, you better believe that I'd be getting a Garrity advisal and possibly a subpeona in front of a grand jury. A law enforcement officer that had the connections to the Nation of Islam that Obama has might well be legally terminated for it. I can cut and paste the caselaw if you'd like.**
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I agree with the Obama concernsfrom Scott Grannis and the additions from Crafty. Picking out one quote from Scott G: "I acknowledge his depth of (Barack Obama's) intellect..."
Definitely true. However that means that the sloppy, vague, deceitful and unexplained changes and omissions from the campaign are intentional, not just the fog of war. For example, 'we will look into offshore drilling and look into nuclear' instead of we will authorize new drilling and authorize new nuclear power plants, 'we will need to look for new sources of revenues' instead of here are the new taxes and fees we will impose, 'we will commit to public financing and limits on campaign spending' followed by 'we will will bury you with money and media', 'tax cuts for 95%' instead of acknowledging only 60-some percent pay anything in the first place and the a tax cut just means we exempt you from the first round of increases, 'capital gains tax increases versions 1, 2, 3 and now 4 depending on results from the latest focus group survey, 'personally pro-life' yet wishing an abortion for his first grandchild so his daughter wouldn't be 'punished with a baby, and of course the television ads that show Obama's national health plan as just a sensible, centrist compromise when his previous words make it clear he wants the full socialist system in place as soon as the public will swallow it.
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As for Security Clearance, I too have read the requirements. So? Nothing in there (although your biased personal opinion might differ) prohibits
Obama from having a Security Clearance.
**Really? Do I have to spoonfeed this to you, or are you not getting the point on purpose?**
Further, as I requested and I suppose you are unable to provide, NO ONE in authority, i.e. anyone
from the US Senate, Homeland Security or the Justice Department has questioned or denied Obama's right to have a security clearance.
**Do you know what the Hatch act is? Of course not. Here is a reference page for you to aquaint yourself with it. This will answer your question, if you actually bother to read it. http://www.osc.gov/ha_fed.htm **
Even McCain's
campaign has not posted to the contrary. That you or a few others don't like him and therefore say he isn't qualified is not relevant and it seems no one else
is taking it as being relevant either.
**Yeah, the MSM is busy running down a hot tip that Joe the Plumber had a parking ticket in 1977, so they haven't been able to do any really vetting of Obama. It's on their to-do list for late November/early December.**
So far I still don't see anything that precludes Obama from having a low level clearance; just your hot air. The Hatch Act? Did you read it or just post it (maybe your usual technique?). The Hatch Act gives details on the political activities public servants are allowed. Do you really think this pertains to a Senator? And this all relates to Obama's security clearance how? May I respectfully suggest you read an item before posting?
Vetting? Is it important? Maybe if McCain's campaign spent spent less on Palin's clothes and more money on the fundamentals, they could get the job done. Rather, they seem like a chicken with it's head cut off aimlessly running everywhere. I can smell the desperation. If you can't win on the facts, ideas, plans, goals, well...... just throw whatever else is left against the wall. Lately, that seems to be the McCain/Palin campaign style.
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As for Security Clearance, I too have read the requirements. So? Nothing in there (although your biased personal opinion might differ) prohibits
Obama from having a Security Clearance.
**Really? Do I have to spoonfeed this to you, or are you not getting the point on purpose?**
Further, as I requested and I suppose you are unable to provide, NO ONE in authority, i.e. anyone
from the US Senate, Homeland Security or the Justice Department has questioned or denied Obama's right to have a security clearance.
**Do you know what the Hatch act is? Of course not. Here is a reference page for you to aquaint yourself with it. This will answer your question, if you actually bother to read it. http://www.osc.gov/ha_fed.htm **
Even McCain's
campaign has not posted to the contrary. That you or a few others don't like him and therefore say he isn't qualified is not relevant and it seems no one else
is taking it as being relevant either.
**Yeah, the MSM is busy running down a hot tip that Joe the Plumber had a parking ticket in 1977, so they haven't been able to do any really vetting of Obama. It's on their to-do list for late November/early December.**
So far I still don't see anything that precludes Obama from having a low level clearance; just your hot air.
**1. His admitted hard drug use, which may well be ongoing. We don't know as he has refused to release his medical history.
2. His connections to a unrepentant founder of a terrorist group.
3. His connections to a hate group, the nation of islam, through his pastor and "spritual advisor" of 20 years, who has repeated expressed racist and anti-american sermons and traveled with Louis Farrakhan to meet with Moammar Khaddaffi in Libya.
4. His relationship to his half brother, a foreign national whom Obama identifies as having racist and radical islamist orientation in his own book.
5. His unethical financial connections to the convicted felon, Tony Rezko.
6. His friendship with Rashid Khalidi, an academic that has expressed support for Palestinian terrorism and defended suicide bombers.
7. Obama's connection to his adviser, Mazen Asbahi. Mazen Asbahi resigned after his connections to HAMAS and CAIR were publicized.
Enough? Do I need to flesh it out more?**
The Hatch Act? Did you read it or just post it (maybe your usual technique?).
**No. I am very aware of the Hatch Act as I was trained on the topic during my time employed by the federal government.**
The Hatch Act gives details on the political activities public servants are allowed. Do you really think this pertains to a Senator?
**No, this was answering your question as to why no one from the FBI or other federal agencies would make a comment as to Obama's potential for a security clearance or the lack thereof. Aside from the political blowback from such an act, any federal employee who made such a public statement faces legal sanction for violating the Hatch Act.**
And this all relates to Obama's security clearance how? May I respectfully suggest you read an item before posting?
**May I suggest you get someone with basic reading comprehension skills to help you through the posts before you try making condescending comments to me.**
Vetting? Is it important? Maybe if McCain's campaign spent spent less on Palin's clothes and more money on the fundamentals, they could get the job done.
**Not that facts have ever made any difference to you, but Palin's clothes were paid for by the RNC (Not the McCain/Palin campaign), just like the Barackopolis in Denver was paid for by the DNC host committee (To the tune of more than 5 million dollars, BTW).**
Rather, they seem like a chicken with it's head cut off aimlessly running everywhere. I can smell the desperation. If you can't win on the facts, ideas, plans, goals, well...... just throw whatever else is left against the wall. Lately, that seems to be the McCain/Palin campaign style.
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Good grief this is ridiculous; say what you want about Obama; good (I doubt) or bad, but he is a standing U.S. Senator. His security clearance is just fine and everyone knows it.
Yours is bogus and fallacious argument. YOU may think he isn't qualified to have clearance, but it doesn't seem to bother anyone in the Justice Department, Homeland Security, the U.S. Senate
or anyone else with access to confidential information or clearance. Only you and a long list of irrelevant and blatantly partisan blogs.
And I know the difference, I was making a joke: I truly don't care about Palin's clothes or the numerous other petty issues being brought up by the press; it is irrelevant to the election. But for this discussion's sake, I do equate
the RNC with McCain/Palin as I do equate the DNC's action with Obama. I think both campaigns have gotten petty and spiteful and ignore the big issues facing this country. McCain should focus on the issues, i.e. experience,
foreign policy, domestic policy, etc. He has a lot of good things to say even if he isn't as pretty or eloquent as Obama :-) Check the polls; almost nobody seems
to care about Ayers when the economy is crashing down among us. But I think it is too late for McCain to focus on the issues... Too bad...
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Who's next?
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2008/10/not-quite-colin.html
First Colin Powell, Now…
Ken Adelman is a lifelong conservative Republican. Campaigned for Goldwater, was hired by Rumsfeld at the Office of Economic Opportunity under Nixon, was assistant to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld under Ford, served as Reagan’s director of arms control, and joined the Defense Policy Board for Rumsfeld’s second go-round at the Pentagon, in 2001. Adelman’s friendship with Rumsfeld, Cheney, and their wives goes back to the sixties, and he introduced Cheney to Paul Wolfowitz at a Washington brunch the day Reagan was sworn in.
In recent years, Adelman and his friends Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz fell out over his criticisms of the botching of the Iraq War. Still, he remains a bona-fide hawk (“not really a neo-con but a con-con”) who has never supported a Democrat for President in his life. Two weeks from now that’s going to change: Ken Adelman intends to vote for Barack Obama. He can hardly believe it himself.
Adelman and I exchanged e-mails today about his decision. He asked rhetorically,
Why so, since my views align a lot more with McCain’s than with Obama’s? And since I truly dread the notion of a Democratic president, Democratic House, and hugely Democratic Senate?
Primarily for two reasons, those of temperament and of judgment.
When the economic crisis broke, I found John McCain bouncing all over the place. In those first few crisis days, he was impetuous, inconsistent, and imprudent; ending up just plain weird. Having worked with Ronald Reagan for seven years, and been with him in his critical three summits with Gorbachev, I’ve concluded that that’s no way a president can act under pressure.
Second is judgment. The most important decision John McCain made in his long campaign was deciding on a running mate.
That decision showed appalling lack of judgment. Not only is Sarah Palin not close to being acceptable in high office—I would not have hired her for even a mid-level post in the arms-control agency. But that selection contradicted McCain’s main two, and best two, themes for his campaign—Country First, and experience counts. Neither can he credibly claim, post-Palin pick.
I sure hope Obama is more open, centrist, sensible—dare I say, Clintonesque—than his liberal record indicates, than his cooperation with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid portends. If not, I will be even more startled by my vote than I am now.
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/10/24/reagan-appointee-and-recent-mccain-adviser-charles-fried-supports-obama.aspx
Reagan Appointee and (Recent) McCain Adviser Charles Fried Supports Obama
Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School, has long been one of the most important conservative thinkers in the United States. Under President Reagan, he served, with great distinction, as Solicitor General of the United States. Since then, he has been prominently associated with several Republican leaders and candidates, most recently John McCain, for whom he expressed his enthusiastic support in January.
This week, Fried announced that he has voted for Obama-Biden by absentee ballot. In his letter to Trevor Potter, the General Counsel to the McCain-Palin campaign, he asked that his name be removed from the several campaign-related committees on which he serves. In that letter, he said that chief among the reasons for his decision "is the choice of Sarah Palin at a time of deep national crisis."
Fried is exceptionally thoughtful and principled; his vote for Obama is especially noteworthy.
--Cass. R. Sunstein
UPDATE: Fried writes to TNR: I admire Senator McCain and was glad to help in his campaign, and to be listed as doing so; but when I concluded that I must vote for Obama for the reason stated in my letter, I felt it wrong to appear to be recommending to others a vote that I was not prepared to cast myself. So it was more of an erasure than a public affirmation--although obviously my vote meant that I thought that Obama was preferable to McCain-Palin. I do not consider abstention a proper option.
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Good grief this is ridiculous; say what you want about Obama; good (I doubt) or bad, but he is a standing U.S. Senator. His security clearance is just fine and everyone knows it.
**Please show me where there is any indication that Obama currently has a security clearance.**
Yours is bogus and fallacious argument. YOU may think he isn't qualified to have clearance, but it doesn't seem to bother anyone in the Justice Department, Homeland Security, the U.S. Senate
or anyone else with access to confidential information or clearance. Only you and a long list of irrelevant and blatantly partisan blogs.
**Again, due to the Hatch Act, no one from the Justice Dept, DHS or other executive branch entity can make any such comment. Whom in the Senate would be in a position to do so?**
And I know the difference, I was making a joke: I truly don't care about Palin's clothes or the numerous other petty issues being brought up by the press; it is irrelevant to the election. But for this discussion's sake, I do equate
the RNC with McCain/Palin as I do equate the DNC's action with Obama. I think both campaigns have gotten petty and spiteful and ignore the big issues facing this country. McCain should focus on the issues, i.e. experience,
foreign policy, domestic policy, etc. He has a lot of good things to say even if he isn't as pretty or eloquent as Obama :-) Check the polls; almost nobody seems
to care about Ayers when the economy is crashing down among us. But I think it is too late for McCain to focus on the issues... Too bad...
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Hmmmm
Obama is a U.S. Senator in good standing
Obama is on the Foreign Relations Committee
Obama is on the Homeland Security Committee
Obama (along with McCain) is getting highly classified briefings
McCain, who would be all over Obama if true, has never said Obama is not eligible or qualified for classified information.
I think time to move on.
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http://www.alanedmunds.com/news/security-clearance-double-standard.html
Double standard for security clearance must end
According to two Washington insiders, Washington’s double standard regarding security clearance for Congress and staff is unacceptable. When it comes to getting access to sensitive government information, Congress and other top-ranking political officials are not held to the same standards as employees who seek security clearance.
This security clearance double standard was exemplified by the recent bribery case involving former Representative Randy “Duke” Cunningham. This Congressman had access to sensitive information while under federal investigation for the crime of bribery. Had a federal investigation been conducted over a congressional employee’s illegal activity, access to sensitive information would have surely been denied. According to Keith Ashdown of the Taxpayers for Common Sense, “Lawmakers should absolutely have to go through the same security clearance process as employees do.”
Under the current system of gaining security clearance, congressional staff and other federal employees are subject to scrupulous background checks and an intensive interview process before obtaining access to sensitive information. If an investigation reveals that a security clearance applicant might pose a threat to national security, they can be denied security clearance. “Risks” such as associating with people who have a criminal background, a history of alcohol abuse, financial problems, and other issues can be used to justify security clearance denial.
Meanwhile, members of congress are not subject to any type of background check. They are merely asked to promise not to reveal any of the nation’s secrets. That’s it. According to a seasoned professional, Winslow Wheeler, with 31 years experience on Capitol Hill, members of Congress are granted security clearance simply by being elected.
Winslow worked for the Senate Budget Committee for six years as a security official. He recently published a book about Congress and national security.
Ashdown and Wheeler have a different focus on what this lack of screening means for national security. Ashdown, for example, points out that a history of alcoholism would preclude congressional staff from gaining security clearance. He points out that, “there are more alcoholics [in Congress] than anywhere in the country.” He stresses that Congress needs to be held to the same standards as any other person seeking security clearance.
Wheeler, on the other hand, says that if the system is working, there is no need to fix it. His biggest concern concentrates on cases like the Cunningham bribery investigation. Five months went by between the start of federal investigations into Cunningham’s illegal activity and the day he pled guilty to accepting $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractor MZM, Inc. During these five months, Cunningham had full access to our nation’s sensitive information. Wheeler argues that investigations should have immediately assessed his ethical violations to determine his fitness for security clearance.
The Cunningham case is just one example of how politics unfairly influence the security clearance process of the United States government. In so many cases, employees are denied security clearance for ambiguous reasons, while dubious officials proceed without question.
Some experts believe situations like the Cunningham scandal turn the spotlight on a security clearance system that is broken and needs to be fixed.
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http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/secrecy/RS20748.pdf
Suggested changes to congress currently exempting it's self from security clearances. So, no Obama does not have a security clearance, nor could he get one were he applying for a job rather than being elected to office.
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So, no Obama does not have a security clearance, nor could he get one were he applying for a job rather than being elected to office.
I was going to stop, but this is getting fun, so I couldn't resist. You just said, "So no, Obama does not have a security clearance" yet
your previous post stated, "members of Congress are granted security clearance simply by being elected." So I guess Obama really does have a security clearance; yes?
Gotta love your logic: you say Obama "does not have a security clearance" and yet you posted within thirty minutes previously that in fact, Obama does currently have security clearance. ???
Must be the bubbles in the beer; try some wine, you might like it.
For numerous reasons I doubt if the CSR's suggestions will pass; otherwise based on your post it looks like President Bush would have been denied on the basis
of "a proven history of alcohol abuse" not to mention drug usage.
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So, no Obama does not have a security clearance, nor could he get one were he applying for a job rather than being elected to office.
I was going to stop, but this is getting fun, so I couldn't resist. You just said, "So no, Obama does not have a security clearance" yet
your previous post stated, "members of Congress are granted security clearance simply by being elected." So I guess Obama really does have a security clearance; yes?
**To be precise, members of congress are exempted from having to go through the security clearance vetting procedure before accessing classified materials. Obama has never been vetted, nor could he pass the vetting were he to try to do so. He does not have a clearance, he just has access. The electoral process and the media are supposed to do the vetting for elected officials, which as in the case of Obama and Keith Elleson, hasn't been done.**
Gotta love your logic: you say Obama "does not have a security clearance" and yet you posted within thirty minutes previously that in fact, Obama does currently have security clearance. ???
**Again, he has access to classified material, but has not been vetted for a clearance, nor would he be granted one given his many "issues".**
Must be the bubbles in the beer; try some wine, you might like it.
**Sorry, about time for me to don my gear and go to work. No alcohol for me.**
For numerous reasons I doubt if the CSR's suggestions will pass; otherwise based on your post it looks like President Bush would have been denied on the basis
of "a proven history of alcohol abuse" not to mention drug usage.
**Care to cite your source for President Bush's drug usage?**
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Actually, to AGAIN quote your post, "According to a seasoned professional, Winslow Wheeler, with 31 years experience on Capitol Hill, "members of Congress are granted security clearance simply by being elected."
As for Bush...
Bush clearly admits to having a history of abusing alcohol (grounds per your post for disqualification) and;
Wikipedia - Illegal Drugs
Bush has refused to discuss speculation that he has used illegal drugs, but has said that when his father became president in 1989 and required White House employees to affirm that they had not used illegal drugs for 15 years, he would have passed that test.[12][13]
A conversation between Bush and an old friend and author, Doug Wead, touched on the subject of use of illegal drugs. In the taped recordings of the conversation, Bush explained his refusal to answer questions about whether he had used marijuana at some time in his past. “I wouldn’t answer the marijuana questions,” Bush says. “You know why? Because I don’t want some little kid doing what I tried.” When Wead reminded Bush that the latter had publicly denied using cocaine, Bush replied, "I haven't denied anything."[14]
Do I care? No.
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Actually, to AGAIN quote your post, "According to a seasoned professional, Winslow Wheeler, with 31 years experience on Capitol Hill, "members of Congress are granted security clearance simply by being elected."
**Let me remind you of page CRS-5, from http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/secrecy/RS20748.pdf
Mandate That Members of Congress Hold Security Clearances to Be
Eligible for Access to Classified Information.
This would mark a significant
departure from the past. Members of Congress (as with the President and Vice President,
Justices of the Supreme Court, or other federal court judges) have never been required to
hold security clearances.**
As for Bush...
Bush clearly admits to having a history of abusing alcohol (grounds per your post for disqualification) and;
Wikipedia - Illegal Drugs
Bush has refused to discuss speculation that he has used illegal drugs, but has said that when his father became president in 1989 and required White House employees to affirm that they had not used illegal drugs for 15 years, he would have passed that test.[12][13]
A conversation between Bush and an old friend and author, Doug Wead, touched on the subject of use of illegal drugs. In the taped recordings of the conversation, Bush explained his refusal to answer questions about whether he had used marijuana at some time in his past. “I wouldn’t answer the marijuana questions,” Bush says. “You know why? Because I don’t want some little kid doing what I tried.” When Wead reminded Bush that the latter had publicly denied using cocaine, Bush replied, "I haven't denied anything."[14]
Do I care? No.
**The wikipedia sourcing is very, very thin. Hardly what would qualify as a confession.**
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**A nice bit of humor from Iowahawk**
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2008/10/i-am-bill.html
I AM BILL
Editorial note: my previous "I AM JOE" post seems to have struck a chord, and possibly a nerve or two. As one new fan writes:
"I think it's hilarious you wingnuts want to embrace this wifebeating tax cheat non-plumber as your new populist poster boy. Funny I didn't see your concern when the Murdoch media was trying to destroy Bill Ayers' life."
You make an excellent point, T.S.! Why should us flag-humping reactionaries get all the good flesh-and-blood lumpenproles to rally behind? So, in preemptive compliance with the coming Fairness Doctrine, please allow me to ladle up another helping of righteous populist indignation on behalf of another lovable everyman who's gotten the shaft from the media for daring to speak up. Bumper stickers coming soon.
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Every time I turn on the internet these days, it seems like another right wing blogger is digging up more baloney on Professor Bill Ayers. Apparently these people would rather talk about Bill Ayers' passionate youthful rambunctiousness than the issues that really matter to us, like Sarah Palin's shoe bill. Well, I've got a message for you, Mister Google cache McCarthy fascist: I'm mad as H-E-double sippy straws, and I'm not going to take it any more. No longer will I remain silent while you smear and slur this great America-hating American with his own quotes. Hear me now: when you mess with Bill Ayers, you're messing with me.
Because I AM BILL.
I AM BILL. I am the everyday forgotten little guy in your neighborhood, the quiet anarcho-syndicalist family man who gets up early and punches the clock at the local state university, writing the manifestos and polemics and grant proposals that keep America humming. I'm just doing my job, and all I ask in return is a little respect. And tenure. And Chicago Citizen of the Year awards. And two graduate assistants to grade exams for Practicum in Imperialist Racist Hegemony 311, because I'm teaching two sections this semester. Also, a sabbatical to Italy next summer would be nice.
I AM BILL. I grew up in a simple little gated community just like yours, with white picket fences and where all the aux pairs and gardeners know your name. When my dad came home from a hard day's work as a CEO, he was never too tired to help me with my homework or tousle my hair for winning the Lake Forest Academy essay contest on Hegelian Dialectics. Yes, he was a simpleminded bourgeois technocrat of the capitalist war machine, but he made sure I got the tuition and tutors and sailing lessons and allowance I needed to make it on my own. I wish he was still alive so I could tell him how much I really planned to kill him last.
I AM BILL. I work with my hands, grizzled and calloused from years on a non-ergonomic keyboard. Maybe I don't know pipe wrenches, but I know pipe bombs, and I've built them right there in my communal kitchen and I've watched with pride as they've offed a couple of pigs. Sure, maybe I've made a few mistakes with wiring or detonator timing and it ends up killing a couple of comrades. But you know what? I get up, dust myself off, and get right back to the drawing board. Because when it comes to international Maoist revolution, quitters never win and winners never quit.
I AM BILL. I love traveling the highways and byways of this great, puke-inducing country we call America, visiting its police stations and ROTC buildings and legislative halls. And when the pigs finally catch up with me and dad hires a legal team to get me off on a technicality, it lets me know that yes, Bill, you can go home again.
I AM BILL. I may have started small. But I still have a crazy plan that one day I will make it big and finally plunge this danged country of ours into a bloody cataclysmic race war. And if you think you can stand in the way of my dream, or escape my escape-proof reeducation death camps, well, then you don't know me.
I AM BILL. I'm still married my to my college sweetheart, and we believe in family values. Especially Manson Family values. After all these years she still hands me my lunchbox at the door every morning, which she has packed with a chocolate kiss and a tiny pinch of Semtex from her hope chest. I can't imagine where I'd be without this woman and her law school salary. Because no matter what I accomplish in this world, this beautiful, insane bitch will always be the real psychopath in the house.
I AM BILL. I believe in upholding America's great traditions, like the Days of Rage and Wounded Knee the Haymarket Riots. Call me sentimental, but my heart still swells with pride whenever I see a Boy Scout color guard parading Old Glory down the street, and a young anarchist rips it away from the those fascists and starts it on fire.
I AM BILL. I fervently believe in educatiing all our children, whether they are Black like Mumia, or Asian like Pol Pot, or Palestinian like Sirhan Sirhan, or recovering whiteys like me. Children are our future. They need funding for programs in aboriginal physics and political consciousness, so they can rebuild the collectivist agrarian labor camp society that once made this country great.
I AM BILL. Unlike Joe the Plumber, I pay my taxes. Because I know that until the inevitable violent overthrow of the dystopian AmeriKKKan nightmare, taxes are the necessary price we all must pay for critical government services like roads, and ACORN, and my university pension. Plus according to my attorney it's harder to beat the rap on tax evasion.
I AM BILL. I love the Cubs. There's nothing I enjoy more than sitting in the grandstands of Wrigley Field sipping a cold one, dreaming of the day when my beloved Chicago People's Cubbies bring home the Castro trophy at the World Series of Socialist Peace and Beisbol. And, after the Yanquis are executed during 7th inning stretch, there will be free nationalized People's Budweiser for everybody. As we Cub fans say, "wait 'til next year!"
I AM BILL. I believe in helping young people -- especially those who show potential as innocuous, non-threatening front men. I work quietly behind the scenes helping them get a foot in the door, arranging entry-level jobs on foundation boards, hosting their political events, ghostwriting their memoirs. I don't do it for the glory. I do it for the quiet satisfaction of knowing that someday these young people might just grow up to be the vanguard of the permanent worker's revolution that will destroy the system from within, and that's all the thanks I need.
I AM BILL. I hate AmeriKKKa. Which you know, if you aren't blinded by false consciousness, means I actually love America -- because dissent is the highest form of patriotism, and bombs are the highest form of dissent. And if you don't like it, you can lump it, you fascist AmeriKKKa-loving America hater! America, hate it or leave it!
I AM BILL.
-----------------------------
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Barney Frank will not soon be named secretary of defense or, insha'Allah, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. So there's really no reason to fear that his recent call to cut defense spending by 25% is a harbinger of what to expect in an Obama administration.
APThen again, maybe there is.
When it comes to defense, there are two Barack Obamas in this race. There is the candidate who insists, as he did last year in an article in Foreign Affairs, that "a strong military is, more than anything, necessary to sustain peace"; pledges to increase the size of our ground forces by 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 Marines while providing them with "first-rate equipment, armor, incentives and training"; and seems to be as gung-ho for a surge in Afghanistan as he was opposed to the one in Iraq.
And then there is the candidate who early this year recorded an ad for Caucus for Priorities, a far-left outfit that wants to cut 15% of the Pentagon's budget in favor of "education, healthcare, job training, alternative energy development, world hunger [and] deficit reduction."
"Thanks so much for the Caucus for Priorities for the great work you've been doing," says Mr. Obama in the ad, before promising to "cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending . . . slow our development of future combat systems . . . not develop new nuclear weapons."
Joe Biden also cut an ad for the group that was even more emphatic: "I'll tell you what we cannot afford . . . a trillion-dollar commitment to 'Star Wars,' new nuclear weapons, a thousand-ship Navy, the F-22 Raptor."
Mr. Biden is right that we can't afford a thousand-ship Navy, not that anyone has proposed it. Current levels of funding don't quite suffice to operate 300 ships, or about half the number the U.S. had at the end of the Reagan arms buildup. The Navy would be satisfied with 313.
Current funding is also just adequate to purchase about 65 new planes for the Air Force each year, even as the average age of each plane creeps upward to nearly 24 years. Last year, the entire fleet of F-15Cs -- the Air Force's mainstay fighter -- was grounded after one of the planes came apart in midair. Spending on maintenance alone is up more than 80% from a decade ago. Is that another defense item Mr. Biden thinks we can't afford?
(As for nuclear weapons, the U.S. hasn't built a new warhead in decades. Its mainstay, the W76, is widely suspected of being unreliable, yet Congress has resisted funding the so-called Reliable Replacement Warhead.)
Maybe it seems odd that the Pentagon, whose budget for 2009 runs to well over $500 billion -- not including the supplemental $165 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan -- should struggle to afford the equipment it needs.
But it's not odd. We've been fighting two wars, straining people and equipment. Weapons have generally become more complex and expensive. President Clinton's "procurement holiday" punted the modernization problems to the present. And even after the Bush buildup, defense spending amounts to just 4% of gross domestic product. By contrast, at the nadir of Cold War defense spending under Jimmy Carter, the figure was 4.7%.
All this should argue for at least a modest recapitalization effort by an Obama administration, assuming it really believes a strong military is "necessary to sustain peace." A study by the Heritage Foundation makes the case that defense spending should rise to close to $800 billion over the next four years in order to stick to the 4% GDP benchmark. That's unrealistic in light of the financial crisis. But holding the line at current levels is doable -- and necessary.
But what if a President Obama doesn't actually believe in the importance of a strong military to keep the peace? Or has an attenuated idea of what qualifies as a "strong" military? Or considers military strength a luxury at a moment of financial crisis? Or thinks now is the moment to smash the Pentagon piggy bank to fund a second Great Society?
Does anyone really know where Mr. Obama's instincts lie? During the third debate, he cited former Marine Gen. James Jones as a member of his wise man's circle -- which was reassuring but odd, given that the general made a point of appearing at a McCain campaign event simply to distance himself from the Democratic candidate.
The Obama campaign has also produced a lengthy defense blueprint on its Web site. It reads more like a social manifesto, promising to "improve transition services," "make mental health a priority," and end "don't-ask, don't-tell." All very well, except the document is notably vague on naming the kinds of weapons systems Mr. Obama would actually support.
And so the question remains: If elected, which Obama do we get? The nuanced centrist or the man from Ben and Jerry's?
Some voters may like answers sometime before next Tuesday. Alternatively, they can click the button called "I'm Feeling Lucky."
Write to bstephens@wsj.com
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Oh and he forgets that B Frank also has already called for an immediate 25% cut in military spending.
Comments Obama's First 100 Days
by Patrick J. Buchanan
10/28/2008
Undeniably, a powerful tide is running for the Democratic Party, with one week left to Election Day.
Bush's approval rating is 27 percent, just above Richard Nixon's Watergate nadir and almost down to Carter-Truman lows. After each of those presidents reached their floors -- in 1952, 1974, 1980 -- the opposition party captured the White House.
Moreover, 80 percent to 90 percent of Americans think the nation is on the wrong course, and since mid-September, when McCain was still slightly ahead, the Dow has lost 4,000 points -- $5 trillion to $6 trillion in value. Continued
Leading now by eight points in an average of national polls, Barack Obama has other advantages.
Not a single blue state is regarded as imperiled or even a toss-up, while Obama leads in six crucial red states: Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Missouri and Colorado. Should McCain lose one of the six, he would have to win Pennsylvania to compensate for the lost electoral votes. But the latest Pennsylvania polls show Barack with a double-digit lead.
Lately moving into the toss-up category are Nevada, North Dakota, Montana and Indiana. All voted twice for George W. Bush.
Not only is Obama ahead in the state and national polls, he has more money, is running far more ads, has a superior organization on the ground, attracts larger crowds, and has greater enthusiasm and more media in camp. And new voter registrations heavily favor the Democrats.
Though Congress is regarded by Americans with a disdain bordering on disgust -- five of six Americans think it has done a poor job -- Democratic majorities are certain to grow. Indeed, with Democrats favored by 10 points over Republicans, Nancy Pelosi's majority could grow by 25 seats and Harry Reid could find himself with a filibuster-proof majority of 60 senators.
Democrats already have 49, plus two independents: Socialist Bernie Sanders and Independent Joe Lieberman. Their challengers are now ahead in New Hampshire, Virginia, North Carolina, New Mexico, Minnesota, Oregon and Colorado, with a chance of picking up Georgia, Alaska, Kentucky and Mississippi.
We may be looking at a reverse of 1980, when Reagan won a 10-point victory over Jimmy Carter, and Republicans took the Senate and, working with Boll Weevil Democrats, effective control of the House.
With his tax cuts, defense buildup and rollback policy against the "Evil Empire," Reagan gave us some of the best years of our lives, culminating in America's epochal victory in the Cold War.
What does the triumvirate of Obama-Pelosi-Reid offer?
Rep. Barney Frank is calling for new tax hikes on the most successful and a 25 percent across-the-board slash in national defense. Sen. John Kerry is talking up new and massive federal spending, a la FDR's New Deal. Specifically, we can almost surely expect:
-- Swift amnesty for 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens and a drive to make them citizens and register them, as in the Bill Clinton years. This will mean that Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona will soon move out of reach for GOP presidential candidates, as has California.
-- Border security will go on the backburner, and America will have a virtual open border with a Mexico of 110 million.
-- Taxes will be raised on the top 5 percent of wage-earners, who now carry 60 percent of the U.S. income tax burden, and tens of millions of checks will be sent out to the 40 percent of wage-earners who pay no federal income tax. Like the man said, redistribute the wealth, spread it around.
-- Social Security taxes will be raised on the most successful among us, and capital gains taxes will be raised from 15 percent to 20 percent. The Bush tax cuts will be repealed, and death taxes reimposed.
-- Two or three more liberal activists of the Ruth Bader Ginsberg-John Paul Stevens stripe will be named to the Supreme Court. U.S. district and appellate courts will be stacked with "progressives."
-- Special protections for homosexuals will be written into all civil rights laws, and gays and lesbians in the military will be invited to come out of the closet. "Don't ask, don't tell" will be dead.
-- The homosexual marriages that state judges have forced California, Massachusetts and Connecticut to recognize, an Obama Congress or Obama court will require all 50 states to recognize.
-- A "Freedom of Choice Act" nullifying all state restrictions on abortions will be enacted. America will become the most pro-abortion nation on earth.
-- Affirmative action -- hiring and promotions based on race, sex and sexual orientation until specified quotas are reached -- will be rigorously enforced throughout the U.S. government and private sector.
-- Universal health insurance will be enacted, covering legal and illegal immigrants, providing another powerful magnet for the world to come to America, if necessary by breaching her borders.
-- A federal bailout of states and municipalities to keep state and local governments spending up could come in December or early next year.
-- The first trillion-dollar deficit will be run in the first year of an Obama presidency. It will be the first of many.
Welcome to Obamaland!
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Mr. Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, "The Death of the West,", "The Great Betrayal," "A Republic, Not an Empire" and "Where the Right Went Wrong."
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http://andyrutledge.com/usagov-redux-fullsize.html
USA.gov post-Obama
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Well he already is showing signs of being an outright liar who duped the electorate. Now middle class is 120K per year.
I told my wife I better sell my arch coal stock. She said why. I said it isn't part of OBonomics. How the heck could W Virginia vote for this guy? They've been duped. I am worried this is just a small foreshadowing of what is to come. With regards to his phrase, "our time is come"? Exactly who is "our"? Is this some sort of code?
Coal official calls Obama comments 'unbelievable'
11/2/2008 4:37 PM
By Chris Dickerson -Statehouse Bureau
Obama
McCain
CHARLESTON - At least one state coal industry leader said he was shocked by comments Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama made earlier this year concerning his plan to aggressively charge polluters for carbon and greenhouse gas emissions.
"What I've said is that we would put a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else's out there," Obama said in a Jan. 17 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle that was made public today on the Web site newsbusters.org, which calls itself "the leader in documenting, exposing and neutralizing liberal media bias." The story later was linked on The Drudge Report.
An audio excerpt from the interview can be found at YouTube.
"I was the first to call for a 100 percent auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter," Obama continued. "That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants that are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted down caps that are being placed, imposed every year.
"So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted."
Calls and e-mails to West Virginia Obama campaign officials seeking a response for this story were not returned. But according to ABC News, an Obama spokesperson said the comments were taken out of context.
"The line they pulled out is in the context of cap and trade program," the spokesperson said. "The point Obama is making is that we need to transition from coal burning power plants built with old technology to plants built with advanced technologies -- and that is exactly the action that will be incentivized under a cap and trade program."
A spokeswoman for the Obama campaign in West Virginia replied to The Record's requests for comment with a quote from Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland about McCain's energy plan.
"After John McCain said he'd like to 'transition away from coal entirely,' his campaign is hardly in a position to criticize a coal state Senator like Barack Obama who has outlined a $150 billion investment in clean coal and other technologies to create jobs and build a new energy economy," Strickland said. "The truth is, John McCain and Sarah Palin can't name a single thing they'd do differently on the economy than George Bush, so all they have to offer is last minute, desperate distortions. Hardworking families don't need more Washington-style political attacks, they need a President who will create jobs and stand up for the middle class - and that's Barack Obama."
According to the West Virginia Office of Miners' Health, Safety and Training, the coal industry provides about 40,000 direct jobs in the state, including those for miners, mine contractors, coal preparation plant employees and mine supply company workers.
West Virginia is the second largest coal-producing state in the country behind Wyoming and accounts for about 15 percent of all coal production in the United States. The Mountain State leads the nation in underground coal production and leads the nation in coal exports with over 50 million tons shipped to 23 countries. West Virginia accounts for about half of U.S. coal exports.
In addition, the coal industry pays about $70 million in property taxes in the state annually, and the Coal Severance Tax adds about $214 million into West Virginia's economy. The coal industry payroll in the state is nearly $2 billion per year, and coal is responsible for more than $3.5 billion annually in the gross state product.
"The only thing I've said with respect to coal, I haven't been some coal booster," Obama said in the San Francisco Chronicle interview. "What I have said is that for us to take coal off the table as an ideological matter as opposed to saying if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it."
The senior vice president of the West Virginia Coal Association called Obama's comments "unbelievable."
"His comments are unfortunate," Chris Hamilton said Sunday, "and really reflect a very uninformed voice and perspective to coal specifically and energy generally."
Hamilton noted other times Obama and vice presidential candidate Joe Biden have made seemingly anti-coal statements.
"In Ohio recently, when Joe Biden said 'not here' about building coal-fired power plants -- this is exactly what will happen," Hamilton said. "Financing won't be directed here. It will all go aboard for plants elsewhere in the world. The United Sates is importing more coal today from Indonesia, South Africa and Colombia than we ever have.
"If we're going to create a situation where coal-fired power plants are at that much of a disadvantage, there will be new ones built. But as Biden said, just not here."
Republican presidential candidate John McCain's state director said Obama's statements are troubling, especially for West Virginians.
"I think this clearly shows the attitude the Obama-Biden ticket has toward coal," Ben Beakes said Sunday. "Rhetoric is cheap, but behind closed doors what they tell their supporters - that's what we have to take as gospel.
"They're definitely not friends of coal."
Beakes noted other examples of Obama and Biden making seemingly anti-coal statements, such as in February when Obama said he'd like to tax "dirty energy" such as coal and natural gas.
"And their cohorts in Congress make similar statements," Beakes said. "(Senate Majority Leader) Harry Reid (D-Nevada) said this summer that 'coal makes us sick.'
"This is an attitude and view that, to me, shows their hatred of coal. And therefore, their view would cost West Virginians thousands upon thousands of jobs."
Beakes touted McCain's view toward coal.
"John McCain has embraced coal," Beakes said. "He doesn't agree with everything in the coal industry, but his view of coal is positive. He will make it part of his energy policy. He's met with leaders in the coal industry and let them know that. He's sought advice from coal industry leaders.
"McCain understands that coal supports about 49 percent of our electricity in this country. He'll continue to make coal important. He wants to reduce our foreign dependency on oil."
Hamilton also said the Obama campaign needs to find varied sources for coal and energy advice.
"If they're victorious Tuesday, they'd better go to someone other than Al Gore on energy and environmental matters," he said. "They've tipped the balance way -- unnecessarily so -- toward protecting the environment."
Coal official calls Obama comments 'unbelievable'
Non-partisan judicial elections could be coming
Woman blames doctors for toddler son's death
McGraw, Obama in trouble in W.Va., poll shows
Va. woman sues trucking company for hit-and-run
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The 60 minutes article with BO was more interesting than I thought.
Nothing new but again it highilights what cans are up against. The only one on the can side in sight who could evn hold a intelligent debate with BO imo is Newt.
I guess the fact that 90% of the nations great universities professor are liberal makes it that much less likely that the cans will get truly thoughtful, reflective intellectuals to their side and to find one that can speak in a coherent rational manner is probably going to be rare.
Couple BO's ability to charm and sound sweet (while he is screwing half the nation) with his team of Clintonites who are masters of BS and spin and with an adoring MSM - well we get the picture - he is going to President for 8 years.
Even Bill Buckleys son is endeared by BOs intellectualistic style.
The cans have no one but Newt in the same league. And the Dems have the Clinton war machine waiting in the lurches just in case BO does learch so far to the left that he will lose support. But anyone who gets their hopes up on this is a fool imho. All his ideas will be tested and retested by polls, trial balloons, surveys, focus groups ala Clinton.
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As long time readers around here may remember, my great hope early in the past election was that Newt would run.
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I guess another brilliant guy who would have been able to go head to head was Colin Powell. But he never wanted to run and of course he is also, as we have just seen, both "had enough of Rebuplicans" and now enamored and charmed by the latest Lib Svengali.
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On this I agree with Chris Matthews on this. Many have been saying that BO is so wise to make Clinton his SOS and he will be taking out his chief Dem Political rival and control her and her team. I say the opposite. I say it *allows the Clintons to control BO* and keep in the game and the spotlight. We will see ad nauseum photo shoots and soundbites of her meeting with this foreign dignitary and fixing our relationship with them or sticking up for our interests blah blah blah. And Matthews against the apparant conventional wisdom agrees with me. I say NEVER underestimate the political gamemanship of the CLintons. Anytime they can be kept out do it. Thye will creep back like cancer otherwise. Never give them an inch because they never give an inch. And, I don't see what all this talk of her being such a great SOS is all about anyway. Again the Clinton spin. What are her credentials oversees that makes her so great?
****Celebrity Sightings Page Six Magazine Cartoon Popwrap Michael Riedel 'HARDBALL' GUY DERAILS HILLARY
Comments: 25Read Comments Leave a Comment November 18, 2008 --
"HARDBALL" host Chris Matthews and the other "castratos" at MSNBC shouldn't hold their breath waiting for a Hillary Clinton interview.
Matthews, who once opined that men who supported Clinton were "castratos in the eunuch chorus," forgot the cardinal rule for those who are often mentioned on Page Six - he didn't take a good look around on the Acela train from Philadelphia to Washington Saturday before he started bad-mouthing the New York senator.
Outrageous Political Impersonations Pop Video Quiz
An avowed Clinton lover who was sitting next to Matthews reports: "He was in business class wearing a red baseball hat that said Penn on the back, and the fat [bleep] fell asleep on the train and snored with his mouth open."
During the ride to DC, Matthews awoke from his nap. A fellow passenger asked him, "What's the news tomorrow?" - to which Matthews loudly started talking about President-elect Barack Obama possibly picking Hillary as his secretary of state.
"I don't understand it," Matthews bellowed. "Why would he pick her? I thought we were done with the Clintons. She'll just use it to build her power base. It's Machiavellian. And then we'll have Bill Clinton, too. I thought Obama didn't want drama. He's already got [chief of staff Rahm] Emanuel and [transition team leader John] Podesta. He'll have even more drama with her.
"She's just a soap opera. If he doesn't pick her, everyone will say she's been dissed again, we'll have to live through that again."
Matthews seems to be playing both sides of the fence. The host, who apologized to Clinton last year for claiming she got where she was because "her husband messed around," said on-air last Friday: "Look, I think that since she lost the fight for the nomination, [Clinton] has been not just a good soldier, she has sang the tune of [Obama]. She's been illustrious, she's been admirable . . . her spirit seems to be with him."
A rep for Clinton declined to comment while a rep for Matthews didn't return e-mails. ****
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CCP wrote: "I don't see what all this talk of her being such a great SOS is all about anyway. Again the Clinton spin. What are her credentials oversees that makes her so great?"
As First Lady she traveled to China and spoke out against women's rights abuses. Then she agreed to have all mention of that removed from her book for the Chinese translation in order to sell it a few million more books. How's that for backbone?
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Hillary's experience? :-P After she clusterfcuked her effort to socialize 14.7% of GDP, she was sent off to bake cookies, hide subpoenaed documents, and duck sniper fire :evil: And if she had met her responsibilities to slick the President's willie, maybe the whole Lewinsky saga would not have happened :lol:
More seriously now, IMHO this SOS thing is a head fake.
BO got ragged for not giving Hillary the respect of pretending to consider her for VP, so now he pretends to give her consideration here. If she takes it, she's under his thumb-- and she won't take it because to do so would mean that Bill would have to explain all kinds of shady money he has been receiving, so I seriously doubt she will take it.
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If she takes it, she's under his thumb-- and she won't take it because to do so would mean that Bill would have to explain all kinds of shady money he has been receiving, so I seriously doubt she will take it.
She'd also have to divest herself of financial interests that would give her an appearance of impropriety, and that would likely include any 2012 election mechanism. It was a cagey move on BHO's part, placate the Pumas, while giving Hillary the choice of either dismantling her political machine or STFU.
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Many Dealings of Bill Clinton Are Under Review
DON VAN NATTA Jr. and JO BECKER
NY Times
Published: November 17, 2008
Over the weekend, former President Bill Clinton enthusiastically endorsed the prospect that his wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, might join the Obama administration as secretary of state. “If he decided to ask her and they did it together,” the former president said, “I think she’ll be really great as a secretary of state.”
Mr. Clinton delivered those remarks at an international economic symposium in Kuwait City sponsored by the National Bank of Kuwait, which said the former president would “share with a select audience his perspective on the issues likely to shape the future prospects of the region.”
It is precisely that kind of paid speech, which Mr. Clinton delivered 54 times last year for a total of $10.1 million in fees, that has complicated the vetting process that Mrs. Clinton is undergoing by the Obama transition team. “Whatever happens or doesn’t happen is between Obama and her,” Mr. Clinton said.
That may be, but Mr. Clinton’s postpresidential life as a globe-trotting philanthropist, business consultant and speech-giver poses the highest hurdle for Mrs. Clinton to overcome if President-elect Barack Obama chooses to nominate her as secretary of state, according to aides of the Clintons and Mr. Obama.
The Obama transition team is focused on the wide array of Mr. Clinton’s postpresidential activities, some details of which have not been made public. This list includes the identity of most of the donors to his foundation, the source of some of his speaking fees — he has earned as much as $425,000 for a one-hour speech — and his work for the billionaire investor Ronald W. Burkle.
The vetting of Mr. Clinton’s myriad philanthropic and business dealings is “complicated, and it may be the complications that are causing hesitation on both sides,” said Abner J. Mikva, one of Mr. Obama’s closest supporters and a White House counsel during the Clinton administration. “There would have to be full disclosure as to who all were contributors to his library and foundation. I think they’d have to be made public.”
While aides to the president-elect declined Monday to discuss what sort of requirements would make it possible for Mrs. Clinton to serve as secretary of state, they said Mr. Obama would not formally offer her the job unless he was satisfied that there would be no conflicts posed by Mr. Clinton’s activities abroad.
Associates of the Clintons said that Mr. Clinton was likely to have to make significant concessions and that he was inclined to do so. Among other things, they said, he would probably have to agree not to take money for speeches from foreign businesses that have a stake in the actions of the American government. Another obvious issue, Democratic lawyers said, would be whether Mr. Clinton’s foundation should accept money from foreign governments, businesses or individuals for the foundation’s philanthropic activities and if it should disclose those donors publicly.
“The problem is it’s going to require some sacrifice by him,” said a former Clinton aide who is not involved in the discussions but did not want to be identified because the talks are confidential. “If he’s not willing to do that, it could blow up.”
One proposal, floated by Mr. Mikva and several other aides involved in the vetting process, would be for Mr. Clinton to separate himself from the activities of his foundation, including raising money.
“It’s not just what he does or says — it’s the fact that the foundation is involved with foreign countries, some of which might well be in conflict with U.S. policy,” Mr. Mikva said. “It’s more than a legal problem — there are ethical problems and appearance problems.”
Several longtime associates of the Clintons said the former president would be an asset to Mrs. Clinton if she were appointed secretary of state. The Obama administration “would be able to use Bill Clinton as the ultimate special envoy inside the tent,” one longtime associate said.
Since the former president established the William J. Clinton Foundation in 1998, it has raised more than $500 million, a sum that allowed him to build his steel-and-glass presidential library in Little Rock, Ark., and create the Clinton Global Initiative, which has done good deeds all over the world, including working to eradicate AIDS in Africa. Much of that money has been raised from foreign sources.
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Mr. Clinton is not required by law to identify the donors to his foundation, and this year he declined to name them. Last year, while Mrs. Clinton was seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, The New York Times compiled the first detailed list of 97 donors who gave or pledged a total of $69 million for the Clinton presidential library in the final years of his administration. The examination found that while some $1 million contributors were longtime Clinton friends, others were seeking policy changes from the administration. Two people pledged $1 million each while they or their companies were under investigation by the Clinton Justice Department.
The foundation has received contributions from the Saudi royal family, the king of Morocco, a foundation linked to the United Arab Emirates and the governments of Kuwait and Qatar.
In a statement, the foundation said at the time, “Donors did not seek, nor did President Clinton give, favors from the federal government,” adding that most of the contributions were made after Mr. Clinton left office. A spokesman for the foundation, Matt McKenna, declined to comment on Monday.
During Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign, the Clintons agreed to sell $11 million to $26 million worth of stock and pledged to liquidate holdings that had been in a blind trust. She said then that they wanted to avoid conflicts of interest.
In September, at his annual Clinton Global Initiative meeting, Mr. Clinton hosted more than two dozen foreign leaders, including Queen Rania of Jordan, President Shimon Peres of Israel and President Álvaro Colom of Guatemala.
Mr. Obama met Thursday in Chicago with Mrs. Clinton. Shortly after that, the process of looking into Mr. Clinton’s activities began, slowed in part because Mr. Clinton did not return to the United States until early Monday.
Several Democrats close to the Clintons said the former president’s activities should not be a disqualifier because the couple had been more open about their finances than past veterans of the White House, thanks to Senate disclosure requirements.
“They are arguably the most transparent former first couple in history,” said one Democratic official, who declined to be identified because the talks are confidential. “For eight years, they’ve been doing this.”
Lanny J. Davis, a longtime Clinton friend who said he was not speaking on the couple’s behalf, said he “completely rejects 100 percent” any suggestion that there was a conflict between Mr. Clinton’s work raising money for his foundation and the work Mrs. Clinton would be doing as the nation’s chief diplomat.
When the Clintons released their postpresidency tax returns in April, the documents showed the couple had earned $109 million after leaving the White House in January 2001. Most of it has come from book-writing and speaking fees, a sum that accounts for nearly $92 million, including a $15 million advance from Mr. Clinton’s best-selling autobiography, “My Life.”
The returns also showed that Mr. Clinton had collected at least $12.6 million since 2002 from his work as an adviser to Mr. Burkle, whose Yucaipa Companies have invested money for the Dubai government and acquired a stake in a Chinese media company.
The former president helped drum up business for several domestic and foreign investment funds in Yucaipa’s portfolio, although precisely what Mr. Clinton did is unknown.
Beyond Mr. Clinton’s work for his foundation and his foreign business dealings, there is also the unique issue of having a secretary of state whose husband is a former president. During her campaign, Mrs. Clinton said if she were elected president, she would appoint Mr. Clinton as a “roving global ambassador.”
But if Mrs. Clinton were to be nominated as secretary of state, potential conflicts could occur if Mr. Clinton continued to serve as a traveling emissary of the United States. It is unknown whether he would be asked to curtail speaking out on foreign policy matters or, if asked, if he would be willing to do so.
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***If she takes it, she's under his thumb-- and she won't take it because to do so would mean that Bill would have to explain all kinds of shady money he has been receiving, so I seriously doubt she will take it.***
Why are the Clinton contributions to be so well scrutinized if she becomes SOS?
Why Bo has received hundreds of millions from donars we know nothing about. Because he didn't accept Federal campaign contribtutions he doesn't have to report his donors?
Does anyone think many of these monies didn't come from overseas?
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From Howard Kurtz' surprising article. Surprising because he documents quite clearly to a degree I never noticed him to do before how the MSM is and was biased for BO. Of course I haven't made a study out of Kurtz' writings but everytime I have seen him review alleged bias by the MSM like the NYT he always seems to eventually conclude at the end that there was NO bias.
In this article he would agree that journalism is on hold. Although I agree more with O'Reilly that it is gone forever as we knew it. (Unless the repubs ever win back power :wink:)
But this part of Kurtz article I don't get:
***Bush, whose ego was threatened by any outburst of excellence in his vicinity, politicized all policymaking and centralized it in the White House. Obama, happily, has the opposite tendencies. He is intellectually confident, enjoys engaging with ideas, and inclines to pragmatism rather than partisanship. He can handle a Lincolnesque 'Team of Rivals' or a FDR-style brain trust. And he's going to need one.***
BO "inclines to pragmatism rather than partisanship"?
Why wasn't BO judged to be the MOST liberal and party loyal Senator? There is nothing in his political background to suggest he has been anything other than a party hack. Though of course he has denied it during his presidential campaign.
And as far as Linconesque cabinet? What I recall Lincoln did as written by the historians I've read decades ago was to pick men he thought were *the best qualified* for the job and not necessarily political rivals that would be taken out of the competition for his 1864 re-election bid.
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**Attention SB Mig, this is what I was talking about when referring to leftist indoctrination centers**
How the Academic Left Elected Obama
By Dr. Paul Kengor
American Thinker | Thursday, November 20, 2008
Of all the reasons why America voted the way it did on November 4, one factor stands out: young people and first-time voters turned out and voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama.
MSNBC's exit polling, which is consistent with other exit polling, showed that voters aged 18-29, who made up nearly one in five voters -- or about 25 million ballots -- went for Obama by more than two to one: 66 to 32 percent. Those voters alone well exceeded Obama's overall popular vote advantage, which was roughly eight million. Likewise, 11 percent of voters were first-time voters, and they went for Obama at an even higher rate: 69 to 30 percent. Single (unmarried) voters, which constituted one in three voters, went for Obama 65 to 33 percent.
While these categories are not monolithic, and overlap, they capture the current generation of college students, who clearly went bonkers for Barack Obama. Why? What are they learning -- and not learning?
These youth live and learn on college campuses where "diversity" and "tolerance" and "multiculturalism" -- bogus buzzwords that apply only to ethnic, gender, and sexual diversity, not genuine diversity of ideas -- reign supreme. Racial diversity is at the crux of this academic trinity, the source and summit of the faith. It is the molten, golden calf, where much of the intelligentsia and their disciples gather to worship. Political correctness has supplanted traditional religion.
Thus, when the university community was presented with Barack Obama, a charismatic, impressive, seemingly excellent Democratic presidential candidate -- who happened to be African-American -- the reaction was nearly reverential, bordering on idolatry. The good senator's bracing radical associations -- enough to deny any other American a security clearance -- and which were not coincidental to a man ranked the most leftist member of the most leftist Senate in U.S. history, didn't matter to the academic world. Quite the contrary, those who dared to point out these associations -- FoxNews, talk-radio, the McCain-Palin ticket -- were deemed loathsome Neanderthals deserving of being burned in effigy from the nearest dorm.
That brings me to another factor in this milieu: McCain-Palin. Neither John McCain nor Sarah Palin resonated with this gang. Given the prevailing orthodoxy in the academic asylum, John McCain's moving personal narrative of military valor had little impact on the college crowd. That McCain was tortured by communists for six years didn't matter much to these people -- the same individuals who endeavor to boot ROTC from their campuses. And as for Sarah Palin, she represented the worst of pariahs at the faculty club: an evangelical so consistently, comically pro-life that she chose to do what 90 percent of women don't do when they're informed of a prenatally diagnosed Down syndrome child -- she delivered the baby. The feminine Palin is seen as an ideological ogre -- an eagerly acceptable target for a torrent of bigotry by the open-minded professoriate and its acolytes.
This is the atmosphere in which these young people are being educated. That's what they're learning. Equally crucial to this election, however, is what college students are not learning:
As I noted earlier, Americans don't care about Barack Obama's radical past, including his links to the likes of Bill Ayers, Frank Marshall Davis, and Saul Alinsky, because of the failure of our educational system to teach the lessons of the Cold War and horrors of communism. This is especially true of higher education, where the leftist worldview is so extreme and so upside down that America's professors share a hearty contempt not for communism but for anti-communism.
Think about this: The current generation of college students was born after the fall of the Berlin Wall. These modern products of elite education are not Reagan babies. They were not inspired by the Westminster Address of June 1982, by the Evil Empire speech of March 1983, by Reagan meeting with Pope John Paul II to topple communism in Eastern Europe throughout the 1980s, or by Reagan in front of the Brandenburg Gate in 1987, demanding that Mikhail Gorbachev tear down that cement tombstone to human freedom. No, today's freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors, who voted for the first time on November 4, 2008, were born after these historic events. They've received their education on communism from their professors, which means they've received either no education at all on the unparalleled slaughter formally known as Marxism-Leninism, or, to the contrary, they've heard only dark, dire lectures about the malevolence of anti-communism -- of McCarthyism.
A deliciously fitting -- albeit depressing -- symbol of this came at the very moment that Obama's coronation was announced by the networks. A FoxNews camera-crew was outside the White House, where a contingent of hysterical students from George Washington University hopped up and down in sheer ecstasy. This was a most appropriate image, in light of the fact that it was such voters who delivered the presidency to Obama. I was struck, however, by the conspicuous presence of a beaming student wearing a red t-shirt with a giant Soviet hammer and sickle. No doubt, the young revolutionary was thrilling at the spectacle, awe-struck amid this sea of what his mentor, Vladimir Lenin, considered "useful idiots" -- i.e., naïve liberals incapable of realizing when they are supporting the communists' intentions.
Ironically, the dupes of, say, the 1950s, would have recognized the young Bolshevik for who he was, but I seriously doubt that the typical student in that crowd had any idea of the true loyalties of their comrade, or sensed that they were celebrating arm-in-arm with a Marxist: Hammer-and-sickle? What's that?
What's more, I would bet $100 that if some disgruntled conservative within the throng yelled out, "Hey, that guy is a communist!" one of the well-trained university brethren would have quickly denounced the conservative -- the anti-communist -- as the real villain in the mix. They have been carefully trained to view Joe McCarthy as more insidious than Joe Stalin.
This is an abbreviated way of explaining why Barack Obama's communist connections didn't matter in this election, and how the Ivory Tower paved the road to victory. We won the Cold War but seem to have lost the long-term, crucial ideological struggle at home. We lost not on the battlefield but in the classroom. On November 4, it finally came back to bite us, and at a time (economically and politically) that couldn't be worse.
Finally, I should add that I've received emails in the last couple of weeks from distraught conservative parents saddened to learn that their college-student children voted for Obama. They shouldn't be surprised; sadly, these parents have unwittingly paid for precisely this. In the vast majority of the nation's colleges, this is what their children are learning at a cost of the parents' lifetime savings. I'm reminded of the statement from the late atheist philosopher Richard Rorty, who said that the job of professors like him was "to arrange things so that students who enter as bigoted, homophobic religious fundamentalists will leave college with views more like our own" and "escape the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents."
This has been the personal mission of many professors for decades now -- in flagrant violation of the scandalously fraudulent mission statements of the colleges where they teach. They've been enormously successful. The left's gradual takeover of academia is complete -- the Long March a stunning success. Behold: the presidency of the United States of America.
The fruits of the left's dogged work were on display on November 4, 2008. And now, alas, to paraphrase the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, America's chickens have come home to roost.
Paul Kengor is author of God and George W. Bush (HarperCollins, 2004), professor of political science, and executive director of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. His latest book is The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan's Top Hand (Ignatius Press, 2007).
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Glad that's an opinion piece, because there are no facts to back up any of the claims made. The points he makes are painted with such broad strokes as to be laughable. As a brief point of reference, he mentions "Rev. Wright's" quote of "chickens coming home to roost". Sorry professor, the quote is Malcolm X's, and used even before Malcolm.
The author links the teaching of tolerance, racial diversity, and multiculturalism to the overwhelming youth backing of Barack Obama. Completely ridiculous. And with not basis in statistical, polled, or even quoted fact.
I find the article to be a perfect example of the generational divide that lost the election. The author's main point seems to that the lack of teaching about the Cold War is what caused students to veer towards Obama.
Just a few quotes and a slightly humorous breakdown (from the POV of a college student):
FoxNews, talk-radio, the McCain-Palin ticket -- were deemed loathsome Neanderthals deserving of being burned in effigy from the nearest dorm.
I don't watch Fox, 'cuz it ain't funny. And who listens to talk radio besides your crazy Uncle Frank?
Given the prevailing orthodoxy in the academic asylum, John McCain's moving personal narrative of military valor had little impact on the college crowd.
No sh*t. None of us are in the military and most of us have spent our formative years hearing nothing but war, war, war. F*ck war dudes, I just wanna play it on my computer.
And as for Sarah Palin, she represented the worst of pariahs at the faculty club
I don't hang out at the faculty club, unless I'm kissing ass for a grade.
But back to the adults:
Finally, I should add that I've received emails in the last couple of weeks from distraught conservative parents saddened to learn that their college-student children voted for Obama
. I find this sentence to be the most telling. Change the last word to Kennedy, or Carter, or Dukakis, or Kerry. Generational divide. Wake up, kids don't always follow in their parents footsteps. And rarely is it due to Professor XYZ's class. It has more to do with their social groups. Or maybe they like to do things their own way. Who knows these days? Darn kids...
Guess what? Theses kids were born post-Cold War. Post Reagan. Post Vietnam. Post Weather Underground. The have ZERO frame of reference and it does not effect their lives in a visible, tangible way. And the older generations need to realize that, and FAST. These kids don't care about your 20, 30, 40 year old historical political battles. Period. They often don't care about what their professors say in class. Period. McCain was a POW in Vietnam. And? I was 4 years old during the Gulf War grandpa. Give me something I can relate to, like say, an XBOX and Facebook.
It's not about indoctrination. It's about a several generations (beginning with Generation X) having lifestyles free of strife, poverty, want, or any type of real fear (unless you count your cable going out). So none of that depressing b.s. resonates. Not trying to be glib, but that is the reality of the world we live in now with respect to the younger generation.
You're in college, you've never really had to work, your parents have given you everything you need, your life is pretty good. Here comes an election:
Candidate 1 - Young, charismatic, well spoken, wants to be my friend on Facebook, text messages me updates on his campaign, has a kick ass webpage. He talks about hope, how together we can do this. He shoots hoop and uses a Blackberry. His running mate is a creepy old dude, but he's not running for president right?
Candidate 2 - Old guy. Like, my grandfathers age. Doesn't use email, no facebook. something about the Vietnam War (what's that?), plays country music at his rallies. He constantly talks sh*t about the young guy, and doesn't try to include me in his plan for the future. "My friends!" Dude, I don't want to be friends with an old dude. Plus, his running mate is one of those weird evangelical chicks who shoots guns.
Pretty easy choice for the kids. It has nothing to do with indoctrination. It has everything to do with presentation to this generation.
And that is what the 'cans are still failing to realize. You are dealing with a generation raised on presentation, the internet, and "reality" television. Not an indoctrinated populace. If anything they are an apathetic populace. The percentage of kids in college classrooms that are fervently involved in the process is very low my friend. Most just want to pass class and get to the keg. It's a vacuous, uninvolved, uninspired generation. If people try to indoctrinate them, they nod their hand, grab the pamphlet and use it as a coaster. Had the 'Cans figured out a way to reach this generation, they would have won the election.
To this generation, Obama is like the cool P.E. teacher who let you hang out in his office. McCain was the grumpy shop teacher who wouldn't let you work on your own projects.
Sadly, it is nothing more than that.
I find the indoctrination argument puzzling. And usually put forward by people who spend little to no time with college students. They seem to think that professors hold some kind of hypnotic power of the current generation of students. They have visions of slack jawed students, chanting Communist party slogans in History class. In reality, the slack jaw comes from too many bong loads, and the chanting is just a techno refrain pumping through someone's iPod.
These kids are just as likely to shoot you a blank stare at the mention of the Cold War and Communism as they are the Beatles and Bobby Kennedy. They just can't be bothered. Ranting liberal professors are referred to as weird old hippies, and conservative professors are referred to as just plain boring. College is about the party more than any other thing.
Save politics for that paper that's due tomorrow and pass the brewski.
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Perfect example, for you. One of the students that works for me just send out a mass email, the title of which is:
"These political surveys are annoying but please fill it out so I can get a good grade"
And I'm not joking this time.
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SB:
Post 408 was pretty good :-)
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Very well said, SB.
I'll admit the last time I was in a classroom (aside from law enforcement training) was in the 90's. However, when I was there, I had firsthand exposure to the holy trinity of "race, class and gender" theory, postmodernism and indoctrination. I also have a personal historical connection to a "name" school because of a gf that was working on her postgraduate degrees at that school when we were together.
Do you question that the left dominates academia and is far from balanced in it's presentation of ideas? What of "speech codes" and other such Orwellian thought-policing?
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The left definitely dominates academia, but domination does not necessarily lead to indoctrination or even results. As for balance, I am convinced that it is nowhere to be found, and possible unachievable. The best and worst thing about this country is that everyone is allowed an opinion. No opinion or belief is ever going to make everyone happy. And the trenches on both sides are so deep that I can't imagine how to breach the gap.
As for speech codes, I find them to be a direct result of the rise of political correctness, and appalling. As an adult, or even a child, you should be able to learn how to express yourself in a clear, concise manner without resorting to inflammatory language. Doesn't always work, but it's not a perfect world. But by no means should anyone tell me, or anyone else how to express themselves. Especially through some kind of code. The hypocrisy of liberal groups chanting down speakers or disrupting lectures is not only embarrassing, but infuriating. And the eye-rolling condescension often exhibited by the right makes me just as crazy. Free speech is for everyone, not just "your" side. (by "your side" i mean whatever side you may be on)
I remember quite clearly a time (1970s and early '80s) where certain words, expressions, subject matter where openly used and or discussed in both the public square and especially on television. People knew which words or actions were bad, but were willing to have a serious interaction in regards to them or how they were presented. Those days are long gone. As my wife says, "People can't hack it anymore." I watched Blazing Saddles a few weeks ago, and though to myself "People would riot in the streets if you made a movie like this now...if you could get the financing for it." When I read opinion pieces written by those "oppressed" classes (pick your minority/majority group) complaining about their poor treatment it makes me want to laugh.
We live in a country where people are allowed to express themselves. They might think differently than you and you might not like it. That's o.k. You get to voice your opinion without getting dragged into the street and shot. Sounds like a good deal to me, so what's the beef?
Sorry, off course....
I have found the people involved in serious political agitation/education on campuses (including where I work) are usually in the minority. They have their fervent minions on both sides. But the large student body is more concerned with other things.
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Hillary for SOS. :-P The soap opera never ends. I was afraid of this. The MSM loves this. They will be drooling over every step, every breath, every word, every momnet of silence, every expression. She will look so *glamorous*, so *smart and witty*, she can do no wrong and yes the drama of her relationship with Barack. The endless torture of talk from the MSM.
Of course I could just watch NFL and MMA sports. :lol:
BO and HRC will be turned into some sort of epic movie drama -
Like Caesar and Cleopatra, a Black Samson and an ugly Delilah. Or Mr and Ms Messiah both here to save the world.
I wish I could just retire and go to Montana or Idaho somewhere where there are no TVs radios or newspapers.
Do they need doctors in Figi?
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Actually, yes, they need doctors in Fiji.
It's also one of the occupations that they welcome from abroad with open arms.
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Before he’s sworn in
The Supreme Court of the United States is about to consider a lawsuit alleging that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. If that were true, he would not qualify to serve as president. Sounds like an outlandish hoax, doesn’t it?
That’s what I thought when I first saw a copy of a lawsuit back in October, one of several it turns out, charging that Obama’s birth records were falsified and he is not eligible to run for president in the US. Which is why it seemed natural that his campaign would ignore it altogether, which they did. So did the media, though the lawsuits circulated widely.
Former Ambassador Alan Keyes, who ran against Obama for the Senate seat from Illinois, joined the suit. Okay, the story had legs. Should be easy to put to rest, right? After all, the Obama campaign had been so good at shutting down rumors and smear tactics before the election. And this only required a mere show of his actual birth records.
So why are they locked in a vault in Hawaii? People are asking, they have been asking, and are about to go public with their concerted effort to get answers.
Mr. Obama is respectfully requested to direct the Hawaiian officials to provide access to his original birth certificate on December 5-7 by our team of forensic scientists, and to provide additional documentary evidence establishing his citizenship status prior to our Washington, D.C. press conference on December 8.
A First Amendment Petition to any official of the Government for Redress of a violation of the Constitution is substantially different from the garden-variety political petitions frequently received by government officials. This Petition demands it be given the highest priority for an expedited review and official Response by Mr. Obama.
As a formal “Notice of a Constitutional Violation,” the Petition naturally includes the People’s inherent Right to an official Response. As a time-sensitive, election related Petition involving the Office of the President, failure to Respond as requested would constitute an egregious breach of the public trust and confirm the certainty of a Constitutional crisis.
This is no joke, and it’s not a hoax.
Today’s Chicago Tribune reports that the case is headed to the Supreme Court. The Justices will decide tomorrow whether to hear it, or dismiss the question of whether or not the newly elected president of the United States is actually…eligible to be.
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IF the Supreme Court decides to hear it, it might get interesting. But everything I have read seems to think the Supreme Court will simply
decline to hear the case. The theory being that the Court is reluctant to overturn the "will of the people". And if they decline, the matter
for all practical purposes is over. Hopefully, Monday, this matter will be resolved.
I am curious, if Obama is declared ineligible does Biden get the nod? Or?
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The law is the law and the Constitution is the supreme law of the land.
Obviously utter chaos would reign, but do we look the other way?
As to what would happen, my guess is that it would be thrown into the House of Representatives , , , the same as if no one had enough electoral votes.
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Jeebus Xmas Key-rist, will you people stop already?!?!?!?!?
http://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/stories/2008/10/27/daily60.html (http://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/stories/2008/10/27/daily60.html)
Verified. Real. American. Period.
Here's some more for ya:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/12/05/birth_certificate/ (http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/12/05/birth_certificate/)
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As much as I'd love for Obama to be ineligible to be president, I have no doubt he was born in Hawaiii, thus is going to be sworn in 1/20/09.
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SB:
"Today’s Chicago Tribune reports that the case is headed to the Supreme Court. The Justices will decide tomorrow whether to hear it".
I had this matter mentally filed under case closed, but when I saw that the Supreme Court was considering hearing it I thought it newsworthy. That's all.
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Today the Supreme Court declined to hear this case. Hopefully, this matter is now put to bed.
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The document is in perfect order because one person, the director of the Hawaii Dept. of Health has seen and verified it and so that's that. I think JDN has it right that the will of the people has already been expressed, also that no real evidence otherwise exists and so the mortals of the court aren't going to go anywhere near this.
That said, I would find it to be a wonderful irony if this man who had his first opponent removed from a ballot for not having her documents in order found his own name removed from reelection in 2012 for the same reason, with real evidence and prior to the will of the people being expressed.
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Probably no accident the revelations about the Illinois governer coming out now before W leaves office.
You know once BO is in office this will all get swept under the rug. I wonder if this has something to do with the Eric Holder pick?
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What a shocking idea-- I'm shocked, absolutely shocked!
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For the RNC, What Kind of 'Conservative'?
The race for the GOP party chairmanship has now jelled. Some 168 members of the Republican National Committee will make their selection from a half-dozen candidates at their meeting in Washington D.C. on January 29.
All of the candidates claim to be conservative, all insist that the party has to compete in states outside its Southern and Western bases, and all agree that the party needs to rediscover its basic principles.
But there are variations in approach.
Mike Duncan, the current RNC chairman, is running a low-key campaign touting his technocratic skills and taking some credit for the party's successes in Georgia and Louisiana runoff elections this month. Michael Steele, a former lieutenant governor of Maryland who is a frequent guest on Fox News, is a little more moderate on social issues than some of the other candidates, saying that Republican Congressional leaders misjudged the mood of the country when they pressed for a federal solution in the case of Terri Schiavo, a comatose woman who was allowed to die in accord with her husband's wishes. Mr. Steele has a good headstart in building support among Republicans who like his direct style and smooth television presence.
Other candidates include: Former Tennessee Republican Chairman Chip Saltsman, who made many contacts this year while managing Mike Huckabee's presidential campaign and is seen as someone in accord with the former Arkansas governor's populist pitch; Saul Anuzis, the chair of the Michigan GOP, who appeals to many Northeastern Republicans who say that the party needs to get away from its over-reliance on support in Southern states; and Katon Dawson, the current chair of the South Carolina party, who says the party can't afford geographic snobbery and is sending out a slick DVD touting his achievements in building a state party.
Last week, a new entrant joined the field. Ken Blackwell, a former state treasurer and secretary of state in Ohio who was his party's gubernatorial candidate in 2006, sent a letter to all RNC members. He calls for returning the party to its Reaganite roots and touts internal reform at the RNC, including "spending smarter, replacing staff and consultants and modernizing our fundraising infrastructure." Mr. Blackwell is the favorite of many movement conservatives, having served on the boards of the National Rifle Association, the National Taxpayers Union and the Club for Growth.
But this will be no conventional election. RNC members are concerned not just with the big picture but also with two very parochial issues: Members want somebody who will keep them personally in the loop on what's happening inside the party, and they also recognize the need for a good manager to keep on top of the sprawling Republican National Committee army of staff members and consultants.
"It's fair to say that the Republican Party has a habit of retaining old consultants and old Beltway players for far too long," one RNC member told me. "We saw the benefit the Obama campaign got by getting some fresh blood for their campaign versus the sluggish response of the retreads around Hillary Clinton. I think the candidate who is most likely to win is the one who will solve the party's 'staff infection.'"
-- John Fund
That Immigration Dog Don't Hunt
National and Louisiana Democrats pulled out all the stops in trying to elect longtime Shreveport District Attorney Paul Carmouche to Congress last Saturday. They touted Mr. Carmouche's anti-crime record and ran ads attacking Republican John Fleming, a physician, for advocating a private alternative to Social Security. Barack Obama taped a radio ad calling on voters to send Mr. Carmouche to Washington so he could back the Obama agenda.
But Democrats also made a blatant attempt to poach conservative votes from Mr. Fleming by attacking him on the immigration issue. Earlier this year, Dr. Fleming spoke in favor of allowing easier entry for foreigners with valid work permits and expressed general support for legal immigration: "We will welcome the positive contributions that they can make to our society. We will encourage them to [pursue] the American dream. And when they become citizens, we will gladly call them our fellow Americans."
Mr. Carmouche claimed Mr. Fleming's position was tantamount to wanting to bring more illegal immigrants into the U.S. "We certainly don't need to bus illegal aliens into the country, to take jobs that belong to Americans," he said in a recent debate. He told voters that on immigration, he was "completely in opposition to my opponent, John Fleming."
Mr. Fleming evenly responded that he supported strict enforcement of border controls, but bravely added that a policy that focused only on enforcement could only go so far. "Just simply deporting [people] is not going to solve the problem," he told voters.
In the end, voters had a clear choice. The final outcome was very close, but in a very anti-Republican year and running a handpicked centrist candidate, Democrats still lost. The lesson appears to be one that more than a few Republican candidates have learned in recent years: While a hard line on immigration may poll well, its concrete political benefits at the ballot box remain elusive.
-- John Fund
Quote of the Day I
"We've never seen anything like [Barack Obama's campaign organization] in this country. They have 4 million contributors, but they have several million more people who are on their e-mail lists. That's just a very, very powerful base for grassroots lobbying . . . We probably put too much weight on [having 60 Democratic votes for a filibuster-proof Senate majority] and not enough weight on the fact that a lot of Republicans, I think, either genuinely want to cooperate or are going to be fearful of the political consequences of not cooperating with President Obama in a period like this. So I think you'll see Arlen Specter, Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and even some more conservative Republicans -- John McCain, for example, on issues like torture and Guantanamo could end up being a real ally of the new president" -- Democratic strategist and former John Kerry campaign manager Bob Shrum, in a Q&A with National Journal's XM Radio show.
Quote of the Day II
"On November 10, in a lengthy telephone call with numerous advisors that included discussion about Blagojevich obtaining a lucrative job with a union-affiliated organization in exchange for appointing a particular Senate Candidate whom he believed was favored by the President-elect and which is described in more detail below, Blagojevich and others discussed various ways Blagojevich could 'monetize' the relationships he has made as governor to make money after leaving that office . . . . Throughout the intercepted conversations, Blagojevich also allegedly spent significant time weighing the option of appointing himself to the open Senate seat and expressed a variety of reasons for doing so, including: frustration at being 'stuck' as governor; a belief that he will be able to obtain greater resources if he is indicted as a sitting Senator as opposed to a sitting governor; a desire to remake his image in consideration of a possible run for President in 2016; avoiding impeachment by the Illinois legislature; making corporate contacts that would be of value to him after leaving public office; facilitating his wife’s employment as a lobbyist; and generating speaking fees should he decide to leave public office"-- from a Justice Department press release today announcing the arrest of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his chief of staff John Harris on federal corruption charges.
Kozying Up with the Dalai Lama
President Nicolas Sarkozy has been regaining lost ground in the French polls, despite the global financial crisis and France's rising unemployment and personal controveries. Over the weekend, he further bolstered his popularity with a risky but crowd-pleasing move: meeting the Dalai Lama.
Mr. Sarkozy's sit-down on Saturday in Gdansk, Poland was his first meeting with the Tibetan spiritual leader, who was in Poland to attend a gathering of Nobel Laureates. China's reaction was the usual fit of pique, which French Minister for Human Rights Rama Yade described as a "psychodrama." Not only did Beijing cancel a trade summit that was supposed to take place in Lyons on December 1. An editorial in the People's Daily denounced Mr. Sarkozy as "stubborn" and called his move "provocative and dangerous." The paper added: "He must pay for it."
"I am free to decide on my agenda as president of the French Republic," Mr. Sarkozy told reporters in response. "I represent values, convictions."
In this case, he also represented Europe's love affair with the Dalai Lama. In April, pro-Tibet protesters attacked the Olympic torch as it relayed through Paris. And last week, in honor of the Dalai Lama's visit, some 30 members of the European Parliament fasted for a day to greet his arrival.
But trade is important too. And more worrisome than the fulminating of the Chinese-language People's Daily may have been Beijing's English-language paper, China Daily, which warned darkly that the spat might hurt the image of such French brands as the Carrefour supermarket chain and Louis Vuitton luxury goods, both of which do good business on the mainland.
Having earned his bouquets for meeting the Dalai Lama, Mr. Sarkozy on Monday quickly tried to limit the damage by dispelling any notion that he was stirring up Tibetan separatism, saying there is "only one China."
-- Leslie Hook
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Probably no accident the revelations about the Illinois governer coming out now before W leaves office.
You know once BO is in office this will all get swept under the rug. I wonder if this has something to do with the Eric Holder pick?
Actually It seems likely to me that the Obama team wanted this taken care off before he got in office and there are rumors to that effect . All Chicago politicians are being smeared with this but Obama specifically hasn't be getting bad press and Blagojevich himself said they wouldn't give him anything for the seat.
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http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=20CAE797-18FE-70B2-A8BFE802A4A48E3A
In scandal, risks for Obama
By: Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin
December 10, 2008 08:31 AM EST
At first blush, Barack Obama comes out of the Rod Blagojevich scandal smelling like a rose. The prosecutor at a news conference seemed to give the president-elect a seal of approval, and the Illinois governor himself was caught on tape complaining that Obama was not interested in crooked schemes.
But make no mistake: The Blagojevich scandal is nothing but a stink bomb tossed at close range for Obama and his team.
Legal bills, off-message headlines, and a sustained attempt by Republicans to show that Obama is more a product of Illinois’s malfeasance-prone political culture than he is letting on—all are likely if the Blagojevich case goes to trial or becomes an extended affair.
Obama and his aides have so far mounted a tight-lipped defense, publicly distancing themselves from Blagojevich’s alleged plans to profit personally from his power to fill Obama’s newly vacant Senate seat with firm but vague denials of any involvement.
Privately, Obama allies are noting that the foul-mouthed governor and the president-elect, though both Democrats atop the Illinois power structure, are hardly close: Obama did not back Blagojevich in his 2002 primary race for governor, and Blagojevich did not back Obama in his 2004 Senate primary.
Republicans, though, plan to keep the pressure on. Republican National Chairman Robert “Mike” Duncan on Tuesday said Obama’s initial response to questions about the governor was inadequate. South Carolina GOP Chairman Katon Dawson, seeking the national party post, went further. He called on Obama to release any records of discussions between his transition team and Blagojevich about Obama’s successor – citing Obama’s oft-repeated pledge for greater transparency.
And, in a Politico interview, Illinois state Republican chairman Andy McKenna, pressed Obama to commit to keeping U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald in his post until the corruption cases run their course.
One prominent Chicago Democrat close to many of those named in the indictment suggested the risk for Obama is “Whitewater-type exposure.” That was a reference to an Arkansas real estate deal that produced a series lengthy and highly intrusive investigations in the 1990s that never proved illegality by the Clintons.
What this Democrat meant with his analogy—which on the facts so far seems a bit premature—was that Obama could suffer by being in the proximity of a back-scratching and deal-making culture, even if he was mostly a bystander. “What will splatter on to Obama is he is to some degree a product of this culture, and he has never entirely stood against it,” said the Democrat, who wanted anonymity for fear of antagonizing the president-elect.
Indeed, at a minimum it will be hard for a transition team that wants to shine a light on their plans to clean up Washington if the steaming compost pile of Illinois politics— and its florid tradition of bribes, extortion, and payback—is in the news.
But there are less obvious hazards. Anyone who has ever been near a public corruption case—and many of Obama’s top advisers have, thanks to their experience in the Clinton years—knows the hassles that can torment even innocent people. Even peripheral figures wind up hiring expensive lawyers. At trial, testimony by minor witnesses becomes a major news event if it is someone close to the president taking the stand.
Prosecutor Fitzgerald pointed out during questions and answers at his news conference that “there's no reference in the complaint to any conversation involving the president-elect or indicating that the president-elect was aware of it.”
Obama advisers argue that Blagojveich's alleged crimes -- extorting campaign contributions from a children's hospital, demanding the firing of the top editors at the Chicago's flagship newspaper in return for state assistance -- are so over-the-top that they speak for themselves, and will only serve to taint the disgraced governor.
Obama aides see proof of his vindication in the fact that Blagojevich, in the secret tapes, complains that the president-elect’s team won’t give him anything. Obama emerged personally untarnished in the 78-page Blagojevich complaint. He was, to the allegedly deeply corrupt governor, the “mother***er” who was owed no favors and a lily-livered reformer who, instead of a bribe, wouldn’t give the disgusted Blagojevich “anything except appreciation.”
But there are enough unanswered questions to give his political opponents plenty of grist, starting with Obama’s curt denial that he had ever spoken to Blagojevich about how to fill Obama’s vacant seat.
His chief political adviser, David Axelrod, Tuesday corrected his own suggestion last month that Obama and Blagojevich had spoken about filling Obama’s vacant seat. Spokespeople did not respond to a question of when Obama and Blagojevich last spoke, and about what.
And there is the question of Fitzgerald’s future . Presidents can appoint their own U.S. Attorneys, but Republicans aim to all but dare Obama to remove the crusading Fitzgerald before he's done cleaning out corruption in Chicago and Springfield.
"What he should do tomorrow is say, 'Patrick Fitzgerald has a job and can have for as long as he wants,'" McKenna told Politico. "Some have wondered if Barack Obama would keep Fitzgerald [as U.S. Attorney]. It would be great if he confirms that he plans to."
Meanwhile, the case is likely to turn reporters into students of Illinois political history, just as the Clinton presidency produced a generation of reporters and opposition researchers obsessed with turning over the rocks of Arkansas politics.
In 2002, when Blagojevich left the U.S. House (opening up a seat for Emanuel), Obama joined other black Chicago Democrats – including his one-time rival Bobby Rush and state Senate mentor Emil Jones –in supporting Roland Burris, an African-American former Illinois Comptroller and state Attorney General.
In a further effort to put distance between Obama and the governor, Obama allies are preemptively noting that incoming Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s claim this summer in a New Yorker article that he and Obama were “the top strategists of Blagojevich's victory” in 2002 was inaccurate.
In a subsequent article in the Springfield political publication Capitol Fax this summer, now being circulated by Obama allies, Emanuel walked back his assertion.
"David [Wilhelm] and I have worked together on campaigns for decades,” Emanuel said, referring to the Democratic operative who was a top adviser to Blagojevich in 2002 and strongly denied that Obama had been involved in that race. “Like always, he's right and I'm wrong."
Further, the allies note that Blagojevich did not support Obama in 2004 in what was initially thought to be a hotly contested primary.
Still, as Obama emerged from the sheltered, reformist enclave of Hyde Park in the 1990s, he made valuable friends among the bosses of its political machine – Mayor Richard Daley, Emil Jones and many others. He bragged at times that Illinois had made him tough. He also campaigned on an ethics bill he helped pass in the Illinois State Senate.
And he seemed still to be in that Chicago straddle when asked about Blagojevich’s arrest yesterday, mustering only word that he was “saddened” and “sobered” at a time when even other Illinois Democrats were demanding Blagojevich resign.
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My initial impression is that I am not seeing anything terrible by BO here. Politics is not beanbag.
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http://www.newsmax.com:80/headlines/Blagojevich_Indictment/2008/12/09/160064.html?s=al&promo_code=7403-1
Blagojevich Scandal: What Did Obama Know, and When Did He Know It?
Tuesday, December 9, 2008 7:04 PM
By: David A. Patten Article Font Size
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich wanted “something big” from the Obama administration in return for naming its preferred candidate to fill Obama’s Senate seat — and he delivered an expletive-filled tirade when Obama’s representatives apparently refused to go along.
Blagojevich and his chief of staff, John Harris, were arrested Tuesday on charges that they tried to “sell” the U.S. Senate seat that Obama recently vacated. Under Illinois law, naming a replacement falls to Blagojevich.
The FBI says it taped Blagojevich complaining that Obama advisers were telling him that he had to “suck it up . . . and give this mother----er [the President-elect]] his senator. F--- him. For nothing? F--- him.”
Obama briefly addressed the arrests Tuesday afternoon, telling the media, “I had no contact with the governor or his office and so I was not aware of what was happening. It’s a sad day for Illinois. Beyond that, I don’t think it’s appropriate to comment.”
The criminal complaint was announced Tuesday by federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who came to national prominence during the investigation that led to the conviction of Scooter Libby on charges related to the Valerie Plame case. Fitzgerald stated Tuesday that “there is no allegation in the complaint that the president-elect was aware of it and that is all I can say,” according to ABCNews.com. The 76-page criminal complaint refers to the president-elect and his representatives at least 40 times, however.
Item No. 99 in the document states that Blagojevich and Harris spoke on Nov. 7 with “Adviser B,” a Washington, D.C.-based consultant presumably working on behalf of the Obama transition team. During the call, Blagojevich indicated that he would appoint a person the complaint identifies only as “Senate Candidate 1” -- presumably a candidate preferred by the Obama administration -- in return for Blagojevich being appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services by Obama.
Candidate 1 is generally believed to be Obama insider Valerie Jarrett, who has been mentioned as among the favorites to replace Obama in the Senate.
Harris stated “we wanted our [request] to be reasonable and rather than . . . make it look like some sort of selfish grab for a quid pro quo."
During the call, Blagojevich stated he was hurting “financially.” And Harris said the “financial security” of the Blagojevich family was an issue. At one point, Blagojevich stated outright, “I want to make money,” according to the indictment. Also discussed during that conference call was a “three-way deal” between the SEIU union, Blagojevich, and Obama. The deal was that Blagojevich would appoint Obama’s preferred candidate, and in return Obama would help Blagojevich win the SEIU appointment to head an organization called “Change to Win.”
ChangetoWin.org describes itself as an organization created by “seven unions and six million workers” to “restore the American Dream of the 21st Century.”
Harris said the three-way deal would give Obama a “buffer so there is no obvious quid pro quo for [the appointment of Senate Candidate 1]. The criminal complaint states, “Adviser B said that he liked the idea of the three-way deal.”
Three days later, the indictment said, Blagojevich told Harris it was unlikely that Obama would name him Secretary of Health and Human Services, or appoint him to be an ambassador, due to the investigation looming over him. The complaint states that Adviser B and another consultant are believed to have participated in a call during which Blagojevich said they were telling him to “suck it up” for two years, and give this “motherf---er [the President-elect] his senator. F--- him. For nothing? F--- him.”
Next, states the complaint, Blagojevich says he would appoint another candidate, Senate Candidate 4, “before I just give f---ing [Senate Candidate 1] a f---ing Senate seat and I don’t get anything.”
Senate Candidate 4, the complaint states, is a deputy governor of the State of Illinois. Dean Martinez, Bob Greenlee, and Louanner Peters currently serve as deputy governors.
During the conversations with Obama’s representatives, Blagojevich repeatedly made it clear he would not agree to name “Senate Candidate 1” to fill the position without a quid pro quo from the White House, if only indirectly, according to the complaint. Blagojevich stated he wanted to make $250,000 to $300,000 annually.
The criminal complaint indicates Blagojevich and his staff were confident they could exact something from at least one candidate for the seat, Senate Candidate 5. Senate Candidate 5 is not identified.
Based on the complaint, it remains unclear whether any close Obama associate knew that Blagojevich was seeking monetary gain in return for the Senate appointment. It is possible that having such knowledge without reporting it to authorities in a timely way could raise serious legal issues. If nothing else, the complaints represent an embarrassment to Obama given his support for Blagojevich’s gubernatorial reelection bid.
The RNC responded to the indictments in part by circulating an Associated Press report from August 2006 in which Obama stated, “We’ve got a governor in Rod Blagojevich who has delivered consistently on behalf of the people of Illinois.”
Also, RNC Chairman Robert M. “Mike” Duncan released a statement calling Obama’s reaction to the arrests “insufficient at best.”
He added, “Given the President-elect’s history of supporting and advising Gov. Blagojevich, he has a responsibility to speak out and fully address the issue.”
© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/12/10/abc-candidate-who-allegedly-offered-blago-money-for-senate-seat-is-jesse-jackson-jr/
ABC: Candidate who allegedly offered Blago money for Senate seat is Jesse Jackson Jr
posted at 1:05 pm on December 10, 2008 by Allahpundit
Better and better. Yesterday he was shocked, shocked to find influence peddling going on. Today? Meet “Senate Candidate 5?:
Chicago Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL) is the anonymous “Senate Candidate #5? whose emissaries Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich reportedly claimed offered up to a million dollars to name him to the U.S. Senate, federal law enforcement sources tell ABC News.
According to the FBI affidavit in the case, Blagojevich “stated he might be able to cut a deal with Senate Candidate 5 that provided ROD BLAGOJEVICH” with something “tangible up front.”
Jackson Jr. said this morning he was contacted yesterday by federal prosecutors in Chicago who he said “asked me to come in and share with them my insights and thoughts about the selection process.”
Jackson Jr. said “I don’t know” when asked if he was Candidate #5, but said he was told “I am not a target of this investigation.”…
“It is impossible for someone on my behalf to have a conversation that would suggest any type of quid pro quo or any payments or offers,” Jackson Jr. told ABC News. “An impossiblity to an absolute certainty.”…
The FBI says in an October 31, 2008 conversation, Blagojevich described an approach from an associate of Senate Candidate 5: “We were approached ‘pay to play.’ That, you know, he’d raise me 500 grand. An emissary came. Then the other guy would raise a million, if I mad him (Senate Candidate 5) a Senator.”
Fancy that: Another Democratic politician whose cronies allegedly took it upon themselves, completely on their own initiative, to throw money around on their boss’s behalf. Fred Baron did the same thing for John Edwards, you’ll recall, shoveling money to Silky’s mistress for months purely out of the goodness of his heart, unbidden by his political patron. Liberals sure do have amazing friends.
It sounds like they’re talking about campaign fundraising here, not money in briefcases being passed under the table, which presumably makes this the sort of routine backscratching scumbaggery extolled by Axelrod in his 2005 op-ed rather than an actionable offense. Use your office to line your own pockets and you go to jail; use it to line your campaign’s pockets and you’re just practicing Illinois politics. Although didn’t the feds record Blago at one point whining that he felt “stuck” in the governor’s job and wanted something that was more prestigious or more lucrative? For which office was he planning to run that he needed Jackson to fundraise for him?
ABC also notes that Blago and Jackson met just two days ago, at which point Blago said he was close to making a decision. Exit question: Is that why Fitzgerald arrested him now? Byron York studied the timeline and speculates that the Tribune’s story on December 5 about wiretapping spooked Blagojevich into clamming up, putting the investigation at a dead end. I’m skeptical; given how reckless and stupid he is, he’d have started talking again and Fitzgerald surely knew it. I wonder if in fact the feds didn’t move in because they were worried that the appointment was imminent and knew that having this news break after the fact would surround the appointee with a royal political clusterfark.
Update: If you missed Jim Lindgren’s timeline this morning connecting news items on Obama’s preference for the Senate seat to the details of the FBI complaint, make time to read it. It sure sounds like someone within Team Barry got nervous. But who, and why?
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http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=235D31DE-18FE-70B2-A81FD06F3EE7C4B9
7 Blago questions for Obama
By: Kenneth P. Vogel and Carrie Budoff Brown
December 10, 2008 07:21 PM EST
The stinging criminal complaint against Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his chief of staff John Harris raises lots of questions for President-elect Barack Obama – questions he’ll have a chance to answer Thursday when he does his first news conference since Blagojevich was charged.
Here are seven worth asking:
1 – “Did you communicate directly or indirectly with Blagojevich about picking your replacement in the U.S. Senate?”
Obama issued a categorical statement Tuesday that he personally hadn’t spoken with Blagojevich about the seat — but seemed to correct himself in a way that suggested others around Obama might have.
“I had no contact with the governor or his office and, so we were not – I was not aware of what was happening," Obama said.
Yet, according to prosecutors’ characterizations of Blagojevich’s wiretapped telephone conversations, the Illinois governor seemed to believe he had a channel of communications with Obama’s team.
For instance, Blagojevich was recorded speaking to a union official who Blagojevich “understood … was an emissary” to discuss the interest of Obama confidant Valerie Jarrett in the seat, according to the criminal complaint unveiled Tuesday.
But at some point, Blagojevich seemed to become aware that Obama’s team had no interest in his favored option – he would pick Jarrett in exchange for being named secretary of health and human services, prosecutor allege. How did he know that?
2 – “Why didn’t you or someone on your team correct your close adviser David Axelrod when he said you had spoken to Blagojevich about picking your replacement?”
Last month, Axelrod unambiguously described a conversation between Obama and Blagojevich about filling the seat.
“I know he's talked to the governor and there are a whole range of names, many of which have surfaced, and I think he has a fondness for a lot of them," Axelrod told an interviewer from Chicago’s Fox affiliate.
But then, Axelrod retracted the comment – after the president-elect asserted Tuesday that he hadn’t spoken to Blagojevich. Axelrod issued a statement saying he "was mistaken when I told an interviewer last month that the President-elect has spoken directly to Governor Blagojevich about the Senate vacancy. They did not then, or at any time, discuss the subject."
3. “When did you learn the investigation involved Blagojevich’s alleged efforts to ‘sell’ your Senate seat, or of the governor’s impending arrest?”
Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said it was not until Tuesday that Obama learned the details of the complaint against Blagojevich – the same day it was released to the public – and wouldn’t say exactly when or how Obama was notified.
But at least some people got an early heads-up: Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. told reporters that he was notified Monday night by federal prosecutors that the investigation was coming to a head, that an arrest was imminent and that Jackson was not a target.
4 – “Did you or anyone close to you contact the FBI or U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald about Blagojevich’s alleged efforts to sell your Senate seat to the highest bidder?”
Blagojevich seems to believe that Obama’s team was aware of – and had rejected – his offers, telling Harris in a wiretapped Nov. 11 conversation that Obama was “not willing to give (Blagojevich) anything except appreciation” for picking Jarrett.
If Blagojevich contacted anyone on Obama’s team even hinting at a possible pay-for-play arrangement, it seems they would have been obligated to report that to law enforcement.
One report out of Chicago suggested the possible tipster was Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s pick for chief of staff and a potential conduit for any communications from Blagojevich’s office to Obama. But Emanuel’s office has denied that story.
5 – “Did federal investigators interview you or anyone close to you in the investigation?”
Fitzgerald said Tuesday he was “not going to speak for what the President-elect was aware of,” but it’s difficult to imagine his investigators did not reach out to Obama or his team during the course of the investigations into Blagojevich and businessman Tony Rezko, given how closely the subject matter involved Obama.
Rezko, a former Obama fundraiser who in June was convicted of 16 corruption-related counts, had alleged that prosecutors pushed him for dirt on both Blagojevich and Obama.
6 – “When did you and Blagojevich last speak and about what?”
Obama and Blagojevich both attended the National Governors Association meeting last week in Philadelphia and were photographed shaking hands at the event.
Before the meeting, Blagojevich was quoted saying he had asked Obama’s transition team for federal stimulus aid of $3 billion over the next three years to help fill Illinois’ estimated $2 billion deficit.
If Obama had spoken on the phone with him since Election Day, it’s conceivable that the conversation would have been recorded by the FBI, which in late October won a court order authorizing the wiretapping.
7 – “Do you regret supporting Blagojevich?”
Obama endorsed Blagojevich in his two gubernatorial runs and was among his key advisors during his first bid, in 2002.
During the governor’s reelection campaign in 2006 – with press reports swirling about a grand jury investigation into Blagojevich’s alleged jobs-for-contributions scheme – Obama praised the governor as a leader “who has delivered consistently on behalf of the people of Illinois.”
It doesn’t seem like he shared the same high regard for Obama, at least not lately, considering that during a Nov. 10 conference call with advisers he called his old political ally and the president-elect an obscene name.
Carrie Budoff Brown contributed.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/12/10/changegov-hiding-questions-on-blagojevich-scandal/
Happy to see this, "Hopenchangers"? It looks like some people are just begging to get "Plumbered".
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A blathering politician with a flash at fame or a great President, Barack Obama faced his first test early. If Obama's corrupt Gov. knew that Obama's team would not put out for the appointment for sale, then most likely or most certainly Obama, at least through his henchmen, knew his US Senate seat was for sale and knew it first. The FBI got the wiretaps approved in late October. If Obama was the one who blew the whistle, that will send a most powerful signal to all potential incoming administration members that none of this BS, like appointments, Lincoln bedrooms and pardon for sale, will be tolerated in his administration.
We will see.
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FWIW what I see so far is a lot of sound and fury signifying , , , I'm not sure what.
I think my hardcore rightwing bonafides to be in reasonably good order :wink: but so far I have not seen anything that puts BO in a bad light. Indeed, what seems to be known so far does not contradict the possibility that BO has acted with integrity.
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John Fund is a serious political reporter for the WSJ:
======================================
By JOHN FUND
This week Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested on charges that he conspired to sell Barack Obama's U.S. Senate seat, among other misdeeds. At first the president-elect tried to distance himself from the issue: "It is a sad day for Illinois. Beyond that, I don't think it's appropriate for me to comment." But it quickly became clear that Mr. Obama would have to say more, and yesterday he called for Mr. Blagojevich to resign and for a special election to fill the vacant Senate seat.
APWhat remains to be seen is whether this episode will put an end to what Chicago Tribune political columnist John Kass calls the national media's "almost willful" fantasy that Mr. Obama and Chicago's political culture have little to do with each other. Mr. Kass notes that the media devoted a lot more time and energy to investigating the inner workings of Sarah Palin's Wasilla, Alaska, than it has looking at Mr. Obama's Chicago connections.
To date, Mr. Obama's approach to Illinois corruption has been to congratulate himself for dodging association with it. "I think I have done a good job in rising politically in this environment without being entangled in some of the traditional problems of Chicago politics," he told the Chicago Tribune last spring. At the time, Mr. Obama was being grilled over news that he bought his house through a land deal involving Tony Rezko, a political fixer who was later convicted on 16 corruption counts. Rezko is mentioned dozens of times in the 76-page criminal complaint against Mr. Blagojevich.
Mr. Obama has an ambiguous reputation among those trying to clean up Illinois politics. "We have a sick political culture, and that's the environment Barack Obama came from," Jay Stewart, executive director of the Chicago Better Government Association, told ABC News months ago. Though Mr. Obama did support ethics reforms as a state senator, Mr. Stewart noted that he's "been noticeably silent on the issue of corruption here in his home state including, at this point, mostly Democratic politicians."
One reason for Mr. Obama's reticence may be his close relationship with the powerful Illinois senate president Emil Jones. Mr. Jones was a force in Mr. Obama's rise. In 2003, the two men talked about the state's soon-to-be vacant U.S. Senate seat. As Mr. Jones has recounted the conversation, Mr. Obama told him "You can make the next U.S. senator." Mr. Jones replied, "Got anybody in mind?" "Yes," Mr. Obama said. "Me."
Starting in 2003, Mr. Jones worked to burnish Mr. Obama's credentials by making him lead sponsor of bills including a watered-down ban on gifts to lawmakers. Most of Mr. Obama's legislative accomplishments came as result of his association with Mr. Jones.
In 2002, Mr. Obama turned up to help Mr. Blagojevich, a staunch ally of Mr. Jones, win the governor's mansion. Rahm Emanuel, Mr. Obama's incoming White House chief of staff, told The New Yorker earlier this year that six years ago he and Mr. Obama "participated in a small group that met weekly when Rod was running for governor. We basically laid out the general election, Barack and I and these two [other participants]."
Mr. Blagojevich won, but before long, problems surfaced. In 2004, Zalwaynaka Scott, the governor's inspector general, said his administration's efforts to evade merit-selection laws exposed "not merely an ignorance of the law, but complete and utter contempt for the law." Nonetheless, Mr. Obama endorsed Mr. Blagojevich's re-election in 2006.
This spring, many Democrats were so disgusted with Mr. Blagojevich that state House Speaker Michael Madigan drafted a memo on why Democrats should impeach Mr. Blagojevich. Mr. Madigan's "talking points" compared the corruption going on in the state to a tumor that must be removed.
But Mr. Madigan's move drew a rebuke from Mr. Jones. The Chicago Sun-Times story at the time quoted Mr. Jones saying he thought it was wrong for the speaker to "promote the impeachment of a Democratic Governor. . . Impeachment is unwarranted in my opinion, and should not be used as a political tool."
Many people were curious who Mr. Obama would side with in the dispute. Would it be with those Democrats who wanted to move aggressively against an apparently corrupt governor or with his old Chicago ally, Mr. Jones, who preferred to wait? Mr. Obama did neither. He kept silent. (I emailed the Obama campaign about Mr. Blagojevich's problems in June, but my question was ignored.)
In today's Opinion Journal
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Whitewashing Fannie MaePolitical Favors at the FCC
TODAY'S COLUMNIST
Wonder Land: U.S. Says It Will Bail Out Christmas
– Daniel Henninger
COMMENTARY
We Need a Bailout Exit Strategy
– Christopher CoxObama Was Mute on Illinois Corruption
– John FundHow the GOP Should Prepare for a Comeback
– Karl RoveBankruptcy Doesn't Equal Death
– Don boudreauxTo his credit, Mr. Obama did call Mr. Jones in September to urge passage of an ethics bill banning some office holders from accepting money from a business that has a $50,000 or larger contract with the state. The bill passed and takes effect on Jan. 1.
Mr. Obama has spoken out forcefully against corruption outside Illinois. Kathy Tate-Bradish, a Chicago teacher active in education in Africa, gushed on Mr. Obama's campaign blog during his visit to Kenya last year about his "amazing" speech against corruption during his visit there.
"Corruption is the single biggest thing keeping not only Kenyans, but all Africans, down," she wrote. "Corruption is just killing them but nobody has been able to speak out against it because they fear for their own security. Barack spoke out against it, publicly, in Kenya. I honestly think the speech he gave will be one of the major factors that turns the tide against corruption."
Mr. Obama says he plans to return often to Chicago as president. "Our friends are here. Our family is here. And so we are going to try to come back here as often as possible," he told the Los Angeles Times this month. Perhaps during one of those trips he could find time to forthrightly address the corruption issues that the state will be sorting through in the weeks and months ahead. A president has a powerful bully pulpit. A few words from Mr. Obama could force real and lasting change in Illinois.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/12/us/politics/12union.html?_r=3&hp=&pagewanted=print
December 12, 2008
Union Linked to Corruption Scandal
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
The Service Employees International Union has long boasted that it is on the cutting edge of the labor movement. But it found itself badly embarrassed this week when it was linked by name to Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich’s maneuvering to secure some financial gain from picking the next Senator from Illinois.
The federal criminal complaint filed against Mr. Blagojevich said his chief of staff, John Harris, had suggested to a service employees’ official that the union should help make the governor the head of Change to Win, the federation of seven unions that broke away from the A.F.L.-C.I.O. The complaint said Mr. Blagojevich was seeking a position that paid $250,000 to $300,000 a year.
In exchange, the complaint strongly suggested, the service employees union and Change to Win would help persuade Mr. Blagojevich to name Valerie Jarrett, President-elect Barack Obama’s first choice, as the state’s new senator. And the union would get help from the Obama administration, presumably for its legislative agenda.
Several union officials in Chicago and Washington said that the service employees official approached by Mr. Harris was Tom Balanoff, the president of the union’s giant janitors’ local in Chicago and head of the union’s Illinois state council. Mr. Balanoff, one of the union officials closest to Mr. Obama, is widely seen as an aggressive, successful labor leader, who has helped unionize thousands of janitors not just in the Chicago area but also in Texas.
Reached by telephone on Tuesday, Mr. Balanoff said, “I can’t comment on anything right now.”
The Illinois branch of the service employees issued a statement on Wednesday night saying, “We have no reason to believe that S.E.I.U. or any S.E.I.U. official was involved in any misconduct.” It added that the union and Mr. Balanoff “are fully cooperating with the federal investigation.”
Greg Denier, Change to Win’s spokesman, said the federation “had no involvement, no discussion, no contact” with Mr. Blagojevich or his staff. “The idea of a position at Change to Win was totally an invention of the governor, and his stance has no basis in reality,” Mr. Denier said.
Mr. Denier noted that the presidency of Change to Win was an unsalaried position. The federation’s president, Anna Burger, is the service employees’ secretary treasurer and receives only her S.E.I.U. salary.
Service employee officials said that the criminal complaint does not allege that the unnamed “S.E.I.U. official” did anything wrong. All he did, they said, was listen to Mr. Blagojevich and his chief of staff and ferry some messages for them.
A senior service employees official who insisted on anonymity because prosecutors have asked union officials not to talk said his union was one of many that backed Mr. Blagojevich and has received favors from him. But he said that it was understandable that Mr. Blagojevich would ask the service employees for favor because it was so powerful and was seen as one of the unions closest to Mr. Obama.
Patrick Gaspard, the former political director of the service employees’ huge New York health-care affiliate, 1199, was political director of Mr. Obama’s campaign.
If Mr. Blagojevich was going to approach a union to help land a cushy job after leaving the Illinois governorship, it probably made sense for him to approach the service employees, the nation’s fastest growing union.
With more than 1.8 million members nationwide, it is the largest union in Illinois, was an early and generous backer of his gubernatorial ambitions and received some important favors from him. In 2005, the governor issued an executive order that enabled the service employees to unionize 49,000 in-home child care providers who were paid through state and federal funds.
Afterward, the service employees negotiated a 39-month contract that raised the child-care providers daily rates by 35 percent on average and provided them with health coverage.
With Mr. Blagojevich evidently hoping to trade favors with President-elect Obama, the service employees seemed like a sensible intermediary because it was widely seen as doing more to elect Mr. Obama than any other union. The service employees’ political action committee spent at least $26 million on Mr. Obama’s behalf in this year’s presidential campaign, making it by far the largest single PAC donor in the campaign.
The service employees union was by far the top overall donor to Mr. Blagojevich’s 2006 re-election campaign, with records showing it donated more than $900,000, or about 5 percent of his total campaign funds.
Michelle Ringuette, a service employees’ spokeswoman, said the political contributions were not unusual.
“Many unions make donations to political candidates,” she said, “in the interest of making sure we have elected officials who represent the interest of working families, men and women who get up and go to work every day.”
The service employees’ president, Andy Stern, is often seen as the nation’s most powerful union official, serving as both a dynamo and lightning rod for the labor movement. He led the schism from the A.F.L.-C.I.O., and now he is seeking to lead an effort to persuade Mr. Obama to enact two major pieces of legislation in his first 100 days: universal health coverage and the Employee Free Choice Act, a law that would make it far easier for workers to unionize.
Mr. Stern was embarrassed early this year when Tyrone Freeman, an official he appointed to run a large, home-care workers’ local in Los Angeles, was suspended and later banned for misappropriating hundreds of thousands of dollars in funds. Mr. Freeman was found to have improperly directed union funds to his wedding, his wife’s company, even to membership in a private cigar club.
Mr. Stern has named a panel of experts to develop a tougher ethical code for the union.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/12/10/changegov-hiding-questions-on-blagojevich-scandal/
Happy to see this, "Hopenchangers"? It looks like some people are just begging to get "Plumbered".
I am going to assume that was at least partly directed at me.
I am still very happy Obama was elected president. Am I really supposed to be upset that a politician is not answering questions or answering them in deliberately vague ways? I'm sure Obama will do something much worse than that in the future and I will stilll be happy he was elected.
I am also happy: Blagojevich got arrested though it will take a while to impeach him. Honestly though it rather sad statement Blagojevich is unpopular because he never got anything done not because he is corrupt.
I am less happy that my state is in the competition for most corrupt state in the US. What I don't get that Illinois is much more corrupt than Wisconsin but we are a much richer state and our schools, police, hospitals, museums, employment opportunities and public transportation are as good or better . Wisconsin does have free roads while we give tons of money to the Tollway authority. In general I think Illinois is fairly well run. I wouldn't want to live anywhere else again.
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***I am less happy that my state is in the competition for most corrupt state in the US***
FWIW I believe this is really the tip of the iceberg. Who in their right mind thinks backroom deals aren't done all the time - everywhere?
I wouldn't know how common it is for a Senate seat to be offered for the highest offer of cash (first of all, most Senators are not appointed anyway) but I would be shocked to find that they aren't offered for some form of reciprical pay back routinely.
As for nepotism... Well probably almost all of local goernments are that. Who doesn't know someone locally who isn't an in-law, cousin, nephew, spouse of someone in office with a cushy government job?
As for the state and federal levels I wouldn't be able to know but a guess is it is likely quite common.
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Who in their right mind thinks backroom deals aren't done all the time - everywhere?
BINGO!
Heard a great quote from an old Chicago politician today:
"Never take a dime, just give 'em your business card"
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So long as the trains run on time, corruption is no big deal?
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So long as the trains run on time, corruption is no big deal?
It's definitely a big deal.
Unfortunately, we have a populace refusing to acknowledge that corruption is pervasive in politics (and has been since the beginning of time), and is either unwilling to work to change the system or just doesn't care.
I don't know how to reform the system. And it seems that "reform-minded" politicians always seem to be the ones caught on the take. But what is the saying, "Acknowledging there is a problem is the first step"?
Perhaps if more people were willing to admit that the system was flawed, more people might actually want to take a hand in making changes to it.
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Corruption is just a form of crime. Crime never goes away, you can do things to reduce it, but there is no endpoint where there is none. For crime (or evil) to triumph, it takes two kinds of people. The first group are those that actively commit the evil acts, the second group are those that choose to excuse or ignore or even defend the acts of the first group.
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For crime (or evil) to triumph, it takes two kinds of people....the second group are those that choose to excuse or ignore or even defend the acts of the first group.
That begs the question, "Is our voting populace accomplice to the crime, or an unwilling participant?" I tend to think its a combination of both.
To grab a quote from the article I just posted:
In a fundamental way, we know that all the charges are true, against Blago and every other politician, now and forever, amen. At least since some time in the 1960s...we've known that the worst thing we can imagine about our politicians is true...There are some good politicians, of course, but even when they are trying to do the right thing, they screw everything up, it seems. And of course much of the time, they are not even particularly concerned with doing the right thing.
Rhetorical questions:
What's the fix? Is there a fix? Are there honest politicians? At what level does corruption/cronyism/favoritism become a crime? Are political favors considered corruption? Does giving an unqualified friend a prominent position in government count as corruption or is that just returning a favor?
I believe politics are fundamentally corrupt. The reality of at some point having to do something for someone that you may not have had to do were you not expected to return a favor is all part of the political lifestyle. The best we can hope for is individuals entering the political arena wanting to make a difference as opposed to making a buck. Or a populace willing to actually throw the bums out. I mean we've been looking at politicians with approval ratings in the 20's and 'teens who keep on keepin' on. What's with that?
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The more of our lives the government controls and manipulates, the more reason there will be to buy politicians and their price will go up.
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And, as the politicians control more and more, they can promise to spread the wealth to [insert whatever majority of voters here], keeping themselves in favor. I think few people really care about anything other than themselves. Others, those who really are smart and talented enough to run for public office and make a significant difference are also smart enough to not want anything to do with politics.
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Others, those who really are smart and talented enough to run for public office and make a significant difference are also smart enough to not want anything to do with politics.
So does that mean we are stuck with the middle to bottom of the barrel, self-interested candidates forever?
Is there a way to get smart, interested individuals involved in politics?
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There are several ways to mitigate the tendency towards corruption in gov't:
1. Transparancy. Open records should be the norm, not the exception.
2. Small government. As mentioned above, smaller gov't reduces the potential for corruption.
3. Zero tolerance for corrupt acts. I'm just as happy to see Ted Stevens get nailed by the feds as to see Blag-gate unfold.
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So does that mean we are stuck with the middle to bottom of the barrel, self-interested candidates forever?
It seems that way to me, unfortunately.
Is there a way to get smart, interested individuals involved in politics?
Good question. They'd have to be rich enough so they couldn't be bought - or just not be driven by money (but, then how would they run a campaign?) - they'd be putting themselves into a large group of powerful criminals or at the least just a group of shoddy liars and thieves. Sometimes I think that a person like this comes along, takes a look into the political arena and walks off, probably to become successful in business or some other enterprise.
Also, I'll throw this out here. If we take some relatively unknown but very smart (he must be) candidate Obama and take him at face value, we have an energetic guy who wants to clean up government {this is theoretical but serves my purpose of example} = Obama comes from nowhere and gets elected. Now he gets to sit in on some secret briefings, where he finds out that the government isn't quite what he thought when he was on the outside. No, not black helicopter tin foil things, just that the US does things for reasons he didn't know about. He gets quiet and starts to rethink whether he can fulfill any of his campaign promises.
Fill in whatever name for "Obama" as a newcomer dropped into a cesspool. I can't come up with why a smart, clear-thinking person would want any part of politics. If there's someone out there who truly believes in the "greater good," I suspect he or she is doing something like surgery to help people.
I sure hope I am wrong.
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**If we can find people of this caliber to serve in uniform, surely we can find some to serve in political office.**
CHP Double Amputee Back On Duty
Posted: July 8th, 2008 05:27 PM EDT
IBS/KCRA-TV
CHP Officer Mike Remmel is returning to work after losing both legs in a traffic accident last year.
Daily Breeze (Torrance, California)
By Don Thompson
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WEST SACRAMENTO - A California Highway Patrol officer who lost both legs in a traffic accident last year is returning to work on "bionic legs" after proving his fitness with tests such as running the 100-yard dash in 20 seconds.
"I probably still could outrun four or five guys in my office, even on these legs," officer Mike Remmel joked Wednesday after demonstrating his new prostheses at the CHP academy in West Sacramento.
Remmel, 47, is the first double amputee to be cleared for field duty after passing the CHP's difficult test using what officers call his "bionic legs," said CHP spokesman Tom Marshall.
Besides sprinting the length of a football field, new cadets and veterans returning from injuries must run 550 meters in two minutes, climb a steep hill, drag a weight and complete several agility tests.
Remmel spent more than a year in rehabilitation and training before passing the last test and getting his doctor's clearance Aug. 10, exactly 19 months after he lost his legs. He quietly returned to work four days later. CHP brass recruited him to give a motivational talk to cadets Wednesday and invited the media.
Remmel was completing a traffic accident investigation just after dusk Jan. 10, 2006, alongside Highway 49 near his hometown of Sonora. A confused 80-year-old driver struck him at 45 mph, sending him flying 23 feet over a tow truck.
He lost his left leg above the knee and his right leg below the knee. Three days later, Remmel came out of sedation after a near constant series of surgeries. He almost immediately began telling the officers around his bed that he would one day rejoin them on patrol. "No one believed me then," he said.
He learned to use a $40,000 computerized leg that can gauge his stride and react accordingly - technology recently developed largely for wounded soldiers returning from Iraq.
To pass the CHP's running tests, Remmel used a $30,000 pair of lighter, springier metal legs. He's run the 100 yards in 17.2 seconds - 18.6 seconds when he's wearing his bulletproof vest and gun belt.
"When I first started doing this, I was falling every 10 yards or so," Remmel said in an interview. Now he is so fast that he is considering competing in sports events for athletes with disabilities.
Using his computerized legs, Remmel played golf again for the first time Monday - and shot a better score than before the accident.
"I needed my old life to come back as much as possible," Remmel said of his motivation. "I needed to know that nothing ended - and so far it hasn't."
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The Impact of War
Amputee Wounded in Iraq to Return to Active Duty
by Joseph Shapiro
Capt. David Rozelle with his wife, Kim, and son, Forrest. Courtesy of the Rozelle family
Rozelle had always been a competitive athlete in peak condition. After his injury, he trained even harder. Only one other amputee has been found fit to return to active duty in Iraq. Rozelle will be the first to return. Courtesy of the Rozelle family
Morning Edition, March 4, 2005 · Capt. David Rozelle of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment will soon become the Army's first amputee from a wound suffered in Iraq to return to active duty.
In the past, it's been rare for soldiers who underwent amputations to go back to war, but better prosthetic arms and legs are now allowing wounded soldiers to do more.
At Fort Carson in Colorado, Rozelle said he knows he's returning both as a fighter and as a role model -- for the soldiers under his command and for other troops with amputations.
"I'm breaking the ice for them," Rozelle says. "I don't want to be an anomaly. I want to be the first to go back. But I don't want to be the last."
Rozelle was injured in June 2003, when an anti-tank mine destroyed part of his right foot and leg. He recounts the experience in a new memoir, Back in Action: An American Soldier's Story of Courage, Faith, and Fortitude. The book's first chapter is excerpted below.
Book Excerpt
Note: This excerpt contains language that some may find offensive.
Chapter 1: The Price of Freedom
It's not hard to get your mind focused for a mission when there's a price on your head. It was the day that would change my life forever, 21 June 2003, in Hit (pronounced "heat"), Iraq.
Just a few days before, my translator and I were smoking cigarettes and enjoying some hot tea, waiting with a few sheiks for our weekly situation meeting to begin. I was the de facto sheriff of Hit. As we waited for the rest of the sheiks to arrive, we would discuss the Iran-Iraq war. My translator had been a POW in the war, held for eleven years in an Iranian prison. He had been pressed into military service after his third year of medical school and served as an infantryman. As a POW, he found himself doing procedures in prison with no anesthesia, no sanitary rooms, and few medical instruments. His techniques kept fellow prisoners alive, but were often brutal and crippling.
After getting out of prison, he decided to never practice medicine again. He was a good man, and was proud to be of service to those who had freed him for the second time in his life. After taking a long drag on one of my Marlboros, he looked over at me and said in a low voice, "Captain, do not go on your mission tonight."
I was surprised. "I always lead my men," I responded. "It's still dangerous and I want to command on the ground."
He said, "Your men will be safe, but you will be attacked. If you go, it may be your last mission."
"What the hell are you talking about?" I said angrily. In a loud voice, so that the sheiks in the room could hear, I continued, "You're not trying to threaten me, are you? I will destroy any man who attacks me. Tell me who is saying these things—I'll arrest them today!"
He spoke to me carefully, in a low voice so that others couldn't hear, trying to calm me: "Captain, there are men in town who are planning missions in our mosques, under the command of clerics here and from Ar Ramadi. These men I do not know. But they are dangerous. Some are from Iran, and some are from Syria. It's rumored that they have offered $1,000 U.S. to any man who can kill you, the one who rides in the vehicle with the symbols K6 on the side . . . the one who always wears sunglasses. They recognize you as the leader, and as one who is successful and powerful. . . . Please do not go tonight."
I responded out loud, "You spread the word: I am powerful and I command many men. Out of respect for the people of Hit, I have yet to bring my tanks into this city and show you my full combat capabilities. Let the town know that the whereabouts of these terrorists must be reported in order to protect the innocent civilians of this city. I'm not afraid and I'm not threatened."
On our mission that night, we did arrest several suspicious people and killed two men who tried to attack our tanks with rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs). After such a wild night, we decided to stay out of the city for a few days. Unfortunately, we were giving the terrorists more time to prepare their next attack.
It was 1630 hours on the day of my final mission. I could tell when my men were ready because the sounds below changed from bolts charged and orders given during the final pre-combat inspection to laughter and tough talk. I never came down from my command post until I heard the distinctive sound of my high-mobility multi-wheeled vehicle (Humvee), distinctive because each Humvee has its own pitch or hum. Upon hearing that sound, I knew that my windshield and binocular lenses were clean, my maps updated with the most current intelligence, my radios checked, and my personal security detachment was loaded, with weapons pointed outward. With so many antennae and barrels protruding, we must have looked like some strange oversized desert insect. But before I walked down to conduct my final inspection, I continued my tradition of kissing the picture of my wife, Kim, listening to the message she had recorded in the frame, and saying a short prayer to God to take care of my unborn child if I did not return.
I was "Killer 6,"which is the code word for the leader of K Troop, 3rd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. I commanded 139 men, nine M1A2 main battle tanks, 13 M3A2 Cavalry fighting vehicles, two tracked vehicles carrying 120 mm mortar guns, three support tracked vehicles, and five wheeled vehicles.
Before heading out on the mission, I would walk the line of soldiers to look at their faces. It wasn't just to make a final inspection. They needed to see me confident and unafraid of our impending mission. We treated every mission the same, whether we were conducting a traffic control point (TCP) or were capturing terrorists. My men had to be ready for anything.
A few weeks earlier, my boss had informed me that now that we had "stood up" an entirely new police force, we had to train them in police work. This tasking was a V Corps requirement. I was excited about it, tired of conducting patrols where I spent most of my time watching over my shoulder. Training leads to confidence and job comfort. We had done something historic. Within weeks of the end of major combat operations, we had rearmed Iraqi soldiers and were now patrolling the streets with them. They certainly needed training, and training was our task for the night.
We had scheduled the first night of training to start at 1700 hours, as it promised to be cooler than midday. The sun did not set until 2030 or 2100 hours, so we had plenty of time to train. We had planned on teaching for two hours, which we knew would turn into three or four. We always planned twice the amount of time to do anything with local forces.
It was about 1640 hours when we finally headed out the gate of our compound. I was traveling with two of my Humvees, my own and an improvised gun-truck, and two military police (MP) Humvees. As I crossed through the wire at the lead of the convoy, I called my departure report to Squadron Operations Center and told my detachment to lock and load their weapon systems.
On the squadron radio, I reported, "Thunder, this is Killer 6 . . . Killer is departing FOB Eden to Hit police academy, vicinity soccer stadium, with one officer and twenty-one enlisted."
Changing hand microphones, I immediately followed, "Killer, this is Killer 6, lock and load your weapon systems and follow my move."
After getting acknowledgments from the three vehicles following me, I charged my 9 mm Beretta, watching as the bullet slipped easily into the chamber. As was my custom, as a deterrent to possible wrongdoers, I had my pistol outside the window in my right hand, and my left inside on the Bible my father had given me just before deploying to Iraq. Inscribed on the inside cover were the words, "Use it as a tour guide," and in the back I had pasted a picture of my wife and me with my parents, taken just after our deployment ceremony.
It was only about five miles from our Forward Operating Base (FOB) to the town of Hit. Just before we reached the roundabout at the north end of the city, I told my driver to turn left down a dirt road we often used for observation by tanks at night.
I intended to avoid the roundabout in order to avoid detection from any spies at the first intersection. The dirt road took us from one paved road to another, and was only about two hundred meters in length. Just as we reached the far side, I noticed that the gradual terrace that normally allowed easy access to the road was now steeper and recently graded. Looking over the edge, I decided that the vehicles could handle the drop and we started to ease over the ledge.
As we began rolling again, everything exploded.
My right front tire, just under my feet, detonated an anti-tank mine. The mine violently lifted the Humvee off the ground and set it back on the three remaining of four wheels. The blast was so powerful that most of it went out and up from the front tire, launching a door and tire a hundred meters away. Blinded by smoke and dust, I wasn't sure exactly what had just happened, but I knew we were either under attack by RPGs or artillery, or had struck a mine -- and that I was injured.
I looked down and saw blood on my arms, and through my glasses I could see that my bulletproof vest seemed to have absorbed a lot of shrapnel. Everything was quiet. I could not speak. I was in terrible pain. I heard noises coming from my driver, screams of pain and fear. I was more confused than afraid.
Finally, I got my voice and asked, "Is everyone okay?"
My driver responded with more screams, and my translator simply gave me a crazy look.
We needed to get out of the Humvee. I began to pull at my left leg, but I couldn't get it free. My left foot was trapped under the firewall and heater. The right front portion of the vehicle's frame was now on the ground, so I set my right foot out into the sand to get some footing, in order to pull myself and my left leg free. But I couldn't get any footing.
I thought, "F--- . . . Oh, God, I am hurt . . . I have to get out of here . . . Why aren't they shooting at me? We're trapped in a stationary vehicle . . . They've got me . . . F---, that hurts . . . Move, David, move now!"
It felt as if I were setting my right foot into soft mud or a sponge. I looked down to see blood and bits of bone squeezing out of the side of my right boot. I gave one big push and turned to dive into the arms of two brave men who ran selflessly into the minefield to save me.
My good friend and fiercest warrior, Sergeant First Class John McNichols, grabbed me and said, "Don't worry, sir, I've got you."
All I could do was look at the ground. I tried to use my feet, but neither one would bear my weight. I could hear First Sergeant Cobal sighing under the burden of my weight.
I looked into his eyes and said, "I can't walk. I'm f---ed up."
Turning now to face Sergeant First Class McNichols, I said, "My feet are messed up."
Sergeant First Class McNichols smiled at me and said, "It's just a walk in the park, sir."
That was the last time I ever used my right foot.
Excerpted from Back in Action: An American Soldier's Story of Courage, Faith, and Fortitude, by Captain David Rozelle. Used by permission of Regnery Publishing.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2008/12/10/GR2008121000748.html
The Chicago way, illustrated.
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http://michellemalkin.com/2008/12/12/rahm-a-drama-beet-red-and-pissed-with-the-msm/
"Rahm-bo" not so tough now.
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GM:
Would you please also post your article about Capt Rozelle on the "Our troops in action" thread?
TIA,
Marc
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/12/13/emanuel-blago-had-conversations-on-senate-succession/
Emanuel, Blago had “conversations” on Senate succession
posted at 11:23 am on December 13, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
The categorical denials coming from Barack Obama on the Rod Blagojevich pay-to-play scandal took another hit today from the Chicago Tribune. Two sources confirm that Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s new chief of staff, had a number of conversations with Blagojevich chief of staff John Harris to discuss acceptable candidates to fill the rest of Obama’s Senate term. These conversations got captured by federal wiretaps and will likely be reviewed by a grand jury looking to indict people on corruption charges:
Rahm Emanuel, President-elect Barack Obama’s pick to be White House chief of staff, had conversations with Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s administration about who would replace Obama in the U.S. Senate, the Tribune has learned.
The revelation does not suggest Obama’s new gatekeeper was involved in any talk of dealmaking involving the seat. But it does help fill in the gaps surrounding a question that Obama was unable or unwilling to answer this week: Did anyone on his staff have contact with Blagojevich about his choice for the Senate seat? …
One source confirmed that communications between Emanuel and the Blagojevich administration were captured on court-approved wiretaps.
Another source said that contact between the Obama camp and the governor’s administration regarding the Senate seat began the Saturday before the Nov. 4 election, when Emanuel made a call to the cell phone of Harris. The conversation took place around the same time press reports surfaced about Emanuel being approached about taking the high-level White House post should Obama win.
Emanuel delivered a list of candidates who would be “acceptable” to Obama, the source said. On the list were Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, Illinois Veterans Affairs director Tammy Duckworth, state Comptroller Dan Hynes and U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Chicago, the source said. All are Democrats.
Sometime after the election, Emanuel called Harris back to add the name of Democratic Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan to the approved list, the source said.
As I wrote this week, no one would be surprised to hear that Emanuel and Obama had enough interest in the latter’s replacement to get in contact with the man who would normally make that appointment, Governor Blagojevich. After all, the composition of the Senate matters a great deal to Obama, who needs to ensure that his agenda gets the most support possible in the next two years. Given the corruption in Illinois politics, it might make it even more important to get involved in the process early to avoid getting someone who would embarrass the administration at a later point in time, especially with Patrick Fitzgerald’s years-long probe into Illinois politics still ongoing.
However, Barack Obama and his team chose not to give that honest and common-sense explanation. Instead, they issued categorical denials that Obama and his staff had contacted Blagojevich or his staff about the succession. It’s a mystifying claim, and one that will apparently get proven false fairly easily. Now, instead of just saying that contact existed but that no one had tried making deals, they have thrown away their credibility on a very foolish point — which will lead to the conclusion that Team Obama has something very significant to hide.
Now it comes down to the Watergate question for both Emanuel and Obama: What did they know, and when did they know it? Did Emanuel’s conversations with Harris or anyone else involve discussions of quid pro quo? Team Obama will deny it, but they spent all of this week denying any conversations took place, and only the most gullible will believe denials from this point forward. The wiretaps will go to the grand jury, and we will see whether Emanuel got himself caught in Fitzgerald’s nets.
If he did discuss quid pro quo and didn’t report it to the feds, Emanuel may or may not have committed a crime, but Obama will have no choice but to fire him. And axing a Chief of Staff before even taking the oath of office does not lend much confidence in either the competence nor the honesty of the new President.
Update: Here’s what Obama said in his December 11th statement:
I had no contact with the governor’s office. I did not speak to the governor about these issues, that I know for certain. What I want to do is to gather all the facts about any staff contacts that may have taken place between the transition office and the governor’s office, and we’ll have those in the next few days and we’ll present them. But what I’m absolutely certain about is that our office had no involvement in any deal-making around my Senate seat. That, I’m absolutely certain of, and that would be a violation of everything this campaign has been about. That’s not how we do business.
So Obama said in one part that he himself hat no contact with the governor’s office or the governor regarding the appointment, which makes sense, because he’s got other issues to handle. He then claims that his office “had no involvement in any deal-making around my Senate seat.” If that’s true, then what was Emanuel discussing with Harris — and how did Blagojevich know that they wouldn’t give him anything but their appreciation? From the complaint, it doesn’t sound like an assumption Blagojevich made. (Hat tip: HA reader David M)
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GM,
It sounds like Clintonism all over again.
BO said he or his office never had contact.
He didn't specify Emanuel. But we all know Emanuel was talking with both BO and the gov. and BO knew.
So even though it is a lie it is not technically a lie. It is the "Clintoneasque" play with words to make a lie look like it is not.
Politics as usual.
Of course the MSM is giving him a complete pass for the deceptive language.
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I'm not getting the motive to be disingenuous here , , , :?
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**Funny how the MSM-Obamedia is ignoring this story..... :roll:
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24799317-5012748,00.html
Barack Obama chief Rahm Emanuel drawn into Rod Blagojevich corruption investigation
Article from: Agence France-Presse
By Jitendra Joshi in Washington
December 15, 2008 08:00am
BARACK Obama's chief of staff is under pressure over reported contacts with Illinois's corruption-tainted governor, who faces impeachment proceedings this week.
Rahm Emanuel, a combative congressman from Illinois who will serve as Obama's political gatekeeper in the White House, was reported to have been in touch with Governor Rod Blagojevich about Mr Obama's Senate seat.
The Chicago Tribune and New York Times did not suggest any wrongdoing by Mr Emanuel, citing sources as saying he had presented suggested names to take over the seat without offering any inducements to Mr Blagojevich.
But the reports could present a distraction to the president-elect, as the Republican Party released a new advertisement declaring that "questions remain" over Mr Obama's links to the disgraced governor.
The web ad by the Republican National Committee highlighted Mr Obama's past support for Mr Blagojevich and showed commentators questioning why the president-elect had not been more forthright in denouncing the Governor.
Mr Blagojevich has refused to resign after his arrest in an FBI investigation that accuses him of staggering corruption, including an attempt to sell Mr Obama's vacated Senate seat to the highest bidder.
Illinois lawmakers are expected to begin impeachment proceedings today in a hastily called special session, while state Attorney General Lisa Madigan wants the state supreme court to strip Mr Blagojevich of the bulk of his powers.
Ms Madigan noted speculation, reported by the Chicago Sun-Times, that Mr Blagojevich may now be set to resign as early as today or temporarily step aside to fight the corruption allegations.
Commenting on the reports about Emanuel, she told NBC television that it "doesn't appear from what I've heard so far that there is anything improper that has occurred."
Ms Madigan was among the names reportedly suggested by Mr Emanuel for the Governor to appoint as Mr Obama's senatorial replacement.
Others were Mr Obama's senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, Illinois Representative Jan Schakowsky, state Comptroller Dan Hynes and Illinois Veterans Affairs director Tammy Duckworth.
"One source confirmed that communications between Emanuel and the Blagojevich administration were captured on court-approved wire-taps," the Chicago Tribune said.
But wire-tap transcripts released by prosecutors suggest that Mr Blagojevich was not being offered anything beyond appreciation from the Obama camp, much to the Governor's foul-mouthed frustration.
Mr Obama has ordered his staff to divulge any contacts they may have had with Mr Blagojevich, while insisting he was "absolutely certain" that there had been no dealings on the alleged scheme to sell off the Senate seat.
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I notice that I am about the only one that believes it was Obama that blew the whistle on the corrupt Gov, setting himself up to be the ethical hero of the century as he takes the oath.
It really is a no-brainer to me since he should be impeached if the facts turn out otherwise.
First, look at the interest in the MN recount here. It matters who becomes Senator, for every seat.
Who has the biggest interest in the Obama seat for continuity purposes? Obama.
Who has to work with the senators of his own party to get things done? The future Pres.
Who submitted a list of 'approved' candidates for the position??? Barack Obama.
Just having a list of approved applicants indicates that Obama believed he had a rightful and high place in the appointment decision process.
If all contact was done through his staff, it wasn't done randomly through his staff, like through the chef, housekeeper or valet car parker. It was through his Chief of Staff who was in CONSTANT contact with his boss and with the corrupt Gov.
If the corrupt Gov. Blag had demands, then who knew first? The person who had the greatest stake in the outcome, Barack Obama.
Everyone in power knows how to trade political favors and understands power brokering, but those who play the game smartest, hardest and best are most aware of the line that cannot be crossed. Obama fits the bill all the way, brokering deals with bill Richardson, Hillary, Daschle and who knows who else along the way. Really everyone he came in contact with in some way shape or form was offered something for what he wanted back, their support, their withdrawal, their money, etc. etc.
So Obama was keenly aware of exactly what was going on in the corrupt Gov's office and on his phone line, he is acutely aware of the limits of blatancy in horse trading and mutual back scratching, he was cut out of the process for not playing the game, and he is not exactly the type to give up easily and leave with his tail between his legs.
So Obama blew the whistle.
The result is that the appointment of a non-Obama-approved candidate was stopped in its tracks, the politician even and especially from his own party who wouldn't surrender his power had it taken from him along with his freedom, and the new kind of politics can ride into inauguration on a white horse, or mixed color horse as the case may be, as the hero of a new generation, and everyone in and around his new administration sees who is in charge as they contemplate their next four years of serving, leaking, backstabbing, selling, trading and self promoting.
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These seem like some fair points to me , , ,
"Anyone who relies solely on MSM outlets ... may not even know that Obama has, to this day, not authorized the state of Hawaii to release his Certificate of Live Birth -- the 'long form' -- to prove that he is a 'natural born citizen' (NBC), a Constitutional requirement of all presidents. Instead, We, the People, have online access to an Obama document known as a Certification of Live Birth, which, as Randall Hoven explains at American Thinker blog, is a computer-generated short form that is not even accepted by the Hawaii Department of Home Lands as adequate verification of Hawaiian identity. ... Further dimming the online document's Holy Grail aspects, it has been altered -- the certificate's number has been redacted -- which, according to a statement printed on the document, actually invalidates it. But that's not all. Back on Oct. 31, Hawaii's director of health, along with the registrar of Vital Statistics, released a statement verifying that the Hawaii's Department of Health has Obama's 'original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures.' Well, that's just great. But no matter how many times this statement from 'Hawaiian authorities' is cited as the NBC clincher, it doesn't prove a thing. It turns out, as Hoven reports, that Hawaii issues birth certificates even for babies born elsewhere, so simply having an original Hawaiian birth certificate 'on record' doesn't answer the key questions. Namely: What exactly does this original birth certificate say? And why doesn't Obama simply authorize the document's release and be done with the question? ... I think it is nothing less than good citizenship to seek to verify that Obama is a 'natural born citizen' since our elites, which include the major political parties and the MSM, failed to bring the matter to its extremely simple resolution long ago. But while important, this isn't just a story about whether we as Americans are right or wrong to ask our president-elect the question about his original birth certificate. It is about whether our president-elect is right or wrong not to answer it." --columnist Diana West
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I notice that I am about the only one that believes it was Obama that blew the whistle on the corrupt Gov, setting himself up to be the ethical hero of the century as he takes the oath.
**Then why the stonewalling from Obama and his camp? If he's the hero, he should be out front with it, not circling the wagons.**
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These seem like some fair points to me , , ,
"Anyone who relies solely on MSM outlets ... may not even know that Obama has, to this day, not authorized the state of Hawaii to release his Certificate of Live Birth -- the 'long form' -- to prove that he is a 'natural born citizen' (NBC), a Constitutional requirement of all presidents. Instead, We, the People, have online access to an Obama document known as a Certification of Live Birth, which, as Randall Hoven explains at American Thinker blog, is a computer-generated short form that is not even accepted by the Hawaii Department of Home Lands as adequate verification of Hawaiian identity. ... Further dimming the online document's Holy Grail aspects, it has been altered -- the certificate's number has been redacted -- which, according to a statement printed on the document, actually invalidates it. But that's not all. Back on Oct. 31, Hawaii's director of health, along with the registrar of Vital Statistics, released a statement verifying that the Hawaii's Department of Health has Obama's 'original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures.' Well, that's just great. But no matter how many times this statement from 'Hawaiian authorities' is cited as the NBC clincher, it doesn't prove a thing. It turns out, as Hoven reports, that Hawaii issues birth certificates even for babies born elsewhere, so simply having an original Hawaiian birth certificate 'on record' doesn't answer the key questions. Namely: What exactly does this original birth certificate say? And why doesn't Obama simply authorize the document's release and be done with the question? ... I think it is nothing less than good citizenship to seek to verify that Obama is a 'natural born citizen' since our elites, which include the major political parties and the MSM, failed to bring the matter to its extremely simple resolution long ago. But while important, this isn't just a story about whether we as Americans are right or wrong to ask our president-elect the question about his original birth certificate. It is about whether our president-elect is right or wrong not to answer it." --columnist Diana West
**Obama obviously had a passport to go to Indonesia as a child and Pakistan as a young man, meaning the US State Department found he was a US citizen long before he had any political connections, yes?**
http://travel.state.gov/passport/get/minors/minors_834.html?css=print
Special Requirements for Children Under Age 16
Before You Start, Please Note:
Minors under age 16 must apply in person
All children regardless of age, including newborns and infants, must have their own passport
There are special requirements for All Minors Ages 16 & 17
STEPS TO SUBMITTING A PASSPORT APPLICATION FOR A MINOR UNDER AGE 16:
Read and understand Steps 1 - 7 before leaving this page.
STEP 1: Complete and Submit Form DS-11: Application For A U.S. Passport
Complete Form DS-11: Application for a U.S. Passport. To submit Form DS-11, the minor:
Must apply in person with both parents/guardian(s)
Must provide the additional documentation required by Form DS-11 (See Steps 2-7)
Must not sign the application until instructed to do so by the Acceptance Agent
Must provide his/her Social Security number
STEP 2: Submit Evidence of U.S. Citizenship
The minor's evidence of U.S. citizenship must be submitted with Form DS-11. All documentation submitted as citizenship evidence will be returned to you. These documents will be delivered with your newly issued U.S. passport or in a separate mailing.
Primary Evidence of U.S. Citizenship (One of the following):
Previously issued, undamaged U.S. Passport
Certified birth certificate issued by the city, county or state*
Consular Report of Birth Abroad or Certification of Birth
Naturalization Certificate
Certificate of Citizenship
*A certified birth certificate has a registrar's raised, embossed, impressed or multicolored seal, registrar’s signature, and the date the certificate was filed with the registrar's office, which must be within 1 year of your birth. Some short (abstract) versions of birth certificates may not be acceptable for passport purposes.
NOTE: If you do not have primary evidence of U.S. citizenship or your U.S. birth certificate does not meet the requirements, please see Secondary Evidence of U.S. Citizenship.
STEP 3: Submit Evidence of Relationship
Parent(s)/Guardian(s) must submit evidence of their relationship to the minor applicant.
Evidence of Relationship (One of the following):
Minor's certified U.S. birth certificate with both parents’ names
Minor's certified Foreign Birth Certificate with both parents’ names*
Minor's Report of Birth Abroad with both parents’ names
Adoption Decree with adopting parents’ names*
Court Order establishing custody
Court Order establishing guardianship
*Foreign documents should be accompanied by an official English translation
NOTES:
Previous U.S. passports are not acceptable as evidence of relationship
Evidence of a legal name change must be submitted, if the name of a parent/guardian has changed since the original documents were issued (e.g. photocopy of a marriage certificate, etc.)
STEP 4: Present Identification of Parent(s)/Guardian(s)
When applying for a minor under age 16, both parent(s)/guardian(s) must present acceptable identification at the time of application.
Primary Identification (One of the following):
Previously issued, undamaged U.S. passport
Naturalization Certificate
Valid Driver's License
Current Government Employee ID (city, state or federal)
Current Military ID (military and dependents)
NOTE: If none of these items are available, please see Secondary Identification.
STEP 5: Provide Parental Consent
Both parents must provide consent authorizing passport issuance for a minor under age 16. See the scenarios below, and follow the instruction that best applies to your circumstance:
Both Parents MUST:
Appear in person with the minor
Sign Form DS-11 in front of an Acceptance Agent
One Parent MUST:
Appear in person with the minor
Sign Form DS-11 in front of an Acceptance Agent
Submit the second parents’ notarized Statement of Consent (Form DS-3053)
One Parent
(with sole legal custody)
MUST:
Appear in person with the minor
Sign Form DS-11 in front of an Acceptance Agent
Submit primary evidence of sole authority to apply for the child with one of the following:
Minor’s certified U.S. or foreign birth certificate listing only the applying parent
Consular Report of Birth Abroad (Form FS-240) or Certification of Birth Abroad (Form DS-1350) listing only the applying parent
Court order granting sole custody to the applying parent (unless child's travel is restricted by that order)
Adoption decree (if applying parents is sole adopting parent)
Court order specifically permitting applying parent's or guardian's travel with the child
Judicial declaration of incompetence of non-applying parent
Death certificate of non-applying parent
NOTE: If none of the above documentation is available, the applying parent must submit Form DS-3053 stating why the non-applying parent/guardian's consent cannot be obtained
A Third Party
(in Loco Parentis applying on behalf of a minor under the age of 16)
MUST:
Submit a notarized written statement or affidavit from both parents or guardians authorizing a third-party to apply for a passport
When the statement of affidavit is from only one parent/guardian, the third-party must present evidence of sole custody of the authorizing parent/guardian.
STEP 6: Pay the Applicable Fee
Please see Current Passport Fees and methods of payment.
STEP 7: Provide Two Passport Photos
We can help you submit clear and correctly exposed passport photos the first time - especially when applying for the U.S. Passport Card. See Quality Requirements for Passport Book & Passport Card Photographs to avoid photo processing delays.
Your Photographs Must Be:
Identical
In color
2 x 2 inches in size
Taken within the past 6 months, showing current appearance
Full face, front view with a plain white or off-white background
Between 1 inch and 1 3/8 inches from the bottom of the chin to the top of the head
Taken in normal street attire:
Uniforms should not be worn in photographs except religious attire that is worn daily
Do not wear a hat or headgear that obscures the hair or hairline
If you normally wear prescription glasses, a hearing device, wig or similar articles, they should be worn for your picture
Dark glasses or nonprescription glasses with tinted lenses are not acceptable unless you need them for medical reasons (a medical certificate may be required)
NOTES:
Vending machine photos are not generally acceptable
See Digitized Passport Photos for information on acceptable digital photos
Professional photographers, see Guidelines for Producing High Quality Photographs for U.S. Travel Documents
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lord lord lord.....i can't believe i continue to contribute to this:
Why the stories about Obama's birth certificate will never die
Barack Obama was, without question, born in the U.S., and he is eligible to be president, but experts on conspiracy theories say that won't ever matter to those who believe otherwise.
By Alex Koppelman
Dec. 05, 2008 |
Barack Obama can't be president: He wasn't really born in Hawaii, and the certification of live birth his campaign released is a forgery. He was born in Kenya. Or maybe Indonesia. Or, wait, maybe he was born in Hawaii -- but that doesn't matter, since he was also a British citizen at birth because of his father, and you can't be a "natural-born citizen" in that case. (But then, maybe his "father" wasn't really his father; maybe his real dad was an obscure communist poet. Or Malcolm X.)
You might think these rumors would have died off after Obama produced proof in June that he was, in fact, born in Hawaii to an American citizen, his mother, Ann, or after Hawaii state officials confirmed in October that he was born there. You might think the rumors would have died off after he was elected by a comfortable margin. Instead, they've intensified. There have been paid advertisements in the Chicago Tribune questioning the president-elect's birth certificate and eligibility, and one group is raising money to run a similar ad on television. The right-wing Web site WorldNetDaily has been reporting on the issue almost nonstop. Numerous plaintiffs have filed lawsuits in various states. And Friday, the Supreme Court's nine justices will decide whether they want to hear one of those suits, which also contends that John McCain, born in the former Panama Canal Zone, does not meet the Constitution's requirements to hold the presidency. (see following article)
The people hoping this is a sign the court will agree with them and stop Obama from becoming president are almost certain to be let down. The fact that the case has gone to conference doesn't mean anything about its merits -- the court will also be deciding whether to take up a number of other cases, and the chances that the suit will actually be heard is exceedingly small. Eugene Volokh, a law professor at UCLA, has calculated that over the past eight years the court has considered in conference 842 cases that sought a stay. Only 60 of them were actually heard. Seven hundred and eighty-two were denied.
But that doesn't matter. The faux controversy isn't going to go away soon. Yes, Obama was born in Hawaii, and yes, he is eligible to be president. But according to several experts in conspiracy theories, and in the psychology of people who believe in conspiracy theories, there's little chance those people who think Obama is barred from the presidency will ever be convinced otherwise. "There's no amount of evidence or data that will change somebody's mind," says Michael Shermer, who is the publisher of Skeptic magazine and a columnist for Scientific American, and who holds an undergraduate and a master's degree in psychology. "The more data you present a person, the more they doubt it ... Once you're committed, especially behaviorally committed or financially committed, the more impossible it becomes to change your mind."
Any inconvenient facts are irrelevant. People who believe in a conspiracy theory "develop a selective perception, their mind refuses to accept contrary evidence," Chip Berlet, a senior analyst with Political Research Associates who studies such theories, says. "As soon as you criticize a conspiracy theory, you become part of the conspiracy."
Evan Harrington, a social psychologist who is an associate professor at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, agrees. "One of the tendencies of the conspiracy notion, the whole appeal, is that a lot of the information the believer has is secret or special," Harrington says. "The real evidence is out there, [and] you can give them all this evidence, but they'll have convenient ways to discredit [it]."
Whatever can't be ignored can be twisted to fit into the narrative; every new disclosure of something that should, by rights, end the controversy only opens up new questions, identifies new plotters. Perhaps the most common argument of those questioning Obama's eligibility is that he should just release his full, original birth certificate, rather than the shorter certification, which is a copy. His failure to do so only proves there is reason to be suspicious, they say, and if the document was released, the issue would go away. But that's unlikely. It was, after all, the Obama campaign's release of the certification this summer that stoked the fever of conspiracy mongers.
For believers, it works like this: So what if Dr. Chiyome Fukino, the director of Hawaii's Department of Health, released a statement saying she has verified that the state has the original birth certificate on record? So what if she said separately that the certification looks identical to one she was issued for her own Hawaii birth certificate? Why didn't her statement specify Obama's birthplace? So what if a Hawaii Health Department spokeswoman later clarified that Fukino meant that Obama was born in Hawaii? So what if researchers for FactCheck.org actually saw the physical copy of the certification and debunked much of the key "evidence" supposedly proving that the image posted online is a forgery? They're not really independent. They're funded by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, and Obama once (with Bill Ayers, no less) ran an entirely unrelated program that happened to be paid for with money donated by Walter Annenberg. And on and on and on.
If the long-form birth certificate were released, with its unequivocal identification of Hawaii as Obama's place of birth, the cycle would almost certainly continue. Rush Limbaugh already suggested that Obama's trip to Hawaii to see his ailing grandmother, who died not long after, was somehow connected to the controversy. Others, like Michael Savage, followed Limbaugh's lead, saying Obama was going to Hawaii to alter the record.
Not surprisingly, almost all of the people who've been most prominent in pushing this story have a history of conspiracist thought. There's Jerome Corsi, who's best known as the co-author of the book that launched the Swift boat vets; he's a chief proponent of the claim that the government is secretly planning to form a "North American Union" with Canada and Mexico. Philip Berg, who filed the lawsuit that had until now drawn the most public attention, is a 9/11 Truther. Andy Martin, who's credited with starting the myth that Obama is a Muslim and has been intimately involved in the birth certificate mess as well, was denied admission to the Illinois bar because of a psychiatric evaluation that showed he had "moderately severe character defect manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a grandiose character." He also has a long history of anti-Semitism. Robert Schulz, who's responsible for the ads in the Tribune, is a fairly notorious tax protester. In 2007, a federal judge ordered Schulz to shutter his Web site because he and his organization were, in the words of the Justice Department's Tax Division, using the site to promote "a nationwide tax-fraud scheme."
We could be dealing with the repercussions of the tangled web these people have woven for years after Obama is inaugurated. We already have some hints of what's to come. Gary Kreep, who heads the United States Justice Foundation and is representing Alan Keyes in one of the lawsuits over the president-elect's eligibility, has said his group will file suit to challenge each and every one of Obama's actions as president.
He may well inspire others. There are a surprising number of people out there -- tax protesters, for instance -- who rely on similarly creative legal thinking based on conspiracy theories for their defense. So don't be too surprised if, sometime after Jan. 20, defendants in federal trials suddenly claim they can't be prosecuted. If Obama isn't really president, then laws he signs have no effect, Department of Justice prosecutors have no authority and judges he appoints aren't legally judges. Anyone who tells you otherwise is just part of the conspiracy.
-- By Alex Koppelman
What the heck, what about McCain?
McCain's birthplace prompts queries about whether that rules him out
By Carl Hulse
Thursday, February 28, 2008
WASHINGTON: The question has nagged at the parents of Americans born outside the continental United States for generations: Dare their children aspire to grow up and become president? In the case of Senator John McCain of Arizona, the issue is becoming more than a matter of parental daydreaming.
McCain's likely nomination as the Republican candidate for president and the happenstance of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 are reviving a musty debate that has surfaced periodically since the founders first set quill to parchment and declared that only a "natural-born citizen" can hold the nation's highest office.
Almost since those words were written in 1787 with scant explanation, their precise meaning has been the stuff of confusion, law school review articles, whisper campaigns and civics class debates over whether only those delivered on American soil can be truly natural born. To date, no American to take the presidential oath has had an official birthplace outside the 50 states.
"There are powerful arguments that Senator McCain or anyone else in this position is constitutionally qualified, but there is certainly no precedent," said Sarah Duggin, an associate professor of law at Catholic University who has studied the issue extensively. "It is not a slam-dunk situation."
McCain was born on a military installation in the Canal Zone, where his mother and father, a navy officer, were stationed. His campaign advisers say they are comfortable that McCain meets the requirement and note that the question was researched for his first presidential bid in 1999 and reviewed again this time around.
But given mounting interest, the campaign recently asked Theodore Olson, a former solicitor general now advising McCain, to prepare a detailed legal analysis. "I don't have much doubt about it," said Olson, who added, though, that he still needed to finish his research.
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and one of McCain's closest allies, said it would be incomprehensible to him if the son of a military member born in a military station could not run for president.
"He was posted there on orders from the United States government," Graham said of McCain's father. "If that becomes a problem, we need to tell every military family that your kid can't be president if they take an overseas assignment."
The phrase "natural born" was in early drafts of the Constitution. Scholars say notes of the Constitutional Convention give away little of the intent of the framers. Its origin may be traced to a letter from John Jay to George Washington, with Jay suggesting that to prevent foreigners from becoming commander in chief, the Constitution needed to "declare expressly" that only a natural-born citizen could be president.
Duggin and others who have explored the arcane subject in depth say legal argument and basic fairness may indeed be on the side of McCain, a longtime member of Congress from Arizona. But multiple experts and scholarly reviews say the issue has never been definitively resolved by either Congress or the Supreme Court.
Duggin favors a constitutional amendment to settle the matter. Others have called on Congress to guarantee that Americans born outside the national boundaries can legitimately see themselves as potential contenders for the Oval Office.
"They ought to have the same rights," said Don Nickles, a former Republican senator from Oklahoma who in 2004 introduced legislation that would have established that children born abroad to American citizens could harbor presidential ambitions without a legal cloud over their hopes. "There is some ambiguity because there has never been a court case on what 'natural-born citizen' means."
McCain's situation is different from those of the current governors of California and Michigan, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jennifer Granholm, who were born in other countries and were first citizens of those nations, rendering them naturalized Americans ineligible under current interpretations. The conflict that could conceivably ensnare McCain goes more to the interpretation of "natural born" when weighed against intent and decades of immigration law.
McCain is not the first person to find himself in these circumstances. The last Arizona Republican to be a presidential nominee, Barry Goldwater, faced the issue. He was born in the Arizona territory in 1909, three years before it became a state. But Goldwater did not win, and the view at the time was that since he was born in a continental territory that later became a state, he probably met the standard.
It also surfaced in the 1968 candidacy of George Romney, who was born in Mexico, but again was not tested. The former Connecticut politician Lowell Weicker Jr., born in Paris, sought a legal analysis when considering the presidency, an aide said, and was assured he was eligible. Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. was once viewed as a potential successor to his father, but was seen by some as ineligible since he had been born on Campobello Island in Canada. The 21st president, Chester Arthur, whose birthplace is Vermont, was rumored to have actually been born in Canada, prompting some to question his eligibility.
Quickly recognizing confusion over the evolving nature of citizenship, the First Congress in 1790 passed a measure that did define children of citizens "born beyond the sea, or out of the limits of the United States to be natural born." But that law is still seen as potentially unconstitutional and was overtaken by subsequent legislation that omitted the "natural-born" phrase.
McCain's citizenship was established by statutes covering the offspring of Americans abroad and laws specific to the Canal Zone as Congress realized that Americans would be living and working in the area for extended periods. But whether he qualifies as natural-born has been a topic of Internet buzz for months, with some declaring him ineligible while others assert that he meets all the basic constitutional qualifications — a natural-born citizen at least 35 years of age with 14 years of residence.
"I don't think he has any problem whatsoever," said Nickles, a McCain supporter. "But I wouldn't be a bit surprised if somebody is going to try to make an issue out of it. If it goes to court, I think he will win."
Lawyers who have examined the topic say there is not just confusion about the provision itself, but uncertainty about who would have the legal standing to challenge a candidate on such grounds, what form a challenge could take and whether it would have to wait until after the election or could be made at any time.
In a paper written 20 years ago for the Yale Law Journal on the natural-born enigma, Jill Pryor, now a lawyer in Atlanta, said that any legal challenge to a presidential candidate born outside national boundaries would be "unpredictable and unsatisfactory."
"If I were on the Supreme Court, I would decide for John McCain," Pryor said in a recent interview. "But it is certainly not a frivolous issue."
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SB et al:
I sincerely hope that BO was born in HI. I think it would be an utter tragedy and disaster if it turns out that he was not and therefor ineligible to serve.
"Perhaps the most common argument of those questioning Obama's eligibility is that he should just release his full, original birth certificate, rather than the shorter certification, which is a copy. His failure to do so only proves there is reason to be suspicious, they say, and if the document was released, the issue would go away. But that's unlikely. It was, after all, the Obama campaign's release of the certification this summer that stoked the fever of conspiracy mongers."
This is specious reasoning for reasons obvious to the general IQ level of this forum. Count me amongs those who can't think of a good reason not to release the original.
Marc
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I always use the "if the shoe was on the other foot" test. If a conservative Republican had such a hard to document via primary sources, single parent, international childhood, do you think those on the left would be raising a hue and cry. Don't forget the claims of Palin's fake pregnancy. . . .
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Don't forget the claims of Palin's fake pregnancy. . . .
Wha??? First I've heard of this.
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Dude, what cave were you in? All the moonbats were speculating when Palin first came on the scene that Palin's son was in fact her daughter's child and that Palin faked the pregnancy to shield her daughter or somesuch.
An excerpt from one of many Daily Kos entries:
Palin's faked "pregnancy"? Covering for teen daughter? UPDATE #2!
by Inky99
Fri Aug 29, 2008 at 02:19:42 PM PST
Okay, I just have to diary about this, although in many ways this falls into the "none of our business category".
But it appears that Pallin's last child, a baby with Down's syndrome, may not be hers. It may be that of her teenage daughter.
Here's a link just to get you started:
http://www.adn.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/29/17933/7330/417/579267
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Relocated to Coming Cognitive Dissonance, per the request of our esteemed mod, two posts below.
http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1718.msg23956#new
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Palin's son was in fact her daughter's child and that Palin faked the pregnancy to shield her daughter or somesuch.
That is just...ridiculous
Who thinks this crap up?
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I'm thinking the Green Team piece belongs better on the Cognitive Dissonance thread , , ,
Anyway, fair and reasonable man that SBM is, of course he gets the absurdity of the Palin baby nonsense-- what remains IMHO is that there is no good reason that I can see for all of us not to see the original certificate. Period.
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BAMA: means business when he states he aims to change the world:
By Charles Krauthammer
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Barack Obama has garnered praise from center to right — and has highly irritated the left — with the centrism of his major appointments. Because Obama's own beliefs remain largely opaque, his appointments have led to the conclusion that he intends to govern from the center.
Obama the centrist? I'm not so sure. Take the foreign policy team: Hillary Clinton, James Jones and Bush holdover Robert Gates. As centrist as you can get. But the choice was far less ideological than practical. Obama has no intention of being a foreign policy president. Unlike, say, Nixon or Reagan, he does not have aspirations abroad. He simply wants quiet on his eastern and western fronts so that he can proceed with what he really cares about — his domestic agenda.
Similarly his senior economic team, the brilliant trio of Tim Geithner, Larry Summers and Paul Volcker: centrist, experienced and mainstream. But their principal task is to stabilize the financial system, a highly pragmatic task in which Obama has no particular ideological stake.
A functioning financial system is a necessary condition for a successful Obama presidency. As in foreign policy, Obama wants experts and veterans to manage and pacify universes in which he has little experience and less personal commitment. Their job is to keep credit flowing and the world at bay so that Obama can address his real ambition: to effect a domestic transformation as grand and ambitious as Franklin Roosevelt's.
As Obama revealingly said just last week, "This painful crisis also provides us with an opportunity to transform our economy to improve the lives of ordinary people." Transformation is his mission. Crisis provides the opportunity. The election provides him the power.
The deepening recession creates the opportunity for federal intervention and government experimentation on a scale unseen since the New Deal. A Republican administration has already done the ideological groundwork with its unprecedented intervention, culminating in the forced partial nationalization of nine of the largest banks, the kind of stuff that happens in Peronist Argentina with a gun on the table. Additionally, Henry Paulson's invention of the number $700 billion forever altered our perception of imaginable government expenditure. Twenty billion more for Citigroup? Lunch money.
Moreover, no one in Congress even pretends that spending should be pay as you go (i.e., new expenditures balanced by higher taxes or lower spending), as the Democrats disingenuously promised when they took over Congress last year. Even some conservative economists are urging stimulus (although structured far differently from Democratic proposals). And public opinion, demanding action, will buy any stimulus package of any size. The result: undreamed-of amounts of money at Obama's disposal.
To meet the opportunity, Obama has the political power that comes from a smashing electoral victory. It not only gave him a personal mandate. It increased Democratic majorities in both houses, thereby demonstrating coattails and giving him clout. And by running on nothing much more than change and (often contradictory) hopes, he has given himself enormous freedom of action.
Obama was quite serious when he said he was going to change the world. And now he has a national crisis, a personal mandate, a pliant Congress, a desperate public — and, at his disposal, the greatest pot of money in galactic history. (I include here the extrasolar planets.)
It begins with a near $1 trillion stimulus package. This is where Obama will show himself ideologically. It is his one great opportunity to plant the seeds for everything he cares about: a new green economy, universal health care, a labor resurgence, government as benevolent private-sector "partner." The first hint came yesterday, when Obama claimed, "If we want to overcome our economic challenges, we must also finally address our health care challenge" — the perfect non sequitur that gives carte blanche to whatever health-care reform and spending the Obama team dreams up. It is the community organizer's ultimate dream.
Ironically, when the economy tanked in mid-September, it was assumed that both presidential candidates could simply forget about their domestic agendas because with $700 billion drained by financial system rescues, not a penny would be left to spend on anything else.
On the contrary. With the country clamoring for action and with all psychological barriers to government intervention obliterated (by the conservative party, no less), the stage is set for a young, ambitious, supremely confident president — who sees himself as a world-historical figure before even having been sworn in — to begin a restructuring of the American economy and the forging of a new relationship between government and people.
Don't be fooled by Bob Gates staying on. Obama didn't get elected to manage Afghanistan. He intends to transform America. And he has the money, the mandate and the moxie to go for it.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment on Charles Krauthammer's column by clicking by clicking here.
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Here we go again. The Clintons grabbing for the spotlight and self serving spin. Every move she makes she will have her spin team out there telling what a great job she is doing fixing the world for us. Oh well. Does State really need to get in on economic issues? She is already trying to ustage BO. I thought BO was for change. We still are going to hear endless grifter propaganda.
***Hillary Clinton plans a more powerful State Dept: NY Times
Hillary Rodham Clinton plans to build a more muscular US State Department, with a bigger budget, high-profile special envoys dispatched to trouble spots and an expanded role in dealing with the global economic crisis, the New York Times reported Tuesday.
The Times cited an unnamed Hillary Clinton adviser as saying her push for a more vigorous economic team stems from her belief that the State Department needs to play a part in the recovery from the global financial crisis, while economic issues also are at the heart of key diplomatic relationships, notably with China.
The former first lady also is reportedly likely to name several high-powered envoys to world hotspots.
The daily reported that Clinton and Obama have not yet settled on specific envoys or missions, although the name of veteran diplomat Dennis Ross has come up as a possible Middle East envoy, along with diplomatic trouble-shooter Richard Holbrooke and Martin Indyk, a former United States ambassador to Israel.
The Times wrote that the New York senator -- President-elect Barack Obama's pick for Secretary of State -- is recruiting Jacob Lew, the budget director under her husband former president Bill Clinton -- to be one of her two deputies. Lew would be tasked with handling economic matters, the report said.
Another Bill Clinton aide, former deputy national security adviser James Steinberg is to be Hillary Clinton's other chief lieutenant, subject to Senate confirmation.***
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Africa: Obama's Victory, Our Hypocrisy
Chris Agbiti
26 December 2008
November 4th, 2008 will, undoubtedly go down in world history as epoch making.
It was a day that signposted the final internment of the age-long divisive philosophy that held one race superior to another (apology to the legend, Bob Marley); it was a day the entire world came together, irrespective of creed and religion, to recite Dune Dimitis (however, not with long faces) for the monster of racial discrimination that had for long defined the political climate of America but now chased away; it was the day Barack Hussein Obama won in landslide, the U.S Presidential election.
The U.S. Presidential Election has come and gone but the echoes of it continue to reverberate in every nook and cranny of Africa especially in Kenya where Obama traces his patrilineal descent from. The euphoria of Obama's victory will for long continue its ripples in the Negroid race of Africa.
However, the point is worth making that for the Americans, the euphoria of joy sweeping through its entire nation is understandable: That, at last, someone who has a clear vision and a good grasp of the issues that need to be addressed to restore U.S. lost glory, consequent upon the lacklustre performance of the out-going president, was not held back from realizing that ambition by prejudices. But for Africans, what other reason beside the sentimental consideration that a fellow brother African now becomes President of U.S., can we adduce to bedrocks our own euphoria at the election of Obama?
If one may ask, what business do African countries, together with their stinking leaders, have in rejoicing over Obama's victory at the U.S. poll when we know in our hearts of hearts that we will never allow the kind of system that has produced Obama in U.S. election to be replicated in our own land?
Or, are we under a delusion that, with Obama's presidency, African countries shall wake up one morning, like the fabled Alice in Wonderland, and find all the good things of life in sufficiency for all as obtain in the western world, even while our leaders and people continue in their culture of greed, corruption, ethnic hostilities and all such practices antithetical to the dictate of modern civilization?
It bears repeating to state here that it borders on crass hypocrisy for African countries such as Zambia, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Nigeria, et al, to rejoice at Obama's victory even when they are all still involved in various acts of prejudices, this time around, not even against a coloured person but against their own black brothers.
We have witnessed instances in Zambia where the first post independent Kenneth Kaunda had his citizenship withdrawn on the allegation that his ancestry is somewhere in another African country! Similar acts have played out in Ivory Coast and Nigeria (Shugaba's case). The xenophobic hostilities in South Africa and Zimbabwe are all still fresh in our memories. Africans must be reminded not to expect too much from the presidency of Obama any more than they expected from the presidency of Bill Clinton.
Our only obvious claim to Obama is his blood ties to his Kenyan father. But we must call to memory that, for all the time the elder Obama lived, his conduct in juxtaposition to what Obama Jr. is and stands for today shows, in very lucid details, those sad commentaries of a pure bred African man. The elder Obama came to America and deceitfully led Obama's mother into marriage, even while he was already married to another Kenya woman back home.
He was to later abandon Obama's mother and returned to Kenya, leaving young Obama in the care of his maternal grandparents in America. It was recorded that he died drunk-driving. Should Obama's father were to be alive, one imagines that he too may be rejoicing just like the other African leaders are hypocritically doing.
We must stop deceiving ourselves. It is high time we told ourselves a few home truths. Whatever Obama is today or stands for, he owes it all to the American society.
If he were to be brought up in Kenya, his fatherland, with all his seeming immeasurable grace of intelligence, he would have ended up, at best, as a very brilliant but frustrated university don holed up somewhere in one of our glorified secondary schools, called university, like many other frustrated Obamas in our African society today. The American society that shaped Obama to become what he is to day places a higher premium of kinship of ideas over and above that of blood.
That explains the acceptance of Obama's candidature across the racial divides. If Obama were not of the rare breed of mankind (who recreates themselves independent of genetic force), he would not even be identifying his African root. It is only for Obama's high sense of humility and decency that he does so and I commend him for it. Africans must be reminded that as we cheer Obama's victory, we must cast away that extra baggage of hypocrisy and begin to reflect on the need for us to home-grow a system similar to what sustains in the U.S. that has made possible the Obama phenomenon.
The world today is ruled by ideas. It is not enough for us bank on blood kinship to Obama and think that alone will be the open sesame to our El Dorado.
In today's modern world, kinship of ideas, as aforesaid, rather than of blood or ethnicity is one of the driving force of attraction. In doing so, we must remind ourselves that until we jettison that negative attitude that encourages subjugation of fellow man rather than our environment which is what the white man has effectively achieved, we shall continue in our collective grope.
Chris Agbiti wrote from Port Harcourt.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200812260007.html
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**I've already heard "National People's Radio" doing this.**
- Works and Days - http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson -
Life At New Animal Farm Won’t Be All That Bad
Posted By Victor Davis Hanson On December 27, 2008 @ 3:31 pm In Uncategorized | 18 Comments
By July, we will come to feel that 2009 will be one of the most upbeat years in our history, as what used to be the news media? begins to get behind America and report on all the mysteriously wonderful things that are suddenly taking place.
All the campaign talk of the Great Depression, a Vietnam-like war, and our shredded Constitution will now thankfully subside as the Obama administration assumes office and solves problems with conciliation, dialogue, and multilateral wisdom, rather than shrillness, unilateralism, preemption, and my-way-or-the-highway dogmatism. We will hear that by historical levels unemployment is still not that bad, that GDP growth is not historically all that low, and that deficits, inflation, interest rates, and housing starts are all within manageable parameters. “Depression” will transmogrify into “recession” which in turn by July will be a “downturn” and by year next an “upswing” on its way to boom times.
Indeed, almost supernaturally crises will be solved with the departure of the hated Bush: no more flooding streets from cracked water mains that were a result of a President’s neglect of infrastructure, and no more spontaneous crashes of Mississippi River bridges due to diversions of critical federal aid from cash-strapped states to Iraq. And when the temperatures rise or drop, the wind howls, the clouds burst forth or go away, the snow melts or piles up, it will be, well, nature that caused the havoc, not the current occupant of the White House who failed to sign Kyoto.
As we watch the innocent die from natural mayhem, it will be due to the breakdown of local responders who now suddenly kill people, not federal inaction—except perhaps for an occasional few Bush federal holdovers that have not yet been rooted out. Human nature, of course, now will be seen more culpable, more selfish, as in needlessly resisting wise and caring federal interventions, rather than being inherently noble but shunned by an uncaring Washington. Yes, when dikes collapse and planes collide on crowed run-ways, it will be due to a cruel and unpredictable nature, or intrinsic design flaws, or improper local use and maintenance, or the past President’s nefarious legacy, not current government policies. (But if you still must bash the government, it will be wise to do it in 1950s style of inattentive state and local officials, prone to regional and tribal prejudices, blocking the infinite wisdom of a caring federal government.)
Some military action abroad could be necessary—and necessarily reported on as measured and reluctant, rather than cowboyish and gratuitous. European whining will be a result of miscommunications or the Euros’ unfair caricatures of Americans, not Bush’s alienation of allies. If radical Islam strikes, it will be, well, radical again and sometimes even dangerous, not a figment of neocon pipe dreams. If an administration official quits, goes on 60 Minutes, and writes a nasty tell-all book about Obama’s insensitivity and his government’s directionless ennui, he will be a heretic, a whiner, a turncoat, not a truth teller or brave maverick who blew the whistle in need of a bestseller hyped from NPR to the New York Times. We will come again to hate the filibuster, obstructionist Congressional policies, and the occasional loud-mouthed Senator who voices slurs against our nation in unpatriotic fashion.
Those around Barack Obama understand that precisely those measures most derided during the campaign—wiretaps, the interrogation of prisoners in Guantanamo, the decimation of al Qaida members in Iraq and Afghanistan, overseas detentions—probably account likewise most for the absence of another 9/11-like attack. In other words, as the Obamians privately ignore the media hype about flushed Korans and hundreds of innocents caught in the cauldron of war and unfairly detained, and instead examine the sort of killers who are presently in Guantanamo, the type of intelligence gathering that led to prevention of dozens of planned attacks since 9/11, and those who turned up and were killed or arrested in Iraq and Afghanistan, they will realize how dicey it will be to follow through with campaign rhetoric about Bush, Inc. torching the Bill of Rights, fighting made-up enemies abroad, and generally alienating our allies.
So all that will change for now will be the sudden absence of shrill complaints that we live in an America without a Constitution. Static, same-old, same-old government policy will, of course, be said to have altered radically (”hoped and changed”), but it will also be refashioned in the media as “sober” and “judicious”, as the administration moves “in circumspect fashion” to probe and explore “complex” and often “paradoxical” matters of national security that “indeed at the end of the day have no easy answers”.
Expect much of the same on the economic front. For all the campaign hysteria about greedy Bushites who destroyed the economy, Obama realizes that in fact the seeds of the current financial weeds were sown years ago, and watered and fertilized by an array of both Democratic and Republican facilitators in Congress and hacks in government-affiliated mortgage sinecures. So expect the bailouts to continue. We will see Wall Street in about 24 hours after January 20 transmogrified from Gordon Gecko’s habitat into a sort of the old Robert Rubin/Warren Buffet-like necessary institution about which a Sen. Schumer or Chris Dodd can offer invaluable advice and consultation.
Socially, we will get a mix of Maya Angelou, Oprah, and Rick Warren, a rich diversity of therapeutics that appeals to everyone’s popular feel-my-pain tastes. Rev. Wrights and Father Plegers are “that was then, this is now” has-beens (not that they and their Blago-ilk with a memoir or wierd disclosure won’t try to crash the party from time to time), replaced by the bromides of the Purpose-Driven Life. The Left will once again see the U.S. as the last, best hope for mankind, a flawed, often errant nation that nevertheless in its heart always showed the world what was right in the end. “Diversity” and “progressive” themes will replace Bush’s hokey old-time patriotism, as we return to a more nuanced and sophisticated love of country that at last “came home.”
In other words, one can also at last enjoy that nice wood-floored study, tastefully granite-countered kitchen, with plenty of stainless steel appliances, in a mostly un-diverse neighborhood, still send your kids to a mostly predetermined racially-appropriate school, and still make a pretty good salary, drive a comfortably large car (though please—preferably a Volvo or Mercedes SUV rather than a Tahoe or Yukon), and feel like you are out there on the barricades of radical environmental, cultural, and political change (and hope too!).
Al Gore will be courted, get an occasional photo-op head-pat—but when he gets too loud quietly sent back upstairs to the closet. Ditto the uncouth Sharpton and Jackson, snapping pit bulls muzzled and dispatched to the kennels. Jimmy Carter will once again be wierd old jet-setting Jimmy Carter, a meddler, a spoiler, a PR junkie on the verge of senility rather than the principled Nobel laureate of the Carter Center.
Those inside the big house change, the commandments on the barn wall subtly are crossed out and updated, but the farm for us animals stays about the same.
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? I say used to be the news media, since when they report good news about the Divine Obama we have no idea whether it’s encomium or fact; and if they are ever slightly negative, we don’t know whether the complaint derives from His real error or merely that they are stung by past criticism and ostensibly trying to be periodically balanced. In short, the age of Murrow is over—and the divine era of Augustus with his Livy and Dio is upon us.
Article printed from Works and Days: http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson
URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/life-at-new-animal-farm-won%e2%80%99t-be-all-that-bad/
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Geopolitical Diary: Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan
January 21, 2009
Barack Hussein Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States on Tuesday. It was an historic day — not because of Obama’s race or policies, but because this was the 44th time that a peaceful transition of power took place in American history. If you will except the Civil War, when the transition was peaceful but nothing else was, that is an extraordinary record; and every time the United States ends one presidency and begins another one, it is an extraordinary event.
The question is whether Obama’s presidency will be historic, mediocre or disastrous. Every administration begins with tremendous support and great hopes. Most lose support and disappoint many hopes. It is impossible to know at the beginning what the end will bring. More than most presidents, Obama begins with a huge pool of support. Part of this derives from his personality. Part of it derives from the fact that he has a unique skill in allowing people to believe readily that he supports their views, when in reality, he has kept his commitment to a minimum. Part of it derives from the fact that between the economic crisis and the wars in the Islamic world, there is a deep pessimism in the United States that creates tremendous enthusiasm for anyone who holds open the promise of solutions.
Obama has become president at one of those moments when what went before makes what comes after appear delightful for many people. Many people have compared Obama to Franklin Roosevelt. To us, Obama is more similar to Ronald Reagan. Reagan took over from Jimmy Carter at a time when the economy was in terrible shape and when the Iran hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan had driven the country into what Carter called a deep “malaise.”
While Reagan had many bitter opponents, his chief virtue was that he was not drowning in pessimism and seemed to know what he would do. His followers saw him as endorsing a wide array of ideological issues, but his presidency turned out to be far more complex and nuanced than that. Many of his supporters, particularly on the Christian right, were quite disappointed in him in the end because he never drove the issues they thought he would drive.
Reagan’s theme was not “change,” but “morning in America” — equally vague, but it spoke to the moment. Reagan was called “the great communicator” for his ability to hold his coalition together in spite of the inevitable setbacks and scandals that every administration has. Ultimately that was his skill, and it was not a trivial one to have. Reagan’s presidency is viewed, even by those who were critics at the time, as successful because he had a singular virtue: He could hold his coalition together as he followed a singularly pragmatic path.
What is interesting about Obama is that he won with a much smaller percentage of the vote than Reagan did, but at this moment, his popularity is higher than it was on Election Day — dramatically so. Reagan’s rose too, but not like this. It will be interesting to see if that gives Obama greater strength or more room to fall.
It is also interesting to remember that Carter was not popular internationally. The Europeans had serious problems with him, and the German chancellor treated him with public contempt. The Islamic world treated him with particular contempt — the Iranians for obvious reasons and the Arabs for not stopping Ayatollah Khomeini. Reagan was actually greeted by many in the world as a vast relief after Carter’s moralizing and bumbling. Very quickly, America’s allies were disabused of their post-Carter fantasies. We strongly suspect that this will be case with Obama as well. Their problem is with America and not a particular president. Reagan was quickly as despised as Carter. It is hard to be as despised internationally as George W. Bush was, but then few thought that Reagan could fall in international esteem to Carter’s levels.
It is useful to recall that Carter cared a great deal about what the international community cared, and he lost respect. Reagan didn’t care a bit about the international community and lost respect. Caring didn’t really matter. But Obama does start out with quite a cushion.
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-oped1022goldbergjan22,0,7487191.story
Why Obama also gives hope to conservatives
Jonah Goldberg
January 22, 2009
I am proud of and excited by the fact that we have inaugurated the first black president of the United States. He wasn't my first choice, but he is nonetheless my president. And if ever there were a wonderful consolation prize in politics, shattering the race barrier in the White House is surely it.
Conservatives who try too hard to belittle the importance of this milestone are mistaken on several fronts. First, this is simply a wonderful—and wonderfully American—story. Any political movement that is joyless about what this represents risks succumbing to bitter political crankery.
For instance, you will not soon see a German chancellor of Turkish descent. Nor will a child of North African immigrants soon take the reins of power in France. It will be a long time before a Pakistani or Indian last name appears on the mailbox at 10 Downing St. And yet these countries bubble over with haughty finger-waggers eager to lecture backward and provincial America about race and tolerance. Why not enjoy rubbing Barack Obama in their faces?
Of course, there's a partisan angle to Obama's presidency—he is head of the Democratic Party, after all—but his success comes on the heels of a bipartisan racial success story. For instance, President Bush appointed the first African-American secretaries of state.
As Obama loves to observe, America is more indivisible and united than many would have us think. "We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the Stars and Stripes, all of us defending the United States of America," he proclaimed in his careermaking keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic convention.
It only follows that George Bush's America is also Barack Obama's America, and vice versa. That's an important lesson not only for foreign observers but for domestic partisans.
More important, opponents of racial quotas and other champions of colorblindness on the right should be popping champagne nearly as much as racial liberals are. Yes, yes, Obama's a passionate defender of affirmative action and the like, but the symbolism of his presidency cannot be contained within narrow liberal agendas.
"There is an entire generation that will grow up taking for granted that the highest office in the land is filled by an African-American," he told the Washington Post last week. "I mean, that's a radical thing. It changes how black children look at themselves. It also changes how white children look at black children. And I wouldn't underestimate the force of that."
Neither would I. The media understandably, if tediously, focus on how Obama's presidency is a deathblow to the legacy of official discrimination and racism. True enough. But the fact that a black man can become president of the United States may also be transgressive to all sorts of more relevant racial orthodoxies on the left and in the black community.
Obama's personal example is only part of the equation. He has voiced an admirable disdain for the notion that academic excellence is nothing more than "acting white." His famous Father's Day speech in 2008 showed that Obama was willing to lend his voice to the effort to fight black illegitimacy and absentee fatherhood.
This puts Obama behind the two most important ingredients for black success, at least according to most conservatives: a rededication to the importance of education at an individual level, and the restoration of the black nuclear family.
At a more political level, a black president surely undermines the argument that American racism is so endemic that a system of racial quotas must remain a permanent fixture of the political and legal landscape.
Obama is most frequently compared to Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. But he also has compared himself to Ronald Reagan, saying he'd like to be a similarly transformative leader, albeit from a different ideological perspective. Only time will tell how successful he will be on that front.
But the analogy may be apt in ways that he and his supporters may not fully appreciate. By hastening the end of the Cold War, Reagan took away the defining cause of the conservative movement. The right had other issues, to be sure. But anti-communism was the coalitional glue. And while principled conservatives were happy to trade a live campaign issue for a dead Soviet Union, the damage to conservative cohesion was real.
If Obama lives up to the dreams of his supporters in writing a new, post-racial chapter for America, he will have at once done more for America than any Democratic president in generations. But he also will have cut the knot holding much of the left together. As an American and as a conservative, I certainly hope that's the case. He's already made a good start of it just by getting elected.
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***President Barack Obama, seeking to sell his stimulus package to the public, promoted plans to build up clean-energy industries, expand health-insurance coverage and boost security at U.S. ports as part of the broader effort to jump-start the sputtering U.S. economy.
“If we do not act boldly and swiftly, a bad situation could become dramatically worse,” Obama said today in his first weekly radio and video address as president.
The administration released a report today outlining some of Obama’s priorities for the two-year recovery package. They include loan guarantees and other support to open up credit for renewable-energy investors, providing health insurance coverage to almost 8.5 million people who’ve lost jobs and enhancing security at 90 ports.***
I don't get the logic. How is providing health insurance going to jump start the economy?
How is beefing security at ports goint to jump start the economy?
How is renewable energy going to jump start the economy?
How are loan gaurantees going to jump start the economy?
And how is putting on hold US offshore drilling going to stimulate the economy?
The rhetoric just doesn't wash with logic. I feel it is just the usual political crap to puch their agenda - big socialized government down the American people.
I am getting more and more concered BO is dead serious about his past socialist ties. The "conciliation" thing, the "post partisan" thing is all one gigantic *con*. We are going to get screwed from here to China.
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Well I am interested in what the dinner host has to say now that he smoozed over cavier with BO. I am not sure what the bottom line is on this whether he is positive or negative with his former dinner guest. Perhaps it is toned down because they share a passion for the same wine. :roll:
"The theory of a grand bargain is that if every American faction is being nicked simultaneously — if tax increases and benefit cuts ("cuts" understood, perhaps, as disappointing increases) make everyone surly at the same time — there will be unity born of universal grievance, which will morph into a public-spirited consensus"
I guess Will is suggesting that BO is going to nick everyone. But that is not what I heard him say. A lot of people who voted for him including some (so I have heard) minorities are already waiting for their check in the mail.
"Grace-Marie Turner, a student of health-care policies, says this SCHIP expansion is sensible — if your goal is quickly to get as many people on public coverage as possible and to have children grow up thinking that it is normal for them to get their health insurance from the government. That is the goal."
You got that right Will. But this is only the beginning I'm afraid.
****Grand, Yes. Bargain, No.
By George Will
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Days before becoming responsible, in the eyes of a public fixated on the presidency, for almost everything, Barack Obama vowed to convene a "fiscal responsibility summit." It will consider the economy's long-term problems, one of which is the growing cost of entitlements in an aging nation that is caught in the tightening grip of an iron law of welfare states: Graying means paying.
Presumably the president's summit will help chart a path toward what has been called a "grand bargain." This Big Bang will aim to create a new universe of domestic policy by, among other things, making the entitlement menu — particularly Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which are more than 40 percent of federal spending — manageable. Obama spoke of his summit a day after the House of Representatives, evidently believing that the nation is so flush that there is no need for restraint, voted to make matters worse by enriching that menu.
By a vote of 289 to 139, with 40 Republicans joining the majority, the House, in the process of reauthorizing the State Children's Health Insurance Program, doubled the funding, thereby transforming it through "mission creep." SCHIP's purpose, when it was enacted by a Republican-controlled Congress in 1997, was to subsidize state governments as they subsidize health care for families too affluent to be eligible for Medicaid but not affluent enough to afford health insurance. Because any measure acquires momentum when it is identified as for "the children," SCHIP was said to be for "poor children" or children of "the working poor."
In 2007, after President Bush proposed a $5 billion increase in SCHIP, the House voted for a $50 billion increase but receded to the Senate's proposed $35 billion, which became the definition of moderation. That compromise, which Bush successfully vetoed, at first would have extended SCHIP eligibility to some households with incomes up to 400 percent of the poverty line (up to $83,000 for a family of four), and more than $30,000 above the median household income ($50,233). So people with incomes higher than most people's became eligible for a program supposedly for low-income people. Call that compassionate arithmetic.
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The new expansion, which is vengeance for Bush's veto, is mission gallop: It will make it much easier for some states to extend SCHIP eligibility to children from families earning up to $84,800. Furthermore, to make "poor" an extremely elastic concept, generous "income disregards" are allowed. Families can, depending on their state's policies, subtract from their income calculation what they spend on rent or mortgage or heating or food or transportation or some combination of these. So children in some families with incomes well over $100,000 will be eligible.
Grace-Marie Turner, a student of health-care policies, says this SCHIP expansion is sensible — if your goal is quickly to get as many people on public coverage as possible and to have children grow up thinking that it is normal for them to get their health insurance from the government. That is the goal.
And this is the Congress with which the president will try to strike a grand bargain. Because of the 22nd Amendment, he may not be president long enough to get a Democratic Congress to agree to the shape of the table at which to bargain.
If he does tackle the problem of the teetering entitlement system, he will do so at an unpropitious moment: Events are making reform more necessary while making it seem less urgent. A nation in which $350 billion was but the first half of the Troubled Asset Relief Program and in which TARP is distinct from the perhaps $825 billion "stimulus" program, is a nation being taught not to take seriously sums with merely nine digits and two commas. Remember, just 15 months ago Bush vetoed SCHIP because of $30 billion, a sum that, from the TARP bucket, nowadays disappears into the thin air from which much of the almost $1 trillion of stimulus will be conjured.
The theory of a grand bargain is that if every American faction is being nicked simultaneously — if tax increases and benefit cuts ("cuts" understood, perhaps, as disappointing increases) make everyone surly at the same time — there will be unity born of universal grievance, which will morph into a public-spirited consensus. Perhaps. On the other hand, George Kennan, diplomat and historian, said that the unlikelihood of any negotiation reaching an agreement grows by the square of the number of parties involved.****
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I wonder if this is the first time his charm isn't working. Using his charm and a veiled means of bribery (well just take from the rich and share it with you all.) he was able to get by with deception.
I am not sure it is so much people finally seeing him for the person he is or people finally realize his policies will hurt and not help them in the long run.
Whether the independents finally see he despises the America we knew for 200 years and is intent on molding it into his conceptual ideal or simply that they will all be paying for it I don't know for sure.
I suspect he will compromise big on the health care plan. I don't underestimate his need to cling to power and I don't think he will try to ram it through without huge compromises - and then of course claim credit.
Anyway her take:
OPINION: DECLARATIONS AUGUST 13, 2009, 10:51 P.M. ET From 'Yes, We Can,' to 'No! Don't!' Obama turns out to be brilliant at becoming, not being, president.By PEGGY NOONAN
Don't strain the system. Don't add to the national stress level. Don't pierce when you can envelop. Don't show even understandable indignation when you can show legitimate regard. Realize that the ties that bind still bind but have grown dryer and more worn with time. They need to be strengthened, not strained.
Govern knowing we are a big, strong, mighty nation, a colossus that is, however, like all highly complex, highly wired organisms, fragile, even at places quite delicate. Don't overburden or overexcite the system. America used to have fringes, one over here and the other over there. The fringes are growing. The fringes have their own networks. All sorts of forces exist to divide us. Try always to unite.
These are things one always wants people currently rising in government to know deep in their heads and hearts. They are the things the young, fierce staffers in any new White House, and the self-proclaimed ruthless pragmatists in this one, need to hear, be told or be reminded of.
***
The big, complicated, obscure, abstruse, unsettling and ultimately unhelpful health-care plans, proposals and ideas keep rolling out of Washington. Five bills, thousands of pages, "as it says on page 346, paragraph 3, subsection D." No one knows what will be passed, what will make its way through House-Senate "conference." They don't even know what the president wants, what his true agenda is. He never seems to be leveling, only talking. Everything's open to misdirection and exaggeration, and everything, people fear, will come down to some future bureaucrat's interpretation of paragraph 3, subsection D, part 22.
What a disaster this health-care debate is. It strains, stresses and pierces, it unnecessarily agitates and is doomed to be the cause of further agitation. Who doubts the final bill will be something between a pig in a poke and three-card Monte?
Which is too bad, because our health care system actually needs to be made better.
***
There are smart and experienced people who say whatever the mess right now, the president will get a bill of some sort because he has the brute numeric majority. A rising number say no, this thing has roused such ire he won't get much if anything. I don't know, but this is true: If he wins it, will be a victory not worth having. It will have cost too much. It has lessened the thing an admired president must have from the people, and that is trust.
It is divisive save in one respect. The Obama White House has done the near impossible: It has united the Republican Party. Social conservatives, economic conservatives, libertarians—they're all against the health-care schemes as presented so far. They're shoulder-to-shoulder at the barricade again.
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More Peggy Noonan
Read Peggy Noonan's previous columns.
And click here to order her new book, Patriotic Grace.
The president's town hall meeting on Tuesday in Portsmouth, N.H., was supposed to be an antidote to the fractious town halls with members of Congress the past weeks. But it was not peaceful, only somnolent. Actually it was a bit of a disaster. It looked utterly stacked, with softball after softball thrown by awed and supportive citizens. When George W. Bush did town halls like that—full of people who'd applaud if he said tomorrow we bring democracy to Saturn—it was considered a mark of manipulation and insecurity. And it was. So was Mr. Obama's.
The first question was from a Democratic state representative from Dover named Peter Schmidt. He began, "One of the things you've been doing in your campaign to change the situation is you've been striving for bipartisanship."
"Right," the president purred. They were really holding his feet to the fire.
"My question is," Mr. Schmidt continued, "if the Republicans actively refuse to participate in a reasonable way with reasonable proposals, isn't it time to just say ,'We're going to pass what the American people need and what they want without the Republicans'?"
Stop, Torquemada, stop!
The president said it would be nice to pass a bill in a "bipartisan fashion" but "the most important thing is getting it done for the American people."
Then came a grade-school girl. "I saw a lot of signs outside saying mean things about reforming health care" she said. Here one expected a gentle and avuncular riff on the wonderful and vivid expressions of agreement and disagreement to be seen in a vibrant democracy. But no. The president made a small grimace. "I've seen some of those signs," he said. There's been a "rumor" the House voted for "death panels" that will "pull the plug on grandma," but it's all a lie.
I'm glad he'd like psychiatric care included in future coverage, because after that answer that child may need therapy.
***
The president seemed like a man long celebrated as being very good at politics—the swift rise, the astute reading of a varied electorate—who is finding out day by day that he isn't actually all that good at it. In this sense he does seem reminiscent of Jimmy Carter, who was brilliant at becoming president but not being president. (Actually a lot of them are like that these days.)
Also, something odd. When Mr. Obama stays above the fray, above the nitty-gritty of specifics, when he confines his comments on health care to broad terms, he more and more seems . . . pretty slippery. In the town hall he seemed aware of this, and he tried to be very specific about the need for this aspect of a plan, and the history behind that proposal. And yet he seemed even more slippery. When he took refuge in the small pieces of his argument, he lost the major threads; when he addressed the major threads, he seemed almost to be conceding that the specifics don't hold.
When you seem slippery both in the abstract and the particular, you are in trouble.
***
Looking back, a key domestic moment in this presidency occurred only eight days after his inauguration, when Mr. Obama won House passage of his stimulus bill. It was a bad bill—off point, porky and philosophically incoherent. He won 244-188, a rousing victory for a new president. But he won without a single Republican vote. That was the moment the new division took hold. The Democrats of the House pushed it through, and not one Republican, even those from swing districts, even those eager to work with the administration, could support it.
This, of course, was politics as usual. But in 2008 people voted against politics as usual.
It was a real lost opportunity. It marked the moment congressional Republicans felt free to be in full opposition. It gave congressional Democrats the impression that they were in full control, that no one could stop their train. And it was the moment the president, looking at the lay of the land, seemed to reveal he would not govern in a vaguely center-left way, as a unifying figure even if a beset one being beaten 'round the head by the left, but in a left way, without the modifying "center." Or at least as one who happily cedes to the left in Congress each day.
Things got all too vividly divided. It was a harbinger of the health care debate.
I always now think of a good president as sitting at the big desk and reaching out with his long arms and holding on to the left, and holding on to the right, and trying mightily to hold it together, letting neither spin out of control, holding on for dear life. I wish we were seeing that. I don't think we are.
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Great news.
I have to admit it is really great to start to see pictures of BO without that smug grin.
He has to triangulate. It appears he has no other option.
The truth though is we still have a huge proportion of Americans who still believe in entitlements.
We have to somehow get that to change.
Entitlements are NOT the answer to our problems.
Yet I agree with O'Reilly - it is crazy not do something with health care. Something has to be done.
But what?
« HEALTH BILL BREACHES IRS PRIVACYPOLL DISASTER FOR OBAMA
By Dick Morris And Eileen McGann 09.3.2009 Published in the New York Post on September 2, 2009
This week’s polls are a disaster for President Obama. The Rasmussen poll has his approval dropping to 45 percent, after several weeks at 49 percent. The Zogby poll has it even lower — at 42 percent.
Worse yet, he’s losing his political base:
* People under 30 — long a key element of his support — give him no better than break-even ratings, with 41 percent approving and 41 percent disapproving of the job he’s doing, according to Zogby.
* Only 75 percent of Democrats, who formerly have supported Obama strongly, now approve of his performance in office. Zogby reports that this represents a slide of more than 10 points over the summer.
* Even among blacks, only 74 percent approve of the job he’s doing (also a drop of more than 10 points).
* Hispanics, who voted for him by a margin of more than 40 points, now break even (36-36) when rating his performance.
Independents, the key swing group in our politics, now deliver a sharply negative 37-50 verdict on Obama’s job performance. The elderly also give him negative ratings by 42-51.
This poll-implosion leaves Obama with few good options.
He obviously can’t get 60 votes in the Senate for his health-care proposals in their current form. No Republican will support them, and moderate Democrats aren’t likely to vote with him.
If he tries to pass it with 50 votes, using so-called reconciliation procedures, he may also fail — because he’d also lose the votes of less-moderate Democrats who’d quail at using parliamentary tricks to pass such a radical, unpopular program.
If Obama waters down his proposals to attract moderate support, he’d lose votes on the left — perhaps more than he’d gain, at this point.
Yet the longer he takes to resolve this political problem, the more his ratings will slip — diminishing his power to achieve anything. No president with support in the 30s would be able to push through a program like his health-care agenda.
It now looks like health-care reform will cripple the Obama presidency, as it did Bill Clinton’s in 1993.
Of course, Clinton was able to move to the center and secure re-election in 1996. But can a true believer like Obama do the same? He’s shown a willingness to move to the center on foreign policy, leaving troops in Iraq and adding them in Afghanistan. But on the domestic front, the only aread where he’s been willing to embrace centrist positions is education.
At best, Obama will be months if not years recovering from this disaster. In the short term, he’s likely to finish September wishing he’d stayed in Martha’s Vineyard.
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Sent to me by a friend. Any merit to this?
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http://thepostnemail.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/googles-archive-shows-obama-birth-story-has-changed/
Google’s archive shows Obama’s birth story has changed
October 15, 2009 by John Charlton
FIRST ONE STORY, THEN ANOTHER — Has Google scrubbed its own News Archive?
by John Charlton
(Oct. 15, 2009) — It’s the world’s largest online repository of Newspaper information, spanning the globe and more than a century of history: the Google News Archive. The Post & Email can attest to its utility and depth of coverage, which enabled it to research the biography of Judge Jerome B. Simandle and publically identify him as an ex-Naider’s Raider. This archive containes scanned images and or digitized text of printed newspapers and electronically available news reports for more than 100 years from papers and news agencies around the globe.
However, its results are skewed when you attempt to search for “Kenyan-born Obama”; results are missing; years prior to 2004 seem scrubbed; and when you click a link to an article in 2000, you get an article in 2004.
Deliberate sabotage of their own news archive?
This article will document what Google has done, for posterity’s sake.
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&q=kenyan-born+obama
This seems a simply enough query: an attempt to verify the AP story which appeared in the East African Standard, Sunday Edition of June 27, 2004: “Kenyan-born U.S. Senator Obama hopeful….”
The results are not so simple:
The first result is for April 28, 1981: The New York Times — The results say the word Obama should appear: it does not; “Kenyan-born” is found with Leaky.
There is no mention of Obama from 1981 to 2000; despite all his “work with the poor” in Chicago.
Next, the Google Newspaper Archive, the most extensive in the world omits the article in the East African Standard for June 27, 2004, in which Obama is identified as “Kenyan-born”.
The fourth result is supposed to be to a PBS story from July 27, 2000, entitled, “Illinois Candidate for the Senate Barack Obama addresses the DNCC”, but the link leads to a report by Elizabeth Brackett, discussing Obama’s Senatorial race victory on July 27, 2004: in which she says many things about Obama, except where he was born.
The fifth link is to a July 28, 2004 story by Bill Nichols, USA Today; which it states that Obama’s father is Kenyan-born; but says nothing about the son’s birth place.
The sixth likewise, on July 27, 2004, fails to mention birth place; and just says “Kenyan-born father”.
The seventh is to the Evening Gazette (Middlesbrough, England), for Nov. 8, 2004, but which seemingly has nothing to do with Obama.
Then, you would not believe it; but all the newspapers in the world, during the period from Jan. 1, 2005 to April 12, 2006, don’t make one mention of Obama! Not even one.
In April of 2006, all three articles have the same verbiage: “a Kenyan-born father and an American mother”.
In a report from the Kansas City Infozine, on Dec. 17, 2007, a Kenyan student in Washington D.C., says that Obama is not a Kenyan, and has no legal bonds to Kenya.
Analysis: An Administration of Mendacity
It seems that following the AP story on June 27, 2004, Obama’s Campaign went mum about the birth place; and only began speaking about a “Kenyan-born” father. The Google Newspaper Archive has been scrubbed for all of 2005 and the first quarter of 2006. However, The Honolulu Advertiser was aware enough still on Jan. 8, 2006 that he had claimed a foreign birth; but by the summer of 2006 stories begin to appear claiming a Hawaiian birth. The reporter for the Honolulu Advertiser admitted in an email to Phil, the publisher of The Right Side of Life news site, that he had obtained his information from the web. Yet this same paper remained so convinced of Obama’s non-Hawaiian birth, that on Nov. 8, 2008, in a long piece ostensibly covering for Obama, it avoided all mention of the place of the birth. How is it that a newspaper in Hawaii after the election can’t bring itself to name the place of birth? — What did they know, that we don’t?*
What appears to have happened is what the American public has already noticed with Obama: he lies as he goes, and he makes up lies to suit his purpose; so many lies, you don’t know what the truth is; and frankly he does not seem to care.
However, if Obama cannot show documents which prove he is born in the USA; the mere fact that he has claimed to be born overseas and in the U.S.A.; first at one hospital in Hawaii and then at another; means that nothing he says in Court, and no document presented by his campaign could be taken as prima facie evidence of anything.
(snip)
The moral of this story is that scrub history as much as you might try; you will always be found out; because the very act of scrubbing leaves holes; holes which will remain as silent witnesses to your crime and indicate indirectly what kind of information you wanted to suppress.
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Winston Churchill he is not. What was his famous line, something like "all I have to offer is blood, toil, sweat, and tears"?
Contrast this with our guy who ran around the world making it a point to demoralize an already demoralized nation, humiliate us more. Unilaterally volunteer to disarm, regulate our industries, gigantically expand the size of a dependent state, lecture us about what we must and must not do, pretend he wants to be bipartisan but of course *only after* he dictates the entire agenda as the most radical one ever seen in the US, and so and on and on.
The question is how long and how succesful will the bribery of select groups of voters keep this guy holding up in the polls? Fortunately most of us are still tax payers.
This is the Peggy Noonan I used to know:
***OCTOBER 23, 2009, 10:49 A.M. ET It's His Rubble Now And the American people want him to fix it.By PEGGY NOONAN
Text
At a certain point, a president must own a presidency. For George W. Bush that point came eight months in, when 9/11 happened. From that point on, the presidency—all his decisions, all the credit and blame for them—was his. The American people didn't hold him responsible for what led up to 9/11, but they held him responsible for everything after it. This is part of the reason the image of him standing on the rubble of the twin towers, bullhorn in hand, on Sept.14, 2001, became an iconic one. It said: I'm owning it.
Mr. Bush surely knew from the moment he put the bullhorn down that he would be judged on everything that followed. And he has been. Early on, the American people rallied to his support, but Americans are practical people. They will support a leader when there is trouble, but there's an unspoken demand, or rather bargain: We're behind you, now fix this, it's yours.
President Obama, in office a month longer than Bush was when 9/11 hit, now owns his presidency. Does he know it? He too stands on rubble, figuratively speaking—a collapsed economy, high and growing unemployment, two wars. Everyone knows what he's standing on. You can almost see the smoke rising around him. He's got a bullhorn in his hand every day.
It's his now. He gets the credit and the blame. How do we know this? The American people are telling him. You can see it in the polls. That's what his falling poll numbers are about. "It's been almost a year, you own this. Fix it."
***
The president doesn't seem to like this moment. Who would? He and his men and women have returned to referring to what they "inherited." And what they inherited was, truly, terrible: again, a severe economic crisis and two wars. But their recent return to this theme is unbecoming. Worse, it is politically unpersuasive. It sounds defensive, like a dodge.
The president said last week, at a San Francisco fund-raiser, that he's busy with a "mop," "cleaning up somebody else's mess," and he doesn't enjoy "somebody sitting back and saying, 'You're not holding the mop the right way.'" Later, in New Orleans, he groused that reporters are always asking "Why haven't you solved world hunger yet?" His surrogates and aides, in appearances and talk shows, have taken to remembering, sometimes at great length, the dire straits we were in when the presidency began.
This is not a sign of confidence. Nor were the president's comments to a New York fund-raiser this week. Democrats, he said to the Democratic audience, are "an opinionated bunch." They always have a lot of thoughts and views. Republicans, on the other hand—"the other side"—aren't really big on independent thinking. "They just kinda sometimes do what they're told. Democrats, ya'll thinkin' for yourselves." It is never a good sign when the president gets folksy, dropping his g's, because he is by nature not a folksy g-dropper but a coolly calibrating intellectual who is always trying to guess, as most politicians do, what normal people think. When Mr. Obama gets folksy he isn't narrowing his distance from his audience but underlining it. He shouldn't do this.
But the statement that Republicans just do what they're told was like his famous explanation of unhappy voters are people who "cling to guns or religion." (What comes over him at fund-raisers?) Both statements speaks of a political misjudgment of his opponents and his situation.They show a misdiagnosis of the opposition that is politically tin-eared. Politicians looking to win don't patronize those they're trying to win over.
***
But the point on the We Inherited a Terrible Situation and It's Not Our Fault argument is, again, that it is worse than unbecoming. It is unpersuasive.
How do we know this? Through the polls. In all of the major surveys, the president's popularity has gone down the past few months. A Gallup Daily Tracking Poll out this week reported Mr. Obama's job approval dropped nine points during the third quarter of this year, that is between July 1 and Sept. 30, when it fell from 62% to 53%. It was the biggest such drop Gallup has ever measured for an elected president during the same period of his term. A Fox News poll out Thursday showed support for the president's policies falling below 50% for the first time. Ominously for him, independents are peeling off. In 2006 and 2008 independents looked like Democrats. They were angry and frustrated by the wars, they sought to rebuke the Bush White House. Now those independents look like Republicans. They worry about joblessness, debts and deficits.
The White House sees the falling support. Thus the reminder: We faced an insuperable challenge, we're mopping up somebody else's mess.
The Democratic Party too sees the falling support, and is misunderstanding it. The great question they debated last week was whether the president is tough enough: Does he come across as too weak? It is true, as the cliché has it, that it's helpful for a president to be both revered and feared. But this president is not weak, that's not his problem. He willed himself into the presidency with an adroit reading of the lay of the land, brought together and dominated all the constituent pieces of victory, showed and shows impressive self-discipline, seems in general to stick to a course once he's chosen it, though arguably especially when he's wrong. His decision to let Congress write a health-care bill may yield at least the appearance of victory. And if Mr. Obama isn't twisting arms like LBJ, and then giving just an extra little jerk to snap the rotator cuff just for fun, the case can be made that day by day he's moving the Democrats of Congress in the historic direction he desires. All his adult life he's played the long game, which takes patience and skill.
The problem isn't his personality, it's his policies. His problem isn't what George W. Bush left but what he himself has done. It is a problem of political judgment, of putting forward bills that were deeply flawed or off-point. Bailouts, the stimulus package, cap-and-trade; turning to health care at the exact moment in history when his countrymen were turning their concerns to the economy, joblessness, debt and deficits—all of these reflect a misreading of the political terrain. They are matters of political judgment, not personality. (Republicans would best heed this as they gear up for 2010: Don't hit him, hit his policies. That's where the break with the people is occurring.)
The result of all this is flagging public support, a drop in the polls, and independents peeling off.
In this atmosphere, with these dynamics, Mr. Obama's excuse-begging and defensiveness won't work.
Everyone knows he was handed horror. They want him to fix it.
At some point, you own your presidency. At some point it's your rubble. At some point the American people tell you it's yours. The polls now, with the presidential approval numbers going down and the disapproval numbers going up: That's the American people telling him.
Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved****
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LOL at that line.
Noonan who once pointed out BO is "no Abe LIncoln", than had a little egg on her face when he got elected can no bring that line up again - touche!
We are hearing it all now. Lincoln was disliked early in his Presidency etc so why not OBama?
"OPINION: DECLARATIONS NOVEMBER 30, 2009 He Can't Take Another Bow By PEGGY NOONAN
Text
Last week, two points in an emerging pointillist picture of a White House leaking support—not the support of voters, though polls there show steady decline, but in two core constituencies, Washington's Democratic-journalistic establishment, and what might still be called the foreign-policy establishment.
From journalist Elizabeth Drew, a veteran and often sympathetic chronicler of Democratic figures, a fiery denunciation of—and warning for—the White House. In a piece in Politico on the firing of White House counsel Greg Craig, Ms. Drew reports that while the president was in Asia last week, "a critical mass of influential people who once held big hopes for his presidency began to wonder whether they had misjudged the man." They once held "an unromantically high opinion of Obama," and were key to his rise, but now they are concluding that the president isn't "the person of integrity and even classiness they had thought."
She scored "the Chicago crowd," which she characterized as "a distressingly insular and small-minded West Wing team." The White House, Ms. Drew says, needs adult supervision—"an older, wiser head, someone with a bit more detachment."
As I read Ms. Drew's piece, I was reminded of something I began noticing a few months ago in bipartisan crowds. I would ask Democrats how they thought the president was doing. In the past they would extol, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, his virtues. Increasingly, they would preface their answer with, "Well, I was for Hillary."
This in turn reminded me of a surprising thing I observe among loyal Democrats in informal settings and conversations: No one loves Barack Obama. Half the American people say they support him, and Democrats are still with him. But there were Bill Clinton supporters who really loved him. George W. Bush had people who loved him. A lot of people loved Jack Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. But no one seems to love Mr. Obama now; they're not dazzled and head over heels. That's gone away.
He himself seems a fairly chilly customer; perhaps in turn he inspires chilly support. But presidents need that rock-bottom 20% who, no matter what's happening—war, unemployment—adore their guy, have complete faith in him, and insist that you love him, too.
They're the hard 20 a president always keeps. Nixon kept them! Obama probably has a hard 20 too, but whatever is keeping them close, it doesn't seem to be love.
***
Just as stinging as Elizabeth Drew on domestic matters was Leslie Gelb on Mr. Obama and foreign policy in the Daily Beast. Mr. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and fully plugged into the Democratic foreign-policy establishment, wrote this week that the president's Asia trip suggested "a disturbing amateurishness in managing America's power." The president's Afghanistan review has been "inexcusably clumsy," Mideast negotiations have been "fumbling." So unsuccessful was the trip that Mr. Gelb suggested Mr. Obama take responsibility for it "as President Kennedy did after the Bay of Pigs."
He added that rather than bowing to emperors—Mr. Obama "seems to do this stuff spontaneously and inexplicably"—he should begin to bow to "the voices of experience" in Washington.
When longtime political observers start calling for wise men, a president is in trouble.
It also raises a distressing question: Who are the wise men and women now? Who are the Robert Lovetts, Chip Bohlens and Robert Strausses who can came in to help a president in trouble right his ship? America seems short of wise men, or short on those who are universally agreed to be wise. I suppose Vietnam was the end of that, but establishments exist for a reason, and it is hard for a great nation to function without the presence of a group of "the oldest and wisest" who can not only give sound advice but help engineer how that advice will be reported and received.
***
Mr Obama is in a hard place. Health care hangs over him, and if he is lucky he will lose a close vote in the Senate. The common wisdom that he can't afford to lose is exactly wrong—he can't afford to win with such a poor piece of legislation. He needs to get the issue behind him, vow to fight another day, and move on.
Afghanistan hangs over him, threatening the unity of his own Democratic congressional base. There is the growing perception of incompetence, of the inability to run the machine of government. This, with Americans, is worse than Mr. Obama's rebranding as a leader who governs from the left. Americans demand baseline competence. If he comes to be seen as Jimmy Carter was, that the job was bigger than the man, that will be the end.
Which gets us back to the bow.
In a presidency, a picture or photograph becomes iconic only when it seems to express something people already think. When Gerald Ford was spoofed for being physically clumsy, it took off. The picture of Ford losing his footing and tumbling as he came down the steps of Air Force One became a symbol. There was a reason, and it wasn't that he was physically clumsy. He was not only coordinated but graceful. He'd been a football star at the University of Michigan and was offered contracts by the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers.
But the picture took off because it expressed the growing public view that Ford's policies were bumbling and stumbling. The picture was iconic of a growing political perception.
The Obama bowing pictures are becoming iconic, and they would not be if they weren't playing off a growing perception. If the pictures had been accompanied by headlines from Asia saying "Tough Talks Yield Big Progress" or "Obama Shows Muscle in China," the bowing pictures might be understood this way: "He Stoops to Conquer: Canny Obama shows elaborate deference while he subtly, toughly, quietly advances his nation's interests."
But that's not how the pictures were received or will be remembered.
It is true that Mr. Obama often seems not to have a firm grasp of—or respect for—protocol, of what has been done before and why, and of what divergence from the traditional might imply. And it is true that his political timing was unfortunate. When a great nation is feeling confident and strong, a surprising presidential bow might seem gracious. When it is feeling anxious, a bow will seem obsequious.
The Obama bowing pictures are becoming iconic not for those reasons, however, but because they express a growing political perception, and that is that there is something amateurish about this presidency, something too ad hoc and highly personalized about it, something . . . incompetent, at least in its first year.
It is hard to be president, and White Houses under pressure take refuge in thoughts that become mantras. When the previous White House came under mounting criticism from 2005 through '08, they comforted themselves by thinking, They criticized Lincoln, too. You could see their minds whirring: Lincoln was criticized, Lincoln was great, ergo we are great. But of course just because they say you're stupid doesn't mean you're Lincoln.
***
One senses the Obama people are doing the Lincoln too, and adding to it the consoling thought that this is only the first year, we've got three years to go, we can change perceptions, don't worry.
But they should worry. You can get tagged, typed and pegged your first year. Gerald Ford did, and Ronald Reagan too, more happily. The first year is when indelible impressions are made and iconic photos emerge.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal Asia, page 15
Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved"
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By Lou Pritchett, Procter & Gamble
A LETTER FROM A PROCTER AND GAMBLE EXECUTIVE TO
THE PRESIDENT*
THE LAST SENTENCE IS THE MOST CHILLING
Lou Pritchett is one of corporate America's true living legends- an
acclaimed author, dynamic teacher and one of the world's highest
rated speakers. Successful corporate executives everywhere recognize
him as the foremost leader in change management.. Lou changed the way
America does business by creating an audacious concept that came to
be known as "partnering." Pritchett rose from soap salesman to
Vice-President, Sales and Customer Development for Procter and
Gamble and over the course of 36 years, made corporate history.
AN OPEN LETTER TO
PRESIDENT OBAMA
Dear President Obama:
You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike
any of the others, you truly scare me.
You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you.
You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive
Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no
visible signs of support.
You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth
growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.
You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.
You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus
don't understand it at its core.
You scare me because you lack humility and 'class', always blaming others.
You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned
yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to
publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail..
You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the 'blame America '
crowd and deliver this message abroad.
You scare me because you want to change America to a European style
country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.
You scare me because you want to replace our health care system
with a government controlled one.
You scare me because you prefer 'wind mills' to responsibly
capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.
You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose
that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of
living in the world.
You scare me because you have begun to use 'extortion' tactics
against certain banks and corporations.
You scare me because your own political party shrinks from
challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.
You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider
opposing points of view from intelligent people.
You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both
omnipotent and omniscient.
You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything
you do.
You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the
Limbaugh's, Hannitys, O'Reillys and Becks who offer opposing,
conservative points of view.
You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.
Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will
probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.
Lou Pritchett
*
*
This letter was sent to the NY Times but they never acknowledged it.
Big surprise. Since it hit the internet, however, it has had over
500,000 hits. Keep it going. All that is necessary for evil to succeed
is that good men do nothing.. It's happening right now.*
http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/youscareme.asp
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I prefer to focus on the way forward, but a big part of it is to recognize exactly where we are right now. The governing mistakes as we see them is what is uniting and energizing a new movement. I would challenge any supporter to point out anything in this or the previous, Crafty's Procter & Gamble post, that is untrue or unfair criticism.
----------------------------------------
America 101 With Dean Obama, (Victor Davis Hanson, Works and Days)
America is now a campus, and Obama is our Dean
This is the strangest presidency I have seen in my lifetime. President Obama gives soaring lectures on civility, but still continues his old campaign invective (“get in their face,” “bring a gun to a knife fight,” etc.) with new attacks on particular senators, Rush Limbaugh, and entire classes of people—surgeons, insurers, Wall Street, those at Fox News, tea-partiers, etc.
And like the campaign, he still talks of bipartisanship (remember, he was the most partisan politician in the Senate), but has rammed through health care without a single Republican vote. His entire agenda—federal take-overs of businesses, near two-trillion-dollar deficits, health care, amnesty, and cap and trade—does not earn a majority in the polls. Indeed, the same surveys reveal him to be the most polarizing president in memory.
His base was hyper-critical of deficit spending under Bush, the war on terror, Iraq and Afghanistan, and government involvement with Wall Street. But suddenly even the most vocal of the left have gone silent as Obama’s felonies have trumped Bush’s misdemeanors on every count.
All this reminds me of the LaLa land of academia. Let me explain.
That Was Then, This is Now
Last week, Obama was at it again. He blasted the oil companies and his own government for lax regulation in the Gulf, apparently convinced that no one in the media would consider his last 16 months of governance in any way responsible for, well, federal governance. (I don’t have strong views on the degree of culpability a president has for lax federal agencies amid disasters, only that I learned from the media between 2004-8 that a president must accept a great deal blame after most catastrophes [at least Katrina was nature- rather than human- induced].)
Obama also trashed, inter alia, Halliburton for the spill, as he had done on other matters ritually in the campaign (“I will finally end the abuse of no-bid contracts once and for all,” “The days of sweetheart deals for Halliburton will be over when I’m in the White House”). Obama seemed to assume that few cared that his administration just gave Halliburton a $568 million no-bid contract.
Standards for Thee, But Not …
When a Senator Obama a while back weighed in on the ill-fated Harriet Miers, he quite logically predicated his skepticism on a dearth of publications (though I found that embarrassing at the time since Senator/Law Professor Obama was essentially without a record of scholarly work), and an absence of judicial experience—both legitimate concerns. So, of course, are we now to expect Obama to talk up his recent Supreme Court nominee Ms. Kagan, and ignore her relative lack of scholarly experience without a judicial past (sort of like being secretary of education without having taught anything)? Does the president, who as a senator voted to deny a court seat to Alito and Roberts, think Kagan is better qualified than either, and, if so, on what grounds—more scholarship, more judicial experience, a more diverse upbringing, intangible criteria like once recruiting Barack Obama?
I once wondered during the campaign whether such serial contradictions in the Obama narrative ever mattered. During his denials of ever hearing Rev. Wright engage in the pastor’s trademark hate speech, I recalled Obama’s 2004 interview with the Sun-Times when he was running for the Senate and wanted to boast of his religious fides. When asked, “Do you still attend Trinity?” Obama snapped right back, “Yep. Every week. 11 o’clock service.” Every week, but mysteriously not those in which Wright did his customary race-bashing?
When for the first time since 1976 a presidential candidate reneged on promises to participate in pubic financing in the general relations, I remembered Obama’s early promise to do the opposite. The press slept on that.
The list of his blatant contradictions could be multiplied. I’ve written here about the past demagoguing on tribunals, Predators, Guantanamo, renditions, Afghanistan, Iraq, wiretaps, intercepts, and the Patriot Act, and the subsequent Obama embrace of all of them, in some cases even trumping Bush in his exuberance.
The Never-ending Story
We could play this game with the entire health care debate—all on C-SPAN, will save billions, not cost billions as the CBO now attests, etc.—the pledge not to hire lobbyists or allow earmarks, to pledge to post legislation for a specified time on the government website, the pledge to prohibit his team from returning within 2 years to the private lobbying revolving door, and so on.
The blatant hypocrisy and untruths are superimposed on a constant (it has not yet begun to let up in his second year) refrain of either “Bush did it” or “the opposition won’t let me be bipartisan.”
Where does this disregard for the truth arise? On the most superficial level, of course, Obama realizes that the media is obsequious and sanctions almost anything he does. He knows that his base was always interested in power, not principle (has anyone seen any war protests the last few weeks against Afghanistan or Iraq, or Guantanamo, or the quadrupling of Predator attacks? Or for that matter, are there anti-Obama Hispanic protests over the increased crackdown on employers and greater deportations than during the Bush era?).
America 101
Yet again, neither the press nor his chameleon followers quite explain what is going on. Instead, I think we, the American people, are seen by Obama as a sort of Ivy League campus, with him as an untouchable dean. So we get the multicultural bromides, the constant groupthink, and the reinvention of the self that we see so often among a professional class of administrator in universities (we used to get their memos daily and they read like an Obama teleprompted speech). Given his name, pedigree, charisma, and eloquence, Obama could say or do almost anything—in the way race/class/gender adjudicate reality on campus, or perhaps in the manner the old gentleman C, pedigreed rich students at prewar Princeton sleepwalked through their bachelor’s degrees, almost as a birthright. (I am willing to apologize for this crude analogy when the Obama Columbia undergraduate transcript is released and explains his next rung Harvard.) In other words, the public does not grasp to what degree supposedly elite universities simply wave their own rules when they find it convenient.
In academia, there are few consequences for much of anything; but in Obama’s case his legal career at Chicago seems inexplicable without publications (and even more surreal when Law Dean Kagan laments on tape her difficulties in recruiting him to the law school—but how would that be possible when a five- or six-book law professor from a Texas or UC Irvine would never get such an offer from a Chicago or Harvard?).
What You Say You Are
On an elite university campus what you have constructed yourself into always matters more than what you have done. An accent mark here, a hyphenated name there is always worth a book or two. There is no bipartisanship or indeed any political opposition on campuses; if the Academic Senate weighs in on national issues to “voice concern,” the ensuing margin of vote is usually along the lines of Saddam’s old lopsided referenda.
In other words, Obama assumed as dean he would talk one way, do another, and was confident he could “contextualize” and “construct” a differing narrative—to anyone foolish enough who questioned the inconsistency. As we have seen with Climategate, or the Gore fraud, intent always trumps empiricism in contemporary intellectual circles. Obama simply cannot be held to the same standard we apply to most other politicians—given his heritage, noble intention, and landmark efforts to transform America into something far fairer.
Like so many academics, Obama becomes petulant when crossed, and like them as well, he “deigns” to know very little out of his field (from Cinco de Mayo to the liberation of Auschwitz), and only a little more in it. Obama voiced the two main gospels of the elite campus: support for redistributive mechanisms with other people’s wealth; and while abroad, a sort of affirmative action for less successful nations: those who are failing and criticized the U.S. under Bush proved insightful and worthy of outreach ( a Russia or Syria); but those who allied themselves with us (an Israel or Colombia) are now suspect.
The Intrusions of the Real World
How does our tenure with Obama as dean end?
I have no idea other than I think at some point Obama’s untruths, hypocrisies, and contradictions will, in their totality, finally remind the voter he is not a student.
After all, America is not a campus. It has real jobs that are not lifelong sinecures. Americans work summers. There are consequences when rhetoric does not match reality. Outside of Harvard or Columbia, debt has to be paid back and is not called stimulus. We worry about jobs lost, not those in theory created or saved. We don’t blame predecessors for our own ongoing failures. Those who try to kill us are enemies, whose particular grievances we don’t care much to know about. Diversity is lived rather than professed; temporizing is not seen as reflection, but weakness.
And something not true is not a mere competing narrative, but a flat-out lie.
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Doug and Crafty,
Two good posts that sum it all up.
Yet his approval ratings continue to stay at around 48%.
As long as the 48% see him as taking from tax payers to pay for *their* benefits it doesn't appear these approval ratings will change much.
It is a sad state of affairs.
The only way I can think of is that we have to convince the 48% that big government is not the long term solution for them as well as for those who work to pay for all this stuff. Many of them won't care in the least. Perhaps a few forward thinkers among them might see the light.
In the health field I see all day long people gaiming the system. Government can and will always be "gamed".
There is always talk amongst the liberal crowd how the wealthy and the corporations game the system. One never hears a peep from them about those on the dole who are doing the same thing. Doesnt that say it all that they will not say anything about this because this is where they get their power from?
They don't want a lot of peopel off welfare, they don't want people to not be tied to food stamps, government sponsored loans, medicaid, unemployment etc.
Intellectually honest academics would be the first to point out that if you spoil people with freebies at others expense, you only serve to encourage the same behavior. Psychology 101.
So we must first convince Americans to believe in themselves and private opportunities - not government. Is it doable? Hopefully, it is for enough voters to get this guy kicked out of office for good.
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Concerning that 48% support: FWIW I have this idea that "People think backwards" i.e. FIRST they choose the position that makes the statement about themselves that they wish to make, THEN the learn the facts and reasoning that support that position. This is why so few people change their minds when confronted with facts to the contrary or clearer thinking. BO's success is based upon his calling to things that people want to say about themselves:
I care
I care about the planet
I care about the poor
etc
Responses based upon
Too bad, so sad
Spotted Owls taste delicious
They desrve it
are not going fly well politically.
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CCP, Good point, 48% is a pretty high rating for this level of failure. The popularity of some of the policies have dropped below the personal approvals and that is encouraging. Among the 48% there some we need to persuade and the rest that we need to defeat politically (from my point of view).
I posted the VDH piece but I think it is a mistake to go too far down the road of exposing and defeating this person Obama. It is the mindset that needs defeating, as you put it: "freebies at others expense" or as Congressman Paul Ryan put it: "more takers than makers".
I recall obsessing over Whitewater and all the lies of the Clinton insiders, but it was the attempt at over-expansion of government, not personal failings, that brought in the Gringrich congress, welfare reform, capital gains tax rate cuts and a balanced budget.
A serious move in the direction of reforming "freebies at others expense" today could alleviate the border crisis, election fraud, the deficit, the debt, the monetary problems, the unemployment rate, the state bankruptcies, the housing crisis, education costs and the healthcare spiral IMHO.
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Wednesday, November 30, 2011
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About Obama's 'missing girlfriends'
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Posted: August 18, 2011
9:00 pm Eastern
© 2011
As WND reported, radio host Rush Limbaugh raised an intriguing question on the air: "Where are all of Obama's former girlfriends?"
In referring to past email inquiries he received on this subject, Limbaugh continued, "They are interesting because those people haven't surfaced. There aren't any ex-girlfriends that have admitted it."
In fact, I wrote about this question in my book, "Deconstructing Obama," and on these pages last year. As the likely source of these rumors, I thought I might clarify them, at least to the degree they can be clarified.
As it happens, Obama inadvertently raised the girlfriend issue himself in his 1995 memoir, "Dreams from My Father." Published when he was 33, "Dreams" documents Obama's all-consuming search for identity.
Whether he dated white women or black women – and what he might have learned from either – matters, but Obama gives the reader very close to nothing.
"Cosby never got the girl on 'I Spy,'" he laments in "Dreams," but in his own retelling, he does not do much better.
Although Obama spent 13 years on the mainland as a single man, on only one occasion in "Dreams" does Obama make any reference to his love life.
In a brief recounting, he tells his half-sister, Auma, that in addition to a white woman he had loved and lost, "There are several black ladies out there who've broken my heart just as good."
The problem is that Obama shares with the reader not a word about any of the black ladies, and not one of them has come forward on her own.
The white woman in question presents a different set of problems. In terms of height, hair color, eye color, parentage and highly specific place of origin – namely a large country estate with a lake in the middle – she is a dead ringer for Bill Ayers' lost love, the late Weatherwoman Diana Oughton.
In his definitive Obama-friendly biography, "The Bridge," David Remnick likewise falls silent on the subject of girlfriends, white or black.
Remnick interviews hundreds of people in Obama's life, but unless I missed something, he offers not a single interview of an Obama girlfriend.
Obama biographer Christopher Andersen made a serious effort to identify the mystery white woman, but he failed.
"No one," he writes, "including [Obama's] roommate and closest friend at the time, Siddiqi, knew of this mysterious lover's existence."
To be sure, Obama did court and marry his wife, Michelle. This tale of courtship, however, is strikingly devoid of any reference to love, sex or romance.
At his most passionate, Obama says of Michelle, "In her eminent practicality and Midwestern attitudes, she reminds me not a little of Toot [his grandmother]." That description must surely have warmed Michelle's heart.
In his second book, "Audacity of Hope," Obama does not even get the date of their first meeting right. "I met Michelle in the summer of 1988," he writes, "while we were both working at Sidley & Austin."
Obama acknowledges he had just finished his first year at law school, but he did not begin Harvard Law until the fall of 1988.
As has become more and more evident, there are some serious manipulations in the Obama narrative. If the year he first met Michelle is not one of them, the courtship of the mystery white woman is.
Jack Cashill is an Emmy-award winning independent writer and producer with a Ph.D. in American Studies from Purdue. His latest book is the blockbuster "Deconstructing Obama: The Life, Love and Letters of America's First Post-Modern President."
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http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2011/12/04/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+daybydaycartoon%2FkUnt+%28Day+by+Day+Cartoon+by+Chris+Muir%29#006341
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CCP said, "Obama's love life as bad as Lincoln's???
I have no idea, but so? Lincoln was a pretty good good President. Is CCP saying Obama is the same as Lincoln? :-)
However, if we are discussing family values, isn't FAMILY VALUES a Republican Planform :-o
Obama compared to Gingrich is a SAINT. Gingrich philosophy was love them and FU^&** them....
I think you all will hear more about that as the election progresses.... I can't wait for the ads.
Think women vote.... or not....
Heck, even I find Gingrich disgusting....
What do you think deep in their heart woman will think? And vote...
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I think the majority of the public, male and female, are more concerned with how Obozo is fcuking the country rather than what wife Newt is on this week.
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JDN,
My take....
In the end women will vote their pocketbooks like everyone else. Older women will vote against Obama to some extent because they will not like how he is destroying America as we know it (and possibly medicare soc sec - if that is how it is projected). Younger women, particularly the single mothers, will vote Democratic for obvious reasons.
I don't think the sexual thing will be a big factor despite what anyone tells us now.
Obama and Lincoln? They may not have been ladies men but there was one difference - a little thing called honesty.
But interestingly enough we know far more about Lincoln who lived 150 yrs ago than we do about Obama's earlier life don't we?
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Actually, I disagree; I think older women and many older men for that matter will vote Democrat because Obama is perceived as the one versus the Republicans trying to save Social Security and not lower/change/privatize benefits. Republicans (I think it's necessary) are the ones trying to reduce benefits and/or privatize i.e. take away guaranteed benefits. All the older people I know vote with their pocketbook and don't want any changes. They like Social Security and Medicare just the way it is.
Of course we know far more about Lincoln; we have had 150 years to study him. That is true of anyone.
As for Newt's serial adultery (documented not once but twice; maybe more but we don't know) when the gloves come off I've got a feeling that will become an issue. Morals are important. Especially for women. I don't think that his divorces (note plural) is the issue per se; it's that he was having affairs over and over again while he was still married. Doesn't say much for his integrity. Or family values...
But we will see.
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"All the older people I know vote with their pocketbook and don't want any changes."
Absolutely. And that is why we can't some entitlement reform from either party.
The "greastest" generation is now the greatest entitlement class - rightly or wrongly.
It has been run like a Ponsi scheme and even Perry who honestly pointed this out was thus vilified.
I wonder if the money that was put in over the decades was really placed into the proverbial "lock box" would these programs now be solvent?
Government simply cannot keep their hands off our money and spend it faster than a person pissing from an urinary tract infection.
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"I can't wait for the ads" [presumably DNC and anonymous outsider groups airing constant prime time advertising loaded with innuendo about a candidate's unfaithfulness more than a dozen years ago as the country goes down in decline]? - That's what you hope the campaign is about? I would counter with 60 second, unnarrated videos of the President's terrible golf swing; this occurred while he was President! We can run the economic headlines in the subtitles.
"Obama compared to Gingrich is a SAINT." - What we know about Obama's fidelity is a record of no accusations- yet. Marital fidelity is considered an indicator that one as President would be faithful to his country's best interests. Didn't someone add Eisenhower, HW Bush and perhaps Reagan in his first marriage to the list of Democratic Presidential cheaters, FDR, JFK, LBJ, and WJC, all since women's suffrage. President Obama already has a record of not supporting his country's best interest to judge IMO, running up the debt, devaluing the currency, investing in failed and corrupt companies with taxpayer money, leaving our oil in the ground while paying Brazil to drill. We won't need innuendo from his bedroom to judge what he would do as President. OTOH, I think Nixon was faithful.
"Think women vote.... or not...."
People who tolerate no sin are left, as usual, with no politician to support. "Did some blow" comes to mind, distrusting white people, despising the clingers of middle America, running guns into international crime rings, etc. With 11 months left, I would not assume this President will be without his own scandals.
"Heck, even I find Gingrich disgusting...."
But we didn't determine whether you are a voter we are trying to attract. If you don't also see the positive side of the Gingrich message that is grabbing the momentum by storm, perhaps you are among the voters we wish to defeat this coming year.
If the majority of people are already irreparably offended by Newt, why would attack ads be necessary? If he can't get through the family values voters in Iowa and elsewhere, he won't be the candidate anyway. But it's funny how the attacks on the person only make someone like me, an unforgiving family values voter, want to jump up to defend him.
The questions of 2012 IMO will be of bigger vs. smaller government and collapse vs. growth of our private economy, and surrender vs. survival in our global security interests. Now that you mention it though, I am wondering if this President ever had pre-marital sex before Rev. Jeremiah Wright of "God DAMN America" fame proudly joined them in Holy matrimony.
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There is no Republican social security proposal that takes benefits away from current recipients or people near retirement age but that is good reminder of the disingenuous smears that are sure to come.
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"Think women vote.... or not....Heck, even I find Gingrich disgusting...."
How you must loathe Bill Clinton then!!! :lol: Women voters too!!! :lol:
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Favreau_(speechwriter)
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Care to flesh that out BD?
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Well, last night I was told that Obama's speech writer was "Jon Faverau." This is true, as it turns out, but he had nothing to do with "Swingers" or "Iron Man." Also, I thought there were some interesting tidbits in there: his apology to HC, his initial meeting of Obama backstage at the DNC in 2004, etc. Nothing really important, just interesting. And, as Obama's speechwriter, he does play a pretty major role in the "Obama Phenomena."
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The meaning of Obama speech writer might depend on the reader's own bias. For me it was a Wizard of Oz moment, seeing Toto pull the curtain back a little. We know the President gives great sounding speeches. We know his policies don't exactly match his rhetoric. And we know that without the teleprompter he is not the same orator. That leads me to great curiosity aimed at the person behind the words in the speeches.
They used to call Karl Rove 'George Bush's brain', but he was a strategist more than a writer.
They all have speechwriters and they all work with their speechwriters to get the message they want. With Obama, that importance of that relationship is exceptional.
Interesting that the person behind the teleprompter is a very smart guy, valedictorian of Holy Cross, Catholic and in his 20s, at least until now. For one thing, it takes a very, very, very smart guy to believe that government could replace the aggregate wisdom of all individual decisions made in the marketplace.
Obama calls Favreau his mind reader.
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OBAMA'S KANSAS SPEECH: THE REBUTTAL
By DICK MORRIS
Published on DickMorris.com on December 8, 2011
Printer-Friendly Version
On Tuesday, President Obama went to a small town in Kansas to lay out his basic campaign theme for the coming election: A commitment to "fairness." In Obama's America, we all are dependent on the government, closely regulated, heavily taxed...and poor. He boldly proclaims that "rugged individualism" doesn't work and neither do tax cuts.
Instead, government management of the economy, heavy subsidies, and universal welfare is the key to economic health.
But in Obama's obsessive focus on income redistribution, he ignores the basic question of wealth and job creation. Where will the money he wants to tax come from? Who will generate the well paid jobs he wants to pass around? What entrepreneur will take a risk or invent a product or service or pioneer a new business when he cannot be sure of keeping what he earns?
To Obama, "fairness" is defined as meaning we all move up or down together and nobody gets more than his "fair" share. Fair? Determined by who? By the government! By politicians seeking votes. In his world, it is through political action, not economic initiative, that people assure their upward mobility.
But, as Margaret Thatcher said "sooner or later you run out of other people's money." And there is no wealth to redistribute, no money to allocate "fairly." In Obama's America, there are no incentives for creating jobs. So there will be no jobs. There is no reason to take risks. So nobody will take risks. There is no capacity for individual initiative. So there won't be any.
Never has Obama laid out as completely his disastrous vision for America. He has now articulated his socialist vision for our country. It won't work. It is a recipe for national decay and dependency.
Nor will it work politically. In a recent Rasmussen Poll, voters agreed by 3:1 that they had more to fear from overreaching politicians than from greedy businessmen. A politics based on envy and class division just won't fly in the United States. Obama's got the wrong country.
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Tim Tebow: “My teammates make me look a lot better than I am”
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/12/12/tim-tebow-my-teammates-make-me-look-a-lot-better-than-i-am/
Pres. Obama: Tonight I can report, I directed [the CIA Director], I was briefed on a possible lead, I met repeatedly with my national security team, I determined that we had enough intelligence, today at my direction, I called President Zardari, these efforts weigh on me every time I as Commander-in-Chief... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/02/osama-bin-laden-dead-obama-speech-video-transcript_n_856122.html
"Ask Osama bin Laden and the 22-out-of-30 top al Qaeda leaders who've been taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement."
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57339492-503544/obama-ask-bin-laden-if-im-an-appeaser/
Contrasting leadership styles. You would think this President could at least pretend to be humble and have surrogates like the VP or media toot his horn for him. IIRC, Reagan had some humility that added to his likability. Pres. Obama will brag more about getting unemployment down to 8% than Pres. Reagan did about getting the real economic growth rate up to 8%, after asphyxiating stagflation.
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Watch D'nesh D'Souza's excellent presentation at CPAC earlier this month - along with a trailer for the film:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6QOscKvUjU
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Sherrif Arpaio says Baraq's birth certificate is a forgery
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/if-i-didnt-have-any-guts-id-leave-this-alone-sheriff-joe-arpaio-explains-why-he-was-compelled-to-investigate-obamas-birth-certificate/
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Here is the link to WH postage of the "long form" It doesn't say "African American" it says the father is African. It does use father's country of origin as Kenya which someone pointed out was a few years before the ever was a Kenya.
I am suspicious of this "form". Yet we will never know the truth or be allowed to find out if it is a real vs forged document.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/04/27/president-obamas-long-form-birth-certificate
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Sent to me by an internet friend:
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Derrick Bell maintained throughout his life that racial minorities in the U.S. were a PERMANENTLY oppressed caste. Bell endorsed a journal called "Race Traitor," which is dedicated to the "abolition of whiteness," and whose motto is "Treason to the white race is loyalty to humanity." Obama's mentor and campaign advisor from 2008 has admitted they intentionally hid this video from the media during the 2008 campaign. Stay tuned - this is only the beginning of what Breitbart's staff has uncovered.
Our "mainstream" media has failed miserably to do its job with regard to vetting Obama. Now the whole truth is finally coming out. Of course already the mainstream media mantra regarding this is: "There's nothing to see here. No big deal. Move along."
www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/03/07/buzzefeed-selectively-edits-obama-tape
Here is a profile of Professor Derrick Bell - just so you know exactly who Obama's close friends are, and what he really believes:
www.discoverthenetworks.org/printindividualProfile.asp?indid=2175
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"...there’s nothing new about the clip or Obama’s role in the controversy at Harvard Law School. In 2008, as a part of our quadrennial election special The Choice 2008, FRONTLINE ran the same footage of the speech as a part of an exploration of Obama’s time at Harvard Law School, where he graduated in 1991. It’s been online at our site and on YouTube since then." http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-elections-politics/the-story-behind-the-obama-law-school-speech-video/
Here is the entire show: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/choice2008/view/
Sent to me by an internet friend:
=====================
Derrick Bell maintained throughout his life that racial minorities in the U.S. were a PERMANENTLY oppressed caste. Bell endorsed a journal called "Race Traitor," which is dedicated to the "abolition of whiteness," and whose motto is "Treason to the white race is loyalty to humanity." Obama's mentor and campaign advisor from 2008 has admitted they intentionally hid this video from the media during the 2008 campaign. Stay tuned - this is only the beginning of what Breitbart's staff has uncovered.
Our "mainstream" media has failed miserably to do its job with regard to vetting Obama. Now the whole truth is finally coming out. Of course already the mainstream media mantra regarding this is: "There's nothing to see here. No big deal. Move along."
www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/03/07/buzzefeed-selectively-edits-obama-tape
Here is a profile of Professor Derrick Bell - just so you know exactly who Obama's close friends are, and what he really believes:
www.discoverthenetworks.org/printindividualProfile.asp?indid=2175
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"...there’s nothing new about the clip or Obama’s role in the controversy at Harvard Law School. In 2008, as a part of our quadrennial election special The Choice 2008, FRONTLINE ran the same footage of the speech as a part of an exploration of Obama’s time at Harvard Law School, where he graduated in 1991. It’s been online at our site and on YouTube since then." http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-elections-politics/the-story-behind-the-obama-law-school-speech-video/
Here is the entire show: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/choice2008/view/
Sent to me by an internet friend:
=====================
Derrick Bell maintained throughout his life that racial minorities in the U.S. were a PERMANENTLY oppressed caste. Bell endorsed a journal called "Race Traitor," which is dedicated to the "abolition of whiteness," and whose motto is "Treason to the white race is loyalty to humanity." Obama's mentor and campaign advisor from 2008 has admitted they intentionally hid this video from the media during the 2008 campaign. Stay tuned - this is only the beginning of what Breitbart's staff has uncovered.
Our "mainstream" media has failed miserably to do its job with regard to vetting Obama. Now the whole truth is finally coming out. Of course already the mainstream media mantra regarding this is: "There's nothing to see here. No big deal. Move along."
www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/03/07/buzzefeed-selectively-edits-obama-tape
Here is a profile of Professor Derrick Bell - just so you know exactly who Obama's close friends are, and what he really believes:
www.discoverthenetworks.org/printindividualProfile.asp?indid=2175
I often watch Frontline and am usually quite well informed on politics, yet somehow this never hit on my radar screen. Why do you think that was?
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Here is a link to the show on YouTube posted 3 years ago.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpEpg12kEnc
Is your oversight of the episode a government conspiracy?
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Here is a link to the show on YouTube posted 3 years ago.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpEpg12kEnc
Is your oversight of the episode a government conspiracy?
Government? No. Establishment media? Clearly that's the case.
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Because you missed an episode? It has been available for three years, on the secret website of YouTube.
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Uhuh.
And I guess CNN, NBC, ABC and CBS didn't know about this secret website. Aside from Fox and CBS, do you see much coverage on "Gunwalker" in the MSM?
Funny how the British press covers Obozo's misconduct much better than our MSM. I wonder why? :roll:
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So BD, do you think the MSM vetted Obozo in a professional and non-partisan way in 2008?
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Because you missed an episode? It has been available for three years, on the secret website of YouTube.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/03/07/obama-biographers-journalists-covered-up-derrick-bell-video
The failure of the mainstream media to examine Barack Obama's support for Critical Race Theory founder Derrick Bell is one of the most glaring cases of journalistic malpractice and neglect in recent memory.
Nearly every single Obama biographer and profiler has mentioned the contentious racial climate of Harvard Law School during the time that Obama was president of the Harvard Law Review.
Some have even mentioned the speech that Obama gave at a protest where he literally embraced Bell.
Yet none, seemingly, bothered to track down and report on the content of the speech itself--or on Bell's radical ideas.
A PBS election special in 2008 showed footage of the protest but dubbed over critical portions of Obama's speech in which he endorsed Bell. A selectively edited clip released by Buzzfeed yesterday included the relevant audio but cut out the footage of Obama embracing Bell.
Harvard Law school professor Charles Ogletree (pictured above)--who was also a debate coach for Obama during the 2008 campaign--told an audience at Harvard last year: "We hid this throughout the 2008 campaign. I don’t care if they find it now."
Many of Obama's biographers appear to have been aware of the Bell protest but showed little interest in Bell or what Obama said about him.
**So, BD, did the secret website happen to have the critically dubbed version?
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http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/03/breitbartcoms-massive-barack-obama-derrick-bell-video-fail/254213/
As is often the case, we do not see eye to eye on this issue. And that is fine. I'll wait to see what the enormous "bombshell" is that Breitbart and Co. are planning for later in the week.
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http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/03/breitbartcoms-massive-barack-obama-derrick-bell-video-fail/254213/
As is often the case, we do not see eye to eye on this issue. And that is fine. I'll wait to see what the enormous "bombshell" is that Breitbart and Co. are planning for later in the week.
Sure, if a republican candidate were hugging a racist loon like Bell and telling an audience to open their hearts and minds to him, it'd be no big deal. If a republican had an unrepentant terrorist start his/her career and brushed it off as "just a guy from my neighborhood", the MSM and the left would give him/her a pass. If a republican attended a racist church for 20 years....
Do you have any explanation why the LA Times continues to hide the Rashid Khalidi tape? I'm sure it's no big deal, right? It's not like the LA Times has a political ax to grind and a candidate to protect.....
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http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2012/03/08/schlichter-space-traders
So, "Space Traders" perfectly captures the stupidity, paranoia, and shameless race-hustling of the people that Obama embraces. This is the idiocy that Obama believes we should open up [our] hearts and our minds to. Pass.
It’s disgusting. It’s revolting. And it’s rapidly becoming clear why the mainstream media refused to vet the President in 2008.
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http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/03/09/why-obamas-radical-buddies-and-antisemitic-mentors-matter-in-2012/
Why Obama’s Radical Buddies and Antisemitic Mentors Matter in 2012
Breitbart.Com Editor-In-Chief Joel Pollak’s achieved a victory against CNN’s presidential apologists when he explained the relevance of this new video evidence linking Barack Obama to Critical Race Theory, the racist political theology of Derrick Bell:
POLLAK: No, I’m not afraid that black people are going to be violent and take over the country. What I’m pointing out is that there’s a pattern in Barack Obama’s associations with Derrick Bell, with Reverend Wright, and it carries over into his governance because his Justice Department won’t treat black civil rights violators the same way that it treats white civil rights violators. That there’s a racial pattern in which justice is enforced in this country. And it also gives us a sense into how Barack Obama thinks about these issues.
At every point in his life when he could have followed the path of Martin Luther King, he threw in his lot with the Jeremiah Wrights and the Derrick Bells of the world.
How often does truth like this penetrate the MSM fog? This is an example of how to hack the media Breitbart-style.
Jeff Dunetz at YidWithLid jumped in yesterday to remind us that Bell falls into a long pattern of antisemitic mentors and associates:
Yesterday’s release of the Barack Obama/Derrick Bell Harvard tape was seen by many as another example of the President’s long history associating with radicals. There is another interpretation however. When Obama urged people to open up their hearts and minds to Bell it was another case of him “cozying” up to an Anti-Semite. Understand we are not talking about people who are Anti-Israel (although there is a huge crossover of the two) but people who regularly use Anti-Semitic stereotypes or more direct derogatory comments about Jews.
Jeff provides 9 examples of other Obama confidantes who promote antisemitic conspiracy theories.
No matter how many times I lay out the facts to them my progressive friends do not understand why any of this matters. “Where’s the bombshell?” in Soldedad O’Brien’s words. Try this information on the Democrats in your own life and you’ll get the same kind of embarrassing, non-sequiturs that prompted Pollak’s rebuttal above: What are you afraid of? That Obama will unleash wild Kenyan tribesman to run through the streets spearing white people? That for his second term he’s plotting new concentration camps for Louis Farrakhan to oversee the implementation of a second Holocaust?
No.
Consistently throughout his political career the young Barry Obama sympathized with antisemites and racists; as president his foreign policy (on Iran, Libya, and Israel) and his legal policy do the same.
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I watched the full 2 hour Choice 2008 of Frontline.
The Frontline piece IMO covers the edges of those controversies but completely glosses over the implications IMO. The impression left is that the issues (at Harvard law School) were horribly divisive and that he was the healer, the one who could reach to both sides. What were the views he was championing? Not covered, was my take.
The top 10 or 12 objections I would have to a Barack Obama administration did not receive any mention, but the viewer of such an exhaustive piece might b e left thinking they have now done their homework for voting.
The next two chapters in American political history were already being written, the beginning of Obama's governance and the 2010 tea party / conservative total repudiation of that. The setup for both of those eventualities was the real story (IMHO) of the campaign of 2008 - not contemplated whatsoever in the documentary. What people were voting for in 2008 and what they got were judged quickly to be two different things (in full vetting?), but the essence of that was completely missed by a documentary of such enormous length and painstaking detail (because IMO the producers likely don't even know their own bias).
3 points of interest in the long version:
28:50+ on the long version is where the shorter clip is taken. Already mentioned, what were the (radical) views he was championing? You would likely need to follow far right wing media to know that. Young college grad Obama "needed to know if there was a better way to lift people out of poverty", so he pursued improving his resume and increasing the power of his influence instead of studying economics. He was accepted at one of the nation's most prestigious law schools (no question of how or why he was accepted), he took on student loans (implying that was how it was paid for, really?). What racial issues was the country going through in the late 1980's? Dred Scott? Rosa Parks? Jackie Robinson?? Was an Ivy League campus keeping out blacks?! What was Prof. Derrick Bell saying that was divisive? They say Obama championed his cause (the point conveyed I think was courage), they show him saying Bell was 'speaking the truth', but they did not say what that 'truth' was. Maybe that is in some other Frontline episode, lol.
Around the 57:00 mark of the first hour they get to the Trinity Church controversy, introduced this way:
"It was a big, popular inner-city church that was known for its community work."
They go on to cover the controversy of Reverend Wright. Seems to me that is exactly backwards to the point to the rest of America. Preaching things like "God Damn America' and "America's chickens have come home to roost" is what was drawing the extremely large and enthusiastic crowds in the heart of the 'capital of black America'; they also do community work. I can think of other figures in recent history who preached hatred yet did community work, but will decline to name the analogies.
At one hour and 50 minutes: Obama is described for choosing of Joe Biden as his VP choice: 'Obama is someone who is cautious, someone who in a very old fashioned sense is a conservative guy," - Ryan Lizza NY Times, and used as PBS Frontline's Oct 15 2008 ending on Obama (before they headed back to close on McCain's choice of Sarah Palin).
Yeah, a conservative guy, that's who suburban white soccer moms, 78% of Jewish Americans and the majority of deficit-first independent voters were electing. (Emoticon unavailable) If that piece passes as full vetting I have some nice property for sale... Respectfully, Doug.
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I on a lighter note I would note that platitudes similar to those in the 2008 Barack Obama stump speeches were advanced by Pat Paulson's in 1968.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTHge8q0zwY&feature=related
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A pretty insightful Peggy Noonan piece today in the WSJ. She ties it to the election for relevance but the insightful parts IMO are about what is going on and not going on in this Presidency.
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Republicans feel an understandable anxiety about Mr. Obama's coming campaign: It will be all slice and dice, divide and conquer, break the country into little pieces and pick up as many as you can. He'll try to pick up college students one day and solidify environmentalist support the next, he'll valorize this group and demonize the other. He means to gather in and hold onto all the pieces he needs, and turn them into a jagged, jangly coalition that will win it for him in November and not begin making individual demands until December.
But it still matters that the president doesn't have a coherent agenda, or a political philosophy that is really clear to people. To the extent he has a philosophy it, tends to pop up furtively in stray comments and then go away. This is to a unique degree a presidency of inference, its overall meaning never vividly declared. In some eras, that may be a plus. In this one?
Republicans are worried about the power of incumbency, and it is a real power. Presidents command the airwaves, as they used to say. If they want to make something the focus of national discussion, they usually can, at least for a while. And this president is always out there, talking. But—and forgive me, because what I'm about to say is rude—has anyone noticed how boring he is? Plonking platitude after plonking platitude. To see Mr. Obama on the stump is to see a man at the podium who's constantly dribbling away the punch line. He looks pleasant but lacks joy; he's cool but lacks vigor. A lot of what he says could have been said by a president 12 or 20 years ago, little is anchored to the moment. As he makes his points he often seems distracted, as if he's holding a private conversation in his head, noticing crowd size, for instance, and wishing the front row would start fainting again, like they used to.
I listen to him closely and find myself daydreaming: This is the best-tailored president since JFK. His suits, shirts and ties are beautifully cut from fine material. This is an elegant man. But I shouldn't be thinking about that, I should be thinking about what a powerful case he's making for his leadership. I'm not because he's not.
It is still so surprising that a person who seems bored by politicking has risen to the highest political office in the land. Politics is a fleshly profession, it's all hugging, kissing, arm twisting, shaking hands. It involves contact. When you see politicians on C-Span, in the well of the House or the Senate after a vote, they're always touching each other's arms and shoulders. They touch each other more than actors! Bill Clinton was fleshly, and LBJ. How odd to have a Democratic president who doesn't seem to like humans all that much.
He's raised a lot of money, or so we keep reading. He has a sophisticated, wired, brilliant computer operation—they know how to mine Internet data and get the addresses of people who've never been reached by a campaign before, and how to approach them in a friendly and personal way. This is thought to be a secret weapon. I'm not so sure. All they can approach their new friends with is arguments that have already been made, the same attacks and assertions. If you have fabulous new ways to reach everyone in the world but you have little to say, does that really help you?
A while back I talked to a young man who was developing a wonderful thing for a website, a kind of constant live TV show with anyone anywhere able to join in and share opinions live, on the screen. You're on your iPad in the train station, you log on and start talking. He was so excited at the technology, which seemed impressive. But I thought: Why do you think people will say anything interesting or important?
This is the problem of the world now: Big mic, no message. If you have nothing to say, does it matter that you have endless venues in which to say it?
The old Washington gossip was that the Obama campaign was too confident, now it is that they are nervous. The second seems true if you go by their inability, months after it was clear Mitt Romney would be running against them, to find and fix on a clear line of attack. Months ago he was the out-of-touch corporate raider. Then he was a flip-flopping weasel. They momentarily shifted to right-wing extremist. This week he seems to be a Bushite billionaire.
Will all this work? When you look at Romney you see a wealthy businessman, a Mormon of inherently moderate instinct, a person who is conservative in his personal sphere but who lives and hopes to rise in a world he well knows is not quite so tidy. He doesn't seem extreme.
It's interesting that the Obama campaign isn't using what incumbent presidents always sooner or later use, either straight out or subliminally. And that is "You know me. I've been president for almost four years, you don't know that other guy. In a high-stakes world do you really want someone new?"
You know why they're not using "You know me"? Because we know him, and it's not a plus.
Here's one reason why.
There is a growing air of incompetence around Mr. Obama's White House. It was seen again this week in Supreme Court arguments over the administration's challenge to Arizona's attempted crackdown on illegal immigration. As Greg Stohr of Bloomberg News wrote, the court seemed to be disagreeing with the administration's understanding of federal power: "Solicitor General Donald Verrilli . . . met resistance across ideological lines. . . . Even Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court's only Hispanic and an Obama appointee, told Verrilli his argument is 'not selling very well.' " This follows last month's embarrassing showing over the constitutionality of parts of ObamaCare.
All of this looks so bush league, so scattered. Add it to the General Services Administration, to Solyndra, to the other scandals, and you get a growing sense that no one's in charge, that the administration is paying attention to politics but not day-to-day governance. The two most public cabinet members are Eric Holder at Justice and Janet Napolitano at Homeland Security. He is overseeing the administration's Supreme Court cases. She is in charge of being unmoved by the daily stories of Transportation Security Administration incompetence and even cruelty at our airports. Those incidents and stories continue, but if you go to the Homeland Security website, there is no mention of them. It's as if they don't even exist.
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Maybe the 2012 election is simpler than we think.
It will be about Mr. Obama.
Did you like the past four years? Good, you can get four more.
Do the president and his people strike you as competent? If so, you can renew his contract, and he will renew theirs.
If you don't want to rehire him, you will look at the other guy. Does he strike you as credible, a possible president? Then you can hire him.
Republicans should cheer up.
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One thing said about Barack Obama is that there was almost no record of him, no ex-girlfriends, no college roommates, no writings, no grades etc. meaning no vetting or that we don't really know who he is. Part of that is solved with a new book coming out by a Wash Post reporter. Vanity Fair has a 6 page excerpt: http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2012/05/david-maraniss-barack-obama-genevieve-cook
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/06/young-barack-obama-in-love-david-maraniss
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/old-obama-girlfriends-revealed-in-new-obama-book-with-excerpts-from-his-love-letters/
I take from it two things, he is more real and genuine for having some past revealed and some relationships. Second is that my belief that he did not write his own books was reinforced.
"In Dreams from My Father, Obama chose to emphasize a racial chasm that unavoidably separated him from the woman he described as his New York girlfriend.
One night I took her to see a new play by a black playwright. It was a very angry play, but very funny. Typical black American humor. The audience was mostly black, and everybody was laughing and clapping and hollering like they were in church. After the play was over, my friend started talking about why black people were so angry all the time. I said it was a matter of remembering—nobody asks why Jews remember the Holocaust, I think I said—and she said that’s different, and I said it wasn’t, and she said that anger was just a dead end. We had a big fight, right in front of the theater. When we got back to the car she started crying. She couldn’t be black, she said. She would if she could, but she couldn’t. She could only be herself, and wasn’t that enough.None of this happened with Genevieve. She remembered going to the theater only once with Barack, and it was not to see a work by a black playwright.
“It is an incident that happened,” Maraniss quotes Obama as saying in a decades-later interview, but it wasn’t with her.
“That was not her,” he said. “That was an example of compression I was very sensitive in my book not to write about my girlfriends, partly out of respect for them. So that was a consideration. I thought that [the anecdote involving the reaction of a white girlfriend to the angry black play] was a useful theme to make about sort of the interactions that I had in the relationships with white girlfriends. And so, that occupies, what, two paragraphs in the book? My attitude was it would be dishonest for me not to touch on that at all … so that was an example of sort of editorially how do I figure that out?” "
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What?
They found the girl he went to the play with and one other girlfriend andjournals and letters. The incident did not happen. It was, in my conjecture only, a stereotypical race relations discussion between sort of black man and white woman, fictionalized by someone else. The composite story is interesting but there have been other indicators that his notes were the take off point for whomever wrote the rest.
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Interesting speculations on both sides , , ,
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Using this thread for time machine issues with Baraq:
http://wayback.archive.org/web/jsp/Interstitial.jsp?seconds=5&date=1088346420000&url=http%3A%2F%2Feastandard.net%2Fheadlines%2Fnews26060403.htm&target=http%3A%2F%2Fweb.archive.org%2Fweb%2F20040627142700%2Feastandard.net%2Fheadlines%2Fnews26060403.htm
Kenyan-born Obama all set for US Senate
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Kenyan-born US Senate hopeful, Barrack Obama (THIS PHRASE IS WHY THIS PIECE IS BEING POSTED-- I would add that this is an example of the sort of fascinating inconvenient datum that can be vaporized by Big Brother and which we need to keep our own independent evidence of it) appeared set to take over the Illinois Senate seat after his main rival, Jack Ryan, dropped out of the race on Friday night amid a furor over lurid sex club allegations.
The allegations that horrified fellow Republicans and caused his once-promising candidacy to implode in four short days have given Obama a clear lead as Republicans struggled to fetch an alternative.
Ryan’s campaign began to crumble on Monday following the release of embarrassing records from his divorce. In the records, his ex-wife, Boston Public actress Jeri Ryan, said her former husband took her to kinky sex clubs in Paris, New York and New Orleans.
"It’s clear to me that a vigorous debate on the issues most likely could not take place if I remain in the race," Ryan, 44, said in a statement. "What would take place, rather, is a brutal, scorched-earth campaign – the kind of campaign that has turned off so many voters, the kind of politics I refuse to play."
Although Ryan disputed the allegations, saying he and his wife went to one ‘avant-garde’ club in Paris and left because they felt uncomfortable, lashed out at the media and said it was "truly outrageous" that the Chicago Tribune got a judge (note the Chicago machine tactics here to BO's benefit) to unseal the records.
The Republican choice will become an instant underdog in the campaign for the seat of retiring Republican Senator Peter Fitzgerald, since Obama held a wide lead even before the scandal broke.
"I feel for him actually," Obama told a Chicago TV station. "What he’s gone through over the last three days I think is something you wouldn’t wish on anybody."
The Republican state committee must now choose a replacement for Ryan, who had won in the primaries against seven contenders. Its task is complicated by the fact that Obama holds a comfortable lead in the polls and is widely regarded as a rising Democratic star. (Eventually Alan Keyes was chosen to carpet bag into the district)
The chairwoman of the Illinois Republican Party, Judy Topinka, said at a news conference, after Ryan withdrew, that Republicans would probably take several weeks to settle on a new candidate.
"Obviously, this is a bad week for our party and our state," she said.
As recently as Thursday, spokesmen for the Ryan campaign still insisted that Ryan would remain in the race. Ryan had defended himself saying, "There’s no breaking of any laws. There’s no breaking of any marriage laws. There’s no breaking of the Ten Commandments anywhere."
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The same material is also produced at http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/05/ap-2004-flashback-kenyan-born-obama-all-set-for-us-senate/ and there are additional comments there-- some of which may contain items of interest as well as the usual internet flotsam.
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"Using this thread for time machine issues with Baraq":
Many people evolve on issues, McCain on tax cuts, Reagan and Romney on life, etc. Politicians sometimes pay a price for that, but it beats total close mindedness or being stone deaf to what the people you wish to represent are wanting.
The oddest part of Pres. Obama giving his sudden historic support for gay marriage, being ahead of the curve, is that he held that position also in 1996-2004, renounced it for seeking high office, invoked God as a reason for his new, temporary view, now is back in favor of gender free marriage for any spouse one and spouse two. It is Biden who voted for the Defense of Marriage Act who has 'evolved'. The President has only weaseled. For him, this was always about focus groups, fund raising and the desire to gain and hold political power.
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http://www.mediaite.com/online/final-answer-president-obama-did-fill-out-1996-questionnaire-supporting-gay-marriage/
Final Answer: President Obama Did Fill Out 1996 Questionnaire Supporting Gay Marriage
by Tommy Christopher | 5:58 pm, June 20th, 2011
White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer resurrected a longstanding controversy Friday when he said that President Obama had not personally filled out a 1996 questionnaire that indicated support for gay marriage. At today’s White House briefing, The Washington Blade‘s Chris Johnson was finally able to get confirmation that the President did, indeed, fill out the questionnaire. Despite Jay Carney‘s protests to the contrary, the White House has not been at all forthcoming in answering that question.
During a Q&A this past Friday at the Netroots Nation conference, Pfeiffer was asked about the questionnaire, and in his response, made the same mistake that Robert Gibbs did when Johnson asked about it in January, confusing it with two other 1996 questionnaires about gun control. The gun control questionnaires were filled out by Obama’s then-campaign manager Carol Harwell.
“If you actually go back and look,” Pfeiffer said, “that questionnaire was actually filled out by someone else, not the President.”
Following Pfeiffer’s remarks, the White House issued a statement explaining the confusion, but still did not confirm that Mr. Obama had filled out the document in question:
“Dan was not familiar with the history of the questionnaire that was brought up today, but the president’s views are clear,” (White House spokesman Shin) Inouye said. “He has long supported equal rights and benefits for gay and lesbian couples and since taking office he has signed into law the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,’ signed into law the hate crimes bill, made the decision not to defend Section 3 of DOMA and expanded federal benefits for same sex partners of federal employees.”
This statement is all too familiar to me. Following Gibbs’ January response, I explained to Gibbs that he had been thinking of the gun control surveys, and that the gay marriage questionnaire had never really been addressed, save an oblique reference by then-Senator Obama in a 2004 interview, which seemed to indicate he had filled it out.
He referred me to a deputy press secretary for followup, and after two weeks of emails, I finally received this statement, from Shin Inouye:
The President has made his position on this issue clear – as a candidate in 2008, in his public writings, and in his on the record comments on at least three separate occasions. He’s also made it clear that he supports full civil unions and federal rights for LGBT couples, supports a repeal of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, and opposes a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and opposes divisive measures like Proposition 8 in California. His Administration has also taken numerous steps to help secure equal rights for LGBT Americans, such as extending benefits to the same-sex domestic partners of federal employees and ensuring equal access to HUD programs, and we hope to continue making progress.
For a guy whose views are clear, President Obama’s press office sure went to a lot of trouble to avoid answering that question. Yes, confirming this would make it appear he had flipped on the issue, but he handled that very well in that 2004 interview:
The Windy City Times, which later acquired Outlines, said it interviewed Obama in 2004, when he was a state legislator running for the U.S. Senate. In a January 2009 article recapping the interview, the newspaper quoted him as saying he no longer supported same-sex marriage “primarily just as a strategic issue,” and not because he had changed his philosophy.
“I think that marriage, in the minds of a lot of voters, has a religious connotation,” Obama said, according to the article. “I know that’s true in the African American community, for example.” Instead, he endorsed civil unions, a designation that did not exist in 1996.
That strategy later evolved to include saying he personally didn’t believe in gay marriage, but opposed efforts to ban it. At that time, there was some resonance to the argument that in order to help gay people, Obama needed to get elected, even if that meant taking a lukewarm porridge position on gay marriage.
At Monday’s White House briefing, Johnson asked Carney about it again, and among the “we love the gays” boilerplate we have come to know and love, Carney confirmed that it was his understanding that the President had completed the questionnaire himself, and Carney acted as though this had always been common knowledge: (transcript via The Washington Blade, additional transcription by Tommy Christopher)
Washington Blade: Jay, I just want to follow up on remarks that Dan Pfeiffer made last week on the president’s 1996 questionnaire response on marriage. The statement from the president in 1996 reads, “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibits such marriages.” Pfeiffer said someone else filled out this questionnaire for the president. Can you confirm that it’s the White House’s position that someone else filled out this questionnaire and —
Carney: Chris, I think you know because you’ve read it multiple times since then that we’ve corrected it beginning Friday that he — that that is not the case, that he was mistaking with another questionnaire.
The president’s position on gay marriage has been clear since ’08 — is clear, again, since he’s been president.
Q: Jay, will you clarify whether the ’96 survey was signed by Obama?
Carney: It’s my understanding that it was.
Blade: But did the president, in fact, support same-sex marriage in 1996?
Carney: Again, what I know is what his position was during the campaign and what it is now. He’s been very clear about it. He was very clear in the campaign. He was very clear about the fact that his position on the views — that’s it evolving. And I really don’t have anything to add to it.
Blade: On Thursday, the president is attending an LGBT fundraiser in New York. This state could have same-sex marriage by the end of this week. It’s very possible. Next week, he’s hosting a Pride reception here at the White House. Isn’t the president selling this audience short by saying he supports them and wants their money for his re-election campaign, but also saying at the same time he does not support their right to marry?
Carney: Chris, I think you know that this president is very supportive of and strong on LGBT rights. And his record is significant with regard to that. He’s been very clear about his position on gay marriage, he’s been very clear about how that position is evolving. I don’t have any new announcements to make, but I think you know his record, and he’s proud of it.
Johnson also asked Carney if the President might share his “evolution” on marriage equality at an upcoming LGBT event, to which Carney replied, “I don’t anticipate that.”
Here’s the problem: the President’s views are clear; as I told Carney a few weeks ago, any reasonable person would conclude, from his words and actions, that President Obama believes in the right of same sex couples to marry, yet he still has not said so, publicly. It’s not 2008 anymore, and while the entire 2012 GOP field (save Ron Paul and Herman Cain) hasn’t progressed, the rest of the country has. For the first time, a majority of Americans support marriage equality, and civil unions have become the 8-track tape of gay rights.
The Democrats no longer have a filibuster-proof majority, and no chance to repeal DOMA, so this is no longer a strategic fight. It is a fight for the hearts and minds of those who still don’t grasp the inequity of second class citizenship, many of whom, as Don Lemon pointed out, are part of a key Obama constituency.
It’s a fight for the hearts and minds of those Democrats who are still stuck in Clinton triangulation mode.
It’s also a fight for the hearts and minds of the tens of millions of LGBT people, and those who love them, who are encouraged by the strides that the President’s press team rattles off, but who are confused by his refusal to stand by them and say, “I believe you are equal.”
It’s a fight for the hearts and minds of all the kids who really need to hear him say that, the kids we keep telling, “It gets better.”
Nobody believes that the President is sitting around, thinking and thinking about this issue, unable to push that boulder over the hill. As Carney’s answers demonstrate, it could not be more obvious that President Obama believes in marriage equality. With so many people who need to hear it, why won’t he say it? (That was in 2011)
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“What I believe is that marriage is between a man and a woman … What I believe, in my faith, is that a man and a woman, when they get married, are performing something before God, and it’s not simply the two persons who are meeting,” he said when running for the U.S. Senate in 2004.
http://www.examiner.com/article/obama-returns-to-1996-position-says-he-supports-gay-marriage?v=1
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Obama on Gay Marriage
• 1996, running for Illinois state Senate: "I favor legalizing same-sex marriage."
• 2004, running for U.S. Senate: "Marriage is between a man and a woman.
• 2010, as president: "My feelings are constantly evolving" on gay mar riage.
• 2012, as president: "I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304070304577394332545729926.html
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Unbelievable how the media can vaporize previous stuff that was out there.
From Bob Grant. A little outdated posted by him back in March before Romney was the solo Republican. I only post because Bob was on his show yesterday opining that Romney is going to lose by criticizing the PAC that is bringing up the Rev Wright issue again.
The DC repubs seem to feel that this was already "veted" and serves no purpose in this campaign. Bob disagrees.
He points out the Dems have no conscious about deceit or any kind of attack on Repubs and therefore all kid gloves should come off in this campaing.
The establishment Repubs have concluded that sticking to the economy IS the best strategy for Romney and personal atacks against the ONE will not work.
I can only hope they do this because they have studies with data that tells them this is the best strategy.
http://www.bobgrantonline.com/archive/2012/obamawin.cfm
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The Potemkin President Disintegrates
Posted By Bruce Thornton On May 21, 2012
After nearly four years in office, the tinsel and cardboard persona of Barack Obama is starting to fall apart. The political unifier who claimed, “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America––there is the United States of America,” has been exposed as one of the most divisive and partisan presidents of modern times. The post-racial candidate who supposedly transcended our racial divisions has intensified them, whether by crudely racializing incidents like the Trayvon Martin shooting, or by allowing the Justice Department to facilitate race-industry attacks on state voter-identification laws, or by calling his own grandmother “a typical white person” for fearing black criminals. The decrier of how money has corrupted our politics has spent more time at the campaign contribution trough than he has governing. The “centrist” who set aside partisan politics for the greater national good has been exposed as a doctrinaire progressive adept at bare-knuckled class warfare. And the “smartest guy ever to become President,” as one historically challenged historian put it, has turned out to be remarkably ignorant about a multitude of issues from the economy to foreign policy.
Yet we didn’t need the past three years to learn the truth about Obama. The evidence was all there from the start. What allowed the fantasy Obama to gain the White House was the collusion of a corrupt mainstream media that failed to ask the hard questions or follow through on stories that had managed to get the nation’s attention. The recentrevelation from the Breitbart outfit that a publisher’s promotional booklet in 1991 bragged that Obama had been “born in Kenya” is just the latest evidence of how stubbornly and willfully indifferent the media have been to asking the penetrating questions of the sort that have dogged every president, especially those since Lyndon Johnson. The media’s dereliction of duty has allowed Obama to construct ad hoc identities that suit his political agenda and obscure his unsavory past and ideology.
For example, the continuing questions about Obama’s birth-country renewed by the Breitbart discovery are significant for exposing his long history of fabricating an identity to suit his careerist needs. The Hawaii prep-schooled, white-raised Barry Dunham discovered on getting to college that the exotic name Barack Hussein Obama, like the Indonesian childhood, was more useful for sending a diversity thrill down the leg of liberal white professors and admissions committees. So too with publishers, eager to display their multi-culti bona fides by promoting a Third-World author “born in Kenya,” who would chronicle his struggles against neo-colonial racism. Like many other hustlers “of color,” Obama was no doubt happy to oblige and collude in the deception––until national political ambitions required that he tone down the “other” vibe, at least until after the election.
So too with the unasked questions about Obama’s radical past. The media saw nothing to report about Obama starting his political career in the living room of ex-terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. You remember Ayers, the ex-Weatherman who bragged in his memoirs about getting away with his terrorist violence and being “free as a bird.” Obama assured us that Ayers was “just a guy who lives in my neighborhood,” despite serving on two foundation boards and appearing at conferences with him. As is the media’s wont, perfunctory “investigations” revealed that there was nothing to the stories, taking on faith Obama’s incredible assertion that there was no significance to the fact that one of America’s most notorious terrorists was a part of his life and political development. The same media that ran with a hit-piece on George Bush supported only by an obviously fabricated letter, and that currently is intensely picking over the past history of Bain Capital, Romney’s treatment of the family dog, and his alleged high-school bullying––that same media four years ago didn’t think there was anything newsworthy in the Democratic candidate for president having ties with an unrepentant left-wing terrorist. Instead, they helped construct Obama’s new identity as a pragmatic centrist beyond partisan politics.
Then there’s the Reverend Jeremiah “God-damn America” Wright, whom Obama credits with leading him to Christianity, who officiated at his wedding, who gave him the title of his second book, and whose church he attended for 20 years. When the videos of Wright’s sermons surfaced, Obama claimed that he was “shocked, shocked” by the rancid anti-Americanism and racism weekly preached by Wright, and the media accepted that preposterous rationalization. Even John McCain dutifully refused to demand an explanation, declaring Wright “off limits.” Indeed, any mention of Wright even today calls forth shrill charges of “race-baiting” and “racial politics” from the Democrats and MSNBC. The same media that in 2006 hyperventilated over Republican Senate candidate George Allen saying something that sort of sounded like what maybe was an obscure ethnic slur apparently didn’t see a story in the fact that Obama’s spiritual mentor hates white people and had glorified the terrorist attacks of 9/11 as “chickens coming home to roost.” Obama needed to be a mainstream post-racialist Christian for the election, so the media were happy to help him throw his one-time spiritual mentor under the bus.
Once again, none of those intrepid “watchdog” reporters from the legacy media were interested in digging for the true Obama, and in stripping away the carefully constructed façade to find out what, if anything, Obama sincerely believed in. All they needed to know was that he was going to “fundamentally transform America” into the progressive paradise. Like Lincoln Steffens on the train heading for the Soviet Union, the facts could be damned: the media had already seen the future, and it worked.
And this is just the beginning of the Obama mysteries left unexamined by the media. Why has the guy whose “I.Q. is off the charts,” as that same historian claimed, refused to release his college transcripts? Is there something in his course-work and grades that could explain the numerous historical gaffes, such as his assertion in the 2009 Cairo speech that Muslims were practicing tolerance in Cordoba centuries after they had been driven out by the Spaniards, or his repetition of internet apocryphal history, as when he claimed President Rutherford B. Hayes had dismissed the telephone’s future, when in fact he installed the first telephone in the White House? Is there some transcript evidence that illuminates the source of howlers such as “57” states or the “Austrian” language? Why have a media that reveled in documenting daily George Bush’s alleged stupidity maintained a studied indifference to this genius’s academic record?
Or why, in this age of meticulous intrusion into every last detail of a politician’s life and health, has Obama’s complete medical records been kept secret? What doesn’t he want us to see? Why can’t we read the Columbia thesis of this universally acknowledged “brilliant” writer? Why did he receive “foreign student aid”? Why, as Roger Kimballasks, are his Illinois state senate schedule and records, Selective Service registration, and law practice client list all sealed? Perhaps there are innocuous reasons for all this secrecy, but no other candidate for the most powerful political job in the world would ever be allowed to keep this information from the public.
Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.
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"So too with the unasked questions about Obama’s radical past. The media saw nothing to report about Obama starting his political career in the living room of ex-terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn."...
"Then there’s the Reverend Jeremiah “God-damn America” Wright, whom Obama credits with leading him to Christianity, who officiated at his wedding, who gave him the title of his second book, and whose church he attended for 20 years."
You wouldn't think their glass house strategy would be to go hard after Romney's background, lol.
Investors Business Daily goes further with the Obama phenomenon today tying questions in his background to questions in his character:
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IBD Editorials
Obama's Bio Grows Even Sketchier
Posted 05/21/2012 07:00 PM ET
The Obama Record
The Obama Record: The discovery of the president's false book bio claiming Kenyan birth fits an increasingly disturbing pattern. We've long described Obama as radical, but he's also deceitful.
The mix of these two traits in the Oval Office is toxic. But the Washington media are anything but alarmed, still believing as they do the mythical savior figure they created in 2008.
The other night, MSNBC's Chris Matthews argued on his "Hardball" show that Americans would be wise to re-elect Obama because he's "the candidate we know." He claimed he's a trusted brand who "is who he seems to be."
He went on to describe the president as "a fairly pragmatic progressive" and "tough defender of the country." Therefore, he argued, he's the safer choice vs. GOP foe Mitt Romney, whom Matthews warns is an unknown commodity — "Brand X" — who could turn out to be a nutty puppet of the "radical right."
Of course, Obama isn't at all who he seems to be. And judging from Obama's sinking poll numbers, this is becoming more apparent to the electorate — thanks in part to the new media's revetting of Obama after the old media's half-hearted attempt in 2008.
Voters who don't watch MSNBC are starting to see that the president's public persona is merely a hologram created by media shills like Matthews, who define his identity and ideology and redefine it when facts disrupt the carefully constructed narrative.
The latest fly in the ointment for Team Obama is a promotional bio Obama's book agent put out in 1991. The old copy, dug up last week by Breitbart.com, says he was "born in Kenya." Asked about the mistaken birthplace, the agent claimed it "was nothing more than a fact-checking error."
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But that's not just any error. Getting a job title wrong is one thing. But screwing up a client's place of birth is a major — and bizarre — boo-boo.
More than likely, Obama supplied the error as fact, since the agency requires clients to submit their bio information. Adding to suspicions, Obama failed to correct it. For 16 years. He allowed his agent to continue to publish the error — despite several updates to his bio posted online — until 2007, when Obama ran for the White House and abruptly switched agents. Only then was the bio corrected.
Why would Obama fictionalize his life story? For answers, let's go back to 1991. At the time he got his book deal, Obama was graduating from Harvard Law School, which required strong grades for entry. Yet by all accounts, Obama had weak grades. Did he juice his application — a la his Harvard law pal, Elizabeth "Cherokee Liz" Warren — to hedge his bet in case his minority status wasn't exotic enough to overcome his grades?
Northwestern University professor John McKnight said a desperate Obama approached him for a letter of recommendation to Harvard, because he couldn't get any of his undergrad professors to pen one due to underwhelming academics. McKnight was one of Obama's radical Alinsky trainers and a key mentor, but not one of his professors.
The embellished bio makes the circumstances surrounding Obama's Harvard admission curiouser. And all the more reason to demand this president do what every other modern president has done, including Democrat candidates John Kerry and Al Gore, and turn over his academic records for public review.
At bottom, this is an issue of trust.
The notion that his author's bio, which played up high the phony foreign-born status, was simply a typo is about as credible as Obama claiming he never heard his radically anti-American preacher say anything unpatriotic while sitting in his pews for over two decades. Or that he hardly knew his Hyde Park neighbor Bill Ayers, the unrepentant terrorist who launched his political career from his living room. And who sat with him on the board of a few radical organizations. And who claims to have actually written the very memoir Obama and his agent began promoting in 1991.
Just who is this man sitting in the people's house? Increasingly, he appears devious and dishonest.
Character matters.
http://news.investors.com/article/612225/201205211900/voters-do-not-know-the-real-obama.htm
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A pdf keeper of Barack's only known published article at Columbia:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/nytdocs/docs/198/198.pdf
The piece drifts from journalism about groups on campus to his own views. Written about anti-militarism, freeze and disarmament at a time when the opposite, peace through strength, was about to bring down the Soviet empire. Or as Barack put it, "By being intransigent, Reagan is playing directly into the Russians' hands."
Young Barack was no more succinct then, and his views on negotiating with the Russians have not changed either. This is only his closing; read it all at the link.
"Indeed, the most pervasive malady
of the collegiate system specifically, and
the American experience generally, is
that elaborate patterns of knowledge
and theory have been disembodied from
individual choices and government policy.
What the members of ARA and (Student groups: Arms Race Alternatives and Students Against Militarism)
SAM try to do is infuse what they have
learned about the current situation,
bring the words of that formidable roster
on the face of Butler Library, names
like Thoreau, Jefferson, and Whitman,
to bear on the twisted logic of which we
are today a part. By adding their energy
and effort in order to enchance the possibility
of a decent world, they may help
deprive us of a spectacular experience-
that of war. But then, there are
some things we shouldn't have to live
through in order to want to avoid the
experience,
and soon, it is quite probable that the
Germans will do something on their
own. The Reagan administration's stalling
at the Geneva ta1Iks on nuclear weapons
has thus already caused severe
tension and could ultimately bring about
a dangerous rift between the United
States and Western Europe. By being
intransigent, Reagan is playing directly
into the Russians' hands.
In 1933 the German establishment
thought it could use Hitler to restore a
modicum of order to the confused and
confusing Weimar Republic. In fact,
Hitler did strengthen the German establishment,
but not exactly in the way
the bankers and businessmen had
wanted; and now, fifty years later, it is
clear who was using whom.
Nevertheless, the Western World
did not complain in 1933 because Hitler,
though a fascist and a totalitarian, was
seen, like counUess American puppet
dictators today, as someone who leaves
the established order in place.
Not so the Greens. If a group of
young, anti-establishment pacifists
v,ith unusual ideas and uncomfortable
answers to hard questions terrifies us
more today than Hitler, Himmler,
Goering and Goebbels did back in 1933,
our terror says more about us than it
does about the Greens or the Germans.
It indicates that we have failed to comprehend
the meaning of Nazism and
hlind obedience to authority in their full
horror, and that we, unlike the Greens,
have yet ourselves to learn the dem<>cratic
lesson that we have taught the
Gennans so well.
Since the European peace movement
has long since become the American
peace movement, and since America
now has its own Green Party, the rise
of the Greens in Germany has profound
significance here. It is at once a warning
to us that the old solutions of more weapons
and again more weapons will no
longer be accepted in a Europe that is
already a powderkeg waiting to go off;
and it is an invitation to work towards a
peace that is genuine, lasting and nonnuclear.
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What garbage. This sounds like some romance novel:
..In Maraniss excerpts, Obama’s ex-girlfriend recalls his ‘sexual warmth’ and charm but also his detachment
.Here is the future most powerful man in the world, judged through the eyes of a long-ago ex-girlfriend as she records in her personal journal the demise of their brief but intense relationship:
Thursday, May 23, 1985
Barack leaving my life—at least as far as being lovers goes. In the same way that the relationship was founded on calculated boundaries and carefully, rationally considered developments, it seems to be ending along coolly considered lines. I read back over the past year in my journals, and see and feel several themes in it all ... how from the beginning what I have been most concerned with has been my sense of Barack's withholding the kind of emotional involvement I was seeking. I guess I hoped time would change things and he'd let go and "fall in love" with me. Now, at this point, I'm left wondering if Barack's reserve, etc. is not just the time in his life, but, after all, emotional scarring that will make it difficult for him to get involved even after he's sorted his life through with age and experience. Hard to say, as obviously I was not the person that brought infatuation. (That lithe, bubbly, strong black lady is waiting somewhere!)
Barack was, of course, future President Barack Obama. The woman was Genevieve Cook, who met Obama in 1983 at a Christmas party in Manhattan's East Village. He was barely six months from his graduation from Columbia University. They crossed paths in the kitchen. He was wearing blue jeans, a T-shirt and a dark leather jacket.
The poignant, often intimate recollections come from "Barack Obama: The Story" by David Maraniss. Vanity Fair published excerpts of the book, which will be published in June. They confirm Obama's description of himself in his memoir "Dreams From My Father" as grappling with his identity. And they will resonate with those who regard Obama as charming but powerfully reserved, almost aloof—traits that have led more than one observer to liken him to "Star Trek's" Mr. Spock.
Thursday, January 26 How is he so old already, at the age of 22? I have to recognize (despite play of wry and mocking smile on lips) that I find his thereness very threatening. ... Distance, distance, distance, and wariness.
And
Saturday, February 25 The sexual warmth is definitely there—but the rest of it has sharp edges and I'm finding it all unsettling and finding myself wanting to withdraw from it all. I have to admit that I am feeling anger at him for some reason, multi-stranded reasons. His warmth can be deceptive. Tho he speaks sweet words and can be open and trusting, there is also that coolness—and I begin to have an inkling of some things about him that could get to me.
At another point, in March, she described Obama as "drawing others' cards out of their hands for careful inspection" without reciprocating. "There's something also there of smoothed veneer, of guardedness ... but I'm still left with this feeling of ... a bit of a wall—the veil," Cook wrote.
Maraniss writes that "when she told him that she loved him, his response was not 'I love you, too' but 'thank you'—as though he appreciated that someone loved him."
A May 9 entry described Obama as "so wary, wary. Has visions of his life, but in a hiatus as to their implementation—wants to fly, and hasn't yet started to take off, so resents extra weight."
Readers who want to will see Cook as predicting Obama's eventual marriage to first lady Michelle Obama.
"I can't help thinking that what he would really want, be powerfully drawn to, was a woman, very strong, very upright, a fighter, a laugher, well-experienced—a black woman I keep seeing her as," she wrote.
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John Hinderaker, founder of Powerline, ends the media sugarcoating of the Obama record:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/06/the-pathetic-legacy-of-barack-obama.php
The Pathetic Legacy of Barack Obama
A week or so ago, an online liberal floated the absurd proposition that Barack Obama has been a fiscal conservative. He claimed that Obama has presided over the second-slowest increase in federal spending in recent history. Given that the Obama administration has run up $5 trillion in new debt while spending vastly more than any administration in history, how was this feat of legerdemain performed? We explained it here and here: (http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/05/barack-obama-fiscal-conservative.php http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/05/barack-obama-skinflint.php)
Briefly, the claim depends on attributing all of FY 2009 spending to the Bush administration. FY 2009 represented the biggest increase in federal spending in history, by a very wide margin, and Bush had little or nothing to do with it. That was the year of the stimulus, and the Democratic Congress assiduously avoided passing a budget until Obama had been sworn in, in January 2009. Obama and the Democrats own FY 2009 spending lock, stock and barrel. The remarkable thing is that even though “stimulus” spending is over, the Democrats haven’t cut overall spending at all, but rather have increased it even further from the astronomical FY 2009 level. The attempt to paint Obama as a fiscal conservative was so transparently stupid that even the Washington Post and the Associated Press denounced it.
But that hasn’t stopped Obama himself from going back to the well. Today he said, at a New York fundraiser with Bill Clinton:
Even when it comes to their big issue, the deficit and the debt, as President Clinton just mentioned, you know, the truth is that the two presidents over the last 30 years, 40 years, who had the lowest increases in government spending, you are looking at them right here. They’re on this stage.
Forget for the moment how utterly dishonest this is, and how sad that Obama continues repeating the lie even when his own most loyal supporters in the media have deserted him. What I want to focus on here is how pathetic it is that Obama is now reduced to posing as a fiscal conservative. Did Obama run in 2008 on a platform of restraining federal spending? Of course not. He represents the left wing of the Democratic Party, whose main objective is increased federal spending. To the extent that he has influenced legislation, has it ever had the purpose of limiting federal spending? Don’t be ridiculous! His signature legislative “achievements,” the stimulus and Obamacare, entailed billions of dollars in new federal appropriations. Has he ever even proposed to limit spending in any meaningful way? No. On the contrary, his budgets have been so flamboyantly profligate that in the last two years, not a single Senator or Congressman has been willing to vote for them. Obama has never been, or tried to be, anything but a far-left spendthrift. So the fact that he now is reduced to posing as a green-eyeshade cost-cutter is simply pathetic.
The same thing has happened in foreign policy. Obama ran as a classic foreign policy leftist, skeptical of his own country’s history and interests. He denounced “torture,” a reference to the three hard-core terrorists who had been waterboarded years earlier, and vowed to close Guantanamo Bay. He thought he could influence the Muslim world by virtue of his middle name and his Indonesian boyhood. All of that is now ancient history. Obama’s proudest boast, as he runs for re-election, is that he didn’t prohibit the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Recently, the White House has leaked the claim that Obama himself chooses the terrorists to be killed by Predator missiles. In the 1960s, when the press reported that Lyndon Johnson was personally selecting bombing targets in Vietnam, it was one more nail in Johnson’s political coffin. Today, Barack Obama, having completely failed to achieve anything he intended when he took office, is so desperate that he has nothing better to offer: he presents himself as not just a skinflint, but a bloodthirsty one. It is, as I say, a pathetic legacy.
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Investors Business Daily takes a try at summarizing the Obama economic record with data from a number of reliable sources. Sad but true:
http://news.investors.com/article/613655/201206041914/obama-economic-recovery-worst-since-great-depression.htm
The Obama Record
The Obama Record: May's weak jobs report further confirms the president's policies are failing to help the economy. This is, indeed, the worst recovery since the Depression.
Negative superlatives associated with this presidency keep piling up. The toll so far:
• The share of Americans who've been out of work a long time — now at 42% of the unemployed — is the highest since the Great Depression (source: Labor Department).
• The proportion of the civilian working-age population actually working, at 58%, is the smallest since the Carter era (Labor Department).
• Growth in nonfarm payroll jobs since the recovery began in June 2009 is the slowest of any comparable recovery since World War II (Hoover Institution).
• The rate of new business startups — the engine of job growth — has plunged to an all-time low of 7.87% of all businesses (Census Bureau).
• 3 in 10 young adults can't find jobs and live with their parents, highest since the 1950s (Pew Research).
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• 54% of bachelor's degree-holders under the age of 25 are jobless or underemployed, the highest share in decades (Northeastern University).
• Black teen unemployment, now at 37%, is near Depression-era highs (Labor Department).
• Almost 1 in 6 Americans are now poor — the highest ratio in 30 years — and the total number of poor, at 49.1 million, is the largest on record (Census).
• The share of Hispanics in poverty has topped that of blacks for the first time, 28.2% to 25.4% (Census).
• The number of Americans on food stamps — 45 million recipients, or 1 in 7 residents — also is the highest on record (Congressional Budget Office).
• Total government dependency — defined as the share of Americans receiving one or more federal benefit payments — is now at 47%, highest ever (Hoover).
• The share of Americans paying no income tax, at 49.5%, is the highest ever (Heritage Foundation, IRS).
• The national homeownership rate, now at 65.4%, is the lowest in 15 years (Census).
• The 30-point gap between black and white Americans who own their own homes is the widest in two decades and one of the widest on record (Census).
• Federal spending, now at 23.4% of GDP, is the highest since WWII (CBO).
• Excluding defense and interest payments, spending is the highest in American history, at 17.6% of the economy (First Trust Economics).
• The federal debt, at 69% of GDP, is the highest since just after WWII (CBO).
• The U.S. budget deficit, now at 9.5% of the economy, is the highest since WWII (CBO).
• U.S. Treasury debt has been downgraded for the first time in history, meaning the U.S. government no longer ranks among risk-free borrowers (S&P).
This is what Obamanomics has wrought. Fiscal promiscuity. Trickle-up poverty. Shared misery.
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- but we're on the right track and need to do more of the same... :?
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President Obama’s problem now isn’t what Wisconsin did, it’s how he looks each day—careening around, always in flight, a superfluous figure. No one even looks to him for leadership now. He doesn’t go to Wisconsin, where the fight is. He goes to Sarah Jessica Parker’s place, where the money is.
There is, now, a house-of-cards feel about this administration. …
Any president will, in a presidential election year, be political. But there is a startling sense with Mr. Obama that that’s all he is now, that he and his people are all politics, all the time, undeviatingly, on every issue. He isn’t even trying to lead, he’s just trying to win.
Most ominously, there are the national-security leaks that are becoming a national scandal—the “avalanche of leaks,” according to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, that are somehow and for some reason coming out of the administration. A terrorist “kill list,” reports of U.S. spies infiltrating Al Qaeda in Yemen, stories about Osama bin Laden’s DNA and how America got it, and U.S. involvement in the Stuxnet computer virus, used against Iranian nuclear facilities. These leaks, say the California Democrat, put “American lives in jeopardy,” put “our nation’s security in jeopardy.”
This isn’t the usual—this is something different. A special counsel may be appointed.
And where is the president in all this? On his way to Anna Wintour’s house. He’s busy. He’s running for president.
But why? He could be president now if he wanted to be.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303753904577452793597495290.html
(just an excerpt, read it at the link: Peggy Noonan, House of Cards)
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Here is Frank Gaffney's excellent latest article - the "mainstream" press clearly could not care less about this issue - as it benefits Obama:
Hold Obama Accountable
Center for Security Policy | Jun 11, 2012
By Frank Gaffney, Jr.
Suddenly, congressional leaders of both parties are demanding investigations into serial disclosures of national security secrets on President Obama's watch. The truth of the matter is that we already know what we need to about these leaks. The question is: Will anybody do anything about it?
Of course, the leaks themselves are already out there - prominently featured, for example, on the front pages of the New York Times. We know of the compromise of techniques used to defend our country through cyberwarfare, drone attacks, covert operations and what turned out to be other nations' successful penetration of terrorist cells.
We also know that, in every case, the leakers' handiwork portrayed Barack Obama as a highly effective, decisive, muscular and hands-on Commander-in-Chief. Sadly, the President's overall record shows him to have been anything but, hence the need to pump up his street creds as part of the reelection campaign.
If the damage done for what are, on their face, nakedly political purposes were not so serious, the President's remark last week that he finds "offensive" suggestions that "his White House" could have been responsible would be hilarious. Yet, it seems certain that his Justice Department's investigation will shed no helpful light on the degree of involvement by the Executive Office of the President or, in case he was parsing his words deliberately, the culpability of those who work for him elsewhere in the government. At a minimum, that will certainly be true between now and the November election.
As former federal prosecutor-turned-bestselling author Andrew McCarthy has observed (http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2012/06/09/latest-in-leak-farce-the-special-counsel-folly/), Attorney General Eric Holder has jujitsued legislators' demands for a special prosecutor into a review by two U.S. Attorneys that will not only take, in all likelihood, a year or more to complete. Worse yet, their investigation will also be used as a pretext to thwart congressional inquiries into the leaks for the duration of that probe.
This is all the more ridiculous in light of what we already know: People working for Barack Obama have been talking to the media. Some, like longtime Democratic political operative and current National Security Advisor to the President Tom Donilon, have actually allowed themselves to be named as sources.
In other cases, the leakers are part of a very small universe, making a swift and rigorous investigation manageable. For instance, some of the leaks were attributed to officials among the presumably quite restricted number of subordinates who participate in highly classified meetings with Mr. Obama to target terrorists for assassination. One of these turns out to be none other than presidential campaign strategist David Axelrod. It really should not take long to ferret out who among this small group said what on an off-the-record basis.
More importantly, the bottom line is also clear: President Obama is the beneficiary of the spin associated with these leaks, not the American people. And that truly is offensive.
Unfortunately, the same can be said of a number of other actions for which the President can - and must - be held directly accountable. These include, for example:
President Obama's deliberate and far-reaching unilateral disarmament of both U.S. conventional and nuclear forces through budgetary actions and malign neglect.
President Obama's embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood - bringing them to power in the Mideast and encouraging their efforts to insinuate shariah here. In fact, Mr. Donilon's deputy, Dennis McDonough, was in Qatar last week meeting with senior operatives of America's two most prominent Brotherhood front groups, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), toward that end. We also just learned that his administration has had "hundreds of meetings" with CAIR.
President Obama's buying time for Iran to complete its decades-long drive to acquire nuclear weapons and eviscerating the U.S. missile defenses needed to protect against that growing threat.
President Obama's alienating of Israel, Poland, the Czech Republic, Honduras and other allies in the vain hope of currying favor with their foes, and ours.
President Obama's encouraging other adversaries, from Russia to China to North Korea to Chavismo in our hemisphere, thanks to the weakness and irresolution that have characterized his policies to date and that his team now feels the need to obscure with heavy spinning of the leaked secrets. And,
President Obama's diminishing of our sovereignty, notably by trying to ram through the Senate the Law of the Sea Treaty - the subject of two more hearings this week in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, including the first in which opponents have been allowed to testify, led by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Despite the likelihood that the American people will not learn who has been responsible for the damage done to our security through the serial leaks of highly classified information until well after November 6th - if then, they are on notice about his priorities: Emboldening our enemies, undermining our friends and diminishing our country. We simply cannot afford four more years of unaccountable and dangerous malpractice on the part of a Commander-in-Chief.
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy (www.SecureFreedom.org), a columnist for the Washington Times and host of the nationally syndicated program, Secure Freedom Radio, heard in Washington weeknights at 9:00 p.m. on WRC 1260 AM.
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Obama losing support among Blacks in NC! Welcome back to the party of Lincoln my fellow Americans!
Save the country for all of us. Now if only my fellow Jews who are crazy liberal Democrats would start to wake up then this country will not go the way of Europe.
No wonder the Dems are panicking.
The recently offered proof that Bamster WAS in the Socialist Party and he lied about it says it all. He absolutely does despise this country and his saying the private sector is doing "fine" is absolutely not a gaff and absolutely is consistent with his political thought.
http://www.businessinsider.com/barack-obama-african-american-vote-black-north-carolina-2012-6
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And first marxist president:
Friday, 08 June 2012 12:11 Obama Belonged to Radical Socialist "New Party" in 1996
Written by Bruce Walker font size decrease font size increase font size Print Email
Stanley Kurtz, in his June 7 article "Obama's Third-Party History" for National Review Online, reports that Barack Obama’s connection to far-left radicals is much more recent that had been previously thought. On January 11, 1996, Kurtz notes, Obama joined the New Party, a radical socialist political movement deeply opposed to capitalism and of the opinion that the Democratic Party was far too moderate. The New Party sought to transform America into the sort of socialist democracy that is common in Europe.
Perhaps more importantly, Kurtz notes that when he first raised this issue in National Review a few weeks before the 2008 presidential election, the Obama campaign dismissed his story as a “crackpot smear,” firmly maintaining that their candidate had belonged to only one political party his whole life — the Democratic Party. On the Obama campaign's “Fight the Smears” website Carol Harwell stated: “Barack did not solicit or seek the New Party endorsement for the state senate in 1995.”
Kurtz bases his proof of Obama’s membership in the New Party on documents obtained from the Illinois ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) records at the Wisconsin Historical Society. Obama also signed a contract, Kurtz reveals, in which he promised that while in office he would publicly support and associate himself with the New Party. Kurtz quotes from the January 11, 1996 minutes of the Chicago chapter of the New Party:
Barack Obama, candidate for State Senate in the 13th Legislative District, gave a statement to the membership and answered questions. He signed the New Party "Candidate Contract" and requested an endorsement from the New Party. He also joined the New Party.
The National Review Online article notes that the Chicago chapter of the New Party listed Obama as a party member beginning in early 1997.
Kurtz then identifies several different threads that tie Barack Obama to radical Marxism, which include these facts:
• His father wrote a paper which advocated 100% taxation of the rich, communal ownership of land and confiscation of private property, and penned an article in Kenya entitled “The Problems Facing Our Socialism”;
• His mother was a Communist sympathizer who had been described as a “fellow traveler” while she was alive, whose teachers at Mercer Island High School forced students to read the Communist Manifesto;
• His parents met in a Russian language class;
• His mentor was known Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis and in Hawaii from 1971 to 1979, Davis treated Obama like a son;
• His brother Roy Obama is a Marxist, and also a radical Muslim;
• His cousin Odinga is also a Marxist and a radical Muslim who seeks to establish Shariah courts in Kenya;
• He attended a socialist conference at Copper Union;
• He was hand picked by Illinois State Senator Alice Palmer to succeed her, and Palmer attended the 27th Communist Party Congress in the Soviet Union;
• His campaign for the Illinois State Senate was organized by avowed Marxists Bill Ayers (pictured above) and Bernadette Dorhn.
The evidence which Kurtz (and others) have assembled to show the deep immersion of Barack Obama in Marxism is overwhelming. The latest proof, his membership as recently as 15 years ago in the radical socialist New Party, shows his Marxist upbringing remained with him and, crucially, that he has concealed that information from Americans.
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Obama's grandfather tortured by the British? A fantasy (like most of the President’s own memoir)
By TOBY HARNDEN
PUBLISHED: 17:15 EST, 19 June 2012
A new biography of Barack Obama has established that his grandfather was not, as is related in the President’s own memoir, detained by the British in Kenya and found that claims that he was tortured were a fabrication.
'Barack Obama: The Story' by David Maraniss catalogues dozens of instances in which Obama deviated significantly from the truth in his book 'Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance'. The 641-page book punctures the carefully-crafted narrative of Obama’s life.
One of the enduring myths of Obama’s ancestry is that his paternal grandfather Hussein Onyango Obama, who served as a cook in the British Army, was imprisoned in 1949 by the British for helping the anti-colonial Mau Mau rebels and held for several months.
Family tree: Barack Obama (centre) with his maternal grandparents Stanley Armour Dunham, (left) and Madelyn Dunham in New York City in the 1980s
Obama’s step-grandmother Sarah, Onyango wife, who is still living, is quoted in the future President’s memoir, as saying: ‘One day, the white man’s askaris came to take Onyango away, and he was placed in a detention camp.
More...
Michelle Obama savages the pursuit of 'fat paychecks and nice offices' (despite her past life as a high-flying corporate lawyer)
Revealed: Michelle Obama's WHITE distant cousins... and how the First Lady's great-great-great grandmother had a relationship with a slave owner's son
‘But he had been in the camp for over six months, and when he returned to Alego he was very thin and dirty. He had difficulty walking, and his head was full of lice. He was so ashamed, he refused to enter his house or tell us what happened.’
In a 2008 interview, Sarah Obama claimed that he was ‘whipped every morning and evening’ by the British. ‘They would sometimes squeeze his testicles with metal rods. They also pierced his nails and buttocks with a sharp pin, with his hands and legs tied together. He was lucky to survive. Some of his fellow inmates were mutilated with castration pliers and beaten to death with clubs.’
But Maraniss, who researched Obama’s life in Kenya, Indonesia, Hawaii and the mainland United States, found that there were ‘no remaining records of any detention, imprisonment, or trial of Hussein Onyango Obama’. He interviewed five people who knew Obama’s grandfather, who died in 1979, who ‘doubted the story or were certain it did not happen’.
Fabricated?: 'Barack Obama: The Story' by David Maraniss catalogues dozens of instances in which Obama deviated significantly from the truth in his book
This undermines the received wisdom that Obama’s grandfather was a victim of oppression, an assumption that has in turn fuelled theories that Obama harbours an animus towards Britain based on a deeply-rooted rage about the way Onyango was treated.
John Ndalo Aguk, who worked with Onyango before the alleged imprisonment and was in touch with him weekly afterwards said he 'knew nothing' about any detention and would have noticed if he had gone missing for several months.
Zablon Okatch, who worked with Onyango as a servant to American diplomats after the supposed incarceration, said: ‘Hussein was never jailed. I know that for a fact. It would have been difficult for him to get a job with a white family, let alone a diplomat, if he once served in jail.’
Charles Oluoch, whose father was adopted by Onyango, said that ‘he did not have any trouble with the government in any way'.
Dick Opar, a relative by marriage to Onyango and a senior Kenyan police official, gave what Maraniss judged to be the most authoritative word. ‘People make up stories,’ he said. ‘If you get arrested, you say it was the fight for independence, but they are arrested for another thing.
‘I would have known. I would have known. If he was in Kamiti Prison for only a day, even if for a day, I would have known.’
Maraniss also casts a sceptical eye on Obama’s grandmother’s tales of racism in Kansas, doubting whether she was ever chastised for addressing a black janitor as ‘Mister’ or ridiculed for playing with a black girl.
Obama himself, Maraniss finds, deliberately distorted elements of his own life to fit into a racial narrative. The author writes that Obama presents himself in his memoir as ‘blacker and more disaffected’ than he really was.
The memoir ‘accentuates characters drawn from black acquaintances who played lesser roles his real life but could be used to advance a line of thought, while leaving out or distorting the actions of friends who happened to be white’.
Researched: David Maraniss (left) found that there were 'no remaining records of any detention, imprisonment, or trial of Hussein Onyango Obama', the President's grandfather
In the forward to his memoir, Obama wrote that ‘for the sake of compression, some of the characters that appear are composites of people I’ve known, and some events appear out of precise chronology’.
But Maraniss writes that Obama’s book is ‘literature and memoir, not history and autobiography’ and concludes: ‘The character creations and rearrangements of the book are not merely a matter of style, devices of compression, but are also substantive.’
Writing about his schooldays, Obama created a friend called Regina, a symbol of the authentic black American experience that Obama yearns for.
Maraniss found, however, that Regina was based on Caroline Boss, a white student leader at Occidental College. Regina was the name of Boss’s Swiss grandmother.
The book also notes that Obama removed two white roommates in Los Angeles and New York from his story. Obama himself told Maraniss in a 90-minute interview that a racial incident involving a New York girlfriend had in fact happened in Chicago.
A tale of the father of Obama’s Indonesian stepfather Soewarno Martodihardjo being killed by Dutch soldiers as he fought for Indonesian independence turns out to be ‘a concocted myth in almost all respects’, Maraniss finds.
According to the book, both Obama’s father and his paternal grandfather were abusive towards women and Maraniss finds that Obama’s story that he was abandoned by his father when he was two was false – in fact, Obama’s mother fled to Washington state a year earlier, possibly because she was being beaten.
A character in Obama’s memoir called Ray, portrayed as a symbol of young blackness, is in fact based on a fellow pupil who was half Japanese, part native American and part black and was not a close friend.
‘In the memoir Barry and Ray, could be heard complaining about how rich white haole [upper class white Hawaiian] girls would never date them. In fact, neither had much trouble in that regard.’
Obama notes of his own grandfather that he was apt to create ‘history to conform with the image he wished for himself’.
Maraniss, who also wrote an acclaimed biography of Bill Clinton, suggests that throughout his life Obama himself, following on from his forbears on both sides, has done the same thing.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2161817/Obamas-grandfather-Stanley-Armour-Dunham-tortured-British.html#ixzz1yMiZhwIj
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In the forward to his memoir, Obama wrote that ‘for the sake of compression, some of the characters that appear are composites of people I’ve known, and some events appear out of precise chronology’.
That's why EVERYONE YAWNS including Maraniss.... :-)
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Well - I'd qualify that by saying "everyone who knows anything about "Dreams From My Father." The minority of the American public that is informed. The fact remains that the mainstream media remains to this day completely uninterested in reporting on any of this. Charlie Rose and Tom Brokaw famously opined that "There is a lot we don't know about Obama." They fail to mention that they haven't even attempted to do any investigative reporting to find out. To them the only item of importance is that Obama has dark skin and he is our first "black President." Nothing else matters.
I might add that several experts in textual analysis have examined "Dreams From My Father," and compared it to verified writings of Obama, and concluded that there is NO WAY Obama wrote that book. The most likely candidate (with whom the style most closely matches) is William Ayers. What a surprise that whole sections are fabrications designed to advance the fraud that is Barack Obama!
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I am not a fan of Jimmy Carter but at least he is consistent. This is nothing less than REMARKABLE that a Democrat would come out and say this in an election year. Not a peep from the rest of the left wing media to my knowledge. If this were W doing the drones they would be screaming bloody **murder** like they did over much less stuff - water boarding three mass murderers!
****......Jimmy Carter Accuses U.S. of 'Widespread Abuse of Human Rights'
By Amy Bingham | ABC News – 23 hrs ago...
...Jimmy Carter Accuses U.S. of 'Widespread …
....
A former U.S. president is accusing the current president of sanctioning the "widespread abuse of human rights" by authorizing drone strikes to kill suspected terrorists.
Jimmy Carter, America's 39 th president, denounced the Obama administration for "clearly violating" 10 of the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, writing in a New York Times op-ed on Monday that the "United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights."
"Instead of making the world safer, America's violation of international human rights abets our enemies and alienates our friends," Carter wrote.
While the total number of attacks from unmanned aircraft, or drones, and the resulting casualties are murky, the New America Foundation estimates that in Pakistan alone 265 drone strikes have been executed since January 2009 . Those strikes have killed at least 1,488 people, at least 1,343 of them considered militants, the foundation estimates based on news reports and other sources.
In addition to the drone strikes, Carter criticized the current president for keeping the Guantanamo Bay detention center open, where prisoners "have been tortured by waterboarding more than 100 times or intimidated with semiautomatic weapons, power drills or threats to sexually assault their mothers."
The former president blasted the government for allowing "unprecedented violations of our rights to privacy through warrantless wiretapping and government mining of our electronic communications."
Want more off-the-cuff politics? Check out OTUS on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @OTUSNews.
He also condemned recent legislation that gives the president the power to detain suspected terrorists indefinitely, although a federal judge blocked the law from taking effect for any suspects not affiliated with the September 11 terrorist attacks.
"This law violates the right to freedom of expression and to be presumed innocent until proved guilty, two other rights enshrined in the declaration," Carter said.
While Carter never mentioned Obama by name, he called out "our government" and "the highest authorities in Washington," and urged "concerned citizens" to "persuade Washington to reverse course and regain moral leadership."
Get more pure politics at ABC News.com/****
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July 3, 2012
Why So Many People Think Obama Is a Muslim
By Pamela Geller
A new Gallup poll shows that 11% of Americans think Obama is a Muslim, and the leftist media just can't figure out why anyone would get that idea. Slate concluded that it must be because of "his exotic name and background, the color of his skin, or (most likely) some combination of the two." But in reality, the reason why people think Obama is a Muslim is because of how he acts.
Why do people believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim? Here's why: after the Muslim Brotherhood won the Egyptian presidency, the military moved to curb the president's powers in order to stave off sharia rule in Egypt. But then Obama warned the military that they better hand over power quickly, or Egypt would lose billions in U.S. aid.
It wasn't enough that Obama invited the Muslim Brotherhood to his submission speech in Cairo in June 2009, despite the fact that the group was banned at that time for obvious reasons: they wanted to install a sharia government, and the draconian, barbaric code of sharia, in Egypt. It wasn't enough that after he invited the Brotherhood to his speech; he had officials in his administration meeting with this Islamic supremacist group. It wasn't enough that he abandoned the true freedom movement, when the women of Iran and Persians and Zoroastrians rose up after 30 years of oppressive sharia rule. Obama spit on them and left them to die. They met bullets with bare flesh and broken bricks.
It was a squandered historical moment: by supporting the demonstrators in Iran, Obama could have done much to remove the head of the snake of Hezb'allah, Hamas, the Shi'ites fighting American soldiers in Iraq, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the Shia agitation in Bahrain. Obama could have saved the free world and gone down in history as one of the magnificent heroes for good. But that is not who he is. He is a tool, a malevolent subversive who managed to seize the most powerful office in the world with the PR expertise of the enemedia.
Obama's war on the good continued. It wasn't enough that he abandoned Mubarak, our 30-year ally in Egypt, the first Muslim country to make peace with the Jewish people despite the Jew-hatred mandated in the Quran. It wasn't enough that he threw our great friend and ally out with both hands, a man who for all his undeniable faults was the most liberal of reformers in the Muslim countries in that region. And here we are with the Brotherhood victorious, and what does the leader of the free world do? He threatens to withhold all U.S. aid to anyone who stops the Muslim Brotherhood from taking power.
Does he threaten to withhold aid from the Muslims in Gaza who daily talk about their desire to destroy Israel and annihilate the Jews, and who glory in the murders of young families with their children, and lob rockets into civilian areas so that the people there have to live in terror going to work and to school? Of course not -- he increases the aid to the annihilationists who thirst for genocide in their mad Islamic Jew-hatred.
And the media wonders why so many people think Obama is a Muslim? Obama has banned the word "jihad" and any discussion of Islam from State, Defense, and Justice Department vernacular and counter-terrorism materials. He is denying that jihad is the enemy, while his Justice Department acts as the de facto legal arm for Muslim Brotherhood groups in America. And the Obama administration has held hundreds of meetings with U.S. Hamas front groups.
Obama is withholding evidence in the Fort Hood jihad that has held up the court case of the single worst act of war on a military base in U.S. history. The Obama administration refers to the Fort Hood jihad as "workplace violence." The trial of the Fort Hood jihadi (who was screaming "Allahu akbar" as he mowed down 13 U.S. soldiers) has been delayed repeatedly because Major Hasan came in sporting the religious beard of the devout Muslim.
The appeaser-in-chief excoriates America for Guantánamo, which provides its enemy combatants with Korans, laptops, duck à l'orange, and my, oh my, the inhumanity of it all. He flogged and beat us with his wet waterboarding noodle. He cried for Khalid Sheik Muhammad's nose -- despite the fact that the enhanced interrogations saved the lives of thousands in Los Angeles. Three mass murderers were waterboarded (along with scores of CIA and military folks), and Obama was shocked, shocked, I tell ya.
Obama has made several Muslim Brotherhood appointments to key high-level, sensitive positions. Obama has told us time and time again that "we will never be at war with Islam" (even if Muslims are at war with us). He has removed the sanctions covering religious freedom from the State Department's Country Reports on Human Rights -- and it just so happens that the worst offenders against religious freedom are Muslim countries.
In June 2010 I wrote an article containing a long list of the things Obama had done since becoming president that made people think he was a Muslim. I wrote: "Obama took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, and yet whether he is a Muslim or not, he has undeniably gone around the world promoting Islam and Sharia (Islamic law)." Since then, he has continued to do so. He keeps fueling the impression that he is a Muslim by his actions, which have been consistent. He killed Osama and Awlaki? Sure...but he has never moved against pro-sharia Islamic supremacists. Quite the contrary.
By their fruits ye shall know them, and so we know him. The left media should stop beating people up for being logical.
Pamela Geller is the publisher of AtlasShrugs.com and the author of the WND Books title Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2012/07/why_so_many_people_think_obama_is_a_muslim.html at July 05, 2012 - 09:48:32 AM CDT
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The President in his own words says that if he can't deliver results he will be held accountable. "If I don't have this done in 3 years, this is going to be a one term proposition."
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCN5-ovvFL0[/youtube]
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/blaze-exclusive-see-this-clip-about-obamas-relationship-with-communist-frank-marshall-davis-from-dinesh-dsouzas-new-2016-film/
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Another story that has received virtually zero coverage in the mainstream news media - even on Fox News Channel. The public needs to know this:
Obama’s Third-Party History
By Stanley Kurtz - National Review Online.
June 7, 2012
On the evening of January 11, 1996, while Mitt Romney was in the final years of his run as the head of Bain Capital, Barack Obama formally joined the New Party, which was deeply hostile to the mainstream of the Democratic party and even to American capitalism. In 2008, candidate Obama deceived the American public about his potentially damaging tie to this third party. The issue remains as fresh as today’s headlines, as Romney argues that Obama is trying to move the United States toward European-style social democracy, which was precisely the New Party’s goal.
In late October 2008, when I wrote here at National Review Online that Obama had been a member of the New Party, his campaign sharply denied it, calling my claim a “crackpot smear.” Fight the Smears, an official Obama-campaign website, staunchly maintained that “Barack has been a member of only one political party, the Democratic Party.” I rebutted this, but the debate was never taken up by the mainstream press.
Recently obtained evidence from the updated records of Illinois ACORN at the Wisconsin Historical Society now definitively establishes that Obama was a member of the New Party. He also signed a “contract” promising to publicly support and associate himself with the New Party while in office.
Minutes of the meeting on January 11, 1996, of the New Party’s Chicago chapter read as follows:
Barack Obama, candidate for State Senate in the 13th Legislative District, gave a statement to the membership and answered questions. He signed the New Party “Candidate Contract” and requested an endorsement from the New Party. He also joined the New Party.
Consistent with this, a roster of the Chicago chapter of the New Party from early 1997 lists Obama as a member, with January 11, 1996, indicated as the date he joined.
Knowing that Obama disguised his New Party membership helps make sense of his questionable handling of the 2008 controversy over his ties to ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). During his third debate with John McCain, Obama said that the “only” involvement he’d had with ACORN was to represent the group in a lawsuit seeking to compel Illinois to implement the National Voter Registration Act, or motor-voter law. The records of Illinois ACORN and its associated union clearly contradict that assertion, as I show in my political biography of the president, Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism.
Why did Obama deny his ties to ACORN? The group was notorious in 2008 for thug tactics, fraudulent voter registrations, and its role in popularizing risky subprime lending. Admitting that he had helped to fund ACORN’s voter-registration efforts and train some of their organizers would doubtless have been an embarrassment but not likely a crippling blow to his campaign. So why not simply confess the tie and make light of it? The problem for Obama was ACORN’s political arm, the New Party.
The revelation in 2008 that Obama had joined an ACORN-controlled, leftist third party could have been damaging indeed, and coming clean about his broader work with ACORN might easily have exposed these New Party ties. Because the work of ACORN and the New Party often intersected with Obama’s other alliances, honesty about his ties to either could have laid bare the entire network of his leftist political partnerships.
Although Obama is ultimately responsible for deceiving the American people in 2008 about his political background, he got help from his old associates. Each of the two former political allies who helped him to deny his New Party membership during campaign ’08 was in a position to know better.
The Fight the Smears website quoted Carol Harwell, who managed Obama’s 1996 campaign for the Illinois senate: “Barack did not solicit or seek the New Party endorsement for state senator in 1995.” Drawing on her testimony, Fight the Smears conceded that the New Party did support Obama in 1996 but denied that Obama had ever joined, adding that “he was the only candidate on the ballot in his race and never solicited the endorsement.”
We’ve seen that this is false. Obama formally requested New Party endorsement, signed the candidate contract, and joined the party. Is it conceivable that Obama’s own campaign manager could have been unaware of this? The notion is implausible. And the documents make Harwell’s assertion more remarkable still.
The New Party had a front group called Progressive Chicago, whose job was to identify candidates that the New Party and its sympathizers might support. Nearly four years before Obama was endorsed by the New Party, both he and Harwell joined Progressive Chicago and began signing public letters that regularly reported on the group’s meetings. By prominently taking part in Progressive Chicago activities, Obama was effectively soliciting New Party support for his future political career (as was Harwell, on Obama’s behalf). So Harwell’s testimony is doubly false.
When the New Party controversy broke out, just about the only mainstream journalist to cover it was Politico’s Ben Smith, whose evident purpose was to dismiss it out of hand. He contacted Obama’s official spokesman Ben LaBolt, who claimed that his candidate “was never a member” of the New Party. And New Party co-founder and leader Joel Rogers told Smith, “We didn’t really have members.” But a line in the New Party’s official newsletter explicitly identified Obama as a party member. Rogers dismissed that as mere reference to “the fact that the party had endorsed him.”
This is nonsense. I exposed the falsity of Rogers’s absurd claim, and Smith’s credulity in accepting it, in 2008 (here and here). And in Radical-in-Chief I took on Rogers’s continuing attempts to justify it. The recently uncovered New Party records reveal how dramatically far from the truth Rogers’s statement has been all along.
In a memo dated January 29, 1996, Rogers, writing as head of the New Party Interim Executive Council, addressed “standing concerns regarding existing chapter development and activity, the need for visibility as well as new members.” So less than three weeks after Obama joined the New Party, Rogers was fretting about the need for new members. How, then, could Rogers assert in 2008 that his party “didn’t really have members”? Internal documents show that the entire leadership of the New Party, both nationally and in Chicago, was practically obsessed with signing up new members, from its founding moments until it dissolved in the late 1990s.
In 2008, after I called Rogers out on his ridiculous claim that his party had no members, he explained to Ben Smith that “we did have regular supporters whom many called ‘members,’ but it just meant contributing regularly, not getting voting rights or other formal power in NP governance.” This is also flatly contradicted by the newly uncovered records.
At just about the time Obama joined the New Party, the Chicago chapter was embroiled in a bitter internal dispute. A party-membership list is attached to a memo in which the leaders of one faction consider a scheme to disqualify potential voting members from a competing faction, on the grounds that those voters had not renewed their memberships. The factional leaders worried that their opponents would legitimately object to this tactic, since a mailing that called for members to renew hadn’t been properly sent out. At any rate, the memo clearly demonstrates that, contrary to Rogers’s explanation, membership in the New Party entailed the right to vote on matters of party governance. In fact, Obama’s own New Party endorsement, being controversial, was thrown open to a members’ vote on the day he joined the party.
Were Harwell and Rogers deliberately lying in order to protect Obama and deceive the public? Readers can decide for themselves. Yet it is clear that Obama, through his official spokesman, Ben LaBolt, and the Fight the Smears website, was bent on deceiving the American public about a matter whose truth he well knew.
The documents reveal that the New Party’s central aim was to move the United States steadily closer to European social democracy, a goal that Mitt Romney has also attributed to Obama. New Party leaders disdained mainstream Democrats, considering them tools of business, and promised instead to create a partnership between elected officials and local community organizations, with the goal of socializing the American economy to an unprecedented degree.
The party’s official “statement of principles,” which candidates seeking endorsement from the Chicago chapter were asked to support, called for a “peaceful revolution” and included redistributive proposals substantially to the left of the Democratic party.
To get a sense of the ideology at play, consider that the meeting at which Obama joined the party opened with the announcement of a forthcoming event featuring the prominent socialist activist Frances Fox Piven. The Chicago New Party sponsored a luncheon with Michael Moore that same year.
I have more to say on the New Party’s ideology and program, Obama’s ties to the party, and the relevance of all this to the president’s campaign for reelection. See the forthcoming issue of National Review.
In the meantime, let us see whether a press that let candidate Obama off the hook in 2008 — and that in 2012 is obsessed with the president’s youthful love letters — will now refuse to report that President Obama once joined a leftist third party, and that he hid that truth from the American people in order to win the presidency.
— Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. A longer version of this article appears in the forthcoming June 25 issue of National Review.
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If only!!!
http://thedailypen.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/obamas-kenyan-birth-records-discovered.html
Where's the flaw?
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The only news story I could find in Google News about 'Kenyan Birth Records Found' was a 2009 Huffington Post story about a Kenyan forgery.
Looks to me like they blur the image - I can't read it it. And no link.
After they say it is proved they go on with a different argument, Barack Sr. didn't declare he had a son. That isn't conclusive of anything.
We need Barack Obama on the ballot in order to defeat him and his policies. There is no shortcut.
If Democrats had to replace him on the ticket between now and the election, it would be the perfect storm, wet dream, shiny object extravaganza for them. They could put a new name on the ballot not directly tied to the current economic record - and you know who she would be... (
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Aaaaccckkk!!! :-o :-o :-o
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The birth certificate issue is a moot point in my opinion now, and really has been since Obama was elected. It will be of historical significance if it can be proven he was not born in the U.S. However, I have to disagree that putting Hillary on the ticket in his place would necessarily translate to a win for the Democrats. I think the die has been cast, and there are enough people who understand that the current economic disaster is directly tied not only to Obama, but Democrat Party policies in general. I predict a big win for Romney - but not because there is any real enthusiasm for him per se, rather voters will be voting AGAINST current policies. We still must fight all the way to the election to get Romney in, and then continue to pressure him and Congress to enact constitutionally conservative policies. It won't be easy - our work will have only begun if Romney wins. But - the alternative is the end of America as we know it.
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Amen (though I think Hillary as VP would ensure the win for Baraq.)
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On the debunk continued, Obama Sr. didn't leave the US in 1961, Stanley Ann wouldn't go meet his family alone - pregnant, and nothing is anywhere near Hawaii for travel by air, land or sea. Looks like you could get a flight today for about $2600 with 2-3 stops and 35 hours fly time each way. Quite a bit longer in 1961. The certificate, BTW, was for one generic US baby born in Africa-other, not an Obama born in the Kenyan region .
I'm not saying HRC would win at either position, just that they are the ones in need of changing the dynamic of the race.
Not to pile on, but while 1 more term of Obama is unthinkable, Hillary is eligible for 2 more terms, don't get that started. " Aaaaccckkk!!! "
Defeat this man the old fashioned way and let Hillary age gracefully on the sidelines.
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It Matters Who Obama’s Father Is
National Press Club
Washington DC
July 19, 2012
Speech by
Joel Gilbert
Highway 61 Entertainment
Director of
Dreams from My Real Father
ObamasRealFather.com
Opening Comments
Why does it matter who Barak Obama’s father really is ?
It matters because Barack Obama sold himself to America as the multi-cultural ideal, a man who stood above politics. His father was a goat herder from Kenya, so he would bring people together, so the story went. As a result, the public perceived Barack Obama as a nice man with an inspiring family story.
However, as shown in Dreams from My Real Father, Barack Obama in fact has a deeply disturbing family background, which he intentionally hid, in order to obscure a Marxist political foundation. While voters will overlook some fudging by politicians, promoting a false family background to hide a Marxist agenda irreconcilable with American values is a totally unacceptable manipulation of the electorate.
At age 18, Barack Obama admittedly arrived at Occidental College a committed revolutionary Marxist. Based on Obama’s own accounts, there can be no doubt that Frank Marshall Davis, a Communist Party USA Propagandist, and former Soviet Agent, indoctrinated Obama with a Marxist world view during his formative years. This is a known phenomenon amongst the radical left, referred to as “Red Diaper Babies” or “hand-me-down Marxism.” Much of the leadership of the SDS and Weather Underground were children of Communist Party USA members, including Katherine Boudin, Jeff Jones, and many more. David Axelrod is also a “Red Diaper Baby”, his mother was a Red journalist.
The Journalist’s Creed
Obama’s election was not a sudden political phenomenon. It was the culmination of an American socialist movement that Frank Marshall Davis nurtured in Chicago and Hawaii, and has been quietly infiltrating the US economy, universities, and media for decades.
As I speak today, here at the National Press Club in Washington DC, what strikes me as most disturbing is that any one of the hundreds of American journalists in this building could win the Pulitzer Prize, just by writing about the evidence presented in Dreams from My Real Father.
So today, here at the National Press Club, a great American Institution, I would like to recall the Journalist’s Creed. The Journalist’s Creed is a code of ethics for the profession of Journalism. It is posted on the wall in the lobby of this building in bronze. It was written by Walter Williams in 1906, when he founded the Missouri School of Journalism. The Journalist’s Creed stipulates:
1) That journalists must be public trustees with the full measure of responsibility to the public
2) That accuracy and fairness are fundamental to good journalism
3) That a single standard of truth must prevail for all
4) That suppression of the news is indefensible
5) And that journalism must be independent, unbiased by personal opinion, and always unafraid.
I Accuse
I accuse all major American Television networks and most Cable News networks of gross violations of the Journalists Creed.
I accuse ABC, NBC, and CBS network news Divisions of violating the public trust by refusing to cover my documentary film, and for ignoring all the revelations about Obama’s background that other researchers have produced.
I accuse MSNBC of an intentional and often vile campaign of lies and misrepresentations to protect Barack Obama’s false narrative.
I accuse Newsmax.com of censorship and suppression of the news. On May 2 of this year, I paid Newsmax $ 4,350, in advance, for an advertising campaign. They pulled it at the last second. “Why?” They said it was because they wanted “to move to the Center”.
I accuse all leftist website-based news organizations of intentional bias – like Talkingpointsmemo.com. On April 26th, they requested a review copy of Dreams from My Real Father, which we provided, but instead they illegally copied parts of the film and put them on YouTube, and wrote that now people don’t need to buy the film.
I also accuse all the mainstream print media, like the Washington Post, the New York Times, Newsweek, Time Magazine, all their ilk, of intentionally suppressing the truth about Barack Obama’s history and agenda and refusal to cover my findings.
The public looks to all of the news organizations in this building, the National Press Club, for truth. However, an astounding number, almost all of them, have failed to live up to the Journalist’s Creed, and thus failed in their responsibility to the public. Only a very few news organizations, like WorldNet Daily, Drudge Report, USA Survival and a handful of independent journalists like Jack Cashill, have done their jobs as journalists – with courage and honesty.
Report the Truth Now
My message to the journalists, then, here at the National Press Club is:
Don’t suppress the truth, it is vitally important.
America needs a truthful press, unafraid.
America is worth it!
Take any risk to expose the truth, about a candidate or even a sitting President.
And what is the truth?
- All evidence points to Barack Obama building his political career upon a fairy tale. There was no Obama family, he is not the son of a Kenyan goat herder.
- All evidence points to a sham marriage to cover an illicit affair between Ann Dunham and Frank Marshall Davis.
- All evidence indicates that Barack Obama was raised and indoctrinated by Frank Marshall Davis, a Communist Party USA Propagandist, during his formative years.
- All evidence indicates Barack Obama has pursued the Dreams from his Real Father.
And what are those dreams?
They are the forced imposition of a classic Stalinist Marxist agenda upon America at home and abroad.
And what is the history of Marxism?
Ladies and Gentlemen, the results are already in!
Marxism leads to economic ruin, and the biological destruction of the populations in societies that have employed the Marxist model.
American Journalists have a key role to play in revealing the truth, and they must do so immediately without further delay. Obama’s style is to minimize, misdirect, and outright lie about damaging information about his past. America needs honest journalism now more than ever, so the public can understand what Obama means by “change” and “fundamentally transforming America.”
I call upon all news organizations and journalists in this building, the National Press Club, to live up to the Journalists creed. Nothing is more important at this late hour – not playing it safe, not worrying about advertising contracts for medications, nothing. The future of America is at stake.
Obama and the Subprime Mortgage Crisis
Not only does the media refuse to look at Obama’s personal and political foundations, they refuse to even look at simple facts of the current campaign. For example, when speaking of the economy, Obama says:
“My opponent wants to go back to the policies which got us into this mess.” and
“The Free Market doesn’t work”
A journalist only has to recite simple facts:
1 – The major cause of the economic meltdown was the subprime mortgage debacle, and Obama was in on it, on the ground floor.
2 – Obama was asked about his role with Acorn during the 2008 campaign. He was not truthful when he said his law firm only represented Acorn to sue the State of Illinois to implement the Motor-Voter Act – and recall that nine of the 9/11 hijackers used this to register to vote, allowing them to get US identification.
2 – In 1995 Obama also represented Acorn in suing Citibank, forcing them to lower their lending standards to lend to minorities even if they were unqualified borrowers. Acorn immediately took this model to HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, who convinced President Clinton to require Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to force all banks across the system to lower their lending standards. This Acorn model, that Obama helped create, crashed the economy 12 years later, not the free markets.
This was all by design. It was part of the socialist strategy taught at the socialist conferences Obama attended in the early 1980’s, to use minorities and the poor to “collapse capitalism”. “Problem solving” and “fair play” were the new code words that socialists learned. The strategy was to move the Democratic party to the far left, and embrace socialism as their natural ideology. Obama now uses terms like “helping middle class families”. Simply speaking, socialist economies do not have a middle class! They have just one big lower class with a handful of political elites controlling the wealth.
Going Direct to the American People
I have received hundreds of emails from concerned Americans. The following is from a Vietnam Veteran:
Dear Mr. Gilbert,
I was very mad after I watched your DVD. You have cracked the code surrounding Obama and the Marxist mission he is on.
We are the verge of losing the constitution. Freedom and liberty are in jeopardy. As a Vietnam war veteran, I ask, what did I fight for?
Please, can you get this information out to millions? We Americans need it. It is our only hope!
Bern Nilson
Denver, Colorado
Because of great Americans like Bern, and because almost all levels of the media are suppressing the information in Dreams from My Real Father, I am announcing today that my distribution company is planning to send a free copy of the DVD in the US mail direct to millions of households. The process has already begun. Within three weeks, hundreds of thousands of DVDs will be mailed across the United States until every American sees this DVD and understands the deadly Marxist dreams Obama has for us, from his real father, Frank Marshall Davis.
Again, for any journalist in this building, here at the National Press Club, a Pulitzer Prize can be yours, just report the facts.
Please visit the film website, there is the breaking news every week, and you can also order the DVD at obamasrealfather.com
Thank you, and God Bless America.
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I see why they call him a mentor, not his father. Barack Sr. was an economist I thought, not a goat herder. Yes, Barack Jr. came to his leftist views through his mother and presumably whomever she was listening to or hanging with in her own activism, including Davis.
Regarding "Soviet Agent", I believe his file includes photographing Hawaiian coastline but not known exchanges with Soviets.
From Wikipedia:
"Frank Marshall Davis knew Barack Obama from as early as 9 or 10, until he left Hawaii for Occidental College in 1978 at the age of 18.
Barack Obama’s 1995 autobiography, Dreams from My Father, included several examples of Obama receiving advice from Frank Marshall Davis:
Obama’s grandmother (Toot) and Gramps have an argument over whether Gramps should give Toot a ride to work after she had been threatened at a bus stop by a black panhandler. Obama looks to Frank to sort it out in his mind. (p. 89-91)
When Toot is having difficulty convincing the drug-abusing young Obama to apply for college, it is again Frank who is able to convince Obama that college is necessary. (p. 96-98)
Frank tells the young Obama “…you may be a well-trained, well-paid nigger, but you’re a nigger just the same.” (p. 97)
Davis told Obama that black people "have a reason to hate [white people)" (Dreams from My Father, p. 91). He also advised the college-bound Obama to "keep your eyes open" and "Stay awake" otherwise he would be "trained" against his own interests. (p. 97) Obama explained how he carried out Davis's advice. "To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets." (p. 100).
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Reading about Davis, I notice the name Vernon Jarret is prominent among the activists, father in law to Valerie Jarret. Reading about Valerie Jarret, there is no indication of a connection to Obama before Valerie hired Michelle instantly upon meeting her and wanted to meet her fiance Barack. Quite a coincidence.
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Actually FMD had extensive documented contacts with the Communist Party USA. Wikipedia is generally of questionable reliability. Here is some additional detail about Frank Marshall Davis (see the web site www.obamasrealfather.com for much more detail on the evidence that he is Obama's biological father):
Frank Marshall Davis (1905-1987) was a Communist Party USA (CPUSA) propagandist in Chicago and Hawaii, as well as a writer and poet. The FBI had Davis under investigation or surveillance for 19 years, compiling a 600-page FBI file. He was on the FBI's 'Security Index A', meaning he would be arrested in the event of national emergency.
In 1930's Chicago, CPUSA recruited journalists to help spread Soviet influence in American public opinion. Frank Marshall Davis was one of them. A graduate of Kansas State Journalism School, Frank Marshall Davis joined the Communist Party and began writing for The Chicago Star. He was a colleague of journalist Vernon Jarrett, father-in-law of Obama confidant Valerie Jarrett. Davis also taught at Chicago's Abraham Lincoln School, a Communist run training school run by CPUSA. Davis authored three major volumes of poetry, and later an autobiographical sex novel under a pseudonym.
In 1948, the Kremlin ordered CPUSA to facilitate a US withdrawal from the Hawaii as US naval forces were considered an obstacle to Soviet expansion in Asia. CPUSA assigned Frank Marshall Davis to Honolulu where he began writing for the Communist Newspaper, the Honolulu Record in 1948. In his columns, Davis flawlessly mirrored official Soviet propaganda - he blamed American capitalism for starting World War II, denounced the Marshall Plan, preached wealth redistribution, nationalization of industry and government healthcare, while bashing Wall Street. Davis also helped organize the Communist controlled ILWU (union) in a failed effort to take over the Hawaiian government in 1949. The Hawaii NAACP chapter complained to its national office, "Comrade Frank Marshall Davis suddenly appeared on the scene to propagandize the membership with the purpose of converting it into a front for the Stalinist line." In 1956, Davis was subpoenaed by the Senate Subcommittee on Un-American Activities and pleaded the fifth. Dreams from My Real Father makes the case that on August 4, 1961, Frank Marshall Davis became the father of the future 44th President of the United States and indoctrinated him with a Marxist ideology during his formative years.
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I did not know that about FMD.
Father or not, certainly he was of great importance during the formative years of our President.
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FMD is Obama's father? :-o :-o :-o
Odds are probably better that Romney's real biological father was a Martian.
What garbage in the pursuit of truth.
:roll:
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MICHELLE OBAMA: "Barack knows that we are going to have to make sacrifices; we are going to have to change our conversation; we're going to have to change our traditions, our history; we're going to have to move into a different place as a nation."
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It's interesting to note that JDN seems to delight in name-calling and ad hominem attacks. Funny how he never seems to actually engage in a dialogue or actual evidence-based debate.
This forum is populated overwhelmingly by thoughtful, intelligent individuals who are ready and willing to back up their arguments with evidence. I and many others here choose not to respond to JDN's inanity because, as Mark Twain famously observed: "Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference."
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It's interesting to note that JDN seems to delight in name-calling and ad hominem attacks. Funny how he never seems to actually engage in a dialogue or actual evidence-based debate.
This forum is populated overwhelmingly by thoughtful, intelligent individuals who are ready and willing to back up their arguments with evidence. I and many others here choose not to respond to JDN's inanity because, as Mark Twain famously observed: "Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference."
ev·i·dence/ˈevədəns/
Noun:
The available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid.
Objectivist, Another expression is if it walks like a fool, quacks like a fool, it must be a fool. That must be you. :-D
You said;
Frank Marshall Davis - Barack's biological father?
Are you really that stupid? :-o
Or are you just intentionally denigrating yourself?
Because that is what you are doing by posting such garbage.
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JDN:
It is a notion that has been floating around for quite some time now.
Given the haze around BO's life (even his own book publicist has him listed as "born in Kenya", the matter of the hidden birth certicate, the hidden school records, etc) it's not surprising that people wonder.
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Dreams from My Real Father: A Story of Reds and Deception
Posted By Mark Tapson On August 14, 2012 - Frontpagemag.com
Barack Obama the man is more of a mystery to Americans than any president in modern history, thanks to suppressed documents and unexplained gaps in his personal and intellectual life. Now a new documentary seeks to answer the question, “Was the multicultural tale of Obama’s goat-herding Kenyan father only a fairy tale to obscure a Marxist agenda irreconcilable with American values?”
Based on two years of research, interviews, newly unearthed footage and photos, and the writings of Communist Party organizer and propagandist Frank Marshall Davis, Dreams from My Real Father: A Story of Reds and Deception is an alternate theory to Obama’s autobiography. The 95-minute video from Highway 61 Entertainment weaves together the facts with re-creations and “reasoned speculation” in an effort to solve the mystery of Obama’s origin. As director/writer/producer Joel Gilbert puts it, the conclusion is that “the ‘Birthers’ have been on a fool’s errand. To understand Obama’s plans for America, the question is not ‘Where’s the birth certificate,’ but ‘Who’s the real father?’”
The film makes the case that Davis is Obama’s real father, both biologically and ideologically, and that he indoctrinated Obama during the latter’s formative years with a political grounding in Marxism and an anti-white world view. It asserts, as Gilbert says in an interview, that Obama’s election “was the culmination of an American socialist movement that Frank Marshall Davis nurtured in Chicago and Hawaii, and has been quietly infiltrating the US economy, universities, and media for decades.”
Dreams from My Real Father is narrated over meandering violin-and-piano music by Obama impersonator and voiceover actor Ed Law, who chronicles the president’s life journey from birth to the present as if Obama himself is speaking. Some dialogue is taken directly from Davis and Obama’s writings, while some is “approximated.”
The documentary includes Obama’s indoctrination in Marxism by Davis, his college years, his work as a Saul Alinsky-style community organizer, his close association with the Bill Ayers family and Rev. Jeremiah Wright, even his little-known role in the subprime mortgage crisis, all the way through his campaigns and into the presidency. “My mission in life,” says the Obama narrator, “is to fulfill the dreams of my ‘ideological father’ – to replace capitalism with Communism.”
The film begins with a comparison of the startling physical similarities between Obama and Frank Marshall Davis: facial features, stature and build, even their voices and laughs. It moves on to a description of Davis’ involvement with the Communist Party of the USA, which was founded in Chicago. The CPUSA targeted useful American journalists like Davis, who was deeply involved an astounding number of Communist front groups and wrote for all their publications. He was assigned to recruit blacks into the party – the goal was to target them, rub salt in their wounds, stir up class resentment, and mobilize their discontent to take power. In addition to being a poet and propagandist, Davis started a camera club and specialized in nude photography.
Enter Obama’s “Gramps,” grandfather Stanley Dunham on his mother Ann’s side, who was a “company man” for the CIA, tasked with recruiting black students against Communism. One of those students was Obama’s purported father, Barack Hussein Obama, who arrived from Kenya and was greeted by Gramps himself. The Dunhams later moved to Hawaii, where a very unhappy Ann began hanging out with poet/photographer Davis, who had moved there to recruit blacks for the CPUSA. He ultimately got her to pose nude for him – and eventually, according to the documentary, also got her pregnant.
After his initial shock and anger over the illicit affair, Stanley Dunham realized he would lose his CIA security clearance if it was discovered that his daughter was pregnant by Communist Davis. Abortion, illegal in Hawaii, wasn’t an option. Dunham decided to carry out an elaborate deception. He needed a black man to marry Ann and legitimize the birth, so he turned to Kenyan student Obama, who needed the money. But Obama was already a married man and father, so he agreed to go along with the plan only if the birth certificate stated “Father unknown.”
Months later Ann was granted an uncontested divorce, married Indonesian Barry Soetero and moved to Jakarta. Young Barry grew up there, eventually was told the truth about his real father, and spent some time with “Uncle Frank” Davis in Hawaii during his formative years. By the time Obama went to Occidental College on a full affirmative-action scholarship, he was already a committed Marxist.
Going to school later in Chicago, Obama was influenced by professors like Richard Cloward with his “crisis strategy” of economic sabotage to collapse capitalism. He met terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who realized Obama’s value to their movement, and learned the strategies of “community organization” – or more precisely, “community agitation.”
Thanks to his connections, Ayers’ wealthy father Thomas and black nationalist patron Khalid al-Mansour, Obama was accepted at Harvard Law School and became president of the Harvard Law Review without actually having written a single law review. He moved on to become a training director for the Alinskyite group ACORN.
The documentary goes on to detail Obama’s political life, his involvement with Project Vote and the subprime mortgage crisis, his shady backing from slumlord patron Tony Rezko, and his support from another red-diaper baby, David Axelrod, who ultimately helped him shape his presidential campaign message. Once in office, Obama began carrying out the socialist blueprint – centralizing power in the government
When asked in an interview why it matters who Barak Obama’s father really is, filmmaker Joel Gilbert replied,
Obama sold himself to America as the multi-cultural ideal, a man who stood above politics. His father was a goat herder from Kenya, he would bring people together, so it went… [P]romoting a false family background to hide an agenda irreconcilable with American values is a totally unacceptable manipulation of the electorate.
The closing image of the film is a waving Communist flag, suggesting that Obama’s agenda – to make America socialist without ever realizing how it happened – is flourishing. “These are my dreams,” the Obama impersonator finishes, “the dreams from my real father.”
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"Barack Obama the man is more of a mystery to Americans than any president in modern history"
Yes. It is astounding how the MSM refuse to investigate this guy.
Yet, we already have more digging and publicizing about Ryan in the last few days than we ever had about the brockster.
If not for Fox, and talk radio no one would ever know anything about the present presidents close ties to marxists, socialists, communists, black racists, anti semites.
Amazing.
Yet the same crowd that likes to place all these revelations into the right wing, crazy conspiracy camp has no problem making the argument that going through Romney's and Ryan's tax records, and every singel detail about everything they ever did or said is relevant and germane.
The hypocracy the double standard is breathtaking to behold.
If the right had the same overt and covert support from the media the election would be a no contest.
I susupect it will wind up being a no contest despite their efforts to buttress their guys.
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Barry The Dope Dealer; one reason Obama's school files are SEALED.
Barry was quite the accomplished marijuana addicted enthusiast back in high school and college. Excerpts from David Maraniss' Barack Obama: The Story "Barry the Dope dealer" with the elaborate drug culture surrounding the president when he attended Punahou School in Honolulu and Occidental College in Los Angeles . He definitely inhaled, a hell of a lot of smoke.
1. The Choom Gang
(http://www.dogbrothers.com/kostas/choom/Barry01.jpg)
A self-selected group of boys at Punahou School who loved basketball and good times called themselves the Choom Gang. Choom is a verb, meaning "to smoke marijuana."
2. Total Absorption
(http://www.dogbrothers.com/kostas/choom/Barry02.jpg)
As a member of the Choom Gang, Barry Obama was known for starting a few pot-smoking trends. The first was called "TA," short for "total absorption." To place this in the physical and political context of another young man who would grow up to be president, TA was the antithesis of Bill Clinton's claim that as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford he smoked dope but never inhaled.
3. Roof Hits
(http://www.dogbrothers.com/kostas/choom/Barry03.jpg)
Along with TA, Barry popularized the concept of "roof hits": when they were chooming in the car all the windows had to be rolled up so no smoke blew out and went to waste; when the pot was gone, they tilted their heads back and sucked in the last bit of smoke from the ceiling.
4. Penalties
(http://www.dogbrothers.com/kostas/choom/Barry04.jpg)
When you were with Barry and his pals, if you exhaled precious pakalolo (Hawaiian slang for marijuana, meaning "numbing tobacco") instead of absorbing it fully into your lungs, you were assessed a penalty and your turn was skipped the next time the joint came around. "Wasting good bud smoke was not tolerated," explained one member of the Choom Gang, Tom Topolinski, the Chinese-looking kid with a Polish name who answered to Topo.
5. The Choomwagon
(http://www.dogbrothers.com/kostas/choom/Barry05.jpg)
[Choom Gang member] Mark Bendix's Volkswagen bus, also known as the Choomwagon. � The other members considered Mark Bendix the glue, he was funny, creative, and uninhibited, with a penchant for Marvel Comics. He also had that VW bus and a house with a pool, a bong, and a Nerf basketball, all enticements for them to slip off midday for a few unauthorized hours of recreation...
6. Interceptions
(http://www.dogbrothers.com/kostas/choom/Barry06.jpg)
Barry also had a knack for interceptions. When a joint was making the rounds, he often elbowed his way in, out of turn, shouted "Intercepted!," and took an extra hit. No one seemed to mind.
7. Slippers
(http://www.dogbrothers.com/kostas/choom/Barry07.jpg)
Choom Gang members often made their way to Aku Ponds at the end of Manoa Stream, where they slipped past the liliko'i vines and the KAPU (keep out) signs, waded into waist-high cool mountain water, stood near the rock where water rushed overhead, and held up a slipper (what flip-flops are called in Hawaii) to create an air pocket canopy. It was a natural high, they said, stoned or not.
8. Ray The Dealer
(http://www.dogbrothers.com/kostas/choom/Barry08.jpg)
He was a long-haired haole hippie who worked at the Mama Mia Pizza Parlor not far from Punahou and lived in a dilapidated bus in an abandoned warehouse. � According to Topolinski, Ray the dealer was "freakin' scary." Many years later they learned that he had been killed with a ball-peen hammer by a scorned gay lover. But at the time he was useful because of his ability to "score quality weed."
...
In another section of the [senior] yearbook, students were given a block of space to express thanks and define their high school experience. � Nestled below [Obama's] photographs was one odd line of gratitude: "Thanks Tut, Gramps, Choom Gang, and Ray for all the good times." � A hippie drug-dealer made his acknowledgments; his own mother did not.
9. Pumping Stations
(http://www.dogbrothers.com/kostas/choom/Barry09.jpg)
Their favorite hangout was a place they called Pumping Stations, a lush hideaway off an unmarked, roughly paved road partway up Mount Tantalus . They parked single file on the grassy edge, turned up their stereos playing Aerosmith, Blue Oyster Cult, and Stevie Wonder, lit up some "sweet-sticky Hawaiian buds" and washed it down with "green bottle beer" (the Choom Gang preferred Heineken, Becks, and St. Pauli Girl).
10. Veto
(http://www.dogbrothers.com/kostas/choom/Barry10.jpg)
One of the favorite words in their subculture revealed their democratic nature. The word was veto. Whenever an idea was broached, someone could hold up his hand in the V sign (a backward peace sign of that era) and indicate that the motion wash not approved. They later shortened the process so that you could just shout "V" to get the point across.. In the Choom Gang, all V's were created equal.
11. Maui Wowie, Kauai Electric, Puna Bud And Kona Gold:
(http://www.dogbrothers.com/kostas/choom/Barry11.jpg)
In the Honolulu of Barry's teenage years marijuana was flourishing up in the hills, out in the countryside, in covert greenhouses everywhere. It was sold and smoked right there in front of your nose; Maui Wowie, Kauai Electric, Puna Bud, Kona Gold, and other local variations of pakololo were readily available.
12. The Barf Couch
(http://www.dogbrothers.com/kostas/choom/Barry12.jpg)
The Barf Couch earned its name early in the first trimester when a freshman across the hall from Obama [in the Haines Hall Annex dorm at Occidental College ] drank himself into a stupor and threw up all over himself and the couch. In the manner of pallbearers hoisting a coffin, a line of Annexers lifted the tainted sofa with the freshman aboard and toted it out the back door and down four steps to the first concrete landing on the way to the parking lot. A day later, the couch remained outside in the sun, resting on its side with cushions off (someone had hosed it clean), and soon it was back in the hallway nook.
13. The Annex Olympics
(http://www.dogbrothers.com/kostas/choom/Barry13.jpg)
(The main hallway at Haines Hall was called the Annex,) home to the impromptu Annex Olympics: long-jumping onto a pile of mattresses, wrestling in underwear, hacking golf balls down the hallway toward the open back door, boxing while drunk. There were the non-Olympic sports of lighting farts and judging them by color, tipping over the Coke machine, breaking the glass fire extinguisher case, putting out cigarettes on the carpet, falling asleep on the carpet, flinging Frisbees at the ceiling-mounted alarm bell, tasting pizza boxes to the floor, and smoking pot from a three-foot crimson opaque bong, a two-man event involving the smoker and an accomplice standing ready to respond to the order "Hey, dude, light the bowl!
Resources:
1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/post/the-choom-gang-president-obamas-pot-smoking-high-school-days-detailed-in-maraniss-book/2012/05/25/gJQAwFqEqU_blog.HTML (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/post/the-choom-gang-president-obamas-pot-smoking-high-school-days-detailed-in-maraniss-book/2012/05/25/gJQAwFqEqU_blog.HTML)
2. http://www.unitedliberty.org/articles/10218-for-choom-the-bell-tolls (http://www.unitedliberty.org/articles/10218-for-choom-the-bell-tolls)
3. http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/politics-raising-children/2012/may/29/lessons-choom-gang-dont-air-your-dirty-laundry/ (http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/politics-raising-children/2012/may/29/lessons-choom-gang-dont-air-your-dirty-laundry/)
4. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/obama-and-his-pot-smoking-choom-gang/ (http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/obama-and-his-pot-smoking-choom-gang/)
5. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2012/05/27/the_choom_gang_obama039s_pot-smoking_days_280927.html (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2012/05/27/the_choom_gang_obama039s_pot-smoking_days_280927.html)
6. http://theweek.com/article/index/228490/the-choom-gang-9-juiciest-details-from-barack-obamas-days-as-a-pothead (http://theweek.com/article/index/228490/the-choom-gang-9-juiciest-details-from-barack-obamas-days-as-a-pothead)
7. http://www.theblaze.com/stories/the-top-headlines-about-barack-obamas-pot-smoking-high-school-choom-gang/][url]http://www.theblaze.com/stories/the-top-headlines-about-barack-obamas-pot-smoking-high-school-choom-gang/ (http://[url)[/url]
8. http://www.buzzfeed.com/gavon/a-users-guide-to-smoking-pot-with-barack-obama (http://www.buzzfeed.com/gavon/a-users-guide-to-smoking-pot-with-barack-obama)
WHY WASN'T THIS ALL ON THE NEWS IN 2008 WHEN HE WAS RUNNING FOR OFFICE ?????
and WHY ISN'T THE NEWS TALKING ABOUT IT TODAY ?????
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http://www.examiner.com/article/2016-obama-s-america-movie-is-hidden-from-public
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I saw this yesterday and it is SUPERB. Very well-done and documented. I strongly encourage all readers of the forum here to go see it and tell your friends.
Of course, certain drones will call it "camel dung," but if all they can do is attack the credibility of the messenger, they have no coherent counter-argument.
Go see it. Tell your friends. Spread the word. Those unfamiliar with D'Souza will be greatly enlightened.
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http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2012/08/25/obama-bashing-documentary-tops-new-films-at-friday-box-office/
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The liberals have figured out how to carry revolution in the US. Simply increase thier numbers by adding victim groups, the poor, the minorities, gays, now single women and bribe them with taxpayer monies.
They need not lift a gun, fire a shot, send anyone into exile. Simply confiscate from a smaller and smaller group and use those monies to pay off those who will then in turn keep voting for them.
It can't be any more clear.
The problem is that many are happy to have others pay for them. You can't "educate" them. Only bribe them more.
One difference between Lenin and brockman is Vladimir was the guru and the spokesperson whereas Brock is just the spokesperson.
One similarity is Lenin was also interested in world wide revolution not just in Russia. Russia was just the base of operations. Now the progressives want to spread the one world wide government, get rid of religion, culture, sovereignty with one world wide centralized controlling authority. The concept of the UN being in charge is only a step in the direction of ONE world government.
Dinesh was on cable the other night and descended a bit into psychobabble, but the overall direction of his conclusions are right on.
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THE PATRIOT POST
Alexander's Column -- August 30, 2012
=================================
On the Web: http://patriotpost.us/alexander/14582/
Printer Friendly: http://patriotpost.us/alexander/14582/print
PDF Version: http://pdf.patriotpost.us/2012-08-30-alexander-bd572251.pdf
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Obama's America: 2012
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The Roots of Obama's Radicalism
"The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or
secret war with the rights of mankind." --Thomas Jefferson (1790)
Timed for theatrical release in advance of the Republican National Convention
(http://www.gopconvention2012.com ) to nominate the Romney-Ryan ticket
(http://patriotpost.us/alexander/14512 ), Dinesh D'Souza's
(http://www.dineshdsouza.com ) much-anticipated film "Obama's America: 2016" is
earning great reviews and already ranks among the top-grossing political
documentaries of all time. The film encourages the audience to consider where our
country will be in 2016 if Barack Hussein Obama is re-elected.
Frankly, it's a great leap of faith to believe there will be an "America" in 2016 if
Obama is re-elected -- at least one that we recognize. One need look no further than
Obama's America in 2012 to see that most of what was left of our Republican
government (http://patriotpost.us/alexander/2009/09/03/essential-liberty-part-1/ )
when he was elected in 2008 has been scheduled for demolition. As I've noted in
previous columns, Obama's strategy (http://patriotpost.us/alexander/3150 ) is to
irrevocably shatter free enterprise (http://patriotpost.us/alexander/6366 ) with a
debt bomb shockwave (http://patriotpost.us/pages/261 ).
Indeed, coinciding with Mitt Romney's keynote convention speech on Thursday, the
acknowledged national debt will hit a mind-boggling $16 trillion. The foundation for
tyranny has already been laid. (To grasp the concept of a trillion dollars, imagine
a stack of $100 bills 678 miles high, or a briefcase full of Franklins that weighs
22 million pounds. Now multiply either of those images by 16.)
D'Souza's film is based on his books, "The Roots of Obama's Rage" and "Obama's
America," in which he asserts that Obama's worldview was shaped most directly by the
anti-colonialist views of his father, and that Obama is now intent on unmaking
American so that he can remake it according to his worldview.
In a 2010 Forbes Magazine editorial on Obama, D'Souza concluded: "[Obama] is trapped
in his father's time machine. Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the
dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African
socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his
anti-colonial ambitions, is now setting the nation's agenda through the
reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son makes it happen, but he candidly
admits he is only living out his father's dream. The invisible father provides the
inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is governed by a
ghost."
He wrote likewise in a Weekly Standard column, "The central tenets of [Obama's
father's] anti-colonial ideology are alive and well three decades later in the White
House. ... We are today living out the script for America and the world that was
dreamt up not by Obama but by Obama's father."
It is understandable how D'Souza, a noted conservative intellectual and president of
The King's College in New York City, would relate most viscerally to Obama's
anti-colonial sentiments. Dinesh was born in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. He arrived
in the U.S. in 1978 as a high school exchange student, and went on to graduate Phi
Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College in 1983. He spent a couple of years as a Reagan
administration adviser and the next two decades working for conservative think
tanks.
However, there's a major difference between D'Souza's roots and those of Obama: The
former was raised by an intact Christian family while the latter most certainly was
not.
Indeed, D'Souza's film captures the tragedy of Obama's childhood
(http://patriotpost.us/alexander/3074 ), which stands in stark contrast to the
language of his official White House bio that falsely asserts, "His story is the
American story -- values from the heartland, a middle-class upbringing in a strong
family." It also serves as good background for a case study of Obama's Narcissistic
Personality Disorder (http://patriotpost.us/alexander/13671 ).
Obama's broken childhood, and the insecurity it seeded deep in his psyche, resulted
in a yearning for the security and stability of an unbroken family -- as is the case
with most Leftists who are the product of chronically dysfunctional homes
(http://patriotpost.us/alexander/2936 ).
But Obama's devotion to the perceived stability of statism, and the roots of his
rage, are most assuredly the direct result of his mentorship by a long list of
avowed socialists and his discipleship under purveyors of hatred
(http://patriotpost.us/alexander/2766 ).
To that end, "Obama's America: 2016" severely understates the influence of those who
really shaped Obama's worldview and his economic formula: Divide the country,
subtract jobs, add debt, multiply misery, which equals a populist support for
"distributive justice (http://patriotpost.us/alexander/11684 )."
While much about Obama is shrouded in secrecy (http://patriotpost.us/alexander/14381
), what is well documented is his lifelong association with Marxist mentors
(http://patriotpost.us/alexander/3047 ).
The film makes scant reference to his association with Communist Frank Marshall
Davis and uber-Leftists Jeremiah Wright, Michael Pfleger, William Ayers, Bernardine
Dohrn, Khalid al-Mansour, Rashid Khalidi, Saul Alinsky, Bob Creamer, Valerie
Jarrett, David Axelrod and many other useful idiots
(http://patriotpost.us/alexander/2959 ).
Of those gurus, however, it was Davis who played the most formative role, acting as
a "father figure" for Obama from 1971 until his death in 1987. Obama refers to him
as just "Frank" in his memoir, "Dreams from My Father," but according to my
colleague Cliff Kincaid -- who obtained release of Davis's 600-page FBI file, a file
that clearly documents that Davis was an active member of the Communist Party USA --
Davis created a "revolutionary mole" who made it all the way to the White House.
Recall that Maoist terrorists Ayers and Dohrn actually hosted the first fundraiser
to launch Obama's political career -- his successful 1996 Illinois State Senate
campaign -- at their fashionable Hyde Park home, and that his campaign was endorsed
by the Democratic Socialists of America. (Incidentally, the DSA would later note in
a newsletter that State Senator Obama gave the eulogy for socialist Saul Mendelson,
a "champion" of Chicago's "democratic left.")
These days, Obama's policies are vetted by his socialist White House advisers
(http://patriotpost.us/alexander/9235 ) Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod, the
handlers of the most dangerous threat to Liberty in American history.
If Obama is re-elected, the Republic as we know it will be all but gone by 2016.
Speaking to the GOP convention, Paul Ryan, Romney's VP candidate, said plainly,
"Before the math and the momentum overwhelm us all, we are going to solve this
nation's economic problems. And I'm going to level with you: We don't have that much
time. But if we are serious, and smart, and we lead, we can do this."
Indeed, if the clock does timeout, I recall the words of George Washington from a
letter to James Madison in 1785: "We are either a United people, or we are not. If
the former, let us, in all matters of general concern act as a nation, which has
national objects to promote, and a national character to support. If we are not, let
us no longer act a farce by pretending to it."
Pro Deo et Constitutione -- Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis
Mark Alexander
Publisher, The Patriot Post (http://patriotpost.us/subscribe/ )
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Harvey Golub the ex ceo of American express was on cnbc this am and I thought he said in a nutshell my conclusions after doing some amatuer reading up on history.
He stated that history is replete with examples that the ONLY political system that works to lift people's lives upward in socio economic class has three components:
1- free markets
2- property rights
3- rule of law
Government control whether communism, socialism, facsism has never worked in creating wealth.
I remember we pondered why in Latin America their is so much more divergence of the classes as opposed to US / Canada. There was a good documentary on this exact point but i don't recall if it was from channel 13 or Nova. Anyway it had to do with the difference in landownership. Those from England who came to the new world to Englished settled colonies were almost all indentured servants. Howev er they were allowed to work off their debt and purchace and own land.
In Latino settled countries they were not allowed to own land. They lived as virtual serfs renting from the big land grwoing landowners.
That is why in Latino countries they are controlled by groups of oligarchy families who gained and maintained control over the centuries.
As for communism we only look at the dust bin of history to see the results of that.
We need the rule of law to keep the markets free.
IMO we don't need more regulation but more enforcement of laws that we have.
In any case I thought Golub's presentation this AM was spot on and the best summary yet of why Obama, and his radicals must be thrown out.
The little mealy mouth mouse on CNN (soloDAD) was of course asking Chirstine Odonnel if Romney is "radical". What a joke, obama is the one who is trying to change 200 yrs of tradition in the US and the "mouse" was calling MR the "radical". Of course ODonnel blew the answer. I don't know for the life of me why she is on a national program . I guess CNN libs made certain to put her on the day after the convention to try to undercut the Repubs.
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*Plato warned that democratic leaders would “rob the rich, keep as much of the proceeds as they can for themselves and distribute the rest to the people”.*
The lessons of history seem to be lost in the generations. Friom the Economist.
****Democracies and debt
Voters are now facing a harsh truth
Sep 1st 2012 | from the print edition
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ALMOST half the world’s population now lives in a democracy, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, a sister organisation of this newspaper. And the number of democracies has increased pretty steadily since the second world war. But it is easy to forget that most nations have not been democratic for much of their history and that, for a long time, democracy was a dirty word among political philosophers.
One reason was the fear that democratic rule would lead to ruin. Plato warned that democratic leaders would “rob the rich, keep as much of the proceeds as they can for themselves and distribute the rest to the people”. James Madison, one of America’s founding fathers, feared that democracy would lead to “a rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property and for any other improper or wicked projects”. Similarly John Adams, the country’s second president, worried that rule by the masses would lead to heavy taxes on the rich in the name of equality. As a consequence, “the idle, the vicious, the intemperate would rush into the utmost extravagance of debauchery, sell and spend all their share, and then demand a new division of those who purchased from them.”
In this section
Hony ahoy
Summertime blues
»Democracies and debt
The anti-Bob
Into another country
Virtual spring
Paint threshold
The geography of poverty
Corrections: Mexico's stockmarket and inflation in India
Reprints
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Related topics
United Kingdom
Italy
Greece
United States
Democracy may have its faults but alternative systems have proved no more fiscally prudent. Dictatorships may still feel the need to bribe their citizens (eg, via subsidised fuel prices) to ensure their acquiescence while simultaneously spending large amounts on the police and the military to shore up their power. The absolute monarchies of Spain and France suffered fiscal crises in the 17th and 18th centuries, and were challenged by Britain and the Netherlands which, though not yet democracies, had dispersed power more widely. Financial problems contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Nevertheless, with much of the democratic world now in the throes of a debt crisis, it is tempting to ask whether the fears of Madison and Adams have come to pass. Given the rise in inequality in America and Britain over the past 30 years, it is hard to argue that democracies have led to the confiscation of private wealth. Quite the reverse: modern American politicians either need to be wealthy, or need the financial backing of the rich.
But there is a broader problem. Modern governments play a much larger role in the economy than the ancient Greeks or the founding fathers could have imagined. This makes political leaders a huge source of patronage, in the form of business contracts, social benefits, jobs and tax breaks. As the late political scientist, Mancur Olson, pointed out, these goodies are highly valuable to the recipients but the cost to the average voter of any single perk will be small. So beneficiaries will have every incentive to lobby for the retention of their perks and taxpayers will have little reason to campaign against them. Over time the economy will be weighed down by all these costs, like a barnacle-encrusted ship. The Greek economy could be seen as a textbook example of these problems.
One answer could be to take fiscal policy out of the hands of elected leaders, just as responsibility for monetary policy has been handed to independent central bankers. To some extent, that has been happening. Greece was briefly run by Lucas Papademos, an unelected former central banker, and Italy is still ruled by Mario Monti, a former EU commissioner. These technocrats are, it is assumed, more willing to take unpopular decisions.
Another approach, with which America has occasionally flirted, is to pass decisions to a bipartisan commission. (This may be the best answer to the “fiscal cliff” that looms in 2013.) Since the decisions of such a commission, and indeed of technocrats in Greece and Italy, are still subject to a parliamentary vote, democracy is not completely abandoned.
For a long time, there did not seem to be any limit to the amount democracies could borrow. Creditors have been more patient with democratic governments than with other regimes, probably because the risk of abrupt changes of policy (like the repudiation of Tsarist debts by Russia in 1917) are reduced. But this has postponed the crunch point, rather than eliminated it—and allowed stable democracies to accumulate higher debt, relative to their GDP, than many, more volatile countries ever achieved. Governments can, as Madison suggested, confiscate the wealth of domestic creditors via inflation, taxes or default. But however often they vote, democracies cannot make foreign lenders extend credit. That harsh truth is now being discovered.
Economist.com/blogs/buttonwood
from the print edition | Finance and economics .Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2012. All rights res*****
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http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2009/01/the-idiossey.html
The Idiossey
The Not-Really-That-Epic Poem of Obamacles Revised and Updated
(with Apologies to Homer)
Book the First: A question for the Muse
Speak to me, O Muse, of this resourceful man who strides so boldly upon the golden shrine of Potomac, Between Ionic plywood columns, to the kleig light altar.
Fair Obamacles, favored of the gods, ascends to Olympus Amidst lusty tributes and the strumming lyres of Media; Their mounted skyboxes echo with the singing of his name While Olbermos and Mattheus in their greasy togas wrassle For first honor of basking in their hero's reflected glory.
Who is this man, so bronzed in countenance, So skilled of TelePrompter, clean and articulate whose ears like a stately urn's protrude?
So now, daughter of Zeus, tell us his story.
And just the Cliff Notes if you don't mind, We don't have all day.
Said the Muse:
I will tell the story of Obamacles through my scribe Iowahawk.
But this poem is copyrighted, so reproduce at your peril.
Book the Second: Obamacles Meets the Oracle of Doritos
From the land of Kenya beyond Nile, came Obamacles the Elder To the grad school at Oahu, where Ann of Kansas bore him a son.
It would prove to be a hassle, thus he left his baby's mama, who then won favor with Soertoro, who brought them to his far-off island nest.
Young Obamacles was growing, and they shipped him back to Gramma, And the prep school on Oahu. There he trained and studied boldly, Drinking beer and smoking weed: Maui Wowie, paca lolo, sensimilla, blunts and chiva, Thai and chronic, just enough to hone his mellow, in the back of Kyle's TransAm, a line or two of coke on weekends.
In his mellow young Obamacles beheld a vision in the salty snacks at Safeway; There the Oracle of Doritos bade him:
"Travel the seas to the East, fair Obamacles, for this is where your fortune lies.
But beware, that way bodes peril if thou are not pure of image and smooth of delivery.
Seek first the masters of Occidental College, who will train you in the philosophers of Po-Mo."
Replied young Obamacles,
"Accidental college heh heh heh heh Accidental moxidental taxidental heh heh,"
And Kyle is like,
"Dude you're totally talking to the Doritos. That is totally bonus."
Book the Third: Obamacles dazzles the masters at the Agora
After Obamacles had completed the perilous sea voyage to LAX and retrieved his bag from the carousel, He entered the agora of Occidental, where wily Obamacles dazzled the masters with recitations:
Fanon, Menchu, Zinn and Chomsky, Saul Alinsky, Eldridge Cleaver, Kurtis Blow.
After two years his masters said,
"fair Obamacles, we can teach you no more, for your bullshit has surpassed even ours.
Hie thee now to the Isle of Manhattus, where in the agora at Columbius
you may study a bullshit so deep and complex and angry it is beyond our philosophies."
Yet bold Obamacles was equal to the challenge. "Give us your thesis," said the masters at Columbius, and Obamacles conjured a mighty paper on Soviet disarmament, double-spaced and expertly margined.
Its beauty was such that the masters wept, and laid a baccalaureate wreath upon him; But the masters ordered the beautiful thesis destroyed that so no mortal would again read it.
Then one day at the Duane Reade on West 123rd, the Oracle of Doritos appeared to him again:
"You have passed your first test, brave Obamacles, but the peril is yet beginning.
For now you must travel west to Chicago, the dreaded Isle of Monsters;
And become yourself a community organizer."
To which Obamacles replied, "I really should cut down on the ganja."
Book the Fourth: Obamacles meets the Jeremiad of Chicago
When Obamacles reached the shores of Chicago, he saw no monsters; Yet its bone-strewn sands announced a land of many unseen dangers.
And though he be clever, Obamacles did not understand his task, set before him by the Oracle; perhaps it was a riddle?
"Community organizer?" he wondered, "What the fuck is that?"
And yet he pushed from house to house, offering to organize the people, But lo, the Southside people shunned him, slamming doors and mocking sad Obamacles.
"O people of Chicago, why do you shun me so?" he lamented.
"I have a bachelor's degree and I am here to organize you."
And then Obamacles heard from behind a voice of such fury and anger that he was frozen in fear for the very first time.
It was the Jeremiad, the fire-breathing Monster of the Pulpit, who roared:
"You stupid ass foo, it because you white!"
Now, it was known to Obamacles that the Jeremiad had forbade white men from the Southside.
What Obamacles did not know is that the Jeremiad also decided who was a white man.
Although his own hue was darker still than the Jeremiad, he was too clever to argue with the Monster; Instead he said:
"You are right, fearsome Jeremiad; I am sadly white. And only your magic, my lord,
can relieve me of my accursed paleness. Cure me, that I may join with the sun people."
The Jeremiad was astonished by the boldness of Obamacles and his clever flattery. He said:
"You have much bravery for a white man, Obamacles. But to become an authentic brother,
you must prove your worthiness in the torments of the pews."
Hour after hour, Sunday after Sunday, year after year, Obamacles stood before Jeremiad And the other monsters of the pulpit, Phlegeron and Mekus, withstanding their bellows of fire, Never blinking or flinching, and seldom falling asleep.
the Jeremiad was pleased and and absolved Obamacles of his whiteness, and allowing him to finally organize the community.
Which turned out to be a system for getting money for the Jeremiad.
One day at the Co-op in Hyde Park the Oracle appeared again to Obamacles from an end-aisle display:
"You have done well, young wayfarer, but further torments lurk in thy destiny.
Prepare at Kaplan for thy LSATs, for the abyss of uselessness at Harvard Law awaits.
And then must you return to Chicago to conquer the legion of monsters."
Book the Fifth: Obamacles and Victimia
Having withstood the scorching blasts of the monster Jeremiad at Chicago, Harvard Law proved no challenge for our hero; he was named beloved of the faculty, For at the Isle of Harvard they eat that "community organizer" shit right up.
He returned to the Isle of Chicago with his magic Harvard talisman, Small of heft but able to open any door.
Here he met Victimia, a long and lanky beauty, whose siren songs of woe bewitched; They were wed in the screaming gardens of Jeremiad.
"O Victimia," he sang, "if I could but bottle thy sob stories, the world would be ours."
"Yes, Obamacles beloved," replied she, "but first let me help you conquer Chicago."
The monsters of Chicago were helpless against the duet's laments and dirges; Like a moth to a flame they proved irresistible, and the strange mutant beasts of this Isle of the Damned soon were transfixed by their enchantments:
Ayres, the decrepit conjurer of fireballs; his wife Doron, worshipper of murderers; Rezko, Philistine Lord of the Pits of Slumos; Giannoulis, Bagman of the Mafios; Blago, Governor of the Underworld of Illinus, And all of the monsters of the Pulpit from Jeremiad to Pherekon.
Obamacles had conquered all of the Chicagomon, even Daleos the little retard king, Without once unsheathing his sword; such was his charm.
The monsters realized Obamacles was the perfect front man for federal funding scams, And thus showered our hero with tributes and contributions, Elevating him to Vicelord of the Chicagomon.
Thus exalted did Obamacles train his gaze on the mounts of Tribune and Suntimus, and WGN and WLS and NBC 5, whose anchors splooged in simultaneous ecstasy At his gleaming incisors and crossover appeal. Together they swore their undying liege and to crush all obstacles in his path.
By acclamation he was sent as Chicago's emissary to Senatus.
Book the Sixth: The Rage of Hildusa
In Senatus, Obamacles laid beside the reflecting pool while a coterie of Media fed him grapes.
Again the Oracle appeared to him, this time in the form of a taco salad; it said,
"You have done well, hale Obamacles, but your torments are not yet complete.
The toughest test of all awaits, and may the gods have mercy on your soul."
"Do your worst, Doritos," he laughed, "for I am Obamacles, Lord of Illinus, who single handedly conquered the LSATs and disarmed the Chicagomon. What task would you possibly fear me with?"
"You are to led the Demos back to the White Temple, by vanquishing Hildusa."
At the sound of Hildusa's name even brave Obamacles was driven to wet his toga, For Hildusa, cuckolder of Bubba, was the mightiest of all the gorgons.
From her head grew a writhing nest of asps, and the mere sight of her cankles Would turn a man to stone. Some said she came from Lesbos But others said her only pleasure was torment and sucking the marrow from her victim's bones.
Around her at all times was a phalanx guard of mincing eunuchs, led by Ickis, Wolfsonis, Blumenthalis and Pennis. At her side, an angry force of menopausal PUMAs ready to strike on her command -- for the children.
But Obamacles was only momentarily dissuaded from his task, for he knew the people of Demos longed to return to the White Temple, where they had been banished by the idiot emperor Chimpos II.
Although the Demos knew that Chimpos was the stupidest person in the world, and they were the smartest, they had somehow been unable to defeat him.
Obamacles seized his opportunity. On the Isle of Demos, and said:
"Citizens of Demos, I am Obamacles of Illinus. I will lead you
from the wilderness back to the White Temple."
Dispite his gleaming smile the agora laughed at the stranger's folly.
"Fool, our leader is Hildusa," they mocked. "What chance stands a handsome newcomer like you against the mightiest of the gorgons?"
"For one, I will conjure our Spartans back from Babylonia," said Obamacles.
"Hilldusa voted with Chimpos. I say it is time to begin the war to end this war."
The words of Obamacles created a murmur in the agora, for on Demos the people wished the Spartans home from war, to face trial for war crimes or be caged as madmen Like in the many tragedies at the Demos Odeon Octoplex.
"We are with you, Obamacles," came the shout of a man, who was turned to marble and struck by lightning before his words could be completed. Obamacles had stoked the terrible rath of the gorgon Hildusa, and the battle was joined.
Book the Seventh: The Battle for Demos
All the torments suffered by Obamacles had steeled him for this epic test.
The cliffs of Demos resounded with the approaching screeches of Hildusa And her army of soul-eating Morpheons, spinning and faxing and conjuring position papers.
But Obamacles was unmoved, and with his right hand summoned the Subterranean Creepos of the Nutroots to do his bidding, Kos and Ariana and Demos Underground.
Hildusa was enraged for she thought them allies, and shot them the stink-eye.
"Destroy Obamacles!" she bellowed at her Eunuchs, But they were retards and got busted for DUI on the chariot ride over.
Then Obamacles shot the arrow of Iowa across abyss of Dukakis, striking Hildusa true in her cankles, no more to freeze men to stone, And all of Demos roared approval.
"Citizens of Demos," screamed the hobbled gorgon, "fair Obamacles is not what he appears!
Look, behind him! A phalanx of Chicagomon, the demons from the pits of Illinus!"
When the Demos people saw the Chicagomon they shrugged, but Obamacles was taking no chances for the general battle; He had no more further use for the Chicagomon and thus he summoned Underbus, the destroyer of memes. One by one he disposed them, The Jeremiad and Phlegeron and Ayres, all sacrificed to Underbus.
When Hildusa saw this her eyes boiled with rage, and she summoned her Amazon Pumas But they were too fat and old and employed to battle the snarky college assholes in official Obamacles tunics.
At last Hildusa summoned Bubba, who in principle was her husband.
Though the mightiest god of Demos, he trembled before her gaze; For once she saved his sacred bacon, but yet had him castrated and banished.
"Destroy! Destroy! Destoy!" she bellowed, handing Bubba sharpened talking points, But Obamacles would not yield, and from beneath his tunic withdrew his razor-sharpened race card, filleting Bubba into tiny pieces.
The crowd at Demos was breathless, hardly believing their eyes.
And then winged Media lifted Obamacles across the abyss to where Hildusa lay supine and helpless, and, grabbing her by the asps, took one more mighty swing with his race card, and held her severed head before the cheering crowd.
All of Demos sang in praise, even the severed head of Hildusa as he paraded it around the stage at Invescos and banked it off the glass for three points.
But yet, as he exited the stage amid the cries of the rapture, The Doritos called once more from the Table of Catering:
"Beware, fair Hero, for one last task awaits thee."
Book the Eighth: The Contest of November
"Who dares challenge me now?" asked Obamacles. "For I am Obacles, vanquisher of Hildusa, of whom all of Demos sing; Make him the mightiest, so that I might find him worthy."
"Your foe will be the grizzled warrior Crustius," said the Doritos, As Obamacles laughed in disbelief; for though brave Crustius had once proved great valor in the tragic war of Namos, He had grown old and addled sailing the Sea of Maverikus.
In years a full score he sailed, seeking the fabled Microphone of Media, Only to crash on its shoals, lured to doom by the flattery of the Sirens.
"Be not hasty in thy hubris, Obamacles," warned the Doritos.
"Although he is old and stranded and beset by mutineers, grizzled Crustius is far craftier than in your imaginings."
True to the prophesy of the Doritos, wily Crustius had a secret trick up his toga.
From his rock-strewn shipwreck he summoned Palina, huntress of Wasilla, Whose fertile loins had many odd-named children bore, Bristol and Trig, Dakota and Algebra, Calculus and Physed, And yet she retained the visage and figure of a goddess.
Palina emerged from the sea, springing fully formed from a clamshell, Brandishing the spear that had slain a thousand antlered beasts.
Once mutinous, the Crustonauts were instantly heartened, For now they and sensed a chance at victory.
Although his pollsters warned of danger, Obamacles was stalwart For he knew just how he got here. "Attack," he beckoned very calmly, And from across the land of Soros, a thousand score of demons answered; HuffPo nutjobs, New York Kronos, the shrieking hags of talk TV, Couric, Fey, Oprah, Behar, the hermaphrodites of NBC.
Palina was undaunted by the minions and thus she battled gamely on.
But at last she was attacked by Crustius himself; For so addled and contrary was the wizened sailor That he had forgotten which side he was on.
Vanquished Palina returned to Wasilla to fight another day, While Crustius sails again, forever seeking the elusive Sirens of Media.
Book the Ninth: Obamacles Ascends to Olympus
Now behold him, brave Obamacles,
Who strides triumphant down Pennsylvania Avenue, With Victimia at his side in a gown of golden brocade, Hewn from the finest hotel draperies.
Behold his ascent to the marble dais to swear his oath, Which Justice Roberts flubs; so dazzled is he by our hero's pure magnificence.
And behold the crowd whose number has grown to a million, Mocking limping Chimpos as he flees to Brazos exile, Tossing their sandals at his edifice, only to stop to hail the conquering hero.
"All hail Obamacles!" they cry, "Master of Bullshit, Vicelord of the Chicagomon, Slayer of Hildusa, Vanquisher of Palina. You are our new and shiny hope, a true god amongst mortals."
And yet once more the Oracle appears to Obamacles, At the Inauguration Bacchanal, brought to you by Doritos.
"What now?" said Obamacles, irked at Oracle's salty impertinence and the interruption of his famous pop 'n' lock. "For I have conquered all, and there is no challenger left in all the Beltway."
The Oracle spoke out from the depths of the guacamole:
"I bid thee welcome to the White House
where your true test now begins:
Markets deaf to happy buzzwords
Blind to Shepard Fairey's art,
Heeding laws of economics,
Not the wishful laws of man;
A world of of evil filled with monsters,
who are unmoved by flowery talk,
Invulnerable to race cards
or leftwing blogger insults,
Who Hope for Change in megatons.
Do not despair! For look before you,
The noble army who brought you here:
Thespians and hiphop moguls,
Graphic artists, hipster twats,
The academic scribes of Athens,
basic cable sycophants.
These are the arrows in your quiver,
for the coming epic tests;
Use them well, but first remember:
They're waiting on those magic tricks.
Good luck with that, well-spoken hero,
I think I'll grab a snack and watch."
Obamacles look out onto his drooling throngs, and wept; for then he realized then may be things even gods can't do.
Is this man hewn from Olympus,
Sent by Zeus to save our souls?
Or a plastic dashboard Jesus
In a car he can't control?
Will this Adonis save the planet?
Or is he fleecing golden sheep?
Ask another Muse tomorrow,
Hell if I know, it's all Greek to me.
Burma Shave
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/18/obama-loyola-speech-leaked-redistribution_n_1894625.html?1348003636&icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl1%7Csec1_lnk1&pLid=207416#slide=1468635
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This is particularly well stated by Bill Whittle in the last two minutes of the clip - but it is worth watching the entire piece. I couldn't have said it better myself:
www.therightscoop.com/must-watch-trifecta-the-end-of-america-as-we-know-it/
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/18/obama-loyola-speech-leaked-redistribution_n_1894625.html?1348003636&icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl1%7Csec1_lnk1&pLid=207416#slide=1468635
By Jon Healey
September 19, 2012, 5:49 p.m.
Republicans tried this week to help their presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, rebound from the drubbing he's received over his secretly recorded remarks about the 47% by unearthing a 14-year-old recording of then-Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama saying, "I actually believe in redistribution."
Note to America: Not only does President Obama have a secret plan to take your guns, he'll grab your piggy bank while he's at it!
The mainstream media hasn't exactly leaped on the recording, in part because we went through a very similar episode four years ago. In other words, this is a dog-bites-man story. Even if you didn't watch the Democratic National Convention, you should know by now that Obama is a fan of the federal programs that redistribute wealth to help people in need.
For the right, though, "redistribution" is a highly charged word. It plays into the "makers vs. takers" construct that has emerged as one of the defining themes of this election. As Romney and his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), have noted with increasing frequency, the number of Americans receiving aid from the government is growing, while the percentage paying the government's tab is shrinking.
This theme meshes with the Romney-Ryan argument that the economy can take off again if the government pulls back and scales down, liberating "makers" to expand their businesses and put people back to work. By contrast, the GOP argues, Obama clings to a failed ideology that doling out money to people is a type of "stimulus" that will revive the moribund economy.
As Romney put it in a speech Wednesday, "I believe the way to lift people and help people have higher incomes is not to take from some and give to others but to create wealth for all."
Yet the makers vs. takers dichotomy is misleadingly simplistic. Much of America falls into both camps. Businesses get tax subsidies, loan guarantees and contracts from federal and state governments. Most workers pay into the Social Security and Medicare systems, but there's no way to predict which ones will get more out than they put in. Plenty of states -- mainly Southern and rural ones -- receive more in aid than their residents pay in taxes.
Redistributing wealth, meanwhile, has long been standard operating procedure for the federal government. The income tax has been "progressive" since its inception in 1913, which means high-income Americans pay a higher percentage of their earnings into the federal kitty than their less intrepid (or fortunate, your choice) neighbors. The same system can also be found in numerous states. Even if there was only one tax rate, though, the wealthy would still pay more into the system -- a flat rate of 5% collects 10 times as much from someone making $250,000 as someone making $25,000.
You might argue that this isn't really redistribution; it's just a way of charging the wealthy more for the government services that benefit everyone, such as national defense and food safety inspections. But a portion of the federal kitty pays for the safety net programs whose direct benefits are confined to the unemployed and the impoverished. By funding those programs, government transfers wealth from the rich to the poor.
Granted, saying "I actually believe in redistribution" conjures up the image of the government trying to produce equal outcomes -- hobbling the successful to promote the unsuccessful. There's something vaguely Marxist about that, a "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" kind of thing.
But on the recording from 1998, as well as in his controversial "spread the wealth around" remarks on the campaign trail in 2008, Obama has touted redistribution in the context of promoting opportunities, not outcomes. Here's a telling excerpt from the 1998 recording: "[T]he trick is figuring out how do we structure government systems that pool resources and hence facilitate some redistribution, because I actually believe in redistribution, at least at a certain level, to make sure that everybody’s got a shot."
So, how do these comments diverge from the theme of shared responsibility that Obama has been pounding away at on the campaign trail? I don't see a difference, really. He wants high-income Americans to pay more taxes so that the government can bring the deficit under control without cutting as much from either "investments" (student loans, infrastructure, research grants) or entitlements (particularly Medicare and Medicaid).
Romney, meanwhile, wants to reduce taxes across the board and make deeper cuts in just about every non-defense program. And Ryan has proposed dramatic reductions over the long term in spending on safety net programs. But even Ryan accepts that the federal government has a role to play in steering aid to the neediest Americans. His model is time-limited aid, a la the welfare reform law Congress enacted in 1996, not no aid at all. In other words, the GOP's opposition to redistribution is more about the degree than the concept.
Here's a transcript of the 1998 recording, ostensibly of comments Obama made at Loyola University in Chicago. There was no telling Wednesday what Obama said before the excerpt began or after it ended; the only thing that's clear is that he was discussing anti-poverty programs:
"Let me just close by saying, as we think about the policy research surrounding the issues I just named -- the policy research for the working poor, broadly defined -- I think that what we’re going to have to do is somehow resuscitate the notion that government action can be effective at all. There has been a systematic, I don’t think it’s too strong to call it a propaganda, campaign against the possibility of government action and its efficacy. And I think some of it has been deserved. Chicago Housing Authority has not been a model of good policymaking. And neither necessarily have been the Chicago public schools. What that means, then, is as we try to resuscitate this notion that we’re all in this thing together, leave nobody behind. We do have to be innovative in thinking how, what are the delivery systems that are actually effective and meet people where they live. And my suggestion, I guess, would be that the trick –- and this is one of the few areas where I think there are technical issues that have to be dealt with, as opposed to just political issues -- the trick is figuring out how do we structure government systems that pool resources and hence facilitate some redistribution, because I actually believe in redistribution, at least at a certain level, to make sure that everybody’s got a shot."
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-barack-obama-believes-in-redistribution-20120919,0,7599323.story
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http://patdollard.com/2012/09/obama-vetting-1979-newspaper-article-by-valerie-jarrett-father-in-law-reveals-start-of-arab-purchase-of-u-s-presidency/
Why would Muslim oil billionaires finance and develop controlling relationships with black college students? Well, like anyone else, they would do it for self-interest. And what would their self-interest be? We all know the top two answers to that question: 1. a Palestinian state and 2. the advancement of Islam in America. The idea then was to advance blacks who would facilitate these two goals to positions of power in the Federal government, preferably, of course, the Presidency. And why would the Arabs target blacks in particular for this job? Well, for the same reason the early communists chose them as their vanguard for revolution (which literally means “change”) in America. Allow me to quote Trotsky, in 1939: “The American Negroes, for centuries the most oppressed section of American society and the most discriminated against, are potentially the most revolutionary element of the population. They are designated by their historical past to be, under adequate leadership, the very vanguard of the proletarian revolution.” Substitute the word “Islam” for the words “the proletarian revolution,” and you most clearly get the picture, as Islam is a revolutionary movement just like communism is. (Trivia: it is from this very quote that Van Jones takes his name. Van is short for vanguard. He was born “Anthony”). In addition, long before 1979, blacks had become the vanguard of the spread of Islam in America, especially in prisons.
Interestingly, in context with the fact that this article was written by her father-in-law, Valerie Jarrett has an unusual amount of influence over Obama (along with personal security that may be even better than his, another unusual and intriguing bit of business here). And equally interesting is that Obama, who may have been a beneficiary of this Muslim money, and may now be in this Muslim debt, has aggressively pursued both of the Muslim agendas I cited above. And, also equally interesting, is that Obama has paid a king’s ransom for court ordered seals of any such records of this potential financing of his college education, and perhaps, of other of his expenses.
Lastly, it’s very important to note that the main source for the article is Khalid Mansour, “the same lawyer who allegedly helped arrange for the entrance of Barack Obama into Harvard Law School in 1988.” (Valerie Jarrett, by the way, was born in Iran. The one country protected by Obama from the sweep of the Arab Spring.) Now all of this may seem sensational, but let’s face facts. What makes it most disturbing is that not only is it all logical, but it suddenly makes a lot of previously confusing things make perfect sense. – Pat Dollard
Excerpted from Daily Interlake: Searching old newspapers is one of my favorite pastimes, and I have tried to use them many times to shed light on current events — or to inform readers about how the past is prologue to our very interesting present-day quandaries.
Recently, I came across a syndicated column from November 1979 that seemed to point 30 years into the future toward an obscure campaign issue that arose briefly in the 2008 presidential campaign.
Though by no means definitive, it provides an interesting insight, at least, into how Chicago politics intersected with the black power movement and Middle Eastern money at a certain point in time. Whether it has any greater relevance to the 2012 presidential campaign, I will allow the reader to decide. In order to accomplish that, I will also take the unusual step of providing footnotes and the end of this column so that each of you can do the investigative work for yourself.
The column itself had appeared in the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Evening Independent of Nov. 6, but it was the work of a veteran newspaperman who at the time was working for the prestigious Chicago Tribune and whose work was syndicated nationally. (1)
So far as I know, this 1979 column has not previously been brought to light, but it certainly should be because it broke some very interesting news about the “rumored billions of dollars the oil-rich Arab nations are supposed to unload on American black leaders and minority institutions.” The columnist quoted a black San Francisco lawyer who said, “It’s not just a rumor. Aid will come from some of the Arab states.”
Well, if anyone would know, it would have been this lawyer — Donald Warden, who had helped defend OPEC in an antitrust suit that year and had developed significant ties with the Saudi royal family since becoming a Muslim and taking the name Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour.
Al-Mansour told Jarrett that he had presented the “proposed special aid program to OPEC Secretary-General Rene Ortiz” in September 1979, and that “the first indications of Arab help to American blacks may be announced in December.” Maybe so, but I looked high and wide in newspapers in 1979 and 1980 for any other stories about this aid package funded by OPEC and never found it verified. (Continued after the jump)
(Copy of article by Jarrets dad appears but I am unable to copy it here)
You would think that a program to spend “$20 million per year for 10 years to aid 10,000 minority students each year, including blacks, Arabs, Hispanics, Asians and native Americans” would be referred to somewhere other than one obscure 1979 column, but I haven’t found any other word of it.
Maybe the funding materialized, maybe it didn’t, but what’s particularly noteworthy is that this black Islamic lawyer who “for several years [had] urged the rich Arab kingdoms to cultivate stronger ties to America’s blacks by supporting black businesses and black colleges and giving financial help to disadvantaged students” was also the same lawyer who allegedly helped arrange for the entrance of Barack Obama into Harvard Law School in 1988.
That tale had surfaced in 2008 when Barack Obama was a candidate for president and one of the leading black politicians in the country — Percy Sutton of New York — told an interviewer on a Manhattan TV news show that he had been introduced to Obama “by a friend who was raising money for him. The friend’s name is Dr. Khalid al-Mansour, from Texas. He is the principal adviser to one of the world’s richest men. He told me about Obama.” (2)
This peculiar revelation engendered a small hubbub in 2008, but was quickly dismissed by the Obama campaign as the ditherings of a senile old man. I don’t believe President Obama himself ever denied the story personally, and no one has explained how Sutton came up with this elaborate story about Khalid al-Mansour if it had no basis in fact, and in any case al-Mansour no longer denies it. (3)
Back in 2008, while actually supporting Hillary Clinton in the New York primary, Percy Sutton was interviewed on TV and said that he thought Barack Obama was nonetheless quite impressive. He also revealed that he had first heard about Obama 20 years previously in a letter where al-Mansour wrote, “there is a young man that has applied to Harvard. I know that you have a few friends up there because you used to go up there to speak. Would you please write a letter in support of him?”
Sutton concluded in the interview, “I wrote a letter of support of him to my friends at Harvard, saying to them I thought there was a genius that was going to be available and I certainly hoped they would treat him kindly.”
Until now, there really has been no context within which to understand the Sutton story or to buttress it as a reliable account other than the reputation of Sutton himself as one of the top leaders of the black community in Manhattan — himself a noted attorney, businessman and politician. But the new discovery of the 1979 column that established Khalid al-Mansour’s interest in creating a fund to give “financial help to disadvantaged students” does provide a clue that he might indeed — along with his patron, Arab Prince Alwaleed bin Talal — have taken an interest in the “genius” Barack Obama.
It also might be considered more than coincidence that the author of that 1979 newspaper column was from Chicago, where Barack Obama settled in 1986 a few years after his stint at Columbia University. It is certainly surprising that the author of that column was none other than Vernon Jarrett, the future (and later former) father-in-law of Valerie Jarrett, who ultimately became the consigliatore of the Obama White House.
It is also noteworthy that Vernon Jarrett was one of the best friends and a colleague of Frank Marshall Davis, the former Chicago journalist and lifelong communist who moved to Hawaii in the late 1940s and years later befriended Stanley and Madelyn Dunham and their daughter Stanley Ann, the mother of Barack Obama. (4)
And to anyone who has the modicum of a spark of curiosity, it is surely intriguing that Frank Davis took an active role in the rearing of young Barack from the age of 10 until he turned 18 and left Hawaii for his first year of college at Occidental College in Los Angeles. (5)
It is also at least suggestive that Obama began that college education as a member of the highly international student body of Occidental College in 1979, the same year when Vernon Jarrett was touting the college aid program being funded by OPEC and possibly Prince Alwaleed. The fact that President Obama has studiously avoided releasing records of his college years is suggestive also, but has no evidentiary value in the present discussion. (6)
The nature of Vernon Jarrett’s relationship to Khalid al-Mansour is likewise uncertain, but it is very likely they had known each other as leaders of the black civil-rights movement for many years. Under his previous name of Donald Warden, al-Mansour had founded the African American Association in the Bay Area in the early 1960s. He had also helped inspire the Black Panther Party through his association with black-power leaders such as Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. Seale, of course, had a famous association with Chicago later, when he was part of the Chicago Eight charged with conspiracy and inciting to riot at the Democratic National Convention in 1968. (7)
In any case, it doesn’t matter if Vernon Jarrett and Khalid al-Mansour had a personal relationship or not. For some reason, al-Mansour had used Jarrett as the messenger to get out the word about his efforts to funnel Arab oil money to black students and minority colleges at about the same time that Barack Obama began his college career. That doesn’t mean either Jarrett or al-Mansour knew Obama at that time, but eight years later when Obama was a rising star in Chicago, a friend of Bill Ayers and Valerie Jarrett, it is much more likely that he did indeed have the assistance of very important people in his meteoric rise. The words of Percy Sutton about what al-Mansour told him regarding Obama certainly have the ring of truth:
“His introduction was there is a young man that has applied to Harvard. I know that you have a few friends back there… Would you please write a letter in support of him? (That’s before Obama decided to run.) … and he interjected the advice that Obama had passed the requirements, had taken and passed the requirements necessary to get into Harvard and become president of the Law Review. That’s before he ever ran for anything. And I wrote a letter in support of him to my friends at Harvard, saying to them that I thought there was a genius that was going to be available and I certainly hoped they would treat him kindly…” (2)
What possible significance could all this have? We may never know, but Vernon Jarrett, back in 1979, thought that OPEC’s intention to fund black and minority education would have huge political ramifications. As Jarrett wrote:
“The question of financial aid from the Arabs could raise a few extremely interesting questions both inside and outside the black community. If such contributions are large and sustained, the money angle may become secondary to the sociology and politics of such an occurrence.” (1)
He was, of course, right.
As Jarrett suggests, any black institutions and presumably individuals who became beholden to Arab money might be expected to continue the trend of American “new black advocacy for a homeland for the Palestinians” and presumably for other Islamic and Arabic interests in the Middle East. For that reason, if for no other, the question of how President Obama’s college education was funded is of considerably more than academic interest.
Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton on Obama and Khalid Mansour
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4EcC0QAd0Ug
Interestingly, in context with the fact that this article was written by her father-in-law, Valerie Jarrett has an unusual amount of influence over Obama (along with personal security that may be even better than his, another unusual and intriguing bit of business here). And equally interesting is that Obama, who may have been a beneficiary of this Muslim money, and may now be in this Muslim debt, has aggressively pursued both of the Muslim agendas I cited above. And, also equally interesting, is that Obama has paid a king’s ransom for court ordered seals of any such records of this potential financing of his college education, and perhaps, of other of his expenses.
Lastly, it’s very important to note that the main source for the article is Khalid Mansour, “the same lawyer who allegedly helped arrange for the entrance of Barack Obama into Harvard Law School in 1988.” (Valerie Jarrett, by the way, was born in Iran. The one country protected by Obama from the sweep of the Arab Spring.) Now all of this may seem sensational, but let’s face facts. What makes it most disturbing is that not only is it all logical, but it suddenly makes a lot of previously confusing things make perfect sense. – Pat Dollard
Excerpted from Daily Interlake: Searching old newspapers is one of my favorite pastimes, and I have tried to use them many times to shed light on current events — or to inform readers about how the past is prologue to our very interesting present-day quandaries.
Recently, I came across a syndicated column from November 1979 that seemed to point 30 years into the future toward an obscure campaign issue that arose briefly in the 2008 presidential campaign.
Though by no means definitive, it provides an interesting insight, at least, into how Chicago politics intersected with the black power movement and Middle Eastern money at a certain point in time. Whether it has any greater relevance to the 2012 presidential campaign, I will allow the reader to decide. In order to accomplish that, I will also take the unusual step of providing footnotes and the end of this column so that each of you can do the investigative work for yourself.
The column itself had appeared in the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Evening Independent of Nov. 6, but it was the work of a veteran newspaperman who at the time was working for the prestigious Chicago Tribune and whose work was syndicated nationally. (1)
So far as I know, this 1979 column has not previously been brought to light, but it certainly should be because it broke some very interesting news about the “rumored billions of dollars the oil-rich Arab nations are supposed to unload on American black leaders and minority institutions.” The columnist quoted a black San Francisco lawyer who said, “It’s not just a rumor. Aid will come from some of the Arab states.”
Well, if anyone would know, it would have been this lawyer — Donald Warden, who had helped defend OPEC in an antitrust suit that year and had developed significant ties with the Saudi royal family since becoming a Muslim and taking the name Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour.
Al-Mansour told Jarrett that he had presented the “proposed special aid program to OPEC Secretary-General Rene Ortiz” in September 1979, and that “the first indications of Arab help to American blacks may be announced in December.” Maybe so, but I looked high and wide in newspapers in 1979 and 1980 for any other stories about this aid package funded by OPEC and never found it verified. (Continued after the jump)
You would think that a program to spend “$20 million per year for 10 years to aid 10,000 minority students each year, including blacks, Arabs, Hispanics, Asians and native Americans” would be referred to somewhere other than one obscure 1979 column, but I haven’t found any other word of it.
Maybe the funding materialized, maybe it didn’t, but what’s particularly noteworthy is that this black Islamic lawyer who “for several years [had] urged the rich Arab kingdoms to cultivate stronger ties to America’s blacks by supporting black businesses and black colleges and giving financial help to disadvantaged students” was also the same lawyer who allegedly helped arrange for the entrance of Barack Obama into Harvard Law School in 1988.
That tale had surfaced in 2008 when Barack Obama was a candidate for president and one of the leading black politicians in the country — Percy Sutton of New York — told an interviewer on a Manhattan TV news show that he had been introduced to Obama “by a friend who was raising money for him. The friend’s name is Dr. Khalid al-Mansour, from Texas. He is the principal adviser to one of the world’s richest men. He told me about Obama.” (2)
This peculiar revelation engendered a small hubbub in 2008, but was quickly dismissed by the Obama campaign as the ditherings of a senile old man. I don’t believe President Obama himself ever denied the story personally, and no one has explained how Sutton came up with this elaborate story about Khalid al-Mansour if it had no basis in fact, and in any case al-Mansour no longer denies it. (3)
Back in 2008, while actually supporting Hillary Clinton in the New York primary, Percy Sutton was interviewed on TV and said that he thought Barack Obama was nonetheless quite impressive. He also revealed that he had first heard about Obama 20 years previously in a letter where al-Mansour wrote, “there is a young man that has applied to Harvard. I know that you have a few friends up there because you used to go up there to speak. Would you please write a letter in support of him?”
Sutton concluded in the interview, “I wrote a letter of support of him to my friends at Harvard, saying to them I thought there was a genius that was going to be available and I certainly hoped they would treat him kindly.”
Until now, there really has been no context within which to understand the Sutton story or to buttress it as a reliable account other than the reputation of Sutton himself as one of the top leaders of the black community in Manhattan — himself a noted attorney, businessman and politician. But the new discovery of the 1979 column that established Khalid al-Mansour’s interest in creating a fund to give “financial help to disadvantaged students” does provide a clue that he might indeed — along with his patron, Arab Prince Alwaleed bin Talal — have taken an interest in the “genius” Barack Obama.
It also might be considered more than coincidence that the author of that 1979 newspaper column was from Chicago, where Barack Obama settled in 1986 a few years after his stint at Columbia University. It is certainly surprising that the author of that column was none other than Vernon Jarrett, the future (and later former) father-in-law of Valerie Jarrett, who ultimately became the consigliatore of the Obama White House.
It is also noteworthy that Vernon Jarrett was one of the best friends and a colleague of Frank Marshall Davis, the former Chicago journalist and lifelong communist who moved to Hawaii in the late 1940s and years later befriended Stanley and Madelyn Dunham and their daughter Stanley Ann, the mother of Barack Obama. (4)
And to anyone who has the modicum of a spark of curiosity, it is surely intriguing that Frank Davis took an active role in the rearing of young Barack from the age of 10 until he turned 18 and left Hawaii for his first year of college at Occidental College in Los Angeles. (5)
It is also at least suggestive that Obama began that college education as a member of the highly international student body of Occidental College in 1979, the same year when Vernon Jarrett was touting the college aid program being funded by OPEC and possibly Prince Alwaleed. The fact that President Obama has studiously avoided releasing records of his college years is suggestive also, but has no evidentiary value in the present discussion. (6)
The nature of Vernon Jarrett’s relationship to Khalid al-Mansour is likewise uncertain, but it is very likely they had known each other as leaders of the black civil-rights movement for many years. Under his previous name of Donald Warden, al-Mansour had founded the African American Association in the Bay Area in the early 1960s. He had also helped inspire the Black Panther Party through his association with black-power leaders such as Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. Seale, of course, had a famous association with Chicago later, when he was part of the Chicago Eight charged with conspiracy and inciting to riot at the Democratic National Convention in 1968. (7)
In any case, it doesn’t matter if Vernon Jarrett and Khalid al-Mansour had a personal relationship or not. For some reason, al-Mansour had used Jarrett as the messenger to get out the word about his efforts to funnel Arab oil money to black students and minority colleges at about the same time that Barack Obama began his college career. That doesn’t mean either Jarrett or al-Mansour knew Obama at that time, but eight years later when Obama was a rising star in Chicago, a friend of Bill Ayers and Valerie Jarrett, it is much more likely that he did indeed have the assistance of very important people in his meteoric rise. The words of Percy Sutton about what al-Mansour told him regarding Obama certainly have the ring of truth:
“His introduction was there is a young man that has applied to Harvard. I know that you have a few friends back there… Would you please write a letter in support of him? (That’s before Obama decided to run.) … and he interjected the advice that Obama had passed the requirements, had taken and passed the requirements necessary to get into Harvard and become president of the Law Review. That’s before he ever ran for anything. And I wrote a letter in support of him to my friends at Harvard, saying to them that I thought there was a genius that was going to be available and I certainly hoped they would treat him kindly…” (2)
What possible significance could all this have? We may never know, but Vernon Jarrett, back in 1979, thought that OPEC’s intention to fund black and minority education would have huge political ramifications. As Jarrett wrote:
“The question of financial aid from the Arabs could raise a few extremely interesting questions both inside and outside the black community. If such contributions are large and sustained, the money angle may become secondary to the sociology and politics of such an occurrence.” (1)
He was, of course, right.
As Jarrett suggests, any black institutions and presumably individuals who became beholden to Arab money might be expected to continue the trend of American “new black advocacy for a homeland for the Palestinians” and presumably for other Islamic and Arabic interests in the Middle East. For that reason, if for no other, the question of how President Obama’s college education was funded is of considerably more than academic interest.
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Obama Shows Contempt for His Oath of Office
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., October 9, 2012 - The Washington Times
Team Obama insists that next month's presidential election is "a choice, not a referendum." It sure seems to be the latter with respect to the two candidates' very different views on the Constitution. Mitt Romney makes plain at every turn his commitment to that document, while Barack Obama's conduct in office has marked him as the post-constitutional president.
Consider just a few examples of President Obama's systematic disregard of, contempt for and deviation from a national charter he swore an oath to preserve, protect and defend:
Mr. Obama has simply refused to uphold federal laws with which he disagrees, including the Defense of Marriage Act and immigration statutes.
After confirming that in the absence of congressional authorization he lacked the authority to give what amounts to an amnesty to young illegal aliens, Mr. Obama went ahead and declared it by executive fiat.
Despite repeated congressional objections to federal purchase of a state prison in Thomson, Ill., to which the Obama administration has sought to relocate jihadists currently held as detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Mr. Obama last week authorized its acquisition for $165 million.
Ever since taking office, the Obama administration has sought to accommodate Islamist demands that freedom of expression be curbed lest it offend Muslims and stoke violence. For example, in 2009, the administration co-sponsored a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution along those lines. In 2011, it launched the so-called "Istanbul Process" to find common ground with proponents of Shariah blasphemy laws who seek to strip us of our First Amendment freedoms.
In September, Mr. Obama announced at the United Nations, "The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam" -- a stance indistinguishable from that of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban and al Qaeda.
A particularly ominous example of Mr. Obama's post-constitutional presidency involves his abdication of his first duty as commander in chief: to secure the common defense. Having successfully engineered two rounds of deep defense budget reductions totaling some $800 billion over the next 10 years, the president is intent on inflicting a further, devastating half-trillion-dollar, across-the-board cut pursuant to a process known on Capitol Hill as sequestration.
There is no getting around it: Cuts of this magnitude are going to result in tremendous disruptions to defense programs and attendant job losses in the associated industries. A federal law known as the Warn Act requires companies with more than 100 employees to give them notice of potential layoffs 60 days in advance. With sequestration due to kick in Jan. 2, this means the mandatory warning of potential pink slips to come would arrive just before the Nov. 6 election.
To avoid such a particularly untimely reminder of the president's dismal stewardship of his economic as well as national security portfolios, in July the Obama Labor Department issued guidance to defense contractors saying that the Warn Act's requirements would not be enforced. The pretext given was that since sequestration's potential effects on particular contracts had not been specified, there was insufficient basis to know the extent of the impact on employment and, therefore, the statute would not apply.
Of course, one reason the potential effects of sequestration are not known with precision less than three months before they are statutorily required to go into effect is that the Obama administration has ordered the Pentagon not to make any plans for implementing that next round of cuts. This directive was reaffirmed Sept. 27.
On Sept. 28, Team Obama advised contractors that, as the Hill newspaper reported: "They would be compensated for legal costs if layoffs occur due to contract cancellations under sequestration -- but only if the contractors follow the Labor [Department] guidance." In other words, the administration now wants the taxpayer to pick up the tab for violations of the law by those it has induced to engage in them.
Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, all Republicans, have been among those tirelessly warning for months of the catastrophe sequestration will inflict on the U.S. military. They issued a joint statement in response to the president's latest post-constitutional action which said, in part, "The Obama administration is cynically trying to skirt the WARN Act to keep the American people in the dark about this looming national security and fiscal crisis. The president should insist that companies act in accordance with the clearly stated law and move forward with the layoff notices.
In an important essay published Sept. 24 in the Wall Street Journal, former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey called on legislators to put Mr. Obama on notice: If, as widely expected, he proceeds after the election to yield to Islamist demands that he transfer or release the lead conspirator in the first World Trade Center attack, Omar Abdel-Rahman -- presumably to Egypt -- it "could be considered the kind of gross betrayal of public trust that would justify removal from high office." The same should apply to Mr. Obama's palpable contempt for the Constitution -- something sure to be even more in evidence if he secures re-election and, as he says, "more flexibility" in a second term.
Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy (SecureFreedom.org), a columnist for The Washington Times and host of Secure Freedom Radio on WRC-AM (1260).
© Copyright 2012 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
Read more: GAFFNEY: The post-constitutional president - Washington Times http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/8/the-post-constitutional-president/print/#ixzz28uXUBwwp
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/barack-obama-and-the-harvard-years-the-interesting-information-we-found-that-you-may-not-have-heard/
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/barack-obama-and-the-harvard-years-the-interesting-information-we-found-that-you-may-not-have-heard/
Man, this guy sounds TERRIBLE:
"Brad Berenson, class of ’91, and the rest of the conservative bloc threw their support to Obama over David Goldberg because they saw Obama as more conciliatory and less strident in his liberalism."
“'Obama was not a uniter. To portray him as someone who brought everyone together wouldn’t be accurate,” Berenson told TheBlaze, “but he was a non-combatant. He was mature and held himself above the fray. He was courteous, decent, and respectful,' says Berenson, even toward conservatives, who were a distinct minority on the law review staff."
"To the more politically left-wing members of the Harvard Law Review, this was too much, says Berenson, and Obama clashed with them on occasion."
“I’m as conservative as they come—I didn’t vote for him in ’08 and won’t be voting for him in ’12—but Obama always treated me well. I liked and respected him.”
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I dunno about that, THIS is what sounds terrible to me:
BEGIN
After his election to the presidency of the Harvard Law Review, Barack Obama told the Harvard Law Record — the student newspaper of Harvard Law School – that “he is especially interested in Constitutional law, noting the ways in which issues of race relations and resource allocation ‘are often played out in Constitutional terms,’” according to archives recently viewed by TheBlaze.
“His work as a community organizer has given him an appreciation for business law as well,” the article, published after Obama’s Harvard election by Paul Tarrr and John Thornton, says.
“Those interested in public policy have to think about how the private sector can be harnessed to promote urban development,” he told the paper.
END
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Guess you skipped over the Derrick Bell part.
Obama repaid the compliment. “I’m walking through doors other folks broke down,” he told the Record. “A whole bunch of people worked real hard to allow me to be in this position—folks at BLSA, Prof. Bell, Edley, Ogletree and a lot of others. They are the groundbreakers.”
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2175
Founder of “Critical Race Theory”
Longtime professor at New York University
Also taught at Harvard and Stanford Universities
Supporter of affirmative action
Viewed America as an irremediably racist nation
Died in October 2011
See also: Critical Race Theory Regina Austin
The late Derrick Albert Bell, Jr. is considered the founder, or at least the godfather, of “critical race theory,” an academic discipline which maintains that society is divided along racial lines into (white) oppressors and (black) victims, similar to the way Marxism frames the oppressor/victim dichotomy along class lines. Critical race theory contends that America is permanently racist to its core, and that consequently the nation's legal structures are, by definition, racist and invalid. As Emory University professor Dorothy Brown puts it, critical race theory "seeks to highlight the ways in which the law is not neutral and objective but designed to support white supremacy and the subordination of people of color." A logical derivative of this premise, according to critical race theory, is that the members of “oppressed” racial groups are entitled—in fact obligated—to determine for themselves which laws and traditions have merit and are worth observing. Further, critical race theory holds that because racism is so deeply ingrained in the American character, classical liberal ideals such as meritocracy, equal opportunity, and colorblind justice are essentially nothing more than empty slogans that fail to properly combat—or to even acknowledge the existence of—the immense structural inequities that pervade American society and work against black people. Thus, according to critical race theorists, racial preferences (favoring blacks) in employment and higher education are not only permissible but necessary as a means of countering the permanent bigotry of white people who, as Bell put it, seek to “achieve a measure of social stability through their unspoken pact to keep blacks on the bottom.”[1]
Born in Pittsburgh on November 6, 1930, Derrick Bell earned a bachelor’s degree from Duquesne University in 1952 and a J.D. from the University of Pittsburgh Law School (where he was the only black student on campus) in 1957. Bell began his legal career by taking a job in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department. But when his superiors there instructed him to give up his membership in the NAACP, saying that it posed a conflict of interest, Bell quit the Department. He then worked as an attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, where he became a protégé of Thurgood Marshall. Bell also taught briefly at the University of Southern California.
In the immediate aftermath of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination in 1968, members of the Black Law Students Association at Harvard University Law School pressured their school to hire a nonwhite minority professor; this led to Bell’s hiring in 1969, and two years later Bell became the first tenured black faculty member in the law school’s history.
From the very outset of his stay at Harvard, Bell was acutely aware of the fact that he lacked the qualifications that traditionally were prerequisites for an appointment there: He had neither graduated with distinction from a prestigious law school, nor clerked for the Supreme Court, nor practiced law at a major firm. Yet Bell mocked such criteria as being nothing more than the exclusionary constructs of a racist white power structure seeking to deny blacks an opportunity to teach at the nation’s elite universities.
It was in the mid-1970s that Bell pioneered the field of critical race theory. He was angered by what he viewed as the slow progress of racial reform in the United States, and he contended that the gains brought about by the civil rights laws of the 1960s were gradually being eroded.
In 1980 Professor Bell left Harvard to become the dean of the University of Oregon School of Law. Five years later he resigned from that position, ostensibly to protest the fact that the school had failed to grant tenure to an Asian female professor. A number of Bell’s colleagues at Oregon, however, viewed his resignation as a contrived, face-saving pretext for leaving a position from which he was about to be fired. They believed that Bell, who had largely become an “absentee dean” known for spending more time on the lecture circuit than at Oregon, was slated for imminent termination.[2]
In 1986 Bell joined the faculty of Stanford Law School and instantly became a source of controversy. Many of his students there complained that he was not using his position to teach principles of law, but rather as a platform from which to indoctrinate his captive audience to his leftwing theories and worldviews. Cognizant of Bell’s glaring deficiencies as a teacher but afraid to openly address them, Stanford quietly instituted a lecture series designed to help his students learn the course material that Bell was not teaching them. Perceiving this measure as a racial affront, Bell left Stanford and returned to Harvard Law School in the fall of 1986.[3]
Soon after his arrival at Harvard, Bell staged a five-day sit-in in his office to protest the University's failure to grant tenure to two professors who espoused critical race theory.
In April 1990 Professor Bell demanded that Harvard Law School hire a black woman—specifically, the visiting professor Regina Austin (who was also an adherent of critical race theory)—as a tenured faculty member. Bell explained that black female law students at Harvard were in desperate need of “role models,” like Austin, with whom they could identify. Though Harvard had a longstanding policy that forbade the hiring of visiting professors during the year of their residence at the school, Bell issued a “non-negotiable demand” that Austin be given a faculty position.[4] And even though 45 percent of Harvard Law's faculty appointments during the preceding decade had gone to minorities and women, none was both black and female—hence Professor Bell's objection.[5]
When the law school would not cave to Bell’s pressure, the professor protested by taking a leave of absence from his $120,000-per-year teaching post. It should be noted, however, that even if Harvard had agreed to grant tenure to Regina Austin, Bell would not have been satisfied. As he would later write in a law-review article condemning schools for hiring only “token” minorities: “The hiring of a few minorities and women—particularly when a faculty is under pressure from students or civil rights agencies—is not a departure from … this power-preserving doctrine” of white male supremacy.[6]
During his leave of absence from Harvard, Bell in 1990 took a position as a full-time visiting professor at New York University (NYU) School of Law.
In 1991, at the height of the controversy over Professor Austin, then-Harvard Law School student Barack Obama spoke at a well-attended campus rally in support of Bell's position. Obama described Bell as a man known for “speaking the truth” and for an “excellence of ... scholarship” that had not only “opened up new vistas and new horizons,” but had “changed the standards [of what] legal writing is about.”
Since Bell viewed racial minorities as a permanently oppressed caste—and saw racism as a normal, permanent aspect of American life—he reasoned that equality before the law was unfair to blacks, whose moral claims were superior to those of whites. Thus Bell was a passionate proponent of racial preferences (i.e., affirmative action) as a means of minimizing what he viewed as the inevitably harmful effects of white Americans’ inherently racist impulses. In 1991 Bell was among the first critics to condemn the nomination of Clarence Thomas (who opposed affirmative action) to the U.S. Supreme Court, stating: “To place a person who looks black and who, in conservative terms, thinks white, is an insult.”
Bell eventually extended his stint as an NYU visiting professor to two years and then, later still, announced that he planned to spend a third year at NYU. But a third year would have required not only NYU’s waiver of time limits on visiting professorships, but also Harvard’s waiver of its firm policy forbidding professors to be on leave for more than two years. Harvard dean Robert Clark warned Bell that if he did not return to his post, he would lose his place on Harvard’s faculty. Bell refused to return, and thus lost his job at Harvard. After that, he continued to teach at NYU until the end of his life.
In 1992 Bell published his most well-known book, Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism. A few of the book's most notable quotes on the subject of race include the following:
"Despite undeniable progress for many, no African Americans are insulated from incidents of racial discrimination. Our careers, even our lives, are threatened because of our color."[7]
"[T]he racism that made slavery feasible is far from dead ... and the civil rights gains, so hard won, are being steadily eroded."[8]
"... few whites are ready to actively promote civil rights for blacks."[9]
"[D]iscrimination in the workplace is as vicious (if less obvious) than it was when employers posted signs 'no negras need apply.'"[10]
“It has begun to seem that blacks, particularly black men, who lack at least two college degrees, are not hired in any position above the most menial.”[11]
"We rise and fall less as a result of our efforts than in response to the needs of a white society that condemns all blacks to quasi citizenship as surely as it segregated our parents."[12]
"Slavery is, as an example of what white America has done, a constant reminder of what white America might do."[13]
"Black people will never gain full equality in this country.… African Americans must confront and conquer the otherwise deadening reality of our permanent subordinate status."[14]
"Tolerated in good times, despised when things go wrong, as a people we [blacks] are scapegoated and sacrificed as distraction or catalyst for compromise to facilitate resolution of political differences or relieve economic adversity."[15]
"The fact that, as victims, we suffer racism's harm but, as a people, [we] cannot share the responsibility for that harm, may be the crucial component in a definition of what it is to be black in America.”[16]
“Victimized themselves by an uncaring society, some blacks vent their rage on victims like themselves.”[17]
Racism remains “an integral, permanent, and indestructible component of this society.”[18]
Also in Faces at the Bottom of the Well, Bell described the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan as “smart and superarticulate,” calling him “perhaps the best living example of a black man ready, willing and able to ‘tell it like it is’ regarding who is responsible for racism in this country.” In a 1992 interview, Bell elaborated: “I see Louis Farrakhan as a great hero for the people. I don't agree with everything he says and some of his tactics or whatever, but hell, I don’t agree with everything anybody says.”
Many of Bell's writings were in the form of parables wherein he placed legal and social commentary into the mouths of invented characters. One of his best-known parables was “The Space Traders,” which appeared in Faces at the Bottom of the Well. In the story, as Bell later described it, creatures from another planet offer the United States “enough gold to retire the national debt, a magic chemical that will cleanse America’s polluted skies and waters, and a limitless source of safe energy to replace our dwindling reserves.” In exchange, the creatures ask only that America hand over its black population, to be dispatched permanently into outer space. An overwhelming majority of whites accept the offer. (In 1994 this story was adapted as one of three segments in a television movie titled Cosmic Slop.)
In 1992 Bell again articulated to his low regard for white people: “I’ve accepted that as my motto—I liv[e] to harass white folk.”
In August 1993 Bell continued to impugn Harvard Law School—which he said was ever-eager to grant tenure to “the white boys”—for having failed to add “a woman of color” to its tenured faculty.
In 1994 Bell was quoted as having predicted that eventually America would witness the rise of charismatic new black leaders who, in the interests of retributive racial justice, would “urge that instead of [African Americans] killing each other, they should go out in gangs and kill a whole lot of white people.”[19]
In a New York Observer interview published on October 10, 1994, Bell denounced "all the Jewish neoconservative racists who are undermining blacks in every way they can." The very same interview began with Bell stating: “We should really appreciate the Louis Farrakhans and the Khalid Muhammads while we’ve got them.” (Khalid Muhammad was a Farrakhan ally who referred to Jews as “bloodsuckers” whose “father was the devil.”)
Bell endorsed a journal called Race Traitor, whose stated aim is “to abolish the white race, which means no more and no less than abolishing the privileges of the white skin.” Moreover, the publication's guiding principle is: “Treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity.” In 1999 Bell signed on to a Race Traitor article that stated: “If the task of the nineteenth century was to overthrow slavery, and the task of the twentieth century was to end legal segregation, the key to solving this country’s problems in the twenty-first century is to abolish the white race as a social category—in other words, eradicate white supremacy entirely.” Among Bell's fellow signatories were Pete Seeger, Cornel West, and Howard Zinn.
In 2002 Bell said, “I've sometimes wondered whether this society could exist without racism. Because this is a country built on property ownership, and most white people don’t have that much property … you know, land and bonds and money in the bank, what they have is a sense of entitlement based on being white. And that's very hard to give up.”
In 2007 Bell came to the defense of Ward Churchill, the former University of Colorado professor who had lost his job in 2006 because of academic misconduct. Churchill had previously gained notoriety for his 2001 essay, “Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens.” In that piece, the author disclosed his belief that the 9/11 attacks were logical reprisals for unjust U.S. foreign policy measures vis a vis the Middle East, and for the alleged ravages of global capitalism as spearheaded by America.
Bell authored several books on race and the law, including Silent Covenants: Brown V. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform (2004); Ethical Ambition: Living a Life of Meaning and Worth (2002); Race, Racism, and American Law (2000); Constitutional Conflicts (1997); Confronting Authority: Reflections of an Ardent Protester (1994); Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (1992); And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice (1989); and Civil Rights: Leading Cases (1980).
Bell died of carcinoid cancer on October 5, 2011.
NOTES:
[1] Derrick Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well (New York: Basic Books, 1992), p. 152.
[2] University of Texas at Austin, Dr. Jim Scheurich, “Introduction to Systems of Human Inquiry,” The History of Critical Race Theory Project (Spring 2001), p. 34. Cited in David Horowitz, The Professors, p. 58.
[3] Ibid.
[4] David Horowitz, The Professors, p. 58.
[5] Fox Butterfield, “Harvard Law School Torn by Race Issue,” The New York Times (April 26, 1990).
[6] David Horowitz, The Professors, p. 59.
[7] Derrick Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well, p. 3.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid., p. 4.
[10] Ibid., p. 5.
[11] Ibid., p. 15.
[12] Ibid., p. 10.
[13.] Ibid., p. 12.
[14] Ibid., pp. 12, 113.
[15] Ibid., p. 10.
[16] Ibid., p. 155.
[17] Ibid., p. 196.
[18] Source: Faces at the Bottom of the Well (Cited in D'Souza, The End of Racism, p. 17.)
[19] Robert Boynton, “Professor Bell, Sage of Black Rage,” New York Observer (October 10, 1994), p. 1.
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Guess you skipped over the Derrick Bell part.
And you skipped the part where he was courteous to conservatives, to the point where his more liberal colleagues grew frustrated and impatient with him. And, the part where was a pretty moderate liberal, all things considered. I do appreciate the extended discussion of Bell, though. I must have totally missed it on the forum when he died. And when the video of Obama's talk appreciating him made some waves here and such.
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/theoval/2012/10/24/obama-trump-5-million-offer/1654437/
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Guess you skipped over the Derrick Bell part.
And you skipped the part where he was courteous to conservatives, to the point where his more liberal colleagues grew frustrated and impatient with him. And, the part where was a pretty moderate liberal, all things considered. I do appreciate the extended discussion of Bell, though. I must have totally missed it on the forum when he died. And when the video of Obama's talk appreciating him made some waves here and such.
I think his drug use and general laziness is a better explanation for his "courteousness".
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“Obama: ‘Deep Down … There’s a Laziness in Me,’” National Journal reports, complete with a hilariously shocked, “unexpected” tone in its lede:
The personality trait President Obama says he most deplores in himself and others is not exactly one you’d expect from, presumably, one of the busiest people in the world: laziness.
“You’re lazy?” Barbara Walters incredulously asked Obama, sitting alongside the first lady, in an interview scheduled to air on ABC on Friday night but previewed ahead of time.
“It’s interesting…. Deep down underneath all the work I do, I think there’s a laziness in me,” Obama said. “It’s probably from growing up in Hawaii, and it’s sunny outside. Sitting on the beach.”
Obama then added the trait he truly most dislikes in others is cruelty. “I can’t stand cruel people,” he said.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/chapter-ii-the-myth-of-the-rock-star-professor/article/2508418
The myth of the 'rock-star professor'
September 19, 2012 | 10:34 pm | Modified: September 20, 2012 at 12:04 am
Obama with his grandparents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, on a park bench in New York City, when Obama was a student at Columbia University. (Associated Press) Time magazine gushed in 2008 about Barack Obama's 12-year tenure as a law lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, saying, "Within a few years, he had become a rock-star professor with hordes of devoted students."
That may have been true during his first two years, when he ranked first among the law school's 40 instructors, with students giving him a rating of 9.7 out of a possible 10.
But law student evaluations made available to The Washington Examiner by the university showed that his popularity then fell steadily.
In 1999, only 23 percent of the students said they would repeat Obama's racism class. He was the third-lowest-ranked lecturer at the law school that year. And in 2003, only a third of the student evaluators recommended his classes.
His classes were small. A spring 1994 class attracted 14 out of a student body of 600; a spring 1996 class drew 13. In 1997, he had the largest class of his tenure with 49 students. But by then, his student rating had fallen to 7.75. Twenty-two of 40 faculty members ranked higher than Obama.
Some former faculty colleagues today describe Obama as disengaged, doing only what was minimally required and almost never participating in faculty activities.
And, unlike others on the Chicago Law School faculty who published numerous articles in legal journals, Obama's byline did not appear in a single legal journal while he taught there.
By comparison, more prominent legal scholars on the Chicago faculty wrote frequently. Federal Judge Richard Posner published 132 legal articles from 1993 to 2004, and federal Judge Frank Easterbrook published 32 legal articles from 1992 to 2004.
Obama has often cited his days at the law school as an important part of his preparation for the presidency. At a March 30, 2007, fundraiser, for example, he said, "I was a constitutional law professor, which means, unlike the current president, I actually respect the Constitution."
From 1992 until 2004, Obama taught three courses: "Current Issues in Racism and the Law," "Voting Rights and the Democratic Process," and "Equal Protection and Substantive Due Process."
Obama wasn't a professor; he was a lecturer, a position that the Chicago Law School said in 2008 "signifies adjunct status." He was elevated to a "senior lecturer" in 1996, the year he was first elected to the Illinois Senate in Springfield.
The new faculty status put him on par with Posner, Easterbrook and a third federal judge, Diane Wood. As the Chicago Law School explained, senior lecturers "have high-demand careers in politics or public service which prevent full time teaching."
Senior lecturers were, however, still expected to participate in university activities. University of Chicago Law School Senior Lecturer Richard Epstein told The Washington Examiner that Obama did not do so.
Obama, Epstein said, "did the minimal amount of work to get through. No one remembers him. He was not a participant in luncheons or workshops. He was here and gone."
Robert Alt, a former Obama student, echoes Epstein, telling the Examiner that "I think it's fair to say he wasn't engaged in the intellectual life of Chicago outside of the classroom."
Alt is director of the conservative Heritage Foundation's Rule of Law Programs and a senior legal fellow.
Alt said, "When you have faculty giving faculty lectures, you'd literally have packed rooms in which it's not unusual to have just all the big names of the university. It wasn't unusual to see Easterbrook and Posner, and it wasn't unusual to see the Nobel laureates attending as well."
Even so, Alt said, "I never remember ever seeing Obama in the audience."
Obama was also a no-show for the faculty workshops, nonclassroom lectures and moot court cases judged by sitting members of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals of the U.S. Current Chicago Law School professor Lisa Bernstein said faculty lecturers are still encouraged to participate in as many such events as possible.
The pattern of minimal performance at the Chicago campus was not an exception to the rule for Obama. In the state Senate during the same years he was lecturing, Obama voted "present" nearly 130 times, the most of any legislator in the chamber.
When then-Sen. Hillary Clinton made Obama's state Senate voting record an issue in their Democratic presidential primary contest in 2007, the New York Times said it found at least 36 instances when Obama was the lone "present" vote or was one of six or fewer lawmakers casting that vote.
And during his lone term as a U.S. senator, according to Gov Track.us: "From Jan 2005 to Oct 2008, Obama missed 314 of 1300 recorded or roll call votes, which is 24.0%. This is worse than the median of 2.4%."
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/ever-wonder-how-obama-got-into-occidental-college-we-may-have-found-the-answer/
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/was-obama-once-an-indonesian-citizen-heres-what-we-found-when-we-went-there-looking/
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FEBRUARY 15, 2013: The Supreme Court of the United States in full conference will review evidence of forged I.D.'s used by the president.
From: the Law offices of Orly Taitz
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States John Roberts scheduled a case by attorney Orly Taitz dealing with Barack Hussein Obama’s use of forged IDs to be heard in conference before the full Supreme Court.
The case titled Noonan, Judd, MacLeran, Taitz v Bowen provides a mountain of evidence of Barack Obama using a last name not legally his, forged Selective Service application, forged long form and short form birth certificate and a Connecticut Social Security number 042-68-4425 which was never assigned to him according to E-Verify and SSNVS. Additionally, this case provides evidence of around one and a half million invalid voter registrations in the state of California alone.
Please, keep in mind, Richard Nixon was reelected and sworn in, but later was forced to resign as a result of Watergate. over 30 high ranking officials of Nixon administration including Attorney General of the United States and White House Counsel were indicted, convicted and went to prison.
Obama Forgery gate is a hundred times bigger then Watergate. More corrupt high ranking officials, US Attorneys, AGs and judges were complicit, committed high treason by allowing a citizen of Indonesia and possibly still a citizen of Kenya Barack Hussein Obama, aka Barack (Barry) Soebarkah, aka Barack (Barry) Soetoro to usurp the U.S. Presidency by use of forged IDs and a stolen Social security number.
http://www.orlytaitzesq.com/?p=375765
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/09/orly-taitz-birther-
supreme-court_n_2443077.html
(In the search box, check docket files then enter 12A606)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2976497/posts
http://www.supremecourt.gov/Search.aspx?FileName=%2Fdocketfiles%2F12a606.htm
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Valerie Jarrett’s Influence on Obama
Posted By Jamie Glazov On March 26, 2014 @ www.frontpagemag.com
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Dr. Paul Kengor, a professor of political science at Grove City College. His books include The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor and Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century. His latest book is 11 Principles of a Reagan Conservative.
FP: Paul Kengor, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
I would like to talk to you today about Valerie Jarrett, her background, her relationship with Barack Obama, and her influence in the Obama White House.
Let’s begin first with who Valerie Jarrett is — and her relationship with Barack Obama.
Kengor: Thanks Jamie.
Valerie Jarrett is President Obama’s single most important and influential adviser. No one else in the White or the entire administration is as close to Obama. She has been described as everything from his “right-hand woman” to like a sister and even a mother to Obama. To cite some mainstream/leftist sources: The New York Times says she’s Obama’s “closest friend in the White House,” his “envoy,” his “emissary,” and his “all-purpose ambassador.” The Times calls her the “ultimate Obama insider.” Dana Milbank says her connection to Obama is “deep and personal” and that she’s “the real center of Obama’s inner circle.”
Obama himself calls her one of his “oldest friends” and says “I trust her completely.”
As for Jarrett, she says that she and Obama have a “shared view of where the United States fits in the world.” She says they “have kind of a mind meld.” She’s says that “chances are, what he wants to do is what I’d want to do.”
FP: Ok, so that begs the next question: What is it exactly that they want to do?
Kengor: That’s a very good question. I think the best I can say, which is admittedly at times vague from a policy standpoint, is that both favor some form of leftist “fundamental transformation.”
In domestic policy, we can expect them to desire and pursue the kinds of policies that Obama was able to implement in 2009-10 when he had a leftist Pelosi-Reid Congress. The current Republican majority in Congress gets a lot of heat from conservatives, but at least it has slowed the radical push to the left that occurred under Obama, Pelosi, and Reid during those first two years of the Obama presidency. Those first two years were an Obama-Jarrett policy fest. That what an Obama-Jarrett agenda looks like.
In terms of foreign policy, here again it’s difficult to track down precise ideological statements and actions from Jarrett, though she has said unequivocally that her worldview fully reflects Barack Obama’s. It may even be worse than Obama’s, if the reports of her intervention on Osama Bin Laden are correct.
My sense is that both Obama and Valerie Jarrett prefer a weaker America on the world stage. The pandering to Putin in the first term was probably a reflection of Obama-Jarrett thinking, and thus so is the humiliation at the hands of Putin in the second term.
I’m also suspicious of Valerie Jarrett’s possibly having provided negative input into Obama’s statements on Iran, including his terrible Carter-like reaction to the initial uprising in the Iranian “street” in June 2009. Did Obama’s behavior in that period, which was initially so weak that even Democrats were aghast, reflect Valerie Jarrett’s input? I can’t say, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
FP: How much influence does she actually have on policy?
Kengor: Her influence is highly significant. She has her hands in every major decision, if not every small one. She’s constantly monitoring things, inserting her input and protecting her Barack. I could give a bunch of examples, but here are two.
Valerie Jarrett pushed for the HHS mandate requiring all religious believers and groups, including institutional churches such as the Roman Catholic Church, to fund abortion drugs and contraception. According to the New York Times and Politico, she did so even as the likes of Joe Biden and Obama Chief of Staff Bill Daley urged the White House to carefully consider the backlash from the Catholic Church. Biden and Daley lost out to Valerie Jarrett and Kathleen Sebelius. No surprise. Obama usually sides with Jarrett.
Especially interesting to readers here, it was reported some time ago that Jarrett repeatedly urged Obama not to take out Osama Bin Laden, prompting Obama to cancel the mission as many as three times. That has been reported by a number of sources, most notably in a book by Richard Miniter. About a year before Miniter’s book, I had written a lengthy feature article for American Spectator on Valerie Jarrett. One piece of information that was out there, but I couldn’t confirm, was this Obama-Osama report.
FP: Jarrett is clearly a leftist, but you have stated that some of the mainstream media sources have tried to suggest otherwise.
Kengor: Yes. When I first researched her, trying to pin down her politics was very difficult. The liberal media’s job is to first and foremost protect Barack Obama. They are reporters second and partisan Democrats first. And so, reporters portrayed Valerie Jarrett in soaring, gushing, hagiographic tones, exalting her as Solomon-like in her almost-unearthly wisdom. Her reasoning skills and mind were the world’s finest ever assembled in a woman (other than, perhaps, in the person of Hillary Clinton). When she and Obama sit together in the Oval Office, it’s like having all the accumulated knowledge in human history right there at once. Naturally, too, of course, the same media portrayed her as a centrist, a moderate. Here’s one of my favorite examples, from a February 2011 Chicago Tribune profile: “She is a consensus builder who reinforces Obama’s tendency toward centrism.”
Yes, of course!
I had to really dig to find examples of her early policy influence. Since then, I’ve found more. She’s precisely what we’d expect of someone who is an Obama kindred soul: a leftist.
FP: Speaking of being a leftist, what are her roots?
Kengor: She was born in Shiraz, Iran in November 1956, the time of the Suez crisis. She was born Valerie Bowman to American parents—Dr. James E. Bowman and Barbara Taylor Bowman. Her father was a pathologist and geneticist at a children’s hospital in Shiraz as part of a U.S. aid program to assist developing countries. The family eventually returned to America, specifically Chicago, in 1963. Her mother was a child psychologist who helped establish the Erikson Institute, which (Hillary Clinton-like) specialized in “child advocacy.” The Erikson Institute got funding from the Woods Charitable Fund. If that sounds familiar to readers here, it’s because Barack Obama and Bill Ayers eventually served together as board members at Woods.
Now her Chicago roots are more disturbing — and indicative of her ideology. They also connect her to Obama and his ideological roots.
Valerie’s maternal grandparents were Robert Rochon Taylor and Dorothy Taylor. Robert was the first African-American head of the Chicago Housing Authority. Dorothy, a native of Berkeley, was active in early Planned Parenthood. That’s ironic, given Margaret Sanger’s “Negro Project,” her 1926 speech to a KKK rally in Silverlake, New Jersey, and her championing of racial-eugenics. Then again, Sanger’s penchant for “race improvement” has never halted liberals’ veneration of her.
FP: There is a fascinating connection that you’ve detailed between Jarrett’s grandfather and Frank Marshall Davis, Obama’s mentor, who you’ve written a book about.
Kengor: That’s correct.
The book is titled, The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor. Frank Marshall Davis was an African-American born in Kansas in 1905 who eventually moved to Chicago and joined Communist Party USA. Notably, he joined the party after the signing of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, a time when many American communists, particularly Jewish-American communists, left the party. They left because Stalin’s signing of the pact facilitated and enabled Hitler’s invasion of Poland and start of World War II. Frank Marshall Davis, however, was undeterred. He joined after the pact.
Worse, Davis, in Chicago, worked for one of the most egregious communist fronts in the history of this country: the American Peace Mobilization. Congress called the American Peace Mobilization “one of the most notorious and blatantly communist fronts ever organized in this country” and “one of the most seditious organizations which ever operated in the United States.” The group’s objective was to stop the United States from entering the war against Hitler—again, because Hitler and Stalin were allies. American communists were allows loyal Soviet patriots. They literally swore allegiance to the USSR and its line.
In my book Dupes, I publish the original Soviet Comintern document acknowledging that the American Peace Mobilization was founded on the Comintern’s initiative in Chicago in September 1940. There, the Comintern and Communist Party USA attempted to organize a coalition of leftists and “progressives” who would keep America out of the war and out of any support for Britain or anyone opposing Hitler and Stalin—who, again, were allies.
Okay, how does this involve Valerie Jarrett? Jarrett’s grandfather, Robert Taylor, was involved with the American Peace Mobilization, as was Frank Marshall Davis.
Taylor also served with Davis on another communist front, the Chicago Civil Liberties Committee, whose members masqueraded as civil-rights crusading “progressives.” The two served on the board together.
And there’s more. Valerie Jarrett has additional family roots in these things. Both Taylor (Jarrett’s grandfather) and Frank Marshall Davis—who would one day meet and become a mentor to a young Barack Obama in Hawaii in the 1970s—would have often encountered another politically active Chicagoan, Vernon Jarrett. In fact, Vernon Jarrett and Frank Marshall Davis worked together on the very small publicity team (a handful of people) of the communist-controlled Packinghouse Workers Union.
Who was Vernon Jarrett? He would one day become Valerie Jarrett’s father-in-law.
So, to sum up, Obama’s mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, worked with the literal relatives of Valerie Jarrett—her grandfather and future father-in-law—in Chicago’s Communist Party circles in the 1940s.
FP: Amazing. And it was in Chicago, of course, that Valerie Jarrett and Obama eventually met?
Kengor: They first met in Chicago in the early 1990s. During her stint as deputy chief of staff to Mayor Daley (the second Mayor Daley), Jarrett met a young lawyer named Michelle Robinson, who worked for the firm Sidley Austin. They hit it off. Michelle told Jarrett she should meet another young lawyer named Barack Obama, her fiancé. They agreed, and the rest is history.
By the way, David Remnick, a top Obama biographer, reported that Valerie said of that meeting: “Barack felt extraordinarily familiar.” How so? She said that she and Barack “shared a view of where the United States fit in the world.” As David Remnick translates, this was a more “objective” view of an America that was not “the center of all wisdom and experience.” This was not an exceptional America. Of course it wasn’t.
FP: One final question on the Chicago roots. This gets even crazier. Tell us how David Axelrod’s roots tie into this.
Kengor: David Axelrod is the political consultant who made Barack Obama president. He coined the very terms “hope and change.” He is a native New Yorker who ended up attending college and then working in Chicago in the 1970s and 1980s and on. Like Obama, and like Valerie Jarrett, he found his political calling in Chicago.
In Chicago, Axelrod was mentored by the Canter family, namely David Canter. The Canter family has not only deep communist roots in Chicago but also in Stalin’s Soviet Union. David and his family had lived in Moscow just before coming to Chicago. His father, Harry Canter, had literally worked for Stalin’s government as an official translator of Lenin’s writings. He was a hardcore American Bolshevik. Before going to Moscow, Harry had been secretary of the Boston Communist Party and ran for governor of Massachusetts on the Communist Party ticket.
When this duty to Stalin was finished, the Canter family moved on to Chicago, which was (second only to New York) a hotbed for communism. The American Communist Party was founded in Chicago in September 1919, six months after the Comintern was founded in Moscow.
The Canters got involved in all sorts of Chicago-based communist activities and fronts: big May Day parades, the Packinghouse Workers Union, the communist Abraham Lincoln School, and in the pages of the Chicago Star, the communist newspaper founded and edited by Obama’s mentor, Frank Marshall Davis. In fact, Harry Canter was one of the small group of board members that bought the Chicago Star from Davis in September 1948 as Davis bolted to Hawaii to do communist work there (and eventually meet Obama). Canter’s group of purchasers was called the Progressive Publishing Company.
Eventually, Harry’s son David Canter, who himself was involved in all kinds of wild far-left activities, met and mentored David Axelrod.
FP: So, all of these folks knew each other in Chicago?
Kengor: Obama and David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett all have common political ancestors who knew and worked with each other in communist activities and fronts in Chicago in the 1940s. The ancestors are, respectively, Frank Marshall Davis, the Canters, and Vernon Jarrett and Robert Taylor. We are today being governed by ghosts from Chicago’s Communist Party haunts of the 1940s. It’s scary.
By the way, then and still today, they call themselves “progressives.”
FP: This information is remarkable. Tell our readers where you have documented all of this.
Kengor: I’m meticulous in tying all these things together. In my books, The Communist and Dupes, especially the former, I provide copies of original materials and documentation. Nothing that I said is exaggerated. Besides, who could make this up?
The American public voted for “change.” This is a change alright.
FP: Ok so crystallize us what the “change” is exactly that Obama and Jarrett have ushered in and are ushering in. And summarize for us: Who is Valerie Jarrett and what is the meaning and significance of her close friendship with, and enormous influence, on the president?
Kengor: I think the “change” is this thrusting of America to the left, this “fundamental transformation.”
Here’s a crucial added insight into Valerie Jarrett’s thinking: There’s a video clip of her on You Tube, from early in the first Obama term, where she’s gushing about Van Jones. She lights up, aglow, as she mentions him—and as the lefties in the crowd howl in approval. She speaks of being “so delighted” with Jones’ “creative ideas” and talks of how her and Obama’s White House hopes to “capture” those ideas. She has a giant smile. That 30 seconds or so of uncensored, unfiltered Valerie Jarrett speaks volumes. At long last, there’s the real Valerie Jarrett, without the doting protection of the mainstream media that coddles her and Barack Obama.
So, in short, the meaning and significance of Valerie Jarrett’s close friendship and enormous influence on the president is an America that increasingly moves left domestically and, I suspect, becomes weaker in the world internationally.
FP: Professor Kengor, thanks for your time.
Kengor: Anytime, Jamie. I thank you, Front Page, and David Horowitz for your time and courage.
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Obj, Nice work. I have no idea what the connection is between the President's closest adviser Valerie Jarrett being Iranian born and noting that when the world's number one sponsor of terror Iran suffered a popular uprising during his first year in office he had absolutely no reaction to it.
Paraphrasing Ronald Reagan: Liberal elites are very smart people, Ivy Leaguers. Stanford and Univ of Michigan in Jarrett's case - even smarter. But most of what they know just isn't so.
Jarrett and Obama preferred the idea of talking to neo-holocaust-supporter Ahmadinejad to toppling the regime.
Liberals have an economic view that the rich get rich at the expense of the poor and a worldview that everything would be better if only the US was weaker. Neither is so.
The roots of Obama's, Jarrett's and Axelrod's leftisms are all interesting, perhaps damning. Still we need (in my view) to de-personalize this and fight against the policies and underlying philosophies. We will still be fighting against failed, leftist philosophies long after this current cast of characters leaves the stage.
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This is going to seem a little OT at first... the recent immigration crisis has sparked a discussion here in Michigan in a little town called Vassar. Wolverine Services, a juvenile social serrvice provider, has been approached to house illegal Unaccompanied Minors. According to a YOu tube video of a spokesperson from the company appearing before the town last night, Wolverine was approached by Heartland Alliance, a Chicago non-profit that runs the Heartland Alliance for Refugee Ressettlement-- basically a pro-amnesty/ pro-immigration / pro-"refugee" (their word) group.
The interesting part is, in looking into Heartland, I discovered that several blogs link Heartland to the Woods Fund, where both Obama and Bill Ayers served as members of the Board, but (I understand) at different times. Woods Fund has made multiple contributions to not only Heartland, but also ACORN, Tides, etc.
Also perhaps interestingly, I came across a Gateway Pundit report from 2009 about the denial of a long-standing grant to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) specifically on the political refugee issue, stating "While the Obama administration extended the contract briefly in March, the bishops were recently notified that it would not be renewed. Instead, Obama officials awarded the grant to three other groups (Tapestri of Atlanta, *****Heartland Human Care Services of Chicago***** and the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants of Washington) — even though the bishops have helped more than 2,700 victims with the funding."
Maybe nothing, maybe something. All of this is of course HIGHLY circumstantial, but it serves to explain why I would be posting links about Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground in this thread.
And, of course, critics will say 'that all that stuff about Ayers was all a long time ago', and etc. I have listened to videos of Ayers several times recently. For the most part, in his speeches, he comes across to me as a fairly 'typical' leftist professor. The exception maybe being the recent interviews I saw he gave Megan Kelly. In his debate with Dinesh D'Souza, for example-- while I disagree with 95% of what Ayers said, he comes across as at least 'lucid' and I thought he managed to comport himself with the same degree of 'articulation of points' as D'Souza, for the most part. In other words, while I am philisophically inclined toward the D'Souza side myself, I thought the debate was pretty much a 'tie' on points of reasoning. For the most part, Ayers comes across **TODAY** as 'socially concerned' and 'not especially violent'. And, for the most part, most Americans today younger than me (1970) have no idea who the Weather Underground even was. i.e. 'So Obama launched his campaign in the house of some guy named Ayers? So what.?'
Anyway, I am a big believer in not taking the spin, but in trying to get as close to first hand accounts as I can. So I was Googling around today and coame up with what I thought were some interesting links, which I will post in reverse order.
The first is to the WU's 1974 written manfesto 'Prairie Fire', which i found especially interesting as it goes into lengthy detail about the need to "open a new [domestic] front" in "the revolution"; and on the need to work from INSIDE the castle walls, so to speak in an effort to overthrow the government, described as "neo-colonialist", "imperialist", etc.. For instance, descibing "their transitional strategy [SDS to WU} to maintain the militant mass base on the campuses, while we deepened our base among the working class." Etc.
http://www.sds-1960s.org/PrairieFire-reprint.pdf
If nothing else, a thorugh skim will give you a deeper understanding of the Obama presidency, as , in as far as I can tell, this reads like a play book.
The second is to a declassified FBI report into the WU, which is where I got the name and idea of trying to Google the former and see if there was an extant copy of the floating around on the internet.
http://vault.fbi.gov/Weather%20Underground%20%28Weathermen%29/Weather%20Underground%20%28Weathermen%29%20Part%201%20of%206/view
Other people (D'Souza, for instance) have done a better job than I could in unpacking the circumstantial evidence regarding a possible relationship between Ayers and Obama. To me, not really being a conspiracy theorist, it's enough to describe them as "Fellow Chicago Leftists" But the repeatedly recurring connections are intriguing to me.
Thirty or forty years from now, maybe we'll know. :-)
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https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/08/obama_i_make_love_to_men_daily_comments.html#comment_thread
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The wife of World history greatest human being
has it rough:
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/08/27/michelle-obama-even-as-first-lady-white-people-have-treated-me-like-i-dont-exist/
funny , how come a privileged white man like myself can recall people obnoxiously cutting in front of me while standing on line too?
I guess i can identify .....
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https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/barack-obama-lindsey-graham-book-034235338.html
"Former President Barack Obama’s new book, “A Promised Land,” hits shelves next week, but the early reviews are already out ― and they cite some eye-popping descriptions of his political rivals.
According to a New York Times review, Obama writes that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has “discipline, shrewdness and shamelessness — all of which he employed in the single-minded and dispassionate pursuit of power.”
I don't know about McConnell but I sure know who that really describes .
I guess O needs to buy few more properties
and Michelle needs a new jet
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http://ace.mu.nu/archives/391325.php
Sure. It's a mistake, of course...
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https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/07/michelle_obamas_changing_sexual_identity.html
It's a man, baby!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgOIEGz7o_s
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Long read, explains the background for a lot of what we are going through. The Biden Presidency appears to be just a chapter in the Obama years in some strange way.
The Obama Factor
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/david-garrow-interview-obama
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maybe he also reads the forum and liked by name for Obama:
https://news.yahoo.com/sold-soul-devil-barack-obama-113418179.html
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Amazing how the professor after 15 yrs since the start of his Presidency has learned absolutely nothing: roll:
And he still lectures the wrong people! :x
Why not lecture Hamas dingbat? Iran? CCP?
Why not lecture Black and Latino gangs?
Why not lecture criminals or drug dealers?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/obama-calls-conflict-in-middle-east-a-moral-reckoning-for-all-of-us/ar-AA1jnA7q?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=6f8a9a26d8ff4afb9d3e0ce8e44cb8e6&ei=53 :roll: