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31 March, 2008
Obama marched with Farrakhan
Can this get any worse? Post below lifted from Weekly Standard. See the original for links
Hugh Hewitt links a 1995 profile of Obama in the Chicago Reader. It's worth reading in full. He shares his views on black churches and the Christian Right, and he makes clear his preference for "collective action" over individualism. And at the end, after discussing his participation in Minister Farrakhan's Million Man March:"But cursing out white folks is not going to get the job done. Anti-Semitic and anti-Asian statements are not going to lift us up. We've got some hard nuts-and-bolts organizing and planning to do. We've got communities to build."It doesn't seem like Barack had any real problem with cursing out white folks or making anti-Semitic and anti-Asian statements, it's just not as productive as he'd like. It's the same when he discusses the "wonderful preachers" in Chicago. "As soon as church lets out," he says, "the energy dissipates." You see it's not enough to just say "God Damn America" on Sunday, you have to organize your community and get on with the damning come Monday.
Update: Since Hugh's linked back here...in response to his question ("Did many mainstream Dems join that march?"), the short answer is no. Only two members of Congress attended, as did a couple of mayors (including Marion Barry), Rev. Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton. President Clinton gave a speech endorsing the goals of the march, but condemning its organizer.
At the time Clinton said "One million men are right to be standing up for personal responsibility, but one million men do not make right one man's message of malice and division." He did not refer to Farrakhan by name, but in retrospect this looks like pretty strong stuff compared to Obama's "Anti-Semitic and anti-Asian statements are not going to lift us up." And of course Clinton didn't actually attend the march.
Obama: Babies are Punishment
Post below lifted from STACLU. See the original for links
After I exposed four gaping holes in Obama's platform yesterday, he platooned himself again today in Pennsylvania by calling babies a punishment. Of course, the Politico writer thinks Obama's answer was intuitive:"Look, I got two daughters - 9 years old and 6 years old," he said. "I am going to teach them first about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby."The answer appeared to be in response to his opposition to abstinence-only education, but rather a preference of comprehensive sexual education that includes some abstinence sprinkled in.
Regardless of your feelings on sexual education, this statement oozes with animosity. It also reveals the true heart of Barack Obama. Despite his so-called "understanding" of both sides of the abortion issue, any person that could utter such cold, abhorrence when discussing a fellow human being has no intention of displaying any goodwill to pro-lifers.
The man with no ideas of his own
No wonder his policy proposals are just Leftist boilerplate
Evidence is accumulating that Barack Obama is an equal opportunity plagiarist, readily borrowing some of the catchiest lines in his campaign speeches and ads from a variety of literary, movie, political and popular sources, all without giving credit or attribution to the original source. The charges began when the Washington Post reported on Feb. 18 a Clinton campaign charge that Obama delivered a speech in Wisconsin including a near-identical passage to a speech delivered two years earlier by then-Democratic Party candidate for governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick.
"In many respects, he [Obama] is asking the public to judge him on the strength of his rhetoric," said Howard Wolfson, a top Clinton advisor, according to the Washington Post article. "When we learn he has taken an important section of his speech from another elected official, it raises very fundamental questions about his campaign." A YouTube.com video plays side-by-side the similarity between Patrick's and Obama's speeches.
An ABC analysis later showed Patrick's 2006 speech quoted many famous phrases, "'We have nothing to fear but fear itself,' . just words. 'Ask not what you can do for your country,' just words . 'I have a dream,' just words," he said, quoting Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King.
Obama's Wisconsin speech was nearly identical, with Obama saying, "Don't tell me words don't matter . 'I have a dream.' Just words. 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.' Just words. 'We have nothing to fear but fear itself.' Just words. Just speeches."
Appearing on ABC on Feb. 19, Patrick defused the controversy by claiming the charge of plagiarism was "unfair." "It's an elaborate charge and an extravagant one," Patrick said on air.
On Feb. 18, at a press conference in Youngstown, Ohio, Obama admitted he should have given credit to his friend, Gov. Patrick, saying, "I was on the stump, and, you know he [Deval Patrick] had suggested that we use these lines. I thought they were good lines. I'm sure I would have [given him credit], didn't this time." "Deval and I do trade ideas all the time," Obama continued, "and, you know, he's occasionally used lines of [mine]. I, at a [fundraising] dinner in Wisconsin, used some words of his."
A second video clip on YouTube.com shows Obama using another Patrick speech segment nearly word-for-word, again without attribution to Patrick for the original use of the language. Patrick is heard to say, "I am not asking anybody to take a chance on me. I am asking you to take a chance on your own aspirations." Obama's speech contains nearly identical language: "I'm not just asking you to take a chance on me. I'm also asking you to take a chance on your own aspirations."
Analysis by Internet bloggers has shown that Obama's heist of language was not limited to Patrick's speeches. "Bamboozled" is the title of a Internet piece in which blogger Seymour Glass tracks Barack Obama's many instances of plagiarism, in which Obama readily borrows from a wide range of sources, including film producer Spike Lee's script for his 1992 feature film, Malcolm X.
Glass pointed out that in many primary states, including South Carolina, Maryland, Delaware, and Texas, Obama has used over and over the words "bamboozled" and "hoodwinked," arguing how the truth has been hidden from voters. He traced the word back to dialogue Spike Lee wrote for Denzel Washington to speak, playing the character of Malcolm X in Spike Lee's movie of the same name about the radical African American activist of the 1960s. Grace also pointed out that Malcolm X never uttered "bamboozled" or "hoodwinked" regarding political maneuvering in the African American community. Again, a clip on YouTube.com shows exactly how the words "bamboozled" and "hoodwinked" appear in both Obama's speech and in Denzel Washington's speeches in the movie, playing the character of Malcolm X.
Jay Freeman, writing in the Boston Globe, traced the words "bamboozled" or "hoodwinked" back to Lord Greville's memoir in 1885, "Palmerston never intended anything but to hoodwink his colleagues, bamboozle the French, and gain time." And also in H.L Menken, writing in 1928, "He does not merely tell how politicians hoodwink, bamboozle and prey upon the boobs; he shows precisely how." Freeman was writing to show the two words were not uncommonly connected, such that Spike Lee using the words in "Malcolm X" was not a unique use from which Obama necessarily copied.
Yet the YouTube.com showing the comparison with the Spike Lee movie also shows clips where the Obama phrase, "We are the ones we have been waiting for," echoes back to a music album by the Visionaires by the same title, a book by Alice Walker also using the title, a Dec. 12, 2007 column by New York Times writer Thomas Friedman and a Dennis Kucinich campaign speech in April 2004 also using the same phrase.
The same video traces a phrase Oprah Winfrey used at a Dec. 9, 2007 rally in Columbia, S.C., to identify Obama. "He is the One," traces back to the Warner Brothers 1999 movie, "The Matrix."
Even the phrase "Si, se puede," that Obama has used as the English, "Yes, we can," traces back to Caesar Chavez and his organizing of Hispanic workers in the United Farm Workers in the 1960s. More recently, according to the Moscow Times, the slogan has been heavily used by a former Soviet official who has ruled his republic of Russia since 1991. That the phrase "Yes we can," became firmly identified as a signature phrase with the Obama campaign is witnessed by the "Yes We Can" Barack Obama music video produced by DipDive.com, now viewed on YouTube.com over six million times.
The YouTube.com video clip ends making the point that many similarities in Obama's speeches, including phrases such as, "I choose hope over fear . ," or "I'm not just asking you to take a chance on me, I'm asking you to take a chance on your own aspirations .," may trace back to Obama's campaign manager David Alexrod, who has introduced similar themes and phrases into the campaigns of many of his clients, including John Edwards (2004) and Deval Patrick (2006).
New York magazine has found yet another instance where Obama has lifted lines from a movie. In the 2006 movie "Man of the Year," Robin Williams plays a comedian who gets elected president. In the movie, Williams gives a speech in which he says, "Red States, Blue States. There [are] no Red States and Blue States. There's only the United States of America." Obama, in his 2008 Iowa caucus victory speech said, "Because we not a collection of Red States and Blue States. We are the United States of America."
Source
A Decades Deep Treasure Trove
Barack Obama's supporters are quick to level the cherry-picking charge in any discussion of Reverend Jeremiah Wright's video vitriol, claiming that Obama's critics are selectively condemning the pastor with but a few exceptional sermons out of twenty-plus years of weekly sermons.
The problem with that argument is that the church's gift shop packaged and sold in DVD format the very sermons that are being used now with such devastating political effect, characterizing them as a "best of" series. One can only speculate as to whose characterization that is, but after seeing the Rev's rather formidable ego demonstrated in the videos and in television interviews, I do not think he is one who would delegate the task of selecting his best sermons for resale purposes to any subordinate; which leaves us to conclude that Reverend Wright himself holds those cherry-picked videos in very high esteem.
Now, do any of us skeptics out here really believe that if those videos are the Rev's choice for his "best of" series, that they are the only exceptional examples of thirty-six years of preaching from that pulpit? Are we to accept that after three and a half decades, the Rev can point only to that skimpy handful of videos and say, "There is the sum total of the very best of the fruits of my labors in service to the Lord?"
So what becomes most intriguing here is the question as to just how long the church has been recording and selling the Rev's weekly exhortations to his flock and just how many of those tapes may be out there in circulation. Obviously, from what we've already seen, the church has been taping at least since the week after 9/11, which means there could be hundreds of tapes in just that time, perhaps multiple thousands if one considers that most likely every performance (three services every Sunday) is taped to provide the collection from which a "best of" series can be selected.
Obama's supporters try to reassure themselves that this will blow over; but I wonder how many of them lay awake wondering just how many more of these tapes are out there and just when one of the Clintons' opposition research operatives is going to pay some disgruntled, or just greedy, former parishioner a very hefty sum for his extensive collection of the "best of" series? That cannot be a sleep-inducing thought within the Obama campaign, especially if one of those videos should contain audience shots that include an enthusiastic, wildly cheering Barack and Michelle.
And just think there's only twenty years of possibilities in this potential treasure trove. Once the Clintons get through digging, there may even be a jewel or two left for Republican oppo investigators should Obama win the nomination.
Source
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30 March, 2008
Barack Obama: Lying Again
Break out your shovels, kids. It's getting deep:"Had the reverend not retired, and had he not acknowledged that what he had said had deeply offended people and were inappropriate and mischaracterized what I believe is the greatness of this country, for all its flaws, then I wouldn't have felt comfortable staying at the church," Obama said Thursday during a taping of the ABC talk show, "The View." The interview will be broadcast Friday.Jeremiah Wright has never publicly apologized for any of his rhetoric, from his racial bigotry to his conspiracy theorizing, or his anti-Americanism.
Even with Wright gone, Trinity United Church of Christ still practices Black Liberation theology, a bastardization of Marxist socialism, racial victimhood, and Christianity-and pretty much in that order of importance-as Karl meticulously detailed in a post at Protein Wisdom. Wright's replacement, the Rev. Otis Moss, will not deviate from those teachings in any significant way, and Moss shows little signs of even toning down the rhetoric, as he compared criticism of Wright's comments to a lynching and compared Wright to Jesus in his Easter sermon. Note well:The criticism surrounding Wright has not softened the services at Trinity United Church of Christ, where Obama has been a congregant for 20 years. Instead, Moss defiantly defended their method of worship, referencing rap lyrics to make his point. "If I was Ice Cube I'd say it a little differently - 'You picked the wrong folk to mess with,'" Moss said to an enthusiastic congregation, standing up during much of the sermon, titled "How to Handle a Public Lynching."Barack Obama is lying when he says that Wright apologized, and lies by implication when he tries to convince America that Trinity has somehow changed with Wright's retirement.
The quarterback may have changed, but Trinity is still playing the same game, using the same playbook based upon radical victimhood, and Barack Obama is still apparently the head cheerleader. If Obama was truly offended by Wright's vitriol, he would have walked out on Moss as well, a pastor mentored at Wright's knee and apparently cut from the same cloth, preaching the same shop-worn victimhood at the same church. Barack Obama was not offended at the radical messages of hate being preached at Trinity, he was just offended that they was exposed.
Source
Obama, the Messiah of extreme Leftism
By Stanley Kurtz
(Graphic from Doug Ross)
Thanks to the verbal stylings of Hugh Hewitt, Mark Steyn, and Barack Obama, I got to bed way too late last night. Here's what I was listening to, and here's the transcript. (Focus on the first third.)
After listening to these autobiographical excerpts from Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father, read out loud by Obama himself, I'm left with the conviction that, in the 2008 election we are facing the mother of all cultural battles. E.J. Dionne thinks the political culture wars are over. Well, I've been rebutting "end of the culture wars" declarations for eight years. They always prove out wrong. If Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee, we're certain to see a huge cultural battle in 2008. But it's now evident that even a Hillary campaign would be tame by comparison to the cultural confrontation flowing from an Obama nomination. The transformation of the 2008 campaign into a full-fledged cultural battle is what is really emerging from the Jeremiah Wright flap.
A president who identifies with Malcolm X? A man who grew up alienated from ordinary American life and determined to avoid becoming a "sellout" by hanging with Marxist professors and radical feminists? In his commentary, Mark Steyn highlights Obama's alienation - the fact that even his many radical gestures never felt quite satisfying. Yet it's important to emphasize that Obama's inability to feel fully satisfied by radicalism wasn't overcome by rejecting radicalism. On the contrary, when Jeremiah Wright came along and offered himself as a substitute father figure, Obama overcame his alienation and embraced leftist organizing and Wright's radical sermons in earnest. Obama finally grew up when he threw away his alienated radical pose and embraced the real radical thing instead.
I was only half joking when I "defended" Jeremiah Wright by substituting his name for Franz Fanon in some post-modern claptrap. Fanon - the international version of Malcolm X - is famous for his paens to the healing psychic powers of anti-colonial violence. Now it turns out that Obama himself really did sit around reading Fanon, and the sort of gibberish Marxist professors write in praise of him. What's more, while I merely substituted Jeremiah Wright for Fanon in some postcolonial prose, Obama made this move in real life. Wright was Obama's Fanon-like father figure, turning Obama's fake radicalism real.
Even the Clintons can't compare with this sort of rearing in sixties-leftism and academic radicalism. This background guarantees a huge cultural dimension to the campaign. Pre-Wright, it looked like an Obama nomination would avoid the refighting of the sixties Hillary would inevitably bring. Post-Wright, post-Dreams, etc. it looks as though Hillary and Bill were only the warm-up act for the great culture clash of 2008.
Conservatives may think the revelations of Obama's formative radicalism and his relationship with Wright are sure to sink him. While they may ultimately have that effect, the outcome is by no means certain. Contrary to liberal denials, Obama has been damaged by the Wright affair. Yet it's also true that association with leftist and academic radicalism is no longer disturbing to large segments of the country.
The Democratic left now believes that the United States is ready for a genuinely "progressive," paradigm-changing president. They are not abandoning Obama, and are not even fully capable of seeing how damaging Obama's background and underlying worldview seem to many (although they are worried enough to try to cover for him). But the country is changing and we can no longer be certain of the impact all these revelations will have. What I do think is obvious at this point is that cultural issues will not be a sideshow in 2008, but very much at the center of things. And if Obama should win, the culture clash of the Clinton and Bush years is sure to go on at full blast.
Right now the media, and the Obama campaign itself (same thing, I know), are desperately trying to avoid having Obama characterized as the ultra-liberal he is. But the cultural dimension of the campaign is going to kill all that. There is just too much consistency between Obama's lifelong radical sensibility and his ultra-liberalism on policy issues to fool the public about who he is and what he wants.
Source
Mark Steyn analyzes the postmodern mess that is Barack Obama's autobiography, "Dreams From My Father"
An interview with Hugh Hewitt
HH: Now I know you've read Dreams From My Father. I don't know if you've listened to it yet. Do you think looking back, it was a wise idea for Barack Obama to record this book?
MS: Well, let me say first of all, about the book, I'm not a big audio book man, so when I read the book, I read it in old fashioned print form. And the reason I think it's better than so many political autobiographies is because it feels like a novel. In a sense, you get the feeling that he created a character for this book. It's not the usual political memoir in which the guy retells a dull story of how he got the airport parking lot extension bill passed. It's actually, it actually feels as if Barack Obama is an invented character. And that's one reason why the book works, but it also gets to the heart of some of the problems he's had in the last few weeks.
HH: As a way of talking about that, I'm going to play some of the clips, some my audience has heard before, some new ones today. And let's just walk through it. Cut number one, Barack talking about Malcolm X and what it meant to him. It's audio number three:BO: Only Malcolm X's autobiography seemed to offer something different. His repeated acts of self-creation spoke to me. The blunt poetry of his words, his unadorned insistence on respect, promised a new and uncompromising order, martial in its discipline, forged through sheer force of will. All the other stuff, the talk of blue-eyed devils and apocalypse, was incidental to that program, I decided. Religious baggage that Malcolm himself seemed to have safely abandoned toward the end of his life. And yet, even as I imagine myself following Malcolm's call, one line in the book stayed with me. 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. I knew that for Malcolm, that wish would never be incidental. I knew as well that traveling down the road to self-respect, my own white blood would never recede into mere abstraction. I was left to wonder what else I would be severing, if and when I left my mother and my grandparents at some uncharted border.HH: Mark Steyn, clearly a first for presidential memoirs, if he becomes president.
MS: Yes, I think so, and I think as we were saying earlier, the key word there, what he identifies with in Malcolm X, is self-creation. And I think it's, in a sense, there's a tragedy about Barack Obama, because he didn't have to be a guy who mired himself in all the grim pathologies of the racial grievance industry. I thought when he first appeared on the national stage, that he was a character more like Colin Powell. Colin Powell and Barack Obama are both the children of British subjects. In Colin Powell's case from the West Indies, in Obama's case, from Kenya. And the advantage of that is that they're not part, they're not part of what we call now the African-American experience. They're not part of the Jesse Jackson-Al Sharpton narrative. So there's something very bizarre about Obama in effect artificially trying to find ways of identifying with that particular, I would regard, that particular self-defeating narrative.
HH: That's almost the perfect analytical tool, as will become obvious in the next two clips. Cut number four:BO: I spent the last two years of high school in a daze, blocking away the questions that life seemed insistent on posing. I kept playing basketball, attended classes sparingly, drank beer heavily, and tried drugs enthusiastically. I discovered that it didn't make any difference whether you smoked reefer in the white classmate's sparkling new van, or in the dorm room with some brother you'd met down at the gym, or on the beach with a couple of Hawaiian kids who had dropped out of school, and now spent most of their time looking for an excuse to brawl. Nobody asked you whether your father was a fat cat executive who cheated on his wife, or some laid-off Joe who slapped you around whenever he bothered to come home. You might just be bored or alone. Everybody was welcome into the club of disaffection. And if the high didn't solve whatever it was that was getting you down, it could at least help you laugh at the world's ongoing folly, and see through all the hypocrisy and bullshit and cheap moralism.HH: Cut number five. He's in college at Occidental:BO: To avoid being mistaken for such 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. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Frantz Fanon, Euro-centrism, and patriarchy. When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet, or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting Bourgeois society's stifling constraints. We weren't indifferent or careless or insecure. We were alienated.HH: Alienated, but not so atypical. Cut number eight:BO: Freshman year, when I was still living in the dorms, there'd be the same sort of bull sessions that I'd had with Ray and other blacks back in Hawaii - the same grumblings, the same list of complaints. Otherwise, our worries seemed indistinguishable from those of the white kids around us: surviving classes, finding a well-paying gig after graduation, trying to get laid.HH: Mark Steyn, it's all sort of, piece by piece, he's putting himself together.
MS: Yes, and the interesting thing about it is, which strikes you when you see Obama live, there's a reserve about him, and a remoteness about him when you see him on stage at one of these rallies, as if he is, in some sense, unknowable. And I think that's true when you listen to this book, too, that he's talking about neocolonialism and patriarchy and Euro-centrism. And there's a kind of air of amused detachment about it. He's using the terms ironically. But it's never clear, and never swims into focus what it is he really believes. And it's an interesting contrast with his wife. If you listen to Michelle Obama, and she was using words like Euro-centrism and patriarch and neocolonialism, you would feel for sure that she meant that for real, and meant it seriously. With Obama, again, there seems to be something empty deep down inside him. What is it that he really believes? Who is he really?
HH: A deep ambiguity continues. Cut number 13:BO: In 1983, I decided to become a community organizer. There wasn't much detail to the idea. I didn't know anyone making a living that way. When classmates in college asked me just what it was that a community organizer did, I couldn't answer them directly. Instead, I'd pronounce on the need for change. Change won't come from the top, I would say. Change will come from a mobilized grass roots. That's what I'll do. I'll organize black folks. At the grass roots. For change. And my friends, black and white, would heartily commend me for my ideals before heading toward the post office to mail in their graduate school applications.HH: But before he became a community organizer, he had to go to work for a little bit. Cut number 14:BO: Eventually, a consulting house to a multinational corporation agreed to hire me as a research assistant. Like a spy behind enemy lines, I arrived every day at my mid-Manhattan office, and sat at my computer terminal, checking the Reuters machine that blinked bright emerald messages from across the globe. As far as I could tell, I was the only black man in the company, a source of shame for me, but a source of considerable pride for the company's secretarial pool.HH: Mark Steyn, throughout the memoir, there is a hostility, sometimes not concealed at all, to basic capitalism, and a sort of profound economic ignorance. And we heard that today in a speech he made on the economy. But he doesn't disguise it, at least.
MS: No, and when he says he's a spy behind enemy lines at this company he was working for in midtown Manhattan, this is ridiculous. This is a fellow who's had a privileged upbringing, been to some of the best educational institutions on the planet. What is fake is not the job in mid-town Manhattan. What smells phony is his decision to become a "community organizer". As he says, he can't explain to any of his college pals what it actually is. In fact, I still don't know what it is. What is a community organizer? I mean, it has a sort of Marxist air, as if you're in a sense corralling the proletariat into, and honing them into a tool to overthrow capitalist oppression. But other than that, nobody can tell me what it is that a community organizer is. It's a ridiculous thing.
HH: Let's skip to the end before the break. This is Barack at his father's gravesite, weeping and reflecting on his life. Cut number 24:BO: For a long time, I sat between the two graves and wept. When my tears were finally spent, I felt a calmness wash over me. I felt the circle finally close. I realized that who I was, what I cared about, was no longer just a matter of intellect or obligation, no longer a construct of words. I saw that my life in America, the black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I'd felt as a boy, the frustration and hope I had witnessed in Chicago, all of it was connected with this small plot of Earth an ocean away, connected by more than the accident of a name, or the color of my skin. The pain I felt was my father's pain. My questions were my brothers' questions. Their struggle, my birthright.HH: Mark Steyn, thirty seconds to the break, do you think he set out to write a classic of African-American literature?
MS: I think in a sense, he decided to invent a novelistic character called Barack Obama. I think it reads like, instead of an autobiography, it reads like a sort of Gatsbyesque tale of self-invention.
- - - -
HH: We're listening to some audio, trying to figure out what Barack Obama's memoir of his early life means. Let's go to Africa. Barack's in a conservation with his half-sister, Aoma, about family in-fighting over the house that they have inherited from their father and his mixed up estate. And here, she's complaining about being responsible for upkeep on the house, and fixing things. Just take a listen. Cut number 16:BO: It would belong to them. We can do all that, Aoma, I said. She shook her head. Let me tell you what I start thinking then. I think of who will take care of the house if I'm not here. I think who can I count on to make sure that a leak gets fixed, or that the fence gets mended. It's terrible, selfish, I know. All I can do when I think this way is to get mad at the Old Man, because he didn't build this house for us. We are the children, Barack. Why do we have to take care of everyone? Everything is upside down, crazy. I had to take care of myself, just like Bernard. Now I'm used to living my own life, just like a German. Everything is organized. If something is broken, I fix it. If something goes wrong, it's my own fault. If I have it, I send money to the family. And they can do with it what they want, and I won't depend on them, and they won't depend on me. It sounds lonely, I said. Oh, I know, Barack. That is why I keep coming home. That is why I'm still dreaming.HH: It doesn't sound lonely to me, Mark Steyn. It sounds like home ownership, but this is sort of the self-pity that pervades this whole Kenyan side of the family.
MS: Yes, it's interesting to me. I mentioned Colin Powell earlier. Again, they come from similar backgrounds, you might think, except that Colin Powell, whatever one feels about him, and I certainly have differences with him as a so-called moderate Republican, but he's very secure in his sense of himself. And clearly, Barack Obama isn't. There's a big hole. That hole, in part, was left by, I think, that hole inside him is in many ways the fault of his father. And he has been trying to fill that hole his whole life. And one way he's been trying to fill that is by trying on various identities in hopes that he can find something that fits. That, I think, explains largely his twenty years at Trinity Church with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. But there is something missing. The story of his life and his book is this great sense of something missing. And that is what differentiates him from, say, Colin Powell when you read Colin Powell's autobiography.
HH: One last cut, it's fairly long. It's two minutes, but we're back with Barack at his father's gravesite in Kenya, and he's reflecting on the stern, old man that was his grandfather, and his great-grandfather. And it goes right to what you've been saying. Cut number 23:BO: I dropped to the ground and swept my hand across the smooth, yellow tile. Oh, father, I cried, there was no shame in your confusion, just as there had been no shame in your father's before you. No shame in the fear or the fear of his father before him. There was only shame in the silence fear had produced. It was the silence that betrayed us. If it weren't for that silence, your grandfather might have told your father that he could never escape himself, or recreate himself alone. Your father might have taught those same lessons to you. And you, the son, might have taught your father that this new world that was beckoning all of you involved more than just railroads and indoor toilets, and irrigations ditches, and gramophones, lifeless instruments that could be absorbed into the old ways. You might have told him that these instruments carried with them a dangerous power, that they demanded a different way of seeing the world, that this power could be absorbed only alongside a faith born out of hardship, a faith that wasn't new, that wasn't black or white or Christian or Muslim, but that pulsed in the heart of the first African village, and the first Kansas homestead, a faith in other people. The silence killed your faith. And for lack of faith, you clung to both too much and too little of your past, too much of its rigidness, its suspicions, its male cruelties, too little of the laughter in Granny's voice, the pleasures of company while herding the goats, the murmur of the market, the stories around the fire, the loyalty that could make up for a lack of airplanes or rifles, words of encouragement, an embrace, a strong true love. For all your gifts, the quick mind, the powers of concentration, the charm, you could never forge yourself into a whole man by leaving those things behind.HH: Mark Steyn, I'm not a cynic. I just don't think this is the sort of language Americans expect out of political leaders.
MS: No, I was just listening to it, and it does sound very much someone spent way too much money on a really bad creative writing course. That, when he talks about the conversations that were never had, those are the conversations that you have if you've got nothing else to do. They're the conversations that people have sometimes when they're at college at 3:00 in the morning, and they're just sitting around, and as he was saying earlier, you know, they're pleasantly high on whatever substance they've been toking, and they've got nothing better to do. But real people, particularly hard working grandfathers and great-grandfathers in Kenyan villages, do have things to do. And you don't even have to make the Kenyan comparison. If you say imagine Calvin Coolidge sitting down and writing a memoir with that kind of narcissistic introspection riddled all the way through it, in other words, not an interesting narrative, but almost like a postmodern commentary on the narrative, I mean, Calvin Coolidge, it's an alien language to most American presidents.
HH: One more cut. This is the dream sequence. Cut number 21:BO: Aoma shook her head. Can you imagine, Barack, she said looking at me. I swear, sometimes I think that the problems in this family all started with him. He is the only person who's opinion I think the Old Man really worried about, the only person he feared. We all decided to turn in. The bunks were narrow, but the sheets were cool and inviting, and I stayed up late listening to the trembling rhythm of the train, and the even breaths of my brothers, and thinking about the stories of our grandfather. It had all started with him, Aoma had said. That sounded right somehow. If I could just piece together his story, I thought, then perhaps everything else might fall into place. I finally fell asleep, and dreamed I was walking along a village road. Children dressed only in strings of beads played in front of the round huts, and several old men waived to me as I passed. But as I went farther along, I began to notice that people were looking behind me fearfully, rushing into their huts as I passed. I heard the growl of a leopard, and started to run into the forest, tripping over roots and stumps and vines, until at last I couldn't run any longer, and I fell to my knees in the middle of a bright clearing. Panting for breath, I turned around to see the day turned to night, and a giant figure, looming as tall as the trees, wearing only a loincloth and a ghostly mask. The lifeless eyes bored into me, and I heard a thunderous voice saying only that it was time. And my entire body began to shake violently with the sound, as if I were breaking apart.HH: Mark Steyn, do we need to know all this?
MS: Well, I think that's actually useful if you're doing your first draft for the film version, and hoping that Miramax will pick up the option. That's what it sounds like. As I said earlier, this is a very unusual memoir. It reads a lot.if you imagine, say, Joe Biden writing a political autobiography, it would be yawnsville from the word go. In a sense, he's written a beautiful, self-absorbed book in which Barack Obama is an invented character in a bizarre postmodern narrative.
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Man Of Steele
Post below lifted from Discriminations. See the original for links
Judged by the power of his analysis in several books that are almost breathtaking in their perception, Shelby Steele really is an intellectual Superman. I have mentioned his most recent, and most timely, book, Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win, several times (here, here, here). He was interviewed by ABC News yesterday (or at least the published report appeared yesterday). You should definitely read the whole thing, but I was particularly struck by two things in it.
First, he discussed an Obama statement from a post-Speech interview that may go a long way towards explaining why Obama appears incapable of separating himself from Rev. Wright, no matter what the reverend said or says in the future.After the March 18 speech in which he addressed incendiary remarks by Wright, Obama told ABC News' Terry Moran that blacks do not have "the luxury" of "being selective." "During the course of this campaign," said Obama, "there have been moments where people say, `Well, I like Barack Obama, but not Al Sharpton. I like Colin Powell, but not Jesse. I like Oprah, but.' You know, those of us who are African-American don't have the luxury."If Steele is reading Obama correctly here, Obama is saying that there are many ways to be black in America, and he's not willing "to be selective" or "separate himself" from any of them. Wright's way is to be filled with anti-American, anti-white paranoid rage. Being a society-blaming victim who refuses to take responsibility for one's own life is another. If Obama wants to do something to address these dysfunctional ways of being black in America, he will have to do considerably more than "contextualize" them.
Asked by Moran what he meant by saying blacks "don't have the luxury," Obama said, "I don't have the luxury of separating myself out and being selective, in terms of what it means to be an African-American in this society. It's a big complex thing. It's not monolithic."
Steele told ABCNEWS.com that he considered Obama's comments to be revealing. "It's a very interesting statement. It's profound," said Steele. "What would be keeping him from having the right to be selective about all of those people? Of course he has the right to be selective."
"What he is really saying is that he's afraid," Steele continued. "What Obama is saying is, `I'm afraid if I am less than receptive to Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, they're going to call me an Uncle Tom, they're going to call me a sellout.' The terror of Barack Obama's life has been that blacks would reject him. That's why I call him a bound man."
That point was made eloquently in an open letter to Obama from Lionel Chetwynd, who was disappointed Obama missed "the teaching opportunity I hoped you would evoke: not explaining Wright's outrage to me, but explaining his outrageousness to him." Be sure to read this whole letter, and then save it to re-read later. It's that good.
Finally, the most dramatic observation in this interview, or in any interview I've read, is Steele's dramatic assertion that "[Affirmative action] did more damage to black America than segregation did." I hope, and bet, we'll be hearing more about that.
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
29 March, 2008
The economic moron
Reagan combined tax cuts with deregulation to create the longest sustained period of economic growth in American history. That said, what is Barack Hussein Obama's cure for our recent economic downturn? Regulation combined with tax increases. A successful President of the United States took one road and it led to an economic boom but a potential President would choose a path in an opposite direction. What do you think that outcome would be? What is the opposite of an economic boom?The government must revive the economy by tightening regulations and reforming its own agencies to adjust to the realities of modern finance, Barack Obama said Thursday.Obama has gone on record several times as being in favor of allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire in 2010 when they are due to sunset. This is the equivalent of a tax increase. But to a leftist like Barack Hussein Obama, it is "targeted" because in their minds the tax cuts only benefited the "rich". Tell that to the family whose income has them in the 10% tax bracket - the working poor - who will see a 50% increase in their tax burden with the sunsetting of the Bush tax cuts. It was those cuts which created the 10% bracket. Tell that to the working lower and middle classes when they get slapped with massive layoffs because their employers cannot afford to pay the larger tax burden created when these tax cuts expire. Remember people - it is those who have economic mobility who create jobs for the rest of us. By slapping them with a tax increase the money available to these people to expand business and make investments dries up. This will, and I'm not speculating I know for certain, this WILL create a higher unemployment rate.
In a speech billed as a major address, the Democratic presidential candidate said most experts agree the U.S. economy is in a recession. "To renew our economy - and to ensure that we are not doomed to repeat a cycle of bubble and bust again and again - we need to address not only the immediate crisis in the housing market; we also need to create a 21st century regulatory framework, and pursue a bold opportunity agenda for the American people," Obama said. "We do American business - and the American people - no favors when we turn a blind eye to excessive leverage and dangerous risks," he added.
One road would lead to prosperity the other to economic ruin. Reagan proved which road is which. Why would anyone vote for someone who advocates a road in the opposite direction? The current problem is a credit problem. Banks extended loans and credit to people who were incapable of paying their bills. The last thing the government needs to do is involve itself. Mr. Obama's "solution" will only compound the problem.
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Obama is no Jackie Robinson
Some pundits ask whether America is ready for Obama. The much more important question is whether Obama is ready for America, and even more important is whether black people can afford Obama. Let's look at it in the context of a historical tidbit.
In 1947, Jackie Robinson, signing a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers, broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball. He encountered open racist taunts and slurs from fans, opposing team players and even some players on his own team. Despite that, his first year batting average was .297. He led the National League in stolen bases and won the first-ever Rookie of the Year Award. Without question, Jackie Robinson was an exceptional player. There's no sense of justice that should require that a player be as good as Jackie Robinson to be a rookie in the major leagues, but the hard fact of the matter, as a first black player, he had to be.
In 1947, black people could not afford a stubble bum baseball player. By contrast, today black people can afford stubble bum black baseball players. The simple reason is that as a result of the excellence of Jackie Robinson, as well those who immediately followed him such as Satchel Paige, Don Newcombe, Larry Doby and Roy Campanella, there's no one in his right mind, who might watch the incompetence of a particular black player, who can say, "Those blacks can't play baseball." Whether we like it or not, whether for good reason or bad reason, people make stereotypes and stereotypes can have effects.
For the nation and for black people, the first black president should be the caliber of a Jackie Robinson, and Barack Obama is not. Barack Obama has charisma and charm, but in terms of character, values and understanding, he is no Jackie Robinson. By now, many Americans have heard the racist and anti-American tirades of Obama's minister and spiritual counselor. There's no way that Obama could have been a 20-year member of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church and not been aware of his statements.
Wright's racist and anti-American ideas are by no means unique. They are the ideas of many leftist professors and taught to our young people. The basic difference between Sen. Obama, Wright and leftist professors is simply a matter of style and language. His Philadelphia speech demonstrated his clever style where he merely changed the subject. The controversy was not about race. It was about his longtime association with such a hatemonger and whether he shared the reverend's vision.
Obama's success is truly a remarkable commentary on the goodness of Americans and how far we've come in resolving matters of race. I'm 72 years old. For almost all of my life, a black having a real chance at becoming the president of the United States was at best a pipe dream. Obama has convincingly won primaries in states with insignificant black populations. As such, it further confirms what I've often said: The civil rights struggle in America is over and it's won. At one time black Americans did not have the constitutional guarantees enjoyed by white Americans; now we do. The fact that the civil rights struggle is over and won does not mean that there are not major problems confronting many members of the black community, but they are not civil rights problems and have little or nothing to do with racial discrimination.
While not every single vestige of racial discrimination has disappeared, Obama and the Rev. Wright are absolutely wrong in suggesting that racial discrimination is anywhere near the major problem confronting a large segment of the black community. The major problems are: family breakdown, illegitimacy, fraudulent education and a high rate of criminality. To confront these problems, that are not the fault of the larger society, requires political courage, and that's an attribute Obama and most other politicians lack.
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What part of bipartisan does this guy not understand?
Today's Washington Post features a front page political ad for article about Sen. Obama, In Obama's New Message, Some Foes See Old Liberalism. It starts:Sen. Barack Obama offers himself as a post-partisan uniter who will solve the country's problems by reaching across the aisle and beyond the framework of liberal and conservative labels he rejects as useless and outdated. But as Obama heads into the final presidential primaries, Sen. John McCain and other Republicans have already started to brand him a standard-order left-winger, "a down-the-line liberal," as McCain strategist Charles R. Black Jr. put it, in a long line of Democratic White House hopefuls.So in the first two paragraphs the article establishes its baseline: how Sen. Obama portrays himself. It's as if questioning if he really represesnts any sort of "post-partisan" reality is somehow dirty pool. Later on there are two really remarkable paragraphs.In most major areas, Obama has taken positions that would seem to conform to the Republican stereotype of a liberal. Like Clinton, he favors expanding the government's role in delivering health care, and would pay for that by ending President Bush's tax cuts for the rich. He would go a step further than Clinton by lifting the limit on income taxed for Social Security, now $100,000, to set that program on firm footing.A "Republican stereotype of a liberal"? He stakes out liberal positions and holds to them. It's not a stereotype, it's his reality. And his National Journal rating is no fluke. But how can the reporter wax eloquent about Sen. Obama's "post-partisan" appeal and then write that he stayed "...out of a bipartisan effort to approve some nominees." If he really is the "post-partisan" candidate of the first two paragraphs it would have been the gang of 15.
He strongly supports abortion rights and spoke out against a Supreme Court ruling last year that upheld a ban on the procedure that some call "partial-birth" abortion. He favors allowing illegal immigrants to get driver's licenses (after some hesitation, Clinton came out against that). He is outspoken on civil rights, and he has opposed Bush's judicial picks, staying out of a bipartisan effort to approve some nominees. While he supports the death penalty for the most "heinous" crimes, as a Senate candidate in 2004 he expressed support for strict gun control, decriminalizing marijuana and ending federal mandatory minimum prison sentences, issues he now rarely raises on the trail.
The problem isn't how Sen. Obama's foes portray him, it's his record. Why would he fail to mention positions he espouses on the trail, except to avoid the fact that these are unpopular and he sees a disadvantage in promoting them. That's fine, but that doesn't make him not liberal. In fact it makes him extremely political.
If the reporter wanted to focus on a candidate with "post-partisan" appeal perhaps he could have looked at Sen. McCain. A recent Gallup poll shows:A sizable proportion of Democrats would vote for John McCain next November if he is matched against the candidate they do not support for the Democratic nomination. This is particularly true for Hillary Clinton supporters, more than a quarter of whom currently say they would vote for McCain if Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee.So a significant portion of Democratic primary voters - though still a minority - would support Sen. McCain in the general election. That would seem to be a much better indication of "post-partisanship" than Sen. Obama's attempts to hide his record. Unfortunately the Post's reporter seemed more interested in presenting a brief for Sen. Obama than in analyzing the dynamics of the presidential race.
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Obama and the Tree of the Knowledge of Evil
by Macranger
According to Obama's supporters, his words, which seem to float on air, mean something, except of course when one figures out what kind of BS he shoveling and calls him on it - then WE don't get it. Take for instance this tripe from Martin Peretz at the New Republic in a article he titles, "Standing By His Man", Why Obama was right in not repudiating his paster. Here is the key quote:"The fact is that many of us were astonished by the rhythm of the English language as it is practiced in Wright's church. Forget for the moment the content. Take a look at a service in what is now Otis Moss's church. This is a Christianity that seems to outsiders to have as much to do with break dancing as it does with the New Testament, and the culture of this one church is very much like the culture of thousands all over America.What absolute nonsense. So "black", so-called "Christian Churches" get a pass on racism because it's more "culturally" acceptable, so we should just cool our "over-sensitized" memories?
You may puzzle as to how Barack Obama, of the quiet demeanor and the Holmesian logic, can relate to this pattern of religiosity. But, if I may jog your oversensitized memory, there was more of Chicago's Trinity United Church in Martin Luther King's perorations than there was Reinhold Niebuhr. The typical black church service is not a Unitarian prayer meeting or Catholic devotions. It is something "other" that many of us have not experienced and do not know. It is not ours but theirs. And what's wrong with that?"
As a evangelical Christian who has worshipped in black, white, hispanic and even with converted Jews, I can tell you that this is bathwater. In Christ there is no black or white, slave or free, Jew or Gentile, but all are one in Him. The way we know one another in the faith is by the fruit they produce. Our Savior said, "You shall know them by their fruit". (Mat. 7:20)
No matter how it's spun Jeremiah Wright's fruit is rancid and it is fit for nothing but the dunghill and to be repudiated and condemned outright. The fact is that Barak Obama - who spent 20 years under Wright's teachings - by not competely disassociating himself from the evil of Wright's fruit consequently makes him a partner in his doctrine.
Jesus also said, "A bad tree cannot produce good fruit, nor a good tree produce good fruit". (Mat. 7:17-18) Wright is a by the measure and quality of his fruit a bad tree, and Obama tasted quite often of this fruit and from all intents - until it was exposed - was content with it's flavor. Here's a little theology for Mr. Peretz. The delusion of evil is that it rationalizes itself as good.
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(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
28 March, 2008
Obama squirming
(Chickens coming home to roost above -- via Doug Ross)
Regardless of the confident assurances from the supporters of Barack Obama that the controversy over Reverend Jeremiah Wright is nothing to worry about, the candidate himself today signaled that he is very worried, indeed. He has thrown Wright under the wheels of his campaign bus, hoping to gain a bit of traction. Obama today called Wright's remarks "stupid."Obama gave a sweeping speech on race last week in which he condemned incendiary remarks by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but the words of the former pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago continue to dog the candidate. Reflecting the campaign's concern about the fallout, Obama used a question about religion at a town hall forum as an opportunity to address the issue.Short translation: "If I can't get the media off this and onto my chosen campaign themes, I have a lot of trouble." Wright now joins Obama's grandmother under the bus as the candidate lurches through the crisis. The bad news? The report also restates Wright's anti-America rhetoric. Obama has a real problem.
"This is somebody that was preaching three sermons at least a week for 30 years and it got boiled down . into a half-minute sound clip and just played it over and over and over again, partly because it spoke to some of the racial divisions we have in this country," Obama told an audience in this central North Carolina city.
"There are misunderstandings on both sides," the Illinois senator said. "We cannot solve the problems of America if every time somebody somewhere does something stupid, that everybody gets up in arms and forgets about the war in Iraq and we forget about the economy."
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Obama plans huge Federal intervention in education
When commentators accuse Obama of trafficking only in vapid bromides it means they've not read his campaign materials. The ethereal vagaries of his pep-rally speeches given on past election nights do not convey the full scope of his plans for federal social activism. Those are only spelled out in his written campaign materials. And reading them can be like wading through a room waist-deep in peanut butter. But they do reveal his domestic agenda.
Both Democrat candidates openly advocate a form of socialized medicine. Obama packages his proposal as a new national health plan. On its face, it represents a politically "liberal" proposal. But during the primary campaign in Texas, Obama resisted being called a "liberal." He charged that those applying the label to him were engaging in the tactics of politics-as-usual saying, "Don't let them run that 'okey doke' on you." If he won't accept "liberal," he's unlikely to align with "socialist." And one socialist-like program -- National Health Care -- is not enough evidence to make the charge stick.
That's where his Blueprint "Plan To Give Every American Child A World Class Education" (pp. 20-23), and its linked, 15-page single-spaced document entitled "Barack Obama's Plan For Lifetime Success Through Education" points to another, broad, federal intervention.
Nearly all of the various programs summarized below will involve additional federal dollars poured into the vast and dynamic education industry, the Democratic Party's most powerful interest group. When you see the word "encourage" in the same phrase as "federal" or "policy", grab your pocketbook, because they want to spend your tax money.
Not just school boards, but consultants, testing companies, publishers, schools of education and a vast universe of other service-providers stand ready to reap more billions. Every time you "address" a problem you have to have studies, conferences, boards, consultants, facilitators, meeting planners, and on and on. That's just to get started, before anything is actually decided, much les created. Education is big business. Plenty of well-paying jobs, in and outside the schools. It will surprise no one that Obama is looking for "new and innovative ways to increase teacher pay" You might want to scan through the litany of proposals that comprise much of his education plan, just to gauge the scope of his intentions:Zero-Five PlanThis is, obviously, not a full-blown plan to federalize the nation's public schools. But it does represent a bold and intrusive step in that direction. Senator Obama sees the state as an instrument to redeem us:
Early Learning Challenge: Early care and educational programs for pregnant women and children from birth to age five to address gaps in services and enhance quality programs that serve all young children.
Early Head Start: Quadruple funding and improve quality; $250 million dedicated funds to create or expand regional training centers.
Voluntary, Universal Pre-School: Provide funding to accelerate the trend toward voluntary, universal pre-school for all.
Child Care Development Block Grant Program: Increase funding that remained unchanged under the Bush administration.
Child Care Quality: Double resources within the Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG) program to develop quality-rating systems for child care that reflect higher standards and supports for teacher training and professional development, improving student/teacher ratios, providing family support in child care settings, and increasing professional development and teacher training.
Evidence-Based Home Visiting Programs: Expand programs to all low-income, first-time mothers, assisting approximately 570,000 first time mothers each year.
Presidential Early Learning Council: Encourage dialogue among programs at federal and state levels, and within the private and nonprofit sectors, to collect and disseminate the most valid and up-to-date research on early learning.
Transform the Teaching Profession
Teacher Service Scholarships: Pays for four years of undergraduate teacher education or two years of post-graduate in return for four years of teaching service.
All Schools Accredited: [What will be the impact on home schoolers and charter schools?]
Teacher Residency Program: Obama will supply 30,000 exceptionally well-prepared recruits to what eduspeak calls high-need schools.
Career Ladder Initiatives: Expanded teacher mentoring programs will pair experienced teachers with new recruits and provide incentives to give teachers paid common planning time so they can collaborate to share best practices. These initiatives will provide federal resources to states and districts to help create mentoring programs. Obama will provide $1 billion in funding to create mentoring programs and reward veteran teachers for becoming mentors.
Reward Teachers: Obama will promote new and innovative ways to increase teacher pay. To be developed with teachers, not imposed on them.
Middle School Intervention Strategies: Provide funding to school districts to invest in interventional strategies in middle schools such as personal academic plans, teaching teams, parent involvement, mentoring, intensive reading and math instruction, and extended learning time.
STEP UP Plan: Addresses achievement gap by supporting summer learning opportunities for disadvantaged children.
Professional Development Schools: Obama will provide $100 million to stimulate teacher education reforms built on school university partnerships.
State Leadership Academies: Obama will provide funding for academies to enable principals to develop the sophisticated skills they need and provide ongoing financial support. Obama's plan will also support research about the effectiveness of various approaches to principal training.
Helping At-Risk Children Succeed in School
Additional Learning Time: Obama will create a $200 million grant program for states and district that want to provide additional learning time for students in need.
The Success in the Middle Act: This legislation, sponsored by Obama, would provide federal support to improve the education of middle grades students in low-performing schools. It requires states to develop a detailed plan to improve student improvement.
Redesigned Schools
Reorganization: Obama will support federal efforts to continue to encourage schools to organize themselves for greater success by developing stronger relationships among adults and students, a more engaging curriculum, more adaptive teaching, and more opportunities for teachers to plan and learn together.
Competitive Grants to Help Students Graduate: Offers grants to existing or proposed public/private partnerships entities that are partnerships or entitles pursuing evidence-based models that work.
Positive Behavior Support: Obama will promote a more effective and just method of addressing behavioral problems in school.
R&D Programs for Improving Science Education: Obama will double our investment in early education and educational R&D by the end of his first term. Part of this funding will go toward improving science education.
Expanding After-school Opportunities
Expanding 21st Century Learning Centers Program: Obama will double funding for this main federal support for after-school programs to serve one million more children each year.
[For more, read the Blueprint and linked documents.]"It is that fundamental belief -- I am my brother's keep, I am my sister's keeper -- that makes this country work."Those fine words express an ageless, altruistic principle behind countless good works, but they are not among the principles our Founders laid down. Barack Obama's broad social engineering design for America has many facets. But transforming education will play a key role when and if its time comes. And that should concern us.
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Obama's Hollow Doctrine
Spencer Ackerman has a long piece in the American Prospect which purports to be a serious exposition of Barack Obama's foreign policy and of his choice of foreign policy advisers. Obama is said to have big, transformative ideas: He "is offering the most sweeping liberal foreign-policy critique we've heard from a serious presidential contender in decades."
I got excited reading this - the kind of expectant feeling one gets upon sitting down to read something that proposes to be new and interesting. Ackerman writes that he "spoke at length with Obama's foreign-policy brain trust" in order to take the measure of the "new global strategy" that President Obama will implement. So what does this new strategy entail? Well, it will bea doctrine that first ends the politics of fear and then moves beyond a hollow, sloganeering "democracy promotion" agenda in favor of "dignity promotion," to fix the conditions of misery that breed anti-Americanism and prevent liberty, justice, and prosperity from taking root.So our foreign policy will be guided by "dignity promotion." Ackerman quotes Samantha Power to flesh out the idea:Dignity is a way to unite a lot of different strands [of foreign-policy thinking]," she says. "If you start with that, it explains why it's not enough to spend $3 billion on refugee camps in Darfur, because the way those people are living is not the way they want to live. It's not a human way to live. It's graceless - an affront to your sense of dignity.Power continues, arguing that U.S. policy should be "about meeting people where they're at. Their fears of going hungry, or of the thug on the street. That's the swamp that needs draining. If we're to compete with extremism, we have to be able to provide these things that we're not [providing]."
This is ludicrous. Islamist ideology itself is in many ways a type of "dignity promotion," insofar as it is concerned with the recovery of Islam's world-historical grandeur and the obliteration of western power, which is viewed as a source of humiliation and tyranny. Unfortunately for Obama and his brain trust, Islamism inspires a form of political and cultural dignity that runs far deeper than any sentiments created through enlarged American budgets for food distribution.
How does Barack Obama propose to offer Muslims the sense of dignity that they clearly derive from their participation in resistance movements whose most basic ambition is the rejection of the West? Is this really the sweeping foreign policy that Obama offers - an attempt to smother ideological radicalism with western materialism? This isn't transformative policy; it is a banal example of defining a problem away. You can continue reading the piece in search of specifics, but you won't find any. It ends with a cliched flourish:Why not demand the destruction of al-Qaeda? Why not pursue the enlightened global leadership promised by liberal internationalism? Why not abandon fear? What is it we have to fear, exactly?What does "liberal internationalism" mean in Ackerman's imagination? What does "enlightened global leadership" entail? Does that mean we let Iran get the bomb, or not? Who knows. Now what was Ackerman saying at the beginning of his piece about hollow sloganeering?
"He goes back to Roosevelt," Power says. "Freedom from fear and freedom from want. What if we actually offered that? What if we delivered that in the developing world? That would be a transformative agenda for us."
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Obama's Pastor Slurs Italians in Latest Magazine
Like Asians, Italians are another minority that has prospered in America .... so ...
"(Jesus') enemies had their opinion about Him," Wright wrote in a eulogy of the late scholar Asa Hilliard in the November/December 2007 issue. "The Italians for the most part looked down their garlic noses at the Galileans." Wright continued, "From the circumstances surrounding Jesus' birth (in a barn in a township that was under the Apartheid Roman government that said his daddy had to be in), up to and including the circumstances surrounding Jesus' death on a cross, a Roman cross, public lynching Italian style. ...
"He refused to be defined by others and Dr. Asa Hilliard also refused to be defined by others. The government runs everything from the White House to the schoolhouse, from the Capitol to the Klan, white supremacy is clearly in charge, but Asa, like Jesus, refused to be defined by an oppressive government because Asa got his identity from an Omnipotent God."
Every issue of the magazine published last year included Wright's column, "The Message," in which he covered a range of subjects, including his views on other African-American churches as expressed in his April 2007 commentary "Facing the Rising Sun."
"In a world that is controlled by white supremacy, in a country that is on its way to hell in a hand basket because of lying politicians, in a culture that still thinks 'white is right' and with young people who do not have a clue as to our story, our history, our legacy or our destiny, we still have African-American Christians who are more concerned about 'bling bling' than about freeing our minds," Wright wrote.
In a nationally broadcast speech on March 18, Obama distanced himself from Wright by saying he "condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy." But Obama also said, "I could no more disown him than I could disown the black community." According to his federal income tax return for 2006, Obama gave the Trinity United church that year $22,500 in contributions.
The Clinton campaign has not commented on the controversy, but in an interview Tuesday with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) said actions speak louder than words. "He would not have been my pastor," Clinton said. "You don't choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend. "You know, I spoke out against Don Imus (a radio talk show host who was fired for making racially insensitive remarks about black female basketball players at Rutgers University), saying that hate speech was unacceptable in any setting, and I believe that," Clinton said. "I just think you have to speak out against that. You certainly have to do that, if not explicitly, then implicitly by getting up and moving," she added.
Trumpet Newsmagazine started publication in the 1980s in Chicago and distribution expanded in March 2006 to several other cities, with broader circulation through subscriptions. On the magazine's masthead, Wright is named as the magazine's CEO and Wright's daughter, Jeri Wright, is the publisher. Requests for comments from Jeri Wright, the magazine's marketing staff, and the Obama campaign were not answered by press time.
The last Trumpet to be published was the November/December edition, a double issue that featured a remembrance of "Pan-Africanist" Hilliard and a profile of Louis Farrakhan, who was the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement "Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter" award at the magazine's 25th anniversary gala late last year. Farrakhan has called Judaism a "gutter religion" and said Jews are "bloodsuckers," as reported in The New York Times.
Trumpet Newsmagazine also included myriad articles and regular features geared toward the black community, ranging from health, parenting, music and the arts, to profiles of successful members of the community and tips on everything from dating to spiritual well-being.
Many political observers have said that Obama's speech last week limited the damage of the ongoing Wright controversy, but others say the issue is continuing to hamper his campaign. "I don't think it's going to go away," Ralph Reed, a long-time conservative activist and political strategist who now runs Century Strategies based in Duluth, Ga., told Cybercast News Service. "Because while Obama's speech was thoughtful and eloquent, it didn't address the central issue, and that's why he would have someone as such a close spiritual advisor with such extreme views," Reed added. "Let me be clear," Reed added. "I don't think any candidate should have to answer for the theological views of their pastor, church or denomination. But (Wright's) were not theological views, but political statements." "I think it's more likely to be a serious issue in the general election, more than in the primaries," Reed said.
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(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
27 March, 2008
Obama the fantasist: What he says cannot be relied upon
The lies and exaggerations noted below are typical of what psychopaths do. Nice of the Clinton campaign to put together the documentation below
Once again, the Obama campaign is getting caught saying one thing while doing another. They are personally attacking Hillary even though Sen. Obama has been found mispeaking and embellishing facts about himself more than ten times in recent months. Senator Obama's campaign is based on words -not a record of deeds - and if those words aren't backed up by facts, there's not much else left.
"Senator Obama has called himself a constitutional professor, claimed credit for passing legislation that never left committee, and apparently inflated his role as a community organizer among other issues. When it comes to his record, just words won't do. Senator Obama will have to use facts as well," Clinton spokesman Phil Singer said.
Sen. Obama consistently and falsely claims that he was a law professor. The Sun-Times reported that, "Several direct-mail pieces issued for Obama's primary [Senate] campaign said he was a law professor at the University of Chicago. He is not. He is a senior lecturer (now on leave) at the school. In academia, there is a vast difference between the two titles. Details matter." In academia, there's a significant difference: professors have tenure while lecturers do not. [Hotline Blog, 4/9/07; Chicago Sun-Times, 8/8/04]
Obama claimed credit for nuclear leak legislation that never passed. "Obama scolded Exelon and federal regulators for inaction and introduced a bill to require all plant owners to notify state and local authorities immediately of even small leaks. He has boasted of it on the campaign trail, telling a crowd in Iowa in December that it was `the only nuclear legislation that I've passed.' `I just did that last year,' he said, to murmurs of approval. A close look at the path his legislation took tells a very different story. While he initially fought to advance his bill, even holding up a presidential nomination to try to force a hearing on it, Mr. Obama eventually rewrote it to reflect changes sought by Senate Republicans, Exelon and nuclear regulators. The new bill removed language mandating prompt reporting and simply offered guidance to regulators, whom it charged with addressing the issue of unreported leaks. Those revisions propelled the bill through a crucial committee. But, contrary to Mr. Obama's comments in Iowa, it ultimately died amid parliamentary wrangling in the full Senate." [New York Times, 2/2/08]
Obama misspoke about his being conceived because of Selma. "Mr. Obama relayed a story of how his Kenyan father and his Kansan mother fell in love because of the tumult of Selma, but he was born in 1961, four years before the confrontation at Selma took place. When asked later, Mr. Obama clarified himself, saying: `I meant the whole civil rights movement.'" [New York Times, 3/5/07]
LA Times: Fellow organizers say Sen. Obama took too much credit for his community organizing efforts. "As the 24-year-old mentor to public housing residents, Obama says he initiated and led efforts that thrust Altgeld's asbestos problem into the headlines, pushing city officials to call hearings and a reluctant housing authority to start a cleanup. But others tell the story much differently. They say Obama did not play the singular role in the asbestos episode that he portrays in the best-selling memoir `Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.' Credit for pushing officials to deal with the cancer-causing substance, according to interviews and news accounts from that period, also goes to a well-known preexisting group at Altgeld Gardens and to a local newspaper called the Chicago Reporter. Obama does not mention either one in his book." [Los Angeles Times, 2/19/07]
Chicago Tribune: Obama's assertion that nobody had indications Rezko was engaging in wrongdoing 'strains credulity.' ".Obama has been too self-exculpatory. His assertion in network TV interviews last week that nobody had indications Rezko was engaging in wrongdoing strains credulity: Tribune stories linked Rezko to questionable fundraising for Gov. Rod Blagojevich in 2004 - more than a year before the adjacent home and property purchases by the Obamas and the Rezkos." [Chicago Tribune editorial, 1/27/08]
Obama was forced to revise his assertion that lobbyists `won't work in my White House.' "White House hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) was forced to revise a critical stump line of his on Saturday - a flat declaration that lobbyists `won't work in my White House' after it turned out his own written plan says they could, with some restrictions. After being challenged on the accuracy of what he has been saying - in contrast to his written pledge - at a news conference Saturday in Waterloo, Obama immediately softened what had been his hard line in his next stump speech." [Chicago Sun-Times, 12/16/07]
FactCheck.org: `Selective, embellished and out-of-context quotes from newspapers pump up Obama's health plan.' "Obama's ad touting his health care plan quotes phrases from newspaper articles and an editorial, but makes them sound more laudatory and authoritative than they actually are. It attributes to The Washington Post a line saying Obama's plan would save families about $2,500. But the Post was citing the estimate of the Obama campaign and didn't analyze the purported savings independently. It claims that "experts" say Obama's plan is "the best." "Experts" turn out to be editorial writers at the Iowa City Press-Citizen - who, for all their talents, aren't actual experts in the field. It quotes yet another newspaper saying Obama's plan "guarantees coverage for all Americans," neglecting to mention that, as the article makes clear, it's only Clinton's and Edwards' plans that would require coverage for everyone, while Obama's would allow individuals to buy in if they wanted to." [FactCheck.org, 1/3/08]
Sen. Obama said `I passed a law that put Illinois on a path to universal coverage,' but Obama health care legislation merely set up a task force. "As a state senator, I brought Republicans and Democrats together to pass legislation insuring 20,000 more children. And 65,000 more adults received health care.And I passed a law that put Illinois on a path to universal coverage." The State Journal-Register reported in 2004 that "The [Illinois State] Senate squeaked out a controversial bill along party lines Wednesday to create a task force to study health-care reform in Illinois. [.] In its original form, the bill required the state to offer universal health care by 2007. That put a `cloud' over the legislation, said Sen. Dale Righter, R-Mattoon. Under the latest version, the 29-member task force would hold at least five public hearings next year." [Obama Health Care speech, 5/29/07; State Journal-Register, 5/20/04]
ABC News: `Obama.seemed to exaggerate the legislative progress he made' on ethics reform. "ABC News' Teddy Davis Reports: During Monday's Democratic presidential debate, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., seemed to exaggerate the legislative progress he has made on disclosure of "bundlers," those individuals who aggregate their influence with the candidate they support by collecting $2,300 checks from a wide network of wealthy friends and associates. When former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel alleged that Obama had 134 bundlers, Obama responded by telling Gravel that the reason he knows how many bundlers he has raising money for him is "because I helped push through a law this past session to disclose that." Earlier this year, Obama sponsored an amendment [sic] in the Senate requiring lobbyists to disclose the candidates for whom they bundle. Obama's amendment would not, however, require candidates to release the names of their bundlers. What's more, although Obama's amendment was agreed to in the Senate by unanimous consent, the measure never became law as Obama seemed to suggest. Gravel and the rest of the public know how many bundlers Obama has not because of a `law' that the Illinois Democrat has `pushed through' but because Obama voluntarily discloses that information." [ABC News, 7/23/07]
Obama drastically overstated Kansas tornado deaths during campaign appearance. "When Sen. Barack Obama exaggerated the death toll of the tornado in Greensburg, Kan, during his visit to Richmond yesterday, The Associated Press headline rapidly evolved from `Obama visits former Confederate capital for fundraiser' to `Obama rips Bush on Iraq war at Richmond fundraiser' to `Weary Obama criticizes Bush on Iraq, drastically overstates Kansas tornado death toll' to `Obama drastically overstates Kansas tornado deaths during campaign appearance.' Drudge made it a banner, ensuring no reporter would miss it. [politico.com, 5/9/07]
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Obama the Messiah
He presents as a fairly nice-looking guy with a slightly dorky quality (I think it's the Bing Crosby ears); who is a smooth, albeit soporific, speaker; who boasts an Ivy League background sullied by the suspicion that he benefited as much from affirmative action as from his own virtues; and who demonstrates a sound grasp of shady Chicago style politics, including, during a remarkably short and generally undistinguished career, some pretty vicious and opportunistic conduct. I am talking, of course, about Barack Obama, a man who has shot from relative obscurity to the forefront of American politics.
To those who worship at his shrine, though, there is nothing ordinary about him. To them, he is the embodiment of all virtues. If you are doodling around with Google and type in the phrase "Obama articulate," you'll get about 277,000 results. It's even more fun to type in "Obama handsome." Then you get about 330,000 results.
That's just word play, though. The real fawning comes in the way people describe their emotional reactions to this former unknown from Illinois. Take the example of Chris Matthews, an MSNBC talking head whom one might naively credit with a little bit of professional objectivity. After hearing one of Obama's speeches, Matthews giddily said "My, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often." One is afraid to ask what other experiences have occasioned Matthews' exciting little leg vibration.
And then there's the fainting: At speech after speech, it seems, ladies swoon merely from being in his presence. There hasn't been this orgy of public fainting since Frank Sinatra or, perhaps, the Beatles. The fact that this whole thing may be the work of one or two determined fans, doesn't seem to affect some people's belief that it is right and appropriate that women are literally knocked flat on their butts by his aura.
One might dismiss all of this as the ravings of a celebrity culture, trained to become hysterical in the presence of fame, were it not for the vaguely religious note that keeps appearing when political commentators start writing about him. Andrew Sullivan, a devout Obama supporter, after admitting that Obama has little going for him in terms of such practical matters as experience or knowledge, nevertheless describes the meaning of his candidacy in shamanistic tones.
Sullivan notes that timing is everything, with Obama coming along at a time when people are sick and tired of the old Baby Boomer politics and weary of the culture wars. It is in this context, says Sullivan, that "Obama's candidacy in this sense is a potentially transformational one." In other words, despite his admittedly tired old Leftist politics, Obama, just by being himself, will miraculously bind us all together.
Sullivan is not alone. Last week, when Bill Richardson ditched his former pal Hillary to endorse Obama, he used almost precisely the same idea to describe Obama's candidacy. Richardson stepped to the podium and boldly announced that Obama is: "the kind of once-in-a-lifetime leader that can bring our nation together and restore America's moral leadership in the world."
Richardson's stated reason for believing Obama holds this power lies, not in what Obama has done (which is pretty much nothing), but in the fact, says Richardson, that he is a "new generation" who "touched" Richardson with his speech on race. (More on that speech later.) I assume that, for the average Obama groupie, those two concepts sound like good reasons to elect a political neophyte as President during a time of war and economic uncertainty. It's the "Wow!" factor.
This kind of soft, worshipful rhetoric is typical for those endorsing Obama. Deprived of a candidate who has actual done anything or even stood for anything, they fall back on emotion-laden platitudes that place Obama on a level above that of ordinary mortals. Already a year ago David Ehrenstein was assuring all of us that Obama can be seen as the "magic negro," capable of functioning as a benign black figure who will make whites feel good about themselves.
Given how rich white liberals have flocked to Obama's banner, it's clear that Ehrenstein was on to something there. It's too bad that Obama's benignity was shot to pieces with the revelation that his "spiritual mentor," long-term pastor and political advisor, Jeremiah Wright, was a racist crackpot, whom Obama revered, ignored or tolerated, depending on which version of the truth Obama feels like spreading around on any given day.
More here
The Audacity of Rhetoric
By Thomas Sowell
It is painful to watch defenders of Barack Obama tying themselves into knots trying to evade the obvious. Some are saying that Senator Obama cannot be held responsible for what his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, said. In their version of events, Barack Obama just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time -- and a bunch of mean-spirited people are trying to make something out of it. It makes a good story, but it won't stand up under scrutiny.
Barack Obama's own account of his life shows that he consciously sought out people on the far left fringe. In college, "I chose my friends carefully," he said in his first book, "Dreams From My Father." These friends included "Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk rock performance poets" -- in Obama's own words -- as well as the "more politically active black students." He later visited a former member of the terrorist Weatherman underground, who endorsed him when he ran for state senator. Obama didn't just happen to encounter Jeremiah Wright, who just happened to say some way out things. Jeremiah Wright is in the same mold as the kinds of people Barack Obama began seeking out in college -- members of the left, anti-American counter-culture.
In Shelby Steele's brilliantly insightful book about Barack Obama -- "A Bound Man" -- it is painfully clear that Obama was one of those people seeking a racial identity that he had never really experienced in growing up in a white world. He was trying to become a convert to blackness, as it were -- and, like many converts, he went overboard. Nor has Obama changed in recent years. His voting record in the U.S. Senate is the furthest left of any Senator. There is a remarkable consistency in what Barack Obama has done over the years, despite inconsistencies in what he says.
The irony is that Obama's sudden rise politically to the level of being the leading contender for his party's presidential nomination has required him to project an entirely different persona, that of a post-racial leader who can heal divisiveness and bring us all together. The ease with which he has accomplished this chameleon-like change, and entranced both white and black Democrats, is a tribute to the man's talent and a warning about his reliability.
There is no evidence that Obama ever sought to educate himself on the views of people on the other end of the political spectrum, much less reach out to them. He reached out from the left to the far left. That's bringing us all together? Is "divisiveness" defined as disagreeing with the agenda of the left? Who on the left was ever called divisive by Obama before that became politically necessary in order to respond to revelations about Jeremiah Wright?
One sign of Obama's verbal virtuosity was his equating a passing comment by his grandmother -- "a typical white person," he says -- with an organized campaign of public vilification of America in general and white America in particular, by Jeremiah Wright. Since all things are the same, except for the differences, and different except for the similarities, it is always possible to make things look similar verbally, however different they are in the real world.
Among the many desperate gambits by defenders of Senator Obama and Jeremiah Wright is to say that Wright's words have a "resonance" in the black community. There was a time when the Ku Klux Klan's words had a resonance among whites, not only in the South but in other states. Some people joined the KKK in order to advance their political careers. Did that make it OK? Is it all just a matter of whose ox is gored?
While many whites may be annoyed by Jeremiah Wright's words, a year from now most of them will probably have forgotten about him. But many blacks who absorb his toxic message can still be paying for it, big-time, for decades to come. Why should young blacks be expected to work to meet educational standards, or even behavioral standards, if they believe the message that all their problems are caused by whites, that the deck is stacked against them? That is ultimately a message of hopelessness, however much audacity it may have.
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Hillary supporter rightly compares Pastor Wrong to David Duke
The Wright Stuff is coming fast and furious from Hillary and her supporters. First Hillary criticized Obama today for not sufficiently distancing himself from the controversial pastor.
I've now learned that a member of Hillary's finance committee and a longtime ally of the Clintons has made some very explicit statements about Barack Obama's ties to his controversial minister, Jeremiah Wright, saying that it's "legitimate" to raise questions about those ties, comparing Wright to David Duke, and claiming that Obama has "used race where it suited him."
The finance committee member, Niall O'Dowd, made the comments on Saturday in an unnoticed interview with RTE Radio in Ireland. The Wright issue has been raised by Hillary surrogates Lanny Davis and Joe Wilson, making O'Dowd the third Hillaryite (or fourth, if you include Hillary herself) to hit Obama over Wright.
The interview is worth a listen, because it's another example of supporters of the candidates (see Power, Samantha) getting themselves in potential trouble by saying things abroad in settings where more candor is possible, and indeed expected, than here in America...
The comments from O'Dowd -- who's long been close to both Clintons, having served as a key adviser on Irish affairs to Bill Clinton and hosting a big fundraiser for Hillary last year -- go farther on Wright than Hillary and her supporters have thus far.
O'Dowd said that the Wright comments raised "a legitimate question" and observed that "it's interesting that Barack Obama sat in the pews while all this was going on, and never once in any of his books or anything else" did he denounce Wright, adding: "He worshipped this man."
O'Dowd also compared Wright to Duke and inadvertently said that the Hillary campaign is actively making an issue of the Wright controversy, something the campaign (Hillary's comments today notwithstanding) has been careful to avoid doing. O'Dowd said:
"I think the issue that the Clinton campaign has seized on is that Barack Obama, you know, never once raised his voice to his pastor and said, `I think your language is quite extreme here, and I think you language is probably wrong.' Because let's turn this around. If this was David Duke and he was preaching on behalf of, and Hillary Clinton was in the pew, there would be outrage about this. And there can't be this double standard. Barack Obama has used race where it suited him, but when it doesn't suit him he backs away from it."
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Obama's general criticizes the "New York money people" too
Where do Democrats get these antisemitic generals? I guess that if you have Leftist sympathies, antisemitism just comes with the territory these days. Gen. Wesley Clark is of the same ilk as the guy below. For any non-American readers: New York and Florida have substantial Jewish populations and General Clark's phrase "New York money people" means rich Jews
In the wake of comments by Obama adviser Gen. Tony McPeak the other day, Robert Goldberg pulled some quotes out of the McPeak memory hole in a piece for the American Spectator:In a 2003 interview with the Oregonian, McPeak complained of that the "lack of playbook for getting Israelis and Palestinians together at...something other than a peace process....We need to get it fixed and only we have the authority with both sides to move them towards that. Everybody knows that." The interviewer asked McPeak: "So where's the problem? State? White House?" McPeak replied: "New York City. Miami. We have a large vote -- vote, here in favor of Israel. And no politician wants to run against it."McPeak also questions whether some aren't more concerned with "the security of Israel as opposed to a purely American self-interest." It's been a while since a presidential adviser flat-out questioned the loyalty of American Jews, and yet Obama seems to surround himself with people who have crackpot views of "the Israel Lobby."
Obama's got a pastor who draws a straight line between Zionism and racism--and he would no more disown him than he would his own grandmother. His pastor preaches that Israel is a "dirty word" and Obama denies that he attends a "crackpot church." And now he's got a military adviser who thinks America's Middle East policies are controlled by New York City and Miami voters (read Jews) with divided loyalties.
A McCainiac writes us in response to the Goldberg piece: "I guess if it weren't for those pesky Jews in New York and Miami, those radical neo-cons and crazy Rapturist Christains, we could get on with a McPeak (Obama?) Middle East policy that promotes American interests by undermining Israel. Is this Obama's view or is this another adviser whose views are different from those of the candidate?" It's a fair question.
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(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
26 March, 2008
2nd Obama-linked pastor under fire for racist talk
Dim bulb called U.S. mayors 'slave masters,' blacks who protect white men 'house n-ggers'
Sen. Barack Obama has been linked to another controversial pastor, this time a declared spiritual adviser who has called white American mayors "slave masters," and referred to black preachers and politicians who "protect" the "white man" as "house n-ggers." "We don't have slave masters, we got mayors," exclaimed James Meeks, an Illinois state senator and pastor of one of the largest churches in the state, in an August, 2006 sermon broadcast on a Chicago community television channel. The speech was broadcast last week by Fox News Channel's "Hannity and Colmes."
Continued Meeks in the sermon: "But they are still the same white people who are presiding over systems where black people are not able to be educated. You got some preachers that are house n-ggers. You got some elected officials that are house n-ggers. Rather than them try and break this up, they're gonna fight you to protect that white man."
Meeks at the time was lashing out at Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley over public-school funding issues. When confronted about his divisive rhetoric in 2006 by Mike Flannery, a political editor for a local CBS affiliate, Meeks defended his sermon. "Is it fair to compare Mayor Daley, him and the governor, to slave masters?" Flannery asked. "They do the same thing. They preside over systems where they have the control of the lives of African-American and Hispanic people," Meeks replied.
With regard to his use of foul language, Meeks stated: "The N-word is not in the African-American community a bad word. It's a term of endearment. And I don't see it as derogatory or defensive, offensive." But Flannery retorted: "That is an insult. You weren't using that term as a term of endearment." According to reports, shortly after his 2006 tirade, Meeks endorsed a Rainbow/PUSH call for blacks to stop using the N-word.
Aside from his senatorial duties, Meeks is an Illinois superdelegate pledged to Obama, and also presides over Salem Baptist Church, described as the largest church in Illinois with some 20,000 members. He has served as an executive vice president for Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH organization. Meeks has reportedly campaigned for Obama and allowed Obama to campaign at his church during the presidential candidate's 2004 senatorial run. A recent Meeks endorsement of Obama is touted on the presidential candidate's campaign website.
In a 2004 interview with Cathleen Falsani of the Chicago Sun-Times, Obama described Meeks as an adviser who he seeks out for spiritual counsel. Obama told the Sun-Times that the day after he won a 2004 senatorial primary, he stopped by Meeks' Salem Baptist Church for Wednesday-night Bible study. "I know that he's a person of prayer," said Meeks of Obama. "The night after the election, he was the hottest thing going from Galesburg to Rockford. He did all the TV shows, and all the morning news, but his last stop at night was for church. He came by to say thank you, and he came by for prayer."
Meeks has made other controversial race remarks. In 2006, Meeks informed his church during a sermon he may run for Illinois governor. He was recorded telling the mostly black congregation any "white Christian" who doesn't vote for him is a "racist."
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A race conversation? What are you talking about?
Judging by the reaction to Obama's speech, you'd think Americans had never uttered a word about race. And see here for a response to Obama's invitation which is probably not what Obama had in mind.
Thank God for Barack Obama. For until his "More Perfect Union" speech last Tuesday, it seems it never occurred to anyone that America needed to talk about race. "Maybe this'll be the beginning of a conversation," Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan proclaimed on "Meet the Press." According to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, just the fact of Obama's address proves that a "national dialogue on race" is "essential." The Chicago Tribune reported that "many voters, black and white, say they were moved by Obama's speech ... which they see as a long-awaited invitation to begin an honest, calm national dialogue about race." Newspaper editorial boards agree. In the words of the San Diego Union-Tribune: "Prodding Americans to confront their racial differences is, by itself, an accomplishment of historical proportions."
Because so many people agree on this brilliant new strategy to heal our national wounds, I can only assume that I'm the one missing something. Because when one luminary after another smacks his forehead like someone who forgot to have a V8 in epiphanic awe over the genius of Obama's call for a national conversation on race, all I can do is wonder: "What on Earth are you people talking about?"
"Universities were moving to incorporate the issues Mr. Obama raised into classroom discussions and course work," the New York Times reported within 48 hours of the speech.
Oh, thank goodness Obama fired the starter's pistol in the race to discuss race. Here I'd been under the impression that every major university (and minor one for that matter) in the country already had boatloads of courses -- often entire majors -- dedicated to race in America. I'd even read somewhere that professors had incorporated racial themes and issues into classes on everything from Shakespeare to the mating habits of snail darters. And scratching faintly in the back of my mind, I felt some vague memory that these same universities recruited black students and other racial minorities, on the grounds that interracial conversations on campus are as important as talking about math, science and literature. A ghost of an image in my mind's eye seemed to reveal African American studies centers, banners for Black History Month and copies of books like "Race Matters" and "The Future of the Race" lined up on shelves at college bookstores.
Were all of the corporate diversity consultants and racial sensitivity seminars mere apparitions in a dream? Also disappearing in the memory hole, apparently, were the debates that followed Hurricane Katrina, Trent Lott's remarks about Strom Thurmond, the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas, the publication of "The Bell Curve" and O.J. Simpson's murder trial. Not to mention the ongoing national chatter about affirmative action, racial disparities in prison sentences and racial profiling by law enforcement.
And the thousands of hours of newscasts, television dramas and movies -- remember Oscar-winning films such as 2004's "Crash?" -- dedicated to racial issues? It's as if they never existed, vanishing like the image on a TV screen after the plug's been pulled. The New York Times' six-week Pulitzer Prize-winning series, "How Race Is Lived in America": just an inkblot?
It all seems so otherworldly. I feel like one of the last humans in an "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" movie in which all of the pod people are compelled by some alien DNA to pine continually for yet another "conversation" about a topic we've never, ever stopped talking about. And if I just fall asleep, I too can live in the pod-people's dream palace, where every conversation about race is our first conversation about race. Snatching me from any such reverie was this masterful understatement from Thursday's New York Times: "Religious groups and academic bodies, already receptive to Mr. Obama's plea for such a dialogue, seemed especially enthusiastic."
No kidding. Janet Murguia is one such especially enthusiastic person. She hoped, according to the Times, that Obama's speech would help "create a safe space to talk about [race]."
Who is Janet Murguia? Oh, she's just the president of a group called the National Council of La Raza, which -- despite what they'll tell you -- means "the race." In fact, doesn't it seem like the majority of people begging for a "new conversation" on race are the same folks who shout "racist!" at anyone who disagrees with them?
This sort of disconnect between rhetoric and reality is the kind of thing one finds in novels by Alexander Solzhenitsyn or Milan Kundera. To my un-rehabilitated ear, Murguia sounds like an old Soviet apparatchik saying that what the U.S.S.R. really needs is an open and frank conversation about the importance of communism.
Why do voluptuaries of racial argy-bargy want another such dialogue? For some, it's to avoid actually dealing with unpleasant facts. But for others -- like La Raza or the college professors scrambling to follow Obama's lead -- when they say we need more conversation, they really mean their version of reality should win the day. Substitute "conversation" with "instruction" and you'll have a better sense of where these people are coming from and where they want their "dialogue" to take us.
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Obama inflates his record
Post below lifted from American Thinker. See the original for links
This isn't very surprising given all politicians like to make it appear that they play a bigger role in events than they actually do. But this is just outrageous and goes way too far:
After weeks of arduous negotiations, on April 6, 2006, a bipartisan group of senators burst out of the "President's Room," just off the Senate chamber, with a deal on new immigration policy.Staffers who had been coming in early for 7:00 AM meetings where only 3 or 4 Senators showed up were flabbergasted because Obama was never at those early morningsessions nor was he present most of the time anyway.
As the half-dozen senators - including John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) - headed to announce their plan, they met Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who made a request common when Capitol Hill news conferences are in the offing: "Hey, guys, can I come along?"
And when Obama went before the microphones, he was generous with his list of senators to congratulate - a list that included himself.
"I want to cite Lindsey Graham, Sam Brownback, Mel Martinez, Ken Salazar, myself, Dick Durbin, Joe Lieberman . . . who've actually had to wake up early to try to hammer this stuff out," he said. (Via The Campaign Spot)
Obama ended up voting against the immigration bill anyway.
Given the candidate's claim that he can "reach across the aisle" and change politics in America, it is a perfectly legitimate question to ask if he is so excited about bi-partisan agreements, why didn't he participate in in those meetings involving the few pieces of legislation where Democrats and Republicans tried to get a bi-partisan bill passed?
I guess we're supposed to trust him to change his tune once we elect him president.
The Prophetic Stream, Conspiracy Theory and Paranoia: What's Wrong with African-American Preaching
There's a brouhaha about the Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr. which deserves close consideration. I have written a good deal about self-criticism, and its origins in the prophetic tradition of the Hebrew Bible. Recently I have been hearing a consistent invocation of this "prophetic tradition" among those explaining (if not justifying and admiring) Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr.'s preaching style. Reverend Joseph Lowery explained on CNN that Wright's sermons were only "divisive" in the sense that they distinguished between people who were in this prophtetic tradition and those who weren't "in the community of faith" defined by that tradition.Well, they certainly separate us from the people who are not from the community of faith and who do not subscribe to prophetic preaching. There are hundreds and hundreds of preachers in black churches across this country who may not use identical language, but they have a common theology with Jeremiah Wright. They're in the prophetic stream. The prophets of old, the Jeremiahs, the Amos, and they spoke angrily and sometimes with cruel phrases and words, to the rulers and kings of their day. That's who they were talking to on behalf of the poor and oppressed of their day. The black church has been a place where black people take their sorrow, their travail and their longing for hope and for deliverance. They expect the preacher and thank the preacher and say, "Amen, hallelujah," to the preacher, who takes their burden to the Lord. And then they join in a movement to help bring new order and a new day into being. That's prophetic preaching, and it's traditionally the black church.Similar remarks from Randall Bailey:I often wonder if those who criticize these homiletical strategies of calling the nation to judgment do not read the 8th to 7th C. BCE prophets, such as Amos, Hosea, Micah, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. They delivered judgment speeches against the nations of Israel and Judah and their rulers because of the ways in which they oppressed the poor, perverted justice, and ignored the moral and ethical imperatives of the religion.As someone who has read the prophetic texts, and thought a good deal about them in the context of the tradition of self-criticism, I think these characterizations of the "prophetic stream" represent a profound misunderstanding. The prophets are ferocious in their criticism of their own people; they have relatively little to say about the real oppressive forces in the world of their day in the 8-7th centuries BCE. When the people of Israel get smashed by the Assyrians and the Babylonians, the prophets don't go into a rant about how evil these vicious imperialists are; they invoke them as God's agents in punishing Israel for their sins. When, under more normative conditions, when they chastize rulers and aristocracy for their treatment of the poor, they do so again with vigorous, even violent rhetoric, but they do so in the hopes of changing their people. The prophets, however rough they may be, love the people they chastize, and rebuke them for the sake of their transformation.
Historically, this "prophetic turn" represents something exceptional among ancient peoples, and one of the reasons that the Jews have survived these defeats, while the other nations, once conquered, decimated, sent into exile, tended to disappear. For these rebukes of the prophets aimed at reminding the elites that they had obligations to the poor; that the people of Israel constituted the unit, and that rulers ruled "for the people." As a result, Jewish communities in the ancient and medieval world had an exceptionally high degree of internal cohesion that permitted them to survive under the most adverse conditions. Among elites in various civilizations - rulers, aristocrats, wealthy - Israelite and Jewish elites have the most highly developed sense of obligation to their commoners. Most nations, once conquered, saw their elites abandon them and join the lower echelons of the imperial administration that now held power. As Abraham Heschel pointed out, the prophets were among the few who denounced "the idolatry of power" with such fervor.
But the core reason for their success comes from the profound attachment that the prophets felt for their people. There is no trace of hatred in their clean anger, no desire to see failure and punishment, no joy in the downfall of the sinners. Indeed, their commitment to the very people they rebuked, in some cases, so savagely, meant that, often enough, those rebuked took them seriously. The very fact that these prophetic denunciations became canonized as sacred scripture - that we hear the shepherd Amos' version of the tale, not that of the royal priest Amatzia - tells us that not only the prophets, but the leaders of the people shared these values and accepted the prophetic rebukes.
All this is very far from what is here invoked as "Black Liberation Theology" or the "prophetic stream" of African-American churches. There, although Reverend Wright repeatedly speaks about "we," he really means the white ruling class who, in his mind, deliberately conspire to destroy, even wipe out the blacks, the innocent victims of that malevolence.
More here
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
25 March, 2008
Media Wrong Again: Poll Finds Most People Didn't Like Obama's Speech
One of the constants espoused by conservative media analysts is that the views of most mainstream press members are not shared by the majority of Americans. This week represented a fabulous example of this assertion as media member after media member gushed over Barack Obama's performance in Philadelphia on Tuesday while a majority of citizens in a recent poll said that they were less likely to vote for the junior senator from Illinois as result of this speech. As announced Thursday by Southern Political Report:Barack Obama's speech about race on Tuesday impressed many who witnessed it or read it. But most of America did neither, and many of them -- white and black -- were less persuaded of the speech's capacity to heal racial wounds, or to put the issue of race behind Obama as he continues his quest for the White House. That's according to a new poll by InsiderAdvantage/Majority Opinion. [...]This finding might explain media's errors:
Of those who knew about the controversy and the speech, we asked, "Taking all this into account, are you more or less likely to support Obama for president?"
Less likely (52%)
More likely (19%)
About the same (27%)
No opinion (2%) [...]
[T]he poll displays no numbers flattering to Obama. Most startling is that blacks by 56% to 31% said the speech made them less likely to vote for him. [...]
Democrats disapproved 48% to 28%, which looks sobering for Obama on first glance, but might portend otherwise. [...]
The disturbing numbers for Obama are the independent voters. By 56% to 13%, they said they're less likely to vote for him because of the speech.And Democratic whites were more sympathetic with the speech's message than black ones.As most press members are "Democratic whites," this explains a lot, doesn't it?
Source
The Obama Associates
Post below lifted from Flopping Aces. See the original for links
We've known for sometime now that Obama has made some questionable decisions on who to befriend. People like Rezko and Auchi, Odinga, Ayers, The New Black Panther Party, La Raza, Farrakhan, and how could we forget the man of the hour, His holiness in hate, the mentor to Barack..Mr. Wright...now a talk show host in Oregon is bringing up another association that Obama had that should be questioned:During Obama's last year on the board of The Woods Fund (2002), he participated in awarding grants, including a $70,000 grant to the Arab American Action Network, a Chicago-based group founded by Rashid and Mona Khalidi. In another suspected quid pro quo arrangement similar to those with Ayers and Rezko, Rashid Khalidi also held a fundraising event in his home for Barack Obama.Read all about Khalidi here. It's not pretty.
In the Middle East, Rashid Khalidi was known as a man to be reckoned with. From 1972 through 1983, Khalidi was the director in Beirut of the official Palestinian press agency, FAFA. His wife worked there as well. According to sources, when the Khalidi's left Chicago for Columbia University in New York, Rashid was honored with the Edward Said Chair in Arab Studies at that Ivy League university. Their goodbye party in Chicago included testimonials from Bill Ayers and Barack Obama.
"What other fund raising connections does Obama have? How many times can you look the other way in church and with fund raising situations with more than questionable people?" asked Ms. Roth. "We all make mistakes in judgment with people and their backgrounds sometimes, but usually we learn and pick better friends and associates. How come Obama seems to have continued hanging around more than questionable characters with anti American backgrounds and some with criminal behaviors? Now one is being indicted, Tony Rezco, who raised a ton of money for Obama," she said.
"As President, how much would he look the other way when dealing with national security and dangers to our country? How much would he listen passively to terrorist leaders then lecture us on our ugly American status? This kind of change is not what our country needs!" added the popular talk show host, whose show is syndicated by USA Radio Network
Yes, its only a fundraising event and taken in that context only it would not be that big of a deal. But you add up the totality of his associations and you have to be a little wary of where this guy is coming from, and in which direction he is heading.
Typical White Fact-Based Reasoning
Senator Barack Obama said in his memoir, The Audacity of Hope, "The arguments of liberals are more often grounded in reason and fact." Yet he also claimed that to fear a black person on the street more than a white person is a racial "stereotype", "bred" into us.
To the contrary, such a fear is actually "grounded in reason and fact." When the numbers are crunched, a black person is almost six times more likely than a white person to be a murderer.Senator Barack Obama in his Race Speech said his white grandmother "once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street". In a follow-up interview he clarified that remark by saying,"She is a typical white person who, you know, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know, there is a reaction. That has been bred into our experiences that don't go away and that sometimes come out in the wrong way." He described such feelings as, "racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."It is true that Jesse Jackson confessed to the same fear . More importantly, that fear is a rational one, borne out by "reason and fact". The data are available. The U.S. Justice Department provides a breakdown of homicides by the race of both the victim and offender. Looking at the data for 2005 (the latest year available), we find that whites committed 48.0% of all murders and blacks committed 51.2% of all murders. However, whites outnumber blacks in the population. In fact, non-Hispanic whites are about 69% of the population and blacks are about 13% . These statistics alone, that blacks are 13% of the population but commit 51.2% of the murders, indicate that blacks commit a seriously disproportionate number of murders.
What we would like to find specifically is the likelihood that a given person is a murderer. The Justice department also provides overall murder rates. In 2004 (last year of available data), 5.9 people were murdered out of every 100,000. Since some of those were multiple murders, let's assume that only 5 people of every 100,000 were murderers. That is, the chance that some person you see on the street will murder someone this year, knowing nothing else, is about 5 in 100,000.... That means a black person is 5.6 times more likely than a white person to be a murderer.
It is totally rational for a any person (including Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama's grandmother) to fear a black person more than a white one. In fact, you should fear them 5.6 times more.
More here
Obama could learn from his white grandparents
Richard Landes has some thoughts on Obama, Wright and the prophetic tradition, in the course of which he recounts the following:Although Reverend Wright has no problem attributing paranoia and stupidity to the "group of patriots in power", he does not seem to have much awareness of the power of paranoid thinking on his own ministry, and the terrible consequences of taking refuge in this thinking. And this is, indeed, a pervasive problem in the Black community.Yes, but it's a dilemma that is wholly alien to the overwhelming majority of American voters. Liberals love to play these games with social conservatives, asking Republican candidates whether they think the Book of Genesis is the literal truth, or they believe in the Rapture. But there's wiggle room in stuff that hasn't yet happened or was all a long time ago. When you're questioned about whether the US government cooked up Aids in a laboratory in the late Seventies to kill black people, you're being asked whether you accept the objective reality of the world we live in. That's not a good thing to make a "dilemma" of.
I had my first glimpse of this problem in 2000, when, as the head of the Center for Millennial Studies, I sat on a panel with three rappers and a black academic colleague, discussing the apocalyptic themes in Hip-hop. The AIDS conspiracy came up repeatedly. Finally, a member of the audience asked, "How many on the panel believe these AIDS conspiracies?" The three rap artists all said they did. I said I did not. The African American professor said:I don't want to answer that, because if I say I do, I'll lose credibility with my colleagues, and if I say I don't, I'll lose credibility with the brothers.The implications of this reluctance to speak replicate closely the dilemma of Barack Obama...
The Reverend Wright is, to modify Cole Porter, not "dilemma" but "da limit" - a point beyond which Americans will willingly accompany Obama. So the simple fact that an absurd proposition for most people is a painful dilemma for the Senator has the effect of distancing him from those whose votes he needs. Rather than disown the kook he's spent 20 years listening to, Obama made his gran'ma the issue. Judith Apter Klinghoffer writes:Does he have any reason to believe she was a "typical" prejudiced "white person?" No. The opposite is true. Unlike Barack himself, his grandparents were active anti-racist. So much so, that they had difficulty fitting into Texas' racist society of the early 1960s. He writes(pp.18-21):Obama's gran'ma was consistently better than the times required. Jeremiah Wright is a lot worse than the times require. There is, in Gran'ma's conduct, the hope of change (as Obama would say). In Wright's, there is none. It's not difficult and all the portentous self-regarding rhetoric in the world can't make it so.. . . At a bank where she worked, Toot (his grandmother's nickname)made the acquaintance of the janitor, a tall and dignified black World War II vet she remembers only as Mr. Reed. While the two of them chatted in the hallways one day, a secretary in the office stormed up and hissed that Tood should never, ever, "call no nigger 'Mister.'" Not long afterworlds, Toot would find Mr. Reed in a corner of the building weeping quietly to himself. . . .He goes on to tell a story about his 11 year old mother who played in the front yard with a young Black girl. Neighborhood Children gathered outside the picket fence shouting: "Nigger lover!" and "Dirty Yankee!" The grandmother tried to get them into the house. The grandfather went further:
They (grandparents) decided Toot would keep calling Mr. Reed "Mister," . . . . Grams began to decline invitations from coworkers to go out for a beer, telling them he had to get home to keep the wife happy.Gramps was beside himself when he heard what had happened. He interrogated my mother, wrote down names. The next day he took the morning off from work to visit the school principal. He personally called the parents of some of the offending children to give them a piece of his mind.No, his grandfather did not say that he could no more disown racist whites than disown the white community.
Source
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
24 March, 2008
Obama the Leftist: An interesting article from 2004
All written without reference to Pastor Wrong
If the Democratic National Convention failed to produce a bounce for John Kerry, the same cannot be said of Illinois State Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic Party's candidate for United States Senator from Illinois. While this rising star in the Democratic Party spouted some conservative themes during his speech, the rhetoric may be deceptive. While Obama spoke of individual responsibility - such as stating that the government cannot teach kids to read, parents must - his ideology and voting record is quite different.
Obama is very liberal. Among his campaign contributors are George Soros, People for the American Way, pro-abortion groups and teacher's unions. Soros got his money's worth from Obama, who turned out redmeat antiwar quotations during the run-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom. At an October 2002 antiwar rally, he repeated the false "economy and war" canard of fanatical antiwar liberals. Obama said:
"I don't oppose all wars.What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Roves to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income...to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression."
When confronted with this quotation by Tim Russert on "Meet the Press," Obama shrugged it off, not choosing to repeat its conspiracy theories. Russert uncharacteristically did not press the issue. But the quotation would seem to indicate Obama's inclination to parrot the Michael Moore Left.
In fact, Obama has bristled at being referred to as a mainsteam Democrat. When he was accused by Black Commentator magazine as being co-opted by the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). Black Commentator believes the more moderate rhetoric of the DLC and Bill Clinton's willingness to compromise with Republicans for political gain have harmed the party. It believes the DLC's candidates are corrupted by corporations, and refers to conservative black politicians as "black stealth candidates," which is how they characterized Obama.
Obama was so disturbed by this, he wrote a letter to Black Commentator stating:"To begin with, neither my staff nor I have had any direct contact with anybody at DLC.I don't know who nominated me for the DLC list of 100 rising stars.I certainly did not view such inclusion as an endorsement on my part of the DLC platform.I spend much of my time with audiences trying to educate them on the dangers of both the Patriot Act, Patriot Act 2, and the rest of John Ashcroft's assault on the Constitution.In the last three months alone, I passed and sent to Illinois governor's desk 25 pieces of major progressive legislation, including groundbreaking laws mandating the videotaping of all interrogations and confessions in capital cases; racial profiling legislation; a new law designed to ease the burden on ex-offenders seeking employment; and a state earned income tax credit that will put millions of dollars directly into the pockets of Illinois' working poor."His voting record certainly displays the ideology characteristic of an indulgent liberal. (Sorry, "Progressive.") Obama favors abortion, socialized medicine, and Affirmative Action. Obama sponsored a bill in the Illinois legislature requiring local police departments in Illinois to record the race of anyone stopped for questioning so that the data can be used to track the occurrence of racial profiling. He opposes a $2,000 tax credit for retirement and has voted against private gun ownership, mandatory sentencing and the death penalty. During his tenure as a legislator, he abstained from voting about an abortion parental notification bill and on legislation that would keep pornographic video stores and strip clubs from within 1,000 feet of schools and churches. He has also voted against laws requiring students to complete suspensions before being transferred to other school districts. He abstained from legislation requiring adult prosecution for students who fire guns on school grounds. He opposed legislation making it a criminal offense for accused gang members to associate with known gang members.
Ironically, Obama is the candidate of the racial segregationist. It is not because segregationists want him to be a Senator. It is because he is classified African-American using the standards of racial segregationists. Obama is called an African-American. However, Obama is half-white. His father, who was black, abandoned him and his mother when he was about two years old. He lived with his white mother and white grandparents.
Considering a mixed race individual an African-American is a typical liberal practice. They routinely refer to anyone who is partially black as black. Tiger Woods, Halle Berry and Mariah Carey are all mixed race celebrities regularly referred to by the liberal media as black. Tiger Woods has had the gall to complain about this. (With good reason; his mother is Asian.)
Ironically, this custom by liberals and Democrats of referring to partially black people as black is simply a reiteration of the old racist, Jim Crow, "one-eighth law." In racist locales, such as segregation-era Louisiana, people with as little as one-eighth African-American ancestry were classified as black. This classification led to dramatic curtailments of freedom. In Missouri and Mississippi, "The marriage of a white person with a negro or mulatto or person who shall have one-eighth or more of negro blood, shall be unlawful and void." Obama is black only by the standards of white segregationists. By insisting that mixed-race individuals be considered black, Democrats -- the party of the unreconstructed South -- are displaying their segregationist roots.
Obama the candidate is conservative only when addressing a national television audience. Ironically, the oddball Black Commentator magazine is partially correct. Obama is a stealth candidate -- a liberal stealth candidate.
Source
In Defense of Jeremiah Wright
Stanley Kurtz imitates far-Left "postmodernist" mumbo-jumbo long enough below to point out that Obama's pastor is actually a mainstream figure in Leftist circles. No wonder Obama sat there and lapped it up. It was not too different from what he would have heard on occasions in his classrooms at Columbia and Harvard
On the matter of Jeremiah Wright, conservatives remain encased in an adamantine literalism. From the perspective of either deconstructionism or postcolonial theory, Wright's utterances are neither controversial nor disturbing. Lack of general familiarity with these critical discourses accounts for the deep-lying anti-Wright bias of both the blogosphere and talk-radio. The conservative misdirection here parallels the literalist condemnation of Paul de Man.
Let us invoke Homi Bhabha's encomium to Franz Fanon (Location of Culture, Chap. 2), including Fanon's meditations on the liberatory effects of anti-European violence. As with Fanon in Bhabha's gaze, Wright appears as the purveyor of a transgressive and transitional truth. His voice is most clearly heard in the subversive turn of a familiar term, in the silence of a sudden rupture: (not God bless America but...) God damn America. This line of thought keeps alive the dramatic and enigmatic sense of change. That familiar alignment of colonial subjects - Black/White, Self/Other - is disturbed with one sharp reversal, and the traditional grounds of national identity are dispersed. It is this palpable pressure of division and displacement that pushes Wright's sermons to the edge of things - the cutting edge that reveals no ultimate radiance but, in his words, an "audacity of hope."
Through repeated sonic replication (which Wright surely anticipated, having released the sermon on DVD), the phrase is effectively broken up, or opened up, in a moment of Lacanian jouissance, migrating, so to speak, from God damn America into God(d) am(n) America. The evident echoing of late-capitalist discourse-games (Toys "R" Us) turns God Am America into what is simultaneously a discreet invocation of early-American providentialism, an appeal to business interests, and an identificatory excursus on the Illinois subaltern.
Spivak is no less apt on the problem of literalism (Spivak Reader, Chap. 9). The denial of contingency is a particular loss on the matter of Wright. Deconstruction has taught us that taking contingency into account entails the immense labor of forging a style that seems only to bewilder. On Wright, we must question staying within the outlines of rational agency and instead give a hint of postcolonial heterogeneity in opposition to the impoverished conventions of mere reasonableness. That "high" register, where sermonic production is in the same cultural inscription as the implied listener, cannot be employed for the epistemic ruses of the South Chicagoan subject.
In short, from the standpoint of deconstruction and postcolonial theory (and only from that standpoint), Wright's remarks are undisturbing, and in fact most welcome. Since the most eminent universities in the United States have consistently valorized these discourses it follows that (unless you've got a problem with deconstruction or postcolonial theory - and how could you possibly?) Wright is to be commended. To be sure, the aporias of Wright's populist discourse are more implicit than in deconstruction or postcolonial theory. Yet in substance (insofar as substance can be attributed), Wright's views and those of scholarly theorists are quite similar. If anything, the theoreticians are more radical. Obama's ability to act as both the revelatory sign and unifying signifier of the discourses of Harvard or the University of Chicago, on the one hand, and the demagoguery of South Chicago, on the other, ratifies and validates his location in culture.
OK, I've been tweaking actual deconstructionist and post-colonial texts, and adding some "original" analysis of my own, to fit the Wright affair. It's partly in fun, but also remarkably easy to do. The serious point is that these radical theorists, so popular in America's academy, do in fact approve of figures like Wright, which is why respectable universities have tenured Wright's spiritual mentors. (Thanks to Lisa for pointing me to Spengler's important analysis of Wright's theological sources.) The condescending approval of sophisticated academic radicals toward Wright's theological mentors seems very much like Obama's own approval of Wright. The tone of the two worlds might be different, but the substance is not that far apart.
Again, to be serious for a moment, Michel Foucault, another deeply influential postmodernist thinker, made a point of idealizing "local" rebellions against oppressive universal forms of knowledge. By this he meant anything from an individual radical subtly subverting some bureaucracy he was employed in, to the challenge posed by Afrocentrism to traditional Christianity. There is "local" radicalism, then there's the sophisticated universal academic radical, who encourages and approves of, yet also transcends, the radicalism of place. We might say that Obama has latched onto Wright's "local" radicalism in the way that his universally radical anthropologist mother latched on to the localized struggles of Indonesian peasants. There may be some condescension and pragmatic political manipulation here, but it's likely also mixed with the genuine admiration of authentic local radicalisms we find among intellectuals. Obama's gift is that he knows how to unite both [radical] sensibilities.
Source
Fear and condescension in the elite media
Post below lifted from Dinocrat. See the original for links
Tom Bethell has an insightful piece in the American Spectator that raises some important points about a debate that, if it is framed honestly, dares not speak its name in the elite media. Excerpt:Rev. Jeremiah Wright's remarks about America were the worst things said about my adopted country since I came here from England in 1962. Louis Farrakhan and Malcolm X are not in the same league as this champion of race hatred from Chicago. Imagine if Senator John McCain had for years been a member of a church where a white pastor said that blacks should go back to Africa where they came from. And McCain were to respond: Well, I disagree with his remarks and I reject what he said but I won't disassociate myself from him, because he has been so important to my life. McCain would be out of the race in the blink of an eye. Yet Obama has not felt the need to distance himself from Pastor Wright.Bethell says: "The underlying problem is that the liberals who still control so much of the debate quietly agree with much of what Wright said". That may be true, but we think the problem may be even worse than that.
The New York Times has praised Obama's speech as a "profile in courage." That is baloney - reflecting the gross double standard that has prevailed for decades on the subject of race. The underlying problem is that the liberals who still control so much of the debate quietly agree with much of what Wright said..I just read a mealy-mouthed article by the Washington Post's Dan Balz ("Will the Answer Outlive the Questions?"). He quoted three "Democratic analysts" who point out that Wright's comments could hurt Obama in November. What was significant was that not one of these analysts went on the record. This shows that we do indeed need a debate about race. The real problem is that it's the liberals who don't want to debate it, probably because they know they would lose.
Prediction: This Obama episode will once more show how the new technology is transforming political debate. Balz conveyed in his piece that the Washington Post will be good soldiers and won't do anything more than absolutely necessary to upset the race industry, of which the Post is a part. But how could the web and the blogs and e-mail be controlled? That's what bothered Dan Balz. "The danger," he wrote, as though he were already on the Obama team, "is that what might last are the images of his Chicago pastor - edited and reedited into television ads, YouTube videos and an endless stream of e-mails delivered quietly into the computers of millions of Americans."
We think that, when confronted by an issue like the Wright comments, many in the elite halls of the MSM experience a combination of fear and condescension that they do not even appreciate consciously. Instead, this toxic brew falsely presents itself to them as a feeling of sensitivity to someone's plight. It masks itself as something nice, but it is not. In fact, it is itself a kind of nasty bias. Of course this is a feeling that it would be very hard for such a reporter or editor to acknowledge and confront directly. The same sentiment was evident in the self-censorship of the elite media in the cartoon controversy three years ago. The media sometimes note in passing the strange or scary or aberrant behavior by members of certain groups, like the Cartoon Riots, or the Wright statements, but, depending upon the group, they'd just as soon leave the matter alone as quickly as possible.
In an example used by Bethell, Nick Kristof wrote in a recent piece "it has been shocking to hear Mr. Wright suggest that the AIDS virus was released as a deliberate government plot to kill black people. That may be an absurd view in white circles, but a 1990 survey found that 30 percent of African-Americans believed this was at least plausible." Kristof then went on to catalogue other items where blacks and whites thought differently, in the same kind of "on the one hand, on the other hand" way. (In some ways that is also what Senator Obama did in his speech the other day.) Regarding Kristof's two-handed approach, isn't the media's problem this: if 30% of people believe something nutty, shouldn't we start the discussion by calling that belief nutty, and take things from there?
Until the elite media are willing to see clearly and condemn nutty or destructive behavior or beliefs of groups that elicit the MSM's inappropriate emotional reaction, an open debate cannot take place - at least any debate hosted by the elite media. Some sort of debate will continue to take place of course; it will just for the most part not include those parts of the media establishment. It is of note that in two recent examples of such debates - the Dubai ports deal and the immigration reform fiasco - the elite media's view was 180 degrees out of phase with the vast majority of Americans. It is our guess that the matter of Reverend Wright is similar in some ways to these two other examples. Time will tell if that is the case.
Another dubious Obama associate
Long before Barack Obama launched his campaign for the White House, when he was considering a run for the US Senate in 2003, he paid an intriguing visit to a former Chicago sewers inspector who had risen to become one of the most influential African-American politicians in Illinois. "You have the power to elect a US senator," Obama told Emil Jones, Democratic leader of the Illinois state senate. Jones looked at the ambitious young man smiling before him and asked, teasingly: "Do you know anybody I could make a US senator?" According to Jones, Obama replied: "Me." It was his first, audacious step in a spectacular rise from the murky political backwaters of Springfield, the Illinois capital.
The exchange also sealed an intimate personal and political relationship that is likely to attract intense scrutiny amid the furore over Obama's links to some of Chicago's most controversial political and religious power brokers. Obama has often described Jones as a key political mentor whose patronage was crucial to his early success in a state long dominated by near-feudal party political machines. Jones, 71, describes himself as Obama's "godfather" and once said: "He feels like a son to me."
Like the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the outspoken pastor of Obama's Chicago church, and like Tony Rezko, the millionaire fundraiser and former friend of Obama who is on trial for corruption, Jones is in danger of becoming a hindrance to his protege's presidential ambitions. For almost a year Jones has used his position as leader of the state senate to block anticorruption legislation passed unanimously by the state's lower house. He has also become embroiled in ethical controversies concerning his wife's job and his stepson's business.
None of them is linked to Obama, but the Democratic contender can ill afford another scandal related to his former Chicago allies. Despite his electrifying speech on race last week, the opinion polls make worrying reading for the senator and his aides. Hillary Clinton appears to be regaining lost ground and John McCain, the Arizona senator who has sewn up the Republican nomination, has edged ahead of his warring rivals......
The Clinton camp is treading carefully, aware that overt attacks on Obama might alienate black voters. Yet the New York senator's aides are quietly pleased by what they regard as an overdue scrutiny of Obama's past. They believe he will come to be seen not as some Messiah but as an unusually gifted political hack who has made compromises with dodgy associates, just like most other American politicians. That intensifying scrutiny may soon lead to Jones's Illinois door, and to further uncomfortable insights into the unflattering political realities that accompanied Obama's climb from obscurity.
At one point during Obama's 2003 Senate campaign, Jones set out to woo two African-American politicians miffed by Obama's presumption and ambition. One of them, Rickey "Hollywood" Hendon, a state senator, had scoffed that Obama was so ambitious he would run for "king of the world" if the position were vacant. When Jones secured the two men's support, Obama asked his mentor how he had pulled it off. "I made them an offer," Jones said in mock-mafioso style. "And you don't want to know."
Jones is now at the centre of a long row over his attempt to block proposed laws cracking down on his state's "pay-to-play" tradition - whereby companies hoping to win government contracts have to contribute to the campaign funds of officials. Jones's staff say he blocked the bill because he intends to produce something tougher. No proposals have appeared.
Cynthia Canary, an activist against corruption who is fighting to have the laws passed, says Obama had little choice as an Illinois politician but to deal with an ethically dubious regime. "You hold your nose and work through the system," she said. Yet she also thinks America is being done a disservice by those who portray Obama as somehow above the uglier wheeler-dealing of politics. "He's a pragmatic politician, and in the end if you think that he's superman, your heart is going to get broken."
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(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
23 March, 2008
Obama has the nomination
There's no way Hillary can win. The Politico gives the Democratic Party a much needed reality check today:
One big fact has largely been lost in the recent coverage of the Democratic presidential race: Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning. Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party's most reliable constituency.So sit back and drink in the realization that your primary season is over-- except for a few formalities.
Unless Clinton is able to at least win the primary popular vote - which also would take nothing less than an electoral miracle - and use that achievement to pressure superdelegates, she has only one scenario for victory. An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else. People who think that scenario is even remotely likely are living on another planet.
Source
Obama Misrepresented The Truth
Post below lifted from Riehl World. See the original for links
While I'd agree that the subject of Obama, Wright and "The Speech" has been discussed about enough, it turns out that Obama played fast and loose with some important facts and it hasn't yet been pointed out. h/t to reader Paul and this questioning post for causing me to dig a little deeper on this. Obama led us to believe Jeremiah Wright's anger was justified by resentment born of years of frustration and struggle. Guess what? That isn't the case at all. And stripped of that rationale, it's really nothing more than plain old anti-white racism from a junior member of a highly accomplished black family.
As Krauthammer points out, led on by Obama - Wright is being cast as a man representing a very troubled past.Krauthammer: But Obama was supposed to be new. He flatters himself as a man of the future transcending the anger of the past as represented by his beloved pastor. (Wright)The problem is, Wright doesn't appear to have struggled much at all. If anything, he came from something of a privileged, or at least upper-middle class background. Some background on his Mother from an extensive list of her accomplishments upon her death. Also confirmed here and here. The family is pictured on Right here - his sister and brother-in-law are Dr. William R. Miner & Mrs. LaVerne Miner. Point being, Wright is from a family that represents incredible success for people of any color, or race. Obama's offered excuse is really no excuse at all. Based on Wright's Bio and Obama's rationalizations, even today, Obama and any successful black American would have every right to be as angry as is Jeremiah Wright.
Obama: (Making excuses for Wright) -- 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.WHEREAS, The former Mary Elizabeth Henderson was born on May 26, 1916 in Surry County, Virginia, the last of seven children of the Reverend Dr. and Mrs. Hamilton M. Henderson; in June, 1938, she married her college sweetheart, the Reverend Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright; and
WHEREAS, She graduated high school at fifteen years of age and graduated from Virginia Union University magna cum laude, with degrees in mathematics and English; in 1949, she earned a Master of Arts degree in mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania; during the 1958-59 school year, Mrs. Wright was on a sabbatical study leave as a National Science Fellow in the Graduate School of Education of the University of Pennsylvania where she earned a Master of Science degree in education; she went on to earn a Doctor of Education degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1971; and
WHEREAS, Dr. Wright had a distinguished 34-year career in the Philadelphia public schools; she taught mathematics for nine years at Sulzberger Junior High School; she was later appointed to teach mathematics at William Penn High School; in addition, she was the first African-American teacher at Roosevelt Junior High School, Germantown High School, and Philadelphia High School for Girls; Dr. Wright was appointed Vice Principal of the Philadelphia High School for Girls in 1968 and remained in that position until her retirement in 1978
Surprise!... Obama's Supported Israel Bashers- Attended Palestinian Fundraisers
Post below lifted from Gateway Pundit. See the original for links
Little Green Footballs tonight links to a an article by Ali Abunimah on how Obama came to love Israel after his years of supporting the Palestinian cause:
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.Debbie Schlussel wrote more about Barack and Michelle and their contacts with prominent Arafat advisor Edward Said in an earlier post:
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 Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and US policy, "Keep up the good work!"Palestinian activist and Islamist Ali Abunimah, who was a close friend of Obama's, attended an Arab fundraiser at which the late Edward Said--plagiarist, fabricator, and prominent PLO/Arafat advisor--was the keynote speaker, and at which the Obamas were notably in attendance. Pictures on Abunimah's site, posted above, show Obama and wife, Michelle, sitting next to Said and engaging in conversation. Abunimah, in a must-read article, says the Senator has since "changed" his proclaimed views from those he expressed privately, in order to get Jewish donors and votes.Debbie has more on Obama's Nation of Islam staffers.
Bill Clinton questions Obama's patriotism -- gets called another Joe McCarthy
The Barack Obama campaign may find itself back in hot water, but this time squarely with Democrats, thanks to one of their premier surrogates. Former Air Force Chief of Staff General Tony McPeak compared a relatively mild Bill Clinton statement to McCarthyism. His remarks about the former President and actual party elder will no doubt stoke outrage just as some of Obama's other troubles had begun to recede:A retired Air Force general compared former President Clinton to Joseph McCarthy, the 1950s communist-hunting senator, on Friday after Clinton seemed to question Democrat Barack Obama's patriotism. Merrill "Tony" McPeak, a former chief of staff of the Air Force and currently a co-chair of Obama's presidential campaign, said he was disappointed by comments Clinton made while campaigning for his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a speech Friday in Charlotte, N.C.It's hard to figure what McPeak found so intolerable, or intolerant, about Clinton's remarks. He didn't say that the Democrats didn't have two candidates who love the nation, just that it would be good to focus on the issues instead of what Clinton sees as irrelevant issues. In fact, that construction makes it clear that he found the controversy over Reverend Jeremiah Wright as part of that "other stuff" that distracts from the issues.
"I think it would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country," Clinton said. "And people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics."
McPeak learned of the remarks while at an Obama rally in Salem, Ore. Afterward, he called Clinton's statement horrible and compared it to McCarthy, the Republican senator from Wisconsin who held hearings on suspected Communist sympathizers in the 1950s. "It sounds more like McCarthy," McPeak said. "I grew up, I was going to college when Joe McCarthy was accusing good Americans of being traitors, so I've had enough of it."
In any case, the charge of McCarthyism is not just overblown, but entirely inaccurate - and a military man should know the difference. Clinton didn't accuse Obama of anything, and certainly not of treason. But McPeak has now made an accusation, and one that will not endear him to the party establishment that has depended on the Clintons for their careers and their fundraising. If the Democrats want to win anything in November, they need Bill on the stump, and having Obama's campaign accusing him of being the next Joe McCarthy damages the brand, not to mention tarnishes the idea of returning the White House to the supposed halcyon days of Democratic control.
If the Hillary Clinton campaign desires, they can make this a serious issue - and it's hard to see why they'd pass up the chance. Obama can't afford to lose his military surrogates, who give him all of the credibility he has as a candidate for Commander-in-Chief with no military or executive experience. They can pressure him to give up McPeak, and the longer Obama keeps him in place, the longer they can argue to the superdelegates that Obama will damage the Democrats if nominated. After the hypocritical way Obama's campaign went after Geraldine Ferraro, they have this kind of fight coming.
Source
Obama demanded Lott resignation
Illinois senator couldn't 'forgive' his embrace of segregationist colleague
While Sen. Barack Obama said he couldn't throw over his friend and pastor of 20 years for racially charged and divisive hate speech, he had no trouble calling for the head of Sen. Trent Lott, the Republican Senate majority leader, for embracing a colleague with a segregationist past on his 100th birthday. On Dec. 12, 2002, Obama, then serving as an Illinois state senator and filling in as host of the Cliff Kelley radio show on WVON, challenged the Republican Party to demand Lott's resignation.
"It seems to be that we can forgive a 100-year-old senator for some of the indiscretion of his youth, but, what is more difficult to forgive is the current president of the U.S. Senate (Lott) suggesting we had been better off if we had followed a segregationist path in this country after all of the battles and fights for civil rights and all the work that we still have to do," said Obama. He added: "The Republican Party itself has to drive out Trent Lott. If they have to stand for something, they have to stand up and say this is not the person we want representing our party."
Eight days later, Lott of Mississippi stepped down as majority leader - not president of the Senate. He had been under fire for his endorsement of Sen. Strom Thurmond's 1948 segregationist presidential campaign at the South Carolina senator's 100th birthday party.
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(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
22 March, 2008
Key Questions Still Left After Obama Speech
By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER
The beauty of a speech is that you don't just give the answers, you provide your own questions. "Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes." So said Barack Obama, in his Philadelphia speech about his pastor, friend, mentor and spiritual adviser of 20 years, Jeremiah Wright. An interesting, if belated, admission. But the more important question is: which "controversial" remarks?
Wright's assertion from the pulpit that the U.S. government invented the HIV virus "as a means of genocide against people of color"? Wright's claim that America was morally responsible for 9/11 - "chickens coming home to roost" - because of, among other crimes, Hiroshima and Nagasaki? (Obama says he missed church that day. Had he never heard about it?)
What about the charge that the U.S. government (of Franklin Roosevelt, mind you) knew about Pearl Harbor, but lied about it? Or that the government gives drugs to black people, presumably to enslave and imprison them?
Obama condemns such statements as wrong and divisive, then frames the next question: "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?" But that is not the question. The question is, Why didn't he leave that church? Why didn't he leave - why doesn't he leave even today - a pastor who thundered not once but three times from the pulpit (on a DVD the church proudly sells) "God damn America"?
Obama's 5,000-word speech, fawned over as a great meditation on race, is little more than an elegantly crafted, brilliantly sophistic justification of that scandalous dereliction. His defense rests on two central propositions: (a) moral equivalence, and (b) white guilt.
(a) Moral equivalence. Sure, says Obama, there's Wright, but at the other "end of the spectrum" there's Geraldine Ferraro, opponents of affirmative action and his own white grandmother, "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." But did she shout them in a crowded theater to incite, enrage and poison others? "I can no more disown (Wright) than I can my white grandmother." What exactly was grandma's offense? Jesse Jackson himself once admitted to the fear he feels from the footsteps of black men on the street.
And Harry Truman was known to use epithets for blacks and Jews in private, yet is revered for desegregating the armed forces and recognizing the first Jewish state since Jesus' time. He never spread racial hatred. Nor did grandma. Yet Obama compares her to Wright. Does he not see the moral difference between the occasional private expression of the prejudices of one's time and the use of a public stage to spread racial lies and race hatred?
(b) White guilt. Obama's purpose in the speech was to put Wright's outrages in context. By context, Obama means history. And by history, he means the history of white racism. Obama says, "We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country," and then proceeds to do precisely that. And what lies at the end of his recital of the long train of white racial assaults from slavery to employment discrimination? Jeremiah Wright, of course.
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.
But Obama was supposed to be new. He flatters himself as a man of the future transcending the anger of the past as represented by his beloved pastor. Obama then waxes rhapsodic about the hope brought by the new consciousness of the young people in his campaign. Then answer this, Senator: If Wright is a man of the past, why would you expose your children to his vitriolic divisiveness? This is a man who curses America and who proclaimed moral satisfaction in the deaths of 3,000 innocents at a time when their bodies were still being sought at Ground Zero. It is not just the older congregants who stand and cheer and roar in wild approval of Wright's rants, but young people as well.
Why did you give $22,500 just two years ago 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?
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Obama church published Hamas terror manifesto
Compares charter calling for murder of Jews to Declaration of Independence
Sen. Barack Obama's Chicago church reprinted a manifesto by Hamas that defended terrorism as legitimate resistance, refused to recognize the right of Israel to exist and compared the terror group's official charter - which calls for the murder of Jews - to America's Declaration of Independence. The Hamas piece was published on the "Pastor's Page" of the Trinity United Church of Christ newsletter reserved for Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., whose anti-American, anti-Israel remarks landed Obama in hot water, prompting the presidential candidate to deliver a major race speech earlier this week.
Hamas, responsible for scores of shootings, suicide bombings and rocket launchings against civilian population centers, is listed as a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department.
The revelation follows a recent WND article quoting Israeli security officials who expressed "concern" about Robert Malley, an adviser to Obama who has advocated negotiations with Hamas and providing international assistance to the terrorist group. In his July 22, 2007, church bulletin, Wright reprinted an article by Mousa Abu Marzook, identified in the newsletter as a "deputy of the political bureau of Hamas." A photo image of the newsletter was captured and posted today by the business blog BizzyBlog. The Hamas piece was first published by the Los Angeles Times, garnering the newspaper much criticism.
According to senior Israeli security officials, Marzook, who resides in Syria alongside Hamas chieftain Khaled Meshaal, is considered the "brains" behind Hamas, designing much of the terror group's policies and ideology. Israel possesses what it says is a large volume of specific evidence that Marzook has been directly involved in calling for or planning scores of Hamas terrorist offensives, including deadly suicide bombings. He was also accused of attempting to set up a Hamas network in the U.S.
Marzook's original piece was titled, "Hamas' stand" but was re-titled "A Fresh View of the Palestinian Struggle" by Obama's church newsletter. The newsletter also referred to Hamas as the "Islamic Resistance Movement," and added in its introduction that Marzook was addressing Hamas' goals for "all of Palestine." In the manifesto, Marzook refers to Hamas' "resistance" - the group's perpetuation of anti-Israel terrorism targeting civilians - as "legal resistance," which, he argues, is "explicitly supported by the Fourth Geneva Convention." The Convention, which refers to the rights of people living under occupation, does not support suicide bombings or rocket attacks against civilian population centers, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America noted.
Marzook refers to Hamas' official charter as "an essentially revolutionary document" and compares the violent creed to the Declaration of Independence, which, Marzook states, "simply did not countenance any such status for the 700,000 African slaves at that time." Hamas' charter calls for the murder of Jews. Among its platforms is a statement that the "[resurrection] will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews and the Muslims kill them, and the rock and the tree will say: 'Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, kill him!'"
In his piece, Marzook says Hamas only targets Israel and denies that Hamas' war is meant to be waged against the U.S., even though Hamas officials have threatened America, and Hamas' charter calls for Muslims to "pursue the cause of the Movement (Hamas), all over the globe."
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Divinity School excuses Pastor Wright's hate speech
Blacks are obviously not responsible human beings to them
On March 29, 2008, Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright is scheduled to receive Brite Divinity School's Black Church Leader Award. Brite and Texas Christian University share a Fort Worth campus, but are independent schools. This week, TCU is probably wishing they were even more independent.
The Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star Telegram have reported on the controversy that led to a decision to move Wright's award ceremony off campus. A TCU senior official told me that both schools have received many angry phone calls in opposition to Wright's award. Consequently, "in light of what happened at Virginia Tech and for the safety of the students," the event will be held off-campus at a site yet to be identified. The official added that "Brite is a small school and getting swamped with calls."
The only Brite staff person authorized to speak about the matter is President D. Newell Williams. Neither Williams nor his administrative assistant were available for comment. I am not suggesting they are dodging questions. No doubt they're struggling to figure out how to best handle this situation without damaging the school. They're academics, not media consultants. Meanwhile, Brite Divinity School posted a statement on its website addressing the issue. Here are excerpts from that statement:"After careful review, and understanding the sincere concerns many have voiced in response to recent media reports, Brite has for the following reasons affirmed the Black School Studies Program's decision, made months ago, to recognize the contributions of the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. at the fourth Annual State of the Black Church Awards Banquet.On its face, Brite's statement suggests that school officials do not believe that any of Wright's statements reported by the media reflect "racial hatred," nor do they deem any to be inconsistent with the Christian gospel. Any element of controversy appears to be excused on the basis of having been delivered in a "radically different" context than that experienced by "middle class Americans."
Contrary to media claims that Wright preaches racial hatred, church leaders who have observed his ministry describe him as a faithful preacher of the gospel who has ministered in a context radically different from that of many middle class Americans. Brite does not endorse all of the statements or views of any of the church leaders recognized by the Divinity School. Brite is recognizing Dr. Wright for his forty-year ministry linking divine justice and social justice."
Their implied thesis it this: The standard for gauging the appropriateness of preaching in black churches is lower than in white, middle-class churches -- the profile of many Disciples of Christ Churches, the denomination with which Brite and TCU are historically affiliated. Since the controversy surrounding Trinity United Church of Christ's alignment with black liberation theology emerged, we've learned that the over 8,000 member congregation includes an economically wide spectrum of members, once including the billionaire Oprah Winfrey, and now including a U.S. Senator.
The Rev. John H. Thomas, General Minister and President, United Church of Christ (Rev. Wright's denominational affiliation), recently released a statement defending Wright and criticizing the "relentless airing of two or three brief video clips of [Wright's] sermons." Thomas also states,"One is tempted to ask whether these commentators ever listen to the overcharged rhetoric of their own opinion shows. Even more to the point is to wonder whether they have a working knowledge of the history of preaching in the United States from the unrelentingly grim language of New England election day sermons to the fiery rhetoric of the Black church prophetic tradition."Commentators may not have the working knowledge Thomas mentions, but I do, since I hold a Doctorate in Sacred Theology (STD), majoring in Preaching & Bible, from a well-respected Protestant seminary. And, while the Rev. Thomas can certainly find historical instances of forceful preaching, he engages in historical hyperbole by implying that hate preach is an acceptable, classic, homiletical genre. To claim, as Rev. Wright has, that the U.S. government developed the HIV/AID virus to kill blacks is absurd. The 18th Century burning of witches in Salem is a lamentable part of American church history, too, but surely Thomas would not cite that as a precedent for bad behavior today.
But then, Thomas is just offering covering fire to one of his own -- one he considers a prophet. It's what church judicatory officials do. But, hate preach is hate preach: from whoever's mouth it is spoken, from whatever pulpit it is delivered, in whatever church it represents, in whatever historical context it is set. It is what it is. Back to Brite's Controversy: these two questions were submitted to Brite's president via email with the promise that his response would be shared with AT readers.1. Question: In light of the controversial statements made by the Rev. Wright that have surfaced recently, do you feel that he was properly vetted in conjunction with the honor that he is to receive?We'll let readers know if we receive a response.
2. According to ABC News, Rev. Wright has referred to U.S. Secretary of State Rice as "Condoskeeza Rice." "Skeeza" is an idiom known in the black community as meaning "whore" or "slut." Section 3.4.b.(1) of the Brite Divinity School Handbook, 2007-2008, page 7, states that a "Community Commitment" at Brite means that "members of the Brite Divinity community covenant together to embody a context of integrity in all aspects of our lives but especially in our academic vocation. This includes (but is not limited to) not lying, cheating, stealing, causing harm to self or others, defacing property, slander, libel, or defamation of character." Referring to Ms. Rice as a whore would seem to violate Brite's own covenant relative to the concepts I've highlighted. Question: Should someone the school is honoring be held to a lower standard than the school's students?
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Obama not popular with White Voters
The racial dimension of Barack Obama's electability problem is now apparent, but no prominent Democrat dares discuss it openly. Similarly expect no discussion of the subject in the major media. I am not referring to the ongoing and intense discussion of The Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Wright is a separate problem for Obama. Whether Obama has been, or will be, permanently weakened by his long and close association with Wright, or has soared above it with his Philadelphia speech, is not the subject of these thoughts. Something much simpler than the answer to that question has been starkly apparent for some time, certainly since well before the Wright eruption: Consistently, and by large margins, Obama has lost the white working class vote to Clinton in all states critical to the Democratic ticket this November. The lurking suspicion -- impossible to verify or refute -- is that much of Clinton's handsome portion of this demographic will not go to Obama in the November election.
This has grave implications for a Obama, at least in Ohio, Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Working class whites have voted heavily for Clinton in these states (or, in the case of Pennsylvania, will soon do so). The return of the Reagan Democrats, not the odious fulminations of Reverend Wright and their consequences, is what is now driving Democratic Big Wigs to the bourbon cabinet. Predictably, the media either refuses to acknowledge this now established voting pattern or, in some cases, actually denies its existence.
The latest example of denial is by Dan Balz, staff writer for the Washington Post, who remarked in his March 17, 2008 article purporting to analyze the white male vote, that Wisconsin (where Obama did relatively well among white males overall) and Ohio (where Clinton crushed him, 66-33%, among white working class males) are "states with striking similarities." It appears Mr. Balz has not looked at the two states closely and thoughtfully. In the crucial details of racial demographics, Ohio and Wisconsin are worlds apart; and it is through these details that Obama's white working class problem can be understood.
Here are some pertinent facts about Wisconsin and Ohio: Wisconsin has about 5.5 million residents, Ohio about 11.3 million. Wisconsin is about 89% white and 5.7% black, while Ohio is 85% white and about 11.5% black. The small (but statistically significant) difference in percentage of blacks living in the two states was the least part of Obama's problem in Ohio. Obama's real difficulty in Ohio - and it has been a consistent one for him in similar states -- is the widely dispersed and interwoven location of the two racial groups in that state, versus their relative isolation from each other in Wisconsin. Here, I warn the reader, we are entering emotionally rough terrain for those schooled only in the mandatory American racial catechism of the last forty years.
For at least the last two generations America's racial policies have been predicated on a near religious belief that increased contact between the races will produce harmony, good feelings and positive relationships. Our experience during this period has been uniformly the opposite. Urban white liberals have fled the public schools by the hundreds of thousands, self-segregation by blacks on university campuses is widespread, resentment in the workplace (by both races) ubiquitous etc. In his Philadelphia speech Obama himself referred -- perhaps the first such reference by a black politician without open contempt -- to the concerns that many white Americans have about blacks.
The salient fact is this: in settings where the two races deal more directly with each other, and get to know each other better, through shared public schools, workplaces, public conveyances, universities, etc., they seem to like each other less, not more. This fact is laid bare, at least for anyone willing to see it, by the Democratic primary results thus far. Consider the following additional facts about Wisconsin and Ohio, those states with "striking similarities."
In Wisconsin more than 75% of the black population resides in the Milwaukee area, a metropolitan area that accounts for only 32% of Wisconsin's total population. This means that in Wisconsin the white portion of 68% of the state's population (which is more heavily white than the state as a whole because of the concentration of blacks in Milwaukee) rarely if ever encounters blacks. Thus, for a high proportion of Wisconsin whites, blacks are abstractions, approached most closely by turning on Oprah.
Now consider Ohio: to begin with, the black population, in percentage terms, is nearly double that of Wisconsin (11.5% versus 5.7%). But its dispersion within and among the white population is the real difference between the two states'racial demographics. In Ohio 80% of the state's 11.3 million residents reside in the eight largest metropolitan areas (Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo, Akron, Dayton, Youngstown and Canton). These cities contain, in the order listed, 24%, 51%, 43%, 24%, 28%, 43%, 44% and 21% black residents. Thus, in Ohio a very high percentage of the white population, particularly its working class component, has regular contact with blacks, or, if living in outer suburbs, has direct contact with other whites who do.
The widely disparate residential patterns of the races is obvious: in Wisconsin, the vast majority of whites live, work, shop, and send their children to school in a world that includes few if any blacks; in Ohio the reverse is true, and the races regularly brush up against each other in all these categories of daily life. Judging from how well Obama did among white voters in these states (satisfactorily in Wisconsin, abysmally in Ohio) increased racial familiarity is not a boon to the Illinois Senator....
More here
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
21 March, 2008
"The First Place I Saw Obama Was On Two Big 'Ol Tits"
A video here of some quite amazing black preaching.
The two-faced one
This is typically psychopathic. Psychopaths can only keep up their "nice guy" act for so long. If he really were a nice guy he would not suddenly turn antisocial and abrupt
Early morning trainers and exercisers at the Greenville, Miss., YMCA on Mississippi primary day last Tuesday got a taste of Sen. Barack Obama's reclusiveness, which the traveling press corps has learned to accept.
After speaking at Tougaloo College on Monday night, Obama went to the "Y" at 6:30 a.m. for a workout. He greeted nobody and did not respond when people there called out to him. That aloofness has been the pattern in the Democratic presidential candidate's behavior toward reporters who cover him.
After finishing his workout, Obama returned to his gregarious campaign mode with a visit to black-owned Buck's restaurant in Greenville before leaving the state. He won Mississippi comfortably against Sen. Hillary Clinton.
Source
Obama implicitly admits he lied
Buried in his eloquent, highly praised speech on America's racial divide, Sen. Barack Obama contradicted more than a year of denials and spin from him and his staff about his knowledge of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's controversial sermons. Similarly, Obama also has only recently given a much fuller accounting of his relationship with indicted political fixer Antoin "Tony" Rezko, a longtime friend, who his campaign once described as just one of "thousands of donors."
Until yesterday, Obama said the only thing controversial he knew about Rev. Wright was his stand on issues relating to Africa, abortion and gay marriage. "I don't think my church is actually particularly controversial," Obama said at a community meeting in Nelsonville, Ohio, earlier this month. "He 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," Obama said on March 2.
His initial reaction to the initial ABC News broadcast of Rev. Wright's sermons denouncing the U.S. was that he had never heard his pastor of 20 years make any comments that were anti-U.S. until the tape was played on air. But yesterday, he told a different story. "Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes," he said in his speech yesterday in Philadelphia.
Obama did not say what he heard that he considered "controversial," and the campaign has yet to answer repeated requests for dates on which the senator attended Rev. Wright's sermons over the last 20 years.
In the case of his relationship with Rezko, Obama has also been slow to acknowledge the full extent of his relationship. It was only last week that he revealed Rezko had raised some $250,000 in campaign contributions for him. The campaign had initially claimed Rezko-connected contributions were no more than $60,000, an amount the campaign donated to charity. Then the figure grew to around $86,000, and there were additional revelations that put the amount at about $150,000. Obama's $250,000 accounting was a substantial jump and clearly contradicted earlier campaign statements that Rezko was just one of "thousands of donors."
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Mark Steyn on the speech
I found Obama's speech profoundly depressing. It was cold, precisely calculated, and, on the Chris Matthews Legometer, stunningly effective, and (as Victor says below) likely to have very wide influence. A reader makes the following point:How can we call on the "good Muslims" to bravely denounce and actively counter the jihadi terror-endorsing clerics who give their children permission to kill and to hate on behalf of Allah when we seem to be afraid to ask the good African-American Christians to stand up against those, like Wright, who call for the "damn"-ing of America, blame everything on "rich white" people, blame Israel and Jews for a host of imagined sins, and tell their children it is their duty to Jesus to "destroy" people because their skins are white?Pre-speech, Mickey Kaus offered the following advice, untaken by the Senator:There are plenty of potential Souljahs still around: Race preferences. Out-of-wedlock births. Three strike laws! But most of all the victim mentality that tells African Americans (in the fashion of Rev. Wright's most infamous sermons) that the important forces shaping their lives are the evil actions of others, of other races. ...That is the psychosis that has left so much of the Muslim world mired in backwardness -political, social and economic. It's sad that the first viable black candidate for the US presidency has chosen to endorse it domestically.
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Jeff Jacoby on Pastorgate
I have known my rabbi for more than 20 years. The synagogue he serves as spiritual leader is one I have attended for a quarter-century. He officiated at my wedding and was present for the circumcision of each of my sons. Over the years, I have sought his advice on matters private and public, religious and secular. I have heard him speak from the pulpit more times than I can remember.
My relationship with my rabbi, in other words, is similar in many respects to Barack Obama's relationship with his longtime pastor, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. But if my rabbi began delivering sermons as toxic, hate-filled, and anti-American as the diatribes Wright has preached at Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, I wouldn't hesitate to demand that he be dismissed.
Were my rabbi to gloat that America got its just desserts on 9/11, or to claim that the US government invented AIDS as an instrument of genocide, or to urge his congregants to sing "God Damn America" instead of "God Bless America," I would know about it straightaway, even if I hadn't actually been in the sanctuary when he spoke. The news would spread rapidly through the congregation, and in short order one of two things would happen: Either the rabbi would be gone, or I and scores of others would walk out, unwilling to remain in a house of worship that tolerated such poisonous teachings. I have no doubt that the same would be true for millions of worshipers in countless houses of worship nationwide.
But it wasn't true for Obama, whose long and admiring relationship with Wright, a man he describes as his "mentor," remained intact for more than 20 years, notwithstanding the incendiary and bigoted messages the minister used his pulpit to promote.
In Philadelphia yesterday, Obama gave a graceful speech on the theme of race and unity in American life. Much of what he said was eloquent and stirring, not least his opening paean to the Founders and the Constitution -- a document "stained by the nation's original sin of slavery," as he said, yet also one "that had at its 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." There was an echo there of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who in his great "I Have a Dream" speech extolled "the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence" as "a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir."
The problem for Obama is that Wright, the spiritual leader he has so long embraced, is a devotee not of King -- who in that same speech warned against "drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred" -- but of the poisonous hatemonger Louis Farrakhan, whom the church's magazine honored with a lifetime achievement award. The problem for Obama, who campaigns on a message of racial reconciliation, is that the "mentor" whose church he joined and has generously supported with tens of thousands of dollars in donations is a disciple not of King but of James Cone, the expounder of a "black liberation" theology that teaches its adherents to "accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy."
Above all, the problem for Obama is that for two decades his spiritual home has been a church in which the minister damns America to the enthusiastic approval of the congregation, and not until it threatened to scuttle his political ambitions did Obama finally find the mettle to condemn the minister's odium. When Don Imus uttered his infamous slur on the radio last year, Obama cut him no slack. Imus should be fired, he said. "There's nobody on my staff who would still be working for me if they made a comment like that about anybody of any ethnic group."
When it came to Wright, however, he wasn't nearly so categorical. Oh, he's "like an old uncle who says things I don't always agree with," Obama indulgently explained to one interviewer. He's just "trying to be provocative," he told another. "I don't think my church is actually particularly controversial," he said. Far from severing his ties to Wright, Obama made him a member of his Religious Leadership Committee -- a tie he finally cut only four days ago.
Such a clanging double standard raises doubts about Obama's character and judgment, and about his fitness for the role of race-transcending healer. Yesterday's speech was finely crafted, but it leaves some serious and troubling questions unanswered.
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More like a baloney sandwich
Helping a destitute mother stricken with cancer is not enough for the final move in the Obama speech. What you need is a more telling, human anecdote. And we get it -- both barrels."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."Did you get misty at that moment? Or was it when the "quiet" "elderly" black man rose up and said, ""I am here because of Ashley." You were supposed to. In the end, the speech is all about -- again -- bringing out the crying towels right down to the last, heart-wringing menu item of "mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat." I don't know about you, but it seems to me that if you cut out either the mustard or the relish you could eat cheaper still.
It also seems to me that you have to be born bone ignorant in a pea patch to think that in this country at this time you have to subsist on such fare. In all fairness, the speech gives us enough "telling" details to determine that Ashley claimed to be making these sandwiches somewhere around 1994. But that still doesn't put this saga in the dark ages of social welfare in the United States.
Looking back, I seem to recall massive public programs on the federal, state, and local level that work against this sort of diet. In the more recent past, I seem to recall a move last month in the congress to increase school lunch programs beyond lunch and breakfast to a third meal as well. For decades I seem to recall food stamps. For even more decades I seem to recall armies of social workers for the state and the federal government raging about the land. And looking at my entire lifetime, I also seem to recall endless private charitable programs that work against this sort of diet.
I can't speak for the distant past, but from what I've seen living in New York City, Southern California, South Carolina, and Seattle over the last few years is you have to work hard, very hard, to go hungry in this country. I've helped out from time to time in a program that feeds the homeless up on Queen Anne. From conversations with the people who show up and those who serve, I've learned enough to know I could eat for free in Seattle at various venues from now until "the last ding-dong of doom."
I could be wrong. There could be swathes of famine sweeping over the land that the media is keeping from us. Bad sandwiches could be a new and undiscovered indictment of America that cries out for a new Federal program to slap some government bologna in them. Perhaps I am just being my churlish self. As I have been repeating to friends over the last week, "I try to become more cynical every day, but lately I just can't keep up."
I have real trouble keeping up when I listen, as I did again today, to yet another anecdote in which we are required by the speaker to reach for the better angels of our nature, our votes, and our wallets. Still, I sure wish there was a video of that moving moment in the early days of the Obama campaign. I wish there was a video in which I could see this now mythical Ashley rise up and testify. I'd watch it over and over. Oh well, I suppose in the next few days the campaign and/or the media will whip up and interview or two with Ashley. It'll pluck at your heart strings now that she's been fully briefed.
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(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
20 March, 2008
Comment on the latest Obamafraud
That Obama is a fraud who will say whatever he thinks expedient at the time is shown by the way he now suddenly rejects the mental environment in which he was living for most of his life up until now. It is his fraudulent presentation of himself that is at issue in the Pastorgate affair. But he is trying to bluff his way out of it. That will only work among people who believe him in spite of the evidence that he cannot be believed. Taranto offers below one of the two comments about Obama's recent speech that I am putting up
Barack Obama took the stage this morning to give what was billed as a "major speech on race." It was, of course, an attempt to rescue his campaign from the revelation that his so-called spiritual mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, espouses a virulently anti-American and antiwhite worldview called "black liberation theology." Here is the part of the speech that bothered us most:I can no more disown [Wright] 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.Our first thought was that it was pretty low of Obama to exploit his (still living) grandmother in this way. Is it really necessary for the whole world to know about her private expressions of prejudice? Doesn't simple decency dictate that a public figure treat embarrassing facts about loved ones with discretion? Obama was trying to accomplish something very specific by dragging his "white grandmother" into this political mess. He was trying to diminish Wright's hateful theology by implying that it too is a private matter. Said Obama:For the men and women of Rev. 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 Rev. Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning.Note how Obama elides the difference between a comment at the "kitchen table" and a sermon delivered to a congregation of thousands and recorded on DVD.
Obama rightly faulted his spiritual mentor for using "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." But he tried to treat Wright's most outrageous comments as if they were aberrations rather than the most extreme expressions of an extreme ideology:I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Rev. Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain.What Obama is evading is that this "profoundly distorted view" is not just some passing emotion. It is what Wright himself, in the "talking points" page of his congregation's Web site, describes as "systematized black liberation theology." As we noted yesterday, Wright credits James Cone of New York's Union Theological Seminary with having undertaken this systematization. Here again is Cone's description of black liberation theology:
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.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.So here we have, on the one hand, an old white woman who would be completely ordinary and anonymous but for her grandson's astonishing political success, and who harbors some regrettable prejudices; and, on the other, a leader in the black community who uses his pulpit to propagate an ideology of hate.
Obama said this morning, "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 if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union." But if he cannot speak out unequivocally against the public, organized bigotry of his spiritual mentor, how can he possibly live up to this promise?
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From the Center-Left TNR on the Obama speech
Perhaps I'm too cynical, but I suspect today's speech may fail to meet its goal of assuaging white America in two ways.
The first is the way the speech will be filtered through the media. Many headlines are already focusing on his condemnation of Reverend Jeremiah Wright's rhetoric. But Obama also refused to rhetorically dump Wright. Instead he argued that "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community." This is a complex and nuanced point--one which, taken from the context of Obama's larger assessment of race in America, won't satisfy people horrified by a preacher who blamed 9/11 on U.S. policies. Other headlines are likely to focus on Obama's overall call for racial reconciliation and a more perfect union. Obama said, quite rightly, that the recent flaps over Wright and Geraldine Ferraro "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."
But the question is whether working class voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania and West Virginia and elsewhere believe, particularly in a stalled economy, that racially perfecting the union really ought to be a central goal of the next president. I would like to believe so. I'm not convinced they do. (A related point: Obama's speech was almost entirely devoted to the black-white divide. As a strategic political matter, he may have inadvisably glossed over the role of Latinos, who foster as much resentment towards black America as do whites.)
The second way in which Obama's speech may have come up short was the scant attention it devoted to social failures within the black community. This, again, was a theme that Bill Clinton used masterfully to establish himself as both a student of black culture and someone unwilling to indulge its worst excesses. It's true that Obama did urge blacks to avoid "becoming victims of our past," and take "full responsibility for our own lives--by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them." But this was a small part of his speech and not at all its tonal emphasis.
Yet it seems quite likely that millions of white voters still see black America as indulgent of criminality and insufficiently devoted to education and work. Obama's fleeting lines about victimhood and reading to children do little to address that audience. As an alternative, Obama might have benefitted from invoking the example of Bill Cosby, who has morphed from comedian to one of black America's sharpest internal critics. "Your dirty laundry gets out of school at 2:30 every day, it's cursing and calling each other [the N-word] as they're walking up and down the street. They think they're hip. They can't read. They can't write. They're laughing and giggling, and they're going nowhere," Cosby told a group of black activists in 2004 (who, it should be noted, cheered him on). There was nothing like that here from Obama.
Finally, I can't help but think of the familiar complaint that Obama's rhetoric is wonderful--but the specifics of the change he promises are fuzzier. In an entire speech about race in America, Obama never so much as mentioned affirmative action. He laments the state of our disgraceful public school system--yet his own platform doesn't promise the kind of revolutionary (and expensive) overhaul that system requires. Making decisions about the allocation of resources is where things get really tricky, but Obama steered away from those questions.
The information era being what it is, I was already debating my thesis via email with an Obama aide as I wrote this reaction. He warned me against assuming that Reagan Democrats are defined by the same racial prejudices that defined them in the 1980s, back when crime and welfare were primary political issues, when one Willie Horton could turn an election. He may be right. I hope he is. Unfortunately, I fear that America hasn't come nearly as far as he hopes. But it is the answer to that question that will determine the fate of Barack Obama.
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Jonah Goldberg on Obama
Obama and his surrogates are denouncing attempts to link the candidate and the views of his pastor and mentor. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) on "Fox News Sunday," for instance, said, "Guilt by association is not typically American. We've all been around in places where people have given speeches or said things that we've thoroughly objected to, totally objected to."
OK. But even Obama didn't spin it that way. More implausibly, Obama claimed that he'd never heard his mentor say anything of the sort, in public or private.
Obama has been a member of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ for 20 years. Wright baptized Obama's daughters; he officiated at Obama's wedding. The title of Obama's career-making book "The Audacity of Hope" is from a Wright sermon. Wright worked with Obama as a community organizer. Saying you were out back catching a smoke during one sermon or another won't cut it. The issue isn't what Obama sat through, but what he stands for. Even Wright's tone is poisonous.
Obama righteously deplores "divisiveness." And yet he literally worships at the altar of division. He wants to transcend race, but his black nationalist church and his liberation theology pastor consider race permanent and central issues.
Obama claims that he's a different kind of politician, but his "repudiation" of Wright last week is traditional pol-speak and nothing more. To listen to Obama, you'd think he was the only person in Chicago not to know that his minister is a hatemonger. Either Obama is the worst judge of character in living memory or he's not the man he's been portraying himself as.
Or there's a third option. Perhaps Obama didn't hear Wright's bilious rhetoric because it blended in with the chorus around him. This is the fact that Obama really needs to address if the "Obama movement" is about more than getting the junior senator from Illinois elected.
What does it say that Trinity United Church is the most popular in Obama's old state Senate district, with a membership of 8,500? One of Wright's flock responded to the controversy by telling ABC News, "I wouldn't call [Wright's theology] radical. I call it being black in America." NPR's Michelle Norris explained on "Meet the Press" that Wright's tone, at least, is "not something that is unusual" in black churches.
A Rasmussen poll released Monday found that 29% of blacks surveyed said Wright's comments made them more likely to support Obama, while only 18% said the opposite, and half said Wright's comments would have no effect on them. That is a symptom of a problem that platitudinous "hope" cannot alone remedy.
A 2005 study by the Rand Corp. and the University of Oregon found that nearly half of African Americans say they believe that HIV is man-made. More than 25% think that it's a government invention, and one in eight say it was created and spread by the CIA. Just over half believe that the government is purposely keeping a cure from reaching the poor.
And please, spare me the rationalization that blacks have reason to be conspiratorial. Doubtless there's truth to that. But that doesn't make the conspiracy theories any more true or any less destructive.
In the 2005 issue of Social Science Quarterly, Sharon Parsons and William Simmons tried to explain why conspiracy theories like these persist in the black community. Part of the answer, they concluded, is that black politicians have no interest in dispelling them. Paging Sen. Obama!
Obama preaches unity. Well, real unity requires real truth-telling and the ability to tell right from wrong, and Wright from right. I, for one, have no interest in being united with Wright or anyone who insists that America is an evil, racist, damnable nation bent on murdering black people -- and I suspect neither will many general election voters.
Obama's power base is made up of black voters and the upscale left-wingers who condescend to them. Well, it is time he spoke truth to that power. If the eloquent, self-proclaimed truth-teller and would-be first black president can't manage that, he should go straight from would-be to never was.
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The new Jimmy Carter
Thirty two years ago a Democrat politician with very little experience "transcended" politics as usual and was lifted on waves of good will to the White House. It seems to be happening again. Jimmy Carter is unknown to most young Americans. Most Americans do not remember how Carter magically seemed to appear on the American political scene. Perhaps a history lesson is in order.
"I'll never lie to you," Carter famously told American voters in 1976. His smile was all embracing. Carter seldom got angry. He talked about his evangelical Christian faith often. Carter promised change and hope. He told us that the mean and cynical government that we had come to expect from Washington was a thing of the past.
Millions of Americans, many of them who had remained uninvolved in American politics, listened. They trusted Carter to be "different." His carefully crafted words led people to believe that Jimmy Carter was something very different from the typical sort of Democrat. Carter would try something new. He was an idealist who was not wedded to failed ideals of the past.
Then Carter won. It became painfully apparent that four years as Governor of Georgia was poor experience for the leader of the Free World. Carter supported on "human rights" grounds the overthrow of the Shah of Iran (our friend) and its replacement by the Islamic theocracy which still rules Iran to this day (our enemy.) He pursed domestic policies which called for privation instead of growth. Carter lied about the firing of U.S. Attorney David Marston, who had been investigating corrupt Pennsylvania Democrat congressmen.
When America faced a genuine crisis, the illegal capture of our embassy staff by the Iranian Islamic militants, Carter was utterly at a loss. He tried to talk to negotiate their release, but the regime with whom Carter tried to work with had no interest beyond utterly humiliating America.
Carter, after the Soviets assassinated our ambassador in Afghanistan and then invaded that nation, was "surprised" that Communism was aggressive and malignant. His response was to try to exert diplomatic pressure on the Soviets as well as trade sanctions. Jimmy Carter, well into the middle of his presidency, seriously seems to have considered that Marxist-Leninist regimes were somehow like another form of socialist democracy, that Moscow was no threat to America, and that the proliferation of virulently anti-American dictators around the globe was in our long term best interest.
All of this sounds very much like Barack Obama. Carter was "magic" because he was the first nominee from the Deep South, the first nominee who talked a great deal about his religion. Obama is "magic" because he is the first black candidate and because he speaks very well. Carter was all smiles and civility, just like Obama is all niceness and calm. Pointedly, neither man speaks about political philosophy much at all.
Yet Carter was obviously a stark Leftist. What was not shown in his brief presidency has been shown in his long ex-presidency. When has Carter ever had anything to say good about America? More pointedly, what American ex-president has been so viciously partisan in his comments? His contempt for every Republican president since him certainly belies the toothy smile and meek words of 1976. Jimmy Carter is a bitter, angry man - a man who hates his country and blames America for the problems of mankind.
Barack Obama seems cut of identical cloth. Carefully scripted, Obama quickly corrects statements which show how he truly feels. He rejects anti-Semitic, anti-American supporters only when nudged to do so. His wife "misstates" when she says that she has never been proud of America until now, but Michelle corrects the error only belatedly and without apparent concern for misinterpretation.
It certainly seems as if Obama feels that the problems of America have been her moral shortcomings, which is very much what Jimmy Carter thought. It seems as if Obama feels himself morally superior to those in politics today, much like Carter did thirty years ago. Obama, like Carter, invites Americans to trust him with the most beguiling claims of spiritual elevation. Obama, like Carter was an utter and complete Democrat partisan, although he promised to be just the opposite.
Jimmy Carter never tried to "govern from the center" or "seek bipartisanship." He could easily have passed tax cuts or defense spending increases. He did not want to. Barack Obama has never sought bipartisanship. He embraces Leftism completely. They are the same: Barack Obama is our next Jimmy Carter
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(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
19 March, 2008
Media tries to bury Pastorgate
Compare this with what happened when GWB gave JUST ONE SPEECH at Bob Jones university
The broadcast network evening show blackout, of Reverend Jeremiah Wright's 2001 charge that the U.S. earned the 9/11 attacks, continued Monday night as neither CBS nor NBC touched the Wright issue and ABC ran a full story which included Wright's "U.S. of K-K-K-A" hate speech and how Obama has been close to Wright for 20 years, but concluded with how "many African-Americans do not understand" the controversy since the "kind of fiery language Wright uses is not uncommon in black churches."
The race-based, white-bashing rants may not be so uncommon, but is anti-American shouting -- about how "we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye" and so "America's chickens are coming home to roost" -- so common?
Anchor Charles Gibson set up the story from Jake Tapper by asserting Obama "is being dogged by his pastor's provocative comments." After the "U.S. of K-K-K-A" soundbite, Tapper pointed out how "Wright has played an important role in Obama's life for 20 years." Viewers then saw a clip of Obama from June of 2007 giving "a special shout out to my pastor" who's "a friend. And a great leader." Following some quotes illustrating Obama's awareness a year ago of how Wright's views could prove embarrassing, Tapper ended with how such language is not unusual in black churches.
Not a word on Monday's CBS Evening News (anchored by Russ Mitchell) of Wright/Obama and, on Monday's NBC Nightly News, merely one cryptic "by the way" line from anchor Brian Williams....
In a sermon the Sunday after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Wright suggested America spurred and deserved the attacks: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....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 into our own front yard. America's chickens are coming home to roost.No part of that far-left, Blame America First language has made it onto the ABC, CBS or NBC evening newscasts since the video became public last Thursday.
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Taranto on Pastorgate
Are we wrong to think that Barack Obama's campaign is imploding? For the past few days the national spotlight has been on Jeremiah Wright, pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ and Obama's so-called spiritual mentor, who turns out to be a certifiable America-hating crackpot. As ABC News reported last week:"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, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people," he said in a 2003 sermon. "God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."Obama's response--which we'll get to in a moment--has been to assert that the most outrageous of Wright's utterances are news to him, and to avoid discussing the pastor's overall theological worldview.
In addition to damning America, he told his congregation on the Sunday after Sept. 11, 2001 that the United States had brought on al Qaeda's attacks because of its own terrorism. "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," Rev. Wright said in a sermon on Sept. 16, 2001.
"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. America's chickens are coming home to roost," he told his congregation.
In a set of "talking points" on the church's Web site, Wright proclaims himself an exponent of "black liberation theology." He cites James Cone, a distinguished professor at New York's Union Theological Seminary, whom he credits for having "systematized" this strain of Christianity. Here is a quote from Cone, explaining black liberation theology (hat tip: Spengler, a pseudonymous columnist for the Asia Times):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.Could Obama really have been unaware for all these years that his spiritual mentor follows a racially adversarial theology, one that demands of God that he be "for us and against white people" and that he participate "in the destruction of the white enemy"? It doesn't exactly sound like the sort of change we can believe in.
National Review's Rich Lowry notes that Obama's 1995 memoir, "Dreams of My Father," cites a Wright sermon called "The Audacity of Hope," the title of which Obama borrowed for his own campaign slogan. Without evident disapproval, Obama quotes a passage from that sermon in which Wright describes "a world . . . where white folks' greed runs a world in need."
Writing on the Puffington Host, self-described Obama backer Gerald Posner says he finds it hard to believe Obama could not have known about Wright's post-9/11 calumny:There was no more traumatic event in our recent history than 9/11. Reverend Wright's comments would have raised a ruckus at most places in America, coming so soon after the the [sic] attack itself. . . .And what does Obama have to say for himself? Essentially nothing. In his own Puffington Host post, the senator issues a series of condemnations without troubling himself to specify what he is condemning:
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 [sic] Wright said yesterday at the church. You should be ready with a comment if someone from the press calls you up."I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy. I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it's on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue. . . .In the same post, Obama claims that Wright "has never been my political advisor; he's been my pastor." In fact, as Bloomberg reports, Wright served on an advisory committee for the Obama campaign, from which he was forced to resign Friday.
The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation. When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments. . . .
Let me repeat what I've said earlier. All of the statements that have been the subject of controversy are ones that I vehemently condemn. They in no way reflect my attitudes and directly contradict my profound love for this country.
Why does Obama feel it necessary to resort to these lawyerly--dare we say Clintoneque--evasions? (The American Thinker blog sends them up to great effect.) Why can't he simply speak from the heart and tell us what he really thinks of black liberation theology? Two possibilities come to mind, both of which may be true.
One is that Obama's condemnation and rejection of Wright's appalling statements is not sincere. That is not to say that Obama shares Wright's hatreds; we have no reason to think that he does and would be surprised if he did. It may just be that the whole question is a matter of indifference to him, except inasmuch as it affects his own political ambitions. If Obama doesn't speak from the heart, perhaps it is because his heart has nothing to say. Obama apparently has been aware for some time that his association with Wright was likely to be a political liability. The New York Times reports:In the interview last spring, Mr. Wright expressed frustration at the breach in [his] relationship with Mr. Obama, saying the candidate had already privately said that he might need to distance himself from his pastor.At this point, though, "distancing" himself plainly is not enough. Obama needs to renounce Wright and his noxious beliefs forcefully and specifically, even if he personally is blas‚ about them.
But this brings us to the second possible reason he hasn't done so: that it may entail a political cost as well. After all, it's not as if the malevolent minister is preaching to empty pews. There is a segment of the black community that embraces Wright-style bigotry, shown anecdotally in this quote from the ABC News story:"I wouldn't call it radical. I call it being black in America," said one congregation member outside the church last Sunday.We would like to think this point of view is not terribly common. But Wright's congregation has 8,000 members, the biggest in its denomination, according to the Religion News Service. Possibly Obama has reason to fear losing crucial black support if he expressly repudiates Wright and what he stands for.
One of the Obama campaign's chief selling points has been the promise of "unity" and of rising above racial division. But how can you unify the nation while countenancing hatred of it? And how can racial division be overcome when those who preach hatred are able to find such a large audience?
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Obama's poor judgment and poorer excuses
Barack Obama showed very poor judgment when he accepted $250,000 of campaign funds from slumlord Tony Resko (now on trial), who was Obama's first substantial contributor in Obama's meteoric political rise. When Obama bought his $1.65 million South Side home, there was an adjacent landscaped lot, which Rezko's wife purchased on the same day for the full asking price of $ 625,000. Obama's changing excuses for his lack of judgment are even more troubling. Here are three of many unconvincing justifications:
First he claims ignorance. "I didn't know about Rezko problems." He told Sun Times reporter Tim Novak on April 24, 2007. He also didn't know the unsafe conditions of Rezko's buildings, some of which were in Obama's district. "Should I have known these buildings were in a state of disrepair? My answer would be that it wasn't brought to my attention,'' Why didn't Obama know? Jay Stewart, Chicago's Better Government Assn., told the LA Times:"Everybody in this town knew that Tony Rezko was headed for trouble. When he got indicted, there wasn't a single insider who was surprised. It was viewed as a long time coming. . . .Why would you be having anything to do with Tony Rezko, particularly if you're planning to run for president?"Second, Obama underplayed Rezko's financial contributions and said it was his "best guesstimate" that Rezko raised $10,000 to $15,000. "Obama said he didn't have more certainty because he didn't then have the staff to maintain better campaign finance records." If Obama had so little management and understanding of his small campaign coffers, how will he govern a nation whose complex economy faces many challenges?
On March 15, 2008, to quell the increased press scrutiny of the Obama-Rezko relationship, Obama explained, "My instinct was to believe him.... In my interactions with him [Rezko], he was very gracious. He did not ask me for favors. He was not obtrusive. He wasn't one of those people who would insist on coming around all the time or constantly being photographed with me."
So the candidate was too trusting, too gullible. Did he think that a conman and influence peddler would be the movie stereotype of a cigar-smoking thug with a scar slashed across his face and wearing a trench coat and dark glasses? Of course, the most effective criminal would be gracious. If Barack Obama is indeed so gullible, then he is not ready for the cons and maneuvers he will encounter with our adversaries in Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea.
Ignorance? Ineptitude? Gullibility? None are excellent credentials for the highest office in the nation.
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Obama can't even "reconcile" his own minister
The poor old emptyhead hasn't got a clue how to reconcile anyone
More from today's Obama:We've got a lot of pent-up anger and bitterness and misunderstanding. But what I continue to believe in is that this country wants to move beyond these kinds of divisions. That this country wants something different.Does Obama believe his own minister wants something different? Can Obama point to any success he has had in moving his minister past anger and bitterness and misunderstanding? (This will be tricky, since Obama apparently only learned in Feb 2007 that his minister harbored and expressed such thoughts.)
When does the Great Reconciliator actually reconcile? Or does Obama's magic reconciliation only work at great distances, with those who don't really know him? Let's put some meat on these reconciliation bones - per this report, Obama's remarks today also included this:He said schools should do a better job of teaching all students African-American history "because that's part of American history," as well as women's struggle for equality, the history of unions, the role of Hispanics in U.S. and other matters that he suggested aren't given enough attention. "I want us to have a broad-based history" taught in schools, he said, even including more on "the Holocaust as well as other issues of oppression" around the world.What? On behalf of gays, lesbians, Native Americans, Asians, and left-handed Alaskans I deplore this limited approach to the teaching of American history. Now, I assume the Asian sub-section will note the vital Chinese role in building our Western railroads, so let's not overlook the Irish, once a disprespected underclass that is now respectably mainstream. C'mon, I have some bad self-esteem days just like everyone else (Perhaps coincidentally I am verging on a low self-esteem moment as I type this, or perhaps because I type this.)
Well - if an enhanced Victims Studies curriculum shouldered by our already struggling public schools is really Obama's bridge to a united tomorrow, please help us all. Help us to keep a straight face, I should say. My impression is that his minister, Jeremiah Wright, is an extremely intelligent and well-educated man who is well-versed in black history - how is his reconciliation progressing?
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(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
18 March, 2008
Obama Sinks in Rasmussen Poll, Left Thrashes About
For what it's worth, Barack Obama dropped seven points in yesterday's Rasmussen tracking poll that matches him against Hillary Clinton. Rasmussen calls last night's sample "very favorable for Clinton." Although we don't know exactly how favorable, simple math says Clinton beat Obama by a lot last night - well into double digits. It would seem a reasonable supposition that Obama's internal polls showed some similarly disquieting data, and those numbers triggered Obama's sprint around the media last night.
How much damage the Meshugenah Minister scandal will do to Obama remains anyone's guess. Hey, it's possible that by this time next week, the talk will have completely shifted to another topic. Then again, that other topic may be Michelle Obama's rhetoric which bears uncomfortable America-bashing similarities to Reverend Wright's, or why exactly the Obamas depended on the financial help of a Chicago political fixer to buy their dream home in a year in which they netted a cool $1.6 million in combined income.
The reactions from the left regarding Obama's association with Reverend Wright have been interesting. Let me share a few. (The following excerpts are long, so if you decide to just skim them, I'll understand.)
Over at Open Left, the leading light of the liberal blogosphere, Matt Stoller, decried the "swiftboating" of Obama but then unsympathetically suggested that Obama brought it upon himself because he's "not a part of any progressive fights, so there's no independent organizing going on on his behalf from people who actually understand the right-wing media and how it operates."
At The American Prospect, Ezra Klein let loose the following jeremiad:
"Does anyone believe a long association with Jerry Falwell's church would have done anything but help McCain in the Republican primary, and gotten Democrats tagged as anti-religion when they tried to point out Falwell's nuttiness in the general? It's fine to be a Christian extremist in America. It's fine to believe, and say publicly, that everyone who hasn't accepted Jesus Christ into their heart will roast in eternal hellfire, fine to believe that the homosexuals caused Hurricane Katrina and the feminists contributed to 9/11, fine to believe we must support Israel so the Jews can be largely annihilated in a war that will trigger the End Times, fine to believe we're in a holy battle with the barbaric hordes of Islam, fine to believe that we went to the Middle East to prove 'our God is bigger than your God.' What you can't believe is that blacks have suffered a long history of oppression in this country, that they're still face deep institutional discrimination, and that a country where 100 percent of the presidents have been rich white guys is actually run by rich white guys. More to the point, even if you do believe those things, you certainly can't be angry about it!"At the Daily Kos, Jennifer Bruenjes (who blogs under the name "Scout Finch") whiffs the fetid stench of a media double standard:
"Without weighing in on whether or not the content of Reverend Jeremiah Wright's sermons should be denounced by Barack Obama, I do find one aspect of this story quite troubling. We have now seen more sermons from Barack Obama's minister in 48 hours than we ever did of Mike Huckabee ---- and Mike Huckabee was a presidential candidate for 14 long months. Why is it acceptable to scour every last sermon given by Wright, but only weeks ago we weren't allowed to see or read Mike Huckabee's sermons? In fact, not only was it totally ignored by the traditional media, but the few times the question of Huckabee's sermons was raised, it was brushed aside as inappropriate."Ms. Bruenjes/Finch and Young Mr. Klein don't quite have their facts straight. People who followed the Republican primary fight spent weeks discussing the phrase "servant leadership." Nevertheless, if indeed Governor Huckabee gave a sermon with "God Damn America" as its exclamation point, I will concede the Kossack has a point. Regarding Klein's rant, does anyone outside the far left echo chamber really think a Jerry Falwell parishioner would have a great shot at the presidency? Even on the Republican side, such a relationship would be as much a debit as an asset as the fate of many campaigns (such as Pat Robertson's) attest. And in a general election, a Falwell disciple would have even greater problems.
Beyond these areas of factual confusion, all three essays on the topic bear a striking similarity - none of them even attempt to grapple with what potential Obama supporters might find disquieting about the candidate's relationship with Wright. Actually, it's worse than that. All three essays take as a jumping off point that if you're concerned about this relationship, you're a schmuck.
This is of course the classic Progressive method of argument - insult someone you disagree with until they come around. It doesn't often succeed, but you have to admire their perverse doggedness in relying on such a strategy at such an hour of peril.
Regarding the merits of the Obama/Wright relationship, here's the current state of play: Obama claims to have found Wright's currently controversial statements offensive. Now, you'll have to forgive the vagueness of the term "found," because we don't know exactly when Reverend Wright's greatest hits reached Obama. Nevertheless, we can assume that the Rolling Stone portrait of Reverend Wright from February 2007 popped up on the Obama campaign's radar. A relevant passage:
Fact number one: We've got more black men in prison than there are in college. Fact number two: Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run! We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns and the training of professional KILLERS. . . . We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God. . . . We conducted radiation experiments on our own people. . . . We care nothing about human life if the ends justify the means! And. And. And! GAWD! Has GOT! To be SICK! OF THIS SHIT!"
And yet Obama didn't break ties with Wright until last night, thirteen months after this story debuted, declaring his profound offense over these remarks in the process yesterday as he toured the media.
As a thought experiment, suppose I had a regular golf game with actor/director Mel Gibson. And suppose I claimed to not be aware that he occasionally called female police officers "Sugar Tits" and engaged in public rants regarding how Jews started all the wars in the world. Let's say that I professed to be gravely offended by these acts. But let's say I kept our regular golf game running for another year. Reasonable, skeptical people might wonder precisely how offended I really was.
Likewise, reasonable people will have serious questions and questions about Barack Obama's relationship with his minister. It's a measure of how knotty this issue is that many Obama supporters refuse to seriously engage the issue, and instead belittle those who find it disquieting.
One final note - the alarming results Obama had in last night's Rasmussen tracking poll came from likely Democratic voters. As much as the left might wish otherwise, many of their own obviously find the Obama/Wright relationship cause for concern.
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Chris Dodd Indicates Sinking Obama
Chris Dodd was on Fox News Sunday and just completely bumbled the Reverend Wright issue, which is a sign of how the issue is tanking Obama's chances. Dodd could not answer why Obama has stayed around Wright for years, and answer why the words of this minister were not denounced much early much stronger. Clearly Obama lied to America the other day when he said he was not aware of comments as Chris Wallace dug up an earlier, much weaker rebuttal by referring to Wright as the crazy old uncle who says crazy things. And when Dodd had to face the fact Obama lied he could only beg for a change of subject. If Obama is lying to us now that means he will lie to us when President. We don't want that kind of mess repeated.
The Dems definitely circled the wagons as Schumer stood by Dodd's lame excuses and diversions. The two dems know the damage is taking hold across the board or they would not have defended each other. But America is not buying the diversion. The two senators said these were distractions and we need to talk about the issues. But Wright (and Geraldine Ferraro) were talking about the issues. They were talking about race relations in America and the lunatic left anti-American views.
America knows this and knows that the people who back or lead a campaign give an indication of where that candidate is going. Once you got the Dems on the mundane topics of economy and health care they were quite able to regurgitate their talking points. But when they had to face the hard issues bubbling up from their base they did not know how to deal with it and just wanted to move on.
The talking heads have lost their connections with the people - that is clear. And they have not figured out how to regain it. America is not giving these losers who have led us into hyper-partisan deadlock anymore leeway. No more benefit of the doubt. Either show some leadership and understanding of what Americans want (and it ain't hyper-partisan sniping) or lose our backing. I can see they signs that this crop of leaders is out of gas and a new generation is about to take hold. Can't happen soon enough for my tastes.
Update: Not coincidentally an Obama supporter spoke out today and emphasizes my point about the lies and how they are killing the the wonder boy Obama: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.This is the acid test Obama just failed. He tried to say he never heard these kinds of statements in 20 years, but as Chris Wallace noted he was trying to pass them off as harmless rantings of an old man a year ago or more. He tried to side step the issue then, and outright lied to the voters this weekend when he tried to claim he was unaware of the rhetoric from his church of 20 years - a laughable position. As Brit Hume noted, even if he missed every flame-throwing sermon somehow, had to be aware of the controversy.
Now we are faced with two versions of a repeat of the Clinton years: His wife and Obama who lies to America's face as he tries to cover up missteps. Not sure America wants either choice right now.
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Trinity United Responds
No apologies. Instead, they've gone with the "look over there!" approach."AN ATTACK ON OUR SENIOR PASTOR AND THE HISTORY OF THE AFRICAN AMERICAN CHURCH":This does not even purport to address the issue. No one is disturbed that Wright tries to better the lives of "the oppressed." People are rightfully angry that he believes it's necessary to tear down "whitey" in the process. Obama spent the last year talking about unity and it turns out that his very good friend, his counsel, his pastor, the man who brought him to Christianity, built a following out of dividing black America from white. Trinity United, and whoever wrote this release does the same thing by announcing that our scrutiny is an attack on the "African American Church." This is freshman-level victimology. I'm a little embarrassed for them.
Chicago, Ill. (March 15, 2008 ) - Nearly three weeks before the 40th commemorative anniversary of the murder of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Reverend Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.'s character is being assassinated in the public sphere because he has preached a social gospel on behalf of oppressed women, children and men in America and around the globe."Dr. Wright has preached 207,792 minutes on Sunday for the past 36 years at Trinity United Church of Christ. This does not include weekday worship services, revivals and preaching engagements across America and around the globe, to ecumenical and interfaith communities. It is an indictment on Dr. Wright's ministerial legacy to present his global ministry within a 15- or 30-second sound bite," said the Reverend Otis Moss III, pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ. During the 36-year pastorate of Dr. Wright, Trinity United Church of Christ has grown from 87 to 8,000 members. It is the largest congregation in the United Church of Christ (UCC) denomination.Well, woohoo for you! It turns out that there are 8,000 like-minded people who want to wallow around in their victimhood once a week. I wouldn't be bragging about that."It saddens me to see news stories reporting such a caricature of a congregation that has been such a blessing to the UCC's Wider Church mission," said the Rev. John H. Thomas, UCC general minister and president, in a released statement. " . It's time for us to say `No' to these attacks and declare that we will not allow anyone to undermine or destroy the ministries of any of our congregations in order to serve their own narrow political or ideological ends."What is he talking about? No one's trying to destroy any ministries or any congregations. In fact, I think we'd all appreciate it if Rev. Wright would make his sermon and lecture notes available for wider release. I am genuinely interested in knowing what he's all about, though I don't expect to sympathize or agree with much of it.Trinity United Church of Christ's ministry is inclusive and global. The following ministries have been developed under Dr. Wright's ministerial tutelage for social justice: assisted living facilities for senior citizens, day care for children, pastoral care and counseling, health care, ministries for persons living with HIV/AIDS, hospice training, prison ministry, scholarships for thousands of students to attend historically black colleges, youth ministries, tutorial and computer programs, a church library, domestic violence programs and scholarships and fellowships for women and men attending seminary.These are all noteworthy and admirable projects. But they're not why Rev. Wright is in trouble. Nor do they negate his efforts to single out blacks, domestically and globally, and convince them of their oppression.Moss added, "The African American Church was born out of the crucible of slavery and the legacy of prophetic African American preachers since slavery has been and continues to heal broken marginalized victims of social and economic injustices. This is an attack on the legacy of the African American Church which led and continues to lead the fight for human rights in America and around the world.""God damn America" is the legacy of prophetic African American preachers? Douglass weeps.Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached the Christian tenet, "love thy neighbor as thyself." Before Dr. King was murdered on April 4, 1968, he preached, "The 11 o'clock hour is the most segregated hour in America." Forty years later, the African American Church community continues to face bomb threats, death threats, and their ministers' characters are assassinated because they teach and preach prophetic social concerns for social justice. Sunday is still the most segregated hour in America.It is laughable and shameful that a congregation that has self-segregated thinks that Rev. King's words will be a shield against further examination. By evoking Rev. King, Trinity United only looks worse by comparison.
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Race and the Democrats-- Postmortem
By Victor Davis Hanson
End of Story. The Wright scandal has now been clarified as much as it is going to be clarified: Obama senses that most (given the alternative of Hillary or the self-destruction of the nation's first competitive black presidential candidate) want to believe him-and where there is a will, there is a way.
So Sen. Obama apparently is going to insist that either the racialism and hatred of America ("God damn America") voiced by Rev. Wright are maliciously cherry-picked and taken out of context (despite the clear evidence of entire sermons delivered in toto on these topics and in this style); or he is going to stonewall by condemning only piecemeal each successive and more astounding venomous sound-bite that surfaces-while contextualizing them by claiming that Wright is retiring, that someone who raves about AIDs being created in the U.S. is a "scholar," and that Wright was a Marine, etc. And don't dare raise the issue again, since you, not the Rev. Wright, are the problem, or as Obama proclaimed on Saturday, -"The forces of division have begun to raise their ugly head again." Again? Or as they have for 20 years at the Trinity Church?
It doesn't seem to matter that there is more than enough evidence in Obama's own memoirs and past interviews and puff pieces-as well as the common-sense deduction that one does not frequent a church for 20 years and remain oblivious to the ratings of its preacher-that Obama knew what went on.
It doesn't seem to matter that Obama's assertion he will stay on at the church due to Wright's departure is problematic, since Wright's successor Otis Moss III, in a recent CNN interview, simply defended Wright and gave no evidence that he would distance the church from his message.
The senator, I wager, apparently thought the extremism of Wright was a sort of venting and metaphorical catharsis, and what damage it might be doing to the African-American community by demonizing their country and fellow citizens was more than offset by the inculcation of racial pride and solidarity-and the occasional nostrum of having a fiery surrogate articulate the frustrations and bitterness that blacks sometimes fell.
At least, that is the subtext that seems to explain Obama's inexplicable past-of preaching a new unity and racial healing while being connected to a church that preaches hatred.
If one were to review the recent network appearances of Obama, the reaction to them by pundits, and the campaign's spin on them, the story we are to swallow is pretty clear:
Given the racist history of the United States, the black church has developed a counter-narrative and history. Others outside the community are apparently not fully aware of the vocabulary, metaphor and style of this sometimes problematic and complicated milieu, but they should give this "alterity" a pass, given our own culpability for shameful episodes in American history. Obama surely and at present does not buy into this "God damn America" rhetoric, so what is the point in pursuing it any longer?
We are most certainly not ever going to get from Sen. Obama anything close to something like "The repugnant rhetoric from the Trinity Church neither reflects my own views nor those of most in America. To assure others of my long-standing objections to such hatred, I am now leaving the church."
So the question will simply be left to the American voter:
EITHER: 'Obama probably knew what was going on at Trinity, but, given the complex circumstances and Obama's other strengths, it doesn't matter enough to affect my vote;'
OR: 'Obama's attendance and his feeble reaction to the criticism of Wright provide a valuable warning of why someone so inexperienced and yet so familiar with extremists should not be President of the United States next year.'
It's left to the electorate, as it should be.
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(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
17 March, 2008
Pastorgate: The modified hang-out, and the modified modified hangout
Despite the serial profession of a new politics, there is something Nixonian about Obama's recent disclaimers over his racist pastor's diatribes. At first he tried to blame the messenger:"Here is what happens when you just cherry-pick statements from a guy who had a 40-year career as a pastor."The problem is not cherries, Senator, but an entire orchard. The most egregious slurs are not from two decades past, but post 9/11 and especially in 2006. And Obama should have learned from Nixon that when there is something there, it is best to get out in front of it in a manner that anticipates more disturbing revelations. Yet the modified hangout then followed;"It's a congregation that does not merely preach social justice but acts it out each day, through ministries ranging from housing the homeless to reaching out to those with HIV/AIDS."This is a de facto defense of, not a distancing from, Wright, and begs the question of why? And the AIDs evocation is especially damning since the reverend has made it clear that HIV was our own creation, apparently part and parcel of some US government conspiracy. Is Obama now suggesting that Wright did important civic work with AIDs even though he promulgated a belief that the virus was fabricated by our own government? And then comes the modified modified hangout:"But because Rev. Wright was on the verge of retirement, and because of my strong links to the Trinity faith community, where I married my wife and where my daughters were baptized, I did not think it appropriate to leave the church."That makes it even worse, because now Obama hints that he might have been in fact aware of the Wright rhetoric, but gave him a pass because he was "on the verge of retirement," as if the albatross were about to disappear anyway, and with it the cause of prior embarrassment. And the evocation of his marriage and his children's baptisms in such an extremist landscape should not be cited as reasons to stay in it, but rather should have been evoked as causes why he should get out-and not have his family further tainted by it. And it goes on and on:"And while Rev. Wright's statements have pained and angered me, I believe that Americans will judge me not on the basis of what someone else said, but on the basis of who I am and what I believe in; on my values, judgment and experience to be President of the United States.""Judgment" is the wrong word here, because the entire Wright liaison is proof positive of terrible judgment. And the problem is not judging Sen. Obama "on the basis of what someone else said", but on the basis of his own generous subsidies to someone who spewed forth not mere speech, but hate speech. And when Obama announces,"The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation,"he only will prompt investigative reporters to rush to substantiate whether the Senator was there when any of this calumny was preached, or has given a hint that he was aware of it in the past. No doubt every word he has written, interview he has given, and people he has talked with will be examined to see whether that astounding statement is in fact true. For some strange reason, Obama has now banked his entire campaign on his word and assurance that he did not hear on a single occasion any such screed.
I hope he is correct. But if one were to collate the reverend's views on what his congregation should think of the United States, and, further, his writs against Americans as "selfish, self-centered egotists who are arrogant and ignorant" with Michelle Obama's own astounding statements that hitherto she had no pride in the United States, and considered America "just downright mean," and Americans "guided by fear" and (in the words of the New Yorker profiler) who summed up her views as `we're a nation of cynics, sloths, and complacents' the echoes are eerie.
Without sounding dramatic, I think his campaign has seriously underestimated the effect of the Wright tapes on the average American voter (again, the problem is not just the transcript, but the delivery, most notably its fury and coarseness), and the senator's own abject inability honestly and forthrightly to explain the close relationship of the Obamas to Reverend Wright, apologize for such a lapse of judgment, and move on. His advisors are culpable here, and apparently in their spin have no clue that they are making things worse rather than better.
Instead, we have heard first "cherry-picking" and then that the reverend does not represent his own views, but not a hint of contrition for an association with such a demagogue and hate-monger. I think this will not go away, and ultimately damage Obama beyond repair, for it strikes at the heart of his very candidacy-that he was a healer who has transcended racial divides, and was introducing a new credo of transparent and painfully forthright politics. The Wright scandal and his reaction thus far belie both. This was precisely why Hillary stayed in the race, and mirabile dictu, perhaps what she imagined would eventually transpire. Whatever one's views, this is both a travesty and a tragedy.
Source
Obama just blathers on foreign policy
Some supporters note that Senator Obama spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, implying that his pre-adolescent experience somehow vests in him the wisdom to deal with foreign policy challenges. But others -- particularly in the Hillary Clinton camp -- disagree. Her now-famous 3 A.M. phone call commercial symbolized this view: Barack Obama has not yet earned his spurs and is unprepared to the rigors of the Presidency. They have their reasons to believe so.
As an adult, Barack Obama focused his efforts in community organizing in Chicago and local and state issues when he became a member of the Illinois State Senate. Since he became a U.S. Senator, his foreign travel has been severely limited and sparse. His supporters tout his role on the Foreign Relations Committee but neglect to note that he has yet to convene a policy-oriented hearing of the Subcommittee on Europe -- which he chairs. As the New York Times notes, Senator Obama seems to have focused on his Presidential campaign rather than on the duties of his office. .Senator Obama realizes that his lack of experience and track record are liabilities in his quest for the Presidency. His campaign instead touts that he has superior judgment and that this judgment trumps experience. In his own words, "foreign policy is all about judgment"This has been a signal message of his campaign, placing the question of his judgment squarely in the center of the campaign debate. Of course his claim to good judgment relies almost solely on his opposition to the launch of the Iraq War, first articulated in a speech he made in Chicago while running for the U.S. Senate.
Since that speech he has moved toward a more, shall we say, nuanced view of the Iraq war than many of his supporters would want us to appreciate. Since the initial 2002 speech his views have evolved over the years (he is the "change" candidate, after all). This is a history of change regarding the Iraq War that the campaign obscures.
But the liberal and Obama-supporting New Republic has gone back and looked, into "The Cinderella Story". His views on the Iraq War have not been quite as principled as his campaign wishes voters to believe. Even before candidate Obama first spoke of his opposition to the war, he fretted to his political advisers regarding whether his speech opposing the war might hurt him politically . That shifting of positions to suit the political tenor of the times has continued over the years.
A timeline of Obama wavering
Here is a convenient timeline of his changing positions (in his own words):October 2, 2002, Chicago Wearing a war is not an option pin, he thrilled the anti-war rally by disparaging the Iraq war as a "dumb war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle, but on politics."As for the troop withdrawal,
The Audacity of Hope When America was obtaining clear victories on the ground in Iraq, Obama wrote in The Audacity of Hope, "I began to suspect that I might have been wrong [about the war]"
March 28, 2003, on CNN, Obama claimed that he, "Absolutely want to make sure that the troops have sufficient support to be able to win." He was invested in winning at that point.
Democratic National Convention July 2004 His only mention of the war was, "There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it." The day after his speech, Senator Obama told reporters that the United States had an "absolute obligation " to remain in Iraq long enough to make it a success. He stated that failure of the Iraqi state would be a disaster and would be a betrayal of the promise that we made to the Iraqi people, and it would be hugely destabilizing from a national security perspective". (This history is beginning to get more attention -- see below).
Same month He was no longer certain how he would have voted. "I'm not privy to Senate intelligence reports. What would I have done? I don't know." (The New York Times on July 26.)
2004 election To keep in line with his party's candidates Kerry and Edwards, who had voted for the Iraq War, he told The New York Times, "I'm always careful to say that I was not in the Senate, so perhaps the reason I thought [the war] was such a bad idea was that I didn't have the benefit of U.S. intelligence,"
After the election Obama regained his certainty on the Charlie Rose Show. When Rose asked him if he would have voted against the Iraq War resolution had he been in Congress, Obama's answer was a simple, "Yes."
July 2004 Obama told the Chicago Tribune "[t] here's not that much difference between my position [on the war] and George Bush's position at this stage."November 2005 speech He called for a gradual withdrawal of forces. "Notice that I say 'reduce,' and not 'fully withdraw'"The AP reported it this way in July 2007:
December 2005 He told the Chicago Tribune, "It is arguable that the best politics going into '06 would be a clear, succinct message: 'Let's bring our troops home...But whether that's the best policy right now, I don't feel comfortable saying it is."
January 2007 (just before announcing his run for the Presidency), for example, he outlined a plan to begin "redeployment of U.S. forces no later than May 1, 2007" and "remove all combat brigades from Iraq by March 31, 2008."
Today, he vows to "immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq.""Presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn't a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there."Obama and obligations
The following is a statement startling in its implications, and gives us insight into Barack Obama's reliability. In 2004, according to the Boston Globe, he stated:...that the United States had an "absolute obligation " to remain in Iraq long enough to make it a success. He stated that failure of the Iraqi state would be a disaster and would be a betrayal of the promise that we made to the Iraqi people, and it would be hugely destabilizing from a national security perspective.That was a commitment to the Iraqi people -- an "absolute" promise that we would hold paramount our obligation to provide them security, to protect them from the ravages that would flow from a failed state. Yet a mere three years later he was ready to throw them to the wolves, genocide be damned.
This willingness of Senator Obama to turn his back on something he proclaimed an "absolute obligation" should be particular concern to the millions of supporters of Israel in America. When campaigning, Senator Obama has made similar promises regarding the safety and security of Israel? How long will those promises last? Until January, 2009?
Much more here
Obama 12 years ago
Barack Obama, the uniter across party lines, across religions, across racial divides, wasn't always Mr. Sunshine. He had a different view 12 years ago, when his campaign was more localized. He was 34 years old: a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School -- bastions of power and wealth. He was the beneficiary of the best education America had to offer. What were his feelings at age 34? Resentment, hyper-partisan, and accusatory towards whites, Republicans and the so-called Christian right.
As Barack Obama prepared to run for the state Senate he spoke up shortly after the Million Man March lead by Louis Farrakhan -- or as Barack Obama honorifically recently titled him, Minister Farrakhan. Via Newsbusters:These are mean, cruel times, exemplified by a 'lock 'em up, take no prisoners' mentality that dominates the Republican-led Congress. Historically, African-Americans have turned inward and towards black nationalism whenever they have a sense, as we do now, that the mainstream has rebuffed us, and that white Americans couldn't care less about the profound problems African-Americans are facing."Barack Obama has commented on the value of words to inspire, to bring about change. What kind of change was he talking about in his mid 30's when most of us had already given up the rebellion we flirted with, and the resentments that beset us, in college?
The right wing, the Christian right, has done a good job of building these organizations of accountability, much better than the left or progressive forces have. But it's always easier to organize around intolerance, narrow-mindedness, and false nostalgia. And they also have hijacked the higher moral ground with this language of family values and moral responsibility.
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Brief notes:
Various Leftists think it is unfair to focus on Obama's church affiliations. Many of the same people, however, had no hesitation dwelling on Romney's Mormon affiliations. See here
Obama on Wright, before the videos reached Americans: "It was just a year ago (March 6, 2007) when Bill Burton, Obama's campaign spokesperson, told the New York Times that "Senator Obama is proud of his pastor and his church..." Listen to Obama talk about his pastor before the media started asking the tough questions. John McCain is too much of a gentleman to use this video in a campaign ad, but others might not be as considerate.
Pelosi boosts Obama: "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says it would be damaging to the Democratic party for its leaders to buck the will of national convention delegates picked in primaries and caucuses, a declaration that gives a boost to Sen. Barack Obama. "If the votes of the superdelegates overturn what's happened in the elections, it would be harmful to the Democratic party," Pelosi said in an interview taped Friday for broadcast Sunday on ABC's "This Week." The California Democrat did not mention either Obama or his rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, by name. But her remarks seemed to suggest she was prepared to cast her ballot at the convention in favor of the candidate who emerges from the primary season with the most pledged delegates. Obama leads Clinton by 142 pledged delegates - those delegates picked in nomination contests to date, in The Associated Press' count."
Civil war at Kos: "There is a writers "strike" at the Daily Kos by pro-Hillary writers. Writes the striker: "Instead, I will put my energy into posting at sites where my efforts aren't routinely trashed, spammed and ridiculed by a handful of angry, petty and spiteful folks who clearly have too much time on their hands." I see a light in the foggy furrows of a bewildered lefty mind. It suddenly dawns on the striking writer that, hey, the years of profanity and personal attacks on others are catching up. Ridicule hurts. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. "Sadly, the majority of the administrators have allowed this hostile environment to develop in our online community for anyone who isn't planted firmly in the Obama camp. They've routinely ignored personal attacks and allowed disruptive, spam-like posts to go unchecked whenever anyone expresses support for Hillary or challenges something their candidate has said or done. There are however several front-pagers who have managed to avoid taking part in the attacks on Hillary and for that I'm grateful. But the site has grown to the point where they simply can't - or won't monitor it. Yes, if you dare disagree with a lefty, said lefty will try to make your life miserable."
Thanks are due to Rev. Wright: "I would like to take this opportunity to thank Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright for his selfless service to the country. Seldom in my memory has one man with one single, unwavering, and forceful train of thought done for America what Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright has done. Almost alone in the 21st century Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright has brought back to life and given voice and face to something most of use believed was lost with the 20th century -- the stone cold stereotype of the angry, bitter, and crazy African-American. So thank you, Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright. Without your ceaseless efforts in the service of your hate, Americans of all colors and creeds might have gone to the polls this fall thinking that the change we all hoped for was at hand. It's comforting to know we can, if we wish, cast our vote to keep your sacred stereotype alive in this century. Do not go gently into that good retirement Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright. The nation needs men of God such as yourself to keep the wounds of racism open, infected, and suppurating."
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
16 March, 2008
Obama as a sort-of Fascist
Fascism was the very popular combination of extreme nationalism with extreme socialism -- so Obama is clearly not a Fascist in any precise sense. So far from being a nationalist, he is not even a patriot.
But history never repeats itself exactly. The non-patriotic (international) socialists of the past were the Communists but they never had mass appeal. As Mao said, their power grew out of the barrel of a gun.
But Communism is now just about dead outside the Humanities Departments of Western universities so in Obama we may be seeing a new synthesis: A popular State tyranny like the Fascist one that does not rely on nationalism for its appeal. It is doubtful that such a tyranny would be so crass as to put out images like the satirical ones below but the reality behind the images might well evolve in the direction that the images suggest.
Images via Vanderleun
Obama's True Beliefs
I am coming to believe that Barack Obama is one of the greatest con artists we've seen. His entire campaign has been about "coming together," a post-racial consensus, etc. Any mention of his middle name was immediately condemned as ignorant fear-mongering. He has played the role of racial unifier with great skill and finesse.
But there is a great deal of evidence out there that he is anything but. The Reverend Wright is exhibit A. Mrs. Obama is Exhibit B. But there's lots more. Here is a piece by John Batchelor about some of Obama's other connections. For example:William Ayers is the second Chicago figure to consider in the political profile of Mr. Obama. William C. Ayers, known as Bill Ayers, is notorious as a terrorist bomber from the 1970s who, on September 11, 2001, in the New York Times was quoted as finding "a certain eloquence in bombs." Now, at 62, Mr. Ayers, a former aide to the current Mayor Richard M. Daley, is an established professor of education at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Importantly, Mr. Ayers and his wife, the equally notorious Weatherman terrorist Bernardine Dohrn, hosted a crucial meet-the-candidate event in their Hyde Park neighborhood home in 1995 when Mr. Obama, also a Hyde Park resident, was sounded out by vital citizens, among them the retiring state senator Alice Palmer for the 13th District.Obama's book is strewn with hints of his far left sympathies, as when he tells an African cousin who complains about the hardships of life in Kenya that things are no better in America. Or when he suggests that the lives of poor black young men in the inner city are blighted by white racism. He never says it explicitly, but it's there.
He has been very friendly with Rashid Khaladi, the fierce anti-Israel professor who took Edward Said's post at Columbia.
My own theory, FWIW, is that Obama acquired his far left views at least in part to make himself as authentically black as he could to compensate for having a white mother. His mother, of course, was very left herself. But looking the way he does, and having been raised among only white people (mother and maternal grandparents) he felt the need to better identify with his black heritage. That struggle is what the book is all about.
One can have sympathy for his psychological predicament . But that sympathy certainly does not extend to electing him president of a country that I sincerely believe he does not love.
Source
Beyond Black Politics
African-Americans voting for Barack Obama are understandably proud of a candidate who is such an electrifying presence on the national political stage. But he has no black company on that same stage. Not a single other member of the Congressional Black Caucus would have had a smidgen of a chance at winning the Democratic nomination. None could have put together Mr. Obama's strong biracial coalition. How come?
The Illinois senator is not the typical black member of Congress. Perhaps partly for that reason, prominent members of the African-American political elite did not initially expect such excitement from black voters. At the start of the campaign, at least some black opinion makers saw Mr. Obama as not quite authentically black -- a man who, as prominent writer Debra Dickerson put it, might "go Tiger Woods on us and get all race transcendent." Ms. Dickerson was reluctant, she said, "to point out the obvious: Obama isn't black."
It wasn't a new issue. In 2000, when former Black Panther member Bobby Rush crushed Mr. Obama in a U.S. House election in Illinois, a consultant to the Rush campaign told a New York Times reporter that Mr. Obama was seen as "not from us, not from the 'hood." Despite his community organizing, he was too Harvard.
Finally, all Democrats -- whatever their color -- want a winner. Only when white voters in Iowa gave Mr. Obama his first victory on Jan. 3 were black voters persuaded they would not be wasting their ballot by backing him. Thus, in the Jan. 26 South Carolina primary, Mr. Obama got 78% of the African-American vote. A month later, civil-rights icon and Georgia congressman John Lewis was unable to ignore his state's 88% black support Mr. Obama, and abandoned his long-standing loyalty to the Clintons. Mr. Obama's share of the black vote dropped below 70% only in Massachusetts and New York, and in numerous states it hovered around 90%.
By now, with Barack Obama well on his way to clinching the Democratic Party nomination, there's an obvious question: If he can make such a serious bid for the presidency, why have so few blacks tried to gain public office in majority-white settings that would have been far less challenging?
There have been few black U.S. senators -- but aspiring politicians cannot win elections in which they do not run. The same rule applies to House seats. It's often noted that the vast majority of black members of Congress are elected from majority-black districts. That does not mean, however, that black candidates will almost inevitably lose in most predominantly white constituencies.
Black candidates, however, seldom take the risk of wandering into political territory where, in Justice David Souter's words, they are obligated "to pull, haul, and trade to find common political ground" with voters outside the group. There is no way of knowing how well a candidate with Mr. Obama's personality and style would have done in many majority-white constituencies, even in the South.
That is, of course, the catch: Barack Obama has done so well precisely because he is a different sort of black candidate. Most black politicians do not have the personal history that has allowed Mr. Obama to "find common political ground." They have also been groomed in majority-black districts where they have seldom needed to appeal across racial lines.
"The Voting Rights Act perplexingly integrates the Congress by separating people into different congressional districts on the basis of race," political scientist David Lublin has noted. The statute has conferred on minority candidates a unique privilege: protection from white competition. In theory, there are no group rights to representation in America. In fact, the 1965 statute has created a system of reserved seats for blacks and Hispanics.
Almost all members of the Congressional Black Caucus have been elected to fill a reserved seat. They run in what Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has called "segregated" districts. These are districts devoid of the normal political pressures that encourage candidates to move to the political center. Candidates win -- as Bobby Rush did -- by emphasizing their racial bona fides, their commitment to representing black interests, and their far-left convictions -- matching those of most black voters. It is not a recipe for winning in statewide and other majority-white settings.
Thanks to the Voting Rights Act, blacks have advanced in one very important sense: At every level of government they hold elected office, and in the South the race-driven districting was initially essential to that dramatic and rapid expansion in black officeholding. But majority-minority districts have also placed blacks in a world of limited political possibilities.
Perhaps the candidacy of Barack Obama can convince the black leadership, as well as the Justice Department attorneys and judges who enforce and interpret the Voting Rights Act, that it is time to move on. Barack Obama, in turning his back on the world of segregated politics, has shown the way forward
Source
REZKO-OBAMA: BEYOND "GUILT BY ASSOCIATION"
For a United States Senator, Barack Obama has been doing a lot of explaining about the company he has kept for the last 17 years or so. Take some Joe Blow Alderman off the streets of Chicago and examine his friends and acquaintances and you're bound to come up with a couple of unsavory characters that straddle the line of legality with regard to city contracts or their business dealings.
But Obama is not some regular Machine pol juicing the way for his ward heeling friends so they can grow fat and rich at taxpayer expense. He is a United States Senator and the Democratic Party's frontrunner for President of the United States. One would think a higher standard might be in order regarding such a man's associates. One would think.
The constant refrain of Obama defenders is that he is being unfairly criticized because his problematic friends and acquaintances represent nothing more than "guilt by association." Taken on a case by case basis, such a defense might ring true. But Obama's problem is that he has so many friends and associates where "guilt by association" is the explanation given by his campaign that one begins to wonder when we can declare the candidate just plain "guilty" of using horrendous judgment and question whether his connection to some of these characters actually goes beyond innocence of wrongdoing.
WILLIAM AYERS, TERRORIST
Former Weather Underground member and unrepentant terrorist bomber William Ayers was one of Obama's earliest political supporters. Neither Obama or Ayers will comment on the extent of their relationship but it is clear that they have had contact several times over many years. They have participated in several forums at the University of Chicago together where Ayers is a professor and even served on the same Board of Directors overseeing the far left Woods Fund.
"Guilt by association?" Some enterprising journalist might want to ask Obama what he was doing paling around with an unreconstructed radical who spent 10 years on the run from the FBI and whose views on America or so out of the mainstream as to make him a pariah even among liberals. He must have found something attractive about Ayers to continue what was described by a friend of both men as a "friendship." He may disavow the tactics used by Ayers but how about his ideology?
A politician can grow and change their views on a variety of subjects. This may be what happened to Obama over the years as his radicalism may have been tempered by both the reality of running for office and a sincere re-examination of his worldview. But shouldn't his long term relationship with this despicable character call into question at the very least Obama's judgment?
When decent folk would never dream of associating in any way with such a man as Bill Ayers, what does that say about the candidate? He could have refused appearing in the same forums with him. He could have turned down the spot on the board of the Woods Fund. But he didn't. And so far, no explanation has been given by the campaign beyond "guilt by association."
REVEREND JEREMIAH WRIGHT
An even stronger case can be made that Obama's relationship with this anti-Semitic, Farrakhan supporting, race baiting preacher should be seen as beyond an innocent interpretation of the "guilt by association" theme. Wright heads up a church chosen by Obama after what he himself calls a long search specifically because of the preacher's sermons and his beliefs. What are those beliefs?Sen. Barack Obama's pastor says blacks should not sing "God Bless America" but "God damn America."Let me ask you, gentle reader, does anyone in your family talk like this?
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for the last 20 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's south side, has a long history of what even Obama's campaign aides concede is "inflammatory rhetoric," including the assertion that the United States brought on the 9/11 attacks with its own "terrorism."
In a campaign appearance earlier this month, Sen. Obama said, "I don't think my church is actually particularly controversial." He said Rev. Wright "is like an old uncle who says things I don't always agree with," telling a Jewish group that everyone has someone like that in their family."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," Rev. Wright said in a sermon on Sept. 16, 2001.Now if you or I had heard our minister or priest utter sentiments like that, what would you have done? I believe it is not beyond imagining that most Americans would have gotten up from their seats and walked out of the church never to return. And Obama's reaction?
"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. America's chickens are coming home to roost," he told his congregation.Sen. Obama told the New York Times he was not at the church on the day of Rev. Wright's 9/11 sermon. "The violence of 9/11 was inexcusable and without justification," Obama said in a recent interview. "It sounds like he was trying to be provocative," Obama told the paper.Again the question must be raised. Rather than simply repudiating the comments, what is the front runner for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States doing attending this church? What in God's name is Obama thinking when he hears this kind of rabid anti-Americanism spewing from the mouth of this racist demagogue?
"Guilt by association?" Or guilty of stupidity and arrogance? When an overwhelming majority of citizens would go far beyond "repudiating" Wright's remarks and want nothing whatsoever to do with him, it calls into question Obama's fitness for the office of President when he makes mealy mouthed explanations as he did to the Times. Can we afford someone as president who might actually sympathize, although not agree with the Ahmadinejad's of the world when they start spouting their hateful rhetoric against America? Will he see them as simply trying to be "provocative?" He's heard it before and did nothing. Why would we expect him to stand up for America when his country is being trashed by the dictators of the world like Hugo Chavez?
TONY REZKO & ASSOCIATES
Here is where Obama's relationships go far beyond "guilt by association" and enters the realm of deliberate obfuscation and perhaps even lying. Obama's ties to this scam artist and crook go far beyond what he told the New York Times - that he saw Rezko a couple of times a year and that he socialized with Rezko and his wife about 4 times a year.Mr. Obama has portrayed Mr. Rezko as a one-time fund-raiser whom he had occasionally seen socially. But interviews with more than a dozen political and business associates suggest that the two men were closer than the senator has indicated.The New York Times certainly has a gift for understatement. An FBI mole, John Thomas, who was working the Rezko case as a partner of one of Rezko's associates had this to say about the extent of how many times the two men saw each other:Sources said Thomas helped investigators build a record of repeat visits to the old offices of Rezko and former business partner Daniel Mahru's Rezmar Corp., at 853 N. Elston, by Blagojevich and Obama during 2004 and 2005. ... Both politicians relied on Rezko for fund-raising connections. Obama was in the thick of his successful run for the U.S. Senate in 2004. Now in the glare of a presidential campaign, Obama has donated to charity $157,835 from contributions to his Senate campaign that he has linked to Rezko.This is the kind of lie that will come back to haunt Obama as the Rezko trial proceeds. At every step Obama has sought to hide, to minimize, to dismiss his relationship with Rezko as a one sided affair - that of an eager Chicago fixer wanting to get close to an up and coming state senator. Instead, the picture that will almost certainly be revealed during Rezko's trial is that Obama and Rezko were close associates with Rezko being a crucial part of Obama's rise in politics while Obama for his part, aided Rezko in his business dealings.
How? By the time honored political tool known as "the drop by." Suppose you are a property developer meeting with foreign businessmen trying to convince them to invest in your plan. Suddenly, a United States senator shows up at your meeting to greet the foreigners, do a little backslapping, and thus give legitimacy and "juice" to the developer making it easier for the foreigners to trust him. The senator is in and out in just a few minutes. But the impact of his visit is not lost on the foreign businessmen. This is exactly what Obama did for Rezko on several occassions:While it is not clear what Mr. Rezko got from the relationship, he liked to display his alliances with politicians, including Mr. Obama. In one instance, when he was running for the Senate, Mr. Obama stopped by to shake hands while Mr. Rezko, an immigrant from Syria, was entertaining Middle Eastern bankers considering an investment in one of his projects."The above via Rezko Watch who adds this:This "dropping in" appears to be very much a part of a tit-for-tat, the exchanging of political favors between Rezko and Obama-Rezko raised funds and contributed to the political ascendance of Obama. In exchange, Obama obligingly "dropped in" while Rezko just happened to be entertaining Middle Eastern bankers whom he wanted to impress with his connections and that he'd like to have as investors in his real estate developments in Chicago.This is a favor done for a friend. It is not illegal. It is not even unethical - except it flies in the face of Mr. Obama's contention that he "never did any favors" for Tony Rezko. That statement is at the very least a shading of the truth. And it was made to hide the extent of his relationship with a very unsavory character.
And it isn't just Obama's relationship with Rezko that is at issue. The candidate has yet to explain the extent of his relationship with several Rezko associates who donated money to his campaign - all at the behest of Rezko. One contribution had to be returned by Obama because Rezko reimbursed the donor out of his own pocket.
All of this, according to the Obama campaign and numerous apologists, is simple "guilt by association." They claim that Obama has no connection to Rezko's activities for which he has been indicted and is standing trial. Except, of course, that Rezko was using the money he extorted from companies wanting to do business with the state and then turned around and made political contributions using that same money to Obama and other Illinois politicians.In the government's case against Rezko, prosecutors allege kickback payments were diverted to others to make campaign contributions to Obama's 2004 Senate campaign because Rezko had already made the maximum federal contribution. Obama is not named in the government's document but his campaign has not disputed that Obama is the politician who received the money from Rezko allies, something backed up by campaign disclosure records. Money linked to the straw donations has already been contributed to charity, Obama aides said.Obama has returned more than $150,000 of that money. There is probably more but it is admittedly difficult to find given the lengths to which Rezko went to conceal his activities. And the ultimate question that hangs over Obama like the Sword of Damocles: What did he know and when did he know it?
Rezko, Auchi, Alsammarae, Wright, Ayers - these are at least some of the shady and corrupt characters we know about who have had contact with both Obama and Rezko. The candidate refuses to address the extent of his relationship with any of them. When do we get beyond "guilt by association" of these people with Obama and start to wonder about just who this man is who is marching toward the nomination and a better than even shot at the White House?
Source
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
15 March, 2008
Obamas Gave $22,500 to Racist Church in 2006
There are mosques that preach Radical Islam. There are churches that preach Radical Christianity. Unfortunately, the leading Democratic nominee for president attends such a church. Unfortunately, its really not a surprise.... Here are a few of those lines again from Jeremiah Wright's more famous sermons:
"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, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people... God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."As noted earlier, Jeremiah Wright is no casual aquaintance of the Obama's. Jeremiah Wright helps keep Obama's "priorities straight and his moral compass calibrated." Sweetness and Light and The Chicago Tribune reported last year:
"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."
"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. America's chickens are coming home to roost."Obama says that rather than advising him on strategy, Wright helps keep his priorities straight and his moral compass calibrated.On the attacks on 9-11, the good reverend said it was a wakeup call for whites. Here are a few lines from the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's newsletter, linked at Sweetness and Light:
"What I value most about Pastor Wright is not his day-to-day political advice," Obama said. "He's much more of a sounding board for me to make sure that I am speaking as truthfully about what I believe as possible and that I'm not losing myself in some of the hype and hoopla and stress that's involved in national politics." .
In his 1993 memoir "Dreams from My Father," Obama recounts in vivid detail his first meeting with Wright in 1985. The pastor warned the community activist that getting involved with Trinity might turn off other black clergy because of the church's radical reputation.
When Obama sought his own church community, he felt increasingly at home at Trinity... Later he would base his 2004 keynote speech to the Democratic National Convention on a Wright sermon called "Audacity to Hope," -also the inspiration for Obama's second memoir, "The Audacity of Hope." Though Wright and Obama do not often talk one-on-one often, the senator does check with his pastor before making any bold political moves.
Last fall, Obama approached Wright to broach the possibility of running for president. Wright cautioned Obama not to let politics change him, but he also encouraged Obama, win or lose...When it comes to Israel and divesting from banks and businesses that are heavily invested in Israel, until the Palestinian problem has been resolved amicably for both sides, you can throw that out of your mind! Nobody is trying to hear what we are saying in terms of divestment from Israel.More here
In the 21st century, 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.
Obama pastor: Not God bless, but God d--- America!
Rev. Jeremiah Wright also blames U.S. for 9/11
First he praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, giving him a humanitarian award and traveling with him to Libya to meet Moammar Gadhafi. Then he turned his Trinity United Church of Christ into an institution that had all the earmarkings of a black separatist congregation. And now he, it turns out, he has damned America in God's name and blamed the U.S. for provoking the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks by dropping nuclear weapons on Japan in World War II and supporting Israel since 1947.
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's pastor for the last 20 years, the man who married he and his wife, Michelle, and baptized their two daughters and is credited with providing the title of Obama's book, "The Audacity of Hope," has a long history of "inflammatory rhetoric."
But those discovered by an ABC News investigation may be the toppers. ABC News reviewed dozens of Wright's sermons, finding repeated denunciations of the U.S. based on what he described as his reading of the Gospels and the treatment of black Americans. "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 d--- America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people," he said in a 2003 sermon. "God d--- America for treating our citizens as less than human. God d--- America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."
In addition to damning America, he told his congregation on the Sunday after Sept. 11, 2001 that the U.S. had brought on al-Qaida's attacks because of its own terrorism, ABC News reports. "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," Wright said in a sermon Sept. 16, 2001. "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. America's chickens are coming home to roost," he told his congregation.
Obama declined to comment on Wright's denunciations of the U.S., but a campaign religious adviser, Shaun Casey, appearing on "Good Morning America" today, said Obama "had repudiated" those comments. In a statement to ABC News, Obama's press spokesman Bill Burton said, "Sen. Obama has said repeatedly that personal attacks such as this have no place in this campaign or our politics, whether they're offered from a platform at a rally or the pulpit of a church. Sen. Obama does not think of the pastor of his church in political terms. Like a member of his family, there are things he says with which Sen. Obama deeply disagrees. But now that he is retired, that doesn't detract from Sen. Obama's affection for Rev. Wright or his appreciation for the good works he has done."
Source
One of Obama's Earmarks Went to Hospital That Employs Michelle Obama
Post below lifted from NRO. See the original for links
Dan Riehl notes, via Amanda Carpenter, that in the list of earmarks he requested, $1 Million was requested for the construction of a new hospital pavilion at the University Of Chicago. The request was put in in 2006.
You know who works for the University of Chicago Hospital? Michelle Obama. She's vice president of community affairs.
As Byron noted, "In 2006, the Chicago Tribune reported that Mrs. Obama's compensation at the University of Chicago Hospital, where she is a vice president for community affairs, jumped from $121,910 in 2004, just before her husband was elected to the Senate, to $316,962 in 2005, just after he took office."
Looks like that raise was worth it.
Atlas has more
Obama slightly better on disastrous housing "solutions"
Why don't these hot-air merchants ever listen to economists? I guess they just don't care about the wreckage they will create as long as it sounds good to the voters
The Democratic presidential race is still going strong and both candidates have latched on to the housing market as a key issue. Both want to bail out mortgage holders, but the news media have given little in-depth attention to concerns about either plan. Warnings that Hillary Clinton's proposals could devastate the economy have gone almost unnoticed.
Clinton (D- N.Y.) has proposed a 90-day moratorium on foreclosures and a five-year interest rate freeze. "On the nation's credit crunch, she [Clinton] stood by her proposal to declare a 90-day moratorium on mortgage foreclosures and a five-year interest rate freeze on existing, adjustable-rate mortgages, despite withering criticism from economists - and from Obama - that the plan would wreck the housing market and send new mortgage rates into the stratosphere," The Washington Post reported February 22.
That "withering criticism" could have come from Jerry Bowyer, chief economist of Benchmark Financial Network. "It would be a trigger event which would set off chaos in every financial market of consequence on planet Earth and would be a disaster for the U.S. economy," Bowyer told the Business & Media Institute. Yet when NBC's Tim Russert interviewed Clinton for "Meet the Press" January 13, he did not challenge the senator's claim that "What I have proposed would begin to stabilize the situation as it is today."
The Economist magazine termed Clinton's plan "deeply unsound" in its March 1-7 issue and said it "would surely result in higher rates and scarcer credit for future borrowers." Even Washington Post business columnist David Ignatius called the moratorium "one of the truly bad ideas of our time" in a piece on February 21.
In contrast, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has said he wants to offer $10 billion in bonds to homeowners and give them a tax credit. While both plans have been mentioned by many news print and broadcast outlets, there has been little explanation of the potential economic consequences. "This seems to be the only area where Obama is not as far to the left as Hillary," said Bowyer. "The downsides are still there, though: bailing out people for high-risk behavior encourages them to do it again - economists refer to this as `moral hazard.' Also, of course, this is tax money taken from productive uses in the private sector to buy votes from people who don't like to pay their debts. So, not a very good idea, but nothing like the disruption to capital market transactions under the Hillary plan."
The Washington Post highlighted the candidates' "protections" for "struggling working-class voters," including tax increases on others, on February 24. "Especially important in Ohio, both Democrats have foreclosure relief plans. Obama's offers $10 billion in bonds to help homeowners avoid foreclosure. He also would give a tax credit to struggling homeowners to cover 10 percent of the interest on their mortgages each year. Clinton would temporarily freeze foreclosures and interest rates on adjustable rate mortgages," wrote the Post's Michael Fletcher. The article didn't include any questions about the plans.
The New York Times reported from the campaign trail in Ohio on March 4. "Their [Clinton and Obama] speeches are also brimming with pledges to revive industry and halt foreclosures ." wrote Andrew Jacobs. Jacobs's story didn't explain what Clinton or Obama planned to do in order to "halt foreclosures," or offer any analysis or criticism of the plans.
Dr. Gary Wolfram, a professor of political economy at Hillsdale College and a BMI adviser, was critical of both plans. Clinton's plan, he explained, would dry up credit and "put downward pressure on housing prices which is exactly what they don't want to." Obama's plan wasn't quite as bad, "so he would just steal from us," said Wolfram sarcastically. "I saved and paid my mortgage off. So now I would be taxed" to pay for people who couldn't afford their houses, he continued. "That's fair."
The Obama plan was also criticized in the Los Angeles Times as "too marginal." The newspaper wrote on February 21, "Economists question whether Obama's $10-billion `foreclosure prevention fund' would cover the thousands of Americans who already have lost homes and the thousands more who are in danger." Then the LA Times quoted economist L. Josh Bivens of the liberal Economic Policy Institute, who called Obama's plan "a drop in the bucket." But at least the paper included Obama's criticism of Clinton's plan, which he termed "disastrous." Obama's criticism was that it would benefit "people who made this problem worse" - banks and lenders.
According to Austan Goolsbee, the lead economic advisor to the Obama presidential campaign, the senator "has not opposed freezes on rates or freezes on foreclosures . He has, however, emphasized that we should not give blanket freezes to everyone such as to the people who have made this problem worse."
But Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital, said freezes have the opposite problem. In the January 21 International Edition of Newsweek, he said mortgage freezes don't benefit lenders; rather, they "unilaterally shift the financial pain to lenders." Schiff was specifically criticizing the Bush administration's freeze, but concluded that "damaging as the plan may be, it is nothing compared with what some presidential candidates and members of Congress are cooking up."
Prominent economist and columnist Walter Williams agreed. "President Bush's plan to deal with the subprime crisis is to freeze interest rates on adjustable rate mortgages. Freezing interest rates would stop people's mortgage payments from increasing. That is a gross violation of basic contract rights and would appear to be a Fifth Amendment violation," Williams wrote in a January 23 column. "The long run effect of the Bush plan is to make lending institutions even more selective in choosing borrowers," Williams wrote. "Then there's the question: If government can invalidate the terms of one kind of contractual agreement where the borrowers can't pay, what's to say that it won't invalidate other contractual agreements where the borrowers encounter hardship and what will that do to financial markets?"
Williams was talking about Bush's plan, which was a voluntary agreement with lenders. A mandatory rate freeze, like Clinton's proposal, merits even more scrutiny. "A mandatory program would have some real constitutional problems," said Ted Frank, an attorney who directs the Legal Center for the Public Interest at the American Enterprise Institute. He said Clinton's proposals sounded like "rewriting contracts after the fact," which would "damage the credibility of American financial markets." "The Clinton plan rewrites contracts that would not have been offered at all had the lenders known that the government would be dictating the interest rate later," Frank said.
Wolfram added that undermining contracts could have economic consequences. "Markets don't work real well when you don't have contracts," Wolfram said. "Sanctity of contract is really what came out of the Middle Ages. That's why England became the center of the Industrial Revolution because it had rule of law and it had contract law. That's why people wanted to trade in England. This little island in the middle of nowhere becomes the center of world commerce. People liked to trade there because they knew they would protect their contract."
That would become an ongoing problem, he said. "Once you set the precedent, how do I know you're not going to come along and violate other contracts? If you want to do it that way - that's fine. The market will respond, housing prices will go down, people will be foreclosed on - they can't sell their house. And all the people that thought they were going to be better off are going to find out that they're worse off."
Source
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
14 March, 2008
Must not mention that Obama is black
Geraldine Ferraro, the former Democratic vice-presidential candidate, resigned last night from Hillary Clinton's campaign after declaring that Barack Obama was successful only because he is a black man. Ms Ferraro's comments, which emerged on Monday, were condemned by Mr Obama and bought fresh charges of "insidious" tactics against the Clinton campaign by the Illinois senator's chief adviser. Ms Ferraro initially blamed the Obama campaign for stoking the controversy, an accusation that Mr Obama denied yesterday.
In her resignation letter to Mrs Clinton, she said: "The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you. I won't let that happen." She quit as a member of the former First Lady's finance committee.
Ms Ferraro, the 1984 Democratic vice-presidential nominee, said of Mr Obama: "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position . . . He happens to be very lucky to be who he is." Her resignation came on a day when Mrs Clinton demanded a rerun of the disputed primary contests in Florida and Michigan, part of a strategy to capture the Democratic nomination by belittling Mr Obama's lead among elected delegates.
Source
Obama and the Race Card
Is it just us, or does Barack Obama seem a mite too quick to play the race card when facing criticism from political opponents? In recent days, the Obama camp has been demanding an apology from Geraldine Ferraro, the former Vice Presidential candidate and current Hillary Clinton supporter who last week let slip that, "If Obama was a white man, 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."
Though Ms. Ferraro resigned from the Clinton campaign yesterday, her remarks reveal little more than a firm grasp of the obvious, even if she could have found a less artless way to express herself. There is no disputing that Mr. Obama's skin color has been a political boon for him to date. And the suggestion that saying so aloud betrays racial animus implies that only the Illinois Senator can discuss the issue of race in regard to his candidacy.
Back in January, the Obama campaign was on similarly shaky ground when it accused Mrs. Clinton of belittling Martin Luther King Jr. by stating that "it took a President" to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Mrs. Clinton was stating a fact, not slighting King, and the context in which she uttered the statement made that perfectly clear. We're not suggesting that the Obama campaign has never been justified in crying foul over racially tinged remarks out of the Clinton camp. When Bill Clinton gratuitously invoked Jesse Jackson after Mr. Obama won the South Carolina primary, he was clearly trying to define the Senator's victory in narrowly racial terms.
But for all of Mr. Obama's soaring rhetoric about the nation's need for a post-racial politics that "brings the American people together," his campaign at times has seemed overly sensitive about race. It also seems to want it both ways. Mr. Obama claims that his brand of politics transcends race, but at the same time he's using race as a shield to shut down important and legitimate arguments.
Already, prominent Obama sympathizers, such as Harvard's Orlando Patterson, are detecting racial overtones where none exist. In a New York Times op-ed this week, Mr. Patterson said a Clinton political ad designed to question Mr. Obama's readiness as Commander in Chief contained a "racist sub-message" because none of the people depicted in the TV spot are black. Counting people of color in an ad about national security is hardly consistent with the Obama theme that "race doesn't matter."
We suppose some of the current back and forth is due to the diversity preoccupations of Democrats. But it bodes ill for an honest fall campaign if Mr. Obama and his allies are going to play the race card to blunt any criticism. A campaign in which John McCain couldn't question Mr. Obama's policies, experience and mettle without being called a racist is not what the country needs. Or wants.
Democrats have repeatedly touted the diversity of their party's White House hopefuls. And it is true that a Clinton or Obama Presidency would make gender or racial history. Americans of all backgrounds can take satisfaction in watching the country field its first black Presidential candidate with a chance to win. But voters also want their would-be Presidents properly vetted, by the media and by each other. To that end Mr. Obama would do better to focus more on answering his political critics with specifics and less on questioning their motives by crying wolf on race.
Source
The press are part of the Obama campaign
Hypercritical of Hillary and indulgent to the hate-filled Mrs Obama
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?"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.
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."
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.
Source
Censorship for Obama
No dissension! Leftists must all march in lockstep together
Hi there. Linda Hirshman here. I just got the boot from TPM Cafe, where I have been blogging for more than a year. Back story: I published a piece on the cover of the Outlook section of the Washington Post last Sunday, March 2, on the class divide in Hillary Clinton's female supporters. Since I criticized the scribbling females of the blogosphere, the article elicited the predictable onslaught of response from them.
But when I sent Andrew Golis, my normal contact at TPM Cafe, my response to post, I got an email telling me TPM had pulled my posting privileges (I don't normally publish email exchanges, but I have no personal relationship with any of the people at TPM, including Golis, and this seems like a fairly straightforward public business communication with no personal material involved.):"For the time being, we're cycling our regular contributers [sic] at the Coffee house and trying to cut down the number of folks with at will posting privileges. If you occasionally have a piece I'd of course love to check it out. But unfortunately we're limiting the number of people who post regularly."I must admit I was a little surprised. I have not been fired in a long time (decades, really), and I think I'm having a pretty good run in the crowded precincts of political commentary. True, my last few postings at TPM Cafe, were not in keeping with the overwhelming majority of their articles, making and making the case for Senator Barack Obama. I questioned the value of an Idaho caucus victory. I criticized Maureen Dowd's column suggesting that when a perfect female candidate came along, the media would be delighted to support her. I suggested that "Josh" might have waited to get more survey results before he posted his video embracing the ultimately erroneous Zogby predictions for the California primary the afternoon before the primary.
But I thought that the new media of the blogosphere was actually established in part to offset what they considered the tendency of the MSM to cut its coverage to suit its preexisting, largely establishment, predilections. So I was blithely oblivious to the possibility that my dissenting views on the inevitability and divinity of the Obama candidacy might cause a problem. Never bashful, I thought I'd press the messenger.Linda to Andrew: "So why did I not make the cut? Is writing for the times and the Post not good enough for TPM?"So. Either the dozen guys who run TPM do not think female voting behavior is worthy of their coverage or, dare I say it, they don't want to run material that might result in readers supporting a candidate other than the one they favor. They do not appear to have deacquisitioned Ruth Rosen, who is one of the Feminists for Peace and Barack Obama! which of course only supports my most paranoid thoughts.
Andrew: "It's not a matter of prestigious clippings, Linda. We're trying to both keep long-standing contributers [sic] around and flesh out the discussion by involving people who are covering things we're not yet addressing."
Linda: "And do you have a lot of contributors covering the female voters, who are likely to determine the outcome of the election of the President of the United States? I am assuming it's not that you don't want anyone who's not already in the tank for Obama. I am serious, here, Andrew. I think this is a real mistake; I have a point of view you don't have much of, I am getting increasingly prestigious opportunities to write and opine, and this is the moment you should capitalize on your relationship with me, not drop me."
Andrew: "I'm not sure the accusation of bias is particularly helpful. For now, like I said, we're focusing on getting our long-standing regulars and folks covering things we don't on the blog. I recognize that you think female voters should be one of those things, we disagree."
Source
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
13 March, 2008
Change can be good OR bad...the facts speak for themselves
The article below has appeared on various sites but authorship seems to be unknown. From what I can see it is pretty accurate, though
Proposed changes in taxes after 2008 General Election:
CAPITAL GAINS TAX
MCCAIN 15% (no change)
OBAMA 28%
CLINTON 24%
How does this affect you? If you sell your home and make a profit, you will pay 28% of your gain on taxes. If you are heading toward retirement and would like to down-size your home or move into a retirement community, 28% of the money you make from your home will go to taxes. This proposal will adversely affect the elderly who are counting on the income from their homes as part of their retirement income.
DIVIDEND TAX
MCCAIN 15% (no change)
OBAMA 39.6%
CLINTON 39.6%
How will this affect you? If you have any money invested in stock market, IRA, mutual funds, college funds, life insurance, retirement accounts, or anything that pays or reinvests dividends, you will now be paying nearly 40% of the money earned on taxes if Obama or Clinton become president. The experts predict that "Higher tax rates on dividends and capital gains would crash the stock market yet do absolutely nothing to cut the deficit."
INCOME TAX
MCCAIN (no changes)
Single making 30K - tax $4,500
Single making 50K - tax $12,500
Single making 75K - tax $18,750
Married making 60K- tax $9,000
Married making 75K - tax $18,750
Married making 125K - tax $31,250
OBAMA (reversion to pre-Bush tax cuts)
Single making 30K - tax $8,400
Single making 50K - tax $14,000
Single making 75K - tax $23,250
Married making 60K - tax $16,800
Married making 75K - tax $21,000
Married making 125K - tax $38,750
CLINTON (reversion to pre-Bush tax cuts)
Single making 30K - tax $8,400
Single making 50K - tax $14,000
Single making 75K - tax $23,250
Married making 60K - tax $16,800
Married making 75K - tax $21,000
Married making 125K - tax $38,750
How does this affect you? No explanation needed. This is pretty straightforward.
INHERITANCE TAX
MCCAIN 0% (No change, Bush repealed this tax)
OBAMA (Keep the inheritance tax)
CLINTON (Keep the inheritance tax)
How does this affect you? Many families have lost businesses, farms and ranches, and homes that have been in their families for generations because they could not afford the inheritance tax. Those willing their assets to loved ones will not only lose them to these taxes.
NEW TAXES BEING PROPOSED BY BOTH CLINTON AND OBAMA
* New government taxes proposed on homes that are more than 2400 square feet
* New gasoline taxes (as if gas weren't high enough already)
* New taxes on natural resources consumption (heating gas, water, electricity)
* New taxes on retirement accounts and last but not least....
* New taxes to pay for socialized medicine so we can receive the same level of medical care as other third-world countries!!!
In case you want more information on Obama's tax and spend agenda: If Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) Could Enact All Of His Campaign Proposals, Taxpayers Would Be Faced With Financing $874.35 Billion In New Spending Over One White House Term:
Updated February 14, 2008: Obama's National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank will cost $60 Billion Over Ten Years; Equal To $6 Billion A Year And $24 Billion Over Four Years.
Obama: "I'm proposing a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank that will invest $60 billion over ten years." (Sen. Barack Obama, Remarks On Economic Policy, Janesville, WI, 2/13/08)
Obama's Health Care Plan Will Cost Up To $65 Billion A Year; Equal To $260 Billion Over Four Years. "[Obama] campaign officials estimated that the net cost of the plan to the federal government would be $50 billion to $65 billion a year, when fully phased in, and said the revenues from rolling back the tax cuts were enough to cover it." (Robin Toner and Patrick Healy, "Obama Calls For Wider And Less Costly Health Care Coverage," The New York Times, 5/30/07)
Obama's Energy Plan Will Cost $150 Billion Over 10 Years, Equal To $15 Billion Annually And $60 Billion Over Four Years.
"Obama will invest $150 billion over 10 years to advance the next generation of biofuels and fuel infrastructure, accelerate the commercialization of plug-in hybrids, promote development of commercial-scale renewable energy, invest in low-emissions coal plants, and begin the transition to a new digital electricity grid." (Obama For America, "The Blueprint For Change," http://www.barackobama.com/, Accessed 1/14/08, p. 25)
Obama's Tax Plan Will Cost Approximately $85 Billion A Year; Equal To $340 Billion Over Four Years.
"[Obama's] proposed tax cuts and credits, aimed at workers earning $50,000 or less per year, would cost the Treasury an estimated $85 billion annually." (Margaret Talev, "Obama Proposes Tax Code Overhaul To Help The Poor," McClatchy Newspapers, 9/19/07)
Obama's Plan Would Raise Taxes On Capital Gains And Dividends, And On Carried Interest.
Obama's tax plan includes: "[i]ncreasing the highest bracket for capital gains and dividends and closing the carried interest loophole." (Obama For America, "Barack Obama: Tax Fairness For The Middle Class," Fact Sheet, www.barackobama.com, Accessed 1/8/08)
Obama's Economic Stimulus Package Will Cost $75 Billion. "Barack Obama's economic plan will inject $75 billion of stimulus into the economy by getting money in the form of tax cuts and direct spending directly to the people who need it most." (Obama For America, "Barack Obama's Plan To Stimulate The Economy," Fact Sheet, www.barackobama.com, 1/13/08)
Obama's Early Education And K-12 Package Will Cost $18 Billion A Year; Equal To $72 Billion Over Four Years. "Barack Obama's early education and K-12 plan package costs about $18 billion per year." (Obama For America, "Barack Obama's Plan For Lifetime Success Through Education," Fact Sheet, http://www.barackobama.com/, 11/20/07, p. 15)
Obama's National Service Plan Will Cost $3.5 Billion A Year; Equal To $14 Billion Over Four Years. "Barack Obama's national service plan will cost about $3.5 billion per year when it is fully implemented." (Obama For America, "Helping All Americans Serve Their Country: Barack Obama's Plan For Universal Voluntary Citizen Service," Fact Sheet, http://www.barackobama.com/, 12/5/07)
Obama Will Increase Our Foreign Assistance Funding By $25 Billion. "Obama will embrace the Millennium Development Goal of cutting extreme poverty around the world in half by 2015, and he will double our foreign assistance to $50 billion to achieve that goal." (Obama For America, "The Blueprint For Change," www.barackobama.com, Accessed 1/14/08, p. 53)
Obama has sponsored a bill in the senate that will tax 1/7th. of 1% of U.S. GDP to give to the UN for distribution to poor countries. This will amount to $845BB/yr. from American taxpayers that most of it will end up in some tyranical despots Swiss bank account!!! As of March 1, 2008, this bill is still in process but is believed to be thwarted by the Senate.
Obama Will Provide $2 Billion To Aid Iraqi Refugees. "He will provide at least $2 billion to expand services to Iraqi refugees in neighboring countries, and ensure that Iraqis inside their own country can find a safe-haven." (Obama For America, "The Blueprint For Change, http://www.barackobama.com/, Accessed 1/14/08, p. 51)
Obama Will Provide $1.5 Billion To Help States Adopt Paid-Leave Systems. "As president, Obama will initiate a strategy to encourage all 50 states to adopt paid-leave systems. Obama will provide a $1.5 billion fund to assist states with start-up costs and to help states offset the costs for employees and employers." (Obama For America, "The Blueprint For Change," www barackobama.com , Accessed 1/14/08, p. 15)
Obama Will Provide $1 Billion Over 5 Years For Transitional Jobs And Career Pathway Programs, Equal To $200 Million A Year And $800 Million Over Four Years. "Obama will invest $1 billion over five years in transitional jobs and career pathway programs that implement proven methods of helping low-income Americans succeed in the workforce." (Obama For America, "The Blueprint For Change," www.barackobama.com, Accessed 1/14/08, p. 42)
Obama Will Provide $50 Million To Jump-Start The Creation Of An IAEA-Controlled Nuclear Fuel Bank. Obama: "We must also stop the spread of nuclear weapons technology and ensure that countries cannot build -- or come to the brink of building -- a weapons program under the auspices of developing peaceful nuclear power. That is why my administration will immediately provide $50 million to jump-start the creation of an International Atomic Energy Agency-controlled nuclear fuel bank and work to update the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty." (Sen. Barack Obama, "Renewing American Leadership," Foreign Affairs, 7-8/07)
Barack Obama wins Mississippi
BARACK Obama has beaten Hillary Clinton in the Mississippi Democractic primary, restoring his momentum in their increasingly nasty presidential fight. The win for Senator Obama, who would be the first black US president, extended his lead over Senator Clinton in pledged delegates to the August nominating convention. The Illinois senator also won on Sunday in Wyoming.
Senator Clinton revived her hopes in the Democratic race last week with big wins over Senator Obama in Ohio and Texas, prolonging their bitter fight for the right to face Republican John McCain in November's presidential election.
While voters in Mississippi, where more than half of the likely Democratic electorate is black, were still casting their ballots, racial remarks about Obama by a prominent Senator Clinton supporter sparked a harsh exchange between the two camps. The Mississippi primary would usually be an afterthought in the nominating contests, but this race is so close that any win is valuable and every delegate vital. Senator Obama's win today adds to his nearly insurmountable lead in delegates. Mississippi has 33 pledged delegates at stake.
But the main prize remaining in the race is the Pennsylvania primary on April 23. With 158 delegates at stake it is the only big state yet to vote. Its importance was evident when, even as Mississippi votes were being counted, both candidates had already left the state to continue their campaigns in Pennsylvania.
Neither Senator Obama nor Senator Clinton is likely to reach the 2025 delegates needed to clinch the nomination without help from nearly 800 superdelegates - party officials and insiders free to back any candidate.
Source
New race row rocks Democrats
BARACK Obama's camp has called on Hillary Clinton to fire history-blazing supporter Geraldine Ferraro, after she put the Illinois senator's stunning rise in the US presidential campaign down to his race. The latest controversy ripped between the two campaigns as primary voters in Mississippi cast their ballots in the latest installment of the dramatic Democratic White House race, with Obama tipped for another victory.
Ms Ferraro, who sits on Senator Clinton's finance committee and is a surrogate speaker for her, sparked the latest firestorm when she was quoted by a California newspaper as saying: "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position.''
Obama's top strategist David Axelrod said the comments were part of an "insidious pattern that needs to be addressed,'' bringing up previous racially tinged rows between the two camps. "When you wink and nod at offensive statements you are really sending a signal that anything goes,'' he said. "We call on the Clinton campaign to take firmer action in this regard. (Ms Ferraro) ought to be removed from those positions.''
Ms Ferraro was the first woman on a major presidential ticket when she stood for vice president in 1984 alongside Democratic nominee Walter Mondale. Republican Ronald Reagan won re-election in a landslide.
There was no immediate comment on the Ferarro affair from the Clinton campaign, but communications chief Howard Wolfson told the Politico website: "We disagree with her.'' In an interview with the Daily Breeze newspaper, Ms Ferraro was also quoted as saying that Obama's success revealed the "very sexist'' attitudes of the media.
"And if he was a woman - of any colour - 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,'' she said. Another Obama advisor, foreign policy aide Susan Rice, told MSNBC the comments were "outrageous and offensive'' and worse than those of her campaign colleague Samantha Power who quit last week after branding Senator Clinton a "monster''.
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The Obama Tax Hike
Until recently, Sen. Barack Obama took a responsible position on Social Security, noting the urgency of reform and saying all options should be on the table. But having cornered himself among Democratic activists whose attitudes toward Social Security reform range from demagoguery to denial, Mr. Obama has recently veered sharply left. He now proposes to solve the looming Social Security shortfall exclusively with higher taxes. "Once people are making over $200,000 to $250,000," Mr. Obama says, "they can afford to pay a little more in payroll tax." No shared sacrifice, no outreach to moderates or conservatives, here.
Mr. Obama's proposal is to make a significant change to the payroll tax system. Currently, all wages below about $100,000 are subject to a 12.4% Social Security payroll tax. But all wages above that amount are not subject to the tax. Mr. Obama wants to eliminate the cap, but, in a concession to taxpayers, exempt wages between $100,000 and $200,000. He wants to create a "donut hole" in the taxing mechanism that pays for the nation's largest retirement program.
The problem is two-fold: His proposal would be a very large tax hike, yet it won't be enough. Mr. Obama's plan fixes less than half of Social Security's long-term deficit, making further tax increases inevitable. The Policy Simulation Group's Gemini model estimates that Mr. Obama's proposal, if phased as Mr. Obama suggests, would solve only part of the problem. A 10 year phase-in, for example, would address only 43% of Social Security's 75-year shortfall. And this is assuming that Congress would save the surplus from the tax increases -- almost $600 billion over 10 years -- rather than spending it, as Congress does now.
What's more, Mr. Obama's plan would keep Social Security in the black for only three additional years. Under his proposal, annual deficits would hit in 2020, instead of 2017. By the 2030s the system would still run an annual deficit exceeding $150 billion.
Mr. Obama's modest improvements to Social Security's financing come at a steep cost. The top marginal federal tax rates would effectively increase to 50.3% from 37.9%, equivalent to repealing the Bush income tax cuts almost three times over.
If one accounts for behavioral responses, even the modest budgetary improvements from Mr. Obama's plan are likely to be overstated. If employers reduce wages to cover their increased payroll-tax liabilities, these wages would no longer be subject to state or federal income taxes, or Medicare taxes. A 2006 study by Harvard economist and Obama adviser Jeffrey Liebman concluded that roughly 20% of revenue increases from raising the tax cap would be offset by declining non-Social Security taxes. Assuming modest negative behavioral responses, Mr. Liebman projected an additional 30% reduction in net revenues, leaving barely half the intended revenue intact.
Mr. Obama's plan would also dramatically raise incentives for tax evasion, further degrading revenue gains. Many high-earning individuals evade the Medicare payroll tax by setting up "S Corporations," paying themselves in untaxed dividends rather than taxable wages. John Edwards avoided $590,000 in Medicare taxes this way in the 1990s. Under Mr. Obama's plan, Mr. Edwards's savings would have exceeded $3 million. With that much at stake, the incentive to follow Mr. Edwards lead will be that much greater.
Mr. Obama's plan shows the limits to taxing the rich as a solution to Social Security's problems. Top earners would effectively be tapped out, with taxes as high as economically and politically feasible, yet most of Social Security's deficit, and the much larger shortfalls in Medicare, would remain.
The U.S. already collects far more Social Security taxes from high earners than other countries do. Social Security taxes here are currently capped at about three times the national average wage -- far above other developed countries. In Canada and France payroll taxes are levied only up to the average wage. In the United Kingdom, taxes stop at 1.15 times the average wage; in Germany and Japan at 1.5 times. Social Security is already more progressive than these countries' pension programs, and Mr. Obama's plan would make it more so.
President Bill Clinton considered lifting the wage ceiling modestly, but was skeptical of eliminating it outright. Doing so would "tremendously change the whole Social Security system . . . We should be very careful before we get out of the idea that this is something that we do together as a nation and there is at least some correlation between what we put in and what we get out," Mr. Clinton said in 1998. "You can say, well, they owe it to society. But these people also pay higher income taxes and the rates are still pretty progressive for people in very high rates."
Social Security's shortfalls are primarily attributable to society-wide trends of lower birth rates and longer lifespans. If we want to retain the shared character that underpins its political support and distinguishes it from traditional welfare programs, we need to share the burdens of reform proportionately. Mr. Obama should drop his exclusive focus on raising taxes and return to his previous view, that Social Security faces significant problems requiring prompt attention. All options should be on the table.
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(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
12 March, 2008
Obama not compromising
White House hopeful Barack Obama has angrily rejected any talk of standing as vice-president on a "dream ticket" with Hillary Clinton, and accused his rival of trying to fool voters. "I've won more of the popular vote than Senator Clinton. I have more delegates than Senator Clinton. So I don't know how somebody who is in second place is offering the vice-president to the person in first place," he said.
Talk of such a Clinton-Obama "dream ticket" intensified over the weekend as Clinton supporters promoted the idea as a way to resolve a tight race which risks going down the wire to the party's nominating convention in August. Speaking on Saturday, former president Bill Clinton argued that a presidential ticket headed by his wife, with Obama in the number two slot, would be an "almost unstoppable force".
But Obama ridiculed the suggestion and warned cheering supporters "they are trying to hoodwink you" as he campaigned in Columbus, Mississippi, ahead of Tuesday's nominating contests.
Clinton has repeatedly sought to undermine Obama's bid by casting doubt on his credentials to be the commander-in-chief. And she stepped up the attacks recently with an ad suggesting he would not be able to handle a dead-of-the-night crisis. "They have been spending the last two, three weeks, you remember, with that advertisement with the phone call ... getting the generals to say, well, we're not sure he's ready. I'm ready on day one, he may not be ready yet," Obama told supporters. "But I don't understand. If I'm not ready, how is it that you think I should be such a great vice president? Do you understand that?"
With eight weeks of primaries already completed, Obama leads the all-important delegate count by a narrow margin. Pollsters RealClearPolitics.com said he had 1,588 delegates to 1,468 to Clinton. A total of 2025 are needed to win the party's nomination to stand in the November polls, and the party's 795 delegates are certain to play a deciding role in who is eventually crowned the nominee.
"I want everybody to be absolutely clear," Obama told the Columbus rally. "I'm not running for vice president. I'm running for president of the United States of America. I'm running to be commander in chief."
Source
Why the Obamas don't advertise their standard of living
Mrs Obama is a rich bitch whom nothing could satisfy
Campaigning for her husband in Zanesville before the Ohio primary, Michelle Obama described to a group of women how hard it had been for her and Barack to make ends meet: "We spend between the two kids, on extracurriculars outside the classroom, we're spending about $10,000 a year on piano and dance and sports supplements. And summer programs...Do you know what summer camp costs?"
The burden was especially heavy because she and Barack had to repay the student loans for college and law school at Princeton and Harvard: "The salaries don't keep up with the cost of paying off the debt, so you're in your 40s, still paying off your debt at a time when you have to save for your kids," Michelle Obama said.
Actually, Michelle's salary has kept up pretty well. The University of Chicago Hospital, where she is vice president for community affairs, bumped her pay from $121,910 in 2004 to $316,962 after her husband was elected to the U.S. Senate that year. National Review's Byron York, who covered her remarks at the Zanesville Day Nursery, noted that her new salary is roughly ten times the median household income in Muskingham County.
The Obamas also have Barack's salary as a U.S. Senator ($169,300), royalties from his two best selling books, and an undisclosed amount of income from her service on six corporate boards. But this hasn't brightened Michelle's outlook: "We have become a nation of struggling folks who are barely making it every day," Michelle had said at a black church in South Carolina in January. "Folks are just jammed up, and it's gotten worse over my lifetime... The life that I'm talking about that most people are living has gotten progressively worse since I was a little girl."
Mrs. Obama was counting her husband and herself among the folks who are just jammed up, reported Lauren Collins of the New Yorker, who was at the Pee Dee Union Baptist Church in Cheraw when Michelle spoke there. "You're looking at a young couple that's just a few years out of debt," Mrs. Obama said. "See, because we went to these good schools, and we didn't have trust funds." It is, apparently, America's fault that the Obamas didn't have trust funds, and unfair that they had to repay their student loans. We're a country that is "just downright mean," Mrs. Obama said.
It is true that some people in America are having trouble making ends meet. Some people in America always are having trouble making ends meet. But what Michelle Obama said is astounding. She was born in 1964. At the time, segregation was still legal. Governors in Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi stood in schoolhouse doors to prevent blacks from attending college.
"The per capita income of African-Americans has risen sixteen-fold over the last 40 years," noted John Podhoretz of Commentary. "Black home ownership has risen tenfold. The black poverty rate has declined from 75 percent to 25 percent." But this is, I suppose, meaningless if you think piano lessons and summer camp are among the things government should guarantee everyone. Whatever gratitude Michelle Obama has for the opportunities America has provided her are overwhelmed by her resentment that some others have more than she does.
Husbands and wives often have different political views, so we should not assume Barack shares the chip on Michelle's shoulder. But "Spengler," the erudite cynic who writes for the Asia Times, thinks the women in his life are a clue to the inner Barack. His mother, Ann Dunham, was a communist sympathizer, he noted. A childhood mentor who Barack praised in his autobiography was Frank Marshall Davis, a prominent member of the Communist Party USA. "Radical anti-Americanism, rather than Islam, was the reigning faith in the Dunham household," Spengler said.
"Barack Obama is a clever fellow who imbibed hatred of America with his mother's milk, but worked his way up the elite ladder of education and career," Spengler said. "He has the empathetic skill set of an anthropologist who lives with his subjects, learns their language, and elicits their hopes and fears while remaining at an emotional distance. That is, he is the political equivalent of a sociopath."
Spengler's is a minority view. But if he's right, we shouldn't wonder why Barack won't wear an American flag pin in his lapel.
Source
Obama and the Pet Rock
In fall 1975 I remember sitting in the Stanford student lounge watching two apparently educated and bright students compare their pet rocks, as the craze spread all over Silicon Valley and then went national. By summer few would admit they had purchased one. Never underestimate the ability of mass wired consumer society to go hysterical.
Something like that happened with the Obama campaign in mid-February, as he became the new generation's pet rock. No one knew what he had done; no one knew what he would do; no one cared whether they knew; all only wanted to be a part of it. It was a sort of self-described "movement" to "change the world," that offered absolution for all sorts of sins, real and imagined, of commission and omission, an atonement for past and present, here and abroad.
And now, as some people wake up from their pet rock purchase, they are seeing they've de facto nominated someone rated about the Senate's most liberal senator based on three years of experience there. The Democrats have boxed them into a situation of running a candidate that has out-sourced all negative attacks to the New York Times, political junkies and columnists, in order to remain above the fray and loyal to the "new" politics of change and hope.
Iraq is quieting not flaring up, even as the Obama rhetoric about it as the "worst" something or other stays fossilized-and his advisors turn to his NAFTA-like two-step of leaking that you really don't quite mean the flight that you've promised on the stump.
Democrats will have to run against a Republican moderate in states like California, Florida, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Texas that their candidate lost in the primary, after a nasty fight in which Sen. Clinton finished as the surger. Already commentators on television- long biased in favor of Obama and apparently without embarrassment or recognition of how they sound-explain that Obama will win this or that state because it has a caucus instead of direct voting or has a large African-American electorate-and therefore in contrast he will probably lose a key state like Pennsylvania since it doesn't. And this is passed off apparently as praise of his strength than criticism of his eroding support.
If Hillary twists arms to overturn the Byzantine nominating process, Obama could hardly serve as her VP since he could imagine the sorts of humiliations in store as payback for his upstart campaign. In turn she would suspect that his inexperience would lead to a Carter-like presidency, and therefore would not wish to replay a Mondale in 2012 or 2016.
Sober Democrats are starting to worry, caught between the pet rock of the Obama fad and the hard place of giving the nomination in back-room fashion to Clinton, Inc.- the masters of the much denounced back room.
Source
Has Barack Obama Jumped the Shark?
After a terrible week punctuated by demoralizing defeats in Texas and Ohio, is it possible that Senator Barack Obama, until recently the darling of the fawning mainstream media and leftist elite, has “jumped the shark?”
For those unfamiliar with the term, “jump the shark” is a pop-culture phrase referring to the point at which a television show, popular figure or other cultural phenomenon passes its peak and begins its decline into mediocrity and staleness. The term specifically derives from an episode of the 1970s television series Happy Days, in which Arthur “The Fonz” Fonzarelli ridiculously dons a swimsuit and jumps a shark tank on water skis. It marked the point at which the previously-acclaimed 1950s nostalgia series descended into pathetic absurdity in pursuit of easy ratings. Since that time, the phrase has come to symbolize the pivotal moment at which a popular entity declines in quality or appeal, and loses its previous charm. In other words, jumping the shark constitutes the beginning of the end. Think Howard Dean’s “I Have a Scream” moment, Michael Jordan coming out of retirement to play for the Washington Wizards, Elvis after his return from the Army or New Coke.
The first sign of trouble for Senator Obama came during his January 5, 2008 debate with Senator Clinton, when Obama sarcastically and dismissively replied, “you’re likeable enough, Hillary” after Senator Clinton labeled him “very likeable.” Some observers labeled it a “cringe moment,” and it may have cost Senator Obama the New Hampshire primary. This week, however, a potential avalanche has germinated over Senator Obama in the form of “NAFTA-gate” and the Tony Rezko felony trial in Chicago.
Regarding NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, Senator Obama may have been exposed as precisely the type of double-talking, calculating politician that he claims to transcend. Canada’s CTV network reports that Austan Goolsbee, Senator Obama’s chief economic advisor, told Canadian officials that Obama’s anti-NAFTA invective was mere campaign rhetoric aimed toward Ohio union voters. According to Mr. Goolsbee’s own admission, he assured these officials that Senator Obama recognizes the benefits of free trade. One would never know that from Senator Obama’s public pronouncements, of course. In contrast to the private assurances to Canadian officials, Senator Obama has incorrectly blamed NAFTA for exporting American jobs, and he ridiculously asserted that it “forced parents to compete with teenagers for minimum wage jobs at Wal-Mart.”
The reality, of course, is quite different. Since NAFTA took effect on January 1, 1994, America has experienced unprecedented levels of prosperity and employment growth. Furthermore, a whopping 55% of Ohio’s exports go to Canada and Mexico, our NAFTA partners, compared with 35% for the United States as a whole. Finally, the primary magnets for Ohio’s job losses have actually been lower-tax and non-union Sun Belt states, not Canada or Mexico. Regardless, exposure of this diplomatic flub has embarrassed Senator Obama, and jeopardized his self-professed “post-partisan” image.
The Tony Rezko trial may be even worse news for Senator Obama and his superficial stardom. Although Senator Obama is not accused of illegal activity related to this case, it is a huge embarrassment to him. Obama’s personal relationship with Mr. Rezko, a longtime Illinois political player, spans two decades, and Mr. Rezko has given tens of thousands of dollars to Obama’s various campaigns during that period. In 2005, after Obama had been elected Senator and received campaign funds for that race from Mr. Rezko, the two bought adjacent Chicago properties while Mr. Rezko was known to be facing federal investigation. Even Senator Obama acknowledges that the real estate deal created an appearance of impropriety, and labeled it “boneheaded.”
This week, Mr. Rezko’s felony trial on charges of extortion and wire fraud commenced, and observers are monitoring the matter closely for what it reveals about Senator Obama’s own judgment. According to federal prosecutors, Mr. Rezko sought millions of dollars from investment firms seeking to conduct business with Illinois state agencies, as well as a $1 million kickback while sitting on a hospital facilities governing board. Additionally, prosecutors contend that Mr. Rezko obtained millions of dollars in non-existent business sales to straw purchasers. “Boneheaded,” indeed. Voters are left to ask themselves whether they can afford for Senator Obama to acquire on-the-job training in the White House while he navigates other “boneheaded” errors.
During a press conference before a press corps that suddenly stopped fawning over him, Senator Obama irately fled the podium and protested that he “already answered, like, eight questions” about the relationship. Is this a foreshadowing of things to come? These flubs follow incidents in which Senator Obama dismissively declined to wear an American flag lapel pin, and his wife asserted that she is only now proud to be an American. Combined, might this period of pitfalls constitute the stretch in which Senator Obama jumped the shark? We’ll soon find out.
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(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
11 March, 2008
The real Obama
Todd Spivak has known Obama for a long time and knows a different Obama from the one you see now. Obama is not the nice guy he seems. Some excerpts below:
It's not quite eight in the morning and Barack Obama is on the phone screaming at me. He liked the story I wrote about him a couple weeks ago, but not this garbage. Months earlier, a reporter friend told me she overheard Obama call me an asshole at a political fund-raiser. Now here he is blasting me from hundreds of miles away for a story that just went online but hasn't yet hit local newsstands. It's the first time I ever heard him yell, and I'm trembling as I set down the phone. I sit frozen at my desk for several minutes, stunned.
This is before Obama Girl, before the secret service detail, before he becomes a best-selling author. His book Dreams From My Father has been out of print for years. I often see Obama smoking cigarettes on brisk Chicago mornings in front of his condominium high-rise along Lake Michigan, or getting his hair buzzed at the corner barbershop on 53rd and Harper in his Hyde Park neighborhood. This is before he becomes a U.S. senator, before Oprah starts stumping for him, before he positions himself to become the country's first black president. He is just a rank-and-file state senator in Illinois and I work for a string of small, scrappy newspapers there.
The other day, while stuck in traffic on Houston's Southwest Freeway, I was flipping through right-wing rants on AM radio. Dennis Praeger was railing against Michelle Obama for her clumsy comment on being proud of her country for the first time. Praeger went on to call her husband a blank slate. There's no record to look at, he complained, unless you lived in Barack Obama's old state Senate district.
Well, I lived and worked in that district for three years - nearly half Obama's tenure in the Illinois Legislature. D-13, the district was called, and it spanned a large swath of the city's poor, black, crime--ridden South Side. It was 2000 and I was a young, hungry reporter at the Hyde Park Herald and Lakefront Outlook community newspapers earning $19,000 a year covering politics and crime. I talked with Obama on a regular basis - a couple times a month, at least. I'd ask him about his campaign-finance reports, legislation he was sponsoring and various local issues. He wrote an occasional column published in our papers. It ran with a headshot that made him look about 14 years old.
My view of Obama then wasn't all that different from the image he projects now. He was smart, confident, charismatic and liberal. One thing I can say is, I never heard him launch into the preacher-man voice he now employs during speeches. He sounded vanilla, and activists in his mostly black district often chided him for it.
I was 25 and had no problem interviewing big-wig politicians. But I always had to steel my nerves when calling Obama. His intelligence was intimidating, and my hands inevitably shook with sweat.
Obama, who then earned about $50,000 a year as a rookie state senator, lived in a small condo just two blocks away. I had never met or even seen his wife Michelle, though I'd heard she was employed at University of Chicago Hospitals. Their second daughter Natasha had not yet been born.
When asked about his legislative record, Obama rattles off several bills he sponsored as an Illinois lawmaker. He expanded children's health insurance; made the state Earned Income Tax Credit refundable for low-income families; required public bodies to tape closed-door meetings to make government more transparent; and required police to videotape interrogations of homicide suspects. And the list goes on.
It's a lengthy record filled with core liberal issues. But what's interesting, and almost never discussed, is that he built his entire legislative record in Illinois in a single year. Republicans controlled the Illinois General Assembly for six years of Obama's seven-year tenure. Each session, Obama backed legislation that went nowhere; bill after bill died in committee. During those six years, Obama, too, would have had difficulty naming any legislative -achievements.
Then, in 2002, dissatisfaction with President Bush and Republicans on the national and local levels led to a Democratic sweep of nearly every lever of Illinois state government. For the first time in 26 years, Illinois Democrats controlled the governor's office as well as both legislative chambers....
Jones appointed Obama sponsor of virtually every high-profile piece of legislation, angering many rank-and-file state legislators who had more seniority than Obama and had spent years championing the bills. "I took all the beatings and insults and endured all the racist comments over the years from nasty Republican committee chairmen," State Senator Rickey Hendon, the original sponsor of landmark racial profiling and videotaped confession legislation yanked away by Jones and given to Obama, complained to me at the time. "Barack didn't have to endure any of it, yet, in the end, he got all the credit. "I don't consider it bill jacking," Hendon told me. "But no one wants to carry the ball 99 yards all the way to the one-yard line, and then give it to the halfback who gets all the credit and the stats in the record book."
During his seventh and final year in the state Senate, Obama's stats soared. He sponsored a whopping 26 bills passed into law - including many he now cites in his presidential campaign when attacked as inexperienced. It was a stunning achievement that started him on the path of national politics - and he couldn't have done it without Jones.
Before Obama ran for U.S. Senate in 2004, he was virtually unknown even in his own state. Polls showed fewer than 20 percent of Illinois voters had ever heard of Barack Obama. Jones further helped raise Obama's profile by having him craft legislation addressing the day-to-day tragedies that dominated local news -headlines. For instance. Obama sponsored a bill banning the use of the diet supplement ephedra, which killed a Northwestern University football player, and another one preventing the use of pepper spray or pyrotechnics in nightclubs in the wake of the deaths of 21 people during a stampede at a Chicago nightclub. Both stories had received national attention and extensive local coverage.
I spoke to Jones earlier this week and he confirmed his conversation with Kelley, adding that he gave Obama the legislation because he believed in Obama's ability to negotiate with Democrats and Republicans on divisive issues.
So how has Obama repaid Jones? Last June, to prove his commitment to government transparency, Obama released a comprehensive list of his earmark requests for fiscal year 2008. It comprised more than $300 million in pet projects for Illinois, including tens of millions for Jones's Senate district. Shortly after Jones became Senate president, I remember asking his view on pork-barrel spending. I'll never forget what he said: "Some call it pork; I call it steak."
On the stump, Obama has frequently invoked his experiences as a community organizer on the Chicago South Side in the early 1990s, when he passed on six-figure salary offers at corporate law firms after graduating from Harvard Law School to direct a massive voter-registration drive. But, as a state senator, Obama evaded leadership on a host of critical community issues, from historic preservation to the rapid demolition of nearby public-housing projects, according to many South Siders.
Harold Lucas, a veteran South Side community organizer who remembers when Obama was "just a big-eared kid fresh out of school," says he didn't finally decide to support Obama's presidential bid until he was actually inside the voting booth on Super Tuesday. "I'm not happy about the quality of life in my community," says Lucas, who now heads a black-heritage tourism business in Chicago. "As a local elected official, he had a primary role in that."
In addition to Hyde Park, Obama also represented segments of several South Side neighborhoods home to the nation's richest African-American cultural history outside of Harlem. Before World War II, the adjacent Bronzeville community was known as the "Black Metropolis," attracting African-American migrants seeking racial equality and economic opportunity from states to the south such as Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Storied jazz clubs such as Gerri's Palm Tavern regularly hosted Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Josephine Baker and many others. In the postwar era, blues legends Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and B.B. King all regularly gigged in cramped juke joints such as the Checkerboard Lounge.
When the City of Chicago seized the 70-year-old Gerri's Palm Tavern by eminent domain in 2001, sparking citywide protests, Obama was silent. And he offered no public comments when the 30-year owner of the Checkerboard Lounge was forced to relocate a couple years later. Even in Hyde Park, Obama declined to take a position on a years-long battle waged by hundreds of local community activists fighting against the city's plan to replace the historic limestone seawall along Lake Michigan - a popular spot to sunbathe and swim - with concrete steps. It would be comparable to representing Barton Creek in Austin, and sidestepping any discussion about conservation.
Obama's aloofness on key community issues for years frustrated Lucas and many other South Siders. Now they believe he was just afraid of making political enemies or being pigeonholed as a black candidate. Lucas says he has since become an ardent Obama supporter. "His campaign has built a momentum of somebody being born to the moment," Lucas says. "He truly gives the perception that he could possibly pull us all together around being American again. And the hope of that is worth the risk when you look at the other candidates. I mean, you can't get away from old school when you look at Hillary."
Lucas even believes Obama made the right choice by declining PBS talk-show host Tavis Smiley's invitation to speak at this week's State of the Black Union 2008 conference in New Orleans. "Obama can't bring those issues up if he wants to be elected," Lucas says. "And that's the travesty of the situation that we find ourselves in as African-Americans."
Though it didn't make national news, Obama inflamed many residents in his old state Senate district last March when he endorsed controversial Chicago alderman Dorothy Tillman in a runoff election. Flamboyant and unpredictable, Tillman is perhaps best known for once pulling a pistol from her purse and brandishing it around at a city council meeting. The ward she represented for 22 years, which included historic Bronzeville, comprised the city's largest concentration of vacant lots.
Just three months before Obama made his endorsement, the Lakefront Outlook community newspaper ran a three-part investigative series exposing flagrant crony-ism and possible tax-law violations that centered on Tillman and her biggest pet project, a taxpayer-funded cultural center built across the street from her ward office that had been hemorrhaging money since its inception. The series won a national George Polk Award, among the most coveted prizes in journalism. Not bad for a 12-page rag with a circulation of 12,000 and no Web site. I had already left the Outlook and had nothing to do with the project.
In the end, Tillman lost the election despite Obama's endorsement, which critics said countered his calls for clean government. Obama told the Chicago Tribune that he had backed Tillman because she was an early supporter of his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign. Many speculate Obama only bothered to weigh in on a paltry city council election during his presidential campaign as a gesture to Chicago's powerful Mayor Richard M. Daley, a Tillman supporter. Even so, Obama should have remained neutral, says Timuel Black, a historian and City Colleges of Chicago professor emeritus who lived in Obama's state Senate district. "That was not a wise decision," Black says. "It was poor judgment on his part. He was operating like a politician trying to win the next step up."
Obama has spent his entire political career trying to win the next step up. Every three years, he has aspired to a more powerful political position. He was just 35 when in 1996 he won his first bid for political office. Even many of his staunchest supporters, such as Black, still resent the strong-arm tactics Obama employed to win his seat in the Illinois Legislature. Obama hired fellow Harvard Law alum and election law expert Thomas Johnson to challenge the nominating petitions of four other candidates, including the popular incumbent, Alice Palmer, a liberal activist who had held the seat for several years, according to an April 2007 Chicago Tribune report. Obama found enough flaws in the petition sheets - to appear on the ballot, candidates needed 757 signatures from registered voters living within the district - to knock off all the other Democratic contenders. He won the seat unopposed.
"A close examination of Obama's first campaign clouds the image he has cultivated throughout his political career," wrote Tribune political reporters David Jackson and Ray Long. "The man now running for president on a message of giving a voice to the voiceless first entered public office not by leveling the playing field, but by clearing it." .....
"He's been given a pass," says Harold Lucas, the community organizer in Chicago. "His career has been such a meteoric rise that he has not had the time to set a record." A week after my profile of Obama was published, I called some of my contacts in the Illinois Legislature. I ran through a list of black Chicago lawmakers who had worked with Obama, and was surprised to learn that many resented him and had supported other candidates in the U.S. Senate election. "Anybody but Obama," the late state Representative Lovana Jones told me at the time.
State Representative Monique Davis, who attended the same church as Obama and co-sponsored several bills with him, also did not support his candidacy. She complained of feeling overshadowed by Obama. "I was snubbed," Davis told me. "I felt he was shutting me out of history."
In a follow-up report published a couple weeks later, I wrote about these disgruntled black legislators and the central role Senate President Emil Jones played in Obama's revived political life. The morning after the story was posted online, I arrived early at my new offices. I hadn't taken my coat off when the phone rang. It was Obama. The article began, "It can be painful to hear Ivy League-bred Barack Obama talk jive."
Obama told me he doesn't speak jive, that he doesn't say the words "homeboy" or "peeps." It seemed so silly; I thought for sure he was joking. He wasn't. He said the black legislators I cited in the story were off-base, and that they couldn't have gotten the bills passed without him. I started to speak, and he shouted me down.
Today I no longer have Obama's cell phone number. I submitted two formal requests to interview Obama for this story through his Web site, but have not heard back. I also e-mailed interview requests to three of his top staffers, but none responded.
More here
Team Obama thinks ticket with Hil could work with her as the No. 2
They are probably right but I am inclined to think that the Hildabeest would die first
Team Obama agreed with Team Clinton Sunday that a "dream ticket" would be great - especially because they believe Hillary would make a terrific No. 2 as vice president.
Obama supporter Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader, said that Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) running as vice president with Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) at the top of the ticket would "turn the page" in their increasingly bitter battle for the Democratic presidential nomination. Daschle said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that Obama was looking for "the person who can serve in the capacity of President should he not be around. She's certainly in that category, but probably a lot of others as well." A tongue-in-cheek Obama camp was responding to jabs from Clinton's side that he wasn't qualified to be commander in chief and should settle for being her running mate.
Clinton said last week, "I've had people say, 'I wish I could vote for both of you.' Well, that might be possible someday." Former President Bill Clinton was nearly giddy at the prospect of his wife heading up a Clinton-Obama ticket. "He would win the urban areas and the upscale voters and she wins the traditional rural areas," Clinton said. "If you put those two things together, you would have an almost unstoppable force."
Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), another Obama supporter, said it was premature to discuss running mates with more primaries ahead. "Once that issue is settled, I think it's appropriate then to have a discussion about who the participants on the ticket should be," Jackson said on CNN's "Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer," adding, "Obviously, I have a preference for Sen. Obama."
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Obama as a luxury brand
Watching Obamamania unfold over the last few days, I have gradually come to the realization that we are living through the first Presidential campaign that is being marketed like a high-end consumer brand.
The logo itself is a good jumping off point. The typical Presidential campaign logo usually features some variant of the stars and stripes. Beyond patriotism, they have no message. They are pretty much interchangeable between Republicans and Democrats.
Obama's logo rearranges these patriotic elements into an emblem that distills his message to the core: the hope of the sun rising [or, Republicans, is it setting?] over amber waves of grain, with the novelty of the candidate's unusual last name reinforced in an "O". Unlike virtually every political logo in history, this one doesn't shy away from the glows and gradients meant to give modern corporate logos realism and depth. And like good corporate logos, this logomark can be disaggregated from the candidate's name, in the same way that the swoosh instantly screams "Nike" or the circular logos of BMW and Mercedes spark instant associations with affluence and prestige.
This is not only the theory. It's the gameplan. Lately, most of Obama's signage doesn't say Obama. The Obama campaign is not selling Obama. It is not selling a public figure with progressive political beliefs. It is selling Hope - and Change. This is why distant historical references aside, it is deliberately difficult to find the politics in the Will.i.am video:
Most campaigns never get beyond talking issues. The sophisticated ones run on attributes in the foreground (cares about people like me) tied to issues in the background (a health care plan). The Obama effort seems to be something wholly different. The campaign and its marketing seems designed to evoke aspirational feelings that have virtually no political meaning whatsoever. This is what great brands do. They evoke feelings that have virtually zero connection to product attributes and specifications. As Alan M. Webber recently wrote in Fast Company:Some categories may lend themselves to branding better than others, but anything is brandable. Nike, for example, is leveraging the deep emotional connection that people have with sports and fitness. With Starbucks, we see how coffee has woven itself into the fabric of people's lives, and that's our opportunity for emotional leverage. Almost any product offers an opportunity to create a frame of mind that's unique. Almost any product can transcend the boundaries of its narrow category.And:
Intel is a case study in branding. I doubt that most people who own a computer know what Intel processors do, how they work, or why they are superior to their competition in any substantive way. All they know is that they want to own a computer with "Intel inside." As a result, Andy Grove and his team sit today with a great product and a powerful brand.The common ground among companies that have built great brands is not just performance. They recognize that consumers live in an emotional world. Emotions drive most, if not all, of our decisions. Not many people sit around and discuss the benefits of encapsulated gas in the mid-sole of a basketball shoe or the advantages of the dynamic-fit system. They will talk about Michael Jordan's winning shot against Utah the other night - and they'll experience the dreams and the aspirations and the awe that go with that last-second, game-winning shot.The end result is that great brands are fungible. They can be all things to all people. The branding approach liberates Obama to be the candidate of the MoveOn wing and of national unity. That's not a criticism. It is a compliment. Now we'll see if it stands up in the land beyond the energized core, in the land of 50% plus one nationally, where evangelism alone is not enough.
A brand reaches out with that kind of powerful connecting experience. It's an emotional connection point that transcends the product. And transcending the product is the brand.
Obama literalists may read back chapter and verse on his policy initiatives, but let's be real here. Those aren't the reasons for his success. Morover, they were never intended to be the underpinnings of the Obama candidacy. Millions of "HOPE" and "CHANGE" placards later, I think that's fairly clear.
Source
Obama Pastors' Sermons May Violate Tax Laws
On Christmas morning, Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. compared presidential candidate Barack Obama's impoverished childhood to Jesus Christ's. "Barack knows what it means to be a black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people," he then trumpeted. "Hillary [Clinton] can never know that." Mr. Wright wasn't at a convention or a campaign stop. He was standing at the pulpit before the mostly African-American congregation of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, where Sen. Obama has worshiped for more than 20 years.
Mr. Wright, who will be ending his 36-year tenure as the church's senior pastor in June, has previously been criticized for comments deriding President George Bush and lauding Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam. Now Mr. Wright's and his successor's repeated enthusiastic promotion of their famous parishioner may be running afoul of federal tax law, which says churches can endanger their tax-exempt status by endorsing or opposing candidates for public office.
Sen. Obama's campaign issued a statement saying that he has repeatedly stressed that personal attacks "have no place in this campaign or our politics, whether they're offered from a platform at a rally or the pulpit of a church." The statement also said he "does not think of the pastor of his church in political terms. Like a member of his family, there are things he says with which Senator Obama deeply disagrees.'' Mr. Wright declined to comment.
Trinity's national parent, the United Church of Christ, recently disclosed that it's being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service for a speech Sen. Obama gave to 10,000 people at a church conference in June in Hartford, Conn., in which he mentioned his candidacy and parts of his platform, namely health-care reform.
Scholars and attorneys say that a growing number of congregations are delving into issue advocacy and partisan politics, a trend dating back to the 1980s, when the religious right enlisted churches to fight abortion. An increasing number of complaints to the IRS over church politicking have triggered agency probes into both liberal and conservative religious groups. A Baptist church in California has acknowledged it's under IRS scrutiny after a watchdog group complained that the church backed Republican Mike Huckabee in his recently ended bid for the White House.
"There have never been more audits than in the last three or four years" involving churches, says Marcus Owens, an attorney who represents some congregations and is a former director of the IRS's exempt-organizations division. But while the agency has issued dozens of warning letters aimed at halting advocacy for political candidates, it has only twice revoked a church's tax-exempt status since the tax law was amended in 1954, a spokeswoman said.
Under the law that governs tax-exempt organizations, churches are allowed to support causes or ballot initiatives such as laws to ban same-sex marriage. They also can hold a candidates' night for all office-seekers in a race. But according to guidance provided on the IRS's Web site, churches are "absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office."
The prohibition is aimed at preventing government subsidies -- in the form of tax breaks -- from going to organizations that support political parties. Other types of nonprofits are permitted to engage in partisan political activity but have more limited tax protections. For instance, their financial supporters aren't allowed to claim tax deductions for their donations.
With 6,000 members, Trinity is the largest United Church of Christ congregation. The church is centered in a poor Chicago neighborhood, near public housing and down the road from Cut Rate Food & Liquors, which posts a sign reading "No drug dealing." A review by The Wall Street Journal of 13 sermons at Trinity seen live or through church-recorded DVDs since late December found nine instances of ministers at Trinity appearing to promote Sen. Obama's candidacy.
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(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
10 March, 2008
Obama lobbies homosexuals for edge over Hillary
Letter to 'LGBT community' affirms he'd dump Defense of Marriage Act
It's not easy to find on his campaign website, but Sen. Barack Obama has issued an open letter to the "LGBT community" assuring them he believes in "full equality" for homosexuals and stating that, unlike Sen. Hillary Clinton, he advocates the complete repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act. In the letter, published on a campaign blog, Obama says he's "running for president to build an America that lives up to our founding promise of equality for all - a promise that extends to our gay brothers and sisters." Pointing out that throughout his career he's "fought to eliminate discrimination against LGBT (Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) Americans," Obama lists some of his specific accomplishments.
* In the Illinois legislature, he "co-sponsored a fully inclusive bill that prohibited discrimination on the basis of both sexual orientation and gender identity, extending protection to the workplace, housing and places of public accommodation."
* In the U.S. Senate, he has co-sponsored bills "that would equalize tax treatment for same-sex couples and provide benefits to domestic partners of federal employees."
As president, he says, "I will place the weight of my administration behind the enactment of the Matthew Shepard Act to outlaw hate crimes and a fully inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act to outlaw workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity."
In the run-up to the recent Texas and Ohio primaries, Obama bought full-page ads in homosexual-oriented newspapers in Columbus, Cleveland, Dallas and Houston. The ads were the brainchild of Stampp Corbin, co-chairman of Obama's National LGBT Leadership Council, the Advocate newspaper reported. Stern told the 'gay' publication the coordinated buy was "the icing on the cake" in terms of the campaign's outreach to the homosexual community in the two states. "It's a direct appeal to LGBT voters, asking for their support," Corbin said. The Advocate said the Obama campaign "has actively been trying to cut into the long-standing ties between gays and lesbians and Sen. Hillary Clinton."
In his letter, Obama says he will also use the presidency's bully pulpit to "urge states to treat same-sex couples with full equality in their family and adoption laws." The candidate for the White House says he would not prevent legalization of same-sex marriage. "I personally believe that civil unions represent the best way to secure that equal treatment," he sayes. "But I also believe that the federal government should not stand in the way of states that want to decide on their own how best to pursue equality for gay and lesbian couples whether that means a domestic partnership, a civil union or a civil marriage."
Obama says he has opposed the Defense of Marriage Act since arriving in the Senate three years ago, and, unlike Sen. Clinton and those who say it should be partially repealed, "I believe we should get rid of that statute altogether." "Federal law should not discriminate in any way against gay and lesbian couples, which is precisely what DOMA does," he says. The Defense of Marriage Act is a law signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996 that says the federal government and individual states are not required to recognize a same-sex marriage, even if it is recognized by another state.
Obama points out he also has called for repeal of the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy of barring personnel from disclosing homosexual behavior or "orientation" while preventing authorities from investigating it.
The Illinois senator says he also has worked "to improve the Uniting American Families Act so we can accord same-sex couples the same rights and obligations as married couples in our immigration system." The bill would allow unmarried "permanent partners" of U.S. citizens to obtain permanent resident status in the same manner as spouses.
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The empty vessel on Iraq
One of his advisers on Iraq was unwisely frank:
Samantha Power, one of Barack's top foreign advisors before she wasn't, went on the BBC and told the whole world that Obama has no real exit strategies for Iraq and that WHEN and IF he becomes president that he'll talk to the military brass to see what strategy they'd recommend.
Just like his talk on NAFTA, it looks like Obama is not to be trusted with what he says on Iraq, either. The American Mind has the transcript:
STEPHEN SACKUR: Let me stop you just for a moment. You said that he'll revisit it when he goes to the White House. So what the American public thinks is a commitment to get combat forces out within sixteen months, isn't a commitment isn't it?Ultimately, Barack has no idea how quickly he can withdraw forces. He has no idea if it can even be done. Figures.
POWER: You can't make a commitment in whatever month we're in now, in March of 2008 about what circumstances are gonna be like in Jan. 2009. We can't even tell what Bush is up to in terms of troop pauses and so forth. He will of course not rely upon some plan that he's crafted as a presidential candidate or as a US senator.
He will rely upon a plan, an operational plan that he pulls together, in consultation with people who are on the ground, to whom he doesn't have daily access now as a result of not being the president.
So to think, I mean it would be the height of ideology, you know, to sort of say, well I said it therefore I'm going to impose it on whatever reality entreats me -
SACKUR: Ok, so the 16 months is negotiable?
POWER: It's the best case scenario
It's the best case scenario
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CHARISMA ISN'T ENOUGH
By Barry Rubin, writing from Israel
The U.S. presidential election is not--at least not supposed to be--like electing a high school class president. Vague promises, glib speeches, and personal popularity shouldn't be enough to gain victory. This should be especially true this year since so many Americans don't seem to think they did such a great job of choosing the last time they voted.
All these points go double and more for the Middle East, an area too dangerous and important to deal with lightly. Yet since these debates are so highly partisan there has been a huge amount of distortion and self-interested blather on all sides.
So let's sort it out. The first issue must be who you trust to deal with the Middle East. The question is definitely not Israel, or even Arab-Israeli issues, in isolation. The next American president will face a lot of other problems, too, including at a minimum: Afghanistan, attempts to takeover states, Egypt's post-Mubarak president, Hamas, Hizballah and Lebanon, Iranian expansionism, Iranian nuclear, Iraq, oil supply and prices, radical Islamist movements, stability of relatively moderate Arab regimes, Syria, and terrorism.
The overriding question is a struggle between a well-organized radical alliance (HISH: Hamas, Hizballah, Iran, in Iraq both insurgents and radical Shia, and Syria) and a relatively moderate though completely uncoordinated set of states. In addition, there are radical Islamist forces that don't work with the HISH bloc but seek revolution in their own countries. Failure to recognize that reality is extraordinarily dangerous.
Facing this very tough situation, it's hard to believe that Barack Obama has the experience, understanding, or worldview to manage the virtually continuous crisis the region faces. The critical point here is not whether he says the "right" things but whether he understands things the right way. Speaking as an analyst, my main concern is not whether or not Obama is elected but that if he becomes president he will do the best possible job. The best-case conclusion-a combination of wishful thinking and accurate assessment-is that sooner or later he will reach what I'll call the default position for U.S. Middle East policy.
In other words, he might start out convinced that he can persuade the Iranian and Syrian governments along with others who are enemies of the United States to play nice. Along the way, one hopes, he will learn that this doesn't work. The main problem is that they don't just object to U.S. policies (or values even, at least if those stay confined to America) but that they rightly see the United States as a barrier standing between them and a Middle East filled with Islamist states and under their hegemony.
All presidents need to learn in office. In relative terms, though, both Hillary Clinton and John McCain are pretty much ready now. Obama is going to need two or three years. So the good news could be that Obama will eventually understand what needs to be done; and the bad news is what happens during that time period.
Given current trends, it's quite possible that by the time he gains the needed comprehension, Iran will have nuclear weapons, Lebanon and Iraq will be satellites of Tehran, and Hamas will run the West Bank. In addition, perceiving Obama as na‹ve and appeasement-oriented-not my invention but one inevitable in the region-will embolden extremists and make relative moderates rush to cut a deal with what they'll see as the winning side. Or to put it another way, the economist John Maynard Keynes said that in the long run we are all dead. In the Middle East, in the medium-run we will all be in very serious trouble.
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Obamacare
Canadians will die if we adopt a universal health insurance plan. "Single payer" are weasel words for government-run. He who pays the piper calls the tune. Democrats have made it clear that they no longer want to pay top price for top service. They will save you money. That will drive down the quality, availability and quantity of health care. I know this because that is how it is done in every socialized medicine country.
In a column in the Toronto Globe and Mail, Lisa Priest explores: "Why Ontario keeps sending patients south." She has the numbers. Heart patient with clogged arteries? You're headed to Detroit for the same angioplasty that is offered in West Virginia apparently is not offered in Ontario. Curious.
High risk pregnancy? Enjoy the ride to Michigan. Charleston (population 50,000) has more neonatal intensive care units than Calgary (population 1 million). That's why this summer those "Canadian" quadruplets were born in Great Falls, Mont., which also has more NICU beds than Calgary. Hey, they can run for president of the United States in 2044.
Her article told the story of one heart patient, a Mr. Bialkowski, who was sent to Detroit.The price to treat him, including a two-day hospital stay in March, 2007, was $40,826.21 (U.S.) With a 35 per cent discount from Henry Ford Hospital, the bill to the Ontario Health Insurance Plan tallied $26,537.03(U.S.), according to a health ministry document, a copy of which was sent to Mr. Bialkowski.If by "took care" he means mooched off the United States, then I guess the Canadian government did just that. But what happens when an Obama or another Clinton is elected president? Maybe they can life flight heart patients to India.
The father of six, a human resources manager for a manufacturing company based in Windsor, is back at the gym and feels great. It didn't matter where he received the lifesaving care, he said, just so long as he obtained it. "I guess the Canadian government took care of me," he said.
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(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
9 March, 2008
Obama as a warmonger?
People have mostly dismissed his desire to invade Pakistan as just ignorance but the Paleocon writer excerpted below notes that there is much more of the same thinking that seems to have been airbrushed out of commentary on Obama. The pattern described is certainly a pattern that fits in with Obama as a Fascist. Ed Brayton take note of that! It is certainly true that it is mainly Democrats who have in the past got America involved in foreign wars
President Obama would be a warmonger. He would be a wide-eyed, zealous interventionist who would not think twice about using America's "military muscle" (his words) to overthrow "rogue states" and to suppress America's enemies, real and imagined. He would go farther even than President Bush in transforming the globe into America's backyard and staffing it with spies and soldiers. He would relish the "American mission" to police the world and topple tyrannical regimes.
Two myths must be exploded: first, that Barack Obama was a principled and passionate opponent of the war in Iraq; second, that if he were installed in the White House he would resist the temptation to launch new wars and would instead usher in an era of peace.
Iraq is the Obamabots' favorite faultline in the clash of the two Democrat contenders: Clinton supported the invasion and Obama opposed it. An open-and-shut case of one candidate being "for the war" and the other being "against the war," right? Not quite. Obama's position over the past five years has been strikingly similar to Clinton's. And that ought to be an issue of serious concern for Obama's army of acolytes and the peace protesters who have latched on to his campaign because, as Jeff Taylor pointed out in Counterpunch, "Clinton herself provides no substantive alternative to the neoconservative philosophy of the Bush administration." Obama is little different from Clinton, and Clinton is little different from Bush.
Obama's campaign frequently invokes his 2002 "speech against the war," but very rarely quotes directly from it. Why? Because this mysterious speech-which has become the stuff of legend in Obamaphilic circles, talked about but rarely read-is a pro-war tirade. Yes, Obama described the planned invasion of Iraq as "dumb" and "rash," but his overriding concern-expressed repetitively throughout the speech-was that the Bush administration was damaging the legitimate case for American-made wars of intervention and potentially making it harder for future administrations (Democratic, for example) to send soldiers around the world to depose unfriendly regimes.
Obama gave the speech at an antiwar rally in Chicago in October 2002. Perhaps nervous about being seen at a gathering of critics of American military intervention, he straight away outlined his pro-war credentials: "Let me begin by saying that although this has been billed as an anti-war rally, I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances." He reiterated his non-opposition to war another four times in the 921-word speech.
Then Obama went to Washington, where he obediently voted to fund the war in Iraq and opposed the withdrawal of American troops. In 2004, he even talked about sending more troops to Iraq to stabilize the country-he had the idea of a surge before the Bushies did. When he and Hillary Clinton had a chance to enact Sen. Russ Feingold's measure ordering Bush to withdraw most U.S. troops from Iraq by July 1, 2007, both voted no. Both senators also voted against a June 2006 amendment proposed by John Kerry for the redeployment of U.S. troops out of Iraq. It wasn't until May 2007 that Clinton and Obama voted to cut off funds.
It is a myth, pure bunkum, that Obama is a brave anti-warrior. He made a brief speech in 2002-peppered with reminders of his generally pro-war leanings-and then, like Clinton, used his muscle in the Senate to fund the war and extend its bloody duration. It is only during the past year, as he has thrown himself into the presidential race, that Obama has decided to pose as a long-standing, level-headed critic. As Taylor argues, "An adept politician, Obama began emphasizing his `anti-war' stance as the war became increasingly unpopular among Democrats across the country and he began gearing up for the 2008 presidential campaign."
But there is more going on here than Iraq-related opportunism. If elected president, Obama would make it a priority to smash the argument for non-interventionism and to rehabilitate America's imperial mission to right the wrongs of the world.
His main beef with the war in Iraq is not that it has failed in its stated objectives, fomented terror, and killed thousands, but rather that it has made the American people skeptical about military intervention. "There is one . place where our mistakes in Iraq have cost us dearly, and that is the loss of our government's credibility with the American people," he says. Citing a Pew Survey that found that 42 percent of Americans agree that the U.S. should "mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own," Obama retorted, "We cannot afford to be a country of isolationists right now. . We need to maintain a strong foreign policy, relentless in pursuing our enemies and hopeful in promoting our values around the world."
Those foolishly cheering Obama's promise to bring the war in Iraq to a "responsible end" should recognize why he is planning this: not to liberate Iraq but rather to liberate the interventionist project from the "Iraqi distraction" and rebuild America's military sufficiently to send its forces to hotspots around the globe. In a long piece for Foreign Affairs in July/August 2007, he argued, "After Iraq, we may be tempted to turn inward. That would be a mistake. The American moment is not over, but it must be seized anew. We must bring the war to a responsible end and then renew our leadership-military, diplomatic, moral-to confront new threats and capitalize on new opportunities." He calls for adding 65,000 soldiers to the Army and 27,000 to the Marine Corps and vastly expanding their mission. "[D]eposing a dictator and setting up a ballot box" is not enough: Obama wants $50 billion to promote "sustainable democracy," a gauzy scheme that aims to "build healthy and educated communities, reduce poverty, develop markets, and generate wealth."
Yet for all his focus on the "politics of hope," when it comes to outlining his program of international interventionism, Obama parrots precisely the Bush regime's panic-packed arguments about the horrendous threats facing America. Paying tribute to earlier battles against fascism and Soviet communism, Obama said last year, "This century's threats are at least as dangerous and in some ways more complex than those we have confronted in the past. They come from weapons that can kill on a mass scale and from global terrorists who respond to alienation or perceived injustice with murderous nihilism. They come from rogue states allied to terrorists and from rising powers that could challenge both America and the international foundation of liberal democracy." ....
In a Washington Post column entitled "Obama the Interventionist," Robert Kagan celebrated the repudiation of the realist consensus: "Obama's speech . was pure John Kennedy, without a trace of John Mearsheimer." In 1996, Kagan co-wrote with Bill Kristol a Foreign Affairs essay entitled "Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy," which argued that U.S. foreign policy should seek to preserve "American hegemony" so that we can continue to fulfill our "responsibility to lead the world." Obama has updated this outlook in PC, Democrat-friendly lingo: "The mission of the U.S. is to provide global leadership grounded in the understanding that the world shares a common security and a common humanity." Little wonder that Kagan sees in Obama a kindred spirit: "Obama believes the world yearns to follow us," he writes. "Personally, I like it."
More here
Obama's connections are fair game
Has there ever been a more politically unfortunate middle name - historically speaking - than Barack Hussein Obama Jr.'s? Probably not. And though stories of Obama's ties to Islam are sordid, his Christian ties are another matter.
When a conservative Cincinnati talk show host recently limbered up a crowd at a John McCain rally, he repeatedly referred to Obama as "Barack Hussein Obama." This prompted massive outrage and an apology from McCain. If you haven't noticed, Hussein is a Muslim name - as are Barack and Obama, by the way. What the electorate is supposed to garner from this nugget, I suppose, is that Obama is a closet Islamic imam.
Now, it should be pointed out that many of the individuals so shocked by the use of Obama's given middle name are many of the same people who eagerly label George W. Bush a Nazi or other exaggerated pejoratives. Selective indignation, clearly, is not confined to either party's faithful.
In fact, it was a Hillary Clinton aide who last week disseminated a picture of Obama, on a visit to Kenya, looking like he was dressed for the Haj. The Drudge Report, in turn, posted shots of House majority leader Nancy Pelosi, First Lady Laura Bush, and others, wearing kafia headdresses (why an American woman would don misogynistic headwear is a mystery), as is customary on official visits.
The use of "Hussein" and the Kenyan picture are no more than petty political ploys, likely to backfire. Obama has assured Americans, with the political adeptness of a social conservative, that he is "a devout Christian. I have been a member of the same church for 20 years. I pray to Jesus every night." Impressive, I suppose, depending on where you pray.
Obama, the guiding hand to American unanimity, has for the past 20 years been a parishioner at Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, whose leader is, by any reasonable standard, a racist. The pastor in question is Jeremiah Wright Jr. It was his use of the term "audacity of hope" in a sermon that inspired Obama to title his best-selling book with the phrase. Wright is a longtime supporter of Nation of Islam's Louis Farrakhan. Last year, the "Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award" was given to Farrakhan, who, it turns out, "truly epitomized greatness." Farrakhan, in addition to making frequent distasteful comments about race, is a person who referred to Judaism as a "gutter religion" and its adherents a bunch of "bloodsuckers." Wright even tagged along when Farrakhan visited Libya's dictator Moammar Khadafy - a terrorist financier directly linked to the murder of Americans - for a chitchat in 1980s.
Obama has shown zero inclination to agree with any of Farrakhan or Wright's odious statements. But as Obama's largest recipient of charitable donations, Trinity United Church of Christ is more than a fleeting distraction in the candidate's life. This is not guilt by association. Until a last minute change of heart, Obama's campaign invocation was to be given by Wright. After bumping Wright, an Obama aide explained: "Senator Obama is proud of his pastor and his church, but because of the type of attention it was receiving on blogs and conservative talk shows, he decided to avoid having statements and beliefs being used out of context and forcing the entire church to defend itself."
If he is proud of his pastor, then asking Obama to clarify his connection to Wright is neither slander nor innuendo - nor is it the right-wing "noise machine" in action. It is nearly inconceivable to imagine Clinton or McCain - or any presidential candidate - enjoying a close relationship with pastor who praises a racist leader for "his integrity and honesty" not coming under the scrutiny of the entire media. No, Obama shouldn't have to deal with unfair innuendo, but he deserves no dispensation when it comes to Wright.
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Obama fund-raiser in fraud trial
The Chicago trial of a fund-raiser for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has opened with the prosecutor alleging massive fraud. The prosecutor alleged that Antoin "Tony" Rezko was behind a $7m plan to extort money from firms trying to do business with Illinois state.
Mr Obama has not been accused of any wrongdoing and has donated the money raised for him by Mr Rezko to charity.
Mr Rezko denies the charges, saying he only raised funds for politicians. Mr Obama's links to Mr Rezko have brought the first whiff of scandal to an election campaign that has rapidly gained momentum. The Illinois senator bought land at a discount from his friend Mr Rezko in 2005, when the businessman was already being investigated. Mr Obama later called the deal "boneheaded".
Besides raising $150,000 for Mr Obama's election campaign, Mr Rezko was also a major fund-raiser for Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. "When Rod Blagojevich was running for governor in 2002, the defendant was one of his biggest fund-raisers," federal prosecutor Carrie E Hamilton said in her opening statement on Thursday. "After he was elected, the defendant Rezko was one of his advisors." He then used his influence to place associates on key state boards, including the powerful Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board, Ms Hamilton said.
In one example, the prosecutor said, Mr Rezko planned with one of the health board members, named Stuart Levine, to get bribes in return for board approval for a hospital expansion. Mr Rezko and Mr Levine then planned a similar operation with the board of a teachers' pension fund, she said. "Rezko was the man behind the curtains, pulling the strings," Ms Hamilton said. Mr Levine has pleaded guilty in the case in a plea deal with the prosecution.
Mr Rezko's defence attorney, Joseph J Duffy, attacked Mr Levine's credibility as a witness, describing his drug use and calling him "a very, very sophisticated con man". Mr Duffy said Mr Rezko, a Syrian-born businessman, wanted nothing for himself and raised money for his favourite politicians out of a passion for politics. Mr Rezko is charged with multiple counts of fraud, of aiding and abetting in the solicitation of bribery, money laundering and attempted extortion, AFP news agency reported. The trial is expected to last for several months.
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Michelle Obama and the affirmative action perpetual futility machine
"Spengler," the Asia Times columnist who was a close associate of Lyndon Larouche back in the 1980s, takes a whack at Michelle Obama's "rage of a privileged class" as exemplified by her Princeton thesis. Typos ahoy!
That reminds me of something I didn't squeeze into my long VDARE article on Michelle and racial quotas: how the downsides of affirmative action just spawn more angry demands for more affirmative action. It's a perpetual motion machine that never goes anywhere.
Michelle got into Whitney Young H.S., Princeton, Harvard Law School, and Sidley Austin LLC due to racial preferences. The entire time she felt aggrieved because people around her at these intellectually elite institutions kept noticing she wasn't as smart as the average person there, and were guessing that she got in because of her race. That both presumptions were accurate only made them more enraging. Those 14 years she endured in over her head due to affirmative action still gnaw away at her psyche, as the recent Newsweek cover story on her makes clear.
With her aggressive personality and need for attention and dominance, she would have been perfectly happy being a big fish in a little pond, but because elite America institutions are so desperate for hard-working blacks with 115 IQs, she kept getting lured into situations where should couldn't be satisfied. So, did all this bitter experience turn her into a campaigner against affirmative action?
Are you kidding? As usual, the exact opposite happened. Here's the beginning of the press release put out by her employer after her husband became a U.S. Senator and she got a $195,000 raise:Michelle Obama has been appointed vice president for community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals. Obama, who was previously the executive director for community affairs at the Hospitals, will be responsible for all programs and initiatives that involve the relationship between the Hospitals and the community. She will also take over management of the Hospitals' business diversity program.She apparently couldn't cut it in big time corporate law, so she became a ... professional diversicrat, in charge of luring other blacks in over their heads, just like she had been, so they can also become underqualified and resentful too, suitable for becoming, in turn, professional diversicrats. Lather, rinse, and repeat, until the end of time.
Prior to joining the Hospitals, Obama worked as an associate dean of student services for the University of Chicago where she developed the University's first office of community service. She came to the Hospitals in 2002 and quickly built up programs for community relations, neighborhood outreach, volunteer recruitment, staff diversity and minority contracting. [Emphasis mine, although you could argue that her entire job was just diversity.]
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(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
8 March, 2008
Obama likes his pretty tractor
Did he get enough bumper car rides in his youth?
A Clintonista sums up Obama
I particularly like the last paragraph
Barack Obama argues that he deserves the Democratic nomination and Hillary Clinton doesn't because he possesses superior "judgment," as he calls it, on the key issues we face as a nation. As definitive proof he offers one speech he made in 2002 during a reelection campaign for an Illinois senate seat in the most liberal district in the state, so liberal that no other position would have been viable. When he made that speech, Obama was not privy to the briefings by, among others, Secretary of State Colin Powell, in support of the Authorization of Use of Military Force as a diplomatic tool to push the international community to impose intrusive inspections on Saddam Hussein.
Would Obama have acted differently had he been in Washington or had he had the benefit of the arguments and the intelligence that the administration was offering to the Congress debating that resolution? During the 2002-2003 timeframe, he was a minor local official uninvolved in the national debate on the war so we can only judge from his own statements prior to the 2008 campaign. Obama repeated these points in a whole host of interviews prior to announcing his candidacy. On July 27, 2004, he told the Chicago Tribune on Iraq: "There's not much of a difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage." In his book, The Audacity of Hope, published in 2006, he wrote, "...on the merits I didn't consider the case against war to be cut-and- dried." And, in 2006, he clearly said, "I'm always careful to say that I was not in the Senate, so perhaps the reason I thought it was such a bad idea was that I didn't have the benefit of US intelligence. And for those who did, it might have led to a different set of choices."
I was involved in that debate in every step of the effort to prevent this senseless war and I profoundly resent Obama's distortion of George Bush's folly into Hillary Clinton's responsibility. I was in the middle of the debate in Washington. Obama wasn't there. I remember what was said and done. In fact, the administration lied in order to secure support for its war of choice, including cooking the intelligence and misleading Congress about the intent of the authorization. Senator Clinton's position, stated in her floor speech, was in favor of allowing the United Nations weapons inspectors to complete their mission and to build a broad international coalition. Bush rejected her path. It was his war of choice.
There is no credible reason to conclude that Obama would have acted any differently in voting for the authorization had he been in the Senate at that time. Indeed, he has said as much. The supposed intuitive judgment he exercised in his 2002 speech was nothing more than the pander of a local election campaign, just as his current assertions of superior judgment and scurrilous attacks on Hillary Clinton are a pander to those who now retroactively think the war was a mistake without bothering to acknowledge Senator Clinton's actual position at the time and instead fantasizing that she was nothing but a Bush clone. Oba a willfully encourages and plays off this falsehood.
What should we make of Obama's other judgments in foreign affairs? Take Afghanistan, for example. It has been evident for some time that our efforts there are going badly and that cooperation and support from our NATO allies would be helpful. As chairman of the subcommittee on Senate Foreign Relations responsible for NATO and Europe, Obama could have used his lofty position actually to engage the issue and pressure the administration to take some action to improve our chance of success in that conflict against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Of course, that would have involved holding hearings, questioning administration witnesses, and taking a position and offering alternatives. That is what we expect that from senators in a democracy. It is called oversight.
But, instead, Obama, by his own admission, offers the excuse that he has been too busy running for president to do anything substantive, such as direct his staff to organize a single hearing. "Well, first of all," Obama was forced to confess in the Democratic debate in Ohio on February 26, "I became chairman of this committee at the beginning of this campaign, at the beginning of 2007. So it is true that we haven't had oversight hearings on Afghanistan." To date, his subcommittee has held no policy hearings at all -- none. At the same time that Obama claimed he was too busy campaigning to do anything substantive, racking up one of the worst attendance records in the Senate, Senator Clinton chaired extensive hearings of the Subcommittee on Superfund and Environmental Health and attended many others as a member of the Armed Service Committee.
As a consequence of Obama's dereliction of duty on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a feckless administration has had absolutely no oversight as it careens from disaster to disaster in Afghanistan, including the central governments loss of control over 70 percent of the country and yet another bumper crop of opium to fuel the efforts of the Taliban and their terrorist allies. Of course, if you don't hold hearings, conduct oversight, make recommendations or sponsor legislation, then you have no record to explain or defend and you are free to take whatever position is convenient when attacking those who actually did address issues. Meanwhile, on the campaign trail, Obama holds forth on Afghanistan, chiding the administration and our allies as though he's a profile in courage and not someone who has abandoned his post in establishing accountability.
On Iran and the question of designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization, the junior senator from Illinois was not quite so clever at avoiding taking a position. He first co-sponsored the "Counter-Proliferation Act of 2007," which contained explicit language identifying the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization. He subsequently claimed to oppose the Kyl-Lieberman sense of the Senate resolution proposing the same thing. Obama's accountability problem here is that he didn't show up for the vote on that resolution -- a vote that would have put him on record. Then he declined to sign on to a letter put forward by Senator Clinton making explicit that the resolution could not be used as authority to take military action. All we have is Obama's rhetoric juxtaposed with his co-sponsorship of a piece of legislation that proposed what he says he opposed.
Obama's gyrations on Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran are not the actions of one imbued with superior intuitive judgment, but rather the machinations of a political opportunist looking to avoid having his fingerprints on any issue that might be controversial, and require real judgment, while preserving his freedom to bludgeon his adversary for actually taking positions as elected office demands. It is hard to discern whether Senator Obama is a man of principle, but it is clear that he is not a man of substance. And that judgment, based on his hollow record, is inescapable.
Source
Obamaholics Unanimous
Now that Barack Obama is closing in on the Democratic nomination, some are wondering whether the media will be tougher in their coverage. There's a better question: is it possible to be any softer? The media writ large have been sounding like they're covering a messiah more than a man. So was Hillary Clinton right to complain that Barack Obama has been more celebrated rather than vetted?
Let's be clear. Hillary Clinton has been the beneficiary of so many cotton-candy profiles and "I Am Woman" honorifics that it's almost impossible that her bad press will ever come anywhere close to balancing out her mountains of puff over the last 15 years. The "rough" press she's been getting since Super Tuesday is merely the political prognosticators noticing she's getting her clock cleaned by 18 to 20 points in a lot of states. Even so, she's still being awarded softball interviews - like the latest in a long series of twinkly Katie Couric gal-pal segments on "60 Minutes."
It's also clear that when it comes to Hillary Clinton complaining about the need for Obama to be "vetted" on scandal stories, we should all fall to the floor laughing. If she thinks she's had a rough scrubbing on cattle futures and travel office cronyism and Whitewater lawyering and Puerto Rican terrorist pardons and on and on, she's living in a parallel universe.
But she's not wrong that the media love's for Obama surpasses their devotion to her. Just start with the way they all flail with outrage when a conservative uses his full name, Barack Hussein Obama. It's not a lie. It's not a distortion. It's his name. Chris Matthews thinks this tactic is "vicious," this "ethnic stuff" is "evil." Keith Olbermann even sneered at his fellow Bush-basher Jon Stewart for making a joke out of Obama's complete name at the Oscars. The "mainstream" media don't just feel Obama's pain, they loudly object to any hostility whatsoever.
Ridiculing Obama's middle name stopped being funny a while ago. But the idea that the Obamaholics on TV can pound the desk and proclaim that these tame middle-name jokes are beyond the pale is utterly ridiculous. Are Olbermann and Matthews really going to claim they've been gentle with Bush and Cheney? Olbermann can suggest Bush is a totalitarian who has commenced the "beginning of the end of America," and Matthews can call Bush a "sadistic murderer," and hope for a modern-day Nuremberg trial, as if the Bushies were the Nazis, and then they have the chutzpah to complain about middle names?
Many liberals in the media object to "whispers" that Obama is a Muslim. On CBS's "60 Minutes," reporter Steve Kroft told Obama that the idea that Obama's a Muslim "popped upon our radar screen all the time." Obama asked: "Did you correct them, Steve?" Kroft said yes. Obama decried a "systematic e-mail smear campaign" that's offensive not only to him, "a devout Christian," but to Muslims because of the "fear-mongering."
Kroft then turned on Mrs. Clinton and pressed her to deny that her campaign was spreading this mangy stuff. Hillary replied that Obama's not a Muslim, "as far as I know." Kroft kept complaining: "It's just scurrilous." But Kroft made no attempt to press Obama on what his actual religious beliefs are, or how "devout" he is in attending services every Sunday. These matters make liberal reporters uncomfortable. What makes them comfortable is trying to convince the audience that their fellow liberal Obama is a heroic victim.
But like Olbermann and Matthews, Kroft has a very flexible, very partisan definition of what is "scurrilous" in media coverage. One week before on the same "60 Minutes" program, CBS reporter Scott Pelley publicized wildly unsubstantiated charges against former Bush aide and strategist Karl Rove, who allegedly sought to ruin the crooked Democratic governor of Alabama Don Siegelman, now in prison. Pelley set up an accuser named Jill Simpson: "Karl Rove asked you to take pictures of Siegelman...In a compromising sexual position with one of his aides."
Brit Hume of Fox News pointed out the next day that the Associated Press reported that CBS's star witness had never made that allegation before to reporters or lawyers in hours upon hours of interviews and a sworn affidavit. Hume added that Karl Rove's lawyer Robert Luskin said no one from CBS approached Rove to give him a chance to respond to these off-the-wall sex-picture charges.
The dramatic double standard of our media elite - a hyperbolic outrage at any criticism of Barack Obama, even as they insult and smear Republicans without restraint or regret, or evidence - is one reason why it's going to hard to find the audacity to hope for media fairness or balance in this upcoming general election campaign.
Source
Mrs Obama's latest whine
Obama begins with a broad assessment of life in America in 2008, and life is not good: we're a divided country, we're a country that is "just downright mean," we are "guided by fear," we're a nation of cynics, sloths, and complacents. "We have become a nation of struggling folks who are barely making it every day," she said, as heads bobbed in the pews. "Folks are just jammed up, and it's gotten worse over my lifetime. And, doggone it, I'm young. Forty-four!"
From these bleak generalities, Obama moves into specific complaints. Used to be, she will say, that you could count on a decent education in the neighborhood. But now there are all these charter schools and magnet schools that you have to "finagle" to get into. (Obama herself attended a magnet school, but never mind.) Health care is out of reach ("Let me tell you, don't get sick in America"), pensions are disappearing, college is too expensive, and even if you can figure out a way to go to college you won't be able to recoup the cost of the degree in many of the professions for which you needed it in the first place. "You're looking at a young couple that's just a few years out of debt," Obama said. "See, because, we went to those good schools, and we didn't have trust funds. I'm still waiting for Barack's trust fund. Especially after I heard that Dick Cheney was s'posed to be a relative or something. Give us something here!"
First Ladies have traditionally gravitated toward happy topics like roadside flower beds, so it comes as a surprise that Obama's speech is such an unrelenting downer. Obama acknowledged to me that some advisers have lobbied her to take a sunnier tone, with little success. "For me," she said, "you can talk about policies and plans and experience and all that. We usually get bogged down in that in a Presidential campaign, over the stuff that I think doesn't matter. . . . I mean, I guess I could go into Barack's policies and rattle them off. But that's what he's for." In Cheraw, Obama belittled the idea that the Clinton years were ones of opportunity and prosperity: "The life that I'm talking about that most people are living has gotten progressively worse since I was a little girl. . . . So if you want to pretend like there was some point over the last couple of decades when your lives were easy, I want to meet you!"
After the speech, Obama was whisked into the church basement. A clutch of people gathered nearby, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. But when she emerged into the chilly morning air, she didn't linger long with her well-wishers. She can seem squeamish about politicking, put off by the awkward stagecraft of glad-handing and the small-group discussions-Michelle, five or six women, and, as she put it one day in Wisconsin, "five thousand cameras"-that her staff bills as "intimate conversations." But she thrives in large venues. Cindy Moelis said, "The first time she got feedback on being such a wonderful speaker, I think when people s id, `Wow, you're really good at that,' she goes, `Why's everybody surprised?' "
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There are policy reasons behind the "Hussein" coverup
Is pronouncing a man's middle name tantamount to in sulting him? In Sen. Barack Obama's case, the answer appears to be yes. Sen. Hillary Clinton has already apologized because her allies used the unmentionable middle name - ostensibly without her consent. Last week, it was Sen. John McCain's turn to apologize, because the host of a meeting he attended was rash enough to pronounce the seven-letter word. The word in question is "Hussein," Obama's middle name and the name of his Kenyan Muslim father. Obama has accepted the apologies as if using his father's name was, indeed, an insult. Why?
Well, "Hussein" supposedly has a negative resonance with many Americans, reminding them of Saddam Hussein, the late Iraqi dictator. The fact that the name Hussein means "most benign" or "very beautiful" in Arabic isn't enough to persuade Obama and his pr gurus to treat it more kindly. (Hussein is also one of the most popular names for Muslims, especially Shiites.) Obama's problems shouldn't end there. "Barack" is also Arabic, from "barakah," meaning "blessing." "Obama," meanwhile, is a word in Swahili - a language based on Arabic that serves as the lingua franca of East Africa; it refers to members of his father's tribe who converted to Islam. In other words, "Barack Hussein Obama" is a perfectly common identifier for someone with an ethnic East African Muslim background.
Nevertheless, Obama insists that, while his father and paternal grandfather were both Muslims, he himself was never one in any way. In Islam, of course, anyone born of a Muslim father is automatically regarded as Muslim. But Obama is hardly obliged to abide by what Muslims may or may not think of his religious status. As a citizen of a free and democratic state, he can cross from one faith to anther or have no faith at all without losing any of his rights, including the right to stand for the highest office.
What's troubling about Obama's approach to the mini-storm stirred by his political enemies over his name is what may look like an attempt at obfuscation. He has behaved as if he did have a family secret, and as if the name Hussein was something to be ashamed of - or, worse still, as if a Muslim background is somehow a handicap for an American politician in ways that Christian, Jewish, Mormon or any other faith is not. That, of course, is hurtful to Muslims - a majority of whom reject the anti-American diatribes of the radical and violent minority.
It would've been better for Obama to state the situation clearly at the start:I was born in Hawaii and spent part of my childhood in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country. Half of my family background is Islamic. My paternal grandfather and father were both Kenyan Muslims. My father gave me an Islamic forename and middle name. But my mother was from a Christian background, and I chose her faith.
Most Americans judge a candidate based on his politics rather than his parents' religious background. In a country where everyone has a rich ethnic and religious background, Obama's family story wouldn't have sounded that exotic. Some Americans may have even regarded the Islamic part of Obama's family story as a plus for the candidate, if only because the biggest challenge to US global leadership todayscomes from forces speaking in Islam's name.
Obama's efforts to distance himself from Islam contrasts with his innovative approach to US relations with its Islamist challengers. President Bush has chosen the "iron fist" - invading Afghanistan and Iraq, quarantining the Islamic Republic in Iran, keeping Syria's Baathist regime in check and helping a dozen Muslim states fight al Qaeda or its variants. McCain and Cli ton offer variations on the same theme, albeit with twists and turns to satisfy their constituencies.
By contrast, Obama offers a policy of dialogue and accommodation. He has opposed listing Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization and proposed a grand bargain with Syria's rulers. He is even prepared to ignore two UN Security Council resolutions that require Iran to stop its uranium-enrichment program as a precondition for talks at the highest level. He has campaigned for a formal congressional move to prevent Bush from taking any military action against Tehran.
In an important symbolic move designed to signal an end of the special relationship between Israel and America, Obama has become the first major presidential candidate in 25 years not to commit himself to transferring the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Last but not least, Obama has promised to withdraw from Iraq in his first year in office - meeting a key demand of all radical Islamist forces, Sunni and Shiite.
The message is clear: Obama wants a new relationship with radical forces in the Islamic world while distancing America from its traditional regional allies. In other words, he proposes to reverse policies that have taken shape over more than six decades under 12 successive American presidents. It's this revolutionary idea that deserves to be examined and debated, not the origin and meaning of Obama's middle name.
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(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
7 March, 2008
Democratic Draw
Now Hillary Clinton knows how Republicans feel. Usually, GOP candidates have to overcome media disdain and establishment calls to declare defeat and get out of the race. This time she's the target of the collective liberal swoon for Barack Obama. But after her victory yesterday in Ohio and a nailbiter in Texas, we see little reason that the New York Senator shouldn't fight on.
That wouldn't please the Democratic panjandrums who desperately want a nominee now that John McCain has wrapped up the Republican race. The party superdelegates who were all for Mrs. Clinton when she was "inevitable" are now hoping she'll drop out and spare them a painful decision. A herd of them -- they prefer the camouflage of numbers -- have reportedly even been plotting to break together for the Illinois orator.
But yesterday's message from actual Democratic voters was hardly a decisive verdict for Mr. Obama. The Illinois Senator continued to do well among better educated, wealthier, more liberal and younger voters. He maintained his domination among African-Americans. But Mrs. Clinton regained the advantages that she showed earlier in the campaign among blue-collar Democrats, union households, women, seniors and Hispanics.
Perhaps most important, according to the exit polls, sh was able to expose a significant vulnerability that Mr. Obama would have against Mr. McCain -- his lack of experience on national security. She made that a major theme of the campaign's final days, running a much-noted TV spot about a President needing to answer the phone at 3 a.m. Mr. Obama turned that into a retort about Mrs. Clinton's bad "judgment" in voting for the Iraq war, which resonated with antiwar voters.
But Mrs. Clinton seems to have won the larger argument, as voters in Ohio said she would make a better Commander in Chief by 57% to 40%. If even Democrats have their doubts about Mr. Obama's national security credentials, he'll have an even harder task persuading independents in November against the Arizona war veteran.
Mr. Obama retained his narrow delegate lead after last night, and must still be considered the favorite. But that's all the more reason for Democrats to want to make him compete in more primaries. Democrats have a history of nominating candidates who come out of nowhere but turn out to have what the larger electorate decides are major liabilities. Think Michael Dukakis, or Jimmy Carter's near collapse after a 22-point lead in the summer of 1976.
According to the exit polls, a mere 57% of Democrats in Ohio, and 52% in Texas, gave Mr. Obama credit for having a "clear plan for the country." The media have also only begun to explore the Senator's rise in the boiler room of Chicago politics, as with the fraud trial of his former fund raiser Tony Rezko that started this week. If he is the nominee, Mr. Obama will be stronger in the fall as a result of the greater scrutiny now.
Mrs. Clinton would bring her own weaknesses into the fall campaign, not least her implausibility as an agent of "change." We certainly understand the desire of many Democrats to be free at last from their codependency with both Clintons. But they should also make sure Mr. Obama isn't one more leap into the November unknown.
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Media finally a bit embarrassed by their Obamamania
Life imitating art or just a coincidence? A study of campaign coverage found the media took a sharper look at Barack Obama the week after "Saturday Night Live" spoofed journalists enthralled by his candidacy. The NBC comedy show on Feb. 23 opened with a mock debate where journalists were rough on Hillary Clinton while being starry-eyed about Obama. It matched complaints the Clinton campaign had made - and she even referenced the comedy skit during a real debate last week.
During the week, Obama was the dominant person in 69 percent of presidential campaign stories, according to a study by Project for Excellence in Journalism. That's the biggest percentage one candidate had received in any week this year. Many of the stories took a tough look at Obama, such as a Feb. 25 ABC "World News" study on his Illinois legislative record and a "CBS Evening News" report on his career three nights later.
It's hard to say whether "SNL" acted as a de-facto assignment editor, since some of the stories were probably being prepared before the NBC show aired, but it did seem to crystallize a thought that had been percolating, said Mark Jurkowitz, the project's associate director. "There were a lot of factors at play," Jurkowitz said. "But there's no question the skit, if nothing else, was perfectly timed."
With no primaries last week, news outlets had the time to look at other stories, as well as the time to look at their own performance. The Washington Post, New York Times and ABC's "Good Morning America" all ran stories addressing whether the media has been fairly covering the Obama-Clinton contest. "Saturday Night Live" this past weekend opened its show with another fake debate where journalists played easy for Obama. This time, the skit ended with an appearance by Clinton herself.
The project studies 48 different media outlets, including newspapers, Web sites and television networks, as part of its examination of campaign coverage.
Source
Slippery money standards from the Obama campaign
Presidential candidate Barack Obama has made "audacity" a campaign theme -- and it's proving to be an apt word for his relationship with campaign finance laws. A case in point is his recent outrage at the activities of a pro-Hillary Clinton 527 group called the American Leadership Project. Headed by former Bill Clinton aide Roger Salazar, ALP queued up a series of ads to run in Ohio and Texas reminding voters that speeches don't solve problems on health care and the economy. The ads don't mention Mr. Obama by name.
Obama Campaign Manager David Plouffe nonetheless cried "smear campaign" and said that groups like ALP amounted to "Swift-Boat style" attacks. Mr. Obama's lawyer, Bob Bauer, said he believed the group was breaking the law by not registering as a political committee. And because it's not incorporated, its actions would expose its donors and aides to criminal liability and a "very, very miserable experience." There would be a "reckoning," he vowed.
If the idea was to scare off the group's donors, it almost worked. The ads didn't appear for days leading up to Tuesday's primary, until funding from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Union came through to get ALP spots on air in Ohio and Texas on Monday and Tuesday. The American Leadership Project argues it doesn't qualify as a "political committee" because its proposed ads stop well short of "express advocacy." Instead it should fall under the category of "electioneering communications." We'll leave further legal parsing to the theologians of the election laws.
For all its indignation, the Obama campaign doesn't mind playing it both ways when convenient. One example is the Senator's own easy relationship with spending on his behalf by organized labor. According to the Federal Election Commission, the Service Employees International Union was spending some $1.4 million to support his candidacy in Ohio and Texas, including direct mail, phone-banking and union outlays to pay for "volunteers." Meanwhile, the Fund For America, another so-called 527 group funded by George Soros and the SEIU, is funneling $400,000 to groups buying ads to attack John McCain. What gives?
Mr. Obama had no trouble complaining when John Edwards was the beneficiary of such spending. In Iowa, an SEIU local threw a reported $750,000 into TV ads for Mr. Edwards, and Mr. Obama criticized what he called "huge, unregulated contributions from special interests." He insisted such efforts were "a way of getting around the campaign finance laws."
Mr. Obama calls his campaign a new kind of politics, and he's to be commended for raising around $50 million in February alone, much of it from donors who aren't the usual suspects. But his selective indignation on spending by so-called 527 groups and his recent waffling on federal funds for the general election don't fit the image. The campaign finance laws may be a contraption, but Mr. Obama has lashed himself to their restrictions. As self-styled and vocal "reformers," Barack Obama and John McCain have both proven this election season that campaign-finance reform makes hypocrites of everyone.
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Obama's Well-Aged Beef
The television images are striking. A handsome young candidate, an adoring audience, a beautifully delivered speech in which he offers to bring us together as a nation, and speaks of his "movement for change:" "I don't want to spend the next year or the next four years" he says, "re-fighting the same fights that we had in the 1990s. I don't want to pit Red America against Blue America, I want to be the President of the United States of America." Nice rhetoric. Is it real or is it theater? Relax: it's theater.
A visit to Barack Obama's website reveals that this is not a candidate who is offering a new left-right synthesis-a new way of looking at our politics and bridging the old Red-Blue divide. Instead, what we see in 60 pages of policy proposals and commitments are the same old ideas of the Democratic Left. Even the rhetoric is old.
On economics: "I'm in this race to take tax breaks away from companies that are moving jobs overseas and put them in the pockets of hard working Americans who deserve it. And I won't raise the minimum wage every ten years-I will raise it to keep pace so that workers don't fall behind. That's why I am in it. To protect the American worker."
The same old disputes come back to us with this on unions: "Obama will ...fight for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act" (this is the failed proposal to eliminate the secret ballot on unionization, of which Obama was a co-sponsor). And this on Social Security: "Obama will protect Social Security benefits for current and future beneficiaries alike...he does not believe it is necessary or fair to hardworking seniors to raise the retirement age. Obama is strongly opposed to privatizing Social Security." And this on taxes: "Obama is committed to repealing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans."
On foreign policy: "Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months." On Iran: "Obama believes that we have not exhausted our non-military options in confronting this threat; in many ways, we have yet to try them." And of course the belief that we can talk our enemies out of their hatred: "The United States is trapped by the Bush-Cheney approach to diplomacy that refuses to talk to leaders we don't like."
In the 60 pages of words, there's hardly a major new idea or an idea that departs significantly from the Democratic Party's agenda since the New Deal. It's all here: the activist government, the ambitious programs without reference to costs, the appeal to some people's sense of victimization. There is also one striking omission-a list of anything that Senator Obama has actually done in the course of his brief career to advance any of these goals.
The point is that there is nothing here to back up a candidacy that is based on bringing the nation together to effect change. It's a rehash of the same policies and programs that the Democratic Left has been pushing--largely without success--for the last 40 years. For some people, as least, the era of big government is not over.
What appears to qualify this candidacy as a candidacy of change is not the policies or programs it relies on but the fact that the same old ideas are coming from a new and telegenic messenger. It is no wonder, then, that this messenger has excited and attracted young people. If you've never heard this message before, and if you don't have any background in the politics of the last two generations, you might think these ideas will be generally accepted. But anyone who has followed American politics over more than the last year knows that there is real disagreement in this country about the role of government, about trade, about taxes, about confronting the nation's enemies. If Senator Obama is ultimately elected, and if his program ultimately adopted, it will certainly bring about change, but no one should be under the illusion that this is a message of reconciliation, or that the American people as a whole will rally around these ideas. Ask George McGovern.
The Obama program has been attacked with the slogan "Where's the beef?" This attack is misplaced. There's plenty of beef; the problem is that it's very well-aged.
Source
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
6 March, 2008
Obama as a Rorschach inkblot
He is so non-specific that everyone thinks he will do what they want
Phil Sowell, a retired government official, scarcely pauses for breath when asked what Barack Obama would do as President: "He will bring peace to the Middle East and anywhere in the world where there is tragedy."
But Larry Milton, 56, thinks that "he will be more worried about what happens here and less worried about other countries". Carrie Thompson hopes that he will "address global poverty and other issues which Republicans keep overlooking", while Ron Gaynor, 52, a lifelong Republican, says: "He will bring the power of veto and say `no' to a lot of this government spending - we seem to give money to people all around the globe."
They are all waiting to hear the man himself speak. It is a familiar scene, repeated across America dozens of times in recent weeks. Long queues snake around a sports hall - comprising people of all ages, races and social class - to gather under the Democrat presidential contender's slogan of "change we can believe in". But what, exactly, is this change in which they all believe? The Times conducted more than 50 interviews at a rally in Westerville, Ohio, where many supporters made plain they have contradictory - and burgeoning - expectations of what "President Obama" would do.
Sarah Jaffy, 41, says: "I really like his healthcare plan. And there's another policy - it's my favourite - ooh, I can't remember right now." Erin Henderson, 18, has gone with a gaggle of friends to see Mr Obama and she declares: "We're all really excited about him and we heard he might make it easier to get into college."
Today these voters could tip the balance of the Democratic presidential race Mr Obama's way. If Hillary Clinton loses Ohio and Texas, most observers - including her husband, Bill - say her candidacy will fail. She has become increasingly frustrated at seeing her poll leads evaporate in the heat of Mr Obama's phenomenal appeal. She rails against his soaring oratory, saying: "I could stand up here and say, `Let's just get everybody together, let's get unified.' The sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing, and everyone will know that we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect."
But Mr Obama's coalition of voters suggests his message is succeeding in reaching out, not only across the racial divisions that have long scarred America, but also over the partisan political landscape that has characterised the Clinton-Bush era. As such, he resembles another charismatic youthful politician who made ephemeral promises of hope, change and a new approach to government: Tony Blair in the UK 11 years ago.
It is a comparison not lost on Mr Obama's admirers, who answer charges that support for him is a passing fad by pointing out that the for er Prime Minister won successive landslide election victories before his star began to fade. And, while British is politics is often dragged down by cynicism, the optimistic American psyche that is always open to a promise of "new leadership" and a "new beginning" may keep Mr Obama afloat for longer. Mr Blair, however, could offer evidence for his claim to stand for postpartisan politics, having defeated the old left of the Labour Party by dumping the Clause IV promise of mass nationalisation and steering the party towards the "radical centre" over three years in opposition.
Mr Obama, by contrast, can only really show a campaign that is winning support from many independent and Republican voters - despite having, according to a study by the National Journal, the most liberal voting record of any US Senator.
Mrs Clinton last week cited a passage from Mr Obama's book, entitled The Audacity of Hope, "where he said that he is a blank screen and people of widely different views project what they want to hear". The full quote, however, is more interesting. Mr Obama said he had many orthodox opinions as a Democrat and a black man, before adding: "That is not all I am. I also think my party can be smug, detached and dogmatic." He then set out views - on the free market, patriotism, spirituality, and a politics not based solely on "victimhood" - which he predicted will "get me into trouble".
Although admitting that he was new enough to be a blank screen on which "people of vastly different political stripes project their own views", Mr Obama added: "I am bound to disappoint some, if not all of them."
But, perhaps, not quite yet. At Mr Obama's Westerville rally, Eric Whitaker, a member of his coterie of friends travelling with him, discusses with passing British journalists any lessons to be learned from the Blair experience. "I guess the big challenge of leadership is disappointing your supporters at a rate they can deal with," he says. As he speaks, Senator Jay Rockefeller, a national security expert, is on the stage explaining why Mr Obama is qualified to be commander-in-chief. "It's just how you feel about it," he says. "I trust him."
Sitting in the audience, Alex Dukeman, 17, says that she expects Mr Obama to introduce universal healthcare. But isn't his plan voluntary while Mrs Clinton promises a compulsory mandate? "I just think he is a likable guy and he inspires people," she replies. Zach Adriaenssens, 20, says that Mr Obama is a "unifier" who can negotiate with Republicans "and will sort healthcare".
Donny Murray, 21, says that Mr Obama "has definitely got a better plan" for tackling global warming. How so? "I'm not sure about the specifics, I just think he'll get more people involved," he says. Freda Graan, 27, a Spanish teacher at Ohio State university, explains: "If you listen to Hillary, she says, `I will do this'. Obama says, `We will do this'. I'm not scared to be idealistic, it's my responsibility as a voter not to be cynical."
Yusuf Abdi, 55, says: "He will change everything - healthcare, no war, education. He can do anything." Karen Clark, a teacher, 58, says that she has switched her support from Clinton because "I want to be on the winning side".
When Mr Obama arrives on the platform, many in the crowd hold cameras above their heads to capture the moment, giving the appearance of a massed double-armed salute. As ever, a woman screams: "We love you Obama!" He replies, as usual, "I, uh, love you back."
His speech is low-key, lacking some of his higher flights of rhetoric but heavy with policy specifics, possibly a sign of how sensitive he remains to Mrs Clinton's recent criticism, which he spends a long time rebutting. But his proposals are not "tough choices", favoured by Mr Blair, but of a type that will not make him new enemies. Mr Obama, for instance, talks of a "middle-class tax cut" which will "make life more affordable for 95 per cent of Americans".
Outside the hall is Robin Lease, 52, a lycra-clad teacher who has just jogged two miles from Mrs Clinton's rally across town. "I wanted to see them both speak," she says. "I would tend to vote for Obama - I think he would be more liberal on social programmes," she says. "But then again, I'm a Republican. I know that sounds confusing."
Source
Obama losing the Jewish vote
Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind yesterday predicted that Jewish voters would make "a mass movement toward Sen. McCain" if Barack Obama knocks Hillary Rodham Clinton out of the race in tomorrow's critical Democratic primaries. Hikind, an Orthodox Jew whose Borough Park district includes the largest Hasidic bloc in the United States, blasted Obama for what he called his half-hearted support of Israel and his ties to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., who has repeatedly praised anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who has endorsed Obama.
Hikind, a Democrat who has yet to endorse a candidate for president, said Obama had not satisfactorily distanced himself from Wright, his Chicago-based personal pastor, noting, "This is a man who thinks Farrakhan is a great guy and God's gift to the world." Hikind went on, "Obama has said that you can be a supporter of Israel even if you're for giving up land to the Arabs, which is true - but for a guy running for president to take a position like this in advance of getting into office, combined with everything else going on in the Middle East, that scares the hell out of me. "There are a hell of a lot of Jews who are concerned about these issues, and they go way beyond Hasidic and Orthodox Jews, people I describe as conservative Reagan/Giuliani Democrats," said Hikind, who backed Ronald Reagan's presidential campaigns in 1980 and 1984.
Hikind's warning about Jewish concerns over Obama are being widely but privately voiced among top New York Democrats. "There is anxiety, there is concern, on the part of a lot of important Jewish Democrats in New York," one of the state's most influential Democratic activists told The Post.
Hikind, meanwhile, said he believed last week's controversy over Obama appearing in Somali garb during a visit to his father's native Kenya would have no impact on Jewish voters. "Something like that by itself doesn't mean anything," he said. Obama, who has repeatedly condemned Farrakhan for making anti-Semitic remarks, rejected his endorsement under pressure from rival Hillary Rodham Clinton during a debate last week. But while Obama has pushed Wright into the background of his campaign, Obama remains a member of his church.
Source
Is Obama hypocritical or ignorant when it comes to NAFTA?
Barack Obama says he'll revive the art of American diplomacy, which sounds nice. We're not sure how this promise squares, however, with the diplomatic incident his campaign has caused in Canada, of all unlikely places.
Last week, Canada's CTV television network reported on a leaked memo from a Canadian diplomat casting doubt on Mr. Obama's sincerity. The memo reported that Mr. Obama's chief economic adviser, University of Chicago professor Austan Goolsbee, had told Canadian officials that Mr. Obama's vow to unilaterally withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement was simply campaign rhetoric aimed at Ohio primary voters. This week, Mr. Goolsbee said that's not what he meant at all when he attended a February 8 meeting at Chicago's Canadian consulate. Perhaps something got lost in translation.
Mr. Goolsbee maintains that he did say that Mr. Obama recognizes the benefits of free trade. But, Mr. Goolsbee adds, he also emphasized that Mr. Obama's objective is to strengthen Nafta's labor and environmental provisions. The accom odating Canadian Embassy nonetheless tried to smooth things over yesterday with a statement saying that "there was no intention to convey, in any way, that Senator Obama and his campaign team were taking a different position in public from views expressed in private, including about NAFTA." Which is too bad, because the apparent revelation that Mr. Obama doesn't believe his own trade rhetoric is the best news we've heard about the Illinois Senator's economic policy.
In Mr. Goolsbee's defense, we too have recognized a language barrier separating the U.S. and Canada, particularly when we enjoy watching NHL games on television. In their understated manner, Canadian analysts describe blows to the head as "messages" and sticks to the face as "taking liberties." So perhaps Mr. Goolsbee's obligatory nod toward the benefits of trade was interpreted in Canada as a passionate defense of free markets.
However, if the Chicago professor was in fact sending a signal that Mr. Obama does not really intend to destroy America's largest trade relationship, we can only say, "Kick save, and a beauty!" Leaving Nafta alone would be great news for Ohioans in particular, as the Cato Institute's Daniel Griswold recently noted. Canada and Mexico buy more than half of Ohio's exports, and since Nafta's 1993 enactment the U.S. economy has added a net 26 million new jobs. The average real hourly compensation (wages and benefits) of workers has climbed 23% and real median household net worth has increased by a third.
We suspect Mr. Goolsbee knows all of this, because the benefits of free trade are one of the few things that economists of the left and right agree on. The Commerce Department reports that while countries with which we enjoy free trade agreements generate only 7.5% of global GDP, they consume more than 42% of U.S. exports.
And along with importing our products, countries seeking open trade with America are also required to embrace the rule of law as a condition for such agreements. Colombia's inspiring progress shows that foreign policy benefits may exceed even the economic gains. But a rejection of the pending Colombian free trade deal, a rewrite of Nafta, and a literal embrace of Mr. Obama's campaign rhetoric would send a disastrous signal over our borders, north and south. Here's hoping Canadian officials heard Mr. Goolsbee correctly the first time.
Source
Some good satire
Via Taranto
I agree with Kim Morrison that Barack Obama would be a great president. I have hope that he can provide free health insurance for everyone. I have hope that he can bring our soldiers home and make the world a safer place. I have hope that he can protect Americans from poverty by printing more money at the mint.
And, I have hope that he can make me a taller, more attractive, wealthier person, immune to all illnesses. The best part is that all of these will be accomplished at absolutely no cost to me.
Some skeptics would say that he can't do these things because he hasn't had enough leadership experience, foreign policy experience, or government experience. Some would say that Obama can't provide for all our needs without doubling taxes. And, some would say that he hasn't provided one piece of a specific plan to reach these goals.
Well, to those people I ask, "Where is your hope?" All these years I've been creating accomplishments and gathering experience to list on my resume. From now on, I'll just list my hopes and plans. All that work was so unnecessary.
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WA CH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
5 March, 2008
Obama: Sermon on Mount Justifies Same-Sex Unions
Strange theology indeed. Homosexuality is one of the things that the Bible is clearest about -- that it is an abomination to God
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) told a crowd at Hocking College in Nelsonville, Ohio, Sunday that he believes the Sermon on the Mount justifies his support for legal recognition of same-sex unions. He also told the crowd that his position in favor of legalized abortion does not make him "less Christian." "I don't think it [a same-sex union] should be called marriage, but I think that it is a legal right that they should have that is recognized by the state," said Obama. "If people find that controversial then I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount, which I think is, in my mind, for my faith, more central than an obscure passage in Romans." [Just what exactly makes one of the great Pauline epistles "obscure"?] St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans condemns homosexual acts as unnatural and sinful.
Obama's mention of the Sermon on the Mount in justifying legal recognition of same-sex unions may have been a reference to the Golden Rule: "Do to others what you would have them do to you." Or it may have been a reference to another famous line: "Do not judge, or you too will be judged."
The Sermon, recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, includes the Lord's Prayer, the Beatitudes, an endorsement of scriptural moral commandments ("anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven"), and condemnations of murder, divorce and adultery. It also includes a warning: "Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves."
The passage from St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, which Obama dismissed as "obscure," discusses people who knew God but turned against him: "They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised," wrote St. Paul. "Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion." .....
In Ohio on Sunday, before mentioning the Sermon on the Mount, Obama insisted he was against "gay marriage" and did not mention his support for allowing same-sex couples to adopt children and have the same "family" status as heterosexual couples. "I will tell you that I don't believe in gay marriage, but I do think that people who are gay and lesbian should be treated with dignity and respect and that the state should not discriminate against them," said Obama on Sunday. "So, I believe in civil unions that allow a same-sex couple to visit each other in a hospital or transfer property to each other. I don't think it should be called marriage, but I think that it is a legal right that they should have that is recognized by the state. If people find hat controversial then I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount, which I think is, in my mind, for my faith, more central than an obscure passage in Romans. That's my view."
More here
Obama, Israel, and the Palestinians: Who are the rubes?
Is the Imperfect Vessel everything to everybody? We have already seen this week that with regard to NAFTA Barack Obama seems to have told Ohio voters one thing and Canadian diplomats another. Has he done the same thing with the Israelis and the Palestinians? Check out this interesting article from Ali Abunimah, the co-founder of The Electronic Intifada. A year ago Abuniemah reviewed Obama's many recent statements in support of Israel, but suggested that they did not reflect his genuine opinions: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 Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and US policy, "Keep up the good work!"
Assume, for a moment, that Ali Abunimah had genuine insight into Barack Obama's opinions four years ago. Is his recently expressed strong support for Israel fabricated? Is it permanent, or will he in fact "be more up front" after he is elected? Or, has Barack Obama actually changed his mind? Who are the rubes to be fooled this time?
Source
Obama invents his own facts again
Post below lifted from Taranto. See the original for links
Obama criticized Clinton expressly for failing to read the classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons capabilities, a report available at the time of her October 2002 vote authorizing the Iraq war. "She didn't give diplomacy a chance. And to this day, she won't even admit that her vote was a mistake--or even that it was a vote for war," Obama said.
"When it came time to make the most important foreign policy decision of our generation the decision to invade Iraq Senator Clinton got it wrong," Obama said.
He said that Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a fellow Democrat from neighboring West Virginia, had read the intelligence estimate as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and had voted against the war resolution.
Rockefeller, who is now chairman of that committee, endorsed Obama on Friday and campaigned with him on Saturday.
Just one problem: As blogress Clarice Feldman points out, and as the Senate roll-call confirms, Rockefeller voted for the war. We guess it was too good to check!
Obama's political background is in shifty Chicago
On Tuesday, Barack Oba a 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.
More here
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
4 March, 2008
Obama and the crooked Rezko
Rick Moran has a BIG article telling you almost anything you might want to know about the Rezko corruption case and Obama's involvement with Rezko. By all means read the full article but I think that all I need to do here is cut to Rick's summing up:
There is no evidence that in any of his dealings with Rezko that Obama broke any law. The question is one of ethics. And judgment, of course. And truthfulness. Obama's relationship with Rezko is much more extensive than he has ever admitted. Their 17-year relationship went beyond "one fundraiser" as Obama claims, and a few social dates with the gals.
Rezko was a patron, a valued supporter, and a b siness partner. And almost certainly a close friend as well.
The significance of this relationship is that it proves that Barack Obama is not who he claims to be - a new kind of politician who will lead us all to the Promised Land. Obama can lie like any normal politician. He can do favors for his supporters who give him money. He can do business with scam artists like Rezko whose illegal activities authorities are still trying to unravel.
Given what we know already, there doesn't seem to be a "bottom" to this story yet. And what we find when we get there may yet prove to be Barack Obama's undoing as a candidate for President of the United States.
Obama: A Thin Record For a Bridge Builder
Hillary Clinton has been trying to make a point about Barack Obama that deserves one last careful look before Tuesday's probably decisive Democratic primaries: If Obama truly intends to unite America across party lines and break the Washington logjam, then why has he shown so little interest or aptitude for the hard work of bipartisan government?
This is the real "where's the beef?" question about Obama, and it still doesn't have a good answer. He gives a great speech, and he promises that he can heal the terrible partisan divisions that have enfeebled American politics over the past decade. And this is a message of hope that the country clearly wants to hear.
But can he do it? The record is mixed, but it's fair to say that Obama has not shown much willingness to take risks or make enemies to try to restore a working center in Washington. Clinton, for all her reputation as a divisive figure, has a much stronger record of bipartisan achievement. And the likely Republican nominee, John McCain, has a better record still.
Obama's argument is that he can mobilize a new coalition that will embrace his proclamation that "yes, we can" break out of the straitjacket. But for voters to feel confident that he can achieve this transformation should he become president, they would need evidence that he has fought and won similar battles in the past. The record here, to put it mildly, is thin.
What I hear from politicians who have worked with Obama, both in Illinois state politics and here in Washington, gives me pause. They describe someone with an extraordinary ability to work across racial lines, but not someone who has earned any profiles in courage for standing up to special interests or divisive party activists. Indeed, the trait people remember best about Obama, in addition to his intellect, is his ambition.
Obama worked on some bipartisan issues, such as a state version of the earned-income tax credit, after he was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996. But he also gained a reputation for skipping tough votes. The most famous example was a key gun-control vote that he missed in December 1999 because he was vacationing in Hawaii. The Chicago Tribune blasted him and several other vote-skippers as "gutless." One Chicago pol says that "the myth developed that when there was a tough vote, he was gone."
Obama's brash self-confidence led him into his only big political blunder. Prodded by the Daley machine, he challenged Bobby Rush, an incumbent Democratic congressman and former Black Panther, in 2000. Rush pounded Obama by more than 2-1in the primary. "He was blinded by his ambition," Rush told The New York Times last year.
Obama has been running for president almost since he arrived in the U.S. Senate in 2005, so his Senate colleagues say it's hard to evaluate his record. But what stands out in his brief Senate career is his liberal voting record, not a history of fighting across party lines to get legislation passed. He wasn't part of the 2005 "Gang of 14" bipartisan coalition that sought to break the logjam on judicial nominations, but neither were Clinton or other prominent Democrats. H did support the bipartisan effort to get an immigration bill last year, winning a plaudit from McCain. But he didn't work clo
