I hope that he keeps this up--being stupid that is:
Now that Senator Barack Obama has become the Democrats' nominee for President of the United States, to the cheers of the media at home and abroad, he has written a letter to the Secretary of Defense, in a tone as if he is already President, addressing one of his subordinates.
The letter ends: "I look forward to your swift response."
With wars going on in both Iraq and Afghanistan, a Secretary of Defense might have some other things to look after, before making a "swift response" to a political candidate.
Because of the widely publicized statistic that suicide rates among American troops have gone up, Senator Obama says he wants the Secretary of Defense to tell him, swiftly:
"What changes will you make to provide our soldiers in theater with real access to mental health care?"
"What training has the Pentagon provided our medical professionals in theater to recognize who might be at risk of committing suicide?"
"What assistance are you providing families here at home to recognize the risk factors for suicide, so that they may help our service members get the assistance they need?"
"What programs has the Pentagon implemented to help reduce the stigma attached to mental health concerns so that service members are more likely to seek appropriate care?"
All this sounds very plausible, as so many other things that Senator Obama says sound plausible. But, like so many of those other things, it will not stand up under scrutiny.
What has been widely publicized in the media is that suicides among American troops have gone up. What has not been widely publicized is that this higher suicide rate is still not as high as the suicide rate among demographically comparable civilians.
No one needs to be reminded that suicide is a serious matter, whether among soldiers or civilians. But the media have managed to create the impression that it is military service overseas which is the cause of suicides among American troops, when civilians of the same ages and other demographic characteristics are committing suicide at an even higher rate at home.
Moreover, this is not the first time that military service overseas has been portrayed in the media as the cause of problems that are worse in the civilian population at home.
The New York Times led the way in making homicides committed by returning military veterans a front page story, blaming this on "combat trauma and the stress of deployment." Yet the New York Post showed that the homicide rate among returning veterans is a fraction of the homicide rate among demographically comparable civilians.
In other words, if military veterans are not completely immune to the problems found among civilians at home, then the veterans' problems are to be blamed on military service-- at least by the mainstream media.
Does Senator Obama know how the rate of suicides or homicides among military veterans compares to the rate of suicides or homicides among their civilian counterparts? Do the facts matter to him, as compared to an opportunity to score political points?
Perhaps even more important, do the media even care whether Senator Obama knows what he is talking about? Or is the symbolism of "the first black President" paramount, even if that means a President with cocky ignorance at a time of national danger?
The media have been crucial to Barack Obama's whole candidacy. His only achievements of national significance in his entire career have been media achievements and rhetorical achievements.
Perhaps his greatest achievement has been running as a candidate with an image wholly incompatible with what he has actually been doing for decades. This man who is now supposedly going to "unite" us has for years worked hand in glove, and contributed both his own money and the taxpayers' money, to people who have sought to divide us in the most crude demagogic ways.
With all his expressed concern about the war in Iraq, he has not set foot in Iraq for more than two years-- including the very years when progress has been made against the terrorists there.
You don't need to know the facts when you have cocky ignorance and the media behind you.
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Monday, June 9, 2008
Thursday, June 5, 2008
OBAMA--LOSER?
Thursday, June 5, 2008 4:25 PM
By: Bill O'Reilly Article Font Size
Cutting through all the fog, there are two primary reasons behind Barack Obama's stunning victory over the Clinton machine: authenticity and the war in Iraq.
As amply demonstrated, there is simply no comparison between Obama and Hillary Clinton as far as public speaking is concerned. He is eloquent and natural, talking directly to the folks. She is more stilted and rehearsed, talking at the listener. Sen. Clinton comes across as the typical politician, while Sen. Obama seems like a genuine human being.
He also outflanked her on the Iraq war. In the beginning of the campaign, Obama bolted from the starting gate flashing his anti-war cred. From the jump, he had been against the action. And now he was the guy who would pull the United States out of the Iraq swamp.
Clinton was immediately put on the defensive, as she initially supported the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein. Also, her entire outlook on confronting Islamic fascism was far too bullish for far-left America. So the Net roots, as they call themselves, flocked to Obama and provided him with vast amounts of money via the Internet.
By the time Hillary rallied Democratic moderates, it was too late.
Now Obama has achieved the nomination, but his winning primary strategy on Iraq could come back to haunt him in the general election, when the far left becomes rather insignificant. Already John McCain is painting Obama as a terror appeaser who would snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq.
And McCain has some heavy ammunition to back up his attack. In May, American casualties were the lowest since the Iraq war began in 2003. In addition, Iraqi oil production is now at its highest level since Saddam fell. Even the liberal Reuters news agency calls the current situation in Iraq a "dramatic turnabout."
Of course, you won't hear much about that in the American press, as the liberal media have much invested in a U.S. defeat in Iraq. But there is no question that the war there can now be won. It's not a lock, but it's certainly a possibility.
McCain must make the case that a victory in Iraq, which means the country stabilizes and becomes an ally against Islamic terror and Iran, means a much more secure United States. For the past few weeks, McCain has been spotlighting Iran's villainy; pointing out its support of terror groups like Hezbollah and its outright killing of our forces in Iraq.
Quietly, McCain is setting Obama up for a hard right to the jaw. If the U.S. pulls out of Iraq too quickly, the pressure on Iran immediately lightens and the potential for aggression by the bitterly anti-Jewish and anti-American mullahs rises dramatically.
Does Obama understand that?
Does it matter to him?
McCain will confront his young challenger with those questions.
Obama's advisers know the Iraq scenario is changing fast. They also understand that the media will ignore the good news for as long as it can. But word will get out and, after years of frustration, Americans could be staring at a success story after all.
Not good news for Obama.
Veteran TV news anchor Bill O'Reilly is host of the Fox News show "The O'Reilly Factor" and author of the book "Who's Looking Out For You?"
© 2008 Creator's Syndicate Inc.
By: Bill O'Reilly Article Font Size
Cutting through all the fog, there are two primary reasons behind Barack Obama's stunning victory over the Clinton machine: authenticity and the war in Iraq.
As amply demonstrated, there is simply no comparison between Obama and Hillary Clinton as far as public speaking is concerned. He is eloquent and natural, talking directly to the folks. She is more stilted and rehearsed, talking at the listener. Sen. Clinton comes across as the typical politician, while Sen. Obama seems like a genuine human being.
He also outflanked her on the Iraq war. In the beginning of the campaign, Obama bolted from the starting gate flashing his anti-war cred. From the jump, he had been against the action. And now he was the guy who would pull the United States out of the Iraq swamp.
Clinton was immediately put on the defensive, as she initially supported the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein. Also, her entire outlook on confronting Islamic fascism was far too bullish for far-left America. So the Net roots, as they call themselves, flocked to Obama and provided him with vast amounts of money via the Internet.
By the time Hillary rallied Democratic moderates, it was too late.
Now Obama has achieved the nomination, but his winning primary strategy on Iraq could come back to haunt him in the general election, when the far left becomes rather insignificant. Already John McCain is painting Obama as a terror appeaser who would snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq.
And McCain has some heavy ammunition to back up his attack. In May, American casualties were the lowest since the Iraq war began in 2003. In addition, Iraqi oil production is now at its highest level since Saddam fell. Even the liberal Reuters news agency calls the current situation in Iraq a "dramatic turnabout."
Of course, you won't hear much about that in the American press, as the liberal media have much invested in a U.S. defeat in Iraq. But there is no question that the war there can now be won. It's not a lock, but it's certainly a possibility.
McCain must make the case that a victory in Iraq, which means the country stabilizes and becomes an ally against Islamic terror and Iran, means a much more secure United States. For the past few weeks, McCain has been spotlighting Iran's villainy; pointing out its support of terror groups like Hezbollah and its outright killing of our forces in Iraq.
Quietly, McCain is setting Obama up for a hard right to the jaw. If the U.S. pulls out of Iraq too quickly, the pressure on Iran immediately lightens and the potential for aggression by the bitterly anti-Jewish and anti-American mullahs rises dramatically.
Does Obama understand that?
Does it matter to him?
McCain will confront his young challenger with those questions.
Obama's advisers know the Iraq scenario is changing fast. They also understand that the media will ignore the good news for as long as it can. But word will get out and, after years of frustration, Americans could be staring at a success story after all.
Not good news for Obama.
Veteran TV news anchor Bill O'Reilly is host of the Fox News show "The O'Reilly Factor" and author of the book "Who's Looking Out For You?"
© 2008 Creator's Syndicate Inc.
IN CASE YOU MISSED THIS
McCain and Obama Square Off
by Ericka Andersen (more by this author)
Posted 06/05/2008 ET
John McCain’s national campaign finally has an identified adversary: Barack Obama, despite Hillary Clinton’s last-minute pleas for a reprieve -- will be the Democratic nominee this fall. And McCain is already seizing on the most obvious Obama weakness: his inability to think quickly and answer questions for which he isn’t prepared.
McCain seems to thrive in person-to-person debates. Obama is uncomfortable unless he is speaking prepared remarks to an adoring crowd. The two -- in this and so many other ways -- are polar opposites.
Wednesday, McCain said he wants joint town hall meetings across the country with his presidential opponent. He hopes they will promote a “pure form of democracy” and force Obama to “respond directly to the specific questions and concerns that people have” instead of pandering to audiences in eloquent but long, vague speeches. As any good pol would want to, McCain seeks to apply his strength to Obama’s weakness.
In a campaign conference call yesterday, McCain said Obama’s frequent “catch all phrases” do not capture the “specific positions and action for the future of the country.”
McCain hopes the American people will learn of and understand Obama’s ultra-liberal record: Obama was rated the most liberal US Senator by the non-partisan National Journal this year.
Both candidates delivered major speeches to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) this week, each acknowledging a vital connection and U.S. interest in the protection of Israel as a Jewish state.
In a conference call yesterday, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) noted a significant “disconnect” for these reasons. Obama pledged to “never compromise when it comes to Israel's security”, but as Lieberman pointed out, he was one of only a handful of Senators that did not support last year’s Kyl-Lieberman amendment, which designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization. Even the Senate’s other most liberal members -- Dick Durbin, Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton -- voted for the amendment -- but not Obama.
In a debate last year, Obama called it “saber-rattling” but in yesterday’s speech he backtracked by saying we should boycott “firms associated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, whose Quds force has rightly been labeled a terrorist organization.”
McCain, though he said he had not seen Obama’s speech, was not surprised by the sudden change in direction, noting that Obama often switches on issues. This one, though, was particularly “remarkable.”
“He made several comments on this amendment…that it would affect troop levels and was the wrong thing to do,” said McCain. “Now he goes before AIPAC and changes…he’s moving through various evolutions…and I don’t think the American people will buy it.”
McCain said it proves again that Obama lacks the experience and knowledge to make the judgments necessary in a time of war.
The Kyl-Lieberman amendment does not purport military action though Obama opposed on those grounds.
Randy Scheunnemann, senior foreign policy and national security advisor to the McCain campaign, said Obama never made any public statements supporting the designation of the IRG as a terrorist group until yesterday so it is “hard to escape the conclusion that…today when it’s AIPAC and a Pro-Israel audience that…Obama has a different message for different audiences.”
Obama made other switches in his speech as well. A few weeks ago, he referred to Iran as only a “tiny” threat compared to the Soviet Union during the Cold War but yesterday, he labeled the country a “grave threat.”
He blamed the U.S. decision to invade Iraq for strengthening the power of the Iranian regime. He said the United States knew of Iran’s threat to Israel before 2002 and “instead of pursuing a strategy to address this threat, we ignored it.” Obama repeated that he said before we invaded that entering Iraq would “fan the flames of extremism in the Middle East.”
Lieberman was quick to disagree, saying, “It’s not because of what we’ve done in Iraq, it’s because Iran is a fanatical terrorist expansionist state…with a leadership that constantly threatens to extinguish the state of Israel.”
Obama’s opinions on Iraq and Iran were challenged recently when it was publicized he had visited Iraq only once -- two years ago -- and never spoke personally with US Army Commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, when he could have done so easily.
“Obama continues to deny that the surge has succeeded in Iraq -- in direction contradiction to fundamental facts on the ground,” McCain said. “This is the 788th day… since he’s been to Iraq and has never requested to sit down and get a briefing from Petraeus.”
McCain concluded that, “That is a degree of lack of judgment about this war that I think Americans will not agree with.”
In the past, Obama has pledged to meet with the leaders of rogue nations such as Iran without pre-conditions but he went back on that statement too. He now claims he would meet with those leaders only if it advances American interests.
“He presents a false choice today that the only diplomacy can work is with Iranian leaders,” said Scheunemann, who also called Obama out on his negativity towards working more closely with European allies.
Obama said the U.S. was “outsourcing diplomacy” to European allies, provoking criticism from the McCain camp.
“To say we are ‘outsourcing diplomacy’ to European allies disparages the very essence of allied cooperation,” Scheunnemann said. “Sen. McCain wants to work with our allies …with sanctions. Sen. Obama seems more interested in…engaging in cowboy summitry with unnamed leaders.”
Obama’s constant calls for troop withdrawals appease a public sick of the Iraq war but don’t consider grave consequences for Israel’s safety, the stability of the region or the security of the US in the war on terror.
“Withdrawal from Iraq…regardless of the situation…that would lead to al-Qaeda declaring victory and giving Iran more power,” said Scheunemann, adding that to think a phased withdrawal wouldn’t have consequences is, “frankly, naïve.”
McCain admitted that Obama’s views on the now-successful troop surge have changed.
“It’s not the categorical condemnation of the surge that he articulated before -- and again -- I hope he goes to Iraq soon, sits down with Petraeus,” said McCain. “Any objective observer…will admit to the fact that the surge is success.”
McCain said Obama will have to discuss the success at length sooner or later -- whether he wants to or not.
Ms. Andersen is a news producer and reporter for HUMAN EVENTS. She previously interned for The Washington Examiner newspaper. She has appeared on MSNBC live and been a guest on the Lars Larson radio show and the Jim Bohannon radio show. She wrote for the Indiana Daily Student, Indiana University's daily newspaper. E-mail her at eandersen@eaglepub.com.
Advertise | Privacy Policy | Terms and Conditions
Copyright © 2008 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.
by Ericka Andersen (more by this author)
Posted 06/05/2008 ET
John McCain’s national campaign finally has an identified adversary: Barack Obama, despite Hillary Clinton’s last-minute pleas for a reprieve -- will be the Democratic nominee this fall. And McCain is already seizing on the most obvious Obama weakness: his inability to think quickly and answer questions for which he isn’t prepared.
McCain seems to thrive in person-to-person debates. Obama is uncomfortable unless he is speaking prepared remarks to an adoring crowd. The two -- in this and so many other ways -- are polar opposites.
Wednesday, McCain said he wants joint town hall meetings across the country with his presidential opponent. He hopes they will promote a “pure form of democracy” and force Obama to “respond directly to the specific questions and concerns that people have” instead of pandering to audiences in eloquent but long, vague speeches. As any good pol would want to, McCain seeks to apply his strength to Obama’s weakness.
In a campaign conference call yesterday, McCain said Obama’s frequent “catch all phrases” do not capture the “specific positions and action for the future of the country.”
McCain hopes the American people will learn of and understand Obama’s ultra-liberal record: Obama was rated the most liberal US Senator by the non-partisan National Journal this year.
Both candidates delivered major speeches to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) this week, each acknowledging a vital connection and U.S. interest in the protection of Israel as a Jewish state.
In a conference call yesterday, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) noted a significant “disconnect” for these reasons. Obama pledged to “never compromise when it comes to Israel's security”, but as Lieberman pointed out, he was one of only a handful of Senators that did not support last year’s Kyl-Lieberman amendment, which designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization. Even the Senate’s other most liberal members -- Dick Durbin, Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton -- voted for the amendment -- but not Obama.
In a debate last year, Obama called it “saber-rattling” but in yesterday’s speech he backtracked by saying we should boycott “firms associated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, whose Quds force has rightly been labeled a terrorist organization.”
McCain, though he said he had not seen Obama’s speech, was not surprised by the sudden change in direction, noting that Obama often switches on issues. This one, though, was particularly “remarkable.”
“He made several comments on this amendment…that it would affect troop levels and was the wrong thing to do,” said McCain. “Now he goes before AIPAC and changes…he’s moving through various evolutions…and I don’t think the American people will buy it.”
McCain said it proves again that Obama lacks the experience and knowledge to make the judgments necessary in a time of war.
The Kyl-Lieberman amendment does not purport military action though Obama opposed on those grounds.
Randy Scheunnemann, senior foreign policy and national security advisor to the McCain campaign, said Obama never made any public statements supporting the designation of the IRG as a terrorist group until yesterday so it is “hard to escape the conclusion that…today when it’s AIPAC and a Pro-Israel audience that…Obama has a different message for different audiences.”
Obama made other switches in his speech as well. A few weeks ago, he referred to Iran as only a “tiny” threat compared to the Soviet Union during the Cold War but yesterday, he labeled the country a “grave threat.”
He blamed the U.S. decision to invade Iraq for strengthening the power of the Iranian regime. He said the United States knew of Iran’s threat to Israel before 2002 and “instead of pursuing a strategy to address this threat, we ignored it.” Obama repeated that he said before we invaded that entering Iraq would “fan the flames of extremism in the Middle East.”
Lieberman was quick to disagree, saying, “It’s not because of what we’ve done in Iraq, it’s because Iran is a fanatical terrorist expansionist state…with a leadership that constantly threatens to extinguish the state of Israel.”
Obama’s opinions on Iraq and Iran were challenged recently when it was publicized he had visited Iraq only once -- two years ago -- and never spoke personally with US Army Commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, when he could have done so easily.
“Obama continues to deny that the surge has succeeded in Iraq -- in direction contradiction to fundamental facts on the ground,” McCain said. “This is the 788th day… since he’s been to Iraq and has never requested to sit down and get a briefing from Petraeus.”
McCain concluded that, “That is a degree of lack of judgment about this war that I think Americans will not agree with.”
In the past, Obama has pledged to meet with the leaders of rogue nations such as Iran without pre-conditions but he went back on that statement too. He now claims he would meet with those leaders only if it advances American interests.
“He presents a false choice today that the only diplomacy can work is with Iranian leaders,” said Scheunemann, who also called Obama out on his negativity towards working more closely with European allies.
Obama said the U.S. was “outsourcing diplomacy” to European allies, provoking criticism from the McCain camp.
“To say we are ‘outsourcing diplomacy’ to European allies disparages the very essence of allied cooperation,” Scheunnemann said. “Sen. McCain wants to work with our allies …with sanctions. Sen. Obama seems more interested in…engaging in cowboy summitry with unnamed leaders.”
Obama’s constant calls for troop withdrawals appease a public sick of the Iraq war but don’t consider grave consequences for Israel’s safety, the stability of the region or the security of the US in the war on terror.
“Withdrawal from Iraq…regardless of the situation…that would lead to al-Qaeda declaring victory and giving Iran more power,” said Scheunemann, adding that to think a phased withdrawal wouldn’t have consequences is, “frankly, naïve.”
McCain admitted that Obama’s views on the now-successful troop surge have changed.
“It’s not the categorical condemnation of the surge that he articulated before -- and again -- I hope he goes to Iraq soon, sits down with Petraeus,” said McCain. “Any objective observer…will admit to the fact that the surge is success.”
McCain said Obama will have to discuss the success at length sooner or later -- whether he wants to or not.
Ms. Andersen is a news producer and reporter for HUMAN EVENTS. She previously interned for The Washington Examiner newspaper. She has appeared on MSNBC live and been a guest on the Lars Larson radio show and the Jim Bohannon radio show. She wrote for the Indiana Daily Student, Indiana University's daily newspaper. E-mail her at eandersen@eaglepub.com.
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Copyright © 2008 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
WHAT THE HECK OVER
Obama's YouTube Defense Talk 'Bizarre,' Analyst Says
By Evan Moore
CNSNews.com Correspondent
March 04, 2008
This man does deserve to be in the White House. Dog House maybe but not in the White House
(CNSNews.com) - Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is facing renewed criticism regarding his national security policies as he continues his campaign for his party's presidential nomination.
In a YouTube video Obama made for a liberal pacifist organization last year, the senator called for major cuts in defense spending, slowing the development of future combat systems, and cutting investments in America's ballistic missile defense program.
Some conservatives have expressed surprise at the degree of Obama's proposals on the video, and this past weekend, Sen. Hillary Clinton's (D-N.Y.) campaign released an ad criticizing Obama's alleged national security inexperience and trumpeting her as the person who could deftly manage emergency global crises.
In his video, Obama repeats his support for ending the Iraq War, saying, "I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending. I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat system. ...
"I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons," Obama says in the video. "To seek that goal, I will not develop new nuclear weapons. I will seek a global ban on the production of fissile material, and I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenals."
Obama also promises in the video to institute an independent defense priorities board to ensure that the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) is not used as a vehicle to justify unnecessary spending.
The video is posted on the official "Obama '08" campaign's YouTube channel but not in the BarackObama.com Web site's video section. The "Obama '08" channel labels the video "Obama-Caucus4Priorities."
Defense cuts
Caucus4Priorities.org, also called Caucus for Priorities, was a campaign of Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities (BLSP), which is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization.
It describes its mission as follows: "To change US budget priorities to reflect a national commitment to education, healthcare, energy independence, job training and deficit reduction - at no additional taxpayer expense - by eliminating funding for unneeded Cold War era weapons systems."
And the specific campaign, Caucus for Priorities, describes its mission as follows: "To redirect 15% of the Pentagon's discretionary budget away from obsolete Cold War weapons towards education, healthcare, job training, alternative energy development, world hunger, deficit reduction."
The BLSP advocates reducing America's stockpile of nuclear weapons to less than 1,000 warheads; reducing the National Missile Defense program to a basic research program; cutting spending on platforms like the F-22 Raptor, the Virginia-class Submarine, the V-22 Osprey airplane/helicopter hybrid, the DDG-1000 destroyer, and the Army's Future Combat System.
Also, the group advocates reducing America's force structure by eliminating two Air Force fighter wings and one aircraft carrier battle-group.
The $60 billion that could conceivably be reused as a result of BLSP's proposed cuts would then be diverted into other initiatives, according to a proposal on the group's website, such as children's health programs, modernizing schools, alternative energy research, budget deficit reduction, veterans' health care, and to "alleviate the global challenges of poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, disease, and disaster."
Sensible Priorities reported before the Iowa Caucuses that Obama supports reinvesting $8 billion of current defense spending.
Sensible Priorities cites a report from a former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, Lawrence Korb, which says that such reductions "would make our military stronger, allowing our forces to focus on the weapons, training, and tactics they need to do their jobs and defend our nation."
Furthermore, the BLSP urges eliminating pork project earmarks in the Defense budget.
According to an analysis of the FY2008 budget by Taxpayers for Common Sense, Obama appropriated $2 million for "nano-medical technologies research" at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champlain in the Defense Appropriations Bill.
Obama publicly disclosed his earmark requests via press release, which can be accessed on his Senate Web site.
Obama's campaign press campaign office did not return repeated requests for comment on this story. However, his defense and foreign policy positions are available on his campaign Web site.
Conservative criticism
In an interview with Cybercast News Service, Baker Spring, a national security research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, described Obama as "somebody who's a mouthpiece for arms control advocacy groups that probably put this litany of commitments in front of him, and he more or less read them without thinking."
Spring said Obama's proposed cuts in missile defense spending would be "a profoundly destabilizing decision [which] basically says that any state - or, for that matter, non-state actor - that wants to attack the United States, he gets the free first shot, including with weapons of mass destruction."
Regarding Obama's promise to reform the QDR process, Spring said, "Obviously, necessary and unnecessary is, to some degree, in the eye of the beholder. I don't think that any administration would put out a Quadrennial Defense Review that would explicitly endorse unnecessary programs.
"In a sense, Sen. Obama is, in his comment, is so logically contradictory, that he is saying that he is going to take preemptive action to prevent his own administration, assuming he's elected, from issuing a report in terms of the future U.S. defense structure, that would include unnecessary and wasteful programs," said Spring. "It strikes me as a little bizarre, to put it mildly."
Make media inquiries or request an interview about this article
Subscribe to the free CNSNews.com daily E-brief.
E-mail a comment or news tip to Evan Moore.
Copyright 1998-2006 Cybercast News Service
By Evan Moore
CNSNews.com Correspondent
March 04, 2008
This man does deserve to be in the White House. Dog House maybe but not in the White House
(CNSNews.com) - Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is facing renewed criticism regarding his national security policies as he continues his campaign for his party's presidential nomination.
In a YouTube video Obama made for a liberal pacifist organization last year, the senator called for major cuts in defense spending, slowing the development of future combat systems, and cutting investments in America's ballistic missile defense program.
Some conservatives have expressed surprise at the degree of Obama's proposals on the video, and this past weekend, Sen. Hillary Clinton's (D-N.Y.) campaign released an ad criticizing Obama's alleged national security inexperience and trumpeting her as the person who could deftly manage emergency global crises.
In his video, Obama repeats his support for ending the Iraq War, saying, "I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending. I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat system. ...
"I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons," Obama says in the video. "To seek that goal, I will not develop new nuclear weapons. I will seek a global ban on the production of fissile material, and I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenals."
Obama also promises in the video to institute an independent defense priorities board to ensure that the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) is not used as a vehicle to justify unnecessary spending.
The video is posted on the official "Obama '08" campaign's YouTube channel but not in the BarackObama.com Web site's video section. The "Obama '08" channel labels the video "Obama-Caucus4Priorities."
Defense cuts
Caucus4Priorities.org, also called Caucus for Priorities, was a campaign of Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities (BLSP), which is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization.
It describes its mission as follows: "To change US budget priorities to reflect a national commitment to education, healthcare, energy independence, job training and deficit reduction - at no additional taxpayer expense - by eliminating funding for unneeded Cold War era weapons systems."
And the specific campaign, Caucus for Priorities, describes its mission as follows: "To redirect 15% of the Pentagon's discretionary budget away from obsolete Cold War weapons towards education, healthcare, job training, alternative energy development, world hunger, deficit reduction."
The BLSP advocates reducing America's stockpile of nuclear weapons to less than 1,000 warheads; reducing the National Missile Defense program to a basic research program; cutting spending on platforms like the F-22 Raptor, the Virginia-class Submarine, the V-22 Osprey airplane/helicopter hybrid, the DDG-1000 destroyer, and the Army's Future Combat System.
Also, the group advocates reducing America's force structure by eliminating two Air Force fighter wings and one aircraft carrier battle-group.
The $60 billion that could conceivably be reused as a result of BLSP's proposed cuts would then be diverted into other initiatives, according to a proposal on the group's website, such as children's health programs, modernizing schools, alternative energy research, budget deficit reduction, veterans' health care, and to "alleviate the global challenges of poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, disease, and disaster."
Sensible Priorities reported before the Iowa Caucuses that Obama supports reinvesting $8 billion of current defense spending.
Sensible Priorities cites a report from a former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, Lawrence Korb, which says that such reductions "would make our military stronger, allowing our forces to focus on the weapons, training, and tactics they need to do their jobs and defend our nation."
Furthermore, the BLSP urges eliminating pork project earmarks in the Defense budget.
According to an analysis of the FY2008 budget by Taxpayers for Common Sense, Obama appropriated $2 million for "nano-medical technologies research" at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champlain in the Defense Appropriations Bill.
Obama publicly disclosed his earmark requests via press release, which can be accessed on his Senate Web site.
Obama's campaign press campaign office did not return repeated requests for comment on this story. However, his defense and foreign policy positions are available on his campaign Web site.
Conservative criticism
In an interview with Cybercast News Service, Baker Spring, a national security research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, described Obama as "somebody who's a mouthpiece for arms control advocacy groups that probably put this litany of commitments in front of him, and he more or less read them without thinking."
Spring said Obama's proposed cuts in missile defense spending would be "a profoundly destabilizing decision [which] basically says that any state - or, for that matter, non-state actor - that wants to attack the United States, he gets the free first shot, including with weapons of mass destruction."
Regarding Obama's promise to reform the QDR process, Spring said, "Obviously, necessary and unnecessary is, to some degree, in the eye of the beholder. I don't think that any administration would put out a Quadrennial Defense Review that would explicitly endorse unnecessary programs.
"In a sense, Sen. Obama is, in his comment, is so logically contradictory, that he is saying that he is going to take preemptive action to prevent his own administration, assuming he's elected, from issuing a report in terms of the future U.S. defense structure, that would include unnecessary and wasteful programs," said Spring. "It strikes me as a little bizarre, to put it mildly."
Make media inquiries or request an interview about this article
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I REALLY DON'T LIKE THIS MAN
Newsmax.com
The Real Barack Obama
Friday, May 23, 2008 9:17 AM
By: David Limbaugh
Columnist Robert Novak reports that John McCain will not yield to Barack Obama's efforts to shame him into running a vanilla campaign.
Instead, he says, McCain is lining up crack research operatives. Interestingly, their charge is not to gather dirt on Obama per se, but "to focus on the real Barack Obama." From where I'm sitting, that looks like one whale of a target-rich environment.
That is, McCain's operatives don't have to dig up dirt on Obama to damage his chances; they merely have to dig through the facade and uncover the real Obama.
Even with the damning revelations concerning his association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and former terrorist William Ayers, I suspect Obama explorers have barely scratched the surface.
While Obama will continue to complain that an examination into his associations is dirty politics, it is anything but. We are known by the company we keep, and this goes for applicants for leader of the Free World as well.
But in Obama's case, the McCain researchers will just be getting started with Obama's sordid associations. Where he's really vulnerable — the area where he most doesn't want you to find out who he really is — is on policy.
Given his George Soros brand of extreme leftism, Obama will do his best to conceal his real policy self, except to the San Francisco environmental- and social-issues anarchists, the arts and croissants crowd of the northeast corridor, and the neo-Marxist professorial elite in academe. Of course, now that he knows microphones and bloggers can pop up anywhere, he won't even feel comfortable letting his guard down in these friendly venues to edify us about such things as small-town bitterology.
Not only is Obama highly vulnerable on policy issues across the board, assuming people discover what he actually stands for, but also his main policy weakness (national security) is made to order for John McCain to exploit.
It's obvious that Obama is sensitive to the charge that he's weak on security, but it's not clear that he quite understands why.
Dovish, isolationist types such as Obama don't view it as a weakness, but as a sign of enlightenment to believe that dictators can be schmoozed and persuaded into better behavior. Obama apparently believes Iranian tyrant Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has reasonable demands that can be satisfied and that he, Barack Obama, might be just the guy to satisfy them. "If I can change Iran's behavior . . . that's something that we should explore."
In his stump speech, he actually implies that we haven't made clear our position to Iran about its nuclear program or intermeddling in Iraq. I'm not the only one who picked up on that implication. One of his supporters, author Nancy Soderberg, confirmed on Fox News that Obama believes "you need to use your carrots and sticks to talk to [Iran]." We haven't told them, she agreed, that they must quit meddling in Iraq and developing nuclear weapons. I honestly couldn't believe my ears.
Isn't it ironic that effete liberals, who can't see the reality of evil staring them in the face, reckon that it is realistic conservatives who are reality-challenged?
Indeed, the hard left doesn't seem to think Ahmadinejad is that bad a guy or unapproachable. Remember the swooning of the elitist class when the Holocaust denier wrote President Bush a lengthy propaganda letter disguised as an invitation for a dialogue? It was a "thoughtful letter," they panted.
One would think it self-evident that the dictator, who refers to Israel as filthy bacteria, is up to no good and not approachable through diplomacy absent unilateral forfeiture of our best interests and those of our allies; that a one-on-one meeting with the president of the United States would send an enormously discouraging signal to our Middle Eastern allies, including American-friendly Iranians praying for the overthrow of this tyrant; and that you can't gain concessions from thugs such as Ahmadinejad through words alone — uncoupled with action or credible threats of using force.
But these things are not self-evident to Barack Obama, who comes from the Jimmy Carter school of resolving all doubt in favor of our enemies, as he did when he blamed the Bush administration instead of NATO for NATO's failure to help us in Afghanistan.
Of a piece with this disturbing mindset of deferring to our enemies or other foreign nations is Obama's recent pronouncement: "We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times . . . and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK. That's not leadership. That's not going to happen." Says who? By what authority?
To defeat Barack Obama in November, John McCain won't need to dig up dirt on Obama; he'll only have to introduce voters to the real Obama.
David Limbaugh is a writer, author, and attorney. His book "Bankrupt: The Intellectual and Moral Bankruptcy of Today's Democratic Party" was released recently in paperback. To find out more about David Limbaugh, please visit his Web site at www.davidlimbaugh.com.
© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
The Real Barack Obama
Friday, May 23, 2008 9:17 AM
By: David Limbaugh
Columnist Robert Novak reports that John McCain will not yield to Barack Obama's efforts to shame him into running a vanilla campaign.
Instead, he says, McCain is lining up crack research operatives. Interestingly, their charge is not to gather dirt on Obama per se, but "to focus on the real Barack Obama." From where I'm sitting, that looks like one whale of a target-rich environment.
That is, McCain's operatives don't have to dig up dirt on Obama to damage his chances; they merely have to dig through the facade and uncover the real Obama.
Even with the damning revelations concerning his association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and former terrorist William Ayers, I suspect Obama explorers have barely scratched the surface.
While Obama will continue to complain that an examination into his associations is dirty politics, it is anything but. We are known by the company we keep, and this goes for applicants for leader of the Free World as well.
But in Obama's case, the McCain researchers will just be getting started with Obama's sordid associations. Where he's really vulnerable — the area where he most doesn't want you to find out who he really is — is on policy.
Given his George Soros brand of extreme leftism, Obama will do his best to conceal his real policy self, except to the San Francisco environmental- and social-issues anarchists, the arts and croissants crowd of the northeast corridor, and the neo-Marxist professorial elite in academe. Of course, now that he knows microphones and bloggers can pop up anywhere, he won't even feel comfortable letting his guard down in these friendly venues to edify us about such things as small-town bitterology.
Not only is Obama highly vulnerable on policy issues across the board, assuming people discover what he actually stands for, but also his main policy weakness (national security) is made to order for John McCain to exploit.
It's obvious that Obama is sensitive to the charge that he's weak on security, but it's not clear that he quite understands why.
Dovish, isolationist types such as Obama don't view it as a weakness, but as a sign of enlightenment to believe that dictators can be schmoozed and persuaded into better behavior. Obama apparently believes Iranian tyrant Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has reasonable demands that can be satisfied and that he, Barack Obama, might be just the guy to satisfy them. "If I can change Iran's behavior . . . that's something that we should explore."
In his stump speech, he actually implies that we haven't made clear our position to Iran about its nuclear program or intermeddling in Iraq. I'm not the only one who picked up on that implication. One of his supporters, author Nancy Soderberg, confirmed on Fox News that Obama believes "you need to use your carrots and sticks to talk to [Iran]." We haven't told them, she agreed, that they must quit meddling in Iraq and developing nuclear weapons. I honestly couldn't believe my ears.
Isn't it ironic that effete liberals, who can't see the reality of evil staring them in the face, reckon that it is realistic conservatives who are reality-challenged?
Indeed, the hard left doesn't seem to think Ahmadinejad is that bad a guy or unapproachable. Remember the swooning of the elitist class when the Holocaust denier wrote President Bush a lengthy propaganda letter disguised as an invitation for a dialogue? It was a "thoughtful letter," they panted.
One would think it self-evident that the dictator, who refers to Israel as filthy bacteria, is up to no good and not approachable through diplomacy absent unilateral forfeiture of our best interests and those of our allies; that a one-on-one meeting with the president of the United States would send an enormously discouraging signal to our Middle Eastern allies, including American-friendly Iranians praying for the overthrow of this tyrant; and that you can't gain concessions from thugs such as Ahmadinejad through words alone — uncoupled with action or credible threats of using force.
But these things are not self-evident to Barack Obama, who comes from the Jimmy Carter school of resolving all doubt in favor of our enemies, as he did when he blamed the Bush administration instead of NATO for NATO's failure to help us in Afghanistan.
Of a piece with this disturbing mindset of deferring to our enemies or other foreign nations is Obama's recent pronouncement: "We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times . . . and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK. That's not leadership. That's not going to happen." Says who? By what authority?
To defeat Barack Obama in November, John McCain won't need to dig up dirt on Obama; he'll only have to introduce voters to the real Obama.
David Limbaugh is a writer, author, and attorney. His book "Bankrupt: The Intellectual and Moral Bankruptcy of Today's Democratic Party" was released recently in paperback. To find out more about David Limbaugh, please visit his Web site at www.davidlimbaugh.com.
© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
POOR MRS. O
This is from one of my favorite authors, writing about a woman who wants to be First Lady
Barack Obama's Bitter Half
By Michelle Malkin
May 7, 2008
Are you ready for hope and change? Barack Obama better hope his bitter half has a change of attitude if she expects to assume the title of first lady in November. She's been likened to John F. Kennedy's wife, what with her chic suits and pearls and perfectly coiffed helmet hair. But when she opens her mouth, Michelle O is less Jackie O and more Wendy W -- as in Wendy Whiner, the constantly kvetching "Saturday Night Live" character from the early 1980s.
When last our world views collided, back in February, the other Michelle was expounding on her lack of pride in America. I gave her myriad reasons to cheer up -- from America's role in the fall of communism to our unparalleled generosity to our nation's superior economic system, cultural resilience, entrepreneurial spirit and ingenuity. But since then, Mrs. Obama has dug in her $500 Jimmy Choo heels and solidified her role in the 2008 presidential campaign as Queen of the Grievance-Mongers.
In one of her few (unintentionally) funny moments during a recent sit-down with comedian Stephen Colbert, Mrs. Obama claimed, "Barack and I tend to look at the positives." That's a side-splitter. As National Review's Yuval Levin put it, Michelle Obama is "America's unhappiest millionaire." And she has the audacity to extrapolate her misery and her husband's alleged victimization to the "vast majority of Americans."
In South Carolina, she called America "just downright mean" and bemoaned "a nation of struggling folks who are barely making it every day." And in case you hadn't heard enough of her carping about how hard it is for a seven-figure-earning family to pay for ballet lessons and piano lessons and pay off college loans, Mrs. Oh-Woe-Is-Me was at it again on the campaign trail in Indiana and North Carolina before Tuesday's primary.
On the stump, she warmed up (or rather, berated) supporters by complaining about how her husband is an underdog even after he keeps winning primary and caucus after primary and caucus. With a scowl etched on her face, she bellyached that "the bar is constantly changing for this man." Call the waambulance, stat.
Barack Obama, the missus explains, is Everyman who has ever been put down by The Man. And "understand this" (a condescending verbal tic shared by both Obamas): Mrs. Obama is here to make sure you feel their pain. Which is really your pain. Because the hardships of a privileged Ivy League couple are "exactly" the same as the travails of miners or service workers or small-business owners: "So the bar has been shifting and moving in this race," she grumbles, "but the irony is, the sad irony is, that's exactly what is happening to most Americans in this country."
Don't tell Miss Michelle about the Great Depression or the Carter Malaise. "Folks are struggling like never before," she seethes.
Well, yes, gas prices are up. Some food prices are rising. And borrowers who bought more housing than they could afford are underwater. But "struggling like never before"? Didn't they teach her about Hoovervilles and stagflation?
In Mrs. Obama, the fear-mongering pot meets the angst-stirring kettle: "Fear," she froths, "creates this veil of impossibility and it is hanging over all of our heads."
But what Mrs. Obama lacks in pride for her country and its promise she more than makes up for with bottomless pride for her husband. Her standard campaign speeches include at least a dozen references to how "proud" she is of him. And of herself. And of everyone who has overcome The Man and pierced the "veil of impossibility" to get to the polls and vote Obama. An online MSNBC report on a joint appearance by the Obamas on the "Today" show in the wake of the Jeremiah Wright debacle included this tellingly narcissistic passage:
[Mrs. Obama]: "'I'm so proud of how he has maintained his dignity, his cool, his honor.'
"Obama gently tried to interrupt, admitting to being embarrassed by the praise.
"'But I am proud of you,' she said.
"'I know,' he replied."
We all know. So get over yourself already, haughty spirit. Pride doesn't photograph well. And bitterness leaves frown lines. Which means Botox bills. Which "struggling folks" like you and your husband simply cannot afford.
Try smiling for once. It's cheaper.
---
Michelle Malkin is author of "Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild." Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com.
COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
--------------------
Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.
Barack Obama's Bitter Half
By Michelle Malkin
May 7, 2008
Are you ready for hope and change? Barack Obama better hope his bitter half has a change of attitude if she expects to assume the title of first lady in November. She's been likened to John F. Kennedy's wife, what with her chic suits and pearls and perfectly coiffed helmet hair. But when she opens her mouth, Michelle O is less Jackie O and more Wendy W -- as in Wendy Whiner, the constantly kvetching "Saturday Night Live" character from the early 1980s.
When last our world views collided, back in February, the other Michelle was expounding on her lack of pride in America. I gave her myriad reasons to cheer up -- from America's role in the fall of communism to our unparalleled generosity to our nation's superior economic system, cultural resilience, entrepreneurial spirit and ingenuity. But since then, Mrs. Obama has dug in her $500 Jimmy Choo heels and solidified her role in the 2008 presidential campaign as Queen of the Grievance-Mongers.
In one of her few (unintentionally) funny moments during a recent sit-down with comedian Stephen Colbert, Mrs. Obama claimed, "Barack and I tend to look at the positives." That's a side-splitter. As National Review's Yuval Levin put it, Michelle Obama is "America's unhappiest millionaire." And she has the audacity to extrapolate her misery and her husband's alleged victimization to the "vast majority of Americans."
In South Carolina, she called America "just downright mean" and bemoaned "a nation of struggling folks who are barely making it every day." And in case you hadn't heard enough of her carping about how hard it is for a seven-figure-earning family to pay for ballet lessons and piano lessons and pay off college loans, Mrs. Oh-Woe-Is-Me was at it again on the campaign trail in Indiana and North Carolina before Tuesday's primary.
On the stump, she warmed up (or rather, berated) supporters by complaining about how her husband is an underdog even after he keeps winning primary and caucus after primary and caucus. With a scowl etched on her face, she bellyached that "the bar is constantly changing for this man." Call the waambulance, stat.
Barack Obama, the missus explains, is Everyman who has ever been put down by The Man. And "understand this" (a condescending verbal tic shared by both Obamas): Mrs. Obama is here to make sure you feel their pain. Which is really your pain. Because the hardships of a privileged Ivy League couple are "exactly" the same as the travails of miners or service workers or small-business owners: "So the bar has been shifting and moving in this race," she grumbles, "but the irony is, the sad irony is, that's exactly what is happening to most Americans in this country."
Don't tell Miss Michelle about the Great Depression or the Carter Malaise. "Folks are struggling like never before," she seethes.
Well, yes, gas prices are up. Some food prices are rising. And borrowers who bought more housing than they could afford are underwater. But "struggling like never before"? Didn't they teach her about Hoovervilles and stagflation?
In Mrs. Obama, the fear-mongering pot meets the angst-stirring kettle: "Fear," she froths, "creates this veil of impossibility and it is hanging over all of our heads."
But what Mrs. Obama lacks in pride for her country and its promise she more than makes up for with bottomless pride for her husband. Her standard campaign speeches include at least a dozen references to how "proud" she is of him. And of herself. And of everyone who has overcome The Man and pierced the "veil of impossibility" to get to the polls and vote Obama. An online MSNBC report on a joint appearance by the Obamas on the "Today" show in the wake of the Jeremiah Wright debacle included this tellingly narcissistic passage:
[Mrs. Obama]: "'I'm so proud of how he has maintained his dignity, his cool, his honor.'
"Obama gently tried to interrupt, admitting to being embarrassed by the praise.
"'But I am proud of you,' she said.
"'I know,' he replied."
We all know. So get over yourself already, haughty spirit. Pride doesn't photograph well. And bitterness leaves frown lines. Which means Botox bills. Which "struggling folks" like you and your husband simply cannot afford.
Try smiling for once. It's cheaper.
---
Michelle Malkin is author of "Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild." Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com.
COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
--------------------
Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.
Monday, April 21, 2008
SAME CRAP, DIFFERENT DAY
Newsmax.com
Newsmax/Zogby Tracking: Hillary Gains in Final Weekend
Sunday, April 20, 2008 8:23 PM
The final weekend before Tuesday’s important primary election in Pennsylvania was good for New York’s Hillary Clinton, as she made a definitive move toward victory over rival Illinois’ Barack Obama, a fresh Newsmax/Zogby daily telephone tracking poll shows.
She gained two points over the past 24 hours as Obama lost one point, and she now leads 48% to 42%, the latest polling shows. Meanwhile, the undecideds dropped by two points. Her edge was three points yesterday but had wobbled within a tight margin. Clinton’s advantage is still within the margin of error, but she is close to getting beyond it as Election Day looms.
The two-day tracking survey, which was conducted April 19-20, 2008, included 11% who were either undecided or supported someone else.
The telephone survey, conducted using live operators working out of Zogby’s on-site call center in Upstate New York, included 602 likely Democratic primary voters in Pennsylvania. It carries a margin of error of +/- 4.1 percentage points. The Newsmax/Zogby polling in the Keystone state will continue through Monday evening, with the final release issued early on Election Day.
Pollster John Zogby: “A big one-day of polling for Clinton. If a 10-point victory is the pundit-driven threshold she needs on Tuesday, it looks like she can do it. This does not look like a one-day anomaly – undecideds dropped to only 5% in this latest single day of polling, and they are breaking Clinton’s way. As I suggested yesterday, if white and Catholic voters, who still are the biggest portion of undecideds, actually vote, Clinton will have her double-digit victory. Just today alone, she polled 53% to Obama’s 38%.
“She had big pickups of support in the western region, among voters 50-65, and among women. She has tightened Obama’s lead among men and she maintains her Catholic base. For the first time in our poll, Clinton climbs into double digits among African Americans.”
While Obama continues to lead in eastern Pennsylvania by a 53% to 37% margin, he lost ground in the central part of the state – Clinton now leads there by 16 points, up from eight points in earlier polling late last week. Clinton also expanded her edge in western Pennsylvania, including Pittsburgh, and now leads there, 56% to 33%.
Clinton has made steady progress among Pennsylvania men, and now trails Obama among the demographic by just three points – 45% to 42%. Meanwhile, she has maintained a big 53% to 40% lead among women.
A key demographic battleground in this race has been among those age 35-54, the single largest age demographic group in the state. Two weeks ago, Clinton lead among those voters, but by last week, Obama had an edge. For the first time in our latest tracking poll leading up to tomorrow’s election, Clinton has regained the lead of these voters and now leads among voters age 35-54, 49% to 44%.
As has been the case in other earlier voting states, Obama holds a big lead among voters younger than age 35, while Clinton leads among voters age 55 and older. After Florida, Pennsylvania has the oldest voters in the nation.
Clinton leads among Catholics, 63% to 25%, reflecting a small gain for Clinton. But Obama continues to lead among Protestants by a 52% to 40% margin, though he continued to lose a small amount of support. The two religious demographic groups are roughly the same size in Pennsylvania.
Among the very liberal Democratic Party voters, Obama expanded his edge to 29 points, a big jump since yesterday. However, Clinton has expanded her lead among mainline liberals, and now holds a 50% to 43% advantage. She also leads by larger margins among moderates and conservative Democratic primary voters.
The economy continues to be the most important issue to voters, and they continue to favor Clinton over Obama in terms of choosing a candidate who would both help their personal financial situation, and help the U.S. economy at large. As has been the case since the beginning of the Newsmax/Zogby daily tracking, Clinton was also seen as the candidate who better understands Pennsylvania – by an almost two-to-one margin.
© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Newsmax/Zogby Tracking: Hillary Gains in Final Weekend
Sunday, April 20, 2008 8:23 PM
The final weekend before Tuesday’s important primary election in Pennsylvania was good for New York’s Hillary Clinton, as she made a definitive move toward victory over rival Illinois’ Barack Obama, a fresh Newsmax/Zogby daily telephone tracking poll shows.
She gained two points over the past 24 hours as Obama lost one point, and she now leads 48% to 42%, the latest polling shows. Meanwhile, the undecideds dropped by two points. Her edge was three points yesterday but had wobbled within a tight margin. Clinton’s advantage is still within the margin of error, but she is close to getting beyond it as Election Day looms.
The two-day tracking survey, which was conducted April 19-20, 2008, included 11% who were either undecided or supported someone else.
The telephone survey, conducted using live operators working out of Zogby’s on-site call center in Upstate New York, included 602 likely Democratic primary voters in Pennsylvania. It carries a margin of error of +/- 4.1 percentage points. The Newsmax/Zogby polling in the Keystone state will continue through Monday evening, with the final release issued early on Election Day.
Pollster John Zogby: “A big one-day of polling for Clinton. If a 10-point victory is the pundit-driven threshold she needs on Tuesday, it looks like she can do it. This does not look like a one-day anomaly – undecideds dropped to only 5% in this latest single day of polling, and they are breaking Clinton’s way. As I suggested yesterday, if white and Catholic voters, who still are the biggest portion of undecideds, actually vote, Clinton will have her double-digit victory. Just today alone, she polled 53% to Obama’s 38%.
“She had big pickups of support in the western region, among voters 50-65, and among women. She has tightened Obama’s lead among men and she maintains her Catholic base. For the first time in our poll, Clinton climbs into double digits among African Americans.”
While Obama continues to lead in eastern Pennsylvania by a 53% to 37% margin, he lost ground in the central part of the state – Clinton now leads there by 16 points, up from eight points in earlier polling late last week. Clinton also expanded her edge in western Pennsylvania, including Pittsburgh, and now leads there, 56% to 33%.
Clinton has made steady progress among Pennsylvania men, and now trails Obama among the demographic by just three points – 45% to 42%. Meanwhile, she has maintained a big 53% to 40% lead among women.
A key demographic battleground in this race has been among those age 35-54, the single largest age demographic group in the state. Two weeks ago, Clinton lead among those voters, but by last week, Obama had an edge. For the first time in our latest tracking poll leading up to tomorrow’s election, Clinton has regained the lead of these voters and now leads among voters age 35-54, 49% to 44%.
As has been the case in other earlier voting states, Obama holds a big lead among voters younger than age 35, while Clinton leads among voters age 55 and older. After Florida, Pennsylvania has the oldest voters in the nation.
Clinton leads among Catholics, 63% to 25%, reflecting a small gain for Clinton. But Obama continues to lead among Protestants by a 52% to 40% margin, though he continued to lose a small amount of support. The two religious demographic groups are roughly the same size in Pennsylvania.
Among the very liberal Democratic Party voters, Obama expanded his edge to 29 points, a big jump since yesterday. However, Clinton has expanded her lead among mainline liberals, and now holds a 50% to 43% advantage. She also leads by larger margins among moderates and conservative Democratic primary voters.
The economy continues to be the most important issue to voters, and they continue to favor Clinton over Obama in terms of choosing a candidate who would both help their personal financial situation, and help the U.S. economy at large. As has been the case since the beginning of the Newsmax/Zogby daily tracking, Clinton was also seen as the candidate who better understands Pennsylvania – by an almost two-to-one margin.
© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
"Silence in the face of evil is always on the side of the aggressor."
April 16, 2008
Obama: Silence in the face of evil
By Peggy Shapiro
"Silence in the face of evil is always on the side of the aggressor."
- Elie Wiesel
Barack Obama, the eloquent speaker who mesmerizes the media, the man whose orations make women swoon, the candidate who promises to embrace dictators and terrorists in conversation, falls strangely silent when his words are needed to stand up against evil, intolerance or injustice. In a dangerous world with evil regimes aspiring to destroy the United States and the values we represent, the silence of an American President would be an
unthinkable disaster.
We know that for over twenty years, Obama listened attentively to his pastor's diatribes against the United States and Israel and said nothing. Confronted with outright lies that the United States created the AIDS virus to destroy Africa and imports harmful drugs to destroy African Americans, Obama was silent. When the church website and newsletter carried the message of Hamas, labeled as a terrorist group by both the U.S. and the E.U., Obama maintained his silence.
Obama has not availed himself of other opportunities to speak out against injustice. When his words have taken take a stand on behalf of human decency and not be empty platitudes, Obama chose silence. Take the case of the anti-Islamist Muslim journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, who was imprisoned and tortured by Bangladeshi authorities when he requested a visa to attend a conference in Tel Aviv. Securing his release became a bi-partisan issue. Richard L. Benkin, who is spearheading efforts to release Choudhury, notes "Democratic, Republican, left, right, moderate; you name it. And every one of them reacted with support; every one of them, that is, except one. Who was the one lawmaker that took a pass on saving the life of an imprisoned US ally and opponent of Islamist extremism? That's right, my own Illinois Senator Barack Obama."
Obama's record in the Illinois legislature established his reluctance to take a courageous stand. In 1999, he was faced with a difficult vote to support a bill that would let some juveniles be tried as adults. Voting "yes" would help create the image of a man who is tough on crime, but many in the African-American community opposed the law. Faced with a moral dilemma, he did what was most comfortable: nothing. He sidestepped this issue and 130 others by voting present. "If you are worried about your next election, the present vote gives you political cover," said Kent D. Redfield, a professor of political studies at the University of Illinois at Springfield. In the United States Senate, where there are no "present" votes, Obama consistently sought the safety of voting 96.7% of the time with the majority of Democrats. That is, when he voted. He has missed 39.3% of the votes during the current Congress.
Obama has found a comfortable spot straddling the fence on any potentially controversial issue. At a town hall in Malvern, Pennsylvania, Obama, was asked about U.S. policy toward Tibet and Darfur (the site of ongoing genocide against the Christian population), especially in light of the forthcoming Olympics in Beijing this summer. He equivocated, "It's very hard to tell your banker that he's wrong...And if we are running huge deficits and big national debts and we're borrowing money constantly from China, that gives us less leverage. It give us less leverage to talk about human rights, it also is giving us less leverage to talk about the uneven trading relationship that we have with China." Obama never once mentioned Tibet or China's relationship with Sudan.
This week when history demanded his voice, Obama once again opted for silence instead of courage. Democratic and Republican Congressional leaders have strongly condemned Jimmy Carter's planned meeting with Khaled Mashal, head of the Hamas terrorist organization. Both Democrats and Republicans demonstrated their leadership in a bipartisan letter to the former president entreating him to refrain from using his stature to undermine U.S. policy and negotiate with Hamas. (Hamas is committed to the complete eradication of Israel and has forsworn any negotiations in favor of violence.) Among Democrats speaking out on the House floor was Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), "In light of Hamas' continuing violence and calls for the destruction of the State of Israel, I strongly urge President Carter to reconsider his decision." Others warned that meeting with Hamas would not only undermine U.S. policy and the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas, but lend legitimacy to the group that thwarts all efforts for peace.
Obama, stunningly, declined to take a moral stance and instead chose silence. He said it was not his place to criticize former President Jimmy Carter... "I'm not going to comment on former President Carter. He's a private citizen. It's not my place to discuss who he shouldn't meet with," Obama (Reuters April 11, 2008)
If Obama wants to be President of the United States, it is his place to speak out for what is true, what is in the interest of the nation, and what is morally right (even if it costs him a few votes). It is called leadership.
Posted by me Thursday, April 17, 2008
April 16, 2008
Obama, CEO Pay, and the Politics of Class Envy
By Lee Cary
Populism uses the politics of discontent. Barack Obama's recurring comparisons between CEO and average worker salaries is a class-warfare play on resentment with just enough truth to make it work with many voters.
Senator Obama has made frequent reference to the spread between CEO compensation and average worker pay. For example:
1. January 20, 2008, "The Great Need of the Hour" speech on MLK Day
"We have a [moral] deficit when CEOs are making more in ten minutes than some workers make in ten months."
2. Radio ad in the Texas primary race
"Some CEOs make more in 10 minutes than some American workers make in a year."
3. April 11, 2008, REUTERS article quoting Obama in Indianapolis
"Some CEOs make more in one day than their workers make in one year."
The parameters for Obama's comparison continue to drift, but few notice. His is not an exercise in mathematics. It's an appeal to voter discontent.
When a politician bemoans the salary-disparity on the Jay Leno or David Letterman Shows the crowds applaud. Never mind that Jay makes $123,000 and Dave $154,000 for each show - considerably more than the average U.S. worker makes in a year. Entertainers, including sports figures, are exempt from salary comparisons. They have talent. And never mind that Obama has leveraged his support from Oprah Winfrey to gain votes. At an annual income of $260,000,000, The Oprah makes a million dollars per weekday.
Obama's floating pay equations have generally been specious. Here's how.
Let's start with the average annual salary (AAS) for a U.S. worker as computed by the San Francisco Chronicle using U.S. Department of Labor statistics: $39,795.33 (Q1 2005). We could use CNN's computation of a 2006 AAS of $29,544, but they relied on the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy; that lower figure factors in both full- and part-time salaries. Therein is a challenge with computing comparative salaries; not only do the numbers lag behind the calendar, but some sources spin the numbers to support their policy agenda. In October 2005, a third source put the ASS at $40,409. We'll use $40,000 as the ASS to test Obama's equations.
Forbes placed the aggregate pay for the CEOs of the top 500 U.S. companies at $5.1 billion, or a CEO average of $10.2 million. Another source notes that the range of 2005 CEO pay is from $10-15 million. We'll use the higher number - $15 million.
In all of Obama's equation he uses the word "some." It's a word that baths generalizations in the warm waters of perceived accuracy. If, for example, you own twin pug dogs that are the only canines that ever learned to play checkers, you could rightly say, "Some dogs play checkers." But, truth be told, most dogs don't. Obama has said this,
1. "We have a [moral] deficit when CEOs are making more in ten minutes than some workers make in ten months."
Here's the math: The 2005 AAS for 10 months was $33,333.33. Based on a 40 hour week, a CEO making more than $33,333 in ten minutes ($3,333.33 per minute) would have a weekly (2,400 minutes) salary of about $8 million and an annual salary of about $416 million. How many CEOs met that qualification? The answer is (drum roll here) - none. According the Forbes, the highest CEO salary for 2005 was Yahoo's Terry Semel at $230 million. (He's right there in Oprah territory.)
2. "Some CEOs make more in 10 minutes than some American workers make in a year."
Oops. This equation pushes the "some" CEOs annual salary up to nearly $500 million. That's equivalent to about what the top three highest paid CEOs made in 2005 combined. So this equation is clearly bogus. Then, finally, Obama lowers the numbers.
3. "Some CEOs make more in one day than their workers make in one year."
Okay, now Obama is into reality with his math, although he was careful not to put the word "all" before "their workers." But, some CEOs do make $10.4 million a year. In fact, as we've seen, that's about the average for the top 500 companies. Some Obama supporters do even better, including Steven Spielberg, who makes $110 million a year; George Clooney, $25 million; Matt Damon, $24 million; Will Smith, $31 million -- and good for them. CBS News reportedly gave Katie Couric a five-year contract making $46,149 per evening news broadcast. So Ms. Couric receives more for 20-odd minutes of teleprompter reading than the AAS of U.S. workers. You suppose CBS News has aired any stories on the disparity between CEO compensation and worker pay?
Where's Senator Obama going with all these sliding comparative equations? The answer is that he's appealing to class envy.
It's not as though the spread between CEO compensation and worker pay isn't already under considerable scrutiny. For a review of proposed and passed legislation pertaining to executive compensation see here. And, for a comprehensive overview of the issue you can read "Excessive CEO Pay: Background and Policy Approaches," a February 2007 publication of the Congressional Research Services (CRS). Here's a summary from that report describing how the government has been addressing the issue.
"There have been two general approaches to executive pay reform. First changes to securities laws and regulations have attempted to strengthen the bargaining position of shareholders by (1) requiring more complete and comprehensive disclosure of CEO pay, (2) making boards more responsive to shareholder interests, or (3) requiring direct shareholder approval of executive pay packages. Some of initiatives are the result of regulatory initiatives, while others are or were legislatively based. Second, Congress has tried to restrain the growth of executive pay by eliminating the tax deduction for compensation paid in excess of specific caps." (p. CRS-3)
So it's not as if Senator Obama is doing the nation a public service by surfacing an issue that's been ignored. No, he has another agenda.
Quote #1 above came from Obama's MLK Day speech wherein he said, "Unity is the great need of the hour. Unity is how we shall overcome." But exploiting class envy is not a unification tactic. It's a divisive tactic and represents the same old liberal politics of discontent. It offers no vision for the future of the nation except friction and stridency.
In the wake of Senator Clinton's attempt to exploit Obama's recent statement about small town Pennsylvanians clinging to guns and religion, Obama said, "Shame on her." In this case, it's shame on him.
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April 14, 2008
Obama Chic
By James Lewis
Geraldine Ferraro wasn't quite right: It's not just Obama's race that has made him the frontrunner on the Left. It's his chic-ness.
It helps that Senator Obama is "international" and half black, but don't ignore his youth, his sonorous voice and skinniness: He's the fashion icon of the age. Shortly after Obama announced, he captured the gay vote with one photo op in a bathing suit.
If Senator Obama looked and talked like Charlie Rangel he would not be adored by millions of lovelorn liberals.
Have our greatest presidents have been chic just like Obama? There is George Washington with his wooden teeth, Abe Lincoln with his ole' prairie lawyer drawl, and Ronald Reagan with this 1950s haircut.
Still, there is something about Obama that casts a magic spell over those of a certain mindset. At Salon magazine, Walter Shapiro gushed,
"Unlike most presidential Dems in recent memory, the Illinois senator is at ease with himself -- even while bowling gutter balls in Pennsylvania."
Even flubbing a couple of bowling ball tries reflects on the man's cool. This man can do no wrong.
I have a friend who ran into Bill Clinton in the 90s one day, shook hands with the great man for a few seconds, and came away transformed. I asked him what came over him. "You don't understand!" he said. "He loved me!" So my friend voted for the Slick One, and wouldn't listen to a critical word in spite of all the scandals. True story. That's what a celebrity handshake and five seconds of sincere vibes can do to certain folks when dealing with a charismatic pol.
I thought it was degrading to be so easily suckered by an flaming con artist. But maybe that's the secret of the Democrats: they know their followers are looking for love. Like any good sales outfit they play to whatever their customers dream about: I care for you, yes you, personally, it's love, baby, sitting in front of your TV with 200 million other viewers. It's like the old radio preacher asking all the listeners to place both hands on their RCA Victor, bow their heads, and pray with him in person, one to one. Bill Clinton made "I care for you" work at the polls. Obama is doing it right in front of our eyes. Hillary doesn't have the mojo, no matter how hard she tries.
You have to admit that black Democrats have a point. If you are looking for a crowd charmer to mesmerize millions of gullible folks, why not choose a black guy? After all, could Obama be worse than Bill?
With the New Media finding out more about the real Obama, we are learning a lot that doesn't quite fit the manufactured image. Such as Senator Obama's notion of compassion toward white small-town Pennsylvanians and their well-known racial rage and hatred.
"... So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations..." (italics added)
Oops.
When Hillary and McCain promptly jumped on that remark as showing contempt for and ignorance about the voters, Obama dug himself a deeper hole:
"No, I'm in touch. I know exactly what's going on. I know what's going on in Pennsylvania, I know what's going on in Indiana, I know what's going on in Illinois," Mr. Obama said, his voice rising. "People are fed up, they're angry, they're frustrated, they're bitter and they want to see a change in Washington. That's why I'm running for president of the United States of America."
It's funny, those are feelings a lot of average Americans may have never noticed themselves --- it's unconscious racism, you you --- but the libs are sure that everybody is a racist out there. It's a miracle how Obama can read all those typical white minds with absolute, metaphysical certainty.
"I know exactly what's going on. I know what's going on in Pennsylvania, I know what's going on in Indiana, I know what's going on in Illinois."
Call it omniscient mind-reading. It's a liberal faith that surpasseth human understanding. They and only they can see right through false consciousness of the masses.
If the media have their way, Obama chic will put all those oddities to rest. The elites yearn for an avatar of human perfection, and Hillary is just so Nineties, and simply not slender. Recognizing a great opportunity, they have switched from Slick Willie to Slick Barry, and are hammering poor Mrs. Clinton for just a few of the old lies -- while letting Obama get away with a bumper harvest of whoppers. Senator Clinton is correct. It's not fair!
Given that the Dems are now wedded to Obama, the new line is that "experience" doesn't matter to for a president. With Obama's brilliance, three years in the Senate is plenty of time to learn how to govern America in a time of war and economic fever. If you were hiring a Starbucks manager you'd look for experience. But President of the United States? Commander in Chief? Captain of the Ship of State? Leader of the Free World? Who cares about experience?
(Am I the only one who thinks that's certifiably insane?)
Even Camille Paglia has fallen for Obama chic. Normally one of the most level-headed people on the Left, she now thinks Obama's magic outweighs any doubts about his substance, character, or racially charged Leftism. Paglia is making the case for Obama's purity of heart is what really matters.
"... I plan to vote for Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania primary because he is a rational, centered personality who speaks the language of idealism and national unity. Obama has served longer as an elected official than Hillary. He has had experience as a grass-roots activist, and he is also a highly educated lawyer who will be a quick learner in office. His international parentage and childhood, as well as his knowledge of both Christianity and Islam, would make him the right leader at the right time. And his wife Michelle is a powerhouse.
"The Obamas represent the future, not the past."
Senator Obama is very slick indeed, a Bill Clinton for the 21st Century. Like Bill, he is good at prettifying his dubious personal associations, politicians and influence peddlers who helped him get where he is today. He is also dexterous in skating through tricky questions.
But Obama has stumbled repeatedly on basic foreign policy knowledge, where he is absolutely Carteresque. Not exactly a man for the times, as Carter's most famous foreign affairs blunder, letting Ayatollah Khomeini overthrow the Shah of Iran in 1979, is now leading to nuclear panic all over the Middle East. Carter himself is adding a new catastrophe to all the old ones by promising to shake hands with Hamas. Is this a foretaste of Barack Obama's compassionate foreign policy? He has certainly not criticized Jimmy Carter's newest desperate grab for the spotlight.
Still, we're not supposed to be looking for flaws. Let's all pretend we didn't hear Senator Obama's off-the-cuff idea of invading nuclear Pakistan, or his notion of trying to charm A'jad out of his race for nukes by being really, really nice to him. We know how susceptible the Mullahs are to sweet reason. Carter showed us how that works in 1979.
Freud said that love is a kind of madness -- you're totally convinced that your adored one makes the world go 'round. Well, liberals have done it again. They fell in love with Adlai Stevenson; they tumbled head over heels for JFK, and then Bill Clinton. Now it's Obama's turn. The only question is, how many voters will surrender to the celebrity parade? That may decide the presidential election.
It all goes to show that Finley Peter Dunne's Mister Dooley had it right: God protects orphans, drunkards, and the United States.
At least, we better hope so.
James Lewis blogs at dangeroustimes.wordpress.com
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/04/obama_chic.html at April 16, 2008 - 11:04:34 PM EDT
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April 15, 2008
Further clarification of Obama's remark
Thomas Lifson
Barack Obama has had several things to say about his "cling" remarks (the cling part is much worse than the bitter part, as several others have noted). But I just read (via Ed Morrissey) some other remarks in the speech. The context clarifies Obama's now-famous words: [emphasis added by Ed]
Here's how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it. And when it's delivered by - it's true that when it's delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama (laugher), then that adds another layer of skepticism.
Obama is calling the clingy folks racists. The crowd's laughter is the key, as Ed notes. These were rich San Franciscans sharing a chuckle over the crude provinciality of their fellow countrymen. The kind of people who give America such a bad name among the overseas elites. It was Obama pandering to the prejudices of his crowd. These people congratulate themselves on their own enlightenment when they support an Ivy Leaguer raised by a white grandmother in the best schools who happens to have black skin. The more open-minded of them acknowledge a certain charm to rural Appalachian culture manifested in folk arts like clog dancing.
This is the secret to the potency of this incident. Message loud and clear: Obama's friends are laughing at the majority of Americans. That is the very definition of elitist.
According to Mayhill Fowler, the blogger who broke the story, and whose crude recording of Obama's words is the only version so far available, there were other video cameras running during the speech. Somewhere, out there, there may well be another version of the event recorded in greater fidelity, and with pictures. Will one surface? Or will class solidarity among the rich prevent the proles in Pennsylvania from seeing the candidate's statement about them and judging for themselves?
Bob Herbert of the NYT thinks Obama knew what he was saying, but didn't go far enough:
Senator Obama has spent his campaign trying to dodge the race issue, which in America is like trying to dodge the wind. So when he fielded the question in San Francisco, he didn't say: "A lot of folks are not with me because I'm black - but I'm trying to make my case and bring as many around as I can."
I rarely agree with Bob Herbert, but I do wish the man who called for a national discussion would be honest and lead a conversation from his heart and soul, not from his carefully manufactured public persona. Actually, I should say personas, for the man seems to behave differently with different crowds. I bet he doesn't talk the same way at Trinity United Congregational Church as on Billionaire's Row in San Francisco.
So Barack Obama should tell us about their false consciousness, and maybe invite his former south Chicago neighbor Thomas Frank to tell them What's the Matter with Kansas, Midwestern and Pennsyslvanian small towns, and pretty much most of flyover country.
Hat tip: Ed Lasky
illustration by Otto Veblin
Posted at 01:35 PM | Email | Permalink
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/04/further_clarification_of_obama.html at April 16, 2008 - 11:07:04 PM EDT
Obama: Silence in the face of evil
By Peggy Shapiro
"Silence in the face of evil is always on the side of the aggressor."
- Elie Wiesel
Barack Obama, the eloquent speaker who mesmerizes the media, the man whose orations make women swoon, the candidate who promises to embrace dictators and terrorists in conversation, falls strangely silent when his words are needed to stand up against evil, intolerance or injustice. In a dangerous world with evil regimes aspiring to destroy the United States and the values we represent, the silence of an American President would be an
unthinkable disaster.
We know that for over twenty years, Obama listened attentively to his pastor's diatribes against the United States and Israel and said nothing. Confronted with outright lies that the United States created the AIDS virus to destroy Africa and imports harmful drugs to destroy African Americans, Obama was silent. When the church website and newsletter carried the message of Hamas, labeled as a terrorist group by both the U.S. and the E.U., Obama maintained his silence.
Obama has not availed himself of other opportunities to speak out against injustice. When his words have taken take a stand on behalf of human decency and not be empty platitudes, Obama chose silence. Take the case of the anti-Islamist Muslim journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, who was imprisoned and tortured by Bangladeshi authorities when he requested a visa to attend a conference in Tel Aviv. Securing his release became a bi-partisan issue. Richard L. Benkin, who is spearheading efforts to release Choudhury, notes "Democratic, Republican, left, right, moderate; you name it. And every one of them reacted with support; every one of them, that is, except one. Who was the one lawmaker that took a pass on saving the life of an imprisoned US ally and opponent of Islamist extremism? That's right, my own Illinois Senator Barack Obama."
Obama's record in the Illinois legislature established his reluctance to take a courageous stand. In 1999, he was faced with a difficult vote to support a bill that would let some juveniles be tried as adults. Voting "yes" would help create the image of a man who is tough on crime, but many in the African-American community opposed the law. Faced with a moral dilemma, he did what was most comfortable: nothing. He sidestepped this issue and 130 others by voting present. "If you are worried about your next election, the present vote gives you political cover," said Kent D. Redfield, a professor of political studies at the University of Illinois at Springfield. In the United States Senate, where there are no "present" votes, Obama consistently sought the safety of voting 96.7% of the time with the majority of Democrats. That is, when he voted. He has missed 39.3% of the votes during the current Congress.
Obama has found a comfortable spot straddling the fence on any potentially controversial issue. At a town hall in Malvern, Pennsylvania, Obama, was asked about U.S. policy toward Tibet and Darfur (the site of ongoing genocide against the Christian population), especially in light of the forthcoming Olympics in Beijing this summer. He equivocated, "It's very hard to tell your banker that he's wrong...And if we are running huge deficits and big national debts and we're borrowing money constantly from China, that gives us less leverage. It give us less leverage to talk about human rights, it also is giving us less leverage to talk about the uneven trading relationship that we have with China." Obama never once mentioned Tibet or China's relationship with Sudan.
This week when history demanded his voice, Obama once again opted for silence instead of courage. Democratic and Republican Congressional leaders have strongly condemned Jimmy Carter's planned meeting with Khaled Mashal, head of the Hamas terrorist organization. Both Democrats and Republicans demonstrated their leadership in a bipartisan letter to the former president entreating him to refrain from using his stature to undermine U.S. policy and negotiate with Hamas. (Hamas is committed to the complete eradication of Israel and has forsworn any negotiations in favor of violence.) Among Democrats speaking out on the House floor was Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), "In light of Hamas' continuing violence and calls for the destruction of the State of Israel, I strongly urge President Carter to reconsider his decision." Others warned that meeting with Hamas would not only undermine U.S. policy and the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas, but lend legitimacy to the group that thwarts all efforts for peace.
Obama, stunningly, declined to take a moral stance and instead chose silence. He said it was not his place to criticize former President Jimmy Carter... "I'm not going to comment on former President Carter. He's a private citizen. It's not my place to discuss who he shouldn't meet with," Obama (Reuters April 11, 2008)
If Obama wants to be President of the United States, it is his place to speak out for what is true, what is in the interest of the nation, and what is morally right (even if it costs him a few votes). It is called leadership.
Posted by me Thursday, April 17, 2008
April 16, 2008
Obama, CEO Pay, and the Politics of Class Envy
By Lee Cary
Populism uses the politics of discontent. Barack Obama's recurring comparisons between CEO and average worker salaries is a class-warfare play on resentment with just enough truth to make it work with many voters.
Senator Obama has made frequent reference to the spread between CEO compensation and average worker pay. For example:
1. January 20, 2008, "The Great Need of the Hour" speech on MLK Day
"We have a [moral] deficit when CEOs are making more in ten minutes than some workers make in ten months."
2. Radio ad in the Texas primary race
"Some CEOs make more in 10 minutes than some American workers make in a year."
3. April 11, 2008, REUTERS article quoting Obama in Indianapolis
"Some CEOs make more in one day than their workers make in one year."
The parameters for Obama's comparison continue to drift, but few notice. His is not an exercise in mathematics. It's an appeal to voter discontent.
When a politician bemoans the salary-disparity on the Jay Leno or David Letterman Shows the crowds applaud. Never mind that Jay makes $123,000 and Dave $154,000 for each show - considerably more than the average U.S. worker makes in a year. Entertainers, including sports figures, are exempt from salary comparisons. They have talent. And never mind that Obama has leveraged his support from Oprah Winfrey to gain votes. At an annual income of $260,000,000, The Oprah makes a million dollars per weekday.
Obama's floating pay equations have generally been specious. Here's how.
Let's start with the average annual salary (AAS) for a U.S. worker as computed by the San Francisco Chronicle using U.S. Department of Labor statistics: $39,795.33 (Q1 2005). We could use CNN's computation of a 2006 AAS of $29,544, but they relied on the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy; that lower figure factors in both full- and part-time salaries. Therein is a challenge with computing comparative salaries; not only do the numbers lag behind the calendar, but some sources spin the numbers to support their policy agenda. In October 2005, a third source put the ASS at $40,409. We'll use $40,000 as the ASS to test Obama's equations.
Forbes placed the aggregate pay for the CEOs of the top 500 U.S. companies at $5.1 billion, or a CEO average of $10.2 million. Another source notes that the range of 2005 CEO pay is from $10-15 million. We'll use the higher number - $15 million.
In all of Obama's equation he uses the word "some." It's a word that baths generalizations in the warm waters of perceived accuracy. If, for example, you own twin pug dogs that are the only canines that ever learned to play checkers, you could rightly say, "Some dogs play checkers." But, truth be told, most dogs don't. Obama has said this,
1. "We have a [moral] deficit when CEOs are making more in ten minutes than some workers make in ten months."
Here's the math: The 2005 AAS for 10 months was $33,333.33. Based on a 40 hour week, a CEO making more than $33,333 in ten minutes ($3,333.33 per minute) would have a weekly (2,400 minutes) salary of about $8 million and an annual salary of about $416 million. How many CEOs met that qualification? The answer is (drum roll here) - none. According the Forbes, the highest CEO salary for 2005 was Yahoo's Terry Semel at $230 million. (He's right there in Oprah territory.)
2. "Some CEOs make more in 10 minutes than some American workers make in a year."
Oops. This equation pushes the "some" CEOs annual salary up to nearly $500 million. That's equivalent to about what the top three highest paid CEOs made in 2005 combined. So this equation is clearly bogus. Then, finally, Obama lowers the numbers.
3. "Some CEOs make more in one day than their workers make in one year."
Okay, now Obama is into reality with his math, although he was careful not to put the word "all" before "their workers." But, some CEOs do make $10.4 million a year. In fact, as we've seen, that's about the average for the top 500 companies. Some Obama supporters do even better, including Steven Spielberg, who makes $110 million a year; George Clooney, $25 million; Matt Damon, $24 million; Will Smith, $31 million -- and good for them. CBS News reportedly gave Katie Couric a five-year contract making $46,149 per evening news broadcast. So Ms. Couric receives more for 20-odd minutes of teleprompter reading than the AAS of U.S. workers. You suppose CBS News has aired any stories on the disparity between CEO compensation and worker pay?
Where's Senator Obama going with all these sliding comparative equations? The answer is that he's appealing to class envy.
It's not as though the spread between CEO compensation and worker pay isn't already under considerable scrutiny. For a review of proposed and passed legislation pertaining to executive compensation see here. And, for a comprehensive overview of the issue you can read "Excessive CEO Pay: Background and Policy Approaches," a February 2007 publication of the Congressional Research Services (CRS). Here's a summary from that report describing how the government has been addressing the issue.
"There have been two general approaches to executive pay reform. First changes to securities laws and regulations have attempted to strengthen the bargaining position of shareholders by (1) requiring more complete and comprehensive disclosure of CEO pay, (2) making boards more responsive to shareholder interests, or (3) requiring direct shareholder approval of executive pay packages. Some of initiatives are the result of regulatory initiatives, while others are or were legislatively based. Second, Congress has tried to restrain the growth of executive pay by eliminating the tax deduction for compensation paid in excess of specific caps." (p. CRS-3)
So it's not as if Senator Obama is doing the nation a public service by surfacing an issue that's been ignored. No, he has another agenda.
Quote #1 above came from Obama's MLK Day speech wherein he said, "Unity is the great need of the hour. Unity is how we shall overcome." But exploiting class envy is not a unification tactic. It's a divisive tactic and represents the same old liberal politics of discontent. It offers no vision for the future of the nation except friction and stridency.
In the wake of Senator Clinton's attempt to exploit Obama's recent statement about small town Pennsylvanians clinging to guns and religion, Obama said, "Shame on her." In this case, it's shame on him.
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April 14, 2008
Obama Chic
By James Lewis
Geraldine Ferraro wasn't quite right: It's not just Obama's race that has made him the frontrunner on the Left. It's his chic-ness.
It helps that Senator Obama is "international" and half black, but don't ignore his youth, his sonorous voice and skinniness: He's the fashion icon of the age. Shortly after Obama announced, he captured the gay vote with one photo op in a bathing suit.
If Senator Obama looked and talked like Charlie Rangel he would not be adored by millions of lovelorn liberals.
Have our greatest presidents have been chic just like Obama? There is George Washington with his wooden teeth, Abe Lincoln with his ole' prairie lawyer drawl, and Ronald Reagan with this 1950s haircut.
Still, there is something about Obama that casts a magic spell over those of a certain mindset. At Salon magazine, Walter Shapiro gushed,
"Unlike most presidential Dems in recent memory, the Illinois senator is at ease with himself -- even while bowling gutter balls in Pennsylvania."
Even flubbing a couple of bowling ball tries reflects on the man's cool. This man can do no wrong.
I have a friend who ran into Bill Clinton in the 90s one day, shook hands with the great man for a few seconds, and came away transformed. I asked him what came over him. "You don't understand!" he said. "He loved me!" So my friend voted for the Slick One, and wouldn't listen to a critical word in spite of all the scandals. True story. That's what a celebrity handshake and five seconds of sincere vibes can do to certain folks when dealing with a charismatic pol.
I thought it was degrading to be so easily suckered by an flaming con artist. But maybe that's the secret of the Democrats: they know their followers are looking for love. Like any good sales outfit they play to whatever their customers dream about: I care for you, yes you, personally, it's love, baby, sitting in front of your TV with 200 million other viewers. It's like the old radio preacher asking all the listeners to place both hands on their RCA Victor, bow their heads, and pray with him in person, one to one. Bill Clinton made "I care for you" work at the polls. Obama is doing it right in front of our eyes. Hillary doesn't have the mojo, no matter how hard she tries.
You have to admit that black Democrats have a point. If you are looking for a crowd charmer to mesmerize millions of gullible folks, why not choose a black guy? After all, could Obama be worse than Bill?
With the New Media finding out more about the real Obama, we are learning a lot that doesn't quite fit the manufactured image. Such as Senator Obama's notion of compassion toward white small-town Pennsylvanians and their well-known racial rage and hatred.
"... So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations..." (italics added)
Oops.
When Hillary and McCain promptly jumped on that remark as showing contempt for and ignorance about the voters, Obama dug himself a deeper hole:
"No, I'm in touch. I know exactly what's going on. I know what's going on in Pennsylvania, I know what's going on in Indiana, I know what's going on in Illinois," Mr. Obama said, his voice rising. "People are fed up, they're angry, they're frustrated, they're bitter and they want to see a change in Washington. That's why I'm running for president of the United States of America."
It's funny, those are feelings a lot of average Americans may have never noticed themselves --- it's unconscious racism, you you --- but the libs are sure that everybody is a racist out there. It's a miracle how Obama can read all those typical white minds with absolute, metaphysical certainty.
"I know exactly what's going on. I know what's going on in Pennsylvania, I know what's going on in Indiana, I know what's going on in Illinois."
Call it omniscient mind-reading. It's a liberal faith that surpasseth human understanding. They and only they can see right through false consciousness of the masses.
If the media have their way, Obama chic will put all those oddities to rest. The elites yearn for an avatar of human perfection, and Hillary is just so Nineties, and simply not slender. Recognizing a great opportunity, they have switched from Slick Willie to Slick Barry, and are hammering poor Mrs. Clinton for just a few of the old lies -- while letting Obama get away with a bumper harvest of whoppers. Senator Clinton is correct. It's not fair!
Given that the Dems are now wedded to Obama, the new line is that "experience" doesn't matter to for a president. With Obama's brilliance, three years in the Senate is plenty of time to learn how to govern America in a time of war and economic fever. If you were hiring a Starbucks manager you'd look for experience. But President of the United States? Commander in Chief? Captain of the Ship of State? Leader of the Free World? Who cares about experience?
(Am I the only one who thinks that's certifiably insane?)
Even Camille Paglia has fallen for Obama chic. Normally one of the most level-headed people on the Left, she now thinks Obama's magic outweighs any doubts about his substance, character, or racially charged Leftism. Paglia is making the case for Obama's purity of heart is what really matters.
"... I plan to vote for Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania primary because he is a rational, centered personality who speaks the language of idealism and national unity. Obama has served longer as an elected official than Hillary. He has had experience as a grass-roots activist, and he is also a highly educated lawyer who will be a quick learner in office. His international parentage and childhood, as well as his knowledge of both Christianity and Islam, would make him the right leader at the right time. And his wife Michelle is a powerhouse.
"The Obamas represent the future, not the past."
Senator Obama is very slick indeed, a Bill Clinton for the 21st Century. Like Bill, he is good at prettifying his dubious personal associations, politicians and influence peddlers who helped him get where he is today. He is also dexterous in skating through tricky questions.
But Obama has stumbled repeatedly on basic foreign policy knowledge, where he is absolutely Carteresque. Not exactly a man for the times, as Carter's most famous foreign affairs blunder, letting Ayatollah Khomeini overthrow the Shah of Iran in 1979, is now leading to nuclear panic all over the Middle East. Carter himself is adding a new catastrophe to all the old ones by promising to shake hands with Hamas. Is this a foretaste of Barack Obama's compassionate foreign policy? He has certainly not criticized Jimmy Carter's newest desperate grab for the spotlight.
Still, we're not supposed to be looking for flaws. Let's all pretend we didn't hear Senator Obama's off-the-cuff idea of invading nuclear Pakistan, or his notion of trying to charm A'jad out of his race for nukes by being really, really nice to him. We know how susceptible the Mullahs are to sweet reason. Carter showed us how that works in 1979.
Freud said that love is a kind of madness -- you're totally convinced that your adored one makes the world go 'round. Well, liberals have done it again. They fell in love with Adlai Stevenson; they tumbled head over heels for JFK, and then Bill Clinton. Now it's Obama's turn. The only question is, how many voters will surrender to the celebrity parade? That may decide the presidential election.
It all goes to show that Finley Peter Dunne's Mister Dooley had it right: God protects orphans, drunkards, and the United States.
At least, we better hope so.
James Lewis blogs at dangeroustimes.wordpress.com
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/04/obama_chic.html at April 16, 2008 - 11:04:34 PM EDT
Return to the Article
April 15, 2008
Further clarification of Obama's remark
Thomas Lifson
Barack Obama has had several things to say about his "cling" remarks (the cling part is much worse than the bitter part, as several others have noted). But I just read (via Ed Morrissey) some other remarks in the speech. The context clarifies Obama's now-famous words: [emphasis added by Ed]
Here's how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it. And when it's delivered by - it's true that when it's delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama (laugher), then that adds another layer of skepticism.
Obama is calling the clingy folks racists. The crowd's laughter is the key, as Ed notes. These were rich San Franciscans sharing a chuckle over the crude provinciality of their fellow countrymen. The kind of people who give America such a bad name among the overseas elites. It was Obama pandering to the prejudices of his crowd. These people congratulate themselves on their own enlightenment when they support an Ivy Leaguer raised by a white grandmother in the best schools who happens to have black skin. The more open-minded of them acknowledge a certain charm to rural Appalachian culture manifested in folk arts like clog dancing.
This is the secret to the potency of this incident. Message loud and clear: Obama's friends are laughing at the majority of Americans. That is the very definition of elitist.
According to Mayhill Fowler, the blogger who broke the story, and whose crude recording of Obama's words is the only version so far available, there were other video cameras running during the speech. Somewhere, out there, there may well be another version of the event recorded in greater fidelity, and with pictures. Will one surface? Or will class solidarity among the rich prevent the proles in Pennsylvania from seeing the candidate's statement about them and judging for themselves?
Bob Herbert of the NYT thinks Obama knew what he was saying, but didn't go far enough:
Senator Obama has spent his campaign trying to dodge the race issue, which in America is like trying to dodge the wind. So when he fielded the question in San Francisco, he didn't say: "A lot of folks are not with me because I'm black - but I'm trying to make my case and bring as many around as I can."
I rarely agree with Bob Herbert, but I do wish the man who called for a national discussion would be honest and lead a conversation from his heart and soul, not from his carefully manufactured public persona. Actually, I should say personas, for the man seems to behave differently with different crowds. I bet he doesn't talk the same way at Trinity United Congregational Church as on Billionaire's Row in San Francisco.
So Barack Obama should tell us about their false consciousness, and maybe invite his former south Chicago neighbor Thomas Frank to tell them What's the Matter with Kansas, Midwestern and Pennsyslvanian small towns, and pretty much most of flyover country.
Hat tip: Ed Lasky
illustration by Otto Veblin
Posted at 01:35 PM | Email | Permalink
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/04/further_clarification_of_obama.html at April 16, 2008 - 11:07:04 PM EDT
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
THE HOLLOW MEN
Barack Obama, The Big Talker, Is A Living Lie
By THOMAS SOWELL | Posted Tuesday, April 15, 2008 4:30 PM PT
An e-mail from a reader said that, while Hillary Clinton tells lies, Barack Obama is himself a lie. That is becoming painfully apparent with each new revelation of how drastically his carefully crafted image this election year contrasts with what he has actually been saying and doing for many years.
Sen. Obama's election-year image is that of a man who can bring the country together, overcoming differences of party or race, as well as solving our international problems by talking with Iran and other countries with which we are at odds, and performing other miscellaneous miracles as needed.
There is, of course, not a speck of evidence that Obama has ever transcended party differences in the United States Senate. Voting records analyzed by the National Journal show him to be the farthest left of anyone in the Senate. Nor has he sponsored any significant bipartisan legislation — or any other significant legislation, for that matter.
Obama is all talk — glib talk, exciting talk, confident talk, but still just talk. Some of his recent talk has stirred up controversy because it revealed yet another blatant contradiction between Obama's public image and his reality.
Speaking privately to supporters in heavily left-liberal San Francisco, Obama let down his hair and described working class people in Pennsylvania as so "bitter" that they "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them."
Like so much that Obama has said and done over the years, this is standard stuff on the far left, where guns and religion are regarded as signs of psychological dysfunction — and where opinions different from those of the left are ascribed to emotions ("bitter" in this case), rather than to arguments that need to be answered.
Like so many others on the left, Obama rejects "stereotypes" when they are stereotypes he doesn't like but blithely throws around his own stereotypes about "a typical white person" or "bitter" gun-toting, religious and racist working-class people.
In politics, the clearer a statement is, the more certain it is to be followed by a "clarification," when people react adversely to what was plainly said. Obama and his supporters were still busy "clarifying" Jeremiah Wright's very plain statements when it suddenly became necessary to "clarify" Obama's own statements in San Francisco.
People who have been cheering whistle-blowers for years have suddenly denounced the person who blew the whistle on what Obama said in private that is so contradictory to what he has been saying in public.
However inconsistent Obama's words, his behavior has been remarkably consistent over the years. He has sought out and joined with the radical, anti-Western left, whether Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers of the terrorist Weatherman underground or pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli Rashid Khalidi.
Obama is also part of a long tradition on the left of being for the working class in the abstract, or as people potentially useful for the purposes of the left, but having disdain or contempt for them as human beings.
"The working class," said Karl Marx, "is revolutionary or it is nothing." That is, they mattered only insofar as they were willing to carry out the Marxist agenda.
Fabian socialist George Bernard Shaw included the working class among the "detestable" people who "have no right to live." He added: "I should despair if I did not know that they will all die presently, and that there is no need on earth why they should be replaced by people like themselves."
Similar statements on the left go back as far as Jean Jacques Rousseau in the 18th century and come forward into our own times.
It is understandable that young people are so strongly attracted to Obama. Youth is another name for inexperience — and experience is what is most needed when dealing with skillful and charismatic demagogues.
Those of us old enough to have seen the type again and again over the years can no longer find them exciting. Instead, they are as tedious as they are dangerous.
Copyright 2008 Creators Syndicate, Inc
Obama's Rev. Wright Mythology
Sunday, April 13, 2008 7:33 PM
By: Ronald Kessler Article Font Size
In his speech on race, Barack Obama tried to explain away his longtime minister’s denunciations of America by saying that for blacks of his generation, memories of “humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away.”
But an examination by Newsmax of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.’s background reveals that Obama’s characterization of his upbringing is mythology.
Described by Obama as his sounding board and mentor for more than two decades, Wright was born in Philadelphia in 1941. He lived in a racially mixed section called Germantown, which consisted of homes on broad tree-lined streets in northwest Philadelphia. The owners then were middle-class families.
For 62 years, Wright’s father, the Rev. Jeremiah Alvesta Wright, was pastor at Grace Baptist Church of Germantown. He was one of the first blacks to receive a degree from the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.
Wright’s mother, Mary Elizabeth Henderson Wright, was a schoolteacher. She was the first black to teach an academic subject at Roosevelt Junior High, the first to teach at Germantown High, and the first to teach at the Philadelphia High School for Girls. She became vice principal of Girls High in 1968.
Rather than attend the more racially mixed Germantown High School at 40 East High St., Wright traveled a few miles to the elite Central High School at 1700 West Olney Ave., graduating in 1959. Opened in 1838, Central High has a distinguished past and admits only highly-qualified applicants who are privileged to attend from all over the city. It is comparable to the Bronx High School of Science and Boston Latin School, both public schools known for academic excellence.
When Wright attended Central High, the student body was 90 percent white, according to students who attended around the same time. At least three-quarters of the students were Jewish. Former students of the period say racial tension did not exist.
Bill Cosby, who attended the school until transferring to Germantown High, has referred to Central as a “wonderful” school. In contrast to Wright, Cosby has denounced blacks who take refuge in self-pitying victimhood and seek to blame whites for problems in the black community.
“Central High was a marvelous academic environment,” says Tod Mammuth, who graduated in 1965 and is now a Philadelphia-area lawyer. “You had to have high academic credentials to be accepted and a high IQ score. Many later said it was more rigorous than college. We had no racial friction.”
In college, “I was so far advanced from the normal kids, it was almost unbelievable,” says H. Yale Gutnick, who graduated from Central High in 1960 and is a Pittsburgh lawyer. “In my freshman year, I didn’t have to do anything. I had already read most of what we had to read in English class, and I was equally advanced in the other academic areas.”
The 211th class yearbook described Wright as a respected member of the class.
“Always ready with a kind word, Jerry is one of the most congenial members of the 211,” the yearbook said. “His record in Central is a model for lower class [younger] members to emulate.”
Saying Wright can be compared to the school handbook’s description of “an educated man,” the description said Wright was “the epitome of what Central endeavors to imbue in its students.”
Next to a photo of Wright wearing black-rimmed glasses, the yearbook listed seven extra-curricular activities, including junior varsity football, band, school orchestra, and swing band.
In contrast to Wright’s comfortable upbringing, Morton A. Klein, who also attended Central High around the same time, lived in a poor, virtually all-black section called West Oak Lane.
“Four times a year, we would go to get big boxes of used clothing that was our wardrobe for the year. I never resented it. I was thrilled with my clothes,” says Klein, who was an economist in the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations and is now president of the Zionist Organization of America.
“We never went out to eat,” says Klein. “We had no car. We did not go to summer camp or take vacations. I had dozens of black friends. We played in the street every day. I remember my childhood as wonderful, and it certainly did not breed hatred of America. I loved America.”
In contrast, the man Obama describes as being like an uncle has blamed America and whites for starting the AIDS virus to kill off blacks, training professional killers, importing drugs, and creating a racist society to oppress blacks.
“The government gives them drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law, and then wants to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, not ‘God Bless America’ — God damn America,” Wright has said.
In a similar vein, Michelle Obama has said she is proud of America for the first time. Last week, Obama said Americans in small towns are “bitter” and cling in frustration to “guns, or religion, or antipathy to people who aren’t like them...”
In his speech on race, Obama sought to evoke sympathy for Wright. He described 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...”
Obama said this was “the reality in which Rev. 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....Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of 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.”
In retirement, Wright will continue a life of privilege that dates back to Central High. As a retirement gift, Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ is building him a million-dollar home abutting Odyssey Country Club and Golf Course in the nearly all-white Chicago suburb of Tinley Park. The home sits on land the pastor purchased in 2004 for $345,000. In December 2006, Wright sold the land to his church, which took out a $1.6 million mortgage on the property. In April 2007, the church applied for a building permit for the brick and stone structure.
Wright’s new home has 10,340 square feet of space, about four times the size of a typical suburban house. It includes four bedrooms, an elevator, an exercise room, and a four-car garage.
Rather than being a victim of oppression of blacks, as Obama has claimed, Wright is a symbol of the American dream. Rather than meriting sympathy, he exemplifies what my friend Fox News contributor Juan Williams describes as black leaders who orchestrate support for themselves by manipulating blacks into seeing themselves as victims, creating a black “culture of failure.”
Obama’s attempt to excuse Wright’s hate-America rhetoric by deceptively describing his personal history and his failure to condemn him as a bigot speak volumes about the candidate’s own character and fitness to lead the country.
Fox anchors O'Reilly and Hannity fire back at Wright
Chicago Sun-Times
PALLASCH: Conservative Fox News talk show hosts Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity hit back at Barack Obama's retired pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright Monday for his weekend comments criticizing them at appellate Justice Eugene Pincham's funeral. "Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the church pews, Rev. Jeremiah Wright's back again," said O'Reilly. O'Reilly has bashed Wright since video surfaced three weeks ago of Wright's sermons criticizing American foreign policy as contributing to the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, including such controversial quotes from Wright as, "God Bless America? No, God damn America!" O'Reilly and Hannity have blasted Wright as "anti-American" for those comments. "Come back on the program, Rev. Wright," Hannity dared. Coming out of his retirement Saturday to preside at Pincham's funeral Saturday, Wright said Pincham's faith wasn't the "you're either with us or against us" variety. "Fox News can't understand that. Bill O'Reilly will never get that. Sean Hannity's stupid fantasy will keep him forever stuck on stupid when it comes to comprehending how you can love a brother who does not believe what you believe," the Sun-Times reported Sunday. On his Monday night show, O'Reilly said, "I don't think he likes me very much . . . [but] I don't know what his beef is with me." O'Reilly's guest commentator Marc Lamont Hill of Temple University told O'Reilly that Wright's beef with him was that O'Reilly misrepresented his criticism of American foreign policy as criticism of America. "I have heard you say people [who disagree with you] don't love America," Hill said.
>> Read more at Illinois News Page
Obama hits back with sarcasm, makes fun of Clinton 'talking like she's Annie Oakley'
Chicago Sun-Times
Democrat Barack Obama lashed out Sunday at rival Hillary Rodham Clinton, mocking her vocal support for gun rights and saying her record in the Senate and as first lady belied her stated commitment to working class voters. "She knows better. Shame on her. Shame on her," Obama told an audience at a union hall here. The Illinois senator has spent three days on the defensive after comments he made at a San Francisco fund-raiser were disclosed that suggested working class people are bitter about their economic circumstances and "cling to guns and religion" as a result. Obama reiterated his regret for his choice of words at the fund-raiser but suggested they had been twisted. He said he'd expected blow back from GOP nominee-in-waiting John McCain, but had been "a little disappointed" to be criticized by Clinton. Then, laughing along with the union audience, Obama noted that Clinton seemed much more interested in guns since he made his comments than she had in the past. "She is running around talking about how this is an insult to sportsmen, how she values the Second Amendment. She's talking like she's Annie Oakley," Obama said, invoking the famed female sharpshooter. He continued: "Hillary Clinton is out there like she's on the duck blind every Sunday. She's packing a six-shooter. Come on, she knows better."
>> Read more at Illinois News Page
By THOMAS SOWELL | Posted Tuesday, April 15, 2008 4:30 PM PT
An e-mail from a reader said that, while Hillary Clinton tells lies, Barack Obama is himself a lie. That is becoming painfully apparent with each new revelation of how drastically his carefully crafted image this election year contrasts with what he has actually been saying and doing for many years.
Sen. Obama's election-year image is that of a man who can bring the country together, overcoming differences of party or race, as well as solving our international problems by talking with Iran and other countries with which we are at odds, and performing other miscellaneous miracles as needed.
There is, of course, not a speck of evidence that Obama has ever transcended party differences in the United States Senate. Voting records analyzed by the National Journal show him to be the farthest left of anyone in the Senate. Nor has he sponsored any significant bipartisan legislation — or any other significant legislation, for that matter.
Obama is all talk — glib talk, exciting talk, confident talk, but still just talk. Some of his recent talk has stirred up controversy because it revealed yet another blatant contradiction between Obama's public image and his reality.
Speaking privately to supporters in heavily left-liberal San Francisco, Obama let down his hair and described working class people in Pennsylvania as so "bitter" that they "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them."
Like so much that Obama has said and done over the years, this is standard stuff on the far left, where guns and religion are regarded as signs of psychological dysfunction — and where opinions different from those of the left are ascribed to emotions ("bitter" in this case), rather than to arguments that need to be answered.
Like so many others on the left, Obama rejects "stereotypes" when they are stereotypes he doesn't like but blithely throws around his own stereotypes about "a typical white person" or "bitter" gun-toting, religious and racist working-class people.
In politics, the clearer a statement is, the more certain it is to be followed by a "clarification," when people react adversely to what was plainly said. Obama and his supporters were still busy "clarifying" Jeremiah Wright's very plain statements when it suddenly became necessary to "clarify" Obama's own statements in San Francisco.
People who have been cheering whistle-blowers for years have suddenly denounced the person who blew the whistle on what Obama said in private that is so contradictory to what he has been saying in public.
However inconsistent Obama's words, his behavior has been remarkably consistent over the years. He has sought out and joined with the radical, anti-Western left, whether Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers of the terrorist Weatherman underground or pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli Rashid Khalidi.
Obama is also part of a long tradition on the left of being for the working class in the abstract, or as people potentially useful for the purposes of the left, but having disdain or contempt for them as human beings.
"The working class," said Karl Marx, "is revolutionary or it is nothing." That is, they mattered only insofar as they were willing to carry out the Marxist agenda.
Fabian socialist George Bernard Shaw included the working class among the "detestable" people who "have no right to live." He added: "I should despair if I did not know that they will all die presently, and that there is no need on earth why they should be replaced by people like themselves."
Similar statements on the left go back as far as Jean Jacques Rousseau in the 18th century and come forward into our own times.
It is understandable that young people are so strongly attracted to Obama. Youth is another name for inexperience — and experience is what is most needed when dealing with skillful and charismatic demagogues.
Those of us old enough to have seen the type again and again over the years can no longer find them exciting. Instead, they are as tedious as they are dangerous.
Copyright 2008 Creators Syndicate, Inc
Obama's Rev. Wright Mythology
Sunday, April 13, 2008 7:33 PM
By: Ronald Kessler Article Font Size
In his speech on race, Barack Obama tried to explain away his longtime minister’s denunciations of America by saying that for blacks of his generation, memories of “humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away.”
But an examination by Newsmax of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.’s background reveals that Obama’s characterization of his upbringing is mythology.
Described by Obama as his sounding board and mentor for more than two decades, Wright was born in Philadelphia in 1941. He lived in a racially mixed section called Germantown, which consisted of homes on broad tree-lined streets in northwest Philadelphia. The owners then were middle-class families.
For 62 years, Wright’s father, the Rev. Jeremiah Alvesta Wright, was pastor at Grace Baptist Church of Germantown. He was one of the first blacks to receive a degree from the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.
Wright’s mother, Mary Elizabeth Henderson Wright, was a schoolteacher. She was the first black to teach an academic subject at Roosevelt Junior High, the first to teach at Germantown High, and the first to teach at the Philadelphia High School for Girls. She became vice principal of Girls High in 1968.
Rather than attend the more racially mixed Germantown High School at 40 East High St., Wright traveled a few miles to the elite Central High School at 1700 West Olney Ave., graduating in 1959. Opened in 1838, Central High has a distinguished past and admits only highly-qualified applicants who are privileged to attend from all over the city. It is comparable to the Bronx High School of Science and Boston Latin School, both public schools known for academic excellence.
When Wright attended Central High, the student body was 90 percent white, according to students who attended around the same time. At least three-quarters of the students were Jewish. Former students of the period say racial tension did not exist.
Bill Cosby, who attended the school until transferring to Germantown High, has referred to Central as a “wonderful” school. In contrast to Wright, Cosby has denounced blacks who take refuge in self-pitying victimhood and seek to blame whites for problems in the black community.
“Central High was a marvelous academic environment,” says Tod Mammuth, who graduated in 1965 and is now a Philadelphia-area lawyer. “You had to have high academic credentials to be accepted and a high IQ score. Many later said it was more rigorous than college. We had no racial friction.”
In college, “I was so far advanced from the normal kids, it was almost unbelievable,” says H. Yale Gutnick, who graduated from Central High in 1960 and is a Pittsburgh lawyer. “In my freshman year, I didn’t have to do anything. I had already read most of what we had to read in English class, and I was equally advanced in the other academic areas.”
The 211th class yearbook described Wright as a respected member of the class.
“Always ready with a kind word, Jerry is one of the most congenial members of the 211,” the yearbook said. “His record in Central is a model for lower class [younger] members to emulate.”
Saying Wright can be compared to the school handbook’s description of “an educated man,” the description said Wright was “the epitome of what Central endeavors to imbue in its students.”
Next to a photo of Wright wearing black-rimmed glasses, the yearbook listed seven extra-curricular activities, including junior varsity football, band, school orchestra, and swing band.
In contrast to Wright’s comfortable upbringing, Morton A. Klein, who also attended Central High around the same time, lived in a poor, virtually all-black section called West Oak Lane.
“Four times a year, we would go to get big boxes of used clothing that was our wardrobe for the year. I never resented it. I was thrilled with my clothes,” says Klein, who was an economist in the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations and is now president of the Zionist Organization of America.
“We never went out to eat,” says Klein. “We had no car. We did not go to summer camp or take vacations. I had dozens of black friends. We played in the street every day. I remember my childhood as wonderful, and it certainly did not breed hatred of America. I loved America.”
In contrast, the man Obama describes as being like an uncle has blamed America and whites for starting the AIDS virus to kill off blacks, training professional killers, importing drugs, and creating a racist society to oppress blacks.
“The government gives them drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law, and then wants to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, not ‘God Bless America’ — God damn America,” Wright has said.
In a similar vein, Michelle Obama has said she is proud of America for the first time. Last week, Obama said Americans in small towns are “bitter” and cling in frustration to “guns, or religion, or antipathy to people who aren’t like them...”
In his speech on race, Obama sought to evoke sympathy for Wright. He described 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...”
Obama said this was “the reality in which Rev. 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....Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of 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.”
In retirement, Wright will continue a life of privilege that dates back to Central High. As a retirement gift, Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ is building him a million-dollar home abutting Odyssey Country Club and Golf Course in the nearly all-white Chicago suburb of Tinley Park. The home sits on land the pastor purchased in 2004 for $345,000. In December 2006, Wright sold the land to his church, which took out a $1.6 million mortgage on the property. In April 2007, the church applied for a building permit for the brick and stone structure.
Wright’s new home has 10,340 square feet of space, about four times the size of a typical suburban house. It includes four bedrooms, an elevator, an exercise room, and a four-car garage.
Rather than being a victim of oppression of blacks, as Obama has claimed, Wright is a symbol of the American dream. Rather than meriting sympathy, he exemplifies what my friend Fox News contributor Juan Williams describes as black leaders who orchestrate support for themselves by manipulating blacks into seeing themselves as victims, creating a black “culture of failure.”
Obama’s attempt to excuse Wright’s hate-America rhetoric by deceptively describing his personal history and his failure to condemn him as a bigot speak volumes about the candidate’s own character and fitness to lead the country.
Fox anchors O'Reilly and Hannity fire back at Wright
Chicago Sun-Times
PALLASCH: Conservative Fox News talk show hosts Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity hit back at Barack Obama's retired pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright Monday for his weekend comments criticizing them at appellate Justice Eugene Pincham's funeral. "Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the church pews, Rev. Jeremiah Wright's back again," said O'Reilly. O'Reilly has bashed Wright since video surfaced three weeks ago of Wright's sermons criticizing American foreign policy as contributing to the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, including such controversial quotes from Wright as, "God Bless America? No, God damn America!" O'Reilly and Hannity have blasted Wright as "anti-American" for those comments. "Come back on the program, Rev. Wright," Hannity dared. Coming out of his retirement Saturday to preside at Pincham's funeral Saturday, Wright said Pincham's faith wasn't the "you're either with us or against us" variety. "Fox News can't understand that. Bill O'Reilly will never get that. Sean Hannity's stupid fantasy will keep him forever stuck on stupid when it comes to comprehending how you can love a brother who does not believe what you believe," the Sun-Times reported Sunday. On his Monday night show, O'Reilly said, "I don't think he likes me very much . . . [but] I don't know what his beef is with me." O'Reilly's guest commentator Marc Lamont Hill of Temple University told O'Reilly that Wright's beef with him was that O'Reilly misrepresented his criticism of American foreign policy as criticism of America. "I have heard you say people [who disagree with you] don't love America," Hill said.
>> Read more at Illinois News Page
Obama hits back with sarcasm, makes fun of Clinton 'talking like she's Annie Oakley'
Chicago Sun-Times
Democrat Barack Obama lashed out Sunday at rival Hillary Rodham Clinton, mocking her vocal support for gun rights and saying her record in the Senate and as first lady belied her stated commitment to working class voters. "She knows better. Shame on her. Shame on her," Obama told an audience at a union hall here. The Illinois senator has spent three days on the defensive after comments he made at a San Francisco fund-raiser were disclosed that suggested working class people are bitter about their economic circumstances and "cling to guns and religion" as a result. Obama reiterated his regret for his choice of words at the fund-raiser but suggested they had been twisted. He said he'd expected blow back from GOP nominee-in-waiting John McCain, but had been "a little disappointed" to be criticized by Clinton. Then, laughing along with the union audience, Obama noted that Clinton seemed much more interested in guns since he made his comments than she had in the past. "She is running around talking about how this is an insult to sportsmen, how she values the Second Amendment. She's talking like she's Annie Oakley," Obama said, invoking the famed female sharpshooter. He continued: "Hillary Clinton is out there like she's on the duck blind every Sunday. She's packing a six-shooter. Come on, she knows better."
>> Read more at Illinois News Page
Saturday, April 12, 2008
SLICK WILLIE, JR
Apr 12, 12:15 PM EDT
Obama concedes remarks were ill chosen
By JIM KUHNHENN and CHARLES BABINGTON
Associated Press WriterS
MUNCIE, Ind. (AP) -- Democrat Barack Obama on Saturday conceded that comments he made about bitter working class voters who "cling to guns or religion" were ill chosen, as he tried to stem a burst of complaints that he is condescending.
"I didn't say it as well as I should have," he said.
As Obama tried to quell the furor, presidential rival Hillary Rodham Clinton hit him with one of her lengthiest and most pointed criticisms to date.
"Senator Obama's remarks were elitist and out of touch," she said, campaigning about an hour away in Indianapolis. "They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans."
At issue are comments Obama made privately at a fundraiser in San Francisco last Sunday. He explained his troubles winning over working class voters, saying they have become frustrated with economic conditions:
"It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
The comments, posted on the Huffington Post political Web site Friday, set off a storm of criticism from Clinton, Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain and other GOP officials. It threatened to highlight an Obama Achilles heel - the image that the Harvard-trained lawyer is arrogant, aloof and carries himself with an air of superiority.
His campaign scrambled to defuse possible damage caused with working class voters that Obama needs to win in upcoming primaries in Pennsylvania and Indiana.
"Lately there has been a little typical sort of political flare up because I said something that everybody knows is true, which is that there are a whole bunch of folks in small towns in Pennsylvania, in towns right here in Indiana, in my hometown in Illinois who are bitter," Obama said Saturday morning at Ball State University. "They are angry. They feel like they have been left behind. They feel like nobody is paying attention to what they're going through."
"So I said, well you know, when you're bitter you turn to what you can count on. So people, they vote about guns, or they take comfort from their faith and their family and their community. And they get mad about illegal immigrants who are coming over to this country."
After acknowledging that his previous remarks could have been better phrased, he added:
"The truth is that these traditions that are passed on from generation to generation, those are important. That's what sustains us. But what is absolutely true is that people don't feel like they are being listened to.
"And so they pray and they count on each other and they count on their families. You know this in your own lives, and what we need is a government that is actually paying attention. Government that is fighting for working people day in and day out making sure that we are trying to allow them to live out the American dream."
But Clinton struck hard, calling Obama's comments "demeaning." The increased attack showed that Clinton is eager to hold on to her working class support and is looking to open new questions about Obama's judgment that would make voters and Democratic officials reconsider their support for the Illinois senator.
"I was raised with Midwestern values and an unshakable faith in America and its policies," she said. "Now, Americans who believe in the Second Amendment believe it's a matter of constitutional right. Americans who believe in God believe it's a matter of personal faith.
"I grew up in a church-going family, a family that believed in the importance of living out and expressing our faith. The people of faith I know don't 'cling' to religion because they're bitter. People embrace faith not because they are materially poor, but because they are spiritually rich.
"Our faith is the faith of our parents and our grandparents. It is a fundamental expression of who we are and what we believe."
"People don't need a president who looks down on them," she said. "They need a president who stands up for them."
One of Clinton's staunchest supporters, Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., acknowledged there was some truth in Obama's remarks. But Republicans would use them against him anyway, Bayh said.
"We do have economic hard times, and that does lead to a frustration and some justifiable anger, it's true," Bayh told reporters after introducing Clinton in Indianapolis. "But I think you're on dangerous ground when you morph that into suggesting that people's cultural values whether it's religion or hunting and fishing or concern about trade are premised solely upon those kinds of anxieties and don't have a legitimate foundation independent of that."
---
Associated Press Writer Charles Babington contributed from Indianapolis.
© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy.
Obama concedes remarks were ill chosen
By JIM KUHNHENN and CHARLES BABINGTON
Associated Press WriterS
MUNCIE, Ind. (AP) -- Democrat Barack Obama on Saturday conceded that comments he made about bitter working class voters who "cling to guns or religion" were ill chosen, as he tried to stem a burst of complaints that he is condescending.
"I didn't say it as well as I should have," he said.
As Obama tried to quell the furor, presidential rival Hillary Rodham Clinton hit him with one of her lengthiest and most pointed criticisms to date.
"Senator Obama's remarks were elitist and out of touch," she said, campaigning about an hour away in Indianapolis. "They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans."
At issue are comments Obama made privately at a fundraiser in San Francisco last Sunday. He explained his troubles winning over working class voters, saying they have become frustrated with economic conditions:
"It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
The comments, posted on the Huffington Post political Web site Friday, set off a storm of criticism from Clinton, Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain and other GOP officials. It threatened to highlight an Obama Achilles heel - the image that the Harvard-trained lawyer is arrogant, aloof and carries himself with an air of superiority.
His campaign scrambled to defuse possible damage caused with working class voters that Obama needs to win in upcoming primaries in Pennsylvania and Indiana.
"Lately there has been a little typical sort of political flare up because I said something that everybody knows is true, which is that there are a whole bunch of folks in small towns in Pennsylvania, in towns right here in Indiana, in my hometown in Illinois who are bitter," Obama said Saturday morning at Ball State University. "They are angry. They feel like they have been left behind. They feel like nobody is paying attention to what they're going through."
"So I said, well you know, when you're bitter you turn to what you can count on. So people, they vote about guns, or they take comfort from their faith and their family and their community. And they get mad about illegal immigrants who are coming over to this country."
After acknowledging that his previous remarks could have been better phrased, he added:
"The truth is that these traditions that are passed on from generation to generation, those are important. That's what sustains us. But what is absolutely true is that people don't feel like they are being listened to.
"And so they pray and they count on each other and they count on their families. You know this in your own lives, and what we need is a government that is actually paying attention. Government that is fighting for working people day in and day out making sure that we are trying to allow them to live out the American dream."
But Clinton struck hard, calling Obama's comments "demeaning." The increased attack showed that Clinton is eager to hold on to her working class support and is looking to open new questions about Obama's judgment that would make voters and Democratic officials reconsider their support for the Illinois senator.
"I was raised with Midwestern values and an unshakable faith in America and its policies," she said. "Now, Americans who believe in the Second Amendment believe it's a matter of constitutional right. Americans who believe in God believe it's a matter of personal faith.
"I grew up in a church-going family, a family that believed in the importance of living out and expressing our faith. The people of faith I know don't 'cling' to religion because they're bitter. People embrace faith not because they are materially poor, but because they are spiritually rich.
"Our faith is the faith of our parents and our grandparents. It is a fundamental expression of who we are and what we believe."
"People don't need a president who looks down on them," she said. "They need a president who stands up for them."
One of Clinton's staunchest supporters, Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., acknowledged there was some truth in Obama's remarks. But Republicans would use them against him anyway, Bayh said.
"We do have economic hard times, and that does lead to a frustration and some justifiable anger, it's true," Bayh told reporters after introducing Clinton in Indianapolis. "But I think you're on dangerous ground when you morph that into suggesting that people's cultural values whether it's religion or hunting and fishing or concern about trade are premised solely upon those kinds of anxieties and don't have a legitimate foundation independent of that."
---
Associated Press Writer Charles Babington contributed from Indianapolis.
© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
CHAPTER NEXT
Dreams From My Father, Lame Excuses From My Grandfather
by Ann Coulter (more by this author)
Posted 04/09/2008 ET
Updated 04/09/2008 ET
Since a Chinese graduate student at Columbia University, Minghui Yu, was killed last Friday when black youths violently set upon him, sending him running into traffic to escape, I think B. Hussein Obama ought to start referring to the mind-set of the "typical Asian person."
As of Wednesday, police had no motive for the attack, and witnesses said they heard no demand for money or anything else. The Associated Press reports that the assailant simply said to his friend, "Watch what I do to this guy" before punching Yu.
Meanwhile, let's revisit the story about Obama's grandmother being guilty of thinking like a "typical white person." As recounted in Obama's autobiography, the only evidence that his grandmother feared black men comes from Obama's good-for-nothing, chronically unemployed white grandfather, who accuses Grandma of racism as his third excuse not to get dressed and drive her to work.
His grandmother wanted a ride to work at 6:30 in the morning because, the day before, she had been aggressively solicited by a homeless man at the bus stop. On her account, the panhandler "was very aggressive, Barry. Very aggressive. I gave him a dollar and he kept asking. If the bus hadn't come, I think he might have hit me over the head."
Even Obama's shiftless grandfather didn't play the race card until pretty far into the argument over whether he would drive Grandma to work. First, the good-for-nothing grandfather told Obama that Grandma was just trying to guilt him into driving her, saying, "(S)he just wants me to feel bad."
Next, he complained about his non-work routine being disrupted, saying: "She's been catching the bus ever since she started at the bank. ... And now, just because she gets pestered a little, she wants to change everything!"
Only after Obama had offered to drive his grandmother to work himself and it was becoming increasingly clear what a selfish lout the grandfather was, did Grandpa produce his trump card. The reason he wouldn't get his lazy butt dressed and drive Grandma to work was ... she was a racist!
As Obama recounts it, on Grandpa's third try at an excuse, he told Obama: "You know why she's so scared this time? I'll tell you why. Before you came in, she told me the fella was black. That's the real reason she's bothered. And I just don't think that's right." So I guess I'll be heading back to the sack now!
That makes sense. It certainly never bothers me when crazy white people harass and threaten me.
This is Obama's own account of what happened, which -- as anyone can see -- consisted of his slacker grandfather making a series of excuses to avoid having to drive the sole bread-earner in the family to work.
But Obama says, "The words were like a fist in my stomach, and I wobbled to regain my composure." (It was as if he had been punched by an aggressive panhandler at a bus stop!) And not because his grandfather's sorry excuse reminded him that he came from a long line of callow, worthless men, both black and white.
No, Obama swallowed his grandfather's pathetic excuse hook, line and sinker, leading Obama to a reverie about his grandparents: "I knew that men who might easily have been my brothers could still inspire their rawest fears." That's true -- assuming his brothers and sisters were menacing people at bus stops.
How deranged would you have to be to cite this incident as evidence that your grandmother thought like a "typical white person" -- as opposed to your grandfather being worthless and lazy? For those keeping score, Obama is aghast at his grandmother's alleged racism, but had no problem with Jeremiah Wright's manifest racism.
If Obama is sent reeling by the mere words of an elderly white woman, how is he going to negotiate with a guy like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? What if Ahmadinejad calls him "booger-face"? Will he run crying from the table?
Your grandmother wasn't a racist, Barack. Your grandpa was just a loser. Can we wrap up our national conversation about race now? I think we'd like to move onto questions about your stupid plan to hold talks with Iran.
Ann Coulter is Legal Affairs Correspondent for HUMAN EVENTS and author of "High Crimes and Misdemeanors," "Slander," ""How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)," "Godless," and most recently, "If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans."
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Copyright © 2008 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.
by Ann Coulter (more by this author)
Posted 04/09/2008 ET
Updated 04/09/2008 ET
Since a Chinese graduate student at Columbia University, Minghui Yu, was killed last Friday when black youths violently set upon him, sending him running into traffic to escape, I think B. Hussein Obama ought to start referring to the mind-set of the "typical Asian person."
As of Wednesday, police had no motive for the attack, and witnesses said they heard no demand for money or anything else. The Associated Press reports that the assailant simply said to his friend, "Watch what I do to this guy" before punching Yu.
Meanwhile, let's revisit the story about Obama's grandmother being guilty of thinking like a "typical white person." As recounted in Obama's autobiography, the only evidence that his grandmother feared black men comes from Obama's good-for-nothing, chronically unemployed white grandfather, who accuses Grandma of racism as his third excuse not to get dressed and drive her to work.
His grandmother wanted a ride to work at 6:30 in the morning because, the day before, she had been aggressively solicited by a homeless man at the bus stop. On her account, the panhandler "was very aggressive, Barry. Very aggressive. I gave him a dollar and he kept asking. If the bus hadn't come, I think he might have hit me over the head."
Even Obama's shiftless grandfather didn't play the race card until pretty far into the argument over whether he would drive Grandma to work. First, the good-for-nothing grandfather told Obama that Grandma was just trying to guilt him into driving her, saying, "(S)he just wants me to feel bad."
Next, he complained about his non-work routine being disrupted, saying: "She's been catching the bus ever since she started at the bank. ... And now, just because she gets pestered a little, she wants to change everything!"
Only after Obama had offered to drive his grandmother to work himself and it was becoming increasingly clear what a selfish lout the grandfather was, did Grandpa produce his trump card. The reason he wouldn't get his lazy butt dressed and drive Grandma to work was ... she was a racist!
As Obama recounts it, on Grandpa's third try at an excuse, he told Obama: "You know why she's so scared this time? I'll tell you why. Before you came in, she told me the fella was black. That's the real reason she's bothered. And I just don't think that's right." So I guess I'll be heading back to the sack now!
That makes sense. It certainly never bothers me when crazy white people harass and threaten me.
This is Obama's own account of what happened, which -- as anyone can see -- consisted of his slacker grandfather making a series of excuses to avoid having to drive the sole bread-earner in the family to work.
But Obama says, "The words were like a fist in my stomach, and I wobbled to regain my composure." (It was as if he had been punched by an aggressive panhandler at a bus stop!) And not because his grandfather's sorry excuse reminded him that he came from a long line of callow, worthless men, both black and white.
No, Obama swallowed his grandfather's pathetic excuse hook, line and sinker, leading Obama to a reverie about his grandparents: "I knew that men who might easily have been my brothers could still inspire their rawest fears." That's true -- assuming his brothers and sisters were menacing people at bus stops.
How deranged would you have to be to cite this incident as evidence that your grandmother thought like a "typical white person" -- as opposed to your grandfather being worthless and lazy? For those keeping score, Obama is aghast at his grandmother's alleged racism, but had no problem with Jeremiah Wright's manifest racism.
If Obama is sent reeling by the mere words of an elderly white woman, how is he going to negotiate with a guy like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? What if Ahmadinejad calls him "booger-face"? Will he run crying from the table?
Your grandmother wasn't a racist, Barack. Your grandpa was just a loser. Can we wrap up our national conversation about race now? I think we'd like to move onto questions about your stupid plan to hold talks with Iran.
Ann Coulter is Legal Affairs Correspondent for HUMAN EVENTS and author of "High Crimes and Misdemeanors," "Slander," ""How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)," "Godless," and most recently, "If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans."
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Copyright © 2008 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
SSAME CRAP, DIFFERENT DAY
Below please find a special message from one of our advertisers, Grassfire. From time to time, we receive opportunities we believe you as a valued customer may want to know about. Please note that the following message does not necessarily reflect the editorial positions of Human Events.
Special Report:
How Congress, the President and the Candidates
are Destroying the Border Fence
It is now clear that if any of the current presidential front-runners have their way, virtually no fence would be built and the Secure Fence Act would likely be ignored altogether!
For example, Barack Obama -- who is steamrolling to the Democratic
Obama: "I will reverse" border fence policy. (view video)
nomination -- is an adamant opponent of the current border fence law.
During a recent debate, Obama sided with Hillary Clinton in flatly rejecting the border fence. "I will reverse the policy," Obama said of the Secure Fence Act's double-layer fence mandate.
Please click here to view the video.
++ Congress gutted the Secure Fence Act!
Even worse -- just before Christmas Congress totally gutted the Secure Fence Act. That's right -- buried in the omnibus spending bill was a little-known amendment that released our government from any legal obligation to build the double-layer fence mandated by the Secure Fence Act! (See Grassfire.org's expose.)
And now the Bush Administration is refusing to build a real fence while touting its bogus "virtual" fence that the GAO says is a total failure!
The fact is, the border fence we worked so hard for is being gutted, ignored and blatantly rejected by the White House, Congress and the presidential candidates. The only way we will ever see our borders secured is for you and I to act today.
+ + Immediate action needed to Save the Border Fence
Two courageous Congressmen -- Duncan Hunter and Walter Jones -- have stepped forward and drafted legislation to Reinstate the Secure Fence Act's specific mandates.
Grassfire.org has launched a petition in support of these efforts to Reinstate the Secure Fence Act.
In just a few days, 85,000 citizens have signed. Please click here to add your name to the petition to Reinstate the Secure Fence Act and build a real border fence:
Let's face it... "President Obama" will never build a fence. He is on record saying so!
And we can't expect "President McCain" to build a real fence when he authored and championed the massive amnesty bill.
We must force Congress to pass a bill immediately to Reinstate the Secure Fence Act.
We must take this battle into our own hands!
Please sign the petition so I can include your name in our next delivery to members of Congress.
Steve Elliott, President
Grassfire.org
P.S: We have a press conference with members of Congress scheduled on Capitol Hill and I need to know if you want your name included on this important petition to Reinstate the Secure Fence Act. Click here to sign.
Special Report:
How Congress, the President and the Candidates
are Destroying the Border Fence
It is now clear that if any of the current presidential front-runners have their way, virtually no fence would be built and the Secure Fence Act would likely be ignored altogether!
For example, Barack Obama -- who is steamrolling to the Democratic
Obama: "I will reverse" border fence policy. (view video)
nomination -- is an adamant opponent of the current border fence law.
During a recent debate, Obama sided with Hillary Clinton in flatly rejecting the border fence. "I will reverse the policy," Obama said of the Secure Fence Act's double-layer fence mandate.
Please click here to view the video.
++ Congress gutted the Secure Fence Act!
Even worse -- just before Christmas Congress totally gutted the Secure Fence Act. That's right -- buried in the omnibus spending bill was a little-known amendment that released our government from any legal obligation to build the double-layer fence mandated by the Secure Fence Act! (See Grassfire.org's expose.)
And now the Bush Administration is refusing to build a real fence while touting its bogus "virtual" fence that the GAO says is a total failure!
The fact is, the border fence we worked so hard for is being gutted, ignored and blatantly rejected by the White House, Congress and the presidential candidates. The only way we will ever see our borders secured is for you and I to act today.
+ + Immediate action needed to Save the Border Fence
Two courageous Congressmen -- Duncan Hunter and Walter Jones -- have stepped forward and drafted legislation to Reinstate the Secure Fence Act's specific mandates.
Grassfire.org has launched a petition in support of these efforts to Reinstate the Secure Fence Act.
In just a few days, 85,000 citizens have signed. Please click here to add your name to the petition to Reinstate the Secure Fence Act and build a real border fence:
Let's face it... "President Obama" will never build a fence. He is on record saying so!
And we can't expect "President McCain" to build a real fence when he authored and championed the massive amnesty bill.
We must force Congress to pass a bill immediately to Reinstate the Secure Fence Act.
We must take this battle into our own hands!
Please sign the petition so I can include your name in our next delivery to members of Congress.
Steve Elliott, President
Grassfire.org
P.S: We have a press conference with members of Congress scheduled on Capitol Hill and I need to know if you want your name included on this important petition to Reinstate the Secure Fence Act. Click here to sign.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
NO COMMENT
Networks Ignore Revealing Obama ‘Baby’ Gaffe
Candidate doesn’t want daughters “punished with a baby.”
By Brian Fitzpatrick
Culture and Media Institute
April 2, 2008
Last Saturday afternoon, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama likened having a baby to being “punished” or contracting a sexually transmitted disease, but you’d never know it by watching network news.
This revealing remark should have been a major story, given Obama’s history as a pro-abortion advocate who, as a state legislator, refused to support a partial birth abortion ban or a law protecting babies who survive abortions.
A Nexis search, however, reveals the statement has been covered only by bloggers, talk radio, cable talk shows and Fox News. CNN broadcast the speech live.
Speaking off the cuff to a Johnstown, Pennsylvania audience, Obama said:
When it comes specifically to HIV/AIDS, the most important prevention is education, which should include abstinence education and teaching children that sex is not something casual. But it should also include other information about contraception because, look, I’ve got two daughters, nine years old and six years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby. I don’t want them punished with an STD at the age of 16.
Despite intensive coverage of the fight for the Democratic nomination, and condemnations of the remark from growing numbers of religious and pro-life organizations, we haven’t found a word about Obama’s colossal gaffe on ABC, NBC or CBS’s morning and evening news broadcasts as of the afternoon of April 2.
On Saturday evening, when the story should have been told, ABC preferred to cover Obama “playing nursemaid to a calf” and bowling. NBC discussed Obama’s retail politics in a bar and a wire factory. CBS was preempted by March Madness.
On Monday evening, both NBC and ABC led their newscasts with stories about Obama leading Hillary Clinton in polls and in fundraising. His frontrunner’s status won’t change, of course, if the networks refuse to report his troubling statements during public speeches.
This morning (April 2), CBS’s Early Show ran an interview of Obama by anchor Harry Smith. Rather than asking about the baby gaffe, Smith lobbed a few softballs:
* What is your sense from what your own people tell you about the switching that has taken place already in Pennsylvania in terms of Republicans coming over to support you?
* What do you know now that you didn't know when you announced 14 months ago?
* Are you willing to take her up on it? (Hillary Clinton’s April Fools Day offer of a “bowl-off.”)
Over on ABC, Good Morning America hosts Diane Sawyer and Robin Roberts today ironically found time to chuckle over a video clip of a baby, just learning to talk, saying “Obama.”
Does the candidate consider that little boy a “punishment?”
Brian Fitzpatrick is senior editor at the Culture and Media Institute, a division of the Media Research Center.
Send this page to a friend! (click here)
Candidate doesn’t want daughters “punished with a baby.”
By Brian Fitzpatrick
Culture and Media Institute
April 2, 2008
Last Saturday afternoon, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama likened having a baby to being “punished” or contracting a sexually transmitted disease, but you’d never know it by watching network news.
This revealing remark should have been a major story, given Obama’s history as a pro-abortion advocate who, as a state legislator, refused to support a partial birth abortion ban or a law protecting babies who survive abortions.
A Nexis search, however, reveals the statement has been covered only by bloggers, talk radio, cable talk shows and Fox News. CNN broadcast the speech live.
Speaking off the cuff to a Johnstown, Pennsylvania audience, Obama said:
When it comes specifically to HIV/AIDS, the most important prevention is education, which should include abstinence education and teaching children that sex is not something casual. But it should also include other information about contraception because, look, I’ve got two daughters, nine years old and six years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby. I don’t want them punished with an STD at the age of 16.
Despite intensive coverage of the fight for the Democratic nomination, and condemnations of the remark from growing numbers of religious and pro-life organizations, we haven’t found a word about Obama’s colossal gaffe on ABC, NBC or CBS’s morning and evening news broadcasts as of the afternoon of April 2.
On Saturday evening, when the story should have been told, ABC preferred to cover Obama “playing nursemaid to a calf” and bowling. NBC discussed Obama’s retail politics in a bar and a wire factory. CBS was preempted by March Madness.
On Monday evening, both NBC and ABC led their newscasts with stories about Obama leading Hillary Clinton in polls and in fundraising. His frontrunner’s status won’t change, of course, if the networks refuse to report his troubling statements during public speeches.
This morning (April 2), CBS’s Early Show ran an interview of Obama by anchor Harry Smith. Rather than asking about the baby gaffe, Smith lobbed a few softballs:
* What is your sense from what your own people tell you about the switching that has taken place already in Pennsylvania in terms of Republicans coming over to support you?
* What do you know now that you didn't know when you announced 14 months ago?
* Are you willing to take her up on it? (Hillary Clinton’s April Fools Day offer of a “bowl-off.”)
Over on ABC, Good Morning America hosts Diane Sawyer and Robin Roberts today ironically found time to chuckle over a video clip of a baby, just learning to talk, saying “Obama.”
Does the candidate consider that little boy a “punishment?”
Brian Fitzpatrick is senior editor at the Culture and Media Institute, a division of the Media Research Center.
Send this page to a friend! (click here)
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
MORE RACISM FROM OBAMA SLAMBAMA
Obama's Dimestore 'Mein Kampf'
by Ann Coulter (more by this author)
Posted 04/02/2008 ET
Updated 04/02/2008 ET
If characters from "The Hills" were to emote about race, I imagine it would sound like B. Hussein Obama's autobiography, "Dreams From My Father."
Has anybody read this book? Inasmuch as the book reveals Obama to be a flabbergasting lunatic, I gather the answer is no. Obama is about to be our next president: You might want to take a peek. If only people had read "Mein Kampf" ...
Nearly every page -- save the ones dedicated to cataloguing the mundane details of his life -- is bristling with anger at some imputed racist incident. The last time I heard this much race-baiting invective I was ... in my usual front-row pew, as I am every Sunday morning, at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.
Obama tells a story about taking two white friends from the high school basketball team to a "black party." Despite their deep-seated, unconscious hatred of blacks, the friends readily accepted. At the party, they managed not to scream the N-word, but instead "made some small talk, took a couple of the girls out on the dance floor."
But with his racial hair-trigger, Obama sensed the whites were not comfortable because "they kept smiling a lot." And then, in an incident reminiscent of the darkest days of the Jim Crow South ... they asked to leave after spending only about an hour at the party! It was practically an etiquette lynching!
So either they hated black people with the hot, hot hate of a thousand suns, or they were athletes who had come to a party late, after a Saturday night basketball game.
In the car on the way home, one of the friends empathizes with Obama, saying: "You know, man, that really taught me something. I mean, I can see how it must be tough for you and Ray sometimes, at school parties ... being the only black guys and all."
And thus Obama felt the cruel lash of racism! He actually writes that his response to his friend's perfectly lovely remark was: "A part of me wanted to punch him right there."
Listen, I don't want anybody telling Obama about Bill Clinton's "I feel your pain" line.
Wanting to punch his white friend in the stomach was the introductory anecdote to a full-page psychotic rant about living by "the white man's rules." (One rule he missed was: "Never punch out your empathetic white friend after dragging him to a crappy all-black party.")
Obama's gaseous disquisition on the "white man's rules" leads to this charming crescendo: "Should you refuse this defeat and lash out at your captors, they would have a name for that, too, a name that could cage you just as good. Paranoid. Militant. Violent. Nigger."
For those of you in the "When is Obama gonna play the 'N-word' card?" pool, the winner is ... Page 85! Congratulations!
When his mother expresses concern about Obama's high school friend being busted for drugs, Obama says he patted his mother's hand and told her not to worry.
This, too, prompted Obama to share with his readers a life lesson on how to handle white people: "It was usually an effective tactic, another one of those tricks I had learned: People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves. They were more than satisfied, they were relieved -- such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young black man who didn't seem angry all the time."
First of all, I note that this technique seems to be the basis of Obama's entire presidential campaign. But moreover -- he was talking about his own mother! As Obama says: "Any distinction between good and bad whites held negligible meaning." Say, do you think a white person who said that about blacks would be a leading presidential candidate?
The man is stark bonkersville.
He says the reason black people keep to themselves is that it's "easier than spending all your time mad or trying to guess whatever it was that white folks were thinking about you."
Here's a little inside scoop about white people: We're not thinking about you. Especially WASPs. We think everybody is inferior, and we are perfectly charming about it.
In college, Obama explains to a girl why he was reading Joseph Conrad's 1902 classic, "Heart of Darkness": "I read the book to help me understand just what it is that makes white people so afraid. Their demons. The way ideas get twisted around. I helps me understand how people learn to hate."
By contrast, Malcolm X's autobiography "spoke" to Obama. One line in particular "stayed with me," he says. "He spoke of a wish he'd once had, the wish that the white blood that ran through him, there by an act of violence, might somehow be expunged."
Forget Rev. Jeremiah Wright -- Wright is Booker T. Washington compared to this guy
Ann Coulter is Legal Affairs Correspondent for HUMAN EVENTS and author of "High Crimes and Misdemeanors," "Slander," ""How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)," "Godless," and most recently, "If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans."
Advertise | Privacy Policy | Terms and Conditions
Copyright © 2008 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.
by Ann Coulter (more by this author)
Posted 04/02/2008 ET
Updated 04/02/2008 ET
If characters from "The Hills" were to emote about race, I imagine it would sound like B. Hussein Obama's autobiography, "Dreams From My Father."
Has anybody read this book? Inasmuch as the book reveals Obama to be a flabbergasting lunatic, I gather the answer is no. Obama is about to be our next president: You might want to take a peek. If only people had read "Mein Kampf" ...
Nearly every page -- save the ones dedicated to cataloguing the mundane details of his life -- is bristling with anger at some imputed racist incident. The last time I heard this much race-baiting invective I was ... in my usual front-row pew, as I am every Sunday morning, at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.
Obama tells a story about taking two white friends from the high school basketball team to a "black party." Despite their deep-seated, unconscious hatred of blacks, the friends readily accepted. At the party, they managed not to scream the N-word, but instead "made some small talk, took a couple of the girls out on the dance floor."
But with his racial hair-trigger, Obama sensed the whites were not comfortable because "they kept smiling a lot." And then, in an incident reminiscent of the darkest days of the Jim Crow South ... they asked to leave after spending only about an hour at the party! It was practically an etiquette lynching!
So either they hated black people with the hot, hot hate of a thousand suns, or they were athletes who had come to a party late, after a Saturday night basketball game.
In the car on the way home, one of the friends empathizes with Obama, saying: "You know, man, that really taught me something. I mean, I can see how it must be tough for you and Ray sometimes, at school parties ... being the only black guys and all."
And thus Obama felt the cruel lash of racism! He actually writes that his response to his friend's perfectly lovely remark was: "A part of me wanted to punch him right there."
Listen, I don't want anybody telling Obama about Bill Clinton's "I feel your pain" line.
Wanting to punch his white friend in the stomach was the introductory anecdote to a full-page psychotic rant about living by "the white man's rules." (One rule he missed was: "Never punch out your empathetic white friend after dragging him to a crappy all-black party.")
Obama's gaseous disquisition on the "white man's rules" leads to this charming crescendo: "Should you refuse this defeat and lash out at your captors, they would have a name for that, too, a name that could cage you just as good. Paranoid. Militant. Violent. Nigger."
For those of you in the "When is Obama gonna play the 'N-word' card?" pool, the winner is ... Page 85! Congratulations!
When his mother expresses concern about Obama's high school friend being busted for drugs, Obama says he patted his mother's hand and told her not to worry.
This, too, prompted Obama to share with his readers a life lesson on how to handle white people: "It was usually an effective tactic, another one of those tricks I had learned: People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves. They were more than satisfied, they were relieved -- such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young black man who didn't seem angry all the time."
First of all, I note that this technique seems to be the basis of Obama's entire presidential campaign. But moreover -- he was talking about his own mother! As Obama says: "Any distinction between good and bad whites held negligible meaning." Say, do you think a white person who said that about blacks would be a leading presidential candidate?
The man is stark bonkersville.
He says the reason black people keep to themselves is that it's "easier than spending all your time mad or trying to guess whatever it was that white folks were thinking about you."
Here's a little inside scoop about white people: We're not thinking about you. Especially WASPs. We think everybody is inferior, and we are perfectly charming about it.
In college, Obama explains to a girl why he was reading Joseph Conrad's 1902 classic, "Heart of Darkness": "I read the book to help me understand just what it is that makes white people so afraid. Their demons. The way ideas get twisted around. I helps me understand how people learn to hate."
By contrast, Malcolm X's autobiography "spoke" to Obama. One line in particular "stayed with me," he says. "He spoke of a wish he'd once had, the wish that the white blood that ran through him, there by an act of violence, might somehow be expunged."
Forget Rev. Jeremiah Wright -- Wright is Booker T. Washington compared to this guy
Ann Coulter is Legal Affairs Correspondent for HUMAN EVENTS and author of "High Crimes and Misdemeanors," "Slander," ""How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)," "Godless," and most recently, "If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans."
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A RACIST FROM THE GITGO
Washington Insider with Ronald Kessler
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Obama Encourages Black Victimhood
Wednesday, March 26, 2008 7:40 AM
By: Ronald Kessler Article Font Size
If there is anything more disturbing than watching the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s paranoid denunciations of whites and America, it’s seeing the reactions of many well-educated blacks who agree with him or find ways to justify his hate-filled comments.
“I am so proud of Reverend Wright, who speaks with unreserved passion, who accepts no quarter and gives no quarter,” said former civil rights leader Lawrence Guyot of Barack Obama’s speech addressing his longtime minister’s claims that America started the AIDS virus, trains professional killers, imports drugs, and has created a racist society to keep blacks down.
Culture of Conspiracy
While some of Wright’s language is “offensive,” the “reality out of which he speaks is that black people have suffered in America and continue to suffer because of the unfairness of the system,” said professor Cheryl Sanders of the Howard University School of Divinity. The black church “has always had prophetic preachers,” she said. “Prophetic voice goes all the way back to the days of slavery, when people were protesting being in bondage. And so protest is just kind of a part of how we do ministry.”
While saying he does not believe that the government created the AIDS virus to kill blacks, as Wright has said, professor R. L’Heureux Lewis of the City College of New York gave credence to the conspiracy theory by saying that he does “respect the right of some people to question the unfettered arrival of AIDS and HIV to the community and the ravishing effects it’s had.”
Responding to my Newsmax stories about Obama and Wright going back to Jan. 7, many blacks said whites could not understand what it means to be black.
“It is not a secret that black people were slaves and that we are still victims and suffering from slavery, a black woman from Inglewood, Calif., wrote. “The pastor is just expressing a reality that we black people are going through.”
In his speech on race, Obama implicitly condoned this backward-looking perspective.
“For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years,” Obama said. "While the anger is not always productive," Obama continued, "[it is] real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.”
Yet while Wright, 66, no doubt had brushes with discrimination growing up in Philadelphia, it was nothing compared with what Condoleezza Rice faced — or, for that matter, what six million Jews who were slaughtered by Adolf Hitler faced.
In contrast to Wright, who attended an integrated school, Rice grew up in segregated Birmingham, Ala. Denise McNair, one of Rice’s friends and classmates, was one of the four girls who was killed in the Ku Klux Klan bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church.
Rice's Unbridled Courage
Rice had to sit at the back of buses. When more whites got on, the driver would move a “Colored” sign farther back in the bus, making less room for blacks. Rice could not eat at the same restaurants as whites unless the restaurant had a separate room with a separate entrance for blacks.
She was not allowed to use the same drinking fountains or public restrooms as whites. But Condi Rice, a descendant of slaves and white slave owners, had something else going for her: Her middle-class black neighborhood had developed a culture separate from the rest of the city, one that shut out the racism all around and taught children they had to be “twice as good” to pull even with whites.
Instead of teaching Rice to carry a chip on her shoulder, as she has told me, Rice’s parents amplified those positive values, giving her a strong sense of self-worth.
Rice’s father, the Rev. John W. Rice Jr., instilled in his daughter the faith that she brought with her into the White House and the State Department.
While Rice is comfortable with her own heritage and often speaks before black groups, she does not dwell on the racism she experienced growing up. Above all, Rice is proud of America and the opportunities that everyone now has. Witness the fact that she is secretary of state.
What a contrast to the poisonous atmosphere at the church that Obama has chosen to attend for more than two decades and the demagoguery of the man he calls his friend, sounding board, and mentor.
Encouraging Failure
As my friend Fox News contributor Juan Williams told me after publication of his book “Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America,” many black leaders orchestrate support for themselves by promoting victimhood, creating a black “culture of failure.”
That self-defeating attitude tells blacks, “You can’t help yourself; you can’t help your family; and therefore, all you can do is wait for the government to do something for you,” Williams says. “I think it is a message of weakness and ineffectual thinking that is absolutely crippling the poor and especially minorities in the United States.”
Sounding a similar theme in his book “Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America,” black author John McWhorter calls the culture of victimhood “therapeutic alienation,” a form of self-medication that is “disconnected from current reality” and continues to hold blacks back.
To be sure, most largely black churches preach an uplifting message.
“As a pastor of a bi-racial church, I cannot accept that Wright’s way is the right way to do ‘black church,’ the Rev. Wally Shifflett, a minister from Charlotte, N.C., wrote to me. “Sen. Obama has been wrongly accused of being a Muslim — and why should that matter? We can hardly disqualify a candidate, offhandedly, because of his or her religion. But the senator’s continued participation in a church stoked with such anti-American rhetoric should no more be acceptable than if he openly supported one of the Islamic-extremist’s madrasses that teach their young to hate Americans. Is there any difference?”
The answer, of course, is no.
Both Islamic extremism and the black cult of victimhood generate support by conjuring up largely imaginary grievances and exploiting them.
The Rev. Otis Moss III, who recently took over from Wright at Trinity United Church of Christ, continued that theme on Sunday. Referring to the media’s belated exposure of Wright’s hate sermons. Moss said the church had been the victim of a “lynching.”
In contrast to the message of Obama’s church and its award to Louis Farrakhan for lifetime achievement, as one of its core values, Shifflett’s church adheres to inclusiveness: “Convinced that all people ever to be born have one common ancestor; and that God’s love for all people caused him to send the one Savior into the world to seek and save all people; we believe that he has reconciled all people to himself, and to one another.”
If Barack Obama were the unifier he claims to be, that is the kind of church he would attend and support with $22,500 in donations over a two-year period.
Instead of saying he understands where Wright and his “God damn America” are coming from and refusing to sever ties with him, if he really wanted to help blacks and further racial progress, he would denounce Wright’s message of hatred and the culture of victimhood that continues to undermine black society.
And if Obama were a leader who genuinely had the interests of all the country’s citizens at heart, he would be citing Condoleezza Rice as an example of what blacks can achieve in America.
Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com. View his previous reports and get his dispatches sent to you free via
e-mail. Go here now.
© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
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Obama Encourages Black Victimhood
Wednesday, March 26, 2008 7:40 AM
By: Ronald Kessler Article Font Size
If there is anything more disturbing than watching the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s paranoid denunciations of whites and America, it’s seeing the reactions of many well-educated blacks who agree with him or find ways to justify his hate-filled comments.
“I am so proud of Reverend Wright, who speaks with unreserved passion, who accepts no quarter and gives no quarter,” said former civil rights leader Lawrence Guyot of Barack Obama’s speech addressing his longtime minister’s claims that America started the AIDS virus, trains professional killers, imports drugs, and has created a racist society to keep blacks down.
Culture of Conspiracy
While some of Wright’s language is “offensive,” the “reality out of which he speaks is that black people have suffered in America and continue to suffer because of the unfairness of the system,” said professor Cheryl Sanders of the Howard University School of Divinity. The black church “has always had prophetic preachers,” she said. “Prophetic voice goes all the way back to the days of slavery, when people were protesting being in bondage. And so protest is just kind of a part of how we do ministry.”
While saying he does not believe that the government created the AIDS virus to kill blacks, as Wright has said, professor R. L’Heureux Lewis of the City College of New York gave credence to the conspiracy theory by saying that he does “respect the right of some people to question the unfettered arrival of AIDS and HIV to the community and the ravishing effects it’s had.”
Responding to my Newsmax stories about Obama and Wright going back to Jan. 7, many blacks said whites could not understand what it means to be black.
“It is not a secret that black people were slaves and that we are still victims and suffering from slavery, a black woman from Inglewood, Calif., wrote. “The pastor is just expressing a reality that we black people are going through.”
In his speech on race, Obama implicitly condoned this backward-looking perspective.
“For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years,” Obama said. "While the anger is not always productive," Obama continued, "[it is] real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.”
Yet while Wright, 66, no doubt had brushes with discrimination growing up in Philadelphia, it was nothing compared with what Condoleezza Rice faced — or, for that matter, what six million Jews who were slaughtered by Adolf Hitler faced.
In contrast to Wright, who attended an integrated school, Rice grew up in segregated Birmingham, Ala. Denise McNair, one of Rice’s friends and classmates, was one of the four girls who was killed in the Ku Klux Klan bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church.
Rice's Unbridled Courage
Rice had to sit at the back of buses. When more whites got on, the driver would move a “Colored” sign farther back in the bus, making less room for blacks. Rice could not eat at the same restaurants as whites unless the restaurant had a separate room with a separate entrance for blacks.
She was not allowed to use the same drinking fountains or public restrooms as whites. But Condi Rice, a descendant of slaves and white slave owners, had something else going for her: Her middle-class black neighborhood had developed a culture separate from the rest of the city, one that shut out the racism all around and taught children they had to be “twice as good” to pull even with whites.
Instead of teaching Rice to carry a chip on her shoulder, as she has told me, Rice’s parents amplified those positive values, giving her a strong sense of self-worth.
Rice’s father, the Rev. John W. Rice Jr., instilled in his daughter the faith that she brought with her into the White House and the State Department.
While Rice is comfortable with her own heritage and often speaks before black groups, she does not dwell on the racism she experienced growing up. Above all, Rice is proud of America and the opportunities that everyone now has. Witness the fact that she is secretary of state.
What a contrast to the poisonous atmosphere at the church that Obama has chosen to attend for more than two decades and the demagoguery of the man he calls his friend, sounding board, and mentor.
Encouraging Failure
As my friend Fox News contributor Juan Williams told me after publication of his book “Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America,” many black leaders orchestrate support for themselves by promoting victimhood, creating a black “culture of failure.”
That self-defeating attitude tells blacks, “You can’t help yourself; you can’t help your family; and therefore, all you can do is wait for the government to do something for you,” Williams says. “I think it is a message of weakness and ineffectual thinking that is absolutely crippling the poor and especially minorities in the United States.”
Sounding a similar theme in his book “Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America,” black author John McWhorter calls the culture of victimhood “therapeutic alienation,” a form of self-medication that is “disconnected from current reality” and continues to hold blacks back.
To be sure, most largely black churches preach an uplifting message.
“As a pastor of a bi-racial church, I cannot accept that Wright’s way is the right way to do ‘black church,’ the Rev. Wally Shifflett, a minister from Charlotte, N.C., wrote to me. “Sen. Obama has been wrongly accused of being a Muslim — and why should that matter? We can hardly disqualify a candidate, offhandedly, because of his or her religion. But the senator’s continued participation in a church stoked with such anti-American rhetoric should no more be acceptable than if he openly supported one of the Islamic-extremist’s madrasses that teach their young to hate Americans. Is there any difference?”
The answer, of course, is no.
Both Islamic extremism and the black cult of victimhood generate support by conjuring up largely imaginary grievances and exploiting them.
The Rev. Otis Moss III, who recently took over from Wright at Trinity United Church of Christ, continued that theme on Sunday. Referring to the media’s belated exposure of Wright’s hate sermons. Moss said the church had been the victim of a “lynching.”
In contrast to the message of Obama’s church and its award to Louis Farrakhan for lifetime achievement, as one of its core values, Shifflett’s church adheres to inclusiveness: “Convinced that all people ever to be born have one common ancestor; and that God’s love for all people caused him to send the one Savior into the world to seek and save all people; we believe that he has reconciled all people to himself, and to one another.”
If Barack Obama were the unifier he claims to be, that is the kind of church he would attend and support with $22,500 in donations over a two-year period.
Instead of saying he understands where Wright and his “God damn America” are coming from and refusing to sever ties with him, if he really wanted to help blacks and further racial progress, he would denounce Wright’s message of hatred and the culture of victimhood that continues to undermine black society.
And if Obama were a leader who genuinely had the interests of all the country’s citizens at heart, he would be citing Condoleezza Rice as an example of what blacks can achieve in America.
Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com. View his previous reports and get his dispatches sent to you free via
e-mail. Go here now.
© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
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