I know I'm not the only one not impressed by Obama's oddly late repudiation of Jeremiah Wright. After all, he knew of the “divisive and destructive,” “ridiculous,” “outrageous” and “wrong” paranoid and hate-based Wright comments long ago. When he first addressed the issue he further embraced Wright in the famous Gramma-Under-the-Bus speech. Now, when Wright had the audacity of not keeping his mouth shut, Barry decides that he can disown a man he suddenly realized his father-figure for all his adult life "gives comfort to those who prey on hate."
My question is this: If Barack Obama had no idea what his father-figure's intentions and beliefs were after two-decades plus of knowing him, how can we trust this man to be able to assess the intention of men like Ahmadinejad and Jong-Il? One of two things is happening here: Either Obama truly is clueless and completely unable to judge people, or he feels a kinship with those who are bitter, angry and hate this nation. In his own life we have his bitter and recriminating wife, Wright, and unrepentant terrorist Ayers. On the international scene Obama has already expressed an interest in establishing talkative, friendly relationships with the world's monsters.
In the meantime, word is slipping out from Wright's friends that he didn't intend to hurt Obama, he was just hurt and lashing out in the moment. I guess that makes everything okay. But it does make us question if it's a good idea to have a man in the White House who has such a vengeful and hateful father-figure in the wings always ready to strike out. Really, is this a soap opera we need in the White House during a time of war?
Father Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina Church said he has been speaking to both men as the events of the past 24 hours unfolded. He counseled Obama Tuesday morning, and while CBS 2 talked to him Tuesday evening, Rev. Wright called his cell phone. "I don't think he had any intention to hurt Barack. He loves Barack," Pfleger said. "I think the pain and the moment took over." That moment was in a place Pfleger called "a lion's den" – The National Press Club.
Yeah, the pain of not having the Man Who Would Be President be subservient and respectful to you? All of these people are reaping the rewards of living in a world of contempt and bitterness. What do they want from each other? Emotional healthy response from each other?
Whether his problem is a pathological inability to see bad people for who they are (and good people for that matter, too. His issue is very probably a Malignant Narcissistic lack of empathy, an inability to comprehend the feelings and motives of others), or identifying sympathetically with those who hate this country, we and he are in trouble.
My favorite man, Mark Steyn, takes his saber pen to the issue of ethenol. You know, that genius plan of the Left to put food into cars in the name of Climate Change, only to cause a worldwide food shortage and the starvation of people in countries across the globe. Well, I suppose with fewer people that helps solve the Climate Change problem, too, since it's all brought on by pesky humans. Now if we could just get Al Gore to stop eating as much, maybe Italy wouldn't be having pasta riots.
Feed your Prius, starve a peasant
At least five people have been killed in food riots in Port-au-Prince. Prices have risen 40 percent since last summer and, as columnist Deroy Murdock reported, some citizens are now subsisting on biscuits made from salt, vegetable oil and (mmmm) dirt. Dirt cookies: Nutritious, tasty and affordable? Well, one out of three ain't bad.
Unlike "global warming," food rioting is a planetwide phenomenon, from Indonesia to Pakistan to Ivory Coast to the tortilla rampages in Mexico and even pasta protests in Italy.
So what happened?
Well, Western governments listened to the ecowarriors and introduced some of the "wartime measures" they've been urging. The EU decreed that 5.75 percent of petrol and diesel must come from "biofuels" by 2010, rising to 10 percent by 2020. The United States added to its 51 cent-per-gallon ethanol subsidy by mandating a fivefold increase in "biofuels" production by 2022.
The result is that big government accomplished at a stroke what the free market could never have done: They turned the food supply into a subsidiary of the energy industry. When you divert 28 percent of U.S. grain into fuel production, and when you artificially make its value as fuel higher than its value as food, why be surprised that you've suddenly got less to eat? Or, to be more precise, it's not "you" who's got less to eat but those starving peasants in distant lands you claim to care so much about.
Yes, of course, please link through and read the whole thing.
Screaming obscenities at First Lady Laura Bush and daughter Jenna while promoting their children's book, and then punching a girl in a wheelchair when he's told to stop it. I'd say the left is getting just a tad more mentally ill, and I'm sure Hillary is thrilled this is the new core of the Democrat constituency.
Bush Heckler Arrested After Punching Wheelchair-Bound Girl
A man heckling First Lady Laura Bush and daughter Jenna outside the 92nd Street Y was arrested after he punched a wheelchair-bound girl whose parents had told him to shut up, authorities said Wednesday.
German Talis, 22, was shouting obscenities at the Bushes, who were leaving the building Tuesday, when he crossed paths with Wendy and John Lovetro and their daughter Maureen, 18, who has cerebral palsy.
They had been in the audience to hear the Bushes talk about their children's book, "Read All About It."
"He began yelling about Iraq and Iran at Jenna Bush. She was waving at the crowd. I told the guy, 'What are you doing? Shut up. This is about a child and books,' " said John Lovetro. "He was unperturbed. I said, 'Get out of here! You're being a moron!' "
The next thing he knew, Talis was allegedly punching Maureen, a fan of the first lady since meeting her in 2004.
Maybe this explains the previous post's polling revelation.
From a day or so ago, but too priceless to let go. Mr. Obama apparently expects his supporters, and everyone else for that matter, to stop that pesky critical thinking about what he actually says and stands for and just be happy about the more vapid, esoteric 'importance' of his candidacy.
PHILADELPHIA — You know a candidate is really feeling the heat when he starts complaining about the kitchen.
You know a candidate is having problems when he starts complaining about the process.
Wednesday night, in a debate here, Barack Obama complained a number of times about the presidential campaign process and how some people spend way too much time “obsessing” about some of the things he and others have actually said...
“I think what’s important is to make sure that we don’t get so obsessed with gaffes that we lose sight of the fact that this is a defining moment in our history,” Obama said.
He also said: “For us to be obsessed with this — these kinds of errors — I think is a mistake. And that’s not what our campaign has been about.”
That's right--it's been about empty, shallow rhetoric, unthinking emotionalism and reliance on mass hysteria.
Carter's found brotherhood with Jew-hating terrorists for quite some time. This Cox & Forkum cartoon is from 2006.
In Syria, in bed with mass-murdering terrorists. Oh, keep in mind either Obama or Clinton will give this terrorist appeaser a role in a new Democrat admin. Perhaps Secretary of State? Ambassador to the UN? Nominated for the Supreme Court? National Security Advisor? Consider whom a candidate will surround himself with when deciding who to vote for. After all, Obama at least knows appointing Farrakhan to cabinet position would be bad (I know that's a leap) so why not Carter, the second-best choice when it comes to malicious, self-obsessed MalNar Jew-haters?
Former US president Carter in Syria for talks with Hamas supremo
Former US president Jimmy Carter met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Friday on the latest stop of a regional tour dominated by impending talks with the exiled leader of Hamas.
Carter held talks with Assad before preparing to defy US and Israeli opposition by meeting with the Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal.
Details on the meeting with Assad were not immediately available, but Carter's spokesman Rick Jafculca told AFP that the two were to discuss the peace process.
"The meeting between Carter and Meshaal will mainly focus on the Palestinian cause and means to deal with the Israeli occupation and its sanctions on the Palestinian people," senior Hamas official Mohammed Nasr told AFP.
How can this sort of 'meeting' not be considered a conspiracy to commit murder, especially when meeting with a death squad whose goal it is to wipe Israel off the map and kill Jews, and your goal is to discuss the "means to deal with the Israeli occupation"?
Senator Obama is fond of saying that his father is from Kenya and his mother is from Kansas, but in the remarks he reportedly made at a fundraiser in San Francisco, the Harvard-educated Democratic presidential candidate showed his true colors as a San Francisco Democrat. "You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years," Mr. Obama said. "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.;
People will be parsing these words for weeks, perhaps months. Senator Clinton, Mr. Obama's rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, was off to a pretty good start when she said, "Pennsylvanians don't need a president who looks down on them." But condescension is just one of the flaws of Mr. Obama's statement.
To begin with is the idea that religion is, like anti-immigration sentiment, a kind of bigotry that appeals to bitter people who don't know better. It's the idea Karl Marx had in mind when he wrote that religion is "the opium of the people." With all the attention paid to Mr. Obama's attendance at the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, we had been under the impression that he had a more positive view of the role of religion in American life...
Mr. Obama is a politician of high intelligence and formidable rhetorical gifts, but his efforts to dig himself out of this one have so far been unconvincing. To the extent that they resonate it is that they speak to a larger phenomenon of American politics. The Democrats, while claiming to be the party of the common man, have become a party of Volvo-driving college professors, of San Francisco and Greenwich Village and Cambridge and Georgetown, while the Republicans, who are caricatured as the party of the country club rich, are in fact more in touch with the church-going and gun-bearing American public than is Senator Obama and the other leaders of his party.
I don't know whether I'm going to like "Expelled", which opens in theaters this Friday. But Hollywood and the mainstream media have been doing their darndest to immerse us in a cauldron of political correctness. Being a disagreeable creature, I thirst for anything that promises to be contrary.
What is "Expelled" about? The press clips indicate it focuses on the conflict between evolutionists and creationists in the academy. I hope there's more to it than that, because that is a battle I would rather not linger on. We're here by the will of God, but is it unthinkable that He might have used an evolutionary process to do the job? Why must the pursuit of this question become prickly? In a nutshell, science tells us how and religion tells us why. These two outlooks should work together (like body and soul) to seek a uniform vision.
The clash of evolution versus intelligent design has become a proxy war as our culture wrestles with issues of atheism versus theism. Radical secularists attempt to misrepresent the Establishment Clause as a call for state-mandated atheism; an aggressively wrong-headed agenda that I vigorously oppose. I'm on board for the war, but the enemy is the repressive political ideology. Is it really necessary that we scrap with the evolutionists?
I view intelligent design ("ID") as a discipline that is more philosophical than scientific. And it's certainly appropriate that the hard sciences be cross-pollinated with philosophical questions; that's what we're doing when, for example, we expect a medical doctor to also learn medical ethics. ID, like ethics, raises hard questions and important challenges. But I can't see it as a science in the sense that biology is. (I know some people put forth a rigorous technical argument in favor of ID, and I'm not dismissing that position; however that's a long discussion in itself, which I'll skip for the sake of brevity.)
Of course, it must be remembered that evolution is also something of a theory. That's why they call is the theory of evolution. Duh!
Back in the bad old days, Galileo offended the dogma of the Church when he advanced his theory of heliocentrism. He was forced to recant this heresy, and spent his latter years under house arrest on orders of the Inquisition. We tell ourselves we've passed beyond the era of dogma into an enlightened age. But these days, the guardians of the One True Church of Political Correctness are equally aggressive in defending their canon. Recently Nobel laureate James Watson was forced into retirement when his observations gave offence to the Anointed Ones.
(As the song goes: "Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss." But let's move along.)
Anyway, with respect to the academic community, I lament to note that mine is apparently a minority opinion. This study indicates that only 7% of scientists believe in a personal God, as opposed to 72% that disbelieve — in sharp contrast to the general public, where a large majority accept God. Other studies suggest that the more educated an individual is, the more likely that person is to be an atheist.
For the record, I (Maynard) have a degree from Starfleet Academy, and in fact my faith was nurtured as it became clear that our most essential questions could not be answered by materialistic inquiry. I love science and I am grateful to the students of the material arts, to whom we all owe a great deal. But it's Man's vanity, rather than objective facts, that tempts us to think we can get by without God.
You Small Town, Bitter, Ignorant Reactionary Rednecks, You
It's interesting what we learn about the Obama's when they open their mouths, isn't it? Make no mistake--one of the hallmarks of Marxists is their disdain for people in general. Barack Obama has judged you and declared you Stupid and Shallow. Barack Hussein Obama has determined that your faith in God, your commitment to the founding principles of this great nation, including the Second Amendment, and your love of this nation and her sovereignty, are simple refuges for the depressed, bitter and ignorant.
What should you take from his comments? That Barack Obama is a self-righteous, MalNar Snob who is stupid enough and In Love with HImself enough to not know what not to say or even to realize how pathetic he is.
Combine his tripe with the Missus' declaration that we're also mean and a bunch of failures, well, I'd say we need to make very sure these freaks don't get anywhere near the White House. Ever.
Obama has already apologized, sorta. But let's start from the beginning. Here's Politico's coverage of The Messiah's description of you Stone-Agers in the Midwest:
You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.
And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
Wow, so what have you people been doing out of work for 25 years? Oh yeah, getting angry, and in your stupid shallowness perhaps wanting revenge because Big Brother abandoned you, you're buying guns, getting faith, and deciding you don't like the Mexicans. Sure.
Now Obama realizes he made a mistake. He's not sorry for saying it, he;s sorry for how he said it and sorry, too, if you're offended. But he's not sorry for being an arrogant ass who's finally revealed the depth of his contempt for the average American. And average American, btw, whose families have saved the world many time over in the past few hundred years.
MUNCIE, IND. -- Barack Obama admitted today that he may not have expressed himself well when he said that Pennsylvania voters turn to guns and religion as a result of their frustration with government.
“Now I didn’t say it as well as I should have, because the truth is that these traditions that are passed on from generation to generation, those are important. That’s what sustains us,” Obama said at town hall meeting at Ball State University.
Nevertheless, he continued to defend the idea that many voters are “bitter” towards government and have turned to other things for support.
“What is absolutely true is that people don’t feel like they're 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,” Obama said. “What we need is a government that is actually paying attention, a government that is actually fighting for working people day in and day out, making sure that we are trying to allow them to live out the American dream. And that’s what this campaign is about."
Genius. So he confirms that yes, this is what he meant, but still insists he's right, but wasn't gentle enough in condemning people being independent as opposed to relying on government. What is wrong with this man?
But he is sorry if he offended you by telling you the truth about your miserable, independent, silly selves.
Obama Regrets If He Offended....
[O]bviously, if I worded things in a way that made people offended, I deeply regret that. The underlying truth of what I said remains, which is simply that people who have seen their way of life upended because of economic distress are frustrated and rightfully so.
The Los Angeles, in the meantime, has the Clinton and McCain reactions. Too bad Hillary is so self-destructive. Despite Obama's true character revealing itself each day, I truly think now Hillary does not want the nomination. But at least she responds to this freakish debacle properly. Obama also digs further in restating that what he saif about you hicks out there is "true."
Seeking to defuse the damage among blue-collar Democrats essential to his chances in upcoming primaries in Pennsylvania and Indiana, Obama told a crowd in Muncie, Ind., that he only meant to show empathy.
"Lately, there's 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...
Fellow Democrat Clinton, campaigning in Pennsylvania ahead of the state's April 22 primary, seized on the remarks, suggesting that Obama was offering condescension rather than solutions. "Pennsylvania doesn't need a president who looks down on them," the New York senator said at a Philadelphia rally. "They need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them."
Responding today to Obama's concession that his words were ill chosen, the New York senator continued her attack. "Sen. Obama's remarks are elitist and out of touch," she said. "They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans. Certainly not the Americans that I know." She added, "If you want to be the president of all Americans, you need to respect all Americans." [...]
A strategist for Sen. McCain (R-Ariz.) also joined in the criticism. "Instead of apologizing to small-town Americans for dismissing their values, Barack Obama arrogantly tried to spin his way out of his outrageous San Francisco remarks," said campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds. "You can't be more out of touch than that."
The price of food goes up because supply can't meet demand, much like oil. The only difference is, if the price of oil goes up, the price of gas goes up, and one can choose to use less gas, and use alternatives. When the price of food goes up there aren't any alternatives. The wealthy, of course, can pay more, but the less well off don't have as much flexibility.
One of the more dramatic headlines in the last couple of days has been the rising price of corn, a result of 'climate change' hysteria. It is the fault of a world so willing to goose-step into line with frantic and ridiculous leftists who worship Al Gore as they pander to his non-existent and yet implacable enemy.
The continuing surge in the price of corn, which is punishing households with higher food prices, is cutting the profits of American ethanol producers and playing havoc with an industry that was blamed for causing the grain shortage.
The price of a bushel of corn soared above $6 on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange last week, pushed higher by news that American farmers were planting less corn...Expensive corn is hurting the livestock industry, which in turn will raise the price of meat, Rich Feltes, senior vice-president of commodity research for MF Global, said. “Hog producers are liquidating sows, the farmers are operating in the red,” he said.
The skyrocketing cost of corn is rebounding on the ethanol industry, which is taking an ever larger proportion of the US corn harvest to manufacture road fuel.
Yeah, this man looks like he knows what's healthy for the rest of us.
This is what we get when the world engages in what Hilary Clinton most recently brought to our attention--Mythomania, a psychiatric term describing individuals who make up fantastical stories and convey then as if they really exist or have happened. You think Hillary's Bosnia airport story was bad? Al Gore and the Climate Change Hysterics are no better, the only reason they haven't been so handily exposed is because God and Nature don't have cameras and YouTube to defend the truth of their matter.
All this courtesy of the Leftists who insist the world will be better off if we find 'alternatives' to Big Oil. Yes, now at the expense of Starving People. Geniuses.
Clear-thinkers regularly decry the Fabulist agenda of Climate Change moonbats like Al Gore and his minions, as we point out not just the absurdity of their agenda but also its dangerousness. I suppose it's meant to be made more difficult as were told that "climate change" is murdering polar bears, puppies, kittens and doves, but I for one was even more astounded by the Time Magazine cover story from a couple of weeks ago that actually declared The Clean Energy Scam. Instead of pointing to Leftist Climate Change pygmies as they should, Time now manages to place all the blame on 'politicians and corporations.' In fact, at no point in their story about how biofuels are a dangerous problem, does Al Gore's name get mentioned once.
...Propelled by mounting anxieties over soaring oil costs and climate change, biofuels have become the vanguard of the green-tech revolution, the trendy way for politicians and corporations to show they're serious about finding alternative sources of energy and in the process slowing global warming. The U.S. quintupled its production of ethanol--ethyl alcohol, a fuel distilled from plant matter--in the past decade, and Washington has just mandated another fivefold increase in renewable fuels over the next decade.
But several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it's dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous. Even cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, which has been promoted by eco-activists and eco-investors as well as by President Bush as the fuel of the future, looks less green than oil-derived gasoline.
Meanwhile, by diverting grain and oilseed crops from dinner plates to fuel tanks, biofuels are jacking up world food prices and endangering the hungry. The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves. The U.N.'s World Food Program says it needs $500 million in additional funding and supplies, calling the rising costs for food nothing less than a global emergency. Soaring corn prices have sparked tortilla riots in Mexico City, and skyrocketing flour prices have destabilized Pakistan, which wasn't exactly tranquil when flour was affordable.
We can thank Al Gore for this, as well as leftist agitators, and yes, politicians on both sides of the aisle who do not have the vision or courage to reject the nature contradicted, increasingly silly, and regularly debunked claims of global climate catastrophe.
The real folly and disaster is that of mankind thinking it knows all, kmows better, and has more influence and power than Mother Nature herself. Eventually she reminds us, to our great peril.
Mr Brooks [the author] proposes that whatever their respective merits, the conservative world view is more conducive to happiness than the liberal one (in the American sense of both words). American conservatives tend to believe that if you work hard and play by the rules, you can succeed. This makes them more optimistic than liberals, more likely to feel in control of their lives and therefore happier. American liberals, at their most pessimistic, stress the injustice of the economic system, the crushing impersonal forces that keep the little guy down...the American left is now a coalition of groups that define themselves as the victims of social and economic forces, and its leaders encourage people to feel helpless and aggrieved.
These are important points. Without their misery, the Left loses its (pardon my French) raison d’être. Tammy has told us how, back in the days when she was a Leftist insider, her mentor explained the necessity of rubbing salt into the collective psychic wounds in order to keep the movement alive. Tammy had been of the naïve opinion that they were working to solve problems rather than to lock people down and create a perpetual power structure.
Thus conservatives have greater potential to achieve happiness. But it would be an oversimplification to say that becoming conservative is enough in itself to make one happy.
I'll offer a few more thoughts on happiness for you hardcore philosophers...
With respect to any cause-and-effect question, people commonly make unfounded assumptions about which is the cause and which is the effect. For example, there may be a connection between crime and poverty, but does poverty cause crime or does crime cause poverty? Or are the two intertwined in some vicious circle? Or does some hidden factor foster both crime and poverty. Likewise, does being conservative cause happiness, or does happiness cause conservatism? It's an interesting question.
My favorite example of misplaced causation is to note the correlation between cars that have accidents and cars that have umbrellas in them. Does carrying an umbrella make an accident more likely? Can we decrease the likelihood of having an accident by removing umbrellas from our cars? No, of course it's the arrival of a rainstorm that causes a spike in both accidents and cars with umbrellas. But you can see how easy it is for people to draw faulty conclusions based upon isolated facts and unsound premises.
Some studies have concluded that happiness is largely a matter of genetic determination. You either get "happy genes" or "unhappy genes". This theory rings true to me. I am a sourpuss by nature, and will always be so. (This is Maynard speaking; we all know Tammy to be a creature of sweetness and light.) So, being inclined to misery, how, then, did I become conservative? The answer is that I'm a self-hating sourpuss, and didn't want to hang out with the other sourpusses. So I pretend to be happier than I am, in order to associate with people who aren't woeful sad sacks. And that's how I got recruited into the vast right-wing conspiracy.
And by the way, I think I have indeed become happier as a result of pretending to be happier. I'll never win any Olympic medals for happiness, but there's benefit to be had by walking the walk, at least in as much as one's genes permit one to take a few staggering steps in that direction.
Now makes a bit more sense with the Jeremiah Wright background. If you haven't seen it before, here's video of him refusing to place his hand over his heart for the anthem. It's an easy thing to do, and reflects a very certain respect for this nation. To not engage in such a small gesture of respect is petty and illustrates a remarkable contempt. Interestingly, it also seems he feels the need to protect his gonads from the anthem. Yeah, let's elect this guy.
WASHINGTON - Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign said she "misspoke" last week when she said she had landed under sniper fire during a trip she took as first lady to Bosnia in March 1996. The Obama campaign suggested it was a deliberate exaggeration on Clinton's part.
Clinton often cites the goodwill trip she took with her daughter and several celebrities as a part of her foreign policy experience.
During a speech last Monday about Iraq, she said of the trip: "I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base." [...] The written account in Clinton's book contradicts the comments she made last Monday about the welcoming ceremony.
Just after her speech last Monday, she reaffirmed the account of running from the plane to the cars when she was asked about it by reporters at a news conference. She said was moved into the cockpit of the C-17 cargo plane as they were flying into Tuzla Air Base.
"Everyone else was told to sit on their bulletproof vests," Clinton told reporters. "And we came in, in an evasive maneuver. ... There was no greeting ceremony, and we basically were told to run to our cars. Now, that is what happened."
The Obama campaign statement also links to a CBS news video taken from her Bosnia trip and posted on YouTube, which shows Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea, walking across the tarmac from a large cargo plane, smiling and waving, and stopping to shake hands with Bosnia's acting president and greet an 8-year-old girl.
"This is something that the Obama campaign wants to push cause they have nothing positive to say about their candidate," Wolfson said Monday in the conference call.
No, it's because they have proof Hillary makes things up.
Funny, though, how the YouTube loop is indeed good enough proof for the Obama campaign as an indication of someone's character when it comes to Clinton, but not when it comes to Jeremiah "G-Damn America" Wright.
Here's the YouTube video of Hillary's experience on the Bosnian tarmac and her description of the experience. Sniper Fire or Poetry-by-Kid? You decide.
Your Must Read of the day: Shelby Steele's piece in today Wall Street Journal puts into perfect perspective Barack Obama, the issue of race, how Obama expertly exploits the issue and the intention to manipulate you with it. Obama's speech today illustrates Steele's proposal that Barack Obama is a race "bargainer." Read this segment from his speech today, then read the Steele article, written not in response to the speech but delving into Obama in general. It ties everything together.
From Barack Obama:
I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible...
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
Mr. Obama's broad appeal to whites makes him the first plausible black presidential candidate in American history. And it was Mr. Obama's genius to understand this. Though he likes to claim that his race was a liability to be overcome, he also surely knew that his race could give him just the edge he needed -- an edge that would never be available to a white, not even a white woman.
How to turn one's blackness to advantage?
The answer is that one "bargains." Bargaining is a mask that blacks can wear in the American mainstream, one that enables them to put whites at their ease. This mask diffuses the anxiety that goes along with being white in a multiracial society. Bargainers make the subliminal promise to whites not to shame them with America's history of racism, on the condition that they will not hold the bargainer's race against him. And whites love this bargain -- and feel affection for the bargainer -- because it gives them racial innocence in a society where whites live under constant threat of being stigmatized as racist. So the bargainer presents himself as an opportunity for whites to experience racial innocence.
This is how Mr. Obama has turned his blackness into his great political advantage, and also into a kind of personal charisma. Bargainers are conduits of white innocence, and they are as popular as the need for white innocence is strong. Mr. Obama's extraordinary dash to the forefront of American politics is less a measure of the man than of the hunger in white America for racial innocence...
But now the floodlight of a presidential campaign has trained on this usually hidden corner of contemporary black life: a mindless indulgence in a rhetorical anti-Americanism as a way of bonding and of asserting one's blackness. Yet Jeremiah Wright, splashed across America's television screens, has shown us that there is no real difference between rhetorical hatred and real hatred.
No matter his ultimate political fate, there is already enough pathos in Barack Obama to make him a cautionary tale. His public persona thrives on a manipulation of whites (bargaining), and his private sense of racial identity demands both self-betrayal and duplicity. His is the story of a man who flew so high, yet neglected to become himself.
Powerful and important. Please do read the whole thing.
The irony, of course, is this hunger for racial innocence is borne of the decades of being told we are racist, by the same people who then explain if we give them things or elevate them to power we will be washed of our crime. In other w0ords, Barack Obama is telling us, as he did today, that making him president is all we have to do to prove we aren't racist. And if we don't? Well, that's the threat.
I find him arrogant, pretentious and manipulative. I also now believe he's more comfortable with pretending than with the truth, and I think this speech embodies all those concerns.
Drudge has the full text. I'll have more soon and of course we'll starts Tammy Radio this morning with my assessment of this attempt to explain how and why we shouldn't care that this man's mentor for his entire adult life is an America-hating racist and how Barack never, never knew.
Yeah, right.
Frankly, I think Michelle Obama should be giving this speech. We'd at least get a peek at the truth.
8:09am PT:
Here's what he just noted which is quite remarkable and at the core of where he stands. So he compares his "white grandmother" to a man who says American created the AIDS virus to genocide black Americans; that God should damn America; that the government funnels drugs deliberately into the black community; that Israel is a dirty word while inferring that Jews had something to do with 9-11. Amazing.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
Stunning.
Oh, and now the Reagan Coalition was based in racism. Lovely.
Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
Oh brother. He really must be afraid of losing what's termed the "black vote" when this issue and our rejection of him is actually the one colorblind thing in this entire debacle. Americans reject Jeremiah Wright's statements. That is what crosses racial lines, yet this morning Barack Obama begs people to return to the politics of race, to the division of Identity Politics.
This is nothing less than a Race/Class warfare speech with little bits of Let's-all-come-together-to-change-awful-evil-Amerikkka speech with some Corporations-Are-Evil and Workers-Unite! thrown in. Fascinatingly deeply held positions for a man who claimed to be the candidate who transcended race.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
The folks at Hot Air are saying the audience was Democrat Super Delegates. The applause was sporadic and weak, strongest when Obama noted his opposition to the war, and certainly no standing ovation.
I kid you not. There is no other way to interpret Obama's choice of analogy here, effectively comparing the exposure of Wright as an America-hating racist and the appropriate excoriation of the man, to the assassination of Dr. King. The following Swamp headline does get it wrong--the comparison is not of OIbama to RFK, it's Wright to MLK, make no mistake.
Obama invokes RFK in distancing self from pastor
PLAINFIELD, Ind. – Sen. Barack Obama invoked Robert F. Kennedy on Saturday as he continued to try to distance himself from controversial statements made by his former pastor that are now widely circulating on the Internet.
"Bobby Kennedy gave one of his most famous speeches on a dark night in Indianapolis, right after Dr. King was shot," Obama said. "He stood on top of a car."
In reality, Kennedy, speaking in nearby Indianapolis on the night of April 4, 1968, spoke from the bed of a flatbed truck.
"He delivered the news that Dr. King had been shot and killed," Obama continued. "At the moment of anguish, he said we've got a choice. We've got a choice in taking the rage and bitterness and disappointment and letting it fester and dividing us further so that we no longer see each other as Americans, but we see each other as separate and apart and at odds with each other...
Saying "the forces of division have started to raise their ugly heads again," Obama began to point to his own former pastor from Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's South Side.
"I have a dream"="God damn America." Great job Barack Hussein Obama. Great job and simply stunning. Let's hope this is the beginning of the real Obama being exposed, and his undoing.
UPDATE:
Well, it seems Americans are indeed recognizing this for what it is, and rejecting Obama. His national lead among Democrats was 8 points yesterday. It has now plunged by an unprecedented 7 points overnight. Keep in mind, this drop is among his own supporters after a couple of days of Wright's venom being exposed, and Obama's credibility gap on what he knew and when he knew it. This highlights that despite our differences here in America, those differences are slight. Despite all our desire for change, Obama supporters also reject racist Hate America First rhetoric spewing from Barack Obama's 'spiritual adviser' and mentor. Good for them.
**Television programming note**: Gateway Pundit is noting that Major Garrett will have Barack Obama tonight on Hannity & Colmes/Fox News to discuss the Wright situation. They also have the full collection of Wright video spew. Perhaps now we know the real reason the Obama campaign has been desperate to paint Hillary and her supporters as 'racist'--to distract from their own ugly, racist underbelly.
After working feverishly to ignore the extraordinary racist, hate-filled comments by Barack Hussein Obama's "pastor", Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., they finally have been forced to admit he exist. Initially, Obama refused to outright condemn comments that ranged from urging black Americans to sing "God damn America," to proposing the theory that America engineered the AIDS virus to genocide people of color and deliberately distributes drugs to me of color, and that America is a terrorist nation. When you hear these remarkably paranoid assertions Michelle Obama's paranoid and America-hating rants make a lot more sense. After all, this is the man who has been Obama's mentor for 20 years, married the Obamas, and baptized their daughters (which means those two bright little girls are exposed to this racist, hate-based insanity.
Ron Kessler, who is associated with the McCain campaign, provided an opinion piece in today's WSJ, the first national newspaper to address this remarkable relationship between the leading Democrat candidate and a hate-monger:
Obama and the Minister
In a sermon delivered at Howard University, Barack Obama's longtime minister, friend and adviser blamed America for starting the AIDS virus, training professional killers, importing drugs and creating a racist society that would never elect a black candidate president.
The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., pastor of Mr. Obama's Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, gave the sermon at the school's Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel in Washington on Jan. 15, 2006...Mr. Wright thundered on: "America is still the No. 1 killer in the world. . . . We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns, and the training of professional killers . . . We bombed Cambodia, Iraq and Nicaragua, killing women and children while trying to get public opinion turned against Castro and Ghadhafi . . . We put [Nelson] Mandela in prison and supported apartheid the whole 27 years he was there. We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God." [...]
As for Mr. Wright's repeated comments blaming America for the 9/11 attacks because of what Mr. Wright calls its racist and violent policies, Mr. Obama has said it sounds as if the minister was trying to be "provocative."
Hearing Mr. Wright's venomous and paranoid denunciations of this country, the vast majority of Americans would walk out. Instead, Mr. Obama and his wife Michelle have presumably sat through numerous similar sermons by Mr. Wright.
Indeed, Mr. Obama has described Mr. Wright as his "sounding board" during the two decades he has known him. Mr. Obama has said he found religion through the minister in the 1980s. He joined the church in 1991 and walked down the aisle in a formal commitment of faith.
The title of Mr. Obama's bestseller "The Audacity of Hope" comes from one of Wright's sermons. Mr. Wright is one of the first people Mr. Obama thanked after his election to the Senate in 2004. Mr. Obama consulted Mr. Wright before deciding to run for president. He prayed privately with Mr. Wright before announcing his candidacy last year.
Mr. Obama obviously would not choose to belong to Mr. Wright's church and seek his advice unless he agreed with at least some of his views. In light of Mr. Wright's perspective, Michelle Obama's comment that she feels proud of America for the first time in her adult life makes perfect sense.
The WSJ piece follows ABC News and their coverage of Wright stating we were to blame for 9/11 and that blacks should condemn the United States. Finally, of Obama and his racist mentor. Finally, Obama responds with a little fluff piece, on the lefty hate blog Huffington Post of all places, which once again waxes on about how great the 'pastor' is but Obama rejects his comments. He skips over the intense relationship they have, including the fact that it was Wright with whom Obama consulted when he was deciding whether or not to run for president, and then "prayed" with him as he decided to do so. Obama also thanked Wright prominently when he first won his senate seat. Yet Obama claims, absurdly, that Wright was never a mentor, and that he never, ever heard this man say anything at all ever close to what has been revealed in the past few weeks.
Yeah, sure.
This last week has been rather priceless--here we have Obama and his minions still pushing the absurdity of the entire Hillary campaign as racist, including the smear against Geraldine Ferraro. Ferraro leaves the Clinton campaign, and HiIllary apologizes to every black person on Earth for everything that ever happened. Yet the stench of racism and hate emanates from only one place--the Barack Obama campaign, his closest friend and adviser, and arguably from Obama himself and his wife. Yet no one has apologized. In fact, big news has been made of the fact thatWright stepped down from one Obama campaign position he held yet the Obama campaign insists he will stay on as a "spirtual adviser." I guess that would be the Racist, Hate America First fort of spirituality.
The next question needs to be, does Hillary and Co. have what it takes to demand an apology from Obama and his minions for the racism and hate they've been spewing? Will she demand Obama apologize for Wright, and that Wright be banished from his campaign entirely? If she doesn't have the cajones to face down a bunch of political thugs and a depraved, paranoid, how can we expect her to deal with the world's tyrants?
This is a test for Hillary. I noted weeks ago, that with all we detest about th Clintons, it's safe to say they do not hate this country. Now we know the Obamas truly do.
Like all other politicians, the man says whatever is necessary to get elected at the time. What a perfect fit he and Hillary are. And what an unbelievably empty suit. (HT Weekly Standard)
In July of 2004, the day after his speech at the Democratic convention catapulted him into the national spotlight, Barack Obama told a group of reporters in Boston that the United States had an "absolute obligation" to remain in Iraq long enough to make it a success.
more stories like this
"The failure of the Iraqi state would be a disaster," he said at a lunch sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor, according to an audiotape of the session. "It would dishonor the 900-plus men and women who have already died. . . . It would be a betrayal of the promise that we made to the Iraqi people, and it would be hugely destabilizing from a national security perspective." [...]
Yesterday, Obama struck back, declaring that Clinton "doesn't have any standing to question my position on this issue." And he added that, "I will bring this war to an end in 2009, so don't be confused."
He better have someone call al-Qaida then with the surrender docs.
Michelle "Ebenezer" Obama Still Not Proud, Declares America "Mean"
Scrooge. Angry, miserable, and against happiness. But when did she dye her hair blue?
I think M. Ebenezer Obama is projecting just a tad. But, yeah, let's move her right into the White House. It's only fair. Normally we elect people who like America. Isn't it time to elect a couple who really, really, hate us? Michelle's approach is actually rather amusing, considering her husband keeps complaining about Hillary using the "politics of fear." So what exactly has his wife been spreading around? (HT JammieWearingFool).
May 2008
Yeah, this man looks like he knows what's healthy for the rest of us.
