Obama & WP's Jonathan Weisman Whitewashing Obama's "Christian Values"

According to a page 1 story from the Washington Post today, " Sen. Barack Obama ended a week's focus on values by giving a conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church a highly personal account of his spiritual journey and a promise that he will make "faith-based" social service "a moral center of my administration." There is no attempt to go beyond the serenity of Obama's sanitized version of his "Christian values" and into the reality of his past. The MSM, and in this case, Mr. Weisman writing in the WP, are reporting positively on Obama's speech, with no mention of the Black Liberation Theology which defined Obama's Christianity for the past twenty years, nor the racist rant which now - carefully edited - animates the core of Obama's campaign. In essence, the press is complicit with Obama - a man whose choice of toxic associations would be red meat for the press were it any other candidate - in an effort to whitewash Obama's "faith" and "values" for mainstream public consumption.
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Though the WP does not mention it, what Obama is spouting today is a version of Christianity foreign from what drew him to Trinity United Baptist Church. Though the WP does not mention it, what Obama is spouting today is wholly foreign to the vile racism and separatism that animates the Black Liberation Theology - the poisonous doctrine of Trinity United throughout the time Obama was in the Churh. And as Obama tells us in his book, The Audacity of Hope, it was one such racist rant by Rev. Wright that drew Obama into Trinity United. Here is Obama reading from his book, recounting the sermon.



And, of course, here is the Black Liberation Theology in application in a "best of" CD sold by Trinity United:



And see this post from Gateway Pundit, discussing many other troubling aspects of Obama's world view.

That our MSM is complicit in whitewashing these facts is a travesty of epic proportions. The MSM takes all that Obama says at face value. Obama's claim never to have heard this come out of a Church whose official doctrine for the past twenty years has been Black Liberation Theology doesn't pass the laugh test. Yet here we have the Washington Post's Johnathan Weisman ignoring the above while reporting on Obama's "Christian values" and "moral center." And less you think Mr. Weisman possesed of any ethics, he finishes his article by allowing Obama to raise and knock down a meaningless strawman to suggest that the criticisms and concerns with what values Obama really holds are unimportant:

. . . In his speech here, he tried to dispel the notion that he comes from Muslim roots, pointedly mentioning that his father, a Kenyan who left his family and returned to Africa when Obama was a small child, was an atheist.

Obama acknowledged how hard it has been for the campaign to dispel false rumors that he is Muslim or that he is not an American, as well as a sense among some voters that he lacks patriotism.

"In fairness to the American people, I am relatively new on the political scene, compared to a John McCain or a Hillary Clinton. My profile is not typical of a presidential nominee, not only because I'm African American, but I'm relatively young as a candidate," he said. "So it's not surprising that people are still getting to be familiar with what I've done, who I am, what I stand for. I do think it's been fed pretty systematically by e-mails that have been sent out. There's a concerted strategy to raise questions about me and to spread lies about my background, and in the Internet age, that's pretty effective.

"What's remarkable is that despite all that, things that have been going on since we announced -- I'm the nominee and have a pretty good shot at winning," he added.

Read the entire article. If I did not know better, I would think the author, WP reporter Jonathan Weisman, in the tank for Mr. Obama.

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Interesting Posts From Around The Web - 1 June 2008

The most interesting posts of the day from across the blogosphere, all below the fold.

Art: Sappho, Charles A. Mengin
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Callimachus has an incredibly poignant Memorial Day Post where he honors a gallery of the military and non-military who have fallen in Iraq, each with a unique and important story. Do read this one. And as always, see Wednesday’s Hero at a Rose By Any Other Name.

How much improved is the Iraq situation? From Political Insecurity, the story of a Marine platoon just returned to the U.S. from a tour in Anbar without firing a shot. And from Jammie Wearing Fool, this four year low in casualties throughout Iraq is simply inexplicable to - and apparently hoped to be a temporary anamoly by - the AP. Perhaps that is why, as JoshuaPundit points out, MSM coverage of the Iraq war has fallen off by 92%.

Soccer Dad adds his thoughts to Krauthammer’s on the proposition that "the global warming hysteria is is just a mask for governments asserting unreasonable control over their respective citizenries." Hillbilly Politics opines on the recent speech on global warming by Czech President Vaclav Klaus. And see Paladin’s Page, where he has a good post on the circumstances surrounding global warming. At Crusader Rabbit, KG posts on the insane greens who seem to want to see economies fall rather than drill another drop of oil.

Bookworm Room writes on why she thinks conservatives who plan to sit out this election are making a foolish error indeed. I concur. McCain is a fiscal conservative, strong on national security, and will choose conservative judges. And the alternative is not merely bad for America, but potentially catastrophic. Power and Control writes a very insightful essay on what a conservative Republican tent must look like if it is to both retain its most important principals and attain a ruling majority. He (or she) does so by citing to Reagan.

From Cheat Seeking Missles, Obama just picked up the much coveted Castro endorsement. Discriminations ponders the similarity between Obama and Carter and arrives at some troubling conclusions. Obama has far less experience and is far more a doctranaire leftie. And yet more evidence from Rhymes With Right that the true nature of Obama’s church is racist to the core. You can also find out more about Trinity United at Faultline.

Obama finally resigned from Trinity United yesterday after a radical sermon by one of his long-time associates, Father Michael Pfelger, made the news. Confederate Yankee looks at the many other associates of Obama and observes: "By comparison, Father Michael Pfleger, while a frothing radical in any other company, actually looks sedate compared to other men who have helped shape and mold Barack Obama."

At Stop the ACLU, they opine about Obama's resignation from Trinity, saying "everyone on planet earth will see such a move for what it is: a cheap, years-late political calculation. I guess Obama means to put this on the list of things we are not permitted to discuss." BizzyBlog points out that, though Obama announced that he is severing ties with Trinity, he is explicitly refusing to "denounce it." I do not think too many people will believe that a principled stand.

Indeed, Deleware Curmudgeon opines that Obama has talking points, not principles. Verum Serum observes that when those talking points become embarrassing, such as Obama’s 2007 pronouncements on the surge being doomed to failure, "he sends out his flunkies to move the goalposts, . . ."

As Dave in Boca notes, at least some of the electorate are paying attention. Others are busy getting tattoos of their favorite candidate – and as Vast Right Wing Conspiracy opine, "God help us – these people probably vote." Regardless, as This Ain’t Hell notes, it appears that the fat lady is singing for Obama, though it may well be a very long aria.

Possibly no subset of socialist thought has been more thoroughly discredited than multiculturalism. Sake White says common sense will tell you why multiculturalism is unworkable. And Fulham Reactionary will point to how the Labour government utterly refuses to apply such common sense, now inviting Imams into the school system in order to promote multiculturalism and lessen radicalism. Hopefully, as Dhivestan Report memorializes, they will not kill the schoolchildren for failing to memorize the Koran.

An Englishman’s Castle observes that it appears the Scottish Raj may be out of touch with the voters south of Hadrian’s Wall. From Blonde Sagacity, one thing socialists on both sides of the pond do not like is a flag waving display of nationalism. This speaks of the poison of socialism spread through our lands that has as part of its dogma that our Western governments are the world oppressors.

In Britain, as in the U.S., the left attempts to address violent crime by further de-arming the public of anything they might use to protect themselves. As quoted at 4 Right Wing Whackos, "A person properly schooled in right and wrong is safe with any weapon. A person with no idea of good and evil is unsafe with a knitting needle, or the cap from a ballpoint pen." That is a profoundly true statement.

As Sheik Yer’mami observes, the radicals of both the socialist and Islamic variety are in max whine mode over the outspoken and much needed comments of Bishop Nazir Ali. Seraphic Secret notes comments similar to the Bishop’s from Italian journalist and Muslim convert to Catholicism, Magdi Allam, Dinah Lord has the story of two evangelical ministers who entered a Muslim enclave in West Midlands only to be ejected by the police and told that they would be charged with a "hate crime" if they returned to the area to proselytize.

From the Colossus of Rhodey, Islamist organizations are in a whinefest claiming that the term "war on terror" means war on Islam. No, though I wish it really did mean war on several specific sects. This is just a strategy by the Muslim Brotherhood and other related organizations to take the "war" out of the "war on terror" and turn it all into a police action.

YouTube gets "thoroughly punked" by Red Alerts "favorite [Independent] Democrat." Lieberman is a class act.

Heh. From Hillbilly White Trash. "Back in November of '06 I said that the Republican congress didn't deserve to be reelected but that the nation didn't deserve what would happen if they lost."
Betsy ponders Al Franken’s situation and the minimum acceptable standards to be a Democratic Senatorial nominee.

Quoted at American Digest on Scott McClellan: "Not since America's most revered feckless crapweasel, former Vermont Sen. James Jeffords, switched parties have Beltway Republicans been more eager to sew a half-starved ferret into someone's body cavity." Gay Patriot diagnoses Scott McClellan as suffering Huffingtonitis, a disease that manifests with an individual defining "his political views and make[ing] public statements in order to win social approval and/or acceptance."

Visit the swami at the Whited Sepulchre for his prognostications and the most important matters of the day. I think he may be batting 100% when all is said and done.

We are in a cyber-war with China, and likely losing according to the Glittering Eye.

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How About Some Context?

Reverend Jeremiah Wright had two significant engagements over the past few days. He was interviewed by PBS resident far left personality, Bill Moyers, in a puff ball interview that saw Moyers do his best to redeem Wright. But then today, speaking before the National Press Club, it was Jeremiah Wright unglued in all of his racist, anti-American glory. We will have to await for Obama to provide the context.
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In 2006 and before, Obama couldn't say enough about his preacher and mentor of twenty years, Rev. Wright. But once Rev. Wright's virulent racism and anti-Americanism became common knowledge, Obama has been trying his best to claim that what we have heard of Rev. Wright was a rare anamoly, taken out of context by the media and not central to the message Obama embraced for twenty years with his attendace and wallet. That canard just become much harder to make with a straight face, compliments of Rev. Wright today. This from Dana Milibank's blog at the Washington Post:

Speaking before an audience that included Marion Barry, Cornel West, Malik Zulu Shabazz of the New Black Panther Party and Nation of Islam official Jamil Muhammad, Wright praised Louis Farrakhan, defended the view that Zionism is racism, accused the United States of terrorism, repeated his view that the government created the AIDS virus to cause the genocide of racial minorities, stood by other past remarks ("God damn America") and held himself out as a spokesman for the black church in America.

. . . Wright suggested that Obama was insincere in distancing himself from his pastor. "He didn't distance himself," Wright announced. "He had to distance himself, because he's a politician, from what the media was saying I had said, which was anti-American."

Explaining further, Wright said friends had written to him and said, "We both know that if Senator Obama did not say what he said, he would never get elected." The minister continued: "Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls."

Wright also argued, at least four times over the course of the hour, that he was speaking not for himself but for the black church.

"This is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright," the minister said. "It is an attack on the black church." He positioned himself as a mainstream voice of African American religious traditions. "Why am I speaking out now?" he asked. "If you think I'm going to let you talk about my mama and her religious tradition, and my daddy and his religious tradition and my grandma, you got another thing coming."

That significantly complicates Obama's job as he contemplates how to extinguish Wright's latest incendiary device. Now, he needs to do more than express disagreement with his former pastor's view; he needs to refute his former pastor's suggestion that Obama privately agrees with him.

Wright seemed aggrieved that his inflammatory quotations were out of the full "context" of his sermons -- yet he repeated many of the same accusations in the context of a half-hour Q&A session this morning.

His claim that the September 11 attacks mean "America's chickens are coming home to roost"?

Wright defended it: "Jesus said, 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you. Those are biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright bombastic divisive principles."

His views on Farrakhan and Israel? "Louis said 20 years ago that Zionism, not Judaism, was a gutter religion. He was talking about the same thing United Nations resolutions say, the same thing now that President Carter's being vilified for and Bishop Tutu's being vilified for. And everybody wants to paint me as if I'm anti-Semitic because of what Louis Farrakhan said 20 years ago. He is one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st century; that's what I think about him. . . . Louis Farrakhan is not my enemy. He did not put me in chains, he did not put me in slavery, and he didn't make me this color."

He denounced those who "can worship God on Sunday morning, wearing a black clergy robe, and kill others on Sunday evening, wearing a white Klan robe." He praised the communist Sandinista regime of Nicaragua. He renewed his belief that the government created AIDS as a means of genocide against people of color ("I believe our government is capable of doing anything").

And he vigorously renewed demands for an apology for slavery: "Britain has apologized to Africans. But this country's leaders have refused to apologize. So until that apology comes, I'm not going to keep stepping on your foot and asking you, does this hurt, do you forgive me for stepping on your foot, if I'm still stepping on your foot. . . .

Read the entire article.

Update from Wretchard at the Belmont Club:

Maybe James Lewis is onto something when he argues that the "moment of truth for the Left has arrived" because the ideology espoused by Jeremiah Wright and his enthusiastic audience is more a product of the Left's idea mill than anything else. You'll find equivalent versions of the Wright ideology for Latinos, Indians, gays, lesbians and environmentalists. Wright is part of a product line. A small part.

And that's why Obama's associations with people like Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, in conjunction with Jeremiah Wright are more significant than they appear at first glance. They imply a loyalty to the parent brand, the Left, more than to its special product line for black people.

Below are the videos of Rev. Wright's entire appearance today at the National Press Club.

Part 1




Part 2




Part 3




Part 4




Part 5




Part 6

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Outfoxed By Obama & The Twelve Unasked Questions

Yesterday, Fox’s Chris Wallace interviewed Barack Obama. It was an interesting interview, and Obama came off well overall. But Chris Wallace did a very poor job of asking probing questions on the major issues of Iraq, the War on Terror, and Rev. Wright.






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You can find the transcript of the Obama interview here. After watching the interview twice, my impression was that Obama came off well. Part of that is that Obama is both likable and highly intelligent. Part is that, unless pushed, he will always dance past the tough questions with the liquid grace of a Fred Astaire.

On several of the issues raised by Chris Wallace, such as the issue of his appeal across the spectrum of voters, Obama defended his position well. And Obama did change his tune from last week and now agrees that his relationsip with Rev. Wright and Trinity United does reflect on his character and that it is a legitimate political issue. Obama did not do so well when Wallace questioned Obama on the fact that, while Obama claims to be able to heal the partisan divide, his record is extremely liberal and that he has never attempted to reach across the aisle on a single controversial issue. Obama’s response to that question was very muddled, at one point attempting to claim that he somehow met this criteria in regards to the confirmation hearings for John Roberts:

WALLACE: But, Senator, if I may, I think one of the concerns that some people have is that you talk a good game about, let’s be post-partisan, let’s all come together . . . The gang of 14, which was a group — a bipartisan coalition to try to resolve the nomination — the issue of judicial nominations. Fourteen senators came together, you weren’t part of it. On some issues where Democrats have moved to the center, partial-birth abortion, Defense of Marriage Act, you stay on the left and you are against both. And so people say, do you really want a partnership with Republicans or do you really want unconditional surrender from them?

OBAMA: No, look, I think this is fair. . . During the Roberts –

WALLACE: John Roberts, Supreme Court.

OBAMA: John Roberts nomination, although I voted against him, I strongly defended some of my colleagues who had voted for him on the Daily Kos, and was fiercely attacked as somebody who is, you know, caving in to Republicans on these fights. . . .

That's not quite a profile in courage. At any rate, Instapundit has a round up some of the commentary on the interview.

. . . Via MyDD, where Jerome Armstrong observes: "Obama is trying to separate himself from the most strident parts of his base, and he does this pretty effectively throughout the interview." . . .

UPDATE: A more critical take at No Quarter. "The truly scary part is that Obama stands for, essentially, nothing. Obama stands for Obama." More discussion at TalkLeft.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reviews from the Rightosphere aren't much better: "I supported Roberts when I opposed him." Plus this: "He called Wright a 'legitimate' campaign issue, which will seem rather shocking to the New York Times, the McCain campaign, and others who have demanded an end to the North Carolina GOP’s television ad.. . . . Obama sounded a lot less convincing when it came to responding to the William Ayers controversy."

For my part, I thought Chris Wallace completely failed to ask anything other than puffball questions on Iraq, the war on terror, Afghanistan and Rev. Wright. Here are the questions that I think should have been asked on those issues:

1. Whether or not invading Iraq was a good decision, the fact is we are there, and so is al Qaeda and Iran. You can’t un-ring the bell. You have made the centerpiece of your campaign the fact that you are against the war in Iraq and said unconditionally that you will draw out our combat troops within 16 months after becoming President. The other day, during the Senate Hearings, you had the opportunity to question General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker about Iraq. You had the chance to ask them to evaluate the likely outcome of your plan to withdraw the vast majority U.S. forces over a sixteen month period. That would have informed America as to the costs and benefits of your proposal. Yet you chose not to ask them that. Why not?

2. We know from testimony General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker gave to other Senators, that they believe a drawdown such as you have proposed would likely be fatal to all the gains we have made in Iraq. It would reopen Iraq to infiltration again by al Qaeda and Iran would seek to dominate Iraq much as it has Lebanon, using militias to create a "Hezbollah" - something which it is trying to do now. Do you agree that all of these things would be incredibly harmful to our efforts to defeat Islamic radicalism and stop expansionist Iran? And if so, how do you possibly justify your plans to pull us out of Iraq before we have that nation stabilized and able to control its internal and external security?

3. Ambassador Crocker has clearly stated that attempting to pressure Iraq with threats of pulling out our soldiers is counterproductive because it puts Iraq’s political groups in the position of looking at their interests when the U.S. is gone rather than having enough feeling of security to make concessions. It makes political progress far less likely. Members of the Iraqi government have made significant concessions over the past several months. Those concessions have resulted in the Iraqi government, at this point, meeting the vast majority of the bench marks we had set out for Iraq to mark political progress. In light of that and Ambassador Crocker’s testimony, how do you justify pulling out of Iraq before the country is stabilized?

4. Both bin Laden and Zawahiri, in public and private correspondence and speeches, have always stressed that Iraq is the central front in al Qaeda’s war against the West. Indeed, al Qaeda’s number two expressed it again in a speech to the world wide umma just the other day. Both Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus said that they had every reason to believe those statements, and evaluated suggestions to the contrary as ridiculous. Moreover, they see the Anbar Awakening movement as having huge ramifications for the world-wide fight against Islamic extremism. And indeed, al Qaeda’s number two has been explicit in saying that destroying the Anbar Awakening movements is one of his top priorities. With those facts in mind, how do you justify pulling out of Iraq, particularly when we have all but defeated al Qaeda in Iraq as of today?

5. You say that we need much more effort in Afghanistan, and much of what we have tried to do is to get NATO to play a much larger role. Indeed, Afghanistan is a NATO mission. Yet far too many of the European NATO nations are, in many ways, not supporting the action in Afghanistan. You have been the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee for Europe since the 2006 election, and thus have had significant power of oversight for our relations with NATO nations. Can you explain why you have not held a single hearing to bring pressure on our European NATO allies to fully support the Afghan mission since the 2006 election? And if your answer is because you have been busy with this election, can you tell us why, throughout 2007, you could not forgo your interests for a week to put the interests of our nation in the forefront?

6. We can agree that intelligence is our single most important line of defense in stopping plots of murder and mayhem planned against our country. In the wake of 9-11, when over 3,000 Americans died in attacks on our soil by the acts of an enemy few of us even knew about, U.S. intelligence agencies approached the telecom industry and asked for their voluntary cooperation with intelligence gathering. The companies did not get paid a single dime for their help deemed critical to the defense of our nation. Moreover, the head of our intelligence organizations, Mike McConnell, has since explained on several occasions how vital it is that we continue to get voluntary cooperation across the spectrum of intelligence gathering operations from telecom companies. The head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat, agrees and that is why both fully support granting the companies immunity from the class action lawsuits that these companies are now facing. These class action law suits are all brought by a Democrat special interest group, the tort bar. The tort bar stands to make hundreds of millions of dollars in their law suits while we, as a nation, risk losing the the very critical voluntary cooperation of the telecom industry in intelligence gathering. You recently voted in favor of the tort bar, to strip immunity provisions for telecommunications companies from the Protect America Act. Could you please tell us why you are supporting a Democratic special interest group over the vital needs of our national security?

7. Iran has been a rogue nation ever since the theocracy was imposed in 1979. That theocracy has a long history of acts of war, directly or by proxy, against the United States. They have been responsible for kidnapping Americans, the torture and murder of CIA agents, the bombing of the Marine Barracks in Lebanon and Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. They are an incredibly destabilizing force in the mid-East, essentially controlling Hamas – an organization you said you would not meet with – and Hezbollah. They have supported coups in several neighboring countries. They call for the destruction of Israel and years of talks have not dissuaded them from pursuing nuclear weapons, which now threatens to create a nuclear arms race throughout the Middle East. Yet you voted against anything that would even allow the U.S. to use even a threat of force against Iran, and have stated that you will, as President, meet unconditionally with your Iranian counterpart. Iran's goal is very clear - to expand its revolution beyond its borders. What could you possibly offer Iran that would change the inherent nature of the theocracy and move them from their current course?

8. You routinely quote JFK who said that while we should not negotiate out of fear, we should not fear to negotiate. You seem to take that quote out of context. JFK certainly never met with Cuba, nor with North Vietnam, both of whom we had ongoing hostilities with at the time. To the contrary, JFK tried to foster a coup in Cuba and he drastically increased our military involvement in South Vietnam. With those things in mind, many people feel that meeting within the Iranian government for unconditional talks is naive and would be very counterproductive. It would give legitimacy to a government that is responsible for killing American soldiers as we speak and it would give legitimacy to a government that does not have the support of its people. Further, talks with an expansionist enemy have historically proven disasterous. For example, had Europe taken a stand against Hitler in the mid '30's, as Churchill argued, WWII may have been aborted. Instead, Chamberlin held talks with Hitler. That merely emboldened Hitler and, in part, led to World War II, with a loss of lives estimated at close to sixty million people. What makes you think your plans to hold talks with Iran under the current circumstances are, one, justified, and two, would be any less ill advised, counterproductive and disasterous than the attempts to find a middle ground with Hitler in the 30's?

9. We’ve been treated to some of the sermons from your pastor, Rev. Wright. They show a man who appears virulently racist and anti-American. That is buttressed by a number of other facts that we know, such as the Church’s black liberation manifesto reviling "middle-classness," Rev. Wright's close relationship to the racist Louis Farrakhan and, frankly, how in your book, Audacity of Hope, you were moved by a semon which included the assertion that "white folks greed runs a world in need." This raises several questions. Many people are concerned at the incredible dissonance between the sermon’s we’ve heard by Rev. Wright, your supporting his message with large donations to the Church, and yet your claim to be a post racial candidate who can somehow heal partisan and racial divides. We’ve heard you say that you didn’t hear anything like what we are hearing from Rev. Wright while you sat in his pews every Sunday for twenty years. And indeed, you say that the clips the press is playing are taken out of context. Let's take just one of many examples. I find it hard to put into context Rev. Wright's claim that the HIV virus was created by the white government in order to conduct a genocidal attack against African Americans. Can you explain how such an incredible statement by Rev. Wright can be contextualized as anything other than virulently racist and anti-American?

10. It is beyond argument that if a white candidate, such as John McCain, had a close relationship with a virulently racist preacher for over twenty years, and that he described him as his spiritual mentor, that it would raise very serious questions about Mr. McCain’s character and judgment. Is there any reason why, when its you instead of John McCain, a different standard should apply?

11. The sermons we are seeing on the news were not taken by hidden camera. They were recorded by Trinity United and sold on DVD through your Church’s bookstore. They are the "best of" moments. Clearly, the Church was quite proud of these sermons. This would indicate that these sermons were part of Rev. Wright’s mainstream message. That could lead some to wonder if you are being honest in your claims to the contrary and what that says about your veracity, your character and your judgment. In order to resolve these issues, would you make available all recordings you have of Rev. Wright’s sermons and ask Rev. Wright to make his unedited sermons available for the period of time you have been in his church?

12. On the basis of far less provocative speech than Rev. Wright's, you were one of the first people to come out and seek the ouster of Don Imus from his radio program. How do you square this with what appears to be a grossly hyocritical double standard - and by that I mean your twenty years of support for Rev. Wright and Trinity United?

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Obama Is Not JFK

Tomorrow, Obama has stated that he will address race and his two decades of close association with Rev. Jerimiah Wright during a speech in Philly. I have seen several commentors on other blogs say they expect this to be Obama’s Kennedy – Catholic speech moment. It cannot possibly be.


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Tomorrow, Obama supporters are hoping that their candidate - already compared to JFK by many in the press - will assuage the national consciousness about racism in the same way JFK did on the issue of his Catholic faith. But JFK's issue with Catholicism and Obama's issues with racism are fundamentally different.

John F. Kennedy was baptized a Catholic at his birth. Unlike Obama, who made a conscious decision to join Rev. Jerimiah Wright and Trinity United Church as an adult, JFK’s religion was simply a part of his inheritance. Obama's adult choices reflect upon his judgment and character in a way JFK's Catholicism never reflected on JFK.

At issue with JFK in 1960 was the question of whether his Catholicism would dictate how he would lead America on social issues and the issue of religious freedom. JFK had to give assurances that as President, he would make decisions based on what he felt was best for America, not on the basis of Catholic dogma. There was no inherent dissonance between his religion and his duties as President. As he put it in his 1960 speech, "I am the Democratic Party's candidate for President who happens also to be a Catholic."

The situation with Obama is quite different. The central promise of his candidacy lies in his promise to be a post racial candidate who can heal the black white divide and, indeed, all other divides. It is a utopian promise indeed – and it is in direct contradiction to the fact that he has spent twenty years in a close relationship with a man who is an ardent, anti-American and divisive racist. It is in direct contradiction to the facts that he described Rev. Wright as a mentor on spiritual and secular matters, and that one of Obama's central themes - the audacity of hope - is based on a racist sermon given by Rev. Wright.

There is inherent dissonance between those facts and Obama's carefully crafted persona. I simply do not see how this can be "contained" with anything approaching intellectual honesty. What Obama cannot say is "I am the post racial candidate for President who happens also to have a decades long relationship with a man I chose as my pastor and whose raison d’etre is racism and claims of victimization by whites and jews."

As I said, I will wait for the speech. But all I expect from Obama is pure dissimulation. More and more, I am convinced that he is nothing more than an incredible con man.

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Interesting Posts From Around The Web - 17 March 2008

Art: The Muses Clio, Euterpe and Thalia, Eustach Le Sueur, 1655

Spc. Monica Lin Brown, 19 years old from Lake Jackson, Texas, 4th Squadron, 73rd Cav, has done something only a very few female soldiers in American history have ever done. She’s been awarded the Silver Star.

Of winter soldiers and real soldiers, two valuable posts from This Ain’t Hell.

From Consul at Arms quoting VDH on the suicidal canard of multiculturalism: "So ingrained is the notion among our elite that there are no absolute standards of ethics and morality, that we have lost the ability to apply abstract moral judgment without exception." And to see multiculturalism’s conjoined twin in all of its destructiveness, one need only turn to the surreal world of modern Britain.

Of course, things can get pretty damn surreal over here amongst our holier than thou lefties – like librarians refusing to notify authorities about visitors downloading kiddie porn over concern for their First Amendment rights.

Hillary’s imaginary achievements.

An Alpocricy commercial.

The question now is, what did Obama know and when did he know it? Remember Obama saying two days ago he had never heard Rev. Wright light into his racist vitriol at any time during his 20 years of attending Trinity United? Documentary evidence to the contrary is starting to roll in. And the video of Obama heaping praise on Rev. Wright has been scrubbed from YouTube, but not from the Jawa Report.

Barking Moonbats has a video that will tell you all you need to know about Obama. And now Obama’s church is trying to claim that Rev. Wright is the victim of character assassination. If you put the words "suicide by" in that description, I might buy it. And have you seen the Trinity United’s proposed revisions to the National Anthem?

The top 9 Obama campaign slogans suggested by Rev. Jerimah Wright. Heh. My favorite: Defeat racism; kill a cracker. And Rev. Wright will soon be bringing his social gospel into children’s programming. His initial work will be to tell the biblical story of "institutional racism in housing policy, when there was ‘no room at the inn.’"

Fact checking – it is not Reuters’ strongsuit. Far easier just to repeat the anti-gun accusations.

Free trade and Economics 101.

The Paris Book Fair this year is honoring several Israeli writers. Muslim authors have called for a boycott, and wholly unsurprisingly, there has been a bomb threat. For a psychological perspective on suicide bombers, go here. Meanwhile, some very bad things are happening to those who have filed official complaints against a radical Salafi Imam in Canada.

Time to break out the ham sandwiches and run the bath, we have a new guest at the Caribbean retreat. Heh. Meanwhile, what should we do with those guests guilty of plotting 9-11? Off with their heads? Nah, only the Saudis do that, such as for the crime of writing that other religions should not be considered "unbelievers." Apostacy.

So what exactly is the intersection of Islamic lawfare, Tibet’s riots and a Caribbean crimewave?

Whither the chainmail bikini?" And it’s the Medieval Tech Help Desk. Heh.

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Hypocrisy and Obaminations (Update 3)

In the wake of the revelations about Obama's church of twenty years and his close relationship with a vitriolic, racist and anti-American preacher, we are treated in the MSM to near silence and, in several instances, outright dissimulation. Indeed, the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune tell us that "no one with more than a springer spaniel's political awareness" need be concerned with what Rev. Wright has said.


______________________________________________________

Barak Obama is asking for us to vote him into our Presidency. Does he evince sufficient character, judgment and veracity to warrant it?

We evaluate a person based on their deeds, their associations and their words. All three tell us much, as does any dissonance among the three. Do the words match the deeds? Are the associations consonant with both? Of these three, probably the most difficult and fraught with potential for unfairness lies with assessing associations.

That said, one of the oldest sayings that we have in the English language is that a man shall be known by the company he keeps. Indeed, the saying itself has ancient roots, deriving from Book of Proverbs 13:20. Taken past its reasonable moorings, this can lead to an unfair assessment of guilt by simple association. But to dismiss the importance of associations on that possibility alone would be a rejection of the wisdom of the ages. And the longer and deeper the associations, the more important they are in assessing the judgment and character of an individual.

In the case of Barack Obama, we now know that he has had a two decades long and extensive association with the Reverend Jerimiah Wright and Trinity United Church. You can find the details and the videos about the deeply racist and anti-American Rev. Wright here. Here is one of the videos:



The relevant facts for this post are that Obama chose this Church. Obama has attended the church for twenty years, and he has spoken often about how important Rev. Wright has been to his life, how he regularly consulted the Reverend on matters both spiritual and secular, and indeed, how he used one of the Reverend's racist sermons to form the basis of his book, "The Audacity of Hope."

Obama's defenses now that the video above and others have surfaced of Rev. Wright's sermons are simply unbelievable:

1. He has tried to deflect the questions about his Church by simply asserting he did not see the Church as "particularly controversial."

2. He attended the Church for twenty years, but claims that he never heard Rev. Wright express this racist, anti-American vitriol that lies at the heart of Rev. Wright's "social gospel."

3. He downgraded the pastor of the Church yesterday to the status of a mere parishioner whose relationship to Obama was that of an acquintance and with whom he had a limited scope of dealings: "I knew him as somebody in my church who talked to me about Jesus and family and friendships."

To put this in perspective, if we were to find that John McCain, for the past twenty years, had embraced as his spiritual advisor a racist who preached vitriol and hatred against his country, who doubts that it would be front page news for months to come. If McCain had not only chosen this man as his pastor, but written about his theories and closely associated with him in his decision making, there would be a great national debate - or at least an unending series of editorials and news analyses - on the pages of the NYT and Washington Post. Left wing pundits would be red-faced and sputtering with righteous moral outrage.

They would be right to do so. And conservatives, I would like to think, would be equally vociferous and, indeed, leading the charge.

Yet, now that it has become clear, beyond a shadow of any doubt, that Obama is embroiled in just such a scenario, there is only the hypocrisy of silence in the MSM for the most part, the brazen hypocrisy of attempting to pretend it does not matter from others.

In the Washington Post, it has only merited a posting to a blog.

In the NYT, we were treated to a blog post discussing only Obama's defenses and a short article on the topic, noting that Obama is "distancing" himself from his preacher.

But by far the most disingenuous is the Chicago Tribune who, in an editorial, have equated Clinton's relationship with Geraldine Ferarro to Obama's relationsip with Rev. Jerimiah Wright and dismissed both:

The controversial, race-based comments of former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro and of retired South Side pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. are of genuine importance to the selection of a Democratic presidential nominee. . . .

. . . No one with more than a springer spaniel's political awareness thinks that Ferraro speaks for Clinton, or that Wright speaks for Obama. Demands from one candidate's supporters that the other repudiate what was said on his or her behalf ring disingenuous. . . .

Read the entire editorial. Any equation of Clinton/Ferraro to Obama/Rev. Wright cannot even be rightly described as comparing apples to oranges, because those two are at least both fruit. It really is more like comparing apples to deadly nightshade in the degree of difference between the two. No one claims that Clinton had a twenty year relationship with Ferraro, or that she regularly consulted Ferraro on matters both spiritual and otherwise. Ms. Clinton has not crafted a book and a campaign message on the philosophy of Ms. Ferraro. In short, it would take an axe to chop through the disingenuousness and hypocrisy in the Chicago Times editorial.

All of this creates a tremendous level of dissonance as we attempt to evaluate Obama's character, integrity, and whether he has the judgment to lead America. Obama's appeal to this point has been in his words. He portrays himself as being post-racial, able to unite America as one. And yet one of his closest associations over the past twenty years has been with his choice of a spiritual guide and mentor whose vile racism and divisivness has no part in America today. That is a level of dissonance that cannot be swept under the carpert except by utter fools on one hand and those who happen to agree with the racist and anti-American screed of Rev. Wright on the other.

It may well be, as many have speculated, that Obama merely joined the Church and associated so closely with Rev. Wright over the past twenty years purely for political gain. If that is the truth, than we need to know it and judge Obama accordingly. It will tell us about Obama's charachter, his lack of principle, his opportunism, his lack of veracity, and his incredibly cynical embrace of political expediency.

The alternative, and certainly what was suggested several weeks ago by the remarks of Michelle Obama regarding her being proud of America for the "first time," is that Obama and his wife have been quite amenable to Rev. Wright's racist and anti-American screed. If that is the truth, than it will be equally informative of Obama's character and veracity. In either event, Obama's dissimulation and the attempt by his supporters to assert this does not matter while offering vacuous comparisons will not - and cannot be allowed - to work.

Update: Obama continues his dissimulation, now scrubbing mention of his pastor of twenty years from his website.



(H/T Before and After screenshots from LGF and Powerline)

Update2: In four days, there has been a 5 point change in the poll numbers. Obama is dropping. Clinton now leads in the national polls 47 to 45.

Obama now plans to address the race issue at a speech in Philladelphia on March 18. This from the Atlantic:

Barack Obama plans a major speech tomorrow in Philadelphia on race, Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the future.

An adviser said that Obama wants to contain the Wright story. He worries that the 1960s-to-1980s prism of race is what everyone has read into it, and Obama wants to move the discussion forward.

He is expected to recount, in detail, how he came to know Rev. Wright, how he came to admire Rev. Wright, the history and meaning of the Trinity church, and address the controversial remarks attributed to Wright. . . .

Read the article here. Given the dissimulation by Obama himself to this point, I expect nothing less from his speech tomorrow.

Update 3: I have listened to Obama's speech. I will do a seperate post on the speech, though several things struck me. He has now changed his story and admitted that he was well aware of Rev. Wright's racism and bombast, though he did nothing to explain why he would willingly sit through such racist and anti-American screed for twenty plus years. He is trying to create an acceptable grey area out of clear racism and anti-Americanism that should enjoy no support in this land.

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About Time

The fulcrums of Obama's campaign have been his character as supposedly transcending race - indeed, he implies that his very identity will somehow end identity politcs in America - and equally his claims to superior judgment. Yet all are clearly called into question by the company he has chosen to keep. The blogosphere has been pointing for months to Obama's twenty year relationship with the racist and vitriolic Rev. Jerimiah Wright and Obama's membership in Wright's afrocentric Trinity United Church. Now it is finally making its way into the cable news, though not yet into the MSM.

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Here is the Hannity and Colmes video documenting a few of the incredibly inflamatory, anti-American, anti-semetic and racist remarks of Obama's friend and pastor of twenty years, Rev. Jerimiah Wright.




And here is a Sean Hannity interview of Rev. Wright:



Obama has previously attempted to squelch talk about Rev. Wright and their association by claiming that Wright was simply an "uncle figure" and that Obama "didn't agree" with all of the things Wright may have said. Despite Obama's disingenuous characterization of Trinity United - "I don’t think my church is actually particularly controversial" - the cat is out of the bag now, and Obama is into damage control.

As reported in the Kaus Files, Obama tried to put a damper on this issue with a preemptive, global denial in the Huffington Post yesterday:

. . . I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy. I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. . . .

Read the article. And he appeared on Fox News last night to briefly answer questions about the scandal:

As shown in the video, Obama's defence is that, while he often attended church, Rev. Wright did not make these vitriolic and racist types of statements while he was in attendance. Obama states that he did know about one or two statements that Wright had made when he named Wright to the committee but did not feel them that important. Obama claims that had he heard these repeated he would have quit the Church.

Watching the video, one is struck with the fact that Bill Clinton may finally have met his match in the ability to lie convincingly. But as Rick Moran lays out the facts, he notes that Obama's contrary assertions are "frankly unbelievable." Indeed, Obama seems to have has his own DNA stained dress problems. In Obama's case, it is a paper trail that belies his assertions in the Fox interview. It is Obama's memoirs and, indeed, the origins of his "audacity of hope" theme. As Rich Lowrey posts at NRO:

. . . In the book, Obama makes it clear that Wright when he first got to know him was pretty much the same Wright we're getting to know now (the one that Obama is at pains to say is on the verge of retirement). Wright was striking some of the same notes, saying racially venomous things and attacking the bombing of Hiroshima. Note this passage about the first sermon Obama heard from Wright, the source ultimately of the title of Obama's second book and one of the central themes of his presidential campaign:

The title of Reverend Wright’s sermon that morning was “The Audacity of Hope.” He began with a passage from the Book of Samuel—the story of Hannah, who, barren and taunted by her rivals, had wept and shaken in prayer before her God. The story reminded him, he said, of a sermon a fellow pastor had preached at a conference some years before, in which the pastor described going to a museum and being confronted by a painting title Hope.

“The painting depicts a harpist,” Reverend Wright explained, “a woman who at first glance appears to be sitting atop a great mountain. Until you take a closer look and see that the woman is bruised and bloodied, dressed in tattered rags, the harp reduced to a single frayed string. Your eye is then drawn down to the scene below, down to the valley below, where everywhere are the ravages of famine, the drumbeat of war, a world groaning under strife and deprivation.

“It is this world, a world where cruise ships throw away more food in a day than most residents of Port-au-Prince see in a year, where white folks’ greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere…That’s the world! On which hope sits!”

And so it went, a meditation on a fallen world. While the boys next to me doodled on their church bulletin, Reverend Wright spoke of Sharpsville and Hiroshima, the callousness of policy makers in the White House and in the State House. As the sermon unfolded, though, the stories of strife became more prosaic, the pain more immediate. The reverend spoke of the hardship that the congregation would face tomorrow, the pain of those far from the mountaintop, worrying about paying the light bill . . .

Read the entire post. Indeed, it would seem that when Obama first heard Rev. Wright's racist screed, he didn't recoil, rather he signed on the dotted line. And we clearly see the Reverend's mindset in the words of Obama's wife. It was only a few weeks ago that she told the world that, for the "first time," she was "proud of America."

The far left Obama supporters in the MSM are circling the wagons, some in an incredible display of hypocrisy. Others ponder whether this is really meaningful.

Update 2: Juan Williams just appeared on the Beltway Boys and raised an interesting point. The Jerimiah Wright issue has still not gotten a lot of traction in the MSM, but he doesn't think that simply ignoring it is doing Obama any favors. To paraphrase, he states that, while the MSM may be ignoring this, a lot of white people aren't.

As Bookworm Room argues in one of her usual thoughtful posts, yes, Obama's association with Rev. Wright does matter. I certainly believe so on several accounts. One, Obama's attempt to minimize his twenty year association with Rev. Wright and the screed he has preached show a distinct lack of veracity. Two, I personally do not tolerate racism, and with two children of mixed race, I firmly believe that racism of any sort has no place in our politics. I would not tolerate the racism of a David Duke, I would not tolerate a supporter of Duke and the racist attitudes that implies, nor will I tolerate the racism of Rev. Wright. The fact that Obama has tolerated it for twenty years speaks volumes about this man's character.

As Thomas Sowell recently wrote:

Character is what we have to depend on when we entrust power over ourselves, our children and our society to government officials.

We cannot risk all that for the sake of the fashionable affectation of being more non-judgmental than thou.

Currently, various facts are belatedly beginning to leak out that give us clues to the character of Barack Obama. But to report these facts is being characterized as a "personal" attack.

Barack Obama's personal and financial association with a man under criminal indictment in Illinois is not just a "personal" matter. Nor is his 20 years of going to a church whose pastor has praised Louis Farrakhan and condemned the United States in both sweeping terms and with obscene language.

The Obama camp likens mentioning such things to criticizing him because of what members of his family might have said or done. But it was said, long ago, that you can pick your friends but not your relatives.

Obama chose to be part of that church for 20 years. He was not born into it. His "personal" character matters, just as Eliot Spitzer's "personal" character matters — and just as Hillary Clinton's character would matter if she had any.

Read the entire article. Finally, Rick Moran asks:

How many lies must Obama tell before he falls off his perch as an “Agent of Change” and comes back down to earth and is recognized as a gifted but flawed politician, no better and no worse than McCain or Hillary Clinton for that matter?

I think it is now beginning to happen. According to Rasmussen, Obama dropped seven points in the polls overnight, making him almost even with Hillary in the Democratic primaries and several points behind McCain in the national polls. It's about time.

Update: Tom MacGuire at Just One Minute has an exceptional post on all of this:

. . . [N]ot even the Times will be able to ignore this now, ancient footage and interviews with Wright will surface, and Obama will be pretending that he never heard any of it. Get Claude Rains to close the church!.

This Rolling Stone article from Feb 2007 titled "The Radical Roots of Barack Obama" looks like a gold mine. Lots of material on Wright . . . This next passage gives a flavor of what Obama is pretending he did not hear in church . . . :

Wright takes the pulpit here one Sunday and solemnly, sonorously declares that he will recite ten essential facts about the United States. "Fact number one: We've got more black men in prison than there are in college," he intones. "Fact number two: Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run!" There is thumping applause; Wright has a cadence and power that make Obama sound like John Kerry. Now the reverend begins to preach. "We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns and the training of professional KILLERS. . . . We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God. . . . We conducted radiation experiments on our own people. . . . We care nothing about human life if the ends justify the means!" The crowd whoops and amens as Wright builds to his climax: "And. And. And! GAWD! Has GOT! To be SICK! OF THIS SHIT!"

This is as openly radical a background as any significant American political figure has ever emerged from, as much Malcolm X as Martin Luther King Jr. Wright is not an incidental figure in Obama's life, or his politics. The senator "affirmed" his Christian faith in this church; he uses Wright as a "sounding board" to "make sure I'm not losing myself in the hype and hoopla." Both the title of Obama's second book, The Audacity of Hope, and the theme for his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 come from Wright's sermons. "If you want to understand where Barack gets his feeling and rhetoric from," says the Rev. Jim Wallis, a leader of the religious left, "just look at Jeremiah Wright."

Obama wasn't born into Wright's world. His parents were atheists, an African bureaucrat and a white grad student, Jerry Falwell's nightmare vision of secular liberals come to life. Obama could have picked any church — the spare, spiritual places in Hyde Park, the awesome pomp and procession of the cathedrals downtown. He could have picked a mosque, for that matter, or even a synagogue. Obama chose Trinity United. He picked Jeremiah Wright. Obama writes in his autobiography that on the day he chose this church, he felt the spirit of black memory and history moving through Wright, and "felt for the first time how that spirit carried within it, nascent, incomplete, the possibility of moving beyond our narrow dreams."

. . . Let's cut to the Times for more on Obama's choice of minister:

It was a 1988 sermon called “The Audacity to Hope” that turned Mr. Obama, in his late 20s, from spiritual outsider to enthusiastic churchgoer. Mr. Wright in the sermon jumped from 19th-century art to his own youthful brushes with crime and Islam to illustrate faith’s power to inspire underdogs. Mr. Obama was seeing the same thing in public housing projects where poor residents sustained themselves through sheer belief.

. . . In “Dreams From My Father,” Mr. Obama described his teary-eyed reaction to the minister’s words. “Inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones,” Mr. Obama wrote. “Those stories — of survival, and freedom, and hope — became our story, my story.”

Mr. Obama was baptized that year, and joining Trinity helped him “embrace the African-American community in a way that was whole and profound,” said Ms. Soetoro, his half sister.

Whoa. It is hardly as if this is the church Obama's parents selected and he inherited. He sought out Wright, was moved by Wright, and is now pretending he had no idea Wright said these things. . . .

Read the whole post. There is much more.

Updated 3: Much of the above information is now appearing in the Washington Post - but only on Mary Ann Akers The Sleuth blog. Its not quite made the main pages yet. Regardless, the comments of one individual who identifies herself as an Obama supporter are noteworthy:

An interesting summary from an Obama supporter. Here's the link if you wanna sound-off. Very interesting:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/03/obamas-judgment-wright-or-wron.php
By now everyone has seen some of the exceedingly provocative clips from
Mr. Wright's (Obama's pastor) sermons. As an Obama supporter I am
assailed by the following questions/confusions regarding the fallout of
this episode. I have tried my hardest (believe me it's been excruciatingly hard)
to objectively confront the implications of our candidate's
relationship with his pastor. I persuaded myself to face these
questions by telling myself that one is nothing if one is not
intellectually honest:

1. There is an undeniable close knit 20 year relationship between the
pastor and Obama. I gather, the Pastor married Barrack and Michelle,
baptized his children, dedicated Obama's house, has been his "sounding
board" for all that time. The title of Obama's book "Audacity of Hope"
is from the Pastor's sermon. From WSJ I gather, the Pastor was one of
the first people Obama thanked after his election to the Senate in
2004. That, Obama consulted him before deciding to run for president
and prayed privately with him before announcing his candidacy last
year. How can one distance oneself from this deep and this long a
relationship? That would be akin to trying to distance yourself from
half your life. Won't it?

2. The Pastor called US the number one killer, held US responsible for
AIDS/9-11/Mandela's imprisonment and apartheid/Palestinian
plight/killing of innocents to bring down Castro & Libya - I mean,
it goes on and on over, not one or two, but several sermons. How do you
explain how you presumably sat through such incendiary sermons with
your family? Or, at a minimum, continued having a spiritual
relationship despite such rhetoric?

3. Then I read that these clips directly contradict some of the things
Obama has been saying about the pastor. It seems Obama said clearly
that he does not regard his church to be "controversial". While
addressing the Jewish Leaders he apparently explained his pastor's
anti-Zionist statements as being rooted in Israel's support for South
Africa when it seems those statements were never qualified as that. I
don't know if anyone has more insights on this.

4. Our candidate's primary counterpoint to Hillary's Experience has been his Judgment. If people question his judgment for keeping close kinship with someone who was asking God to damn America, how will he respond? What will he say?

5. Obama's candidacy is significantly based on his crossover appeal.
That is, his appeal to Republicans and Independents. He may yet get the
nomination but is his appeal not fatally compromised? How can he hold
on to the mantle of being the less divisive candidate while having an
unapologetic 20 year spiritual relationship with such a radical
preacher? I feel so hopeless about this point. I mean, how would we
feel if McCain was taking his family most Sundays to Jerry Falwell's
discourses?

6. Obama's appeal to the young and the "latte liberals" has been his
fresh-faced sincerity and honesty. To me, I know, that has been his
primary appeal. Now, how do I reconcile this with what his detractors
will call: the hypocrisy of calling, say, Ferraro as divisive? I mean,
folks, what is more divisive than the things the Pastor said about
"white folks", even clearly lambasting Europeans.

7. Of all the incendiary things one can say about race and society and
country where is an Obama supporter or surrogate who now has the moral
high ground to accuse the opponent's surrogates for being divisive.
What is disheartening here is that Obama has forever ceded that high
ground to Clinton/McCain.

I may be wrong - do persuade me that I am. It is very hard for me to
vote for Hillary but now I am thinking about the general election and
finding it really hard to figure out how Obama can keep his
constituencies, his image of being a uniter. How can he? I am seeing
those Republican ads running day and night showing a montage of all the
different ways this Pastor has denounced America and Europeans and
Israel, punctuated by Obama in his own words "I don't think actually
that my church is particularly controversial". I mean, Judgment,
Moderation, Sincerity - can they be Obama's defining pillars anymore?
This is so disheartening. Where do we go from here?

Posted by: Umbria | March 14, 2008 05:38 PM

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Interesting News - 8 February 2008

Today's interesting news, below the fold

Here is a bit more on the company Obama keeps. Obama’s rhetoric is soring, but the few things I can see undergirding it are disturbing – to me and others. About the only thing I like about Obama – and its one of the things I like about McCain – is his stand on trade. I thought Obama had at least one vote wrapped up. I was wrong.

Classical Values endorses McCain and does so for all the right reasons. Much could be riding on McCain’s choice for VP. Confederate Yankee is thinking that if McCain chooses Fred Thompson, that would go far to ameliorating Conservatives. Meanwhile, American Digest ponders MDS – McCain Derangement Syndrome. As I wrote here, I am not infected with that dementia.

This is incredibly troubling. Sharia law arbitration agreements now being recognized in Texas. And see here and here. True, parties can choose whatever law they wish to govern their private agreements. But we also have a long legal tradition that we will not enforce laws that contravene public policy – and much about Sharia law is antithetical to public policy in the West. One example of how antithetical it can be is demonstrated in this story of how "kumbaya gets t-boned by reality" in Ridyah.

Lionheart has up a fascinating post on the narcojihadism in Luton and Britain at large, as well as explaining why he has decided to seek asylum in the United States.

What is the value of Human Rights Commissions when they are being used to stifle freedom of speech and force secular left values on people who object to the same, in this case on Christian grounds?

The problem, Georgia’s incredible growth and below average rainfall has left the state with a severe water problem. The proposed solution – annex Tennessee, or at least that part of it with significant water resources. One wonders how many wars have been motivated on similar grounds since time immemorial. At any rate, break out the battle flags and muskets, and let Civil War redux commence.

Is the next little Ice Age already upon us? It certainly would put in perspective the politicization of science that has made the Goracle rich and now threatens to regulate us back to the stone age. Meanwhile, in Canada, there are calls for those who question the authenticity of global warming to be jailed. (H/T LostINto2)

Hook-handed hate cleric Abu Hamza is appealing his extradition to the U.S. where he will be tried on terrorism charges. His lawyer is concerned. "There are grave concerns about what might happen if the extradition goes ahead. The Americans have said he will not face the death penalty or be sent to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp - but how can we be sure? "I also fear that if he was sent to America he would become a victim of torture." The thing of it is, between British and EU Courts, I actually wonder if his appeal might not work. (H/T Sheik Yer Mami)

Taqiyya, the revered Muslim practice of fooling the Kafir and others, is explained. And you can see taqiyya in action here.

A 34-year-old Italian man who had sex with a 13-year-old girl has had his sentence cut by a two-thirds because a court decided there was "real love" between the pair.

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Interesting News - Super Tuesday Edition

This is it. Super Tuesday is here.
Big Lizards Guide to Uber Tuesday for the Perplexed is a where to go for your scorecard. And pundits are using their columns to try and influence the vote. E.J. Dionne has found his personal savior in Obama. Can we have a "hallelujah" Indeed, we now know the debate is over and the only ones who consider it otherwise are racists. Could they be as racist as the head of Trinity United, however? On the right side, Andres Martinez leads with the question of whether McCain has accepted Jesus as his personal savior, while Rick Moran ponders the redefining of what it means to be a Republican. I happen to share the view of the Glittering Eye on McCain.

John Bolton ponder how our spy chief, Mitch McConnell, can undue the tremendous damage of the NIE on Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Program when he testifies before Congress this week.

David Aaronovitch ponders the horrendous ramifications of a withdrawal from Afghanistan. As does a professor in Pakistan. America will not abandon it, but NATO is shaky indeed, compliments of the cowardly and disloyal Germans who have refused to provide combat soldiers that would actually fight in the NATO operation.

As I have blogged previously, Gordon Brown plans to get upwards of 30% of the UK’s energy through a massive construction of wind turbines throughout Britain. It was nuts to begin with, and now its worse. "Nato has begun an investigation into British findings that wind farms make overflying planes invisible to radar . . ." Meanwhile, Labour has given £1 billion in tax receipts to energy companies to start building them – which the companies have pocketed while energy prices in the UK skyrocket.

More insane PC silencing of free speech in Britain. "Schools are being ordered to drop the term "mum and dad" in case it offends pupils from a single-parent, homosexual or turkey-baster ‘family.’" And if its not the PC crowd, it’s the bureaucrats doing in the quality of life.

"A new study says that mandatory diversity training backfires: After looking at data from 830 workplaces, researchers discovered that sensitivity seminars and their ilk led to declines in the number of women and minorities in management."

What will you do to celebrate Waitangi Day tomorrow, take a Mori tribesman to dinner?

Sleaze goes Goracle green. He is the modern version of a war profiteer.

More on the travesty of justice in the Maldives following the gang rape of a 12 year old girl by members of the religion of peace.

Gloria Steinem editorializes at TNOY as to the many accomplishments of the "womyn’s" movement in America. You will find a few of the accomplishments surprising, beginning with the more equal distribution of STD’s

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