Saturday, March 29, 2008

Like JFK, Obama Lacks Spine to Repudiate Racists Whose Support He Needs

JFK made nice speeches about civil rights, but knew that he needed the support of racist Southern Democrats in the U.S. Senate, so he was relatively inert during the turmoil of the Civil Rights movement.

He also understood that Blacks were inalienably Democratic, and therefore would remain in his column despite his flirtations with white racist demogogues like James Eastland, Orville Faubus, William Fulbright and Sam Ervin.

Likewise, Sen. Obama has generated some soaring rhetoric about unity and racial reconciliation, but he understands as a prosperous biracial man that his bona fides with the resentful Black underclass are not secure enough to permit him to repudiate Black racist demogogues and economic hypocrites like his Chicago pastor.

Just in case Obama wavers, ideological enforcers like the Washington Post's Colbert King are at the ready with columns like the one below.

Why Obama Stands With His Church
By Colbert King

All they wanted to do was pray with the rest of the congregation. But that was asking too much.

To be sure, Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, two leaders in Philadelphia's black community, enjoyed great success in bringing African Americans into the Christian fold. But the steady growth in black membership at St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church distressed the white congregation that owned the church.

At first, black Christians were moved to seats along the wall. That still allowed for too much mingling. So one Sunday morning as Allen, Jones and the other black worshipers knelt to pray, white church elders tapped Jones and Allen on the shoulders and told them to take their praying upstairs to a recently built balcony.

Rather than submit to such humiliation, Jones, Allen and the rest of the black worshipers walked out. The two men formed their own congregations.

Jones gained permission from the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania to establish America's first black parish, St. Thomas African Episcopal Church. He eventually became the Episcopal Church's first African American priest.

Allen formed a Methodist congregation that eventually became today's multimillion-member African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church.

The walkout in the City of Brotherly Love occurred in 1787 -- a year that marks the beginning of America's independent black church, a theological movement born out of racism.

This history comes to mind as I listen to conservative commentators, chief among them MSNBC's Pat Buchanan, brand as "racist" the slogan adopted by Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago: "Unashamedly black and unapologetically Christian."

Trinity is Barack Obama's church and the place where the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. -- a gift to all who would bring down Obama -- served as pastor until his recent retirement.

Buchanan and his ilk look at Trinity's slogan with horror. They label the church's theological values "Afro-centric" and "racially exclusive." Trinity is beyond the pale of Christianity, at least their version of it. Psst: Trinity has plenty of company, coast to coast.

Many black congregations, from storefronts to mega-churches, are in sync with the Trinity slogan. They, too, see no need to apologize for their African roots. Nor are they ashamed of preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

But hey, what's with this newfound concern about African Americans worshiping among themselves in their own way? More important, who forced that separation?

As sociologist Kenneth Clark noted in his book "Dark Ghetto," ministers and lay leaders of white Christian churches historically were unwilling to incorporate large numbers of blacks into their houses of Christ. That's still the case today with some churches.

Truth is, folks like Buchanan don't really care that America's Christian congregations don't look like salt and pepper on Sunday mornings. The reality of blacks and whites worshiping apart doesn't disturb them. If anything, Buchanan thinks African Americans are ingrates -- that we should be satisfied with our station in life.

"America has been the best country on earth for black folks," Buchanan wrote in his column, " PJB: A Brief for Whitey," posted on his Web site yesterday.

"It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known," he wrote.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Like JFK, Obama Leading "Double Life"

JFK was a notorious adulterer who profaned the presidency with multiple trysts, and used the White House staff to prevent his wife from discovering women with him there. By contrast, Obama appears to be a faithful husband. Yet, as Thomas Sowell writes below, he "has been leading as much of a double life as Eliot Spitzer."

What Obama found irresistible, however, was not a mini-skirt or a bursting bodice, but the cult of Black racism and treason in Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. Now he is telling his spiritual mistress of 20 years not to call him at work, and not to embarrass him in front of his new friends. But it's hard not to notice the lipstick on his collar.

Race and Politics
By Thomas Sowell
March 18, 2008

There is something both poignant and galling about the candidacy of Barack Obama. Any American, regardless of party or race, has to find it heartening that the country has reached the point where a black candidate for President of the United States sweeps so many primaries in states where the overwhelming majority of the population is white.

We have all seen the crowds enthralled by Barack Obama's rhetoric and theatrical style. Many of his supporters put their money where their mouths were, so that this recently arrived Senator received more millions of dollars in donations than candidates who have been far more visible on the national stage for far more years.

That's the good news. The bad news is that Barack Obama has been leading as much of a double life as Eliot Spitzer.

While talking about bringing us together and deploring "divisive" actions, Senator Obama has for 20 years been a member of a church whose minister, Jeremiah Wright, has said that "God Bless America" should be replaced by "God damn America" -- among many other wild and even obscene denunciations of American society, including blanket racist attacks on whites.

Nor was this an isolated example. Fox News Channel has played tapes of various sermons of Jeremiah Wright, and says that it has tapes with hours of more of the same.

Wright's actions matched his words. He went with Louis Farrakhan to Libya and Farrakhan received an award from his church.

Sean Hannity began reporting on Jeremiah Wright back in April of 2007. But the mainstream media saw no evil, heard no evil and spoke no evil.

Now that the facts have come out in a number of places, and can no longer be suppressed, many in the media are trying to spin these facts out of existence.

Spin number one is that Jeremiah Wright's words were "taken out of context." Like most people who use this escape hatch, those who say this do not explain what the words mean when taken in context. In just what context does "God damn America" mean something different?

Spin number two is that Barack Obama says he didn't hear the particular things that Jeremiah Wright said that are now causing so much comment.

It wasn't just an isolated remark. Nor were the enthusiastic responses of the churchgoers something which suggests that this anti-American attitude was news to them or something that they didn't agree with. If Barack Obama was not in church that particular day, he belonged to that church for 20 years. He made a donation of more than $20,000 to that church. In all that time, he never had a clue as to what kind of man Jeremiah Wright was? Give me a break! You can't be with someone for 20 years, call him your mentor, and not know about his racist and anti-American views.

Neither Barack Obama nor his media spinmeisters can put this story behind him with some facile election year rhetoric. If Senator Obama wants to run with the rabbits and hunt with the hounds, then at least let the rabbits and the hounds know that.

The fact that Obama talks differently than Jeremiah Wright does not mean that his track record is different. Barack Obama's voting record in the Senate is perfectly consistent with the far left ideology and the grievance culture, just as his wife's statement that she was never proud of her country before is consistent with that ideology.

Senator Barack Obama's political success thus far has been a blow for equality. But equality has its down side. Equality means that a black demagogue who has been exposed as a phony deserves exactly the same treatment as a white demagogue who has been exposed as a phony.

We don't need a President of the United States who got to the White House by talking one way, voting a very different way in the Senate, and who for 20 years followed a man whose words and deeds contradict Obama's carefully crafted election year image.
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Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.
COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Monday, March 17, 2008

JFK felt obliged to make a major speech during his 1960 presidential campaign when critics predicted that the Catholic Church would dominate the U.S. government under the Catholic Kennedy. He promised that no clergyman would influence his decisions in the White House, and most Americans found that convincing. As it turns out, there is some evidence that Francis Cardinal Spellman was unusually influential as to U.S. foreign policy, but this was no less true during the Eisenhower administration.

Obama has had the opposite errand until recently. Last year he was pledging his devotion to 20-year spiritual adviser Jeremiah Wright. This was in part to deflect accusations that he is a secret Muslim. Now he may wish he had identified himself as a Muslim, because his ties to Wright are proving controversial and embarrassing. Now Obama has to make a speech accounting for his devotion to a racist, divisive pastor and congregation.

If you missed the "Black Values" on Barack Obama's church's About Us page, it's too late.

The 160-word section has since been deleted from the About Us page, replaced by videotaped testimonials from church members vouching for Pastor Jeremiah Wright, including a white official from the parent denomination, United Church of Christ, who said she feels welcome at predominantly black Trinity.

“These black ethics must be taught and exemplified in homes, churches, nurseries and schools, wherever blacks are gathered,” the original page said. But it was taken down, and Wright has gone into seclusion, unavailable for comment.

Obama is expected to deliver a speech today to clarify his views on the racially inflammatory, anti-American sermons that Wright has delivered at Trinity United Church of Christ during the two decades Obama has been a member.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

JFK had Spellman; Obama has Wright

Like Barack Obama, JFK was close to a churchman, Cardinal Francis Spellman. Spellman was alleged to have been complicit in the coup against South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem, himself a Catholic, which led to Diem's assassination by Buddhist forces.

Spellman was a fierce anti-Communist who was very influential in U.S. foreign policy, and was occasionally dispatched by the Vatican to represent Catholic interests with national leaders, including Eisenhower and Kennedy.

Obama, too, has close ties to a churchman with foreign policy interests and strong opinions about the illegitimacy of American society. Obama's confidante, United Church of Christ preacher Jeremiah A. Wright, laid out his view of America in a YouTube sermon described below by Newsmax.com correspondent Ronald Kessler.

Obama Minister's Hatred of America
By Ronald Kessler

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 man as president. The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., pastor of 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.

While snippets from the sermon have appeared in a few magazines, no news outlet has previously run the entire text of Wright’s diatribe. An audio recording of the sermon appears on YouTube.

Raising his voice in rage, Wright began his sermon by saying, “Fact No. 1: We’ve got more black men in prison than there are in college. Racism is alive and well. Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run. No black man will ever be considered for president, no matter how hard you run Jesse [Jackson] and no black woman can ever be considered for anything outside what she can give with her body.”

Omitting fact No. 2, Wright thundered on: “Fact No. 3: America is still the No. 1 killer in the world. We invaded Grenada for no other reason than to get Maurice Bishop [a Grenada revolutionary who seized power in 1979], invaded Panama because Noriega would not dance to our tune any more. 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 Qaddafi.”

Wright continued: “Fact No. 4: 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.

Fact No. 5: We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians and branding anybody who spoke out against it as being anti-semitic.”

His voice rising, Wright was on a roll: “Fact No. 6: We conducted radiation experiments on our own people. They’re just finding out about that. We care nothing about human life if the ends justifies the means.

Fact No. 7: We do not care if poor black and brown children cannot read and kill each other senselessly. We abandoned the cities back in the '60s when the riots started and it really doesn’t matter what those nations do to each other; we gave up on them and public education of poor people who live in the projects . . .”

Wright went on: “Fact No. 8: We started the AIDS virus, and now that it is out of control, we still put more money in the military than in medicine; more money in hate than in humanitarian concerns. Everybody does not have access to healthcare, I don’t care what the rich white boys in the Senate say. Listen up: If you are poor, black and elderly, forget it.”

Concluding, Wright said: “Fact No. 9: We are only able to maintain our level of living by making sure that Third World people live in grinding poverty.

And fact No. 10: We are selfish, self-centered egotists who are arrogant and ignorant and betray our church and do not try to make the kingdom that Jesus talked about a reality. And — and — and in light of these 10 facts, God has got to be sick of this s***.”

Meeting with Jewish leaders in Cleveland on Feb. 24, Obama described Wright as being like “an old uncle who sometimes will say things that I don't agree with.” He rarely mentions the items of disagreement.

Obama went on to explain away Wright’s anti-Zionist statements as being rooted in his anger over the Jewish state’s support for South Africa under its previous policy of apartheid. As with a previous claim that his church gave an award to Louis Farrakhan because of his work with ex-offenders, Obama made that up out of thin air. Wright’s statements denouncing Israel have not been qualified in any way.

As for Wright’s repeated comments blaming America for the 9/11 attacks, Obama has said it sounds as if the minister was trying to be “provocative.” Hearing Wright’s venomous and paranoid denunciations of this country, the vast majority of Americans would walk out. Instead, Obama and his wife Michelle have presumably sat through hundreds of similar sermons. Indeed, Obama has described Wright as his “sounding board” during the two decades he has known him.

Obama has said he found religion through Wright in the 1980s and consulted him before deciding to run for president. He prayed privately with Wright before announcing his candidacy last year. Aside from showing poor judgment, it’s difficult to imagine that Obama could be so close to Wright without agreeing with at least some of his views.

In light of Wright’s perspective, Michelle Obama’s comment that she feels proud of America for the first time makes perfect sense. (In a second iteration, she said she feels “really proud” for the first time.)

Wright’s blame-America mentality also fits in neatly with many on the left who support Obama’s weak approach to national security and dealing with foreign dictators. To date, the Obama-loving media have largely ignored the senator’s close association with Wright. The question is whether the blackout will be lifted before voters decide whether they want to entrust Obama with America’s future.

Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com.

Saturday, March 1, 2008

Somali Tribesmen Assert Jurisdiction Over Obama's Female Rival, Demand U.S. Apology

John F. Kennedy had a devoted following in his family's ancestral homeland, but Ireland generally stayed out of U.S. elections, and there was no Irish concept of dhimmi. Barack Obama's ethnic Somali kinsmen in Kenya are decidedly less deferential toward U.S. sovereignty, and have intiated a trial of Obama's American rival Hillary Clinton in absentia for campaign tactics they have declared unacceptable.

Pro-Obama Somali immigrant activists in Minneapolis, also, have demanded an apology for the release of a photograph that shows the Illinois Senator wearing a Somali turban and tribal robes during a visit to his father's homeland in western Kenya.

In 1993, Somali Muslims massacred several U.S. soldiers who were part of a U.N. peacekeeping mission to Mogadishu, then mutilated them, displayed them to gawkers, and drug their bodies through the streets to the merriment of Somali onlookers.

The Obama photograph presents an unforgettable image of a potential U.S. Commander-in-Chief dressing himself in the robes and turban of an ethnic group whose response to the mutilation of idealistic young American soldiers was joy and celebration.

The ceremonial photo does not predate the "Blackhawk Down" tragedy, and therefore Obama's worldview can legitimately be analyzed in the context of Mogadishu. One wonders what Obama was thinking when he let these people dress him up and photograph him like that, and it is impossible to imagine J.F.K. committing any analogous gaffe.

You have to wonder what Obama will let other foreigners do to and in the United States, as long as they express personal admiration for him.

Clinton faces Kenya cattle fine over Obama photo
By Daniel Wallis

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenyan elders may impose a fine on U.S. presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, payable in livestock, after a photo of her rival Barack Obama in robes dragged their people into the race for the White House.

The picture, which appeared on a U.S. Web site, showed the Illinois senator in a white headdress and traditional Somali attire during a 2006 visit to Wajir in Kenya's remote northeast.

Obama has battled a whispering campaign by fringe elements who wrongly say he is Muslim and his aides accused Clinton's campaign of "the most shameful, offensive fear-mongering" after the photograph was published.

Wajir elders resolved to file an official complaint with the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, dropping earlier plans to hold a protest after Friday prayers.

They said they would also convene a traditional Somali court to investigate the matter. It can impose fines that are payable in cattle, goats or camels.

"We will go ahead with this case whether Senator Clinton or Democratic party leaders turn up or not," said Mohamed Ibrahim, a member of the clan that hosted Obama during his trip. "But this whole thing can be avoided if only an apology is made."

The late father of the Democratic frontrunner was from western Kenya. Many in the east African country support Obama the way the Irish idolized President John F. Kennedy in the 1960s -- as one of their own who succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

"The clan he was with have every right to be offended," said Hussein Ali, a 32-year-old unemployed man outside the main Jamia Mosque in the capital Nairobi.

"Obama's enemies are trying to portray him as a terrorist, saying all Muslims, and especially Somalis, are dangerous men."

MOLLIFYING (OBAMA'S KINSMEN)

Clinton's campaign denies authorizing the release of the controversial photo but says that, with 700 staffers, it could not be certain someone had not sent it out unofficially.

That has not mollified locals in Wajir, a small desert town near the Somali border, who demanded Clinton "clear her name".

Other Kenyans questioned the timing of the picture's publication, days before make-or-break votes in Ohio and Texas next week.

For many Americans, Somalia conjures up disturbing images of dead U.S. troops being dragged through Mogadishu's dusty streets during the "Black Hawk Down" battle of 1993.

The U.S. military launched air strikes on the Horn of Africa country last year in its hunt for al Qaeda, including suspects wanted over the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi in 1988.

"We suspect the intent behind releasing this picture now, just before Tuesday's very critical vote," said Omar Jamal, head of the St Paul, Minnesota-based Somali Justice Advocacy Center.

His lobby group, which works with Somali immigrants in the United States, has also demanded an apology from Clinton's camp.

"They are trying to make a link between a man who could be the next U.S. president and a country with al Qaeda terrorist activities. They're trying to tell citizens, look who you might be voting for," he told Reuters by telephone.

"Everyone is very upset. It's outrageous and undermining."