Lack of accomplishment as an academic, then as a state senator and finally as a US senator might seem a bit of a hurdle to most of us if we were to contemplate running for president. But not for Obama and not for his handlers. Why? Because of what the campaign perceives to be a trump card - the application of race (or the preferred half for this purpose) to apply leverage. Sure enough, he’s hard at work: "...what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. You know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills, you know." Or, "He’s young and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?" Or even in Berlin, where he tried to highlight that he was the first black American to address an audience there (forgetting Rice and Powell before him).
Obama’s strategy is straightforward - delegitimize any line of attack. That is, no charge against Obama can be made innocent of racial bias. That’s why his lack of qualification is not key, is not a major concern to his campaign. Don’t worry about the normal political back-and-forth; it’s illegitimate; the guy is above criticism.
How exactly did Obama plan to turn his blackness to advantage? From Shelby Steele of the Hoover Institute, "The answer is that one ‘bargains.’ Bargaining is a mask that blacks can wear in America, that enables them to put whites at their ease. Bargainers like Obama make the subliminal promise to whites not to shame them with America’s history of racism on the condition that they will not hold the bargainer’s race against him. And whites love the bargain – and feel affection for the bargainer–because it gives them racial innocence in a society where whites live under constant threat of being stigmatized as racist. Unlike Jackson and Sharpton who intimidated and demanded, Obama instead flatters whites, grants them racial innocence and hopes to ascend on the back of their gratitude."
Sure enough, Obama’s policy positions are nothing but DNC boilerplate. He has not espoused one original or galvanizing political idea. He is unable to say what he means by "change" or "hope" or "the future," and failed to say how he would be "a unifier." He has a track record with a near vacuity of content, BUT, none of this matters! Because as Steele illustrates, "Race... lifts his political campaign to the level of allegory, making it the stuff of a far higher drama than budget deficits or education reform (or even national security we might add). His dark skin...frames the political contest as a morality play. Thus, for whites here is the opportunity to document their deliverance from the shame of their forbearers."
Well, nice try Obama but quite likely your game is up. This strategy will fail on most Americans for the simple reason that it has been over played. As our own Vic Hansen observes, "The voter is now starting to hear serially from Obama about race; they were promised a racially transcendent candidate, but now Obama seems obsessed with identity, either accusing others of racism, or using heritage himself for political advantage. This is a tragic blunder."
Robert Craven
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008
Thursday in Berlin - The Second Coming
In his victory speech upon winning his party’s nomination Obama pronounced a great turning point in history - "generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment" - when, among other wonders, "the rise of the oceans will began to slow." As economist Irwin Stelzer noted in his London Telegraph column, "Moses made the waters recede, but he had help. Obama apparently works alone."
Just ask the German youth packaged (with the assist of a rock band) for the Berlin spectacle. Veneration, idiolatry swept the audience, gathering most of the press in its wake. Whoa! It seems only yesterday that Obama was just another Chicago politician whose entire resume was a speech at John Kerry’s convention. As we highlighted in detail in an earlier sketch, he’s a short-term US senator without a single legislative accomplishment, a former Illinois senator who voted "present" nearly 130 times (meaning - not willing to commit), a president of the Harvard Law Review and law professor who never produced one single piece of scholarship, not one memorable article, aside, that is from a biography on his favorite subject - himself.
Germans don’t vote for this office but since Thursday’s sermon, poll results are higher among many of those who will. Have the masses been taken in by this messiah wannabe? No doubt. Obama’s handlers are counting on voter illiteracy as their trump card. Americans are tired of conflict; thus, a warm and fuzzy message fits as it sheds the necessity of hard choices; it is a fit because a whole bunch of Americans are blissfully unaware of the dynamics of foreign affairs, ignorant of US and world history.
But Obama as commander-in-chief? Holly mackerel. In an earlier sketch we put a spotlight on the perfect contest for this office - a real life, hands on, taking-of-the-helm. This was 2006 when McCain, as a member of the Senates Armed Services Committee recommended the "surge" noting that initially this strategy would increase American casualties and hardships but then would bring violence under control. Obama as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee presented his solution in the "Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007 (S. 433) which forbade the surge and demanded that most troops be out of Iraq by the spring of 2008. As our friend Rex Murphy of Canada’s GlobeandMail.com puts it, "Obama offered unqualified, insistent opposition to the Petraeus surge, which turned the war around to the point that some of its most relentless critics now maintain ‘it cannot be lost.’ In other words, on the one definitive issue, post-invasion, on his country’s most important foreign involvement, the one decision the inarticulate and sublimely unhip Texan in the White House made alone, and got right; Obama was perfectly, publicly wrong." Too much.
Thus, by Obama’s European tour his handlers looked to build an image, create a statesman out of nothing, knowing as most of us do that this man is profoundly out of his league in matters of foreign affairs; knowing too that they have a leftist on their hands who thinks that war can be wished away by blaming the US for its enemies’ hatred. The tool: create an illusion, the wonderland of ONE WORLD - how did the rest of us miss that!? - and Obama will become its paladin. For example, Obama’s reference Thursday to why Berlin did not starve in 1948 ("But in the darkest hours, the people of Berlin kept the flame of hope burning. The people of Berlin refused to give up. And on one fall day, hundreds of thousands of Berliners came here, to the Tiergarten, and heard the city’s major implore the world not to give up on freedom.") As the San Joaquin Valley’s own Vic Hansen made note, "With all due respect, I don’t believe the world did anything to save Berlin. The city was kept alive not by ‘the world’ or even the courage of the hungry Berliners, but by the skill and courage of the US Air Force."
Fortunately for Obama, this is the stuff that slips by the masses, most of whom, if not suffering from a case of chronic amnesia, certainly struggle to lay claim to events preceding the last super bowl.
Again from Thursday’s worship we witnessed Obama’s soaring rhetoric, his historical revisionism that, "The two superpowers that faced each other across the wall of this city came too close too often to destroying all we have built and all that we love." (a pause for a visit to the men’s room - I will throw up presently.. Ok, back after a clearing of the system) As Hansen notes, "I would beg to differ again and suggest that a mass-murdering Soviet tyranny came close to destroying the European continent (after wiping out millions of its own people)...and was checked only by an often lone and caricatured US superpower and its nuclear deterrence."
Ongoing we will continue to expose the messiah for what he is, or isn’t.
Robert Craven
Just ask the German youth packaged (with the assist of a rock band) for the Berlin spectacle. Veneration, idiolatry swept the audience, gathering most of the press in its wake. Whoa! It seems only yesterday that Obama was just another Chicago politician whose entire resume was a speech at John Kerry’s convention. As we highlighted in detail in an earlier sketch, he’s a short-term US senator without a single legislative accomplishment, a former Illinois senator who voted "present" nearly 130 times (meaning - not willing to commit), a president of the Harvard Law Review and law professor who never produced one single piece of scholarship, not one memorable article, aside, that is from a biography on his favorite subject - himself.
Germans don’t vote for this office but since Thursday’s sermon, poll results are higher among many of those who will. Have the masses been taken in by this messiah wannabe? No doubt. Obama’s handlers are counting on voter illiteracy as their trump card. Americans are tired of conflict; thus, a warm and fuzzy message fits as it sheds the necessity of hard choices; it is a fit because a whole bunch of Americans are blissfully unaware of the dynamics of foreign affairs, ignorant of US and world history.
But Obama as commander-in-chief? Holly mackerel. In an earlier sketch we put a spotlight on the perfect contest for this office - a real life, hands on, taking-of-the-helm. This was 2006 when McCain, as a member of the Senates Armed Services Committee recommended the "surge" noting that initially this strategy would increase American casualties and hardships but then would bring violence under control. Obama as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee presented his solution in the "Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007 (S. 433) which forbade the surge and demanded that most troops be out of Iraq by the spring of 2008. As our friend Rex Murphy of Canada’s GlobeandMail.com puts it, "Obama offered unqualified, insistent opposition to the Petraeus surge, which turned the war around to the point that some of its most relentless critics now maintain ‘it cannot be lost.’ In other words, on the one definitive issue, post-invasion, on his country’s most important foreign involvement, the one decision the inarticulate and sublimely unhip Texan in the White House made alone, and got right; Obama was perfectly, publicly wrong." Too much.
Thus, by Obama’s European tour his handlers looked to build an image, create a statesman out of nothing, knowing as most of us do that this man is profoundly out of his league in matters of foreign affairs; knowing too that they have a leftist on their hands who thinks that war can be wished away by blaming the US for its enemies’ hatred. The tool: create an illusion, the wonderland of ONE WORLD - how did the rest of us miss that!? - and Obama will become its paladin. For example, Obama’s reference Thursday to why Berlin did not starve in 1948 ("But in the darkest hours, the people of Berlin kept the flame of hope burning. The people of Berlin refused to give up. And on one fall day, hundreds of thousands of Berliners came here, to the Tiergarten, and heard the city’s major implore the world not to give up on freedom.") As the San Joaquin Valley’s own Vic Hansen made note, "With all due respect, I don’t believe the world did anything to save Berlin. The city was kept alive not by ‘the world’ or even the courage of the hungry Berliners, but by the skill and courage of the US Air Force."
Fortunately for Obama, this is the stuff that slips by the masses, most of whom, if not suffering from a case of chronic amnesia, certainly struggle to lay claim to events preceding the last super bowl.
Again from Thursday’s worship we witnessed Obama’s soaring rhetoric, his historical revisionism that, "The two superpowers that faced each other across the wall of this city came too close too often to destroying all we have built and all that we love." (a pause for a visit to the men’s room - I will throw up presently.. Ok, back after a clearing of the system) As Hansen notes, "I would beg to differ again and suggest that a mass-murdering Soviet tyranny came close to destroying the European continent (after wiping out millions of its own people)...and was checked only by an often lone and caricatured US superpower and its nuclear deterrence."
Ongoing we will continue to expose the messiah for what he is, or isn’t.
Robert Craven
Sunday, June 15, 2008
AMNESIA
John F. Kennedy, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Scoop Jackson, once great leaders of a once great party, could feel nothing if not betrayed by the new Democratic party and its selection of Obama as its candidate for president of the United States.
In the post of Apr/21 we highlighted the transformation from the party JFK said in his inaugural would "pay and price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of freedom," to one which Joe Lieberman illustrates, "grew to see America as the aggressor - a morally bankrupt, imperialist power whose militarism and ‘inordinate fear of communism’ represented the real threat to world peace." The Soviets and their allies were our enemies not because they nursed ambitions of global conquest but because we provoked them, we threatened them.
Naturally our partisan friends won’t admit the same; most simply accept and move lemming-like to November yet the undeniable truth is that the old, respectable Democratic party is gone; it no longer exists and to most of the membership lessons of history are lost with it. What does exist is a party and a philosophy which would gag Harry Truman, a philosophy certainly when directed toward foreign affairs represents a clear and present danger to this country. This new Democratic party believes that the more therapeutic and the more conciliatory, the more diplomatic, the more apologetic, the more sensitive, the more likely we will be safe. This party condemns a man who has kept the nation safe for 7 years by keeping the Islamic medievalists pinned down in Iraq while virtually destroying al-Qaida, yet deifies a man who has accomplished absolutely nothing in his entire life except to give speeches about "change". And countries which adopted a DNC-like stance? What happened to them since Sep/2001? Simply ask the Europeans who were hit repeatedly, who were successfully targeted because they stood for nothing, or certainly nothing they were willing to defend.
A great Democratic secretary of state, Dean Acheson, once warned that, "No people in history have ever survived who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies." A lesson lost on the present DNC leadership, suffering it seems from a severe case of amnesia.
Robert Craven
In the post of Apr/21 we highlighted the transformation from the party JFK said in his inaugural would "pay and price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of freedom," to one which Joe Lieberman illustrates, "grew to see America as the aggressor - a morally bankrupt, imperialist power whose militarism and ‘inordinate fear of communism’ represented the real threat to world peace." The Soviets and their allies were our enemies not because they nursed ambitions of global conquest but because we provoked them, we threatened them.
Naturally our partisan friends won’t admit the same; most simply accept and move lemming-like to November yet the undeniable truth is that the old, respectable Democratic party is gone; it no longer exists and to most of the membership lessons of history are lost with it. What does exist is a party and a philosophy which would gag Harry Truman, a philosophy certainly when directed toward foreign affairs represents a clear and present danger to this country. This new Democratic party believes that the more therapeutic and the more conciliatory, the more diplomatic, the more apologetic, the more sensitive, the more likely we will be safe. This party condemns a man who has kept the nation safe for 7 years by keeping the Islamic medievalists pinned down in Iraq while virtually destroying al-Qaida, yet deifies a man who has accomplished absolutely nothing in his entire life except to give speeches about "change". And countries which adopted a DNC-like stance? What happened to them since Sep/2001? Simply ask the Europeans who were hit repeatedly, who were successfully targeted because they stood for nothing, or certainly nothing they were willing to defend.
A great Democratic secretary of state, Dean Acheson, once warned that, "No people in history have ever survived who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies." A lesson lost on the present DNC leadership, suffering it seems from a severe case of amnesia.
Robert Craven
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
ELECTION UPDATE
ELECTION UPDATE
The Pennsylvania primary exit poll results, the first contest since information regarding Obama’s less-than-flattering past associations has become available, and, the first contest to follow his recent condescending, elitist remarks so consistent with a far-left ideology, perfectly endorse our insight/prediction as highlighted in the post of Apr/21 -- Obama cannot secure the vote of middle class Americans.
Finally, as we noted months ago and as the Clinton camp levered effectively in this recent contest, Obama is profoundly out of his league in matters of national security, the single key consideration is selecting a commander-in-chief.
Democrats will stumble through a primary process that even to them must be an embarrassment, end up selecting Obama as their candidate before August so as not to have the entire spectacle on TV, and then lose in November.
Robert Craven
The Pennsylvania primary exit poll results, the first contest since information regarding Obama’s less-than-flattering past associations has become available, and, the first contest to follow his recent condescending, elitist remarks so consistent with a far-left ideology, perfectly endorse our insight/prediction as highlighted in the post of Apr/21 -- Obama cannot secure the vote of middle class Americans.
Finally, as we noted months ago and as the Clinton camp levered effectively in this recent contest, Obama is profoundly out of his league in matters of national security, the single key consideration is selecting a commander-in-chief.
Democrats will stumble through a primary process that even to them must be an embarrassment, end up selecting Obama as their candidate before August so as not to have the entire spectacle on TV, and then lose in November.
Robert Craven
Monday, April 21, 2008
A PARTY HIJACKED, OR WHY OBAMA WILL LOSE
We have witnessed the death throws of the old, respectable, bread and butter
Democratic party, the party of Truman, FDR, Kennedy and Scoop Jackson. This process began in the late 60's, my view, as a new left arising from the cultural revolution, galvanized by the Vietnam war and the advent of the new left-wing intellectuals’ manifestoes about revolutionary violence, black power and imperialism moved away from Johnson and hijacked the traditional Democratic party mechanism, effectively, as one spokesman put it, "murdering liberalism in its official robes".
This was the beginning of the end. There was a transformation, one from anti-war to anti-American (apologists for Communism, apologists for the Sandinistas, for Castro), from being just critical to almost purely nihilistic in character. Now the party is for the most part lost to Hollywood, to the universities, to the shills for the left in the media, the elitist revisionists and foundations which have an agenda out of touch with the average American, most of whom they never see or wish to see. This of course is what Democratic party elders feared following the McGovern debacle, why they threw grass-roots democracy out the window and instead adopted the so-called Super Delegate system as a way to trump such radically inspired messes in the future (even this system has been hijacked). And this is why a respected life-long Democrat, the Greek scholar Vic Hansen sickened at the sight of Michael Moore perched next to Jimmy Carter at the last Democratic convention, mourning that, "This says it all, the sorry coming together of conspiratorial anti-Americanism and self-righteous appeasement".
And of course this is why Obama’s recent comment in SF about embittered Americans, his refusal to wear the American flag lapel pin, his friendly relationship not just with a Weatherman terrorist but to use his own words, "Marxist professors and structural feminists...," show that his philosophy is no different really from the liberal elitism (and grievance culture) of a Dukakis or a McGovern or Kerry all of whom lost because of a lack of connection with the bread and butter Democrats. Obama’s voting record is perfectly consistent with this far-left ideology. Obama, if the nominee, means failure for the Democrats in November.
Robert Craven
Democratic party, the party of Truman, FDR, Kennedy and Scoop Jackson. This process began in the late 60's, my view, as a new left arising from the cultural revolution, galvanized by the Vietnam war and the advent of the new left-wing intellectuals’ manifestoes about revolutionary violence, black power and imperialism moved away from Johnson and hijacked the traditional Democratic party mechanism, effectively, as one spokesman put it, "murdering liberalism in its official robes".
This was the beginning of the end. There was a transformation, one from anti-war to anti-American (apologists for Communism, apologists for the Sandinistas, for Castro), from being just critical to almost purely nihilistic in character. Now the party is for the most part lost to Hollywood, to the universities, to the shills for the left in the media, the elitist revisionists and foundations which have an agenda out of touch with the average American, most of whom they never see or wish to see. This of course is what Democratic party elders feared following the McGovern debacle, why they threw grass-roots democracy out the window and instead adopted the so-called Super Delegate system as a way to trump such radically inspired messes in the future (even this system has been hijacked). And this is why a respected life-long Democrat, the Greek scholar Vic Hansen sickened at the sight of Michael Moore perched next to Jimmy Carter at the last Democratic convention, mourning that, "This says it all, the sorry coming together of conspiratorial anti-Americanism and self-righteous appeasement".
And of course this is why Obama’s recent comment in SF about embittered Americans, his refusal to wear the American flag lapel pin, his friendly relationship not just with a Weatherman terrorist but to use his own words, "Marxist professors and structural feminists...," show that his philosophy is no different really from the liberal elitism (and grievance culture) of a Dukakis or a McGovern or Kerry all of whom lost because of a lack of connection with the bread and butter Democrats. Obama’s voting record is perfectly consistent with this far-left ideology. Obama, if the nominee, means failure for the Democrats in November.
Robert Craven
Thursday, March 27, 2008
BETRAYAL
Most of our friends on the left and a few on the right are discouraged. It is not Hillary. Hillary is simply being Hillary. The fact that she recently added to her long list of constructs yet another fiction - that she was under fire when disembarking in Bosnia in 1996 when in fact she sauntered off the plane and stopped on the tarmac to listen to a little girl read her a poem - is old hat for most of her fans; as Carl Berstein noted recently, "She has always had a difficult relationship with the truth." No, it is in fact Obama whose cross-racial and cross-partisan supporters believed that he was a new-era politician, one not defined by the grievances and habits of an earlier generation, a post-racial leader who could bring us all together but who now appears, sub-surface, to be altogether someone else.
Among those who hoped this guy was genuine are intellectually honest black Americans like Shelby Steele who in a recent editorial in the WSJ worried about Obama’s revelation that he sat Sunday after Sunday for 20 years in a church whose pastor spewed venom at everything American. "Facts are stubborn things," John Adams reminds us. Obama, Steele says, "fellow-traveled with a hate-filled, anti-American black nationalism all his adult life, failing to stand and challenge an ideology that would have no place for his own mother. And what portent of presidential judgement is it to have exposed his two daughters for their entire lives to what is, at the very least, a subtext of anti-white vitriol?" "What was Obama thinking?," Steel asks. And the answer: "Of course he wasn’t thinking. He was driven by insecurity, by a need to ‘be black’ despite his biracial background," and a little race hatred was the compromise because from Rev Wright and others like him there is the mindless indulgence in a rhetorical anti-Americanism as a way of bonding and of asserting one’s blackness, an apparent fit for Obama.
We also hear from Thomas Sowell, another black American and an economist at the Hoover Institute whose wisdom and courage have inspired many of us over the years. From Sowell: "Obama didn’t just happen to encounter Wright, who just happened to say some way out things; Wright is in the same mold as the kinds of people Obama began seeking out in college - members of the left, anti-American counter-culture. In college, ‘I chose my friends carefully,’ he said in his first book, Dreams From My Father. These friends included ‘Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk rock performance poets’ — in Obama’s own words — as well as the ‘more politically active black students.’ He later visited a former member of the terrorist Weatherman Underground who endorsed him when he ran for state senator."
Nor has Obama changed in recent years. His voting record in the Senate is the furthest left of any senator, and 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 is consistent with that ideology. Never did he try to educate himself on the views of people on the other end of the political spectrum, much less reach out to them. As Sowell notes, "He reached out from the left to the far left. That brings us together?"
To help explain away some of this Obama gave a speech the other day in Philadelphia. He made a statement on racial matters, answering a question that no one was asking. That speech warmed the hearts of the NYT’s staff and Harvard Review but insulted the intelligence of everyone else. If your topic is race, meaning blacks, then let’s discuss subjects ranging from disproportionate illegitimacy and drug usage to higher-that-average criminality to disturbing values espoused in rap music, and unaddressed anti-Semitism. (To most, racism is such a distant memory that racial victimologists like the Rev Wright are now left with concocting wild-eyed conspiracy theories to maintain their power. It is self-serving black "leaders" like Wright and Jackson and other race baiters who act as though the legacy of slavery gives black people like them the right to be permanently ill-mannered, and who through their racial identity politics have blocked advancement more than racism every could.) But key is that Obama dodged the question that everyone is asking - why did he spend 20 years listening to Wright and never say a word? There was no apology, no tough stance on Wright. If you seek to be president, you better damn well repudiate any clown who blames us for 9/11, who claims the US invented AIDS as a way to kill people.
The masquerade is that Obama’s sudden rise to leading Democratic contender has required him to project an entirely different image and persona. The ease with which he has accomplished this chameleon-like change and entranced both whites and blacks is a tribute to the man’s talent, yet a warning about his credibility. His run at the presidency is based more on the manipulation of white guilt than on substance. He flatters whites; as Steele explains, "he grants them racial innocence, and hopes to ascend on the back of their gratitude."
And so now, from some of those who had hope for this man we actually hear accusations of dissembling. And why not? Obama told the Chicago Sun-Times, "I’ll be honest with you. I wasn’t in church when any of those sermons were issued....I had not heard him make what I consider to be objectionable remarks from the pulpit." Yet in the speech itself, Obama declared, "Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church?" Yes." But for Obama to now claim that Wright’s obscene views come as a shock is a fabrication.. To deflect, Obama cowardly compares Wright’s invective to his own grandmother ("a typical white person") who he claims, "..once confessed her fear of black men who passed her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe." My, my. His own grandmother, who cooked his food and tucked him in at night and paid for his private school - has expressed the same feeling about black men as Jesse Jackson. He had no excuses for his grandma though. She never felt discrimination, doesn’t get the same pass as his "old uncle" Rev Wright.
Obama, a phony?
Robert Craven
Among those who hoped this guy was genuine are intellectually honest black Americans like Shelby Steele who in a recent editorial in the WSJ worried about Obama’s revelation that he sat Sunday after Sunday for 20 years in a church whose pastor spewed venom at everything American. "Facts are stubborn things," John Adams reminds us. Obama, Steele says, "fellow-traveled with a hate-filled, anti-American black nationalism all his adult life, failing to stand and challenge an ideology that would have no place for his own mother. And what portent of presidential judgement is it to have exposed his two daughters for their entire lives to what is, at the very least, a subtext of anti-white vitriol?" "What was Obama thinking?," Steel asks. And the answer: "Of course he wasn’t thinking. He was driven by insecurity, by a need to ‘be black’ despite his biracial background," and a little race hatred was the compromise because from Rev Wright and others like him there is the mindless indulgence in a rhetorical anti-Americanism as a way of bonding and of asserting one’s blackness, an apparent fit for Obama.
We also hear from Thomas Sowell, another black American and an economist at the Hoover Institute whose wisdom and courage have inspired many of us over the years. From Sowell: "Obama didn’t just happen to encounter Wright, who just happened to say some way out things; Wright is in the same mold as the kinds of people Obama began seeking out in college - members of the left, anti-American counter-culture. In college, ‘I chose my friends carefully,’ he said in his first book, Dreams From My Father. These friends included ‘Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk rock performance poets’ — in Obama’s own words — as well as the ‘more politically active black students.’ He later visited a former member of the terrorist Weatherman Underground who endorsed him when he ran for state senator."
Nor has Obama changed in recent years. His voting record in the Senate is the furthest left of any senator, and 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 is consistent with that ideology. Never did he try to educate himself on the views of people on the other end of the political spectrum, much less reach out to them. As Sowell notes, "He reached out from the left to the far left. That brings us together?"
To help explain away some of this Obama gave a speech the other day in Philadelphia. He made a statement on racial matters, answering a question that no one was asking. That speech warmed the hearts of the NYT’s staff and Harvard Review but insulted the intelligence of everyone else. If your topic is race, meaning blacks, then let’s discuss subjects ranging from disproportionate illegitimacy and drug usage to higher-that-average criminality to disturbing values espoused in rap music, and unaddressed anti-Semitism. (To most, racism is such a distant memory that racial victimologists like the Rev Wright are now left with concocting wild-eyed conspiracy theories to maintain their power. It is self-serving black "leaders" like Wright and Jackson and other race baiters who act as though the legacy of slavery gives black people like them the right to be permanently ill-mannered, and who through their racial identity politics have blocked advancement more than racism every could.) But key is that Obama dodged the question that everyone is asking - why did he spend 20 years listening to Wright and never say a word? There was no apology, no tough stance on Wright. If you seek to be president, you better damn well repudiate any clown who blames us for 9/11, who claims the US invented AIDS as a way to kill people.
The masquerade is that Obama’s sudden rise to leading Democratic contender has required him to project an entirely different image and persona. The ease with which he has accomplished this chameleon-like change and entranced both whites and blacks is a tribute to the man’s talent, yet a warning about his credibility. His run at the presidency is based more on the manipulation of white guilt than on substance. He flatters whites; as Steele explains, "he grants them racial innocence, and hopes to ascend on the back of their gratitude."
And so now, from some of those who had hope for this man we actually hear accusations of dissembling. And why not? Obama told the Chicago Sun-Times, "I’ll be honest with you. I wasn’t in church when any of those sermons were issued....I had not heard him make what I consider to be objectionable remarks from the pulpit." Yet in the speech itself, Obama declared, "Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church?" Yes." But for Obama to now claim that Wright’s obscene views come as a shock is a fabrication.. To deflect, Obama cowardly compares Wright’s invective to his own grandmother ("a typical white person") who he claims, "..once confessed her fear of black men who passed her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe." My, my. His own grandmother, who cooked his food and tucked him in at night and paid for his private school - has expressed the same feeling about black men as Jesse Jackson. He had no excuses for his grandma though. She never felt discrimination, doesn’t get the same pass as his "old uncle" Rev Wright.
Obama, a phony?
Robert Craven
Monday, March 17, 2008
CHARACTER
"The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men." - Samuel Adams
It is a fruitful exercise to try to come to understand the depth of character that may reside within each of the three individuals looking to take the helm of this country. Most by now understand that Hillary Clinton had shed most any claim to honesty, candor, or, to the anchor of principle. We need only recall the NYTs own William Safire as he labeled the woman a "congenital liar" to realize one need go no further. John McCain on the contrary has a reputation, even among his would-be detractors as someone with integrity and true convictions. We need not agree with him on every issue but at least we know he is not willing to say something, or anything just to get elected. He has demonstrated that time and time again. It’s refreshing to be able to rely on a candidate’s word.
We arrive at Barack Obama. He is certainly a skilled orator but in addition he seems a sincere man, an individual who claims that he is truly concerned with the well being of his fellow Americans and - key - is blessed with a vision of a way to effect positive change for every one of them. Is this true? Or, is the left’s David Ignatius of the Washington Post more on the mark when he asserts that Obama’s record is that of, "...a stridently-liberal partisan, not a bipartisan consensus-maker who gets things done.."? Is the man authentic? Is he honest? Or, is he a phony? We’ll take a look.
We highlighted in an earlier post the worrying relationship between Obama and a his chief Chicago fund raiser, one Tony Rezko. Rezko has a long record yet Obama says he did not end his relationship with this fixer until recently, "because there was no evidence of wrongdoing".Obama went to Harvard law school, was elected the Review’s first black president in its 104 year history, completed his degree magna cum laude, yet did not have the wherewithal to realize his friend was a gangster? Whoa! That’s a bit of a stretch.
Less obvious to the masses but more worrying to us was Obama’s posturing while in Ohio, telling workers whose jobs are threatened by NAFTA that he will work to re-write that document to preserve their jobs yet sent his economic adviser Austan Goolsbee that week to Canada’s consulate in Chicago to assure them that "not really", he just saying that, so don’t worry. Obama was cornered, denied the visit, then backed down after a Canadian diplomat’s memo confirmed the mission.
We also highlighted in an earlier post the venomous and paranoid denunciations of America from Obama’s minister for over 20 years. The Obamas were not merely endorsed by, or attended the church of the good Rev Wright, but subsidized his hatred with donations, were married by him, and had their children baptized by this clown. Newsmax correspondent Jim Davis attended a service at the church during which Wright referred to "white arrogance" and "the United States of white America". Obama was at church that day. Davis claims that he sat in his pew nodding in agreement. The WSJ featured an opinion piece by Newmax chief Washington correspondent Ronald Kessler in the Mar/14 edition which disclosed that Wright had delivered a sermon blaming America for starting AIDS, training professional killers, importing drugs, and creating a racist society. Yet Obama has disassociated himself from all of this, saying he never heard any such thing or about any such thing all these years. As Newt Gingrich noted recently, "Does he honestly expect the nation to believe that for 20 years...he didn’t notice the anti-American rhetoric? I mean, does somebody seriously believe that in over 800 potential Sunday visits, it never once came up, no one ever mentioned it to him?" Or from life- long Democrat Vic Hansen, "Sen Obama has proclaimed a new politics of hope and change that were to transcend such venom and character assassination. Thus besides being politically dense, he suffers - unless he preempts and explains in detail his Byzantine relationship with the reverend - the additional charge of hypocrisy in courting such a merchant of hate." Well, it seems pretty obvious that Obama, since his early 20's has sat week after week willingly listening to the ravings of just another cookie-cutter race huckster. Or, are we missing something?
Finally, there is the seeming contradiction between his rhapsody of delivery and what appears to some to be a vacuity of content, or if nothing, certainly nothing new that has not been pablum from the left for years. Are we wrong? Is there something there that is authentic, genuine, new and different? Let’s take a look. Recall the so often-repeated line, "We are the ones we’ve been waiting for". What does that mean and where did that come from? Is this a sentence that as Andrew Ferguson of the Weekly Standard put it, "...no one will admit to being confused by, like the tenor-sax solos of John Coltrane, lest your peers think you’re a loser or a moron."? Well, come to find out, the phrase was borrowed from the title of a book of essays by the left-wing-radical-feminist-lesbian novelist Alice Walker - We Are The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For. And then the more we looked at Ferguson’s research the more we found that Obama has been credited with using phrases that have been in circulation for years. "This is a defining moment in history," Obama repeats; that is what Elizabeth Dole said when her husband ran for president in 1996. Obama climbs to the climax of his stump speech. Head bowed, brow furrowed, eyes flashing, he announces that, "We will choose unity over division" (Jesse Jackson, 1992). "We will choose hope over fear" (Bill Clinton and John Kerry, 1994). "And we will choose the future over the past" (Al Gore, 1992). "In so doing we will overcome our moral deficit" (Bush 2000, Gore, 2000) "by bringing people beyond the divisions of race and class" (Clinton, 1992) because the "story of our country" (Perot, 1992) or the "genius of our country" (Bush, 2000) or the "wonder of our country" (Bush, 1988) is, as Obama says in 2008, "ordinary people doing extraordinary things" (Perot, Bush, Bush, Reagan).
Well, we’d like to believe the best about this guy; certainly the Democrats could use a break. At the moment unfortunately things do not look promising.
Robert Craven
It is a fruitful exercise to try to come to understand the depth of character that may reside within each of the three individuals looking to take the helm of this country. Most by now understand that Hillary Clinton had shed most any claim to honesty, candor, or, to the anchor of principle. We need only recall the NYTs own William Safire as he labeled the woman a "congenital liar" to realize one need go no further. John McCain on the contrary has a reputation, even among his would-be detractors as someone with integrity and true convictions. We need not agree with him on every issue but at least we know he is not willing to say something, or anything just to get elected. He has demonstrated that time and time again. It’s refreshing to be able to rely on a candidate’s word.
We arrive at Barack Obama. He is certainly a skilled orator but in addition he seems a sincere man, an individual who claims that he is truly concerned with the well being of his fellow Americans and - key - is blessed with a vision of a way to effect positive change for every one of them. Is this true? Or, is the left’s David Ignatius of the Washington Post more on the mark when he asserts that Obama’s record is that of, "...a stridently-liberal partisan, not a bipartisan consensus-maker who gets things done.."? Is the man authentic? Is he honest? Or, is he a phony? We’ll take a look.
We highlighted in an earlier post the worrying relationship between Obama and a his chief Chicago fund raiser, one Tony Rezko. Rezko has a long record yet Obama says he did not end his relationship with this fixer until recently, "because there was no evidence of wrongdoing".Obama went to Harvard law school, was elected the Review’s first black president in its 104 year history, completed his degree magna cum laude, yet did not have the wherewithal to realize his friend was a gangster? Whoa! That’s a bit of a stretch.
Less obvious to the masses but more worrying to us was Obama’s posturing while in Ohio, telling workers whose jobs are threatened by NAFTA that he will work to re-write that document to preserve their jobs yet sent his economic adviser Austan Goolsbee that week to Canada’s consulate in Chicago to assure them that "not really", he just saying that, so don’t worry. Obama was cornered, denied the visit, then backed down after a Canadian diplomat’s memo confirmed the mission.
We also highlighted in an earlier post the venomous and paranoid denunciations of America from Obama’s minister for over 20 years. The Obamas were not merely endorsed by, or attended the church of the good Rev Wright, but subsidized his hatred with donations, were married by him, and had their children baptized by this clown. Newsmax correspondent Jim Davis attended a service at the church during which Wright referred to "white arrogance" and "the United States of white America". Obama was at church that day. Davis claims that he sat in his pew nodding in agreement. The WSJ featured an opinion piece by Newmax chief Washington correspondent Ronald Kessler in the Mar/14 edition which disclosed that Wright had delivered a sermon blaming America for starting AIDS, training professional killers, importing drugs, and creating a racist society. Yet Obama has disassociated himself from all of this, saying he never heard any such thing or about any such thing all these years. As Newt Gingrich noted recently, "Does he honestly expect the nation to believe that for 20 years...he didn’t notice the anti-American rhetoric? I mean, does somebody seriously believe that in over 800 potential Sunday visits, it never once came up, no one ever mentioned it to him?" Or from life- long Democrat Vic Hansen, "Sen Obama has proclaimed a new politics of hope and change that were to transcend such venom and character assassination. Thus besides being politically dense, he suffers - unless he preempts and explains in detail his Byzantine relationship with the reverend - the additional charge of hypocrisy in courting such a merchant of hate." Well, it seems pretty obvious that Obama, since his early 20's has sat week after week willingly listening to the ravings of just another cookie-cutter race huckster. Or, are we missing something?
Finally, there is the seeming contradiction between his rhapsody of delivery and what appears to some to be a vacuity of content, or if nothing, certainly nothing new that has not been pablum from the left for years. Are we wrong? Is there something there that is authentic, genuine, new and different? Let’s take a look. Recall the so often-repeated line, "We are the ones we’ve been waiting for". What does that mean and where did that come from? Is this a sentence that as Andrew Ferguson of the Weekly Standard put it, "...no one will admit to being confused by, like the tenor-sax solos of John Coltrane, lest your peers think you’re a loser or a moron."? Well, come to find out, the phrase was borrowed from the title of a book of essays by the left-wing-radical-feminist-lesbian novelist Alice Walker - We Are The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For. And then the more we looked at Ferguson’s research the more we found that Obama has been credited with using phrases that have been in circulation for years. "This is a defining moment in history," Obama repeats; that is what Elizabeth Dole said when her husband ran for president in 1996. Obama climbs to the climax of his stump speech. Head bowed, brow furrowed, eyes flashing, he announces that, "We will choose unity over division" (Jesse Jackson, 1992). "We will choose hope over fear" (Bill Clinton and John Kerry, 1994). "And we will choose the future over the past" (Al Gore, 1992). "In so doing we will overcome our moral deficit" (Bush 2000, Gore, 2000) "by bringing people beyond the divisions of race and class" (Clinton, 1992) because the "story of our country" (Perot, 1992) or the "genius of our country" (Bush, 2000) or the "wonder of our country" (Bush, 1988) is, as Obama says in 2008, "ordinary people doing extraordinary things" (Perot, Bush, Bush, Reagan).
Well, we’d like to believe the best about this guy; certainly the Democrats could use a break. At the moment unfortunately things do not look promising.
Robert Craven
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