Bozell: Rick's Rock vs. Rev. Wright

These words ring so true:

"You know who ought to recognize injustice? Anyone who reads The Washington Post expecting Republicans and Democrats to be treated with equal fairness and accuracy." Brett Bozell

The hit piece by the Washington Post shows a coordinated effort to take out Rick Perry orchestrated in my opinion by Rove and others in coordination with the Washington Post since Herman Cain came out last week saying he couldn't support Rick Perry which made no sense.  It does now as he most likely had a copy of the story.  They are getting sloppy when you can figure out what is happening in short order.

As we posted yesterday some black Texas Democrats have defended Perry against the accusations of the Washington Post, Herman Cain and Mitt Romney.  They are smart enough to realize even though they disagree with Perry philosophically, that he is not racist and never has been.

As the days have gone on, we are noticing more and more writers going after the Washington Post, but where is Fox News on the story.  Has Ailes killed that story like he has others.  Who is their next flavor of the week since Christie turned them down?  Can Ailes and Rove seriously think that once the American people see Herman Cain that he can win the GOP nomination?  His quick jump to automatically paint Perry as being a racist based on the Washington Post article says more about him then anything.  We saw that in the White House when Obama automatically took the side of the black in Boston against the police without facts.  Herman Cain has done the same thing this time to a fellow Republican.  He should be ashamed and Romney even more so but neither one have apologized.

Bozell has it right about the Washington Post and their double standards when it comes to protecting Obama and Rev Wright versus attacking a Republican candidate.  He sums it up perfectly with this paragraph:

The Post should have done more investigating and less sympathizing with Wright. But the Post should have also done more investigating before they published this ridiculous fraction of a story about some painted rock on a Texas ranch. Any editor worth his salt would have laughed the reporter out of his office and back to do more record-scrubbing ... and less paint sniffing.

Once again the Washington Post has shown the lack of ethics we have come to expect.  Next question is what did the Post get out of this article?  Is the Obama Education Department going to back off on their assault on Kaplan, a for-profit university owned by the Post?  Does make you wonder as the hit piece by the Post was so ludicrous.  Have to give them credit that they actually got black Texas Dems to admit that Perry isn't racist -- almost fainted with that one!  When you get some of Perry's fiercest critics saying he is not racist, then you know the Washington Post, Herman Cain, and Mitt Romney are on the wrong side of this one.

Bozell: Rick's Rock vs. Rev. Wright
By Brent Bozell October 5, 2011 6:30 am 

Is there a clumsier group of newspaper character assassins than the hit squads at The Washington Post? On Oct. 1, the Post was back on the racist-Republican attack with a 3,000 word, investigative treatise over a rock. Specifically, Gov. Rick Perry had leased a property where the N-word was painted on a rock, and then he had it painted over with white paint. 

But investigative genius Stephanie McCrummen could see a virtual Klan hood on Perry's head. "As recently as this summer, the slab-like rock -- lying flat, the name still faintly visible beneath a coat of white paint -- remained by the gated entrance to the camp." 

Near the end, she underlined it again: "In the photos, it was to the left of the gate. It was laid down flat. The exposed face was brushed clean of dirt. White paint, dried drippings visible, covered a word across the surface. An N and two G's were faintly visible." 

Three thousand words on this. 

Apparently, investigative reporting at the Post means staring at old rocks under paint (with a microscope?) to discern almost invisible letters and suggesting this should ruin a presidential campaign. It resembles the Post feverishly fumbling through foreign-language dictionaries trying to find a racially defamatory definition for "macaca" to torpedo Sen. George Allen's re-election in 2006. 

The fact that these Republicans are racist is never established. Two days after the rock "scoop," a Post front-page article by Amy Gardner found Perry's record on race was "complicated"... by the facts. Yes, Perry "appointed the first African-American to the state Supreme Court and later made him chief justice" and oh, yes, "One chief of staff and two of his general counsels have been African-American." But many "minority legislators (read: Democrats) say Perry has a long history -- dating to his first race for statewide office more than 20 years ago -- of engaging in what they see as racially tinged tactics and rhetoric to gain political advantage." 

What kind of offensive tactics? Guess what's listed first: "Black lawmakers have been particularly troubled by Perry's recent embrace of the Tea Party movement." 

By contrast, does anyone recall The Washington Post being the first investigative journalism outfit to reveal the racist, anti-American and anti-Semitic rants of Rev. Jeremiah Wright in 2007? Of course not. That fastest-turtle award would go to ABC's Brian Ross on March 13, 2008. By that late date, after all the investigators had finished their naps, 42 states and the District of Columbia had already voted for a nominee. 

That's not to say the Post was unfamiliar with the scent of this scandal at Obama's own Trinity United Church of Christ. The news folks could have read Post columnist Richard Cohen denouncing Wright in a column on Jan. 15, 2008, over how Trinity's church magazine fulsomely praised anti-Semitic Louis Farrakhan. But the Post "news" hunters weren't turning over that rock. 

.... 

Excerpt:  Read More at GOPUSA 

---
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center.
COPYRIGHT 2011 CREATORS.COM

Jewish Leader: Jewish Support for Obama Sinking Fast

The Jewish voters who voted and supported Obama with their money have to be asking themselves how they were so fooled by Obama during the election. They are not the only ones that were fooled by the Obama rhetoric. Sadly their vote was a serious mistake when it comes to Israel.

No one can sit in a church for 20 years, listen to Rev Wright have him for a friend and be pro-Israel. Not going to happen but the media was so quick to throw Wright under the bus when Obama gave the order that very little came out about the Black Theology taught in his church. Wright, himself, is a 'former' Muslim who is good friends with the Nation of Islam leader Farrenkhan who their church honored yet Obama wants us to think he never knew about Rev Wright.

Unfortunately, some of the Jewish Obama supporters are waking up to the fact after the Cairo speech and then the UN speech that Obama supports the Palestinian (Islamic) view of Israel. They believed what he said during the campaign, and the media made sure that facts were hidden that might shine the light of day on who Obama really is. Do we even know today the true Barack Hussein Obama which is a scary thought?

Jewish Leader: Jewish Support for Obama Sinking Fast

Thursday, October 8, 2009 2:56 PM

By: Ronald Kessler

Previously overwhelming support for President Obama among Jews is sinking fast, Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, tells Newsmax.

Klein cites a recent Gallup Poll that found Obama’s approval rating among Jews in America has slipped from 83 percent in January to 64 percent.

“I give a lecture almost every week around the country to Jewish groups,” says Klein, whose organization of 30,000 members is the oldest pro-Israel group in the country. “I began to see serious concern after Obama’s speech in Cairo, in which he equated Palestinian suffering to Jewish suffering during the Holocaust, a ridiculous analogy. He said the Palestinian situation is equivalent to U.S. blacks in America before the civil rights movement, implying that Jews are oppressors.”

Jews became even more anxious when Obama gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to “two of the most virulent anti-Israel people in the world, Mary Robinson of Ireland and Desmond Tutu of South Africa,” Klein says.

“More recently in the United Nations speech, Obama coupled supporting Israeli security with Israel fulfilling Palestinian claims and rights,” Klein says. “He could have said, I support Israel security, and I want Israel to fulfill Palestinian claims and rights. But he didn’t say that. He used the word couple, linking it.”

That linkage “has never been made by any president, ever,” Klein notes. “So that was an astonishingly new statement. This really frightens both Christian and American Jewish supporters of Israel.”

(snip)

When it comes to Israel, “It’s tragic to realize that Obama’s sympathies and feelings are not that far from his mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright,” Klein says.

Based on the president’s speeches and many of his foreign policy appointments, Klein thinks Obama “may become the most hostile president to Israel ever.”

Excerpt: See Newsmax for Full Article

The Emerging Obama Doctrine

By Joseph Ashby,
Sep 8, 2009

With casualty counts rising in Afghanistan and generals calling for a change in strategy, our attention is being pulled from political threats to our freedom at home to violent threats to our freedom abroad. Nearly eight months into the Obama Administration, the campaigner who was long on rhetoric and short on particulars is beginning to fill in the details on what will be known as the Obama Doctrine.America the Transgressor

The first aspect of the Obama Doctrine is a natural outgrowth of his lifelong associations. Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s repeated anti-American screeds, William Ayers’ Vietnam era exploits (which were lionized in Obama’s political and academic circles), the communist leanings and affiliations of Obama’s family and friends have led Obama to the belief that America must apologize for its many evils.American contrition has always been a central tenet of the Obama agenda. With recent news coverage focusing so heavily on domestic issues, it’s easy to forget Obama’s feverish quest for foreign forgiveness. During his first 100 days, he traveled to Europe and South America in what many aptly dubbed “apology tours.”

(Excerpt) Read more at the American Thinker

Comments: How many Communist or Communist leaning people has Obama put in his Administration and how many are in Congress? The numbers keep growing as we have now learned that the Progressive and Black Caucus' are both socialist (communist) organizations in the House. These are the people that want to take over industry after industry by the Federal Government, censor radio/tv/internet so conservatives aka racist by the progressives have no say in what is happening.

In 2010 at the ballot box, they are going to find out that the American people have had it with their march toward socialism/communism. As this group continues to trample on the Constitution that has stood for over 200 years, Americans across the political spectrum are getting angry. They misjudged the American people big time and calling us names when we disagree with their agenda it going to have more of us looking for the truth the media refuses to investigate preferring to spin for this Administration.

Major DNC Donor to Party Treasurer: Obama is a Bad Investment

Posted on Tuesday, July 29, 2008 8:15:17 AM by dascallie
(From Hillary Clinton forum today)

The following is a letter sent to DNC Treasurer Andy Tobias telling him why, from a rational investor's point of view, Obama has not earned the author's vote. The letter was sent by one of the DNC's biggest donors, a donor who has historically maxed out to the DNC and who was a maxed out donor in both the Kerry and Clinton campaigns, in response to comments by Tobias that she could not see the forest through the trees.

You decide.

Dear Andy,

So you want to know what is taking me so long to "get on board"? Let me try to answer with some discussion of what my 25 years on Wall Street and the Hedge Fund community have taught me, and what insights I can share in order to explain my stance.

As you know, anyone in our profession meets with countless management teams on a monthly, quarterly, and annual basis. The "plots" change from time to time and the cast of characters play musical chairs. After awhile, they become all too familiar. You have seen the movie before. When you spot the corrupt CFO enter the scene, it immediately casts a doubt on the rest of the management team. One or two conclusions can be drawn - either they are inept or they wanted a dishonest player. Neither answer provides any comfort, but always insight. I have been lied to by the best of them over the decades; I am sure you have had similar experiences.

After years of stepping in land mines, I learned to read people and situations. I had no choice - my listening skills were honed, my gut fine-tuned. I picked up on what was and was not said, and I always paid close attention to the cast of characters. The actions of a management team always told me more than anything they ever said. If they were bailing out, so was I. If the head of sales left unexpectedly, alarm bells went of.

In the thirteen years that I have had audited results, I lost money in only one year, and then only in single digits. I am proud that I was able repay my investors' faith and confidence in me by compounding their funds assets, net of fees, at 18% over those 13 years. I took my responsibilities seriously and when I knew I could not give it 110% of my energies, I turned it over to someone who would. My investors deserved someone who would work tirelessly on their behalf, looking under every rock in support of their interests.

The fact that I became successful was not what made me proud. It was how I did it. My soul is intact. It was the self-imposed rules and standards that I adhered to. I believed in a win, win, and still do. My investors always came first. I never screwed anyone over. I made plenty of mistakes, but I always owned them, never blaming others. I treated everyone fairly and with respect, believing everyone has something to offer. I always tried to do the right thing.
So what does this have to do with me not falling in line and supporting Obama? Well everything as you can see.

Andy, if I worked and served the people in the 13th District in Chicago, I would have known all of the players. And to win that district, would I have gamed the system to run unopposed? Tony Rezko would not have had a seat at my table. Either Obama is a fool and is blind to what should have been obvious, or someone like Tony is fine by Obama's standards. The guy is a dirtball. And a dirtball would not be part of my circle, certainly not my inner circle. I would rather not be elected than associate with someone like Rezko.

Nor for political or any other reasons would I choose Rev. Wright, Rev. Meeks, or Father Plager as my spiritual mentors. Again, he is either blind or an opportunist. Would I be hanging out with Mr. Ayers? Would you? Would you refuse to be photographed with Gavin Newsom? There is a pattern with this guy - he manipulates; the ends justify the means. He lacks character.
Getting not one bill passed in the first 6 years of his career in not inspiring. Having Emil Jones hand him the ball 26 times on the one-yard line in order to make Obama a United States Senator does not cut it either. What deals he made, he did to benefit no one but himself. He never worked long enough in either Senate to help the people who elected him. Andy, I could never imagine you taking credit for legislation someone else slaved over. Starting in his community organizing days he claimed sole responsibility for other people's accomplishments all for the purpose to boosting his career.

In terms of the campaign itself, I had the opportunity to witness his methods up close. During the primaries I was in 6 states, 2 of which had caucuses; it was not clean. El Paso was a joke with the Obama campaign stealing the caucus packets, locking supporters out - Intimidation 101, 102 and 103. Fair elections do not seem to be a priority in my birth state. No other machine exists from the days of Boss Tweed, but Chicago's. How many elected officials are in jail?They are the joke of the nation. It is called the Chicago machine for good reason.

It was clear that what I saw and experienced was not a fluke or isolated incidents, but coordinated, deliberate and arrogant. I got to see him and his organization for who he is and what it is - not inspiring, to say the least. Not something I would have, in business, endorsed in any way. In fact, I would most likely have reported them to the appropriate regulators.
Andy, I have consistently found you to be a compassionate person, but more importantly you have always put your money where your mouth is. Does it not bother you that a guy like Obama can serve a poor district and give away a paltry $1000 to charity? He only stepped up his giving when he decided to run for President and he knew his charitable giving would be made public. How could anyone see that much misery and not try to personally do something about it?
Please, show me something this guy ever did that was not done in a calculated fashion to create and advance his own personal narrative? Something selfless, perhaps, just because it was the right thing to do?

Every person I have talked to who worked at the Law Review at Harvard with him, or in the later part of his career, said the same thing: he was arrogant and self-centered. One person laughed, saying Obama wanted to be King of the World, that he was always running for something, never staying in one place long enough to amass accomplishments or be held accountable.

Do you not you find it troublesome that he has hundreds of paid bloggers, posting vicious attacks not only about the Clintons but her supporters as well? The whole purpose was to cast him as the second coming, while trashing her and quashing other points of view.

At first I thought is was just some hyped up kids, and then a pattern emerged. He paid others to do his dirty work. The most egregious sexist cracks were rampant, both on the Internet and the MSM. Yet, what did Howard and Obama say? Nothing. Obama promoted it, paid his bloggers to write it. Never once did he try to stop it. Howard, after the damage was done finally commented on it, but barely. Wink, wink.

Andy, I heard remarks that still make my jaw drop.

You know I consider myself a centrist. The right wing of the Republican Party scares me, but so does the left. Ideologues of either side should not have control simultaneously of the executive, legislative, and judicial arms of the government. Absolute power corrupts, be it on the left or the right. Ha, but you will say.... the courts. If you have the legislative branch, all will be fine. McCain voted Ginsberg in, he is not a stupid man and certainly not an Ideologue, and he took heat in the primaries for refusing to have a litmus test for judges. And need I remind you that Obama thought Roberts was an acceptable appointment until some more experienced hands in the Senate told him that would not do?

Painting him as Bush 3 is a little annoying, and what's up with the MoveOn Baby Alex commercial? Give credit where credit is due. McCain went against his own party twice on immigration reform, on ethanol subsidies, and campaign finance reform. He started talking about Global warming 8 years ago. I don't agree with McCain on a number of topics, but I do believe he has principals and a backbone. He is not willing to say anything to get elected.

I can't say the same for Obama who is turning out to be more like Bush than McCain; Obama is at least as arrogant as W, just more polished. Are you not ashamed, in these past weeks, of his reckless abandon of any pretense to a moral center on issues such as FISA, separation of church and state, gun control? And what he did to one of my heroes, Wes Clark? Insulting my intelligence and my standards will not win me over.

But, in this conversation, you will say, McCain wants to be in Iraq for 100 years. No, he said that as in Japan, or Korea, we could have a presence. We have been in both of those countries for 60 years and not leaving any time soon, and the world is safer for it.

Next will be, McCain is not knowledgeable about the economy. While with Carly Fiorina, who I remember from her Lucent days, at a town meeting he turned the mic over to Carly when asked about the mortgage mess, painting her as the expert. Wow - he gave a woman a compliment, praising her knowledge, referring to her as the expert. How often have you praised Charles, or me, and everyone for that matter? Why? Because you are gracious and you know it reflects well on you.

All this might not bother me if so much if the stakes where not so high, but they are. I am an issues person, not a cult of personality devotee. Substance matters. Barack is a politician, an inexperienced one at that, pretending he is different. I just see him as arrogant and power hungry. Our country deserves better, someone I would be proud to do business with.

Andy, my country comes first, not the Democrat party. Having said that, I believe that the Democratic Party has just kicked away the best candidate and our best chance to redeem our country, Hillary Clinton, a proven centrist. Given his resume, or should I say the lack of one, he is either ineffective or hiding something, neither answer gives me the warm and fuzzies. If she is chosen in Denver, you can count on my full and enthusiastic support. Until then,
I own my vote.

http://www.hillaryclintonforum.net/discussion/showthread.php?t=21580

Is Barack Obama a Muslim wolf in Christian wool?

By Reuven Koret
March 27, 2008
http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Politics/12745.htm

The glib handling of criticism of his relationship with the anti-American ("God Damn America!") and anti-Israel ("a dirty word for Negroes") Reverend James Wright may have bought him a little time. But the legacy of dissimulation about his long-concealed identity is about to come crashing down around the ears of Barack Hussein Obama, courtesy of the assembled testimony of his family, friends, classmates and teachers.

The accumulated research indicates that Obama was in his childhood a devout Muslim, the son of a devout Muslim, the step-son of a devout Muslim and the grandson and namesake ("Hussein") of a devout Muslim. He was registered in school as a Muslim and demonstrated his ability to chant praise to Allah in impressive Arab-accented tones even as an adult. Just as he has not disavowed his "uncle" Jeremiah, neither has he disavowed his Muslim faith that he was born into, raised with, celebrated and never abandoned. He just covered it over with a thin veneer of his own self-styled "Christianity."

Although as an adult he would register as a Christian, and occasionally attend a Christian Church (but apparently not often enough to listen to the preaching of his pastor, or so he would claim) this was a necessary step for a man who from earliest boyhood has nurtured the precocious ambition to be President of the United States.

He was entered into the Roman Catholic, Franciscus Assisi Primary School, in Jakarta, Indonesia, on January 1, 1968, registered under the name Barry Soetoro, an Indonesian citizen whose religion was listed as Islam. Catholic schools accept non-Catholics worldwide. Non-Catholic students are typically excused from religious instruction and ceremony.

In kindergarten, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled 'I Want to Become President.'"Iis Darmawan, 63, Senator Obama's kindergarten teacher, remembers him as an exceptionally tall and curly haired child who quickly picked up the local language and had sharp math skills. He wrote an essay titled, 'I Want To Become President,' the teacher said." [AP, 1/25/07]

Three years later, in 1971, Obama enrolled in the Besuki Primary School, a government school, as Barry Soetoro, Muslim. In third grade, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled 'I Want To Be a President.' His third grade teacher: Fermina Katarina Sinaga "asked her class to write an essay titled 'My dream: What I want to be in the future.' Senator Obama wrote 'I want to be a President,' she said." [The Los Angeles Times, 3/15/07]

All Indonesian students are required to study religion at school and a young Barry Soetoro, being a Muslim, would have been required to study Islam daily in school.

He would have been taught to read and write Arabic, to recite his prayers properly, to read and recite from the Quran and to study the laws of Islam.

In his autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," Obama mentions studying the Koran and describes the public school as "a Muslim school."

"In the Muslim school, the teacher wrote to tell mother I made faces during Koranic studies."

According to Tine Hahiyary, one of Obama's teachers and the principal from 1971 through 1989, Barry actively took part in the Islamic religious lessons during his time at the school. "I remembered that he had studied "mengaji" (recitation of the Quran)" Tine said.

The author of the Laotze blog writes from Jakarta: "The actual usage of the word 'mengaji' in Indonesian and Malaysian societies means the study of learning to recite the Quran in the Arabic language rather than the native tongue. "Mengagi" is a word and a term that is accorded the highest value and status in the mindset of fundamentalist societies here in Southeast Asia. To put it quite simply, 'mengaji classes' are not something that a non practicing or so-called moderate Muslim family would ever send their child to. To put this in a Christian context, this is something above and beyond simply enrolling your child in Sunday school classes."

"The fact that Obama had attended mengaji classes is well known in Indonesia and has left many there wondering just when Obama is going to come out of the closet." "

As I've stated before, the evidence seems to quite clearly show that both Ann Dunham and her husband Lolo Soetoro Mangunharjo were in fact devout Muslims themselves and they raised their son as such."

The Obama Campaign told the LA Times he wasn't a "practicing Muslim." (3/14/2007). But his official website says: "Obama Has Never Been A Muslim, And Is a Committed Christian" (11/12/2007) That's not what his friends and classmates have said. Classmate Rony Amiris describes young Barry as enjoying playing football and marbles and of being a very devout Muslim. Amir said, "Barry was previously quite religious in Islam. We previously often asked him to the prayer room close to the house. If he was wearing a sarong, he looked funny," said Rony.

Amiris, now the manager of Bank Mandiri, Jakarta, recently said, "Barry was previously quite religious in Islam. His birth father, Barack Hussein Obama was a Muslim economist from Kenya. Before marrying Ann Dunham, Hussein Obama was married to a woman from Kenya who had seven children. All the relatives of Barry's father were very devout Muslims"

Emirsyah Satar, CEO of Garuda Indonesia, was quoted as saying, "He (Obama) was often in the prayer room wearing a 'sarong', at that time."

"He was quite religious in Islam but only after marrying Michelle, he changed his religion." So Obama, according to his classmates and friends was a Muslim until the confluence of love and ambitious, caused him to adopt the cloak of Christianity: to marry Michelle and to run for President of the United States.

In "Dreams," Obama sheds light on his formative years and the political views of his mother, an anthropologist and Islamophile who hated America and subsequently "went native." (It was her mother -- Barry's "other" grandmother who cared for him in his druggie teenage years -- that he would describe as a "typical white person" who was, he said scoldingly, fearful of black men and prone to making stereotypical racial remarks.)

Obama Senior also had three sons by another woman who are all Muslim. Although Obama claims Senior was an atheist, Senior was buried as a Muslim.

Barack Obama's brother Roy opted for Islam over Christianity, as the Senator recounted in his book when describing his 1992 wedding. "The person who made me proudest of all," Obama wrote, "was Roy. Actually, now we call him Abongo, his Luo name, for two years ago he decided to reassert his African heritage. He converted to Islam, and has sworn off pork and tobacco and alcohol."Abongo "argues that the black man must "liberate himself from the poisoning influences of European culture." He urged his younger brother to embrace his African heritage.

In Kenya while he was a Senator, Obama stumped for his cousin, opposition leader Raila Odinga, the son of Senior's sister, a direct first cousin and nephew of Obama's father.

On August 29, 2007, Raila Odinga and Shiekh Abdullah Abdi, chairman of the National Muslim Leaders Forum of Kenya signed a Memorandum of Understanding in which it pledges the support of Kenyan Moslems for Raila's election. In return, as President of Kenya, Raila agrees ... within 6 months re-write the Constitution of Kenya to recognize Shariah as the only true law sanctioned by the Holy Quran for Muslim declared regions [and] within one year to facilitate the establishment of a Shariah court in every Kenyan divisional headquarters -- everywhere in Kenya, not just in "Muslim declared regions" -- and to popularize Islam, the only true religion ... by ordering every primary school in Kenya in the regions to conduct daily Madrassa classes.

In an interview with the New York Times, published on April 30th, Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama's younger half sister, told the Times, "My whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim."

Obama describes his new found "Christian" faith as: (1) Suspicious of dogma (2) Without any monopoly on the truth (3) Nontransferable to others (4) Infused with a big healthy dose of doubt, and (5) Indulgent of and compatible with all other religions.

On February 27th, speaking to Kristof of The New York Times, Barack Hussein Obama said the Muslim call to prayer is "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset."

In an interview with Nicholas Kristof, published in The New York Times, Obama recited the Muslim call to prayer, the Adhan, "with a first-class [Arabic] accent."

The opening lines of the Adhan (Azaan) is the Shahada: "Allah is Supreme!

Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme! I witness that there is no god but Allah I witness that there is no god but Allah I witness that Muhammad is his prophet? "

According to Islamic scholars, reciting the Shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith, makes one a Muslim. This simple yet profound statement expresses a Muslim's complete acceptance of, and total commitment to, the message of Islam. Obama chanted it with pride and finesse.

An American Expat in Southeast Asia blog, written by an American who has lived in Indonesia for 20 years and has met with both the Taliban and al-Qaeda, contains the following:

"Barack Hussein Obama might have convinced some Americans that he is no longer a Muslim, but so far he has not convinced many in the world's most populous Muslim country who still see him as a Muslim and a crusader for Islam and world peace."

"Barack Hussein Obama's race, his staunch opposition to the war in Iraq, his sympathy to Islam and Muslims worldwide and his Muslim heritage receive the Indonesian media coverage. There is no mention of his apostasy."

"A good example of how some of the Indonesian media is reporting on Obama's religion can be found in the following."

"What I found interesting in the article was the use of the word 'mengaku' when refering to Obama's conversion from Islam to Christianity. The word 'mengaku' in Indonesian means "claimed" and as such leaves the insinuation to the native Indonesian reader being that Obama might actually still be a Muslim.

But this is how Indonesians see Obama, they don't see him as an apostate at all, they see him as a crusader for the cause of Islam."

Obama wants it both ways, has always wanted it both ways. Black and white, Indonesian and American, Muslim and Christian. He loves playing one off the other, using one to hide the other even as the traces of the truth may be assembled to reveal the whole cloth of deception and self-promotion he has been weaving so skillfully since his childhood. No wonder he is a man of change. He IS a changeling, a veritable chameleon, adapting and amending his life story to fit the circumstances.

The charm may have worked once. It still works on some. It won't work forever in the age of the Internet. The fog of ambiguity and dissimulation is dissipated by the harsh, unforgiving and scrutiny of the blogosphere and its unlimited access to historical facts and time-stamped testimony.

Many have been puzzled why Obama could claim not to be familiar with Wright's rants. It turns out the Trinity Church, like many African-American churches, happily accepts believing Muslims within its congregation. And evidently many Muslims have no problems surrounding themselves with an anti-American, anti-Israel preacher who week in and week out wins the amens of his adoring congregation.

On Feb 15/08, Usama K. Dakdok, President of The Straight Way of Grace Ministry called Obama's Church and reported the following conversation: " I then asked the person who answered what I needed to do to join. She told me that I needed to attend two Sunday School classes in a row and then I would walk the aisle. I replied, "That sounds easy. One last question please. If I am Muslim and I believe in the Prophet Mohammed, peace be unto him and I also believe in Jesus, peace be unto him, do I have to give up my Islamic faith to be a member in your church? She answered: "No, we have many Muslim members in our church."

Indeed.

Credit for these reports and revelations -- assembling the statements of those who love and admire Barry Soetoro aka Barack Hussein Obama -- belong primarily to the writers, researchers, and journalists cited in and contributing to the above references. Special hat tip to Ted Belman of Israpundit for putting most of the pieces together. One can be sure that more, much more, is on the way, before the first black muslim president enters the White House. Or not.

*****
Note:

Who are the Democrats electing as their nominee? Are they so intent on having a liberal represent their party that they have thrown caution to the wind with nominating someone fairly new on the scene with a Muslim background. What does this say about today's Democrat Party? More articles like this will be posted as they are found to show who is the 'real' Obama.

My bold and highlight!

Obama Soft On Crime?

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted Monday, March 24, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Law and Order: Obama doesn't talk much about his views on crime and punishment — at least not in front of general audiences — and for good reason.

While his Web site says he's "a strong proponent of tougher measures to fight crime," his record tells a different story.

As an Illinois state senator, for example, he acted more as a friend to criminals than to cops, legislating among other things:

• Curbs on what he called a "broken" death penalty system.
• A measure to expunge some criminal records and give job grants to ex-cons.
• Tougher handgun controls.
• A vote against making gang members eligible for the death penalty if they kill someone to help their gang.
• Opposition to a bill requiring juveniles to be prosecuted as adults for firing a gun at or near a school.

At the federal level, Obama would:

• Repeal "unfair" mandatory sentences for crack convictions.
• Provide drug counseling instead of jail time for some abusers.
• Rethink criminal penalties for pot.
• Ban profiling by federal law enforcement, even if it helps catch violent criminals including terrorists.
• Strengthen hate-crime laws and beef up civil rights enforcement against police chiefs who profile.
• Provide job training, drug rehab and counseling for ex-cons.
• "Re-enfranchise" felons denied the right to vote.

In addition, Obama, who once vowed to repeal the Patriot Act, still talks about reforming it. He also once proposed banning executions of inmates, arguing he was against capital punishment.
It's not clear where Obama stands on the issue now, but he does think death row and the entire U.S. penal system are stacked against blacks. While so far only alluding to racism as the culprit, his mentor Rev. Jeremiah Wright minces no words in blaming "racist white America."

"The brothers are in prison" largely because of their skin color, he claims.

And a racist white majority put them there, he believes, by "structuring an economic environment that induces captive youth to fill the jails and prisons."

In Wright's conspiracy, personal responsibility plays no role. This is the same adviser who told Obama that there are "more black men in prison than in college"—a statement that Obama parroted until he was told that it was false.

Unfortunately, Obama listens to his preacher and buys into his conspiracy theories. "In our criminal justice system, African-Americans and whites are arrested at very different rates," Obama recently complained. "It has to do with how we pursue racial justice."

He vows to pursue it with gusto, unleashing civil rights cops on police chiefs and district attorneys who dare to arrest and prosecute criminals who happen to be of color.

In last Tuesday's speech explaining his ties to Wright, he reiterated his desire to do more to enforce civil rights laws.

He cites the Jena Six case as an example of racial injustice. But one of the thugs he defends as a victim of Louisiana racism recently was arrested again for assault. The 6-6 Bryant Purvis allegedly choked and slammed a classmate's head on a table after helping five other blacks beat a white student within an inch of his life.

Would Obama go soft on such brutal crime in the name of racial equality? No justice, no peace? Obama for now speaks only in code, saying he'll fix "a criminal justice system that's broken." But how exactly is it broken? And who would he appoint to help fix it?

Who will he pick as his attorney general? His top civil rights cop? Is his pal Rep. John Conyers on the short list? Rep. Keith Ellison?

What about federal judges? Will they be frustrated social workers who go easy on criminals to "reintegrate" them into society?

More important, what kind of justices does Obama have in mind to replace aging veterans on the high court, which decides the constitutionality of capital punishment cases?

We shudder to think.

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=291251769393224#

*****
Why hasn't Obama's soft on crime record been brought forward before the primary voting was started to tell voters about his on the record on crime? He talks a good talk using a teleprompter but his record is one of being soft of criminals and his statements lean toward allowing criminals to go free because of color. If you do the crime, you should pay the time without regard to race.

This is another example of why Obama would be bad for America. My question would be who is going to run the Country -- Obama or Rev Wright? Seems he thinks more of Wright's ideas then anyone else over the years. Obama looks to be only representing Illinois blacks not the rest of the State which brings up the question would he only represent blacks if elected President?

Voters need to take a look at his voting record and seriously listen to what he is saying. We have already discovered that his campaign motto "Change" he has used since the 1980's when President Reagan was President. Looks to me like he is more talk and no action if over 20 years later he is using the same word -- "CHANGE!" Voters BEWARE of someone that recently came on the national scene with little experience to be President!

My bold and highlight!

Key Questions Still Left After Obama Speech

By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER
Posted Thursday, March 20, 2008 4:30 PM PT

The beauty of a speech is that you don't just give the answers, you provide your own questions. "Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes." So said Barack Obama, in his Philadelphia speech about his pastor, friend, mentor and spiritual adviser of 20 years, Jeremiah Wright.

An interesting, if belated, admission. But the more important question is: which "controversial" remarks?

Wright's assertion from the pulpit that the U.S. government invented the HIV virus "as a means of genocide against people of color"? Wright's claim that America was morally responsible for 9/11 — "chickens coming home to roost" — because of, among other crimes, Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

(Obama says he missed church that day. Had he never heard about it?)

What about the charge that the U.S. government (of Franklin Roosevelt, mind you) knew about Pearl Harbor, but lied about it? Or that the government gives drugs to black people, presumably to enslave and imprison them?

Obama condemns such statements as wrong and divisive, then frames the next question: "There will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church?"
But that is not the question. The question is, Why didn't he leave that church? Why didn't he leave — why doesn't he leave even today — a pastor who thundered not once but three times from the pulpit (on a DVD the church proudly sells) "God damn America"?

Obama's 5,000-word speech, fawned over as a great meditation on race, is little more than an elegantly crafted, brilliantly sophistic justification of that scandalous dereliction.

His defense rests on two central propositions: (a) moral equivalence, and (b) white guilt.

(a) Moral equivalence. Sure, says Obama, there's Wright, but at the other "end of the spectrum" there's Geraldine Ferraro, opponents of affirmative action and his own white grandmother, "who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe." But did she shout them in a crowded theater to incite, enrage and poison others?

"I can no more disown (Wright) than I can my white grandmother." What exactly was grandma's offense? Jesse Jackson himself once admitted to the fear he feels from the footsteps of black men on the street.

And Harry Truman was known to use epithets for blacks and Jews in private, yet is revered for desegregating the armed forces and recognizing the first Jewish state since Jesus' time. He never spread racial hatred. Nor did grandma.

Yet Obama compares her to Wright.

Does he not see the moral difference between the occasional private expression of the prejudices of one's time and the use of a public stage to spread racial lies and race hatred?

(b) White guilt. Obama's purpose in the speech was to put Wright's outrages in context. By context, Obama means history. And by history, he means the history of white racism. Obama says, "We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country," and then proceeds to do precisely that. And what lies at the end of his recital of the long train of white racial assaults from slavery to employment discrimination?

Jeremiah Wright, of course.

This contextual analysis of Wright's venom, this extenuation of black hate speech as a product of white racism, is not new. It's the Jesse Jackson politics of racial grievance, expressed in Ivy League diction and Harvard Law nuance.

That's why the speech made so many liberal commentators swoon: It bathed them in racial guilt, while flattering their intellectual pretensions. An unbeatable combination.

But Obama was supposed to be new. He flatters himself as a man of the future transcending the anger of the past as represented by his beloved pastor.

Obama then waxes rhapsodic about the hope brought by the new consciousness of the young people in his campaign.

Then answer this, Senator: If Wright is a man of the past, why would you expose your children to his vitriolic divisiveness?

This is a man who curses America and who proclaimed moral satisfaction in the deaths of 3,000 innocents at a time when their bodies were still being sought at Ground Zero.

It is not just the older congregants who stand and cheer and roar in wild approval of Wright's rants, but young people as well.

Why did you give $22,500 just two years ago to a church run by a man of the past who infects the younger generation with precisely the racial attitudes and animus you say you have come unto us to transcend?

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=290899211643217

****
My bold and highlights. I found this speech and his attempt to make whites feel guilty a slap in the face to people who look at what a person stands for not the color of their skin. People like Rev Wright and Obama who defends him are no different then the other side of the coin where someone condemns someone because of their race. Racism isn't reserved for whites only as some would have us believe. Wright's anger at the United States and whites makes me wonder why he is here taking advantage of all America has to offer.

Obama's Real Faith (IBD, Jan. 23, '07)

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted Thursday, March 20, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Recent media questions about Barack Obama's Afrocentric faith were, in fact, raised by an IBD editorial more than a year ago.

Campaign 2008: Those spreading rumors that Barack Hussein Obama is a "closet Muslim" are off the mark. His religion has little to do with Islam and everything to do with a militantly Afrocentric movement that's no less troubling.

Read More: Election 2008 Religion

Surrogates for Hillary Clinton and GOP front-runners hope to tarnish golden boy Obama by making him out to be some kind of Manchurian candidate for Islamist masters because he shares a name with Saddam Hussein and is the son of a Muslim.

True, his late father was a Muslim, but he can hardly be described as "radical," as the rumors have put it. He turned atheist in his early 20s before Obama was even born.

His mother is from a Christian background but eschewed organized religion altogether. She and her parents (one Baptist, the other Methodist) ended up raising Obama after her two marriages failed.

Yes, his former stepfather, an Indonesian oil executive, also was a Muslim, albeit a secular one. Obama describes him as "nonpracticing," and he spent only five years with the man before he and his mother split up.

If, as rumors claim, Obama's stepfather nurtured a "lifelong relationship with Islam" for his stepson, why isn't his daughter a practicing Muslim? Obama's Indonesian half-sister, now a University of Hawaii professor, is a "hottie" who dresses in Westernized clothing, students say.
What about the supposed "Wahhabi madrassa" Obama attended for "four years" in Jakarta? Actually, he went to a Muslim school for two years, and a Catholic school for the same amount of time. "I was sent first to a neighborhood Catholic school," Obama wrote in his autobiography, "and then to a predominantly Muslim school."

Obama said he was drawn to Christ after college while working with black churches on inner-city projects. Soon he knelt "beneath the cross" at one of them, he said in a recent speech, and "embraced Christ." If he were Muslim, this act alone would be punishable by death.
Trouble is, Obama embraced more than Christ when he answered the altar call 20 years ago at the Trinity United Church of Christ in Southside Chicago. The 8,000-member church describes itself as "unashamedly black" and holds classes in "African-centered Bible study." Obama also pledged to honor something called the "Black Value System," which is a code of nonbiblical ethics written by blacks, for blacks.

This is what should give American voters pause.

According to its Web site, Trinity puts the "black community" first. Black members are encouraged to pursue education and skills exclusively to advance their community, and allocate their money exclusively to support "black institutions" and black leaders.

In short, it preaches from the gospel of blackness and black power. There's little room for white Christians at Obama's church. It disavows the pursuit of "middleclassness" — code for whiteness — arguing that middleclassness is a conspiracy by white leaders to keep talented African-Americans "captives."

Obama, meanwhile, has been getting in touch with his African roots. He recently visited relatives in Kenya for the first time; he dropped the nickname Barry for the more African-sounding Barack.

"I believe in the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change," he recently asserted. He said his faith has also led him to question "the idolatry of the free market." This reflects Trinity church doctrine that no African-American can really rise to the top echelons of a "racist, competitive" white society on merit.

Obama, in turn, calls the dashiki-wearing minister of this militantly black church his "spiritual adviser" and mentor. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright said of Obama and his other congregants: "We are an African people, and remain true to our native land, the mother continent." He wants health care for all and more housing for the poor, and calls those who voted for President Bush (and his tax cuts) "stupid."

Do such beliefs translate into a political agenda tailored to African-Americans? Would Obama, despite his agreeably race-neutral and nonthreatening public persona, govern and petition on behalf of one group and not necessarily for the greater good of the country?

White House challengers such as Clinton think Obama's childhood brushes with Islam will make Americans nervous. But it's his adult conversion to black nationalism and socialism that makes this otherwise attractive minority candidate unfortunately so unattractive.

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=290905147114601

My bold and highlights!

Obama Merely Changes The Subject

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Tuesday, March 18, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Election '08: Rather than break ties with his demagogic, anti-American pastor, Barack Obama used a speech on race to excuse his behavior and sweep the controversy under the rug. Passing the buck is not very presidential.

Speaking in Philadelphia, steps away from where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were enacted, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president delivered an address that used the words "race" or "races" 11 times, "racial" or "racially" 15 times, and "racism" or "racist" six times.

But Obama's recent troubles, which this much-hyped speech was supposed to put past him, are not about race relations. They're about one churchman who happens to be black, whose views from the pulpit are repugnant and from whom Obama doesn't seem to have the guts to distance himself.

Reacting to being linked with a bigoted conspiracy theorist by lecturing the nation on race is like disgraced ex-New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer responding to his getting caught patronizing an international prostitution ring by giving a speech on the female physique.

The supposed divide between black and white is not the issue here; Obama's longtime association with Jeremiah Wright is.

This is a man who believes the U.S. government formulated the HIV virus to commit genocide against blacks and that it is also responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

Yes, Obama claimed in his speech to have "condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy." But he quickly proceeded to equivocate regarding them.

The problem, according to Obama, is not that Wright is wrong about America being a racist society, but that he "sees white racism as endemic." The problem is not that Wright has made statements that clearly seem anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli, but that he, as Obama puts it, "sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam."

Obama's pastor of 20 years is nothing more than "imperfect," as Obama sees it. And so, "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community." He won't quit this church where hate is spewed, and he doesn't explain why over all the years he has never tried to straighten Wright out.

The rest of Obama's speech was spent explaining and rationalizing hate such as Wright's rather than denouncing it. Wright's words "reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through," the result of which has been "a cycle of violence, blight and neglect" still haunting America.

The solutions? Expanded government for one, of course. But while Obama concedes that "the erosion of black families" is "a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened," he fails to understand what "Wealth and Poverty" author George Gilder knew back in 1981:

"What actually happened since 1964 was a vast expansion of the welfare rolls that halted in its tracks an ongoing improvement in the lives of the poor, particularly blacks, and left behind . . . a wreckage of broken lives and families worse than the aftermath of slavery."
Another of Obama's answers is that black anger and white resentment should give way to "the real culprits" — capitalists, or as Obama puts it, "a corporate culture rife with inside-dealing, questionable accounting practices and short-term greed" and Washington lobbyists who support it.

The early reaction to Obama's speech amounted to more media fawning on the order of that which was spoofed in a recent "Saturday Night Live" sketch. The Reuters headline was "Obama denounces preacher, urges race healing." The Boston Globe titled its story "Obama calls for racial unity." And the Washington Post proclaimed: "Obama Confronts Race in U.S." A CNN analyst even compared it to Lincoln's 1858 "A House Divided" classic.

Lincoln, however, used that occasion to warn that "this government cannot endure, permanently half-slave and half-free . . . . It will become all one thing or all the other." Unlike Obama, Honest Abe wasn't trying to have it both ways.

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=290732552237836

My bold and highlighted!

Speech doesn't pander; does it explain?

By: Roger Simon
March 18, 2008 02:36 PM EST

Barack Obama spoke calmly and reasonably Tuesday about a subject that often lacks both calm and reason in America: race.

Obama’s speech was temperate and built on logic, not fiery or built on passion. It was meant to be calming.

It was a speech that attempted to connect the dots of race in American history from slavery to Jim Crow to black anger, to white fear, to, ultimately, the hope of reconciliation. Where it was strongest was in appealing to the better angels of the American spirit: the notion that we can all come together.

Where it was weakest was in explaining the very reason for the speech: how the inflammatory, even repugnant, comments of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are understandable.

Wright, who has been Obama’s pastor for 20 years, has said America had brought on the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — “America’s chickens are coming home to roost” — and that “We started the AIDS virus.”

Without citing such statements specifically, Obama sought to explain them, though he first condemned them. Speaking in slow, measured tones, Obama said Wright used “incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation, that rightly offend white and black alike.”

But, for the first time, Obama admitted what he previously had denied: that he was present when Wright had made some of his outrageous comments.

“Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church?” Obama said. “Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely — just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.”

Obama did not say, however, that he had ever expressed his disagreement to Wright or in any way attempted to get Wright to moderate or change his views.

Instead, Obama said Wright was “more than snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and YouTube.”

Obama mentioned once again that Wright was a “Marine” and “has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country” and has spent his time “housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.”

Obama also said, in effect, that some white people simply don’t get black churches.

“They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear,” Obama said. “The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and, yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.”

It was the key to his speech and his toughest sell: that the black experience in America has been different from the white experience and that white people have to expect the “bitterness and bias” of black people while recognizing their own history of white racism.

Obama encapsulated that within his own family by speaking of his white grandmother, “a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”

The speech was also, in part, the speech of a constitutional law professor building a case.

“We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country,” Obama said. “But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.”

If Obama was not attempting to excuse the statements of Wright, he was certainly attempting to put them in context.

“For the men and women of Rev. Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away, nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years,” he said.

But Obama also attempted to explain white resentment by saying that when white Americans “are told to bus their children to a school across town, when they hear that an African-American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed, when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.”

And although the speech was not interrupted by applause very many times, Obama’s attack on some in the media was greeted that way. “Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism,” he said as the audience clapped.

But Obama said that things could get better and that his running for president was a sign that things had gotten better and that the races in America could join together in a common goal.

“The profound mistake of Rev. Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society,” Obama said, “it’s that he spoke as if our society was static, as if no progress has been made, as if this country — a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black, Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old — is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past.”

That, of course, is what the Hillary Clinton campaign resents the most about the Obama campaign: that he uses race politically. That he says a vote for him is a sign that America’s racial healing has begun.

In the end, Obama’s speech was about hope and redemption, and there was no doubt who was supplying the hope and who was the redeemer.

“This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected,” Obama said. “And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation — the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.”

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=C2EC88D8-3048-5C12-0003A7A1BE877D47
*****
My bold and highlighted.

Obama and Rev Wright

Michael Ramirez
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/cartoons.aspx

Obama's 'I Didn't Inhale' Defense

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Monday, March 17, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Election 2008: Barack Obama's story that he never once heard his preacher trash whites and America in hundreds of sermons sounds like Bill Clinton claiming he never inhaled while smoking dope.

The mushrooming church scandal has taken the shine off the golden boy of politics, a two-decade regular at "unashamedly black" Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.

With his phony defense, the Democrat front-runner has exposed himself as both a typical Beltway spinmeister and a hypocrite.

From the start of his presidential campaign, Obama has positioned himself as a straight shooter and a uniter — the very antidote to the sinister Clintonian politics of the past.

"Voters don't believe what politicians say. They get cynical," he said during the Nevada primary in response to what he described as dishonest "tricks" by both Clintons. "We have to change that politics, and that's why I'm running for president."

"You know what I'm saying is true," he reassured voters.

Yet his denial over Rev. Jeremiah Wright's vitriol does not ring true. He's suddenly shocked — shocked! — that his black nationalist church would spew anti-American venom.

"I did not hear such incendiary language myself, personally," he insisted, "either in conversations with him or when I was in the pew."

Back in February 2007, however, Obama knew Wright might be a political liability. His chief campaign strategist, David Axelrod, was so worried about his provocative statements that he urged Obama to withdraw a request that Wright deliver an invocation at his presidential campaign kickoff.

Reluctantly, Obama "uninvited" his long-time friend and mentor, according to Wright's own account at the time, telling him "it's best for you not to be out there in public."

And earlier this year, Obama had to release a statement distancing himself from a decision by Wright to honor black bigot Louis Farrakhan with a "lifetime achievement" award in Wright's name. In its November/December issue, Obama's church magazine heaped praise on Farrakhan in a cover story.

Obama seemed neither surprised nor very offended. "I assume that Trumpet magazine made its own decision to honor Farrakhan based on his efforts to rehabilitate ex-offenders," he shrugged.

Only the magazine, published by Wright's daughters out of church offices, never mentioned Farrakhan's work with ex-cons.

Obama claims he never heard Wright suggest as he did in a Sept. 16, 2001, sermon that America brought the 9/11 attacks on itself.

But he said essentially the same thing, only worse, in 2005 — this time, in the same church magazine, Trumpet, that Obama and his family receive as members. There on page 7 of the August 2005 issue, Wright blames the attacks on "white America," suggesting outrageously and cold-bloodedly that the murder of nearly 3,000 Americans on 9/11 was retribution for America's past racism.

Obama argues his pastor's hate speech was strung together and compiled in the media out of hundreds of sermons over the course of a lifetime. "They basically culled five or six sermons out of 30 years of preaching," he complained.

In fact, the clips shown represent Wright's bread and butter. These are just the Greatest Hits he sells as DVDs in the church bookstore. Obama, a church regular whose membership spans 1,040 sermons, expects us to believe he not only missed these particular lessons, but was unaware of such bile ever coming from the pulpit of his home church.

"If I had been in church those days, I would have objected fiercely to them and I would have told him personally," he now claims.

Really? A reporter witnessed Obama nod his head in agreement during a July 22, 2007, sermon in which Wright trashed the "United States of White America."

Here's another whopper Obama tells concerning Wright: "He hasn't been my political adviser, he's been my pastor."

Yet it turns out Wright quietly had a formal role in Obama's campaign, and was only pushed out last week as a member of his spiritual advisory committee when the tapes hit the airwaves.

Spinning harder, Obama claimed Wright's remarks are not "reflective of the church."

Yet the videos clearly show fellow members whooping and thumping in their applause of Wright's hateful rants. These weren't just a smattering of amens and hallelujahs. They were standing ovations.

Point is, these are the folks with whom the Obamas worship and socialize. Yet we're expected to believe Obama never heard the same incendiary remarks from them, either?

His plea of ignorance doesn't wash. And if he were sincere in his outrage, he would have distanced himself from these haters at the first opportunity.

He wouldn't be doing it as damage control only after the light is shone into the dark corners of his social and spiritual life.

Obama's image as a man of integrity is starting to fade along with his carefully crafted image as a refreshingly race-neutral candidate.

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=290645937799103#

Barack Obama Fact Sheet: Part I

Obama’s Racial Identity Politics (from Dreams from My Father)

The following quotes are from Obama’s Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (paperback, Three Rivers Press, ISBN 978-1-4000-8277-3, $14.95 U.S.). They suggest that, contrary to popular depictions as a multiracial unifier, Obama’s ideology was formed by Black identity politics. This ties in directly with his membership in a church with a “non-negotiable commitment to Africa” and liberation theology. Suggestion: if you are FOR Obama, buy this book. Obama will get a royalty for the sale even if, after you verify the following for yourself, you decide to vote for someone else.
…I ceased to advertise my mother’s race at the age of twelve or thirteen, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites… (page xv)I blew a few smoke rings, remembering those years. Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though… (page 93) [http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/streetterms/ByAlpha.asp?strTerm=B, “Blow” = “Cocaine; to inhale cocaine; to smoke marijuana; to inject heroin”]That was the problem with people like Joyce [a college classmate of Italian, African-American, Native American, and French ethnicity]. They talked about the richness of their multicultural heritage and it sounced real good, until you noticed that they avoided black people. …

The truth was that I understood [Joyce], her and all the other black kids who felt the way she did. In their mannerisms, their speech, their mixed-up hearts, I kept recognizing pieces of myself. And that’s exactly what scared me. Their confusion made me question my own racial credentials all over again. …To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. (pages 99-100)

“[Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness] teaches me things,” I said. “About white people, I mean. See, the book’s not really about Africa. Or black people. It’s about the man who wrote it. The European. The American. A particular way of looking at the world. If you can keep your distance, it’s all there, in what’s said and what’s left unsaid. So I read the book to help me just understand just what it is that makes white people so afraid. Their demons. The way ideas get twisted around. It helps me understand how people learn to hate.” (page 103)

Pages 195-204: [Obama describes his relationship with Rafiq al-Shabazz, a self-proclaimed Black Nationalist]

The above material is relevant to claims that Barack Obama, as a person of multiracial ancestry, would be a “racial unifier.” Obama’s own statements suggest that, at least during his college years, he resisted integration into mainstream American society while criticizing other students for doing so. This becomes especially significant when placed side by side with his membership in a church with a “non-negotiable commitment to Africa,” whose parent organization, the United Church of Christ, has ties to the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center: an entity whose Web site calls the establishment of Israel a “catastrophe.”

http://husaria.wordpress.com/2008/03/14/anti-obama-viral-email-project/

Obama and the Minister

By RONALD KESSLER
March 14, 2008; Page A19

In a sermon delivered at Howard University, Barack Obama's longtime minister, friend and adviser blamed America for starting the AIDS virus, training professional killers, importing drugs and creating a racist society that would never elect a black candidate president.

The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., pastor of Mr. Obama's Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, gave the sermon at the school's Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel in Washington on Jan. 15, 2006.

"We've got more black men in prison than there are in college," he began. "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."

Mr. Wright thundered on: "America is still the No. 1 killer in the world. . . . We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns, and the training of professional killers .
. .

We bombed Cambodia, Iraq and Nicaragua, killing women and children while trying to get public opinion turned against Castro and Ghadhafi . . . We put [Nelson] Mandela in prison and supported apartheid the whole 27 years he was there. We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God."

His voice rising, Mr. Wright said, "We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians and branding anybody who spoke out against it as being anti-Semitic. . . . We care nothing about human life if the end justifies the means. . . ."

Concluding, Mr. Wright said: "We started the AIDS virus . . . We are only able to maintain our level of living by making sure that Third World people live in grinding poverty. . . ."

Considering this view of America, it's not surprising that in December Mr. Wright's church gave an award to Louis Farrakhan for lifetime achievement. In the church magazine, Trumpet, Mr. Wright spoke glowingly of the Nation of Islam leader. "His depth on analysis [sic] when it comes to the racial ills of this nation is astounding and eye-opening," Mr. Wright said of Mr. Farrakhan. "He brings a perspective that is helpful and honest."

After Newsmax broke the story of the award to Farrakhan on Jan. 14, Mr. Obama issued a statement. However, Mr. Obama ignored the main point: that his minister and friend had spoken adoringly of Mr. Farrakhan, and that Mr. Wright's church was behind the award to the Nation of Islam leader.

Instead, Mr. Obama said, "I decry racism and anti-Semitism in every form and strongly condemn the anti-Semitic statements made by Minister Farrakhan. I assume that Trumpet magazine made its own decision to honor Farrakhan based on his efforts to rehabilitate ex-offenders, but it is not a decision with which I agree." Trumpet is owned and produced by Mr. Wright's church out of the church's offices, and Mr. Wright's daughters serve as publisher and executive editor.

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

Mr. Obama went on to explain Mr. 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 his previous claim that his church gave the award to Mr. Farrakhan because of his work with ex-offenders, Mr. Obama appears to have made that up.

Neither the presentation of the award nor the Trumpet article about the award mentions ex-offenders, and Mr. Wright's statements denouncing Israel have not been qualified in any way. Mr. Obama nonetheless told the Jewish leaders that the award to Mr. Farrakhan "showed a lack of sensitivity to the Jewish community." That is an understatement.

As for Mr. Wright's repeated comments blaming America for the 9/11 attacks because of what Mr. Wright calls its racist and violent policies, Mr. Obama has said it sounds as if the minister was trying to be "provocative."

Hearing Mr. Wright's venomous and paranoid denunciations of this country, the vast majority of Americans would walk out. Instead, Mr. Obama and his wife Michelle have presumably sat through numerous similar sermons by Mr. Wright.

Indeed, Mr. Obama has described Mr. Wright as his "sounding board" during the two decades he has known him. Mr. Obama has said he found religion through the minister in the 1980s. He joined the church in 1991 and walked down the aisle in a formal commitment of faith.

The title of Mr. Obama's bestseller "The Audacity of Hope" comes from one of Wright's sermons. Mr. Wright is one of the first people Mr. Obama thanked after his election to the Senate in 2004. Mr. Obama consulted Mr. Wright before deciding to run for president. He prayed privately with Mr. Wright before announcing his candidacy last year.

Mr. Obama obviously would not choose to belong to Mr. Wright's church and seek his advice unless he agreed with at least some of his views. In light of Mr. Wright's perspective, Michelle Obama's comment that she feels proud of America for the first time in her adult life makes perfect sense.

Much as most of us would appreciate the symbolism of a black man ascending to the presidency, what we have in Barack Obama is a politician whose closeness to Mr. Wright underscores his radical record.

The media have largely ignored Mr. Obama's close association with Mr. Wright. This raises legitimate questions about Mr. Obama's fundamental beliefs about his country. Those questions deserve a clearer answer than Mr. Obama has provided so far.

Mr. Kessler, a former Wall Street Journal and Washington Post reporter, is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com and the author of "The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack" (Crown Forum, 2007).

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120545277093135111.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

Obama's Pastor: God Damn America, U.S. to Blame for 9/11

Obama's Pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Has a History of What Even Obama's Campaign Aides Say Is 'Inflammatory Rhetoric'

By BRIAN ROSS and REHAB EL-BURI
March 13, 2008—

Sen. Barack Obama's pastor says blacks should not sing "God Bless America" but "God damn America."

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for the last 20 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's south side, has a long history of what even Obama's campaign aides concede is "inflammatory rhetoric," including the assertion that the United States brought on the 9/11 attacks with its own "terrorism."

In a campaign appearance earlier this month, Sen. Obama said, "I don't think my church is actually particularly controversial." He said Rev. Wright "is like an old uncle who says things I don't always agree with," telling a Jewish group that everyone has someone like that in their family.

Rev. Wright married Obama and his wife Michelle, baptized their two daughters and is credited by Obama for the title of his book, "The Audacity of Hope."

An ABC News review of dozens of Rev. Wright's sermons, offered for sale by the church, found repeated denunciations of the U.S. based on what he described as his reading of the Gospels and the treatment of black Americans.

"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people," he said in a 2003 sermon. "God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

In addition to damning America, he told his congregation on the Sunday after Sept. 11, 2001 that the United States had brought on al Qaeda's attacks because of its own terrorism.
"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye," Rev. Wright said in a sermon on Sept. 16, 2001.

"We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost," he told his congregation.

Sen. Obama told the New York Times he was not at the church on the day of Rev. Wright's 9/11 sermon. "The violence of 9/11 was inexcusable and without justification," Obama said in a recent interview. "It sounds like he was trying to be provocative," Obama told the paper.
Rev. Wright, who announced his retirement last month, has built a large and loyal following at his church with his mesmerizing sermons, mixing traditional spiritual content and his views on contemporary issues.

"I wouldn't call it radical. I call it being black in America," said one congregation member outside the church last Sunday.

"He has impacted the life of Barack Obama so much so that he wants to portray that feeling he got from Rev. Wright onto the country because we all need something positive," said another member of the congregation.

Rev. Wright, who declined to be interviewed by ABC News, is considered one of the country's 10 most influential black pastors, according to members of the Obama campaign.

Obama has praised at least one aspect of Rev. Wright's approach, referring to his "social gospel" and his focus on Africa," and I agree with him on that."

Sen. Obama declined to comment on Rev. Wright's denunciations of the United States, but a campaign religious adviser, Shaun Casey, appearing on "Good Morning America" Thursday, said Obama "had repudiated" those comments.

In a statement to ABCNews.com, Obama's press spokesman Bill Burton said, "Sen. Obama has said repeatedly that personal attacks such as this have no place in this campaign or our politics, whether they're offered from a platform at a rally or the pulpit of a church. Sen. Obama does not think of the pastor of his church in political terms. Like a member of his family, there are things he says with which Sen. Obama deeply disagrees. But now that he is retired, that doesn't detract from Sen. Obama's affection for Rev. Wright or his appreciation for the good works he has done."

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=4443788

*****

NOTE: My bold and highlight. If a pastor of my church spoke these words, I would get up and walk out never to darken the doorway of his church his again. For Obama to have continued to attend this church after 9/11 speaks volumes about Obama. No one who cares deeply for America, no matter your race would continue to attend this 'racist' church. You don't have to be white to be 'racist' as this pastor has proved. Do we want a President that goes to a church with a pastor like this in the White House that has had a huge influence on his life? Think about it! Samantha

Obama's Church

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted Tuesday, January 15, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Since we first drew attention to Barack Obama's Afrocentric church a full 12 months ago, other media have weighed in. And additional disturbing information has come to light.

At the core of the Democratic front-runner's faith — whether lapsed Muslim, new Christian or some mixture of the two — is African nativism, which raises political issues of its own.

In 1991, when Obama joined the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, he pledged allegiance to something called the Black Value System, which is a code of non-Biblical ethics written by blacks, for blacks.

It encourages blacks to group together and separate from the larger American society by pooling their money, patronizing black-only businesses and backing black leaders. Such racial separatism is strangely at odds with the media's portrayal of Obama as a uniter who reaches across races.

The code also warns blacks to avoid the white "entrapment of black middle-classness," suggesting that settling for that kind of "competitive" success will rob blacks of their African identity and keep them "captive" to white culture.

In short, Obama's "unashamedly black" church preaches the politics of black nationalism. And its dashiki-wearing preacher — who married Obama and his wife and now acts as his personal spiritual adviser — is militantly Afrocentric. "We are an African people," the Rev. Jeremiah Wright reminds his flock, "and remain true to our native land, the mother continent."

Wright once traveled to Libya with black supremacist Louis Farrakhan to meet with terrorist leader Muammar Qaddafi. Last year at a Chicago gala, Wright honored his old pal Farrakhan, who's fond of calling whites "blue-eyed devils," for lifetime achievement.

It comes as little surprise then that Wright would think Israel a "racist" occupier of Palestinians, while describing the 9/11 attacks as a "wake-up call" to "white America" for ignoring the concerns of "people of color." Wright makes the Rev. Jesse Jackson look almost moderate and patriotic. Yet this is whom Obama picked to baptize his daughters, plus to act as his "sounding board" during his presidential run.

The candidate already has heeded his church's "nonnegotiable commitment to Africa," spending an inordinate amount of his campaign time on the Kenyan crisis, for one. Obama has close family ties to Kenya, and even founded a school in his ancestral village — the Senator Obama School.

In the bloody conflict there, which already has claimed some 700 lives, Obama appears to have sided with opposition leader Raila Odinga, head of the same Luo tribe to which Obama's late Muslim father belonged.

Obama's older brother still lives there. Abongo "Roy" Obama is a Luo activist and a militant Muslim who argues that the black man must "liberate himself from the poisoning influences of European culture." He urges his younger brother to embrace his African heritage.

Beyond family politics, these ties have potential foreign policy, even national security, implications. Odinga is a Marxist who reportedly has made a pact with a hard-line Islamic group in Kenya to establish Shariah courts throughout the country. He has also vowed to ban booze and pork and impose Muslim dress codes on women — moves favored by Obama's brother.

With al-Qaida strengthening its beachheads in Africa — from Algeria to Sudan to Somalia — the last thing the West needs is for pro-Western Kenya to fall into the hands of Islamic extremists.

Yet Obama interrupted his New Hampshire campaigning to speak by phone with Odinga, who claims to be his cousin. He did not speak with Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki.

Would Obama put African tribal or family interests ahead of U.S. interests?

It's a valid question, and one voters deserve to have debated regardless of the racial and religious sensitivities. Thanks to a media blackout of these issues, the electorate has yet to benefit from a thorough vetting of Obama.

We have to wonder how much of the national agenda Africa would consume under an Obama administration. Of the six "world threats" Obama lists in stump speeches, at least half of them concern that chronically troubled Third World continent.

Yes, some of his African priorities are noble, such as fighting AIDS and genocide. But how much U.S. aid, resources and presidential time would he devote to them? How much is enough? If Bill Clinton was America's "first black president," would Barack Hussein Obama be our first president for Africa?

Then there is the issue of his Muslim past. Obama, 47, was raised by two Muslim fathers and attended Islamic classes in Indonesia. He denies being Muslim, however, and says he "embraced Christ" while answering the altar call 20 years ago at Trinity. (Contrary to anonymous e-mail rumors circulating, Obama never took the oath of office on the Quran. He used a Bible, and Vice President Dick Cheney swore him in during his Senate ceremony.) This merely raises another concern, beyond that of the controversial church he chose to baptize him. If Obama were ever Muslim, even as a youth, he would now be viewed as an apostate, which in radical Islam is punishable by death. As Mideast expert Daniel Pipes has noted, a President Obama could be the target of a fatwah.

Still, his Muslim heritage is not the signal issue before the electorate.

It's his Afrocentric church, which preaches black socialism and black nativism, and his family ties to an African tribe that's fanning the flames of Marxism and militant Islam in a country once considered strongly democratic and a friend of the U.S.

"I believe in the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change," Obama has asserted. He also says his faith has led him to question "the idolatry of the free market." If a President Obama's foreign and domestic policies are anything like the Afrocentric doctrine he's pledged to uphold, Americans will pay a hefty price, including those among the growing black middle class.

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=285292746454291