UPDATE: I had the story below ready to publish since I need to leave, but ran across this video from MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show last night. So I’m adding this video without accompanying text because Maddow does such a great job of explaining not only Obama’s failure to live up to his campaign promises but also another instance of Obama’s thwarting of legislation to end “don’t ask don’t tell”:

Amy has found that Obama’s failure to issue an executive order (”stop loss”) or direct Congress has led to 230 service members being kicked out of the military under the policy since Obama took office. Despite Obama’s aversion to “hot button” issues, action may be taken soon. Following Congress’s August recess, the Senate Armed Services Committee will hold a hearing on “don’t ask don’t tell.” A member of the committee, Sen. Kristen Gillibrand, who was appointed to fill Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s seat, is the force behind the push for Congressional action and convinced Chair Carl Levin to hold the hearing.

“Morning Meeting” devoted a full-panel segment to getting rid of “don’t ask don’t tell” and joining all of our allies in permitting gays to serve openly in the military. During the “Meeting” segment, the most clear, “let’s cut to the chase” advocate for permitting gays to serve in the military was the reserved-looking, older Gen. Barry McCaffrey (retired), an analyst for NBC and MSNBC News. (See the MSNBC.com bio of Gen. McCaffrey. The photo is from Wikipedia’s bio.)

There’s no video of the segment so I transcribed what Gen. McCaffrey said: “Whether the military wants to do it or not is irrelevant. The question is: Is private consensual homosexual behavior legal or not? The Supreme Court seems to have said a decade ago that states couldn’t pass laws affecting private consensual homosexual behavior.”

Gen. McCaffrey stated firmly that Congress “ought to step up to it” and change the law. The rest of Morning Meeting panel also said that Obama shouldn’t bother with a “stop loss” order (a half-measure), and instead demand that Congress change the law.

Of course, as Reverend Amy has told us, Obama is ducking the issue despite his campaign promises, and has taken no action of any kind.

Why Obama is so wary of the issue is unclear (unless it’s to appease his ultra-religious, vociferously anti-gay constituencies, including his old Chicago minister pals like Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Father Michael Pfleger, Rev. Otis Moss, and Rev. James Meeks). Obama’s reticence can’t be due to voters’ attitudes since “Morning Meeting” noted that a recent poll found that two-thirds of Americans approve of allowing gays to serve freely in the military.

Included early in the segment was Dr. Nathaniel Franken, author of “Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America” (Kindle edition). Dr. Franken pointed out that, under the current “don’t ask don’t tell” policy, over 13,000 service members have been discharged, including 1,000 “mission critical specialists,” 300 linguists and 60 Arab linguists.

“This is a national security emergency. It’s not just a gay rights issue. And President Obama does have the power to issue an executive order,” Dr. Franken continued. (Read more about Dr. Franken’s views in Amy’s June post.)

The “Morning Meeting” panelists concurred that if Obama is going to “take a hit” for issuing a stop-loss executive order, he might as well go all the way and compel Congress to enact a law to do away with discrimination against gays. But Obama hasn’t done a thing so far and shows no signs of taking actions.

In Rabble Rouser Reverend Amy’s story, “Stop Making Excuses For This Guy!!,” she takes on the gays who are still backing Obama:

Repeal the law – it cannot POSSIBLY take that long. Like I said, look how fast Obama got some other things done he wanted done. If he wanted this law repealed already, he would have. Rather, Obama chose to not even weigh in on this to the Supreme Court. LOOK AT THE FACTS, not the rhetoric!

Here’s the bottom line to the LGBT community: STOP MAKING EXCUSES FOR THIS GUY. Stop humiliating yourselves hoping, crossing your fingers, and wishing that Obama is going to do right by you because he said he would, or because you think he’s “dreamy.” Had you opened your eyes and paid attention to his actions (or lack thereof) over the course of his political career, or the people with whom he chooses to surround himself, you wouldn’t have picked the guy you thought was “cool.” You would have supported the person who has stood with YOU for years. But you didn’t. And here we are, no farther along for it.

Aren’t you TIRED of begging for the crumbs to drop from the table?? Aren’t you ready to be a guest at the table, where you belong?? All the excuses in the world for Obama do nothing but let him off the hook, and diminish YOU. Seriously, you, we, deserve better. Deep down inside, you must know that is true. At least I HOPE you do…

U.S. allies openly permit gays to serve in their armed forces. Via AOL News:

Check out more of Amy’s posts:

• “Soldiers and WORMS” [WORM stands for "What Obama Really Meant."]

• “And The Hits Just Keep On Coming” (which links to even more posts)

• “Passing the Buck“

This section from “Passing the Buck,” exposes the real Obama:

Once again, Obama has found a way to NOT let the buck stop with him – he is proving to be quite adept at finding a way to not take a stand on stands he has previously taken. I know – it makes my head hurt, too, but that’s the reality of it. The title of this article really says it all: Obama Avoids Test on Gays in Military. Uh, yeah. You may recall that I wrote just recently about the Army Arabic linguist, Lt. Dan Choi, and his plea to Obama to not fire him from the Army (“Freedom’s Just Another Word…”).

Well, get this:

The Obama administration has decided to accept an appeals-court ruling that could undermine the military’s ban on service members found to be gay.

A federal appeals court in San Francisco last year ruled that the government must justify the expulsion of a decorated officer solely because she is a lesbian. The court rejected government arguments that the law banning gays in the military should have a blanket application, and that officials shouldn’t be required to argue the merits in her individual case.

The administration let pass a May 3 deadline to appeal to the Supreme Court. That means the case will be returned to the district court, and administration officials said they will continue to defend the law there.

The move comes as President Barack Obama attempts a balancing act on gay rights. He was elected with strong support from the gay community and promised action on a number of issues. But mindful of the complex politics, the White House has moved slowly.

Um, no – a glacier moves slowly. Obama hasn’t moved at all: … (Read all.)

Um, no – a glacier moves slowly. Obama hasn’t moved at all:

Amy, you crack me up even while you’re talking about a truly serious story that affects national security because the military is dismissing desperately needed Arab linguists and other “mission critical specialists.”

Since 2/3rds of the American people back the open inclusion of gays in the military, this action is not hazardous politically and should be taken care of right away. Get with the program, President Obama.

A US Cardinal and several Bishops denounce the University of Notre Dame for inviting Barack Obama to deliver a speech at their commencement ceremonies. They are also pissed off about the Honorary Law Degree to be given to Barack “God Damn AmeriKKKa” Obama. A lot of Catholics are pissed of too, and over 210,000 of them signed a petition denouncing University of Notre Dame. For the Bishops, Cardinals and many Catholics the problem is Obama’s stance on LIFE:

US Cardinal DiNardo, Archbishop of Galveston-Houston:

“Though I can understand the desire by a university to have the prestige of a commencement address by the President of the United States, the fundamental moral issue of the inestimable worth of the human person from conception to natural death is a principle that soaks all our lives as Catholics, and all our efforts at formation, especially education at Catholic places of higher learning.”

Texas Bishop Gregory Aymond of Austin:

“it is very clear that in this case the University of Notre Dame does not live up to its Catholic identity in giving this award and their leadership needs our prayerful support.”

Indiana Bishop John D’Arcy of Fort Wayne-South Bend:

This will be the 25th Notre Dame graduation during my time as bishop. After much prayer, I have decided not to attend the graduation. I wish no disrespect to our president, I pray for him and wish him well. I have always revered the Office of the Presidency. But a bishop must teach the Catholic faith “in season and out of season,” and he teaches not only by his words — but by his actions.

My decision is not an attack on anyone, but is in defense of the truth about human life.

Arizona Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix:

“I am saddened and heavy of heart about your decision to invite President Obama to speak at Notre Dame University and even to receive an honorary degree,” began Bishop Olmsted.

But the prelate went further, charging that Fr. John Jenkins, the university’s president, has committed “a public act of disobedience to the Bishops of the United States” by inviting Obama to the May 17 Commencement.

These are fighting words. But the Cardinal and the Bishops miss the point. It’s not just life that is the issue here. It is also about fake Catholic Father Pfleger. Allowing Obama to speak at Notre Dame grants this trash credibility:

Cardinal DiNardo needs to reread his statement.

Particularly troubling is the Honorary Law Degree since it recognizes that the person is a ‘Teacher,’ in this case of the Law. I think that this decision requires charitable but vigorous critique.

Obama’s more than a teacher of law and of abortion. Friends with Father Pfleger, who Obama called a friend and an advisor, Obama is a teacher of hate.

The 2004 Sun-Times article noted that “friends and advisers” such as Pfleger, “who has known Obama for the better part of 20 years, help him keep his (moral) compass, he (Obama) says.” Based on Pfleger’s remarks, either he or Obama, or both, have, uh, lost their bearings.

Pfleger has had a working relationship with Obama since the late 1980s. As noted, he was one of Obama’s spiritual mentors. Between 1995 and 2001, Pfleger contributed a total of $1,500 to Obama’s various political campaigns.

Giving Obama a free degree and letting him speak is to accept the hate of Father Pfleger, who mentored Barack Obama. I am sure all those rich white Irish, Italian, Polish and Lithuanian kids from the suburbs of Chicago who work hard to pay money to attend the Catholic college mommy and daddy attended will want to sit and listen to a guy whose mentor said all white people are responsible for slavery and racism. I am sure all those rich white Catholics who will get a job in daddy’s business or with daddy’s friends from the old parish want to hear a man whose mentor said all of them are responsible for white privilege. I don’t think people go to a Notre Dame graduation to be told they are all white people who feel entitled.

That is what Notre Dame wants. Not just God Damn AmeriKKKa but also BLAME WHITEY and HATE WHITEY. Inviting Barack Obama to speak is inviting Father Pfleger and Reverend Wright to Notre Dame. Not a good move.

This is more about life. This is about ignorance and hate. The Cardinals and Bishops need to wrap their heads around that. If they don’t say anything about Obama and Pfleger, we’ll just assume the Cardinals and Bishops and the whole Catholic Church agrees with Pfleger and Obama and the God Damn AmeriKKKa Church both of them went to. That’s not the direction I think Catholics and Notre Dame want to go.

Confusing. Perhaps you can help me to clarify the butter here.

It is tough enough to fathom how a nation with grievous economic difficulties at home and two wars abroad can elect a man with no governing experience, no executive experience and very little legislative experience. Perhaps George Bush so lowered the bar, people figure – ‘hey, how bad can this guy do? At least he gives a good speech.’

Let’s hold that thought for the moment.

Read the rest ->

No matter how unhappy I am with his election or how he got here, I have been pleased with at least some of his cabinet picks. Hmmm. Perhaps he is exhibiting some of that ‘good judgment’ that his supporters keep touting after all.

Surely it is excellent judgment to nominate Senator Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State (no matter how he lied about her ‘lack of experience’ during the campaign). Probably a good idea to keep Robert Gates on as Defense Secretary to insure a smooth transition given our situation in Iraq and Afghanistan. Appointing Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff, not my favorite pick, but a Hillary fan and a solid enforcer who knows how to get things done and knows where the bodies are buried (which, as it turns out, could be good or bad for him with Chicago festering and ready to explode). Also, his appointing 80% Clintonistas tells me that the self-described “delegator,” P.E. Obama, is smart enough to know what he doesn’t know and hire some adults to mind the store. So far, so good.

So here’s my problem with him in the judgment department. How can a man with the political savvy the media and his followers keep trumpeting be goofy enough to surround himself for twenty years with the likes of Rev. Wright, Rev. Pfleger, Tony Rezko, Bill Ayers (now practicing revisionist history on every talk show and newspaper who will have him), Emil Jones, Gov. Blagojevich, Mayor Daley, Jim Johnson, Penny Pritzker, et al….I could go on singing!

According to Politico:

During [Blagojevich’s] reelection campaign in 2006 – with press reports swirling about a grand jury investigation into Blagojevich’s alleged jobs-for-contributions scheme – Obama praised the governor as a leader “who has delivered consistently on behalf of the people of Illinois.”

Yep. He sure exhibited some good judgment there. And didn’t he endorse someone else who got arrested recently? Kwame Kilpatrick, I believe.

Never mind ‘surrounding’ himself with these people, and praising them, surely not the work of someone with good judgment, but when questioned on their negative influence, their crooked actions, questionable ethics or downright criminal behavior, his answer is invariably one of the following:

I didn’t know.
I thought he was reformed.
We never spoke.
Oops, that was a boneheaded move.
He doesn’t work for me.
This is not the man I knew.
I am sobered and saddened.
Come one fellas, can’t I just eat my waffle?

As far as hearing Rev. Wright’s incendiary and racist America-bashing sermons, P.E. Obama contradicted himself on mainstream news six times in one week: ‘I knew. I didn’t know. I knew. I didn’t know.’

My sister, my daughter, my sister, my daughter…
She’s my sister AND my daughter!

(Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown…)

It’s downright exhausting keeping track of so many fibs. It is even harder to do this because the press won’t do their jobs and keep track of them for us. Articles getting scrubbed, altered history left and right. What’s a girl to do?

I know Rev. Wright is considered old news to Obama’s more virulent supporters and the media, who keep insisting there is ‘nothing to see here.” They say this even though Wright just came out this weekend to declare the TUCC is responsible for giving us our first black President. But riddle me this, Batman: if a man sits in a church for 20 years where this vile stuff is expounded regularly and gets married by this man and baptizes his children there – he does so for one of two reasons – either he believes this stuff – or he just sat there for TWENTY years for political street cred. Or he slept in church for TWENTY years.

Unfortunately, there is no good way to spin that. Just as there is no good way to spin so many of his other actions and policy reversals. Gee, he hasn’t even been inaugurated yet. What a supreme mess.

So I guess my question is, how much can Mr. Supercalifragilistic-Expialidocously Triple-Coated Teflon Man get away with before the American people start to wonder about a leader who doesn’t ever seem to notice stuff that is happening right under his own nose? Assuming for the moment that it is mere ignorance and not complicity.

I have made mention of this in the past, but I want a President who is going to protect us, not one we have to protect. Everyone in the media is dancing circles around themselves to make sure we know how honorable he is. Do they protest too much? Why is this even necessary?

I guess media talking heads need to protect their investment, since they have so touted Obama, any revelation denting the armor of their ‘chosen one’ would irreparably tarnish their reputations. Well, I hate to tell you, MSM, but that ship already sailed.

I thought the whole reason he was able to get some mileage over the more qualified candidate, Senator Hillary Clinton, was that he was supposed to be the “new kind of politics” – a fresh way of doing business in Washington – yet he was and is surrounded by very unsavory influences indeed, and seems very much at home with them all.

And after the fact, he behaves as though he knew nothing, saw nothing, said nothing, heard nothing.

Without even accusing President Elect Obama of wrongdoing, I am terrified at having our leader be someone who constantly acts like he is walking around with his head in a fart, with no knowledge of anything that is happening around him. And that is giving him the benefit of the doubt.

But anyone who has been caught dissembling as much as President-Elect Obama has, stopped getting the benefit of the doubt a long time ago.

Right now, it looks as though we have two choices: he is ignorant of all of this or is being dishonest about his involvement. Which is worse? I can certainly understand his voters aching to believe him when he says this stuff, because they voted for a romantic idea and would hate to see their hopes come crashing down. I worry about a crash too, albeit for very different reasons.

What are you hearing out there? Any buyer’s remorse? Is anyone else concerned?

Listen to the video in its entirety because Matthews describes further how VERY near he was to where that bomb went off. And Ayers (of course, this was not discussed today) is a free man solely because his attorneys managed to prove the FBI improperly conducted wiretaps. (I have MUCH MORE TO SAY about this below, and ask you to read along and then share YOUR reactions and add your own knowledge and your own impressions of what occurred, shamefully, on MSNBC.)

I can only imagine what Concerned Mother would have to say about this travesty.

It is unconscionable to me that we and the MSM constantly RAGE about O.J. Simpson, who murdered two people, but not reject Barack Obama, a presidential candidate, now president-elect, who has associated freely and over a long time with a man who could have killed dozens and dozens of people.

On his remarkable radio show a few weeks ago, Nocturnal Warrior made a brilliant point about PEBO’s selection of numerous former Clinton White House and cabinet members. Warrior said that PEBO has to select such people because he has almost no FRIENDS or LONGTIME ASSOCIATES to appoint to any serious jobs in his administration. This is a situation that has NEVER occurred in the history of the presidency of the United States. Heretofore, every U.S. president has had a rich collection of friends, associates, and allies from whom he could select many qualified for high-ranking administration positions. But not Barack Obama. You faithful readers of No Quarter know of many of Obama’s real longtime associates: Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, Father Michael Pfleger, William Ayers, Allison and Cullen Davis, Penny Pritzker, Bernardine Dohrn, and on and on, only a very, very few of them suited for any respectable position at any level in an administration. (I’ve clicked several Categories to provide you with a list.) And now, this week, we learn more about other Obama longtime associates like Rod Bagojevich and his wife.

William Ayers’ Crimes, and Additional Perspective History

The SOLE reason no one died is because Ayers et al. were piss-poor bomb makers. What is the sentence range these days for an attempt to commit murder? And don’t forget all the other bombs that nearly killed many others. Including the judge, his wife, and his children — while they slept — simply because that judge was doing his job: Handling the trial of a Black Panther. I’m not generally in favor of the death penalty, but Ayers’ and the Weather Underground’s attempts, repeatedly, to kill as many people as possible in the Capitol, the Pentagon, police stations, and a judge’s home are the works of people so dangerous that those people should never be freed, and may be eligible to be charged with a capital offense.

Ayers has famously said, “Free as a bird, guilty as hell, ain’t America great.” (From Larry Johnson’s must-read article, “A Statement by a Retired FBI Agent Re William Ayers.”)

Dear readers, please understand this: All that, to Matthews, is just some history. It has some import to Matthews, given that he might have been blown up himself, but apparently not much since the conversation flows easily and reasonably amicably, and Matthews, at the end of the interview, gladly flogs Ayers’ book. THEN, after this interview, Matthews has his panel on. Matthews asks Joan Walsh, Salon’s editor, why Ayers — who appeared today to be “confessional” in his tone — didn’t do that during the campaign. Ms. Walsh LAUGHS with a SMIRK on her face, and says, “I think he wanted to stay out of it entirely, and not dignify what the McCain campaign and others were doing.”

Thank you, Ms. Walsh. We now know who the real criminals are. Shame on you, John McCain. Shame on you, Sarah Palin.

Ms. Walsh, please share your opinions with John Murtagh. Well, of course. That’s unfair. You don’t know who John Murtagh is.

Uppity Woman can tell you, in her story, “When This Man Was 9 Years Old, Ayers Bombed His Home.”

If I may, I will contrast the actions of William Ayers and the rest of the sociopathic members of the Weather Underground to the actions of a man who — unless you’re my age and you closely followed anti-war activities during the Vietnam War — you’ve probably NEVER heard of, and will not hear of in the MSM.

After all, he didn’t make bombs. He didn’t befriend a future president and excite the easily excitable rightwing. He simply did the hard work of truly changing history and he paid the price that true, albeit boring, heroes do, in anonymity.

His name is David Harris.

He was the resident counselor in the boys’ dormitory across the street from my girls’ dorm. Many of us sat at his feet as he modestly told us his stories about traveling to the South in summers past to try to help black people get the right to vote. He also shared with us the music he’d learned about in the South — the blues. He told us about Muddy Waters and more. We were entranced. With him, with his stories and the very REAL danger he was in during those summers when white racists wanted to kill him and every white college kid who dared to fight for blacks’ right to vote.

He ran for student body president and I worked on his campaign. He ran on the sole condition that, if elected, he would not serve. He won in a landslide. And did not serve.

Then his draft number came up. (My memory is vague these days, but I believe he tried all the normal routes available back then, such as conscientious objector status, and so on. All of those routes failed.)

So he went to prison. Leavenworth. About seven years ago, I did a search on him, curious what his life had been like. I discovered that he had written a book about his time in Leavenworth, along with his then-wife Joan Baez. I bought the book, and read it. It was a heart-wrenching account. I had no idea that being an inmate in Leavenworth was such a horrific, maddening, insane experience.

It is a simple story, really.

He refused to fight for a war he did not believe was right.

The U.S. government tried him and sentenced him to prison.

He served roughly three years, as I recall.

You may disagree with his decision, but he decided to take the punishment like a man.

He had a father who, as I remember it, was an attorney in Fresno, California. His father surely had some means, but not enough to prevent his son from going to prison.

Bill Ayers had a father who was Chairman of Commonwealth Edison and a mover/shaker in Chicago politics, the arts and education. His father had the means to hire a cadre of attorneys who successfully prevented his son from spending a single day in prison.

David Harris did not build bombs.

He tried to help blacks in the South get to vote, at great risk to his own life.

He helped educate and watched over younger students attending the university, which was often a tedious task, listening to those 18-year-olds’ angst and fear and uncertainty and their various problems with and anxieties about their classes.

He helped the students with the difficult reading for the required freshman class, The History of Western Civilization, because he had read all of those works, including all of Plato, Socrates, and more, and he could — and did — explain those works to those anxious students. He spoke with them patiently and kindly and always very softly.

He was a hulk of a man with broad thick shoulders and a large angular head and a blond mustache but he was, as they say, a gentle giant.

He did not teach the younger students to build bombs or burn down buildings.

He taught the students about giving black people the right to vote and about the blues and about philosophy and about literature and about political thinking and about peaceful protest and about Martin Luther King and Gandhi.

He marched and sang folk songs with his wife, who bore their son.

What a dull man.

Doubtless, Chris Matthews will never invite David Harris for a feature interview.

If only he’d built bombs and then buddied up with a future president, he’d be a sought-after guest.

At least he has an entry in Wikipedia.

:::::::::::

Via Google News results:

Matthews to Ayers: ‘I Agitate My Way, You Agitate Your Way‘ – NewsBusters

Chris Matthews invited on Bill Ayers on Wednesday night’s “Hardball,” and actually confronted him about his bombing of Capitol Hill during his days as a member of the ’60s terrorist group Weather Underground, as the former Capitol Hill police officer emotionally observed: “I was a Capitol policeman at the time, so I was one of the guys that could have been killed obviously at the time you put that, your guys put that bomb in there. So I have a little personal interest. It wasn’t just vandalism. To me it was life-threatening to the guys I worked with. And there were some pretty good guys working there.”

However Matthews, who paradoxically may not even be alive to conduct this interview today if the Weather Underground’s bombs were more devastating, devoted most of the interview tossing softballs Ayers’ way, as the two often agreed with each other on Barack Obama and Iraq policy as the “Hardball” host pointed out they only really differed on how to spread their points of view: “Well, Mr. Ayers, with all due respect, you agitate your way, I agitate my way.

Matthews, who back in October dismissed Sarah Palin’s mention of Ayers, as “the politics of distraction,” began the interview by setting up Ayers to play down any association he had with Obama: …

READ ALL: Matthews to Ayers: ‘I Agitate My Way, You Agitate Your Way‘ — NewsBusters

AND READ MORE of NoQuarter’s treasure trove of materials on the bombings conducted by William Ayers.

Imagine yourself at the podium talking to a huge crowd, and the words on the teleprompter say things like: "This is the moment that the world is waiting for. . ." or, "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions." How do you pull it off? Maybe you flash to Peter O’Toole as Lawrence of Arabia, running across the top of a train shouting, "Acaba! Acaba!" with stirring music underwriting your every move. Even so, something in you hesitates at throwing your full self into such grandiosity. Something healthy in you that feels it’s just too way over the top. Besides, isn’t it up to other people to say whether you are a transformative figure?

That something in you that hesitates is not present in some people, such as Barack Obama. When he proclaims that, "we are the change we’ve been waiting for," he goes full tilt with a straight face and no embarrassment. Those caught up in his rhetoric feel like they are part of the "we," and that they are going to be part of something big and wonderful together. Others of us get an unsettling sense that even when he says "we," it’s all about him, quite singular. We don’t sense individuals in a crowd relating to him (as we do, for example, when Hillary Clinton speaks), but a fused entity lost in him. He is not offering to  serve them or fight on their behalf. He is proclaiming that they can become part of him. Many of us get an eerie chill because this is the kind of messianic promise made by cult leaders, not politicians.

And that’s just the beginning of the diametrically opposed reactions to Obama that have deeply divided feminists, progressives, and Democrats, and pitted friends, family members, co-workers, neighbors, networks, interest group members and officials, former political allies, as well as demographic groups against one another. One of the things that keeps us so divided is that his devotees and even many of his converts seem to know so little about him yet consistently reject information that does not fit with their trusting view of him. Many pour out unprecedented—for "progressives"—nastiness, misinformation, and hatred to demean Hillary Clinton and then Sarah Palin, and to intimidate and even threaten those who don’t agree with them. Their bullying has dominated campuses, caucuses, and the convention as well as the blogosphere and media. "Truth squads" aim to silence anything but unqualified admiration.

This is not politics as usual. How can we explain the depth and ferocity of opposing views about a man who portrays himself as a uniter? What is unleashing such widespread animosity and bullying? Is there something about the candidate himself that is inherently divisive?

When a situation has lots of pieces that don’t seem to fit, I look for a lens that can make comprehensive sense of them. In this case, we can get part of the way there via Alinsky-style "community organizing" which Obama says is the best education he ever had. This explanation dovetails perfectly with another that takes us deeper and makes sense of diametrically opposed perceptions and reactions: the anatomy of the candidate’s "self-system." The hypothesis advanced here is that his self-system appears to be organized by "narcissistic personality disorder" (NPD). The NPD lens can illuminate the structure and dynamics not only of the candidate but also of his campaign and the roles of the key sets of players. That is the focus of this article which has grown into two parts: why Obama cannot unify, and how he has divided us.

Having first engaged seriously with NPD 30 years ago and integrated it into my interdisciplinary work, I find the term "narcissist" can be a valuable tool when it is not tossed out casually or without a clue that the self-centered-ness to which it typically refers is merely the tip of an iceberg. We need to dive beneath the surface.

When we do, we discover that NPD is a defective way of organizing the self. Rather than growing around a core, it is cut in half and has no center. The ensuing hollowness and fragmentation explains why "NPDs" lack empathy and authenticity, and have difficulty standing by a principle. It’s also why the psychiatrists who first began recognizing this pattern referred to it as the "as-if" personality. Non-professionals who try to figure out NPDs invariably find themselves
encountering masks and personae, and puzzle over what lies beneath them. Where is the "real" person? Where is the "real" Barack Obama?

They will never succeed in finding him. The devastating truth about NPDs is that there is no "there" there. Nothing substantial and real lies under the masks. There are only masks.

But there is an invisible anatomy beneath the masks. It makes sense of what otherwise doesn’t. It shows us how the pieces fit together and why NPDs are inherently divisive. NPD is not uncommon, and it comes in variable degrees and with different overlays. We’ve all paid an enormous price for not recognizing NPD the last time around. Bush, too, claimed to be a uniter. Despite the disaster he has perpetrated, the Democratic establishment and most of the media have learned absolutely nothing. They can’t wait to do it all over again.

I, on the other hand, being a sociologist, tend to look beneath the surface to social and behavioral processes and the meanings they enact. I have been appalled by what it reveals about this campaign. I am perhaps even more disturbed by the feeble degree of interest and outrage among so many Democrats about these processes and what that bodes for our future. My allegiance is to neither wing of the corporate party nor their candidates, but to getting at the truth—the only basis for any of the
things we say we value.

The issue of divisiveness initially came into focus during the spring because, despite his rhetoric, Obama’s campaign and captive media kept hammering Clinton as "polarizing," and, along with the DNC, as "dividing the Party." How could a candidate who kept getting stronger and winning all the swing states be seen that way—unless, as we now know, the playing field had been rigged before a single vote was cast? This claim had legs, however, because it built on the old shibboleth that Hillary is polarizing. Really? What has seemed obvious to me for the past sixteen years is that Hillary is just the Rorschach onto whom has been projected our culture’s polarizing ambivalence about women, especially powerful women, a deep ambivalence that is carried by many women as well as many men. Not only was Hillary getting a phoney bad rap, but, equally troubling, why were so many voters unable to see through the media narratives to discern that the Obama campaign, their bloggers, and their captive media were the ones generating extraordinarily hateful vitriol and divisiveness?

When I began this piece in early August, we could still hold out the hope that the pledged and automatic delegates could resist the monumental pressure and intimidation to choose the eminently qualified woman over the unqualified man—and of course, as most people don’t know, they nearly did on Convention Wednesday until they were quashed. Although the short-term electoral context has changed, nothing changes the absolute necessity of untangling the modus operandi of this campaign. Liberal ideologues will consider my critique heretical while I consider their singularity and suppression of other narratives dangerous. I’m in the business of deconstructing false narratives and exposing what goes on beneath them—the job our defunct Fourth Estate failed to do.

Forming a Self: the Right Way and a Wrong Way. To understand NPD, we need to see the invisible structure beneath the masks. The kind of structure in focus here is mental: how we represent images, feelings, and experiences and organize them into a pattern or structure. Because we filter new experience through that structure, it becomes a self-reproducing system. The most basic of these structures is how we configure the self.

Gaining a sense of self while also learning about relationships and boundaries with others is the big task of an infant/toddler. When this goes well, "I" develop a sense of "me" and "you" in relationship with a realistic internal boundary separating us.

• Someone organized by NPD never got that right. Instead, the young narcissist-to-be lays down a different primary pattern: good/bad.

• The profoundly disturbing implication is that his self has no core or center from which to grow himself. Instead, he has two halves split off from each other. They don’t "talk" to each other. His self-boundary is in the wrong place. It divides him in two rather than drawing a line between himself and the other.

• What gets really crazy-making is that both halves of "me" get mixed up with "you" (i.e., my mental representations of you). Both halves cut right across self and other. "Good me" conflates parts of you and of me, and "bad you" conflates different parts of you and of me.

• The mixups enabled by his mislocated boundary lead to unending projections and reversals that are inevitably destructive, and make our heads spin when we try to untangle them. That’s why it is so important to slow them down and have some guidance for how to see their strange anatomy.

To add to our difficulty in seeing through the spaghetti maze, NPD is a deep structure which can be overlaid by later developments and adaptations that obscure its operation to many observers. The bright NPD can use his charm to "pass" with people who aren’t used to looking deeper, and in situations that do not threaten his faulty structure. Things get very nasty very quickly, however, whenever his "stuff" kicks in. That, not his surface adaptations, is my focus here. I begin with half of his faulty self, what the literature refers to as the "Grandiose Self."

Grandiose Self. The surface presentation of the Grandiose Self may be extremely charming, polished, even charismatic. He has a sense of entitlement and an appearance of great independence. Beneath his
grandiosity, however, lies a sense of emptiness and hollowness. How can he not feel hollow when he has no center?

Rather than learning how to "feed" and take care of himself, the NPD’s sense of entitlement leads him to expect to be filled up emotionally and supplied by his admirers. His Grandiose Self requires a steady diet of admiration, applause, and other supplies to feel alive, real, and good; anything less than wholehearted approval may be experienced as criticism. When the applause stops, the narcissist deflates like a balloon.

Beneath his grandiosity and entitlement lies the hidden structure of the NPD’s Grandiose Self. It conflates three streams into the "good" self who the narcissist considers himself to be:

 
(a) realaspects of himself that he "owns" as being "who I am";

 
(b) qualities he idealizes and claims for himself but does not in fact embody; and

 
(c) mirroring aspects of other(s) which feed his fantasy of himself by reflecting the only image of himself he identifies with and will accept and which he appropriates as part of himself.

What’s wrong with this structure? First of all, the narcissist lacks the normal tension between who he is and his ideal or fantasy of himself. That tension is essential to realistic self-perception. Presidential candidates do not normally claim that the other party’s administration is handling Gustav better than Katrina because they are following "my recommendations."

Once we know about that conflation, we are not quite so surprised by the Obama mantras about the world waiting for His Coming. That conflation also explains why the speaker of such words shows no embarrassment in speaking them, or in demanding a Greek temple stadium or the Brandenburg Gate, or usurping a presidential seal for his podium. He feels entitled to these venues, symbols, and much more. When called on it, he does not feel shamed. No acknowledgment of his gross inappropriateness will be forthcoming, only a denial of his intent when turned down ("The Brandenburg gate was only one venue we were considering") or denial of our interpretation ("We never intended to use the seal for more than one occasion"). It’s like a cat who has misjudged a leap: "I intended to change my position in precisely that manner." Yet a cat knows she is pretending; the narcissist doesn’t.

Given the absence of a center and the fragility of the Grandiose Self, narcissists are defensive, thin-skinned, and lack a sense of humor about themselves. This may not at first appear obvious because they conceal their lack of humor and humility with preemptive, inoculating statements about themselves. ("They’ll try to scare you and tell you that I’m ….." the stump speech intones.) But underneath: how dare anyone criticize! Or worse, poke fun.

Nothing hurts a narcissist more than ridicule. Mockery and even simple questions can trigger "narcissistic wounds" that lead to retaliatory behavior—especially if they churn up some truth he is trying to hide. No surprise then that following an acerbic cartoon cover of the presidential pretender and his wife, there was, according to Dana Milbank, no room for the New Yorker on the Europlane.

Obama’s conflation of fantasy and reality is readily observable in his representations of his polygynous father and his union with his mother. Barack, Jr. has created a mythic birth for himself that rearranges facts, events, and time, including the Selma march (four years after he was born!). His inability to represent his parents’ relationship realistically is merely the beginning of fabrications, distortions, denials, and coverups about his birth, childhood, schooling, family, and chunks of his adult life. Like many others, I am concerned about not only what he is hiding about himself, but also his still being a prisoner of his internal family drama.

This was the best laugh I had all day, until one of the creative readers at No Quarter, Obama Is A Fraud, posted this:

Please join us for this historical Inaugural Celebration for President Barrack Hussein Obama. It will be a day of great events for all!

Midnight – Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez drink champagne toast to their brother in communism Comrade Obama. Burning of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence and fireworks display. Long live the US of Hussein!

It’s an Open Thread – how was YOUR day?

Turns out that Ayers was not just a guy in the neighborhood. Nor is Minister Louis Farrakhan. Obama has direct and indirect ties to Minister Farrakhan that date back over the past 20 years.

It is no surprise that Minister Farrakhan has spoken so highly of his friend Barack Obama:

First, the circle of friends and associates that Obama joined in Chicago since the early 1980s includes Minister Farrakhan. The staff on their organizations often overlap, their goals are often the same, and their techniques are as well. And, yes, they are neighbors.

Obama spent three weeks in Pakistan in the early 1980s around the same time that Minister Farrakhan and Reverend Wright were making their own trek to visit Moammar Gadhafi in Libya.

Obama likely first met Minister Farrakhan in the mid-1980s after to Chicago. It’d be hard to imagine that he didn’t, considering their shared community interests, Obama’s past with communist and black nationalist Frank Marshall Davis, and his new friend Reverend Wright. Obama doesn’t say much except that he worked with all the local religious leaders because that was the focus of his community organizing. Reverend Jesse Jackson, PUSH, and Rainbow Coalition also fit into the picture. Reverend Jackson and Minister Farrakhan, themselves, made a trip to Syria together in 1986.

Barack Obama would go on to call Reverend Wright his spiritual advisor, mentor, and friend. He married Barack and Michelle Obama in late 1992 then baptized their children. Obama sat in the pews of Reverend Wright’s church, Trinity United Church of Christ, for nearly 20 years.

In scattered comments throughout the current presidential campaign and in past years, it is clear that Barack Obama also sought out Father Michael Pfleger and Reverend James Meeks as spiritual advisors, mentors, and colleagues on numerous projects. While little is mentioned of Minister Farrakhan, former Farrakhan deputy, Dr. Vibert White, Jr., once known as Brother Vibert L.X., and later as Minister V.L. Muhammad, says they “run deep, and that for many years the two men have had ‘an open line between them’ to discuss policy and strategy, either directly or through intermediaries.” (Obama-Farrakhan Ties Are Close, Ex-Farrakhan Aide Says).

“Remember that for years, if you were a politician in Chicago, you had to have some type of relationship with Louis Farrakhan. You had to. If you didn’t, you would be ostracized out of black Chicago,” said Dr. Vibert White Jr., who spent most of his adult life as a member and ultimately top officer of the Nation of Islam.

In 1995, Reverend Wright and Barack Obama helped their mutual friend, Minister Farrakhan, organize the Nation of Islam’s Million Man March that they all then attended together. In later talking about his black nationalism, Barack explained in a Chicago Reader interview:

“These are mean, cruel times, exemplified by a ‘lock ’em up, take no prisoners’ mentality that dominates the Republican-led Congress. Historically, African-Americans have turned inward and towards black nationalism whenever they have a sense, as we do now, that the mainstream has rebuffed us, and that white Americans couldn’t care less about the profound problems African-Americans are facing.”

Kenneth Timmerman writes, as have others, that Obama’s involvement with the black nationalism of Minister Farrakhan and Reverend Wright, among others, is a connection to Khalid al-Mansour, who helped pay for Barack’s tuition at Harvard Law School:

“Black nationalism” is a current of thought and political action in the African-American community that has been championed by the likes of Farrakhan, Wright, Malcolm X, the Black Panthers and Khalid al-Mansour. Obama discussed his attraction to black nationalism at length in his 1995 memoir “Dreams of My Father.”

In interviews, Khalid al-Mansour, lawyer and friend of the Saudi ruling family, has refused to discuss his relationship with Obama and Obama’s law school funding. As he explains to Kenneth Timmerman:

“In respect to Mr. Obama, I have told him, because so many people are running after him, and when stories get printed they usually get distorted and then he has to spend a lot of time trying to unravel them – and then after the experience of Rev. (Jeremiah) Wright whom I’ve never met, but I’ve followed the media coverage – I was determined that I was never going to be in that situation. I never discuss Barack Obama,” al-Mansour said.

The media frenzy surrounding Barack Obama is quite justified in many respects and in others is a bit intrusive.

Dr. Vibert White, Jr., observes and explains in a recent interview that Barack has learned well from Minister Farrakhan:

“If you listen to the rhetoric and you take away Obama’s political jargon, you hear a religious tenor to it that is very much Nation of Islam-like. I don’t know if anyone has ever touched on it, but Obama’s speaking style is very Malcolm-like, very Farrakhan-like.”

….

“I don’t know who was training Obama. But that style is not a ministerial style like in the Christian church. It’s a Nation of Islam style.”

….

“If the Nation of Islam can’t do anything else, it can train people how to speak. And nobody can outspeak a Muslim minister,” he said.

Even Michelle Obama plays a role in this, and very likely an even bigger one than is currently publicly known. Back in June, Larry Johnson at NoQuarterUSA, noted the “role that Louis Farrakhan and his wife, Mother Khadijah Farrakhan, have played in the POLITICAL RISE of Barack and Michelle Obama.”

One happy family: Minister Louis Farrakhan, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Reverend Jesse Jackson, Father Michael Pleger, Reverend James Meeks, and, yes, Barack Obama.

“You are known by your friends” is a sturdy old saw with a lot of wisdom in it. It’s one thing to buddy up, only to quickly find out that this person violates your deeply-held values about right and wrong and quickly exit the relationship. It’s quite another to know exactly who such people are, and still keep them close by until it is no longer to one’s own advantage to hang on to them.

We know about Obama’s long-term relationships with anti-white religious leaders, unrepentant home-grown terrorists, and a sleazy slumlord who was a major backer and fundraiser for Obama who now sits in prison on multiple sustained charges. We hear less about the bird on the far right, Emil Jones. So let me reprise some amazing quotes from an article about Obama’s “toxic mentors” from March of 2008.

For almost a year Jones has used his position as leader of the state senate to block anticorruption legislation passed unanimously by the state’s lower house. He has also become embroiled in ethical controversies concerning his wife’s job and his stepson’s business.

Obama has often described Jones as a key political mentor whose patronage was crucial to his early success in a state long dominated by near-feudal party political machines. Jones, 71, describes himself as Obama’s “godfather” and once said: “He feels like a son to me.”
At one point during Obama’s 2003 Senate campaign, Jones set out to woo two African-American politicians miffed by Obama’s presumption and ambition. One of them, Rickey “Hollywood” Hendon, a state senator, had scoffed that Obama was so ambitious he would run for “king of the world” if the position were vacant.

When Jones secured the two men’s support, Obama asked his mentor how he had pulled it off. “I made them an offer,” Jones said in mock-Mafioso style. “And you don’t want to know.”
Jones is now at the centre of a long row over his attempt to block proposed laws cracking down on his state’s “pay-to-play” tradition – whereby companies hoping to win government contracts have to contribute to the campaign funds of officials.

Jones scares me. Conjures up Tony Soprano. And except for Jones, this avian lineup has by now been exposed in the blogs if not sufficiently in the main stream media. (I ran out of wire space or I could have drawn in a few more). So it continues to surprise many of us that Obama’s long-term relationships with some alarming birds doesn’t seem to phase a lot of people. I think Bud White’s recent post here explains why the best. The Republican Bush years have been so disastrous that many will take anything else without a close look—and the charismatic Obama and his handlers took full advantage of these fears. But, what would we actually be getting instead?

From the original post:

Gatewaypundit has a video from Naked Emperor News with some comments from BO back in 1995. Yeah, it’s a few years ago. But he talks about the same thing he mentioned to “Joe the Plumber.” This sounds like the real BO to me – not the sanitized stump speech version. After all, there are no white people who willingly pay taxes for AA children to go to school, are there?

Here’s the audio:

All day yesterday, Memeorandum featured many, many articles about the second video, including one at the National Review.
Read the rest ->

First, the audio from 2001:

The National Review author provided a transcript of the audio and interspersed parts of it with interesting comments. I’m excerpting a few here, but it’s worth the time to read the entire article.

There is nothing vague or ambiguous about [Obama's comments]. Nothing. 

From the top: “…The Supreme Court never entered into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And uh, to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical.”

If the second highlighted phrase had been there without the first, Obama’s defenders would have bent over backwards trying to spin the meaning of “political and economic justice.” We all know what political and economic justice means, because Barack Obama has already made it crystal clear a second earlier: It means redistribution of wealth. Not the creation of wealth and certainly not the creation of opportunity, but simply taking money from the successful and hard-working and distributing it to those whom the government decides “deserve” it. 

This redistribution of wealth, he states, “essentially is administrative and takes a lot of time.” It is an administrative task. Not suitable for the courts. More suitable for the chief executive.

Wow. “.. . redistribution of wealth. . . essentially is administrative.” Redistributing the wealth, then, is both a job for the President and is simply a matter for planning? And “not suitable for the courts” certainly suggests one would not have much chance for redress. Are you kidding?

Then he adds this:

Now that’s just garden-variety socialism, which apparently is not a big deal to may voters. So I would appeal to any American who claims to love the Constitution and to revere the Founding Fathers… I will not only appeal to you, I will beg you, as one American citizen to another, to consider this next statement with as much care as you can possibly bring to bear: “And uh, to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution — at least as it’s been interpreted, and [the] Warren Court interpreted it in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties: [it] says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.

To me, when Obama says “[the Warren Court] didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution,” I get the distinct impression he means the court somehow failed in the “breaking free” part. That would mean Obama feels the constraints engineered by the Constitution should be removed or overcome somehow. This is what the NR had to say about that:

The entire purpose of the Constitution was to limit government. That limitation of powers is what has unlocked in America the vast human potential available in any population. 

Barack Obama sees that limiting of government not as a lynchpin but rather as a fatal flaw: “…One of the, I think, the tragedies of the Civil Rights movement was because the Civil Rights movement became so court-focused, uh, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways we still suffer from that.”

So, the Civil Rights movement, by using the courts to address questions of equality missed out on creating “coalitions of power” that would bring about “redistributive change.” The reason the Civil Rights movement used the courts is because that is what the courts are for – to address such problems in a venue everyone believes has legitimacy and the force of government behind it. Why would community organizing have done any better? How in the world would “redistributive change” have occurred outside the courts? What does he MEAN?

In addition to the author’s comments about Obama’s statements, he notes as well that this video – by Naked Emperor News – was found and reported on by an individual. NOT THE MSM. The 1995 video is also from NEN.

I, do however, blame the press for allowing an individual citizen to do the work that they employ standing armies of so-called professionals for. I know they are capable of this kind of investigative journalism: It only took them a day or two to damage Sarah Palin with wild accusations about her baby’s paternity and less time than that to destroy a man who happened to be playing ball when the Messiah decided to roll up looking for a few more votes on the way to the inevitable coronation. 

We no longer have an independent, fair, investigative press. That is abundantly clear to everyone — even the press. It is just another of the facts that they refuse to report, because it does not suit them. 

Remember this, America: The press did not break this story. A single citizen, on the Internet did.

I just did a story on the MSM, noting that it had lost all its integrity. This is just another reason to distrust those providing you “news” on tv and print and radio. At least on the ‘net you can look at multiple sources and are not limited to whatever some editor decides to give air time to.

CBSnews did give some cursory coverage to the story by reporting on a remark by John Boehner.

“As disturbing as Barack Obama’s comments about ‘redistribution of wealth’ are, what’s worse is that seven years later his rhetoric is the same,” Boehner said Monday in a statement.

“Obama still wants to ‘redistribute’ our tax dollars and ‘spread the wealth around,’ giving money to people who don’t pay taxes rather than growing our economy for everybody.”

The Obama campaign immediately pushed back, arguing that the Right is deliberately misinterpreting a narrow legal argument Obama was making about decades-old court cases.
————–
“In this seven year old interview, Senator Obama did not say that the courts should get into the business of redistributing wealth at all.

The Obama campaign is whacking away at a straw man here. I don’t think Obama was arguing the courts should redistribute wealth at all either. He plainly said that was an administrative function for the chief executive.

Of course, this audio also has other implications. By discussing the redistribution of wealth and justice within the context of the civil rights movement, Obama also makes this a racial discussion. His context is clearly about AAs and whites.

Obama has said he is all about trans-racial politics even while his past associations with the likes of Rev. Wright, Father Pfleger and other race salary-men suggest otherwise. To me, this audio is simply more of the same in that sense.

And what about the redistribution of wealth and justice? Obviously Obama feels redistribution needs to happen. That’s not even open to question for him. He also seems to think the President can accomplish such redistribution because it is an “administrative function.” And he says the Constitution, rather than define what government cannot do to citizens, should rather define what it HAS to do for citizens. That’s a very different way of approaching the fundamental outlines of how our country works.

And, the Civil Rights movement missed out by ONLY using the courts to work for justice. ONLY? What venues did the Civil Rights movement miss?

Fundamental questions for a candidate, one would think. Will anyone but the bloggers bother to ask? Given that Obama has provided so little about his beliefs (other than his strong Christian beliefs, but NOT at Trinity, no, that was a 20 year fluke) or about him personally (writings, personal information), something like this audio offers a window into what a President Obama would put on his agenda. Had he bothered to make more information available, this audio might be placed within some bigger context. But he hasn’t. So, this audio is as important as it gets.

Obama is remarkably consistent from at least 1995 to 2001 in how he views the ideas of who owes what to whom. I wonder. In the wake of these audio clips, will people try to convince us BO’s politics have changed or his attitudes? Given that he was at Trinity until last spring, I’d say the only viable thing to say is his (mis)representaitons of his politics and his positions have changed. After all, the BO campaign will do whatever they can get away with, not what is true or even passes the sniff test.

It seems that others are noticing the rampant sexism/misogyny, and the hypocrisy of the “liberal elite” when it comes to who can be a feminist or not. Victor David Hanson would be one such person in his article,An Instructive Candidacy: What Sarah Palin taught us about ourselves. In his excellent piece, parts of which are excerpted here, Mr. Hanson takes on not just the Feminist Police, but the journalists who have been “reporting” during this campaign season:

Soon this depressing campaign will be over, and we can reflect on what we learned from our two-month introduction to Sarah Palin.

Clearly, it is more than we would have ever wished to know about ourselves.

First, there turns out to be no standard of objectivity in contemporary journalism. Palin’s career as a city councilwoman, mayor, and governor of Alaska was never seen as comparable to, or — indeed, in terms of executive experience — more extensive than, Barack Obama’s own legislative background in Illinois and Washington. Somehow we forgot that a mother of five taking on the Alaskan oil industry and the entrenched male hierarchy was somewhat more challenging than Barack Obama navigating the sympathetic left-wing identity politics of Chicago.

Well, true that. Everyone seems to have convenient amnesia when it comes to the accomplishments of the Governor of Alaska. Far too often, I have seen letters to the editor or comments at blogs claiming she is “just a mother of five.” No, she is that, which is no small thing, by the way, to which my mother can attest, but she is One of FIFTY governors in the entire United States, with the highest approval rating of any governor, as well as one who has taken on her own party, and WON, thank you so much.

But I digress:

So we seem to have forgotten that the standards of censure of her vice-presidential candidacy were not applied equally to the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. The media at times seems unaware of this embarrassment, namely that their condemnation of Sarah Palin as inexperienced equally might apply to Barack Obama — and to such a degree that by default we were offered the lame apology (reiterated by Colin Powell himself) that Obama’s current impressive campaigning, not his meager political accomplishments, was already an indication of a successful tenure as president. The result is that we now know more about the Palin pregnancies — both of mother and daughter — that we do the relationships of Tony Rezko, Bill Ayers, Reverend Wright, and Father Pfleger with our possible next president.

No FREAKIN’ KIDDING! Obama hasn’t had a tenth of the vetting in eighteen months that Palin has had in two months – nice that some people are keeping score here. Hanson continues:

Indeed, the media itself — in private, I think — would admit that while (we? they?) have learned almost everything about Tasergate and the Bridge to Nowhere, we assume that at some future date a publicity-starved, megalomaniac Rev. Wright will soon offer his post-election memoirs, detailing just how close he and a President Obama were. Or we will learn Barack Obama and Bill Ayers, as long-time friends, in fact, did communicate via phone and e-mail well after Ayers had told the world, about the time of 9/11, that he, like our present-terrorist enemies, likewise wished he had engaged in more bombing attacks against the United States government. And the media never wondered whether a Palin’s falling out with those who ran Alaska might have been more of a touchstone to character than Obama’s own falling in with those who ran Chicago.

Uh, yeah. For some reason, while still in the Primary season, the MSM were all too happy to do their level best to ignore anything to do with Wright. They downplayed the videos, believed Obama when he claimed he certainly didn’t hold the same beliefs that Wright does even though his butt was in the pew in that church for over twenty years, and even though he called Wright his “uncle.” Oh, no – we must take him at his word that he would NEVER believe in that hate mongering theology. Just like we are supposed to take him at his word about Bill Ayers, Domestic Terrorist-Who-Wishes-He-Had-Been-More-Successful! Never you mind that they have been hanging around with each other for the past 13 years, working together, living near each other, and handing out hundreds of thousands of dollars to promote Ayers’ “unique” ideology to the youth of Chicago, through Wright, of course. Obama is such a straight shooter, naturally we must believe every word that escapes his lips, right?? Evidently.

And now is when we get to the issue of feminism:

Second, there does not seem to be much left of feminism any more. Of course, feminists once gave liberal pro-choice Bill Clinton a pass for his serial womanizing of vulnerable subordinates, and Oval Office antics with a young female intern. But they gave the game away entirely when they went after Gov. Palin for her looks, accent, pregnancies, and religion, culminating in assessments of her from being no real woman at all to an ingrate — piggy-backing on the pioneer work of self-acclaimed mavericks like themselves.

Feminism, it turns out, is no longer about equal opportunity and equal compensation, but, in fact, little more than a strain of contemporary elitist identity politics, and support for unquestioned abortion. Had Gov. Sarah Palin just been a mother of a single child at Vassar rather than of five in Alaska, married to a novelist rather than a snow-machiner, an advocate of pro-choice, who shot pictures of Alaskan ferns rather than shot moose — feminists would have hailed her as a principled kindred soul, and trumpeted her struggles against Alaskan male grandees.

So there was something creepy about droves of irate women, in lock-step blasting Sarah Palin from the corridors of New York and Washington, when most of them were the recipients of the traditional spoils of either family connections, inherited money, or the advantages that accrue from insider power marriages. Indeed, very few of Palin’s critics on their own could have emerged from a small-town in Alaska, with an intact marriage and five children, to run the state of Alaska.

We have come to understand that — for a TV anchorwoman, op-ed columnist, or professor — it would be a nightmare to birth a Down Syndrome child in her mid-forties, or to have had her pregnant unwed teen actually deliver her baby. In the world outside Sarah Palin’s Wasilla, these are career-ending blunders that abort the next job promotion or book tour— or the future career of a prepped young daughter on her way to the Ivy League.

Right? I’ve known people who couldn’t endure the stress of their partner getting a PhD., for cryin’ out loud, much less the stress of moving from one level of government to another with five kids, one of whom is a Special Needs child. Add to that the lack of support from her own party in doing these things, and you got yourself some stress. Which Sarah Palin has handled with seeming ease, a feat that should have been CELEBRATED by feminists, not ridiculed.

Hanson then takes on the whole Biden v. Palin contest:

Third, from the match-up of Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, we discovered that our media does not know anything about the nature of wisdom — how it is found or how it is to be adjudicated. For the last eight weeks, Palin has been demonized as a dunce because she did not, in the fashion of the class toady with his hand constantly up in the first row, impress in flash-card recall, the glasses-on-his-nose Charlie Gibson, or clinched-toothed Katie Couric.

Meanwhile Joe Biden has just been Ol’ Joe Biden — which means not that he can get away with the occasional gaffe, but that can say things so outrageous, so silly, and so empty that, had they come out of the mouth of Sarah Palin, she would have long ago been forced to have stepped aside from the ticket.

Factual knowledge? Biden, in the midst of a financial meltdown on Wall Street, apparently thinks that the last time it happened in 1929, we heard FDR rally us on television. And such made-up nonsense came in the form, as many of Biden’s gaffes do, of a rebuke to the supposedly obtuse George W. Bush…

Amazingly, very, very little is made of either Biden’s OR Obama’s gaffes, though BOTH of them have PLENTY. Had Clinton, or McCain, or Palin, or anyone else made the factual inaccuracies or flat out lies that either of these men have made, they would be running across the bottom of your screen for days on end. But Biden and Obama? Hahaha, they made a mistake, move along, nothing to see here. Sheesh. Here are just a few for you:

Silliness? Imagine the following outbursts, mutatis mutandis, from the mouth of a Sarah Palin — “John McAmerica,” “a Palin-McCain administration,” “Senator George Obama,” “Congressman Joe Biden,” who is both “good looking,” and “drop-dead gorgeous.” Or “I guarantee you, John McCain ain’t taking my shotguns. . . . If he tries to fool with my Beretta, he’s got a problem. I like that little over and under, you know? I’m not bad with it. So give me a break.”

Or “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” Or “Mitt Romney is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice president of the United States of America. Quite frankly he might have been a better pick than me.”

Holy toledo. Reversing the positions helps to highlight just how absurd all of this has been…I agree with the following assessment:

The list could go on ad nauseam. But we got the picture. Biden has devolved from the ridiculous to the unhinged, confident that in-house journalism would understand that the law graduate with 36 years in the Senate was simply being Joe, while a Sarah Palin, who flinched when asked to parse the Bush Doctrine, was a Neanderthal creationist. I thought by now the You-tubed exchange of a Congressional Finance Committee hearing between the pompous Harvard Law School graduate Barney Frank and the conniving Harvard Law School graduate Franklin Raines — at the proverbial moment of conception of the financial meltdown — would have put to rest the notion that graduation from law school was any proof of either wisdom or morality.

I don’t know whether Sarah Palin would make a great vice president. But I did learn that by the standard of John Kerry’s pick of John Edwards, and now Barack Obama’s choice of Joe Biden, as running mates, she is wise and ethical beyond their measure.

— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

He’s got a point, don’t you think?

And in conclusion, while looking for videos for something else, I stumbled upon the following video. From this person’s lips to the powers-that-be in the universe:

Cross-posted on my blog, The Independent View.

Van Susteran’s special will cover Obama’s relationships with Bill Ayers, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, ACORN and more.

By the way, will Fox News reair Hannity’s America special two weeks ago? I’m surprised the channel hasn’t done so since it obviously required an investment in personnel and travel.

Wow – I love his description of Father Pfleger as a “whacko” – perfect! His advice is solid, I think – and I agree that McCain SHOULD have been hammering away about Wright and Ayers long ago. Frankly, the MSM should have been as well, but I have given up expecting them to actually do their jobs anymore.

And with the debate coming up, one can expect questions about the economy. Needless to say, it has been BIG in the news of late. For some reason, the majority of people polled believe Obama will do better. Why, I don’t know – he has absolutely no track record on anything anywhere in the neighborhood of dealing with an issue of this magnitude. I think we can chalk that up to the MSM shilling for him shamelessly. But, many of this country’s CEOs do not think so. Out of 751 CEOs polled, 80% think McCain is better for the long term health of the economy, according to Chief Executive Magazine. This assertion was affirmed by the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, Herman Cain this morning. He said, in no uncertain terms, that John McCain is CLEARLY better for the economy. Oh, and since everyone is keeping score these days (thanks so much for that, Barack), Mr. Cain is African American.

Mr. Cain isn’t the only one who thinks McCain would be better. The following is basically a combination of Krauthammer and Cain in one Rudy Guiliani (I know – I cannot believe I am including him either, but I think he is right on this issue):

And while we are talking Economics, last night, a bunch of former Hillary Clinton supporters, led by Lady Lynn Forester de Rothchild, held a major fundraiser for John McCain and Sarah Palin. They raised $10,000,000 in that fundraiser. As to why these people decided to hold this fundraiser, the article contained the answer:

While Mrs. Clinton has implored her former supporters to back Senator Barack Obama, some still harbor ill will towards him, organizers said.

“These people want to give their vote of disapproval,” said Mr. Lausell. “This is a way they’re doing it.”

Well, yeah, that’s sure one way of voicing one’s disapproval – raising a cool $10 mil. Wowie zowie.

Gee willikers, who could not want to support someone as humble, warm, and supportive as these folks (h/t to Paul Villareal)??

Oh, yeah. Add in the “Bros Before Hos” t-shirts, and the more despicable ones Obamabots are wearing these days, and I simply cannot imagine how people like Lady Lynn and others aren’t supporting this guy? Sheesh – what sore losers. (That is major snark, just in case you were confused.)

Hmmm – I wonder if McCain will bring up those t-shirts tonight? That would sure be an interesting debate, wouldn’t it?? Can’t you just SEE Obama trying to WORM his way out of that one??

Anywho, those Hillary-Now-McCain supporters are not the only ones who are resistant to Obama as president. Not by a long shot. There was an interesting comment by Desgans – in French – overnight at No Quarter’s post, “Barack Obama- First President of the World“:

Bonjour je suis Française et je viens de penser à un feuilleton que j’adorai ici en France, les acteurs : Jane Badler, Marc Singer, Faye Grant pour le film Vqui me fait penser à ce qui se passe aux US, PUMA sont les résistants et BHO partisants les lézards !!

Mon Dieu! Basically (according to PA goes Red),those of us who will not support this Selected nominee, the one who espouses the ideologies of William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright, whose arrogance, hubris, and just plain condescension, coupled with a dearth of experience, are Freedom Fighters like in the movie, “V.” Or like John Connors and company from “The Terminator,” I’m thinking. Yep, I can buy that. I do feel like I am fighting for my country to not be overtaken by those who do not have her best interests at heart, or at the least, have primarily THEIR interests at heart. The way in which the Obama campaign treats citizens of this country, especially women (and don’t forget Donna Brazile’s concept of the New Democratic Party – none of you bitter, clingy, religious, rural, elderly, and Hispanics need apply) makes that pretty clear. At the very least, our presidents should have the nation’s best interest as their bottom line. Obama is not only unqualified for this position, he does not fulfill that qualification. So, yeah – resistance here I come!

Ya think McCain can work THAT into the debate?!

The recent, reluctantly released papers from Obama’s time as head at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) and his time on the board of the Woods Fund sheds new light on his relationship with Bill Ayers and the seamy milieu of Farrakhan’s Chicago.

The CAC and Woods Fund money paved the way for Obama’s political career:

the monies doled out through the Woods Fund to these groups, including [Bill] Ayers own Annenberg Challenge, helped cement Obama’s political relationships and bond with key players in Chicago.

Stanley Kurtz said that CAC money did not go directly to schools:

“Instead of giving money directly to schools, they gave to what they called external partners, and these external partners were often pretty radical community organizer groups.”

And Steve Diamond writes that Ayers was focused on what:

Ayers calls “social justice” approaches to teaching and “small schools” as well as race-based approaches to curriculum in the public schools.

Ayers and Obama funneled money intended for education to race-based curriculum. Matthew Weaver reports:

let’s also not forget organizations that received funding from Barack and Bill [Ayers], such as:

Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) Arab American Action Network (AAAN) founded by husband and wife Rashid and Mona Khalidi. Maoist Mike Klonsky, another terrorist member of the Weatherman Children and Family Justice Center, Bernardine’s organization. Trinity Unity Church and Rev. Wright.

Ayers is an important part of the Chicago racial Left, a loosely affiliated group of churches, academics, and activists who include Jeremiah Wright, Pfleger, Farrakhan, the group ACORN, and many others. The racial Left is not committed to fighting racism — a noble cause — but instead looking at the world through a racial lens. This means that issues of class — which affects whites, women, gays, etc. — is frequently dismissed. Instead, there are disquisitions on “white privilege,” without discussing the fact that poverty knows no color. The racial Left, of course, is a class struggle between those who have and those who do not, and many of it’s proponents have attended the best schools and hold the highest positions in the academy and in government. It’s no accident that Bill Ayers, the scion of a wealthy family, is a primary member of the racial Left. And it’s no accident that Obama, surrounded by millionaires in San Francisco, pointed out that his difficulties in Pennsylvania were due to skin color (identifying those resistant to him as white) and then ridiculing them as religious, intolerant of immigrants, and as the owners of guns, all cultural indicators to the racial Left of the despised lower-income whites. He could just have easily said those who are bitter cling to Jeff Foxworthy, shop at Wal-Mart, and hump their sister, or any other stereotype used against low-income whites.

The racial Left is about protecting status:

Not only is Ayers using Obama’s rapid ascent to celebrity in order to capitalize on his own unquenchable thirst for fame by having his memoir Fugitive Days reissued in January 2009, he is also working with Hollywood to have his memoir turned into a movie. As if that’s not enough, he and his wife, Bernardine Dorhn, have authored a book, soon to be released, entitled Race Course Against White Supremacy.

Belying it’s title, this book is NOT about white supremacists, such as the Aryan Brotherhood, but instead states that “white supremacy is the dominant political system” in American’. From Amazon’s Product Description:

Arguing that white supremacy has been the dominant political system in the United States since its earliest days—and that it is still very much with us—the discussion points to unexamined bigotry in the criminal justice system, election processes, war policy, and education. The book draws upon the authors’ own confrontations with authorities during the Vietnam era, reasserts their belief that racism and war are interwoven issues, and offers personal stories about their lives today as parents, teachers, and reformers.

Stanley Kurtz has uncovered that Obama attended Farrakhan’s Million Man March, and Obama’s close friend, Michael Pfleger, is close to Farrakhan:

Although it’s been discussed before (because it confirms that Obama attended Louis Farrakhan’s Million Man March), a 1995 background piece on Obama from the Chicago Reader has received far too little attention. Careful consideration of this important profile makes it clear that Obama’s long-standing ties to Chicago’s most rabidly radical preachers call into question far more than Obama’s judgment and character (although they certainly do that, as well). Obama’s two-decades at Trinity open a critically important window onto his radical-left political leanings. No mere change of church membership can erase that truth.

As Matthew Weaver posted, Rev. Farrakhan just pronounced Obama the Messiah (watch the video here):

“You are the instruments that God is going to use to bring about universal change, and that is why Barack has captured the youth. And he has involved young people in a political process that they didn’t care anything about. That’s a sign. When the Messiah speaks, the youth will hear, and the Messiah is absolutely speaking.” – Louis Farrakhan

In addition to being the leader of NOI, Farrakhan is first and foremost a politician, and one of the most powerful in Chicago. And Obama has at least one NOI member on his payroll.

In a June article from Reuters entitled “BREAKING NEWS: Nation of Islam Activists on Obama Camp Payroll” states that

“Sen. Barack Obama employed and continues to employ senior staffers who belong to the Nation of Islam, and the presidential candidate has some “worrying” ties to the controversial group headed by Louis Farrakhan, a former key Obama insider told AARON KLEIN… The former insider confirmed Obama is directly aware of the Nation of Islam members on his staff.”

“A key constituency for Obama was Hyde Park, where Farrakhan lives. To be successful politically in that area, you need to be involved with Farrakhan, since he’s a strong power in the district,” said the former insider.”

“The former insider identified former Obama worker Shakir Muhammad as a Nation of Islam activist. Muhammad was paid by Obama’s office as a photographer…According to a black supremacist source tied to Farrakhan, Muhammad previously worked as a bodyguard for the Nation of Islam chief.”

In fact, according to the article, Cynthia K. Miller, a known Nation of Islam activist who served Obama in his early state Senate days and was treasurer for his U.S. senatorial campaign, and a paid consultant in 2003 and 2004, was the beneficiary of help from Obama by another one of his Chicago friends, Tony Rezko.

“The former insider said Obama asked indicted Chicago businessman and Obama financier Tony Rezko to get his treasurer, Miller, a state government job with
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.”

While researching the source of Michelle Obama’s alleged “whitey” rant, we discovered direct connections between the Nation of Islam (NOI), Stokely Carmichael, Jeremiah Wright’s Black Liberation Theology and, most prominently, Louis Farrakhan.

According to Larry Johnson’s sources, the Michelle Obama tape captures her in sordid company:

The sources who have seen the tape report that Michelle says
disparaging things about “whites” and that Louis Farrakhan is visible.
There is no identifying information on the segment they have seen to
identify the location or time when this was recorded. [emphasis added]

Those who are following this matter will recall that Michelle Obama, when asked about these allegations, is reported to have said that “whitey” is not a word used by African Americans today. However, we documented that Mrs. Obama’s primary text for her Princeton thesis was Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton’s 1967 book Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America, and we showed how Carmichael used the term “whitey” repeatedly, thereby establishing an epistemological connection between Carmichael and Mrs. Obama. In other words, Michelle Obama is the intellectual offspring of Stokely Carmichael.

Before going further, it should be noted that Reverend Jeremiah Wright was once a member of the Nation of Islam, though it’s not clear when he was involved with NOI. Ryan Lizza of the New Republic first reported that:

Wright was a former Muslim and black nationalist who had
studied at Howard and Chicago, and Trinity’s guiding principles–what the church calls the “Black Value System”[Emphasis added]

But back to Stokely Carmichael. Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, the Federal Bureau of Investigations has released hundreds of pages from their files on Stokely Carmichael. It’s a treasure trove for those interested in the history of the civil rights movement. What we found most interesting, however, were the large number of documents connecting Carmichael with the NOI. For instance, the document below is an Airtel sent to Director Hoover on July 29, 1966, from Chicago. The subject is Stokely Carmichael and it concerns NOI leader Elijah Muhammed’s “CALL FOR SUMMIT MEETING, MAJOR CIVIL RIGHTS LEADERS.”

There are three areas of interest for us: first, the Airtel came from the city of Chicago; second, the year 1966 (more on that later), and third, that the Nation of Islam — in the manner of the infamous mob meeting in Apalachin in 1957 — was organizing all of the major civil rights groups.

It has been widely reported, and documented here, that Carmichael was an “Honorary Prime Minister” of the Black Panther Party, and that he was the leader of the innocuous sounding Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The following document, however, shows that Carmichael was open to violence as a political tool–see the highlighted sentence below–”This nonviolence bit is just a philanthropic hang-up,” and that he was indeed a founder of the Black Panther Party:

In the following document we initially noticed Carmichael’s willingness to use violence. He is paraphrased as saying that “in his opinion, the black man is justified in using any means at his command to obtain what he believes is due him,” indicating an acceptance of violence as seen through a racial frame. What’s more interesting, however, is the next paragraph. “Louis Walcott, Minister of the New York City Muslim Mosque, Nation of Islam, also participated in this conference.” See the second paragraph below:

The name Louis, of course, was glaring. Could it be he? A quick Google search linked to a 1996 Morning Edition transcription of a Bob Edwards piece on Farrakhan:

The early life of Louis Farrakhan, who grew up as Louis Eugene Walcott, was heavily influenced by his loving but demanding mother and his poor but safe neighborhood of Roxbury, Boston, in the late 1940s.

Over the last decade, Louis Farrakhan has emerged as one of the most visible and formidable black political leaders in America

Let’s add up what we have so far: Stokely Carmichael, Michelle Obama’s primary source and intellectual ancestor, shared the stage with Louis Farrakhan, the same man who she allegedly shared a stage with when she said “whitey.”

Carmichael and Farrakhan may have shared more than a stage. The document below indicates but doesn’t conclude that Carmichael may have been a Muslim himself. Although heavily redacted, the FBI’s source said that “Stokely Carmichael, [redacted] as ‘one of us’ which this source interpreted as meaning a member of the Muslims.”

Whether or not Carmichael was a Muslim is unclear. What is clear is that at sometime in the summer of 1966 there was a meeting of the minds between some civil rights groups, black radicals, and the Nation of Islam. These groups organized into a force promoting and preaching a racist form of black nationalism. The document below describes a meeting that clearly shows this union of forces: Carmichael and Minister Louis “made it clear they wanted to unite with all Negro groups regardless of philosophy.” Note the date of August 18, 1966:

This takes us back to Jeremiah Wright and the question of when Wright was a Muslim. According to Wright’s Wikipedia entry:

In 1963, after two years of service, Wright joined the United States Navy and entered the Corpsman School at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center. Wright was then trained as a cardiopulmonary technician at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

“In 1966, as a U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman,” the Wikipeida entry continues, Wright assisted with the care of President Johnson. Extrapolating from these dates, it appears that Wright was in Maryland between 1964 and 1966, and this may have been the time when he was a member of NOI. Wright didn’t start at Trinity until 1972, and evidently received spiritual training after receiving a master’s degree in English in 1969.

Also in Maryland in 1964 was Stokely Carmichael, where he was arrested “as a result of demonstrations in that city.” This doesn’t mean that Wright knew Carmichael, but surely Wright was cognizant of Carmichael’s work and of NOI as well. This is likely the time when he was a “Muslim and black nationalist.”

However Wright was radicalized, it is clear that he consciously appropriated the language and tenor of the Nation of Islam.

Wright’s statement that 9/11 was deserved retribution (“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans…America’s chickens are coming home to roost”) is a perfect echo of Malcolm X’s statement that “The assassination of Kennedy is a result of that way of life and thinking. The chickens came home to roost.”

Although it appears that Wright began his focus on Black Liberation Theology sometime after 1966, his racial attitudes and rhetoric have imitated that of NOI since at least 1970. Wright’s blaming the United States for creating AIDS to kill minorities is but just one example of his thinking being in lockstep with NOI.

Black Liberation Theology was first formed in 1966. According to NPR:

Black liberation theology originated on July 31, 1966, when 51 black pastors bought a full page ad in the New York Times and demanded a more aggressive approach to eradicating racism. They echoed the demands of the black power movement, but the new crusade found its source of inspiration in the Bible.

Keep in mind that NOI’s Elijah Mohammad called for a summit of black leaders on July 11, 1966, only 20 days prior to the official formation of Black Liberation Theology. If the dates don’t convince you of a synergy between NOI and Black Liberation Theology, please note Wright’s mentor — and Black Liberation Theology founder — James Cone’s words about NOI’s Malcolm X:

Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man ‘the devil.’ The false Christianity of the white-devil oppressor must be replaced by an authentic Christianity fully identified with the poor and oppressed.

The black intellectual’s goal, says Cone, is to “aid in the destruction of America as he knows it.”

Couple these words with Wright’s own view that:

There will be no peace in America until whites begin to hate their whiteness, asking from the depths of their being: ‘How can we become black?’

In 1998, Louis A. De-Caro, Jr. published a book titled Malcolm and the Cross: The Nation of Islam, Malcolm X, and Christianity. De-Caro’s book underscores the racial nature and revolutionary intent of the NOI’s promotion of a black “Christianity”:

Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam based their religious orthodoxy more on the Bible than on the Qur’an. In part, this was because they sought to convert black Christians. More- over, Elijah Muhammad taught that the Bible, actually the story of “dark people,” had been distorted by the white man in order to enslave and oppress black people in the United States.

The Nation of Islam and Black Liberation Theology are two doors to the same room. Black Liberation Theology is a “palatable” form of “Christian” black nationalism. The fiery anti-American, race-baiting words of Wright, Ayers, Meeks, Pfleger, and Moss are from the same philosophical cauldron as the Nation of Islam. It’s obvious now why Wright’s Trumpet Magazine featured Farrakhan on the cover:

Some have said that Michelle Obama’s thesis proves nothing because it was written more than 20 years ago. We suggest that it was no accident that the Obamas sought out Wright a mere 2-3 years after she wrote her thesis and stayed with him for nearly 20 years, even while he preached the vilest and most hateful sermons that our nation has been forced to hear. TexasDarlin writes:

It’s no wonder that the Obamas joined Trinity United, grew close to Jeremiah Wright and Michael Pfleger, and actively defended the church. And there is no doubt in this alert reader’s mind that Michelle Obama clung to Trinity as long as possible politically and, unfortunately for her husband, perhaps many years too long for most voters’ palates.

But the Obamas’ connections to the Nation of Islam go deeper than Rev. Wright. Louis Farrakhan’s political connections extend to the Obamas directly through Chicago politics and Tony Rezko. Larry Johnson writes that:

Before Barack came on the scene, THE MAN in his political district was Louis Farrakhan. No one could take Alice Palmer’s seat without Farrakhan’s blessing. No one. I do not fault Barack Obama for seeking out the blessing of Farrakhan, but the story of what was done behind the scenes to get rid of Barack’s predecessor—Alice Palmer—has not been told. A knowledgeable source tells me that Tony Rezko played a direct role in this feat. And Rezko has been tight with Farrakhan.

At some point, probably between 1964-66, Jeremiah Wright was a member of the Nation of Islam and was indoctrinated into its odious brand of racist theology. And make no mistake, Wright’s race-baiting is not indicative of the vast majority of black churches. A pastor at LivePrayer writes:

Please hear me very clear. Black liberation theology is a perverse view of the Scriptures and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is a radical view held by a very small minority of black pastors. This is NOT representative of the black church or the overwhelming majority of black pastors who preach and teach the true Gospel of Jesus Christ without looking at it thru the lens of color. Every black pastor I know condemns Dr. Wright and this perverse racist theology.

In 1966, a group of “Christian” ministers, at the behest of Elijah Mohammad, began to preach the same teachings as NOI. Stokely Carmichael and Louis Farrakhan actively worked to bridge the gap between these two groups, and Carmichael would soon publish a book espousing much the same separatist ideas. Carmichael’s book “guided” Michelle Obama’s thesis and soon she and Barack would join Trinity United Church of Christ.

The continuity of the teachings of Carmichael, Farrakhan, Cone, Pfleger, Wright, and Ayers is incontrovertible; it’s all about skin color.

Christopher Hitchens asks:

how is it that the loathsome Wright married him, baptized his children, and received donations from him? Could it possibly have anything, I wonder, to do with Mrs. Obama?

Obama’s targeted use of Malcolm X’s super-charged racial code words (”hoodwink, bamboozled”), and his followers’ continuous charges of racism against Obama’s opponents as a political tool has been well documented. It shows that Obama has a studied understanding of the racial radicalism of Malcolm X, Farrakhan, Wright, Pfleger, and Ayers coupled with the cold-blooded instincts of a heartless politician. The Obama campaign has already smeared as racists vast swaths of the Democratic Party, people who were drawn to the Party for its commitment to civil rights. Now he employs the same tactics against John McCain, a champion of immigrants who has never had a hint of racism associated with his name.

Sinclair Lewis is frequently quoted as saying: “When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”

In today’s upside down world, racism has come to America embodied in a multi-racial politician and carrying the banner of the Democratic Party.

Before ACORN became a household name, Larry Johnson and Eastan McNeal reported that the Obama campaign has been funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to a shady ACORN shell corporation called Citizens Services, Inc. New information, including the photo above, proves that Obama’s past denials of his relationship with ACORN are not the truth.

According to the Leftist Dissent Magazine, the nebulous term, “community organizing,” has shaped Barack Obama:

Although he didn’t make community organizing a lifetime career—he left Chicago to attend Harvard Law School—Obama often says that his organizing experience has shaped his approach to politics.

~snip~

Since embarking on a political career, Obama hasn’t forgotten the lessons that he learned on the streets of Chicago.

Although Obama claims to never have been associated with ACORN, except when he was retained as their attorney, his community organizing experience is indistinguishable from ACORN’s mission:

In 1985, at age 23, Obama was hired by the Developing Communities Project, a coalition of churches on Chicago’s South Side, to help empower residents to win improved playgrounds, after-school programs, job training, housing, and other concerns affecting a neighborhood hurt by large-scale layoffs from the nearby steel mills and neglect by banks, retail stores, and the local government.

ACORN’s mission is to force governments and businesses, by threat of lawsuits and harassment, to support their agenda of obtaining the maximum services from government, coercing corporations to finance their projects, and forcing banks to approve high-risk loans. Additionally, ACORN works on voter registration issues and is suspected in mass voter fraud. This should be of special concern to the supporters of Hillary Clinton, many of whom witnessed caucus fraud during the primary season.

Stanley Kurtz details that ACORN may be at fault for much of the housing crisis we are now experiencing. Kurtz writes:

While the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act did call on banks to increase lending in poor and minority neighborhoods, its exact requirements were vague, and therefore open to a good deal of regulatory interpretation. Banks merger or expansion plans were rarely held up under CRA until the late 1980s, when ACORN perfected its technique of filing CRA complaints in tandem with the sort of intimidation tactics perfected by that original “community organizer” (and Obama idol), Saul Alinsky.

Kurtz states that Obama, in his position on the board of the Woods Fund and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) — both with domestic terrorist and Obama benefactor Bill Ayers — funneled large sums of money to ACORN:

as a director at Chicago’s Woods Fund, Obama was successfully pushing for a major expansion of assistance to Acorn, and sending still more money Acorn’s way from his post as board chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Through both funding and personal-leadership training, Obama supported Acorn. And Acorn, far more than we’ve recognized up to now, had a major role in precipitating the subprime crisis.

It’s become apparent that ACORN is serving as Obama’s red-shirted shock troops for voter “outreach,” a euphemism for the mass voter registration fraud witnessed up to this point in the election. ACORN will do for voting integrity what they did for mortgage lending.

According to Obama’s “Fight the Smears” Web Site, he was never an organizer for ACORN:

Regardless of what the Web site says, Obama’s ties to ACORN go much further than simply writing the group large checks from CAC in his role as Bill Ayers’ toady. Although “Fight the Smears” says that Obama was not an organizer for ACORN, he was an attorney for an ACORN’s voter registration project.

However, in May of this year, Stanley Kurtz discovered that Obama and ACORN have a much closer connection:

While most press accounts imply that Obama just happened to be at the sort of public-interest law firm that would take Acorn’s “motor voter” case, Foulkes claims that Acorn specifically sought out Obama’s representation in the motor voter case, remembering Obama from the days when he worked with Talbot. And while many reports speak of Obama’s post-law school role organizing “Project VOTE” in 1992, Foulkes makes it clear that this project was undertaken in direct partnership with Acorn. Foulkes then stresses Obama’s yearly service as a key figure in Acorn’s leadership-training seminars.

Further, John Fund of the Wall Street Journal, elaborates that Obama was an attorney for ACORN, trained ACORN activists, and dispensed funds to ACORN:

In 1995, then GOP Gov. Jim Edgar refused to implement the federal “Motor Voter” law. Allowing voters to register using only a postcard and blocking the state from culling voter rolls, he argued, could invite fraud. Mr. Obama sued on behalf of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, and won. Acorn later invited Mr. Obama to help train its staff; Mr. Obama would also sit on the board of the Woods Fund for Chicago, which frequently gave this group grants.

Kurtz lays the collapse of the mortgage giants squarely at the feet of ACORN:

Up to now, conventional wisdom on the financial meltdown has relegated ACORN and the CRA to bit parts. The real problem, we’ve been told, lay with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In fact, however, ACORN is at the base of the whole mess. ACORN used CRA and Democratic sympathizers to entangle Fannie and Freddie and the entire financial system in a disastrous disregard of the most basic financial standards. And Barack Obama cut his teeth as an organizer and politician backing up ACORN’s economic madness every step of the way.

In a prescient article from 1998, entitled Capitalist Wealth Underwrites Assaults on Middle America’s Values, Robert Holland reports that ACORN received funding from Fannie Mae and other banks and that ACORN then pressured the federal government to force banks to make high-risk loans:

Corporate leaders may be dispensing this aid in the belief it will curry favor with radical groups, or they may calculate that regulation will favor their business’ interests over competitors. Some of the giving, however, just seems spectacularly misguided: For example, Bank America, Chase Manhattan, and Fannie Mae contributed $315,000 to ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), an outfit that threatens financial institutions with federal sanctions if they fail to issue high-risk loans at bargain rates to borrowers of ACORN’s choosing.

Matthew Weaver originally uncovered this photograph of Obama and The Rev. Michael L. Pfleger protesting payday loans in January 2000.

The caption from NBC 5 photograph does not detail who sponsored the protest. It’s striking, however, that one of ACORN’s primary missions is protesting payday loans. And the yellow signs are ubiquitous in nearly all photographs of ACORN from this period:

The caption reads: “ACORN members demand fair lending, not predatory lending! This march was part of ACORN’s National Convention in Philadelphia, Summer 2000.”

The protest in Chicago attended by Obama and The Rev. Pfleger was likely an ACORN-related event, and significant enough for Pfleger to list the protest on his Curriculum Vitae:

What’s interesting about Pfleger’s CV, in addition to the prominence placed on the lending protest, are the other two actions. In a period of one month, Pfleger was actively attempting to ban Indian bidis cigarettes (with Obama) and coordinating efforts with Rev. Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam.

But Obama’s ties with Pfleger did not end with fighting payday loans and exotic cigarettes, Pfleger is close to Farrakhan and Obama attended Farrakhan’s Million Man March:

Obama was apparently at Farrakhan’s Million Man March, although his precise attitude toward the march is in dispute

Regardless of Obama’s proximity to Farrakhan, he continues to embrace the resurgent far-Left.

Dissent reports that Obama employs Marshall Ganz of Harvard to lead “Camp Obama,” a Saul Alinsky-inspired, ACORN-like retreat for the training of Obama organizers:

Obama enlisted Marshall Ganz, a Harvard professor who is one of the country’s leading organizing theorists and practitioners, to help train organizers and volunteers as a key component of his presidential campaign. Ganz was instrumental in shaping the volunteer training experience.

Many Obama campaign volunteers went through several days of intense training sessions called “Camp Obama.” The sessions were led by Ganz and other experienced organizers

Ganz is a respected organizer and academic with long-term associations with ACORN. He was also a member of the Howard Dean campaign.

In an article last year on Talking Points Memo, Ganz notes that recent elections have been remarkably close and that organizing will decide this year’s election. Using Alinsky as his model, he proposes a grass-roots campaign to win in 2008.

Barack Obama, a man we know little truth about, was forced onto the Democratic Party by far-Left activists and obsequious Party elders. ACORN is engaged in fraudulent voter registration on behalf of Obama, and the leader of “Camp Obama” tells us clearly that this election will be about organizing. Obama’s close relationship with ACORN, as documented by Kurtz,

a bit of digging into Obama’s years in the Illinois State Senate indicates strong concern with Acorn’s signature issues, as well as meetings with Acorn and the introduction by Obama of Acorn-friendly legislation on the living wage and banking practices. You begin to wonder whether, in his Springfield days, Obama might have best been characterized as “the Senator from Acorn.”

This is a frightening thought when you consider that ACORN is much to blame for the housing crisis we’re now experiencing. And it’s not surprising that the Obama campaign’s strong-arm tactics, inspired by Alinsky and perfected by ACORN, have made the Democratic Party foreign to so many of its loyal base.