It made me mad. It is just more of the media’s continued unfounded, politically motivated, assault on Sarah Palin. They have attacked her mercilessly for three years, and now claim, after the constant harassment, that she has “darker tendencies”? Are you kidding me with this circular logic crapola??

And so, I was compelled to write this letter to the editor of the Post and Courier. I have no illusions they will actually publish it:

I read Molly Ball’s article on Gov. Palin. The emails requested back in 2008 from sites such as Mother Jones are proving to be a bit of a disappointment to all those who wanted to get dirt on the former governor. Turns out that she was – gasp – hardworking, warm, engaging, and dedicated to her state. Shocking!

But here’s the thing – to qualify Palin now as exhibiting her “darker tendencies” is disingenuous at best. The only reason these emails are even available was the desire to take down this qualified woman 3 years ago by the media when they filed their FOIA requests. They have hounded her, and her family, on a daily basis, flat out making crap up (like that she, personally, shot wolves from the air, which your newspaper has already dispelled). They have accused her husband of incest, claimed her baby was not her own, used despicable language to attack her, and her family, sent numerous reporters to Wasilla to dig up dirt on her, and AP reporters to “factcheck” her book. And now, Ms. Ball is claiming that Palin is a divisive figure. If she is, it is only because the media has MADE her a divisive figure.

Even more, why has the media never spent anywhere NEAR this much time investigating Barack Obama? He claimed he had no records, not even a datebook, of his time as an IL Senator. How is that even possible?? The media failed miserably in ferreting out why the two front runners for the IL US Senate seat both, mysteriously, had their SEALED divorce records unsealed just a few short months before the election, forcing them both to drop out, allowing Obama, once again, to run basically unopposed as he did when he ran for office the first time (he got everyone else thrown off the ballot – look it up).

Where has the media been in looking at his connections to Khalid Rashidi, Bill Ayers, Tony Rezko, Kwame Kilpatrick, Louis Farrakhan, and Jeremiah Wright? They could not be bothered to research the presidential candidate, or his methods for becoming the candidate, much less his associates, any one of whom would have brought down any other candidate. (How many people know about the rampant caucus fraud perpetrated by the Obama camp? There were complaints made to the DNC by a number of people, including Hillary Clinton, but the DNC turned a blind eye. Even worse, they took lawfully cast and certified votes for Hillary Clinton and GAVE them to Obama. That was the day this Yellow Dog Dem became an Independent.)

But to the VP candidate from Alaska the media managed to devote all kinds of resources. Lo, and behold – there is nothing there. Of course, that doesn’t stop Ms. Ball from making gratuitous, unfounded, slights against Palin, thus demonstrating her very clear bias even as she was tasked with acknowledging there was nothing there.

This isn’t journalism, this is tabloid writing. And you put it on the front page.

While I am at it, I would like to highlight something else from these emails that was in my local paper – and listen up all of you who made this salacious claim – SARAH PALIN DID NOT SHOOT WOLVES FROM THE AIR, AND WAS OPPOSED TO IT. Got it? Seriously. Oh, and the emails highlighted how much of a conservationist she really is. I bet that will stick in some folk’s craw…

Good grief.

Clearly, despite there being nothing there to attack Palin over, these rags will continue to make the kinds of gratuitous smears Ms. Ball did. They just cannot stand that this woman is exactly who she said she is and has demonstrated herself to be. I guess in the face of Obama’s failures, this must really get to them, so they have redoubled their efforts to go after her, not him. Pathetic. Be big enough people to admit you were duped, you were snookered, you were fooled, and you were wrong. Give it a shot.

And now, for our musical moment to take a break from this continued media folly, I leave you with this:

And that is why I took particular delight in Andy Borowitz’s most recent piece, “Obama Quits While Ahead; Prez Resigns After Hundred Days: “It’s All Downhill From Here.” Oh, if only:

In a move that stunned both political allies and foes alike, President Barack Obama resigned today after serving 100 days in office, telling the White House press corps, “It’s all downhill from here.”

The reporters seemed stunned by the President’s decision in light of the fawning media coverage he received during his first 100 days, but the hyperbolic nature of that reportage, ironically, may have been the prime motivator behind Mr. Obama’s shocking move.

“Let’s face it, I’m not going to get better coverage than I have to date,” he said. “The only guy with a higher approval rating is that dude who landed the plane on the Hudson – or maybe that other dude who escaped from those pirates.”

Click HERE to read the rest – it is pretty funny, especially to see who has higher poll numbers than Obama!

Sigh. I guess it is easy for him to have slightly better than half approval ratings when liberals and progressives ignore: expanded faith-based initiatives, a program we detested under Bush; keeping No Child Left Behind intact, a program we have all widely decried, especially teachers; and Obama’s EXPANSION of warrantless wire-tapping on American citizens. For added irony, here is a video from Keith Olbermann, of all people, on this very thing:

Then there is the attempt to nationalize our banks, firing the CEO of a private company, and the list goes on and on. These are just off the top of my head. I am sure there are more – feel free to add them!

The point is, someone who was inexperienced and unqualified was elected president as the result of the best marketing ploy I have ever seen. His connections to: Tony Rezko; Jeremiah Wright; Bill Ayers; Khalid Rashidi; Kwame Kilpatrick; Louis Farrakhan; and James Meeks, to mention a few, all ignored. Also ignored was his massive contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as was his his dearth of a record, both as an IL state senator and a US senator (or how he got to either one of those positions – getting the qualified people kicked off with the very thinnest of reasons). His sexist behavior, and his homophobic associates, all ignored by the MSM and his followers, people who ordinarily would never give quarter to such a person (and about which I have written extensively here. To find those posts, and other related articles by fellow No Quarter writers on those issues, and Obama’s associates, feel free to do a Search at No Quarter.).

Oh, what might have been. Below are a few very good videos on Hillary Clinton, the one who received the most votes in a Primary EVER, despite being outspent at every turn, and having the MSM expose its Clinton Derangement Syndrome at every turn. Still, STILL, she received the most votes of anyone EVER. That says something, both about her, and about the DNC’s choice to pick Obama over her, for all of their concocted reasons and unethical machinations to make it so. In recognition, then, of Obama’s 100 Days in the White House, I hope these will bring a smile to your face (though they also brought tears to my eyes):

Remember how we all blew a gasket over Bush making sure people who asked him questions were his loyal followers? Oh, yeah – Obama, too! You may recall that during his most recent “I must have my face on national television as much as is humanly possible” “press conference,” he said he would be taking more questions via the internet from us, the people. Just your normal, average, every day Americans who might have some concerns we want to share with our “Compassionate” president who cares all about the little people. (I know – I can barely write this stuff out.)

Except not so much your average ol’ American: Obama Town Hall Questioners Were Campaign Backers

President Obama has promised to change the way the government does business, but in at least one respect he is taking a page from the Bush playbook, stocking his town hall Thursday with supporters whose soft — though far from planted — questions provided openings to discuss his preferred message of the day.

Obama has said, “I think it’s important to engage your critics … because not only will you occasionally change their mind but, more importantly, sometimes they will change your mind,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs recounted to The Post’s Lois Romano in an interview Wednesday.

But while the online question portion of the White House town hall was open to any member of the public with an Internet connection, the five fully identified questioners called on randomly by the president in the East Room were anything but a diverse lot. (Emphasis Mine) They included: a member of the pro-Obama Service Employees International Union, a member of the Democratic National Committee who campaigned for Obama among Hispanics during the primary; a former Democratic candidate for Virginia state delegate who endorsed Obama last fall in an op-ed in the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star; and a Virginia businessman who was a donor to Obama’s campaign in 2008.

Well, I’ll be hornswoggled – REALLY?? He didn’t choose random people’s questions to show all over the internet?? Hell no, he didn’t. Did we really believe he would?

Here are their stories:

1. Sergio Salmeron: Self-description at the White House: “My name is Sergio Salmeron. I want to find out about health care.”

Salmeron became engaged with the Obama campaign early in 2008, writing on his blog at my.barackobama.com, “We need to mobilize towards changing the trend of ’2 to 1 Latinos favoring Hillary over Barack.’ Let’s make a resolute commitment… Let’s put the facts on the table, ask the questions, until we understand how this all applies to us. Then strategize [sic] to get the word out to Latinos in America, who want change as much as everyone else.”

He was a volunteer canvasser for the campaign, he told The Post, and did voter registration work and translated materials for the campaign, as well. A partner at Global Paradigm Strategies, Salmeron is volunteer “member of the Democratic National Committee” and continues to be active with the Obama campaign’s successor, Organizing for America, which is how he got the White House invite, he said.

“I got a call from this woman who has been working with me for the pledge drive,” he said, referring to the Organizing for America drive on behalf of the president’s budget proposal. “You know, we’re trying to get support out for the president’s agenda.”

2. Tom Sawner: Self-description: “Sir, I’m Tom Sawner. I’m a service-disabled veteran, small-business owner in Arlington, Virginia. My company, Educational Options, works with public schools.”

According to Federal Election Commission records, Sawner made a $250 donation to Obama’s campaign on Oct. 27, 2008. He also, as he noted Thursday, served as an adviser on Obama’s educational platform committee. He said he was invited to the White House town hall through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Small Business Executive Council.

Sawner’s no stranger to the White House, either; he attended President Bush’s Feb. 2008 signing ceremony for that year’s economic stimulus package — another Chamber of Commerce invite. And in April 2008, he even became an anecdote in one of Bush’s speeches.

“And I met a guy named Tom Sawner,” the 43rd president said at a small business summit. “Now, he’s an old fighter pilot, which means there’s no wall he can [sic] run through. He’s a doer, an achiever, and he’s got him a small business called Educational Options.”

But the event with Obama, Sawner said, “was a whole different look and feel” than the one with Bush. “This is a president who is into openness.” And he didn’t know he was going to be able to ask a question until he got to the forum, he said.

3. Carlos Del Toro: Self-description: “My name is Carlos Del Toro. I served in the Navy for 26 years, retired four years ago, and started a small business.”

In 2007, Del Toro stood as a Democratic candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates, but did not win. A supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic presidential primaries, he backed Obama against McCain in the general, endorsing him in an Oct. 24, 2008 op-ed in the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star.

“As a Virginia small-business owner, veteran, and Latino, I’m voting for Sen. Barack Obama for the same reasons as millions of other Americans: because I believe this country desperately needs change. Obama will change our economic policies to help middle-class families, promote the growth of small businesses, and increase funding for veterans’ affairs, so no member of our armed services goes without the medical treatment he or she needs and deserves,” he wrote.

In 2008, he donated $2,750 to Virginia Democratic candidates for office, according to the Center for Responsive Politics; in 2006, he gave $1000 to the campaign of now Sen. Jim Webb (Va.), FEC records show.

He also has ties to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Small Business Council.

Wouldn’t it have been really funny if, say, Donna Brazile, was one of the people who got to ask the President a question? Sorry – just popped into my head, especially as she is trying to pass herself off as just another citizen when she speaks at the DOJ (Ani has an excellent post on the hubris, and downright insult of having Brazile, that very partisan back-stabber, not-exactly-a-major-feminist speaking on women’s issues). Ahem. Sorry.

Here’s the rest:

4. Linda Bock: “My name is Linda Bock and I’m a registered nurse just in Prince George’s County, Maryland — been there 34 years at a free senior health center. And I’m here with my fellow nurses from SEIU.”

Bock, along with her chapter of the SEIU and her son and daughter, helped campaign and canvass for Obama, she said. After Obama was elected, she wrote in the Landover, Md., 1199 SEIU nurses’ newsletter: “Now we have our work cut out for us -to hold our elected officials accountable. And I hope they hold us accountable too. We all have work to do to make the changes needed to restore our reputation, to heal the wounds of war, to repair our earth and regulate its resources; and, to secure our economic future. It will take sacrifice and service. It will take prayer and the grace of God. Now we have hope. We have President-elect Barack Obama. God bless America.”

Her invite to the White House came through the Nurse Alliance Leadership Council, she said. And like Sawner, she didn’t know until she got to the forum that it was open to the in real life participants. “I did not think we would be able to ask any questions,” she said. “I wasn’t personally anticipating being chosen to ask anything. We knew that the Web portion was people already lined up.”

5. Bonnee L. Breese: “Hi, Mr. President. Thank you so very much for having me, a public school teacher from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, here to be with you.
THE PRESIDENT: What’s your name?
Q Bonnee Breese.
THE PRESIDENT: Good to see you, Bonnee.
Q Thank you. I’m from Overbrook High School. I have to say that, because I know all the children are watching. (Laughter.)”

Breese has not donated a reportable amount to Obama, according to the FEC. She is a member of the 11,626-person Pennsylvania for Obama page on Facebook.

A supporter of the president’s — “Of course!” she said — Breese was invited to the meeting through the American Federation of Teachers union. She sits on the executive board of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, Local 3, she said, and is known in her area for being politically engaged.

The sixth in-person presidential questioner, “Ellie” from Maryland, did not give her surname. The White House did not respond to a request for it, but noted there were roughly 100 people in the audience.

“The audience was composed of approximately 100 people, including teachers, nurses, small business owners, and community leaders — and the virtual audience of thousands across the country who have submitted questions online,” said White House spokesman Nicholas S. Shapiro. “The White House reached out to a number of community groups and the chamber of commerce and those groups invited their folks to come and participate.”

Oh, yes, I am just so sure they did pick some random people who are simply “concerned citizens” – who believe in supporting everything Obama does. Perfect. What next, a “White House of Chicago, IL”?? Maybe Farrakhan will let him buy his complex to do that. Since it is only a couple of blocks from his current home, he already knows the neighborhood and everything, so it makes sense. Or maybe Rezko can sell him some more property (at a cut rate, naturally) around the house he already has. Just a thought.

Gee – I wonder which Bush-type thing he’ll do next??

Ironic that on Inauguration Day, when President Barack Obama told Americans it was time to take personal responsibility and “grow up” as a country, some of his supporters behaved like spoiled children in booing George W. Bush.

And, sadly, neither Obama nor any leader in the public spotlight that day seized the moment to admonish the boorish behavior.

It would have been nice had Obama had the presence of mind in his inaugural speech to not only allude to scripture in saying it’s time to put away “childish things” but to also have told the boo-birds that their behavior was inappropriate and the embodiment of those “childish things.”

He might have said: “Isn’t it enough to be just happy for me? When you boo the former president, you fail to understand what this solemn event is all about — the peaceful transition of power. This is not a football game. Nor is it a Third World bloodless coup. This is American democracy at work. If you can’t respect that, then leave. Now.”

Like I said, why the hell would Obama start now? He hasn’t bothered to say anything to any one of his minions at any point during the entire primary or election season, so why would he speak out for Mr. Bush?

And here is another little problem I have – him saying Obama should have said, “Isn’t it enough to be just happy for me?” Um, what? Yes, we should all be happy for The Boy Who Would Be Dictator because this has nothing to do with our actual country. Wowie.

Mr. Frederick’s shock continues:

But no one mustered the courage to say that. While I thought Obama’s speech was otherwise thought-provoking and worthy, he missed an opportunity to call out these boors and chastise their behavior. By not doing so, I am afraid that Obama essentially condoned this kind of mob intolerance. There is already a hateful mean streak among some Obamamaniacs. Left unchecked, it can fester into something quite un-American and un-democratic.

In case you missed it, when President George W. Bush was announced to the crowd, some booed loudly, shocking even the commentators on the official Obama network, MSNBC. One section of onlookers sang, “Nah nah nah nah, hey hey hey, goodbye.” And, finally, as Bush left the White House, one deep thinker took the opportunity to give the “one-finger salute,” thus saying more about himself than anything else.

This from a movement that fancies itself all about peace, love and global karma.

Where in the HELL Has this man been? Clearly, he cannot distinguish between the mantras of the Obama Party and the REALITY of the Obama Party. How many, many times have we written about this, the cruel, aggressive, demeaning, sexist, even misogynistic behavior of Obama’s followers, and that is just toward Secretary of State Hillary Clinton!! It would seem Mr. Frederick’s blindfold and earplugs served him well if he was unaware of these, um, “shenanigans.” The “one-finger salute? Like the one Obama gave to Clinton detailed in THIS article?

He continues:

Now look, it would be a mistake to paint all Democrats and Obama supporters with the actions of these few on Inauguration Day. And, according to news reports, some in the crowd tried hard to shush the boo-birds. That is a hopeful sign.

But let’s also not ignore the obvious. There is a growing faction of the American left that seeks revenge more than righteousness.

Intolerant of dissenting views, this faction thinks as comedian Janeane Garofalo does that some members of the opposing political party should be “jailed.” Terrorist acts (such as mailing envelopes of white power to Mormon temples because the gay marriage vote in California went the church’s way) are seen by this faction as understandable and acts of legitimate political expression.

But of course. Target the Mormons, thus the Senate Majority Leader (why does everyone always forget that Harry Reid is a MORMON, and ANTI-Choice? I just don’t get that.) So, yes, Janeane, let us completely deny that even before the election, the NY Times was predicting that it would be OBAMA’S supporters that would vote IN Prop. 8. That, in fact, was the reality. It was the African American community coming out in droves that tipped the scales, as detailed HERE and HERE.

Mr. Frederick does touch on the issue of race, too:

There is also an ugly racial component to it. We first saw it with Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who said, among other things, that white America had deliberately inflicted black Africa with AIDS.

When the Rev. Wright first hit the national stage, we hardly knew what to make of his irrational and separatist statements. Consequently, we pretty much ignored the substance of Wright’s racially divisive rhetoric and focused on it as a day-to-day political story. It made us more comfortable, I think.

But in light of the things we saw at the inauguration, it may be time to revisit the dangers of intolerance and hate — no matter the color of the person who makes them — and nip this ugly mean streak in the bud.

As our president said, it is time to grow up. (Sherman Frederick (sfrederick@reviewjournal.com) is publisher of the Review-Journal and president of Stephens Media.

Well, that is just laughable – to expect the most juvenile, petulant, arrogant, immature, empty-suit to tell his minions to grow up. HAHAHAHAHA!! Yeah, maybe when he does.

Beside that, though, is the convenient amnesia of Mr. Frederick regarding what the Rev. Lowery said at the inauguration (h/t to LisaB), highlighted in Pat Racimora’s article, “A Profound Prayer Until..>Wrong Turn!.” To recap, he said this:

Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around … when yellow will be mellow … when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right.

Holy cow. Yeah, I think that qualifies as having a racial component.

But it also begs the question WHY Rev. Wright’s incendiary, separatist comments were not addressed more fully? And why his connection, as well as Louis Farrakhan’s, to Obama was continually glossed over by the majority of those in the MSM? Because they were afraid of being called racists? Or because they knew it would be real trouble for Obama if they actually did their job and exposed the belief system in which Obama was a willing participant? Some of us were paying attention, though. Do a “search at: NoQuarter on Rev. Wright, and you will get page after page after page of articles that at least have some mention of him, if not dealing with him directly (far too many to link to here), beginning with this one in March.

Same goes for the “boorish” behavior of Obama’s supporters. The Palin (and Clinton) t-shirts? The intimidation/bullying at the caucuses? “Iron My Shirt” buffoons? Obama turning away from Clinton without greeting her at the SOTU? Obviously, I could go on and on with examples, all of which have been well documented at NQ and other sites. Which raises this question: where in the hell has this guy been, expecting Obama to change his stripes NOW? Just because it was Bush being booed? Because at no time has Obama acted like a “grown up” when his crowds have gone off on his competition – not once. He has been their role model for boorish behavior from debates to rallies. So for anyone to expect anything different now just because he was sworn in a few times is nothing short of delusional.

So to recap, it is way past time to take off the blindfold and take out the earplugs. The booing? Typical. Comments like Garofalo’s? Typical. Intimidation of dissenters? Typical. (Don’t believe me? Just ask the Justice Department since they are suing the Black Panthers.) Racial division by clergy? Typical.

This is who Obama is. To expect him to challenge behavior in which he himself engages is nuts.

Richard Cohen’s sister is canceling her inauguration party because of President-elect Obama’s choice of Rick Warren to bless Mr. Obama’s taking the office of the Presidency of the United State.

According to her brother’s column in the Washington Post, what made her do this is the way in which Mr. Obama’s choice to pick this pastor for this occasion serves as a special sort of condoning of Mr. Warren’s views about gays and lesbians.

I agree with Richard Cohen, and apparently his sister, that these views should be regarded as totally unacceptable by anybody who has any sense of the importance of civil rights and indeed of human rights. I also agree with Richard Cohen’s view that as a somebody running for the office of President and who was at the time a U.S. Senator, Mr. Obama had a particular responsibility for denouncing his then-pastor’s church, Trinity United Church of Christ, for giving the anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan a special award during the primary season.

I find it troubling that neither Mr. Cohen nor apparently his sister have not been, as far as I can tell, overly concerned by President-Elect Obama’s equally eloquent silence and inaction regarding the sexism and misogyny directed at Senator Clinton and her supporters, particularly the sophomoric expression of these attitudes by Jon Favreau, the man writing President-elect Obama’s inaugural address. (I shudder to think what the reaction of the Cohen family would have been if Favreau had been found on YouTube horsing around calling somebody a “homo” – maybe then Richard Cohen’s sister would join us in our demand that the President-Elect fire this sophomoric bigot as his chief speech-writer. Whether a bigot is slick (Warren) or juvenile (Favreau), he is still a bigot.)

It is tempting to forget in this sort of dynamic who the real problem is. As is clear from what I have written so far, I wish Richard Cohen and his sister would be, respectively, writing about and canceling inauguration parties as much over Mr. Obama’s inaction in the face of sexism and misogyny as they are in the face of anti-Semitism and gay-bashing. And yes, I wish that Richard Cohen’s sister had paid attention to and given greater weight to the fact that she had the option to work to elect somebody who, both as a Senator and as a Presidential candidate, repeatedly marched in Pride parades and met with editors of gay newspapers across the country rather than working for somebody who would not even have his photograph taken with Gavin Newsome.

But I am not falling into the trap that lies that way. Just because people got it wrong before does not mean they cannot help matters now. People can learn. So despite the bit of complaining above, I am not going to point a finger at Richard Cohen’s sister (or, for that matter, at Katha Pollitt for decrying the misogyny involved in the Warren choice when Pollitt, like Richard Cohen’s sister, opted to support Mr. Obama for the presidency when it was already obvious that he was complacent, to say the least, about sexism and misogyny). I am just pleased that they are starting to pay attention now and apparently coming to understand better who they voted for. To quote Richard Cohen: “The real problem has nothing to do with ministers and everything to do with Obama’s inability or unwillingness to be a moral leader. Sooner or later, he just might have to stand for something.”

Aye, there’s the rub. During the primary season and the general election a friend of mine who spent some considerable amount of time listening to me lament the Democratic Party’s poor judgment in making then-Senator Obama their poster-child, kept saying to me that the real problem with Mr. Obama is that he is an “empty suit”.

That term seemed to me too tepid back then. But I have come to see it as the essential problem behind the problem of Mr. Obama’s inability or unwillingness to be a moral leader, and possibly any kind of leader. To be a moral leader, to stand for something means that you have to fill out your suit, your office, your position. To be an “empty suit” is to be a person who cannot draw a line in the sand, precisely because you do not have an arm and hand within that suit to use to reach out and draw that line. To be an “empty suit” is to be devoid of the weightiness that real leadership requires, including the gravitas to admit to a mistake and change one’s position (drop the bigoted minister and lose the bigoted speechwriter; say you have been wrong to dig in your heels rather than listen to the concerns of so many of the people who worked so hard to elect you). To be an “empty suit” is to be a moral vacuum.

I refused to vote for John McCain for a number of reasons but among them was the fact that while I knew he had the capacity for moral leadership, I did not care for the directions toward which his moral commitments would lead my country. I refused to vote for Barack Obama because I knew he came up empty on the capacity for moral leadership.

In some ways, moral emptiness, especially in a President, is worse than moral wrong-headedness. The morally wrong-headed leader takes a stand, e.g. George W. Bush’s legitimization of torture, and one can rally people against the stand she or he takes. The morally empty leader takes no stand. Under these circumstances, her or his silences often allow people to forget that the blank that exists in lieu of a leader is the appropriate target of criticism. After all, it seems easier to go after people who actually do take stands (Rick Warren, for example) rather than the person who silently enables wrong-headed person to gain in stature. But this is sleight of hand. The real problem is the enabler, the person who allows the sophomoric sexist to put words in his mouth, the person who lets bigoted clerics and their churches affiliate with him.

So, to Richard Cohen’s sister and to Katha Pollitt, I say welcome to my party – the one that got lost in 2008, the one that expected moral leadership of a certain kind from a Democratic president. Now that you are here, I hope you can help me figure out what we are going to do with the empty suit about to occupy the Oval Office. If that empty suit thinks he can pick up sufficient evangelical money and votes in 2012, he is not going to listen to bloggers and op-ed columnists whose votes and followers he thinks he can replace with the support of the evangelicals, regardless of the detestable content of many of their views and some of their conduct. Personally, I do not think we can give the empty suit the sort of backbone necessary to resist the lure of that support. If we cannot give this empty suit some backbone, we need, as I have written before, to start figuring out how we can have a better candidate on offer in 2012. So to the people who are canceling their celebrations, may I suggest that they use the time and effort saved to start solving that problem. We need to coalesce now around somebody who can fight for a nomination by a major Party – probably the the Party formerly recognizable as the Democratic one – who is what Obama’s supporters hoped he would be and what I fear he is not.

Throughout this campaign season, any attempts to discern the “content of (Obama’s) character” have been thwarted by the Propaganda Machine, formerly known as the Fourth Estate, his handlers, the DNC, and his followers who claim, irrationally, I might add, the “Obama will heal us!” as Cher did on The Ellen Degeneres Show Nov. 3rd, as if he truly IS the Obamessiah, ignoring the tremendous splitting of the country, of the Democratic Party itself.

For the first time in memory, a candidate was NOT “known by the company he keeps,” “the birds of a feather which flocked together.” Rather, any mention of Bill Ayers was met, even by university professors with the illogical justification that Obama was only 8 when Bill Ayers and his compatriot, Bernadine Dorhn, were bombing the US Capitol, Pentagon, and other US buildings.

That may be so, but the ideology which drove Ayers and Dorhn is the ideology to which they still adhere. Obama has chosen to have them in his life, to live near them, work with them, and seek them out, as we recently learned for sure (as many of us suspected, and confirmed in this article by Steve Diamond at No Quarter, “Ayers and Obama In Regular Contact Says Source Close to Obama Candidacy“).

The list of his close associates in addition to Ayers and Dorhn are troubling: Rezko, Wright, Khalidi, Kilpatrick, Farakkhan, Blogajevich, et al, a list that contains convicted felons and one under investigation. I have said before, and will say again, any ONE of these people would have sunk any other candidacy, yet in the case of Obama, they were brushed aside as irrelevant. As was the glaring reality that Obama took the majority of his policy positions, often lock, stock, and barrel, from Hillary Clinton. But the Propaganda arm flipped it around, and his minions, again, many university professors, brushed aside his plagiarism as inconsequential. What a great lesson they are teaching their students, and their children.

Along those lines, I am in disbelief that adults, people who would not hire Obama at their own universities or businesses with his refusal to provide ANY documentation of his academic life, or allow friends, families, or fellow students to discuss him to ANYONE trying to get information on this first term senator running for the highest office in the land, would gladly give this man their votes.

I despair that adults, and their children, believe that the means justify the ends, that hundreds of thousands of fraudulent voter registrations, over 200,000 in Ohio, and 212,000 discovered in Georgia, in which voters were registered in GA, as well as OH or FL, are dismissed because as one neighbor, a retired university professor said, “ACORN does great work.” The level of voter registration fraud was through the ceiling, as the 16 investigations into ACORN indicate, yet the Propagandists say NOTHING about this as Obama “wins” contests in states where voter registration fraud was rampant. Even duplicate voting is brushed aside, as this video demonstrates (and h/t to a listener of Truthteller’s Election Night Radio Show mentioned):

Um, no – it is NOT okay for anyone to vote more than once in an election. It is FRAUD, and it is ILLEGAL!! But we already know there were instances of this in OH and FL. Heck, in VA, felons were allowed, no, RECRUITED, to vote for Obama, but absentee ballots to our military serving abroad went out late, sparking a lawsuit to make sure THEIR votes were counted. And on and on it goes.

As I said, I despair that adults are teaching our young people that you cheat, lie, and steal to get what you want. While you are at it, make sure you are a sore loser, hammering away at the vanquished in a juvenile, mean-spirited manner, never having learned the concept of gracious winning (especially when the “winning” is suspect). These are the same people who said NOTHING, or were SUPPORTIVE, of the Democratic Party forever smearing its very name by stealing votes from one candidate to give to another. The ends justify the means, and if that means we tarnish, tear down, belittle, smear, and steal from a candidate to win, so be it. Oh – and blame them for it, too, while we are at it as the NY Times did in an incredibly offensive editorial it had up last night celebrating Obama’s defeat of Clinton (I won’t link to it – go find it yourself if you want to read that dribble). We have now taught our young people that you can register as many times as you want, and vote as often as you want – just like on “American Idol”! – to make sure YOUR candidate wins. Fair and square is old school. Now it is win at all and any costs, and belittle your opponent while you are at it.

Then there are the issues of misogyny and race-baiting that sustained this campaign, with the willing participation of the Propaganda Arm, Obama, and the DNC. The treatment of women during this campaign was a low I have not seen in DECADES, yet many women were willing participants to this abuse, claiming even as Obama contradicted them, that he was going to be great for women. Ask Hillary. Ask Sarah. Ask those folks wearing, “Sarah Palin Is a C–t” t-shirts, or the organization that used the “C-word” as its acronym regarding Hillary. Women were treated as not just objects, but as sexual anatomy period, in a most vulgar and derogatory way. Still, since it was the DNC, too many women accepted this treatment from the very party of which they are the majority. How they can celebrate the future presidency of a man who treats women in such a hostile manner is beyond me. That goes for the GLBT community, too. But hey – they got their “Bro Before Ho,” so I know they are happy.

The race baiting that was used to tear down our only two term Democratic president in decades was horrendous to watch, especially as members serving in Congress, people whom President Clinton had helped personally, went out of their way to paint him with the stigma of being racist. Hillary, too. Two people who have worked TIRELESSLY to end discrimination in this people were called racists, and it stuck. Then anyone who would not, could not, imagine voting for the most inexperienced, unqualified candidate who was taking Chicago-style politics national, with his thugs attacking people around the country, were labeled, no, BRANDED racists if they did not support Obama. As women’s rights have been set back decades after this election season, so have been race relations. All in the service of getting this man elected because of the color of his skin, not the content of his character, which is still largely ignored or unexplored by the electorate and the Propagandists.

I do not think this is what Dr. King had in mind. I do not think this is what our founders had in mind, either. This election, with its win at all costs, even if it means cheating, lying, and stealing, is not democracy. It surely isn’t decent. And it is not the American Way. At the moment, I can’t see how this will change – how we will regain any semblance of justice, of knowing right from wrong, of being ethical, moral, good. Yes, we made history last night, but I ask you, at what cost to us, to our country? I weep for us today, at what we have become. I have to hope, and pray, that we will regain what we have lost, but for today, grief overwhelms me.

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.

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.

First up, we have ACORN. Yes, ACORN has been in the news a good bit recently. Seems the organization Obama has paid $800,000 to register voters has been, um, shall we say, enthusiastic in fulfilling its task? Apparently, this alleged non-partisan organization has been overly zealous in registering voters, so that areas like Indianapolis now have 105% voter registration! Whoopie! One guy registered 72 times! This is not new for ACORN – they have been under investigation before for voter registration fraud, but the SCOPE of it this year is mighty telling, as the 2-part video below highlights. And bear this in mind: ACORN receives YOUR tax paying dollars. AND they are one of three organizations to which the Democrats, led by Chris Dodd, tried to get 20% of the $700 billion dollar bailout repayment funneled. Again, YOUR tax paying dollars going to fund this organization. And if you believe for one second they are non-partisan, just watch these videos from their meeting this summer (h/t to Katy, alert NQ reader). Again, YOUR taxpaying dollars:

Thomas Jefferson said:

To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.

Amen to that.

While we are on the subject of voter fraud, there is the wife of Chuck Hagel, Lilibet Hagel. Guess who she is endorsing? Uh, yeah – Barack Obama. Yes, the wife of the man who is an owner of the Company-Formerly-Known-As-Diebold is endorsing Barack Obama. See, in Nebraska, the electoral votes are actually split up between 5 areas. Obama’s plan is to win Omaha, so he is actually campaigning there. But hey – when the wife of the man who owns the voting machines telegraphs for all to see who she wants to win, don’t be too surprised when it comes to pass. I am sure ACORN can help with that if there are any doubts by registering some dead people or re-registering people who can send in absentee ballots AND vote in person.

Last night, the “bipartisan” panel (which included a prominent Obama supporter. Larry Johnson had a great post on the makeup of the Committee HERE.) investigating Governor Palin on “Troopergate” declared she had abused her power in wanting her former brother-in-law removed from the State Troopers. The media is playing this off as if it is just bad blood because he and her sister were getting divorced. Apparently, so is this commission, which is framing this whole thing as her pushing a personal agenda. Here’s why this is NUTS: Trooper Wooten (who still has his job, by the way) ADMITTED to tasering his 10 yr old stepson. He was found GUILTY of “judgment failures,” like drinking and driving in a STATE TROOPER patrol car. This doesn’t sound like a PERSONAL issue. It sounds like a PERSONNEL issue. That the board completely overlooked these documented issues is very telling. Oh, they didn’t find anything unlawful in her behavior, in case you are keeping score (and you should be). This is just pathetic. And pathetic the way the media is now trying to play up Trooper Wooten’s behavior. Is this the kind of person YOU would want as a state trooper? Yeah, me neither.

And to finish up, I give a big H/T to Matthew Weaver at No Quarter for finding this extremely disturbing video of Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam (and if you don’t know about the Nation of Islam, I’ll give you some tips after you watch this), who is closely associated with Obama’s church, TUCC:

Yes, he did just call Barack Obama The MESSIAH. Now for some information regarding the Nation of Islam, and Minister Louis Farrakhan from Islam Today:

Racist ideology also at odds with universal Islam
A third area of non-compliance with Islam, and the one which receives by far the greatest attention in the secular media, is the issue of race. The present “Nation of Islam” leader, Louis Farrakhan, is on record as having made objectionable anti-Jewish (as distinct from anti-Zionist) remarks. Among other unfortunate utterances, he is alleged to have referred to Judaism as a “gutter religion”.

Moreover, the NOI is a segregationalist organization exclusively for black people descended from slaves. Proper Islam is a universal religion open to people of every race. Muslims are supposed to differentiate between people on the basis not of ethnic origin but of piety and upright behavior. As the Quran makes clear:

“And mankind is naught but a single nation.” Holy Quran 2:213

“O Mankind! Most certainly, it is We (God almighty) who have Created you all from a single (pair) of a male and a female, And it is We who have made you into nations and tribes, that ye may recognize each other. Verily, the noblest of you in the sight of Allah is (he who is) the most righteous of you.” Holy Quran 49:13

And in his final sermon, Prophet Mohammed made clear that racism has no place in Islam:

“O people! Verily your Lord is one and your father is one. All of you belong to one ancestry of Adam and Adam was created out of clay. There is no superiority for an Arab over a non-Arab and for a non-Arab over an Arab; nor for white over the black nor for the black over the white except in piety. Verily the noblest among you is he who is the most pious.”

In contrast, the NOI has a pronounced anti-white bias. They refer to blacks as God’s chosen people and Caucasians as white devils. They call for a separate homeland for American blacks, for racially segregated education and for a ban on interracial marriage. To quote again from their website:

* We believe we are the people of God’s choice.

* WE BELIEVE this is the time in history for the separation of the so-called Negroes and the so-called white Americans.

* We want our people in America whose parents or grandparents were descendants from slaves, to be allowed to establish a separate state or territory of their own–either on this continent or elsewhere.

* We want all black children educated, taught and trained by their own teachers.

* We believe that intermarriage or race mixing should be prohibited.

Uh, yeah. I guess they don’t know about Obama’s mixed heritage. No matter – he is The One – Minister Louis Farrakhan has spoken. So glad my friends and family have found their Messiah. If only he wasn’t so flawed, so propped up by the media, so enmeshed with nefarious characters like, oh, I dunno, FARRAKHAN! But hey – as long as they can go to their happy Kool Aide drinking place following The One, as far away from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as we can get them, that’s their choice. I don’t have to understand it, but I’ll have to learn to accept it. I sure don’t want this “Messiah” in the White House myself. I am an adamant supporter of the Separation of Church and State, so someone a little less celestial is my choice for president, but that’s just me.

Yes, it is true, in the conversation Charlie Gibson of ABC (“American Barack Broadcasting,” as my aunt says) with Barack Obama the other day, Obama threw down a challenge to John McCain. In this interview, which was VERY different from the interview with Palin, by the way (this one, they were practically playing Barry White and using mood lighting), Obama said this:

Yeah, right. McCain is afraid to confront Obama face to face. Now, you know damn well what would have happened if McCain HAD brought this up – Obama would have whined and cried that it wasn’t the issue they were supposed to be discussing, and besides that, McCain was involved in the Keating 5. And honestly, I think that is the only reason he is making this challenge, so he can throw that in McCain’s face. Never mind that McCain was exonerated – we all know facts don’t matter to Obama and his minions as his response to Gibson made quite clear.

(As to the Ayers component, Larry Johnson had an excellent piece on this exchange, “When It Comes to Ayers, It Is Participation That Matters“, which I recommend to you.)

But it is this claim of cowardice with which Obama and his camp are painting McCain that is just startling to me, and it is not confined to a discussion of Ayers. My sister sent me an article recently from Rolling Stone by Tim Dickinson claiming the Bush and McCain families are very much alike. Oh, please, spare me. One of the issues he raised in this article was about the Forrestal Explosion, of which I knew nothing, I have to admit. My sister added this little tidbit when I responded that they were nothing alike:

We’re talking about Johnny. Those were NOT “his men” in the POW camp and he DID abandon the men who were fighting the fire that HIS plane caused. Hell, he could at least have used a fire extinquisher (sic)!

I hadn’t the FOGGIEST about what she was talking until I saw John McCain’s biography on bio.com. I realized as I watched the ACTUAL footage from the plane to what she must have been referring. It seems that Obama’s pawns are spreading this vicious lie all around the Internet community that McCain caused the devastating explosion on the Forrestal aircraft carrier by “wet-starting” his plane, a hot dog stunt to mess around with a flight deck crewman. And that he was such a coward, he didn’t even bother to help anyone else on the aircraft carrier, so says the Democratic Underground anyway.

Wow. Aren’t these the SAME people who were livid (myself included) about the Swiftboating of John Kerry’s military service, and his heroics during the Vietnam war? Aren’t these the very same people who decried tactics of blatant lies, of character assassination, and now are engaging in those very same tactics? (Well, and why not – now voter fraud is perfectly acceptable to these folks, too, so why am I surprised??)

So, having seen this, I wrote back to my sister:

The other day, were you talking about when McCain’s plane blew up on the flight deck? I just saw the actual footage from that event on tv and realized that must have been about what you were talking. In case it was, what happened was a missile fired accidentally from another plane across the flight deck, and hit McCain’s plane in the fuselage right after he had started his pre-flight check. He had started the engine, but once he got hit, he turned it off. He dropped and rolled through the burning jet fuel (over 400 gal)from his plane. He saw the pilot next to him try to do the same thing, but failed. He got up to run to him, and as soon as he stood up, there was another explosion, which knocked him back 10 ft. After that, other missiles started exploding. It was the worst disaster outside of war, with 134 crew dying. It took 36 hrs to get the fire under control. One fire extinguisher was not going to do it, and he was lucky to get out of there alive (as it was, he was hit by shrapnel). It was in no way, shape, or form, his fault, nor was there anything he could do to help anyone, as is clear from the flight video.

She claimed she was being rhetorical (uh huh) about the fire extinguisher, and said the least he could have done was stayed to help instead of watching on closed circuit tv (the claim from the Rolling Stones article). Yeah, what a freaking coward – he jumps from a burning plane into burning jet fuel, tries to help another pilot, gets blown back by an explosion from which he took shrapnel, and the wimp turned tail and ran. How dare he! Obama would NEVER have done anything like that, I am CERTAIN. And I am certain of that because Obama did not spend 22 years of his life in military service to our country, and has not exhibited anything close to the intestinal fortitude that McCain has demonstrated over his long career in service to this country.

Once again, don’t take my word for all of this. Here is the actual video footage from the Forrestal aircraft carrier (and this accident completely changed standard operating procedures by the Navy on aircraft carriers). The first thing you should notice is that McCain’s jet tail is pointed OVER the deck toward the ocean, thus debunking the whole “wet-start started this whole thing!” claim. Here it is:

Here is eyewitness testimony about the fire on the Forrestal:

Finally, this is one made in response to the vicious smears by Obama supporters on this tragic accident:

Now shut the hell up. Or, as I said to my sister:

It sure would be nice if you bothered to look into the character of Obama, and the FACTS about him, as much as you are willing to listen to innuendo, rumor, and bald-faced lies about McCain and Palin. Obama has a HISTORY of unsavory characters as CLOSE friends/colleagues/bosses in his life, INCLUDING A MAN WHO BOMBED THE PENTAGON AND THE CAPITOL BUILDING, who said after 9/11 he wished they had done MORE!!!!!! How about Tony Rezko (convicted)? Auchi? Blogajevich (under investigation)? Wright? Meeks? Kilpatrick (convicted)? Clark (under investigation)? Farrakhan?? The people who got Obama into Harvard? Being a card-carrying member of the New Party wing of the Dem. Socialist Party, a group that endorsed him for his first run (in which he got EVERYONE thrown off the ballot)? *

And you are going to focus on a bogus claim that McCain didn’t do anything after his PLANE got shot by a missile and burst into flame???? A man who gave 22 yrs of his life in military service to this country?? HOLY SHIT.

Obama has done next to NOTHING in his life but be associated with the kinds of people mentioned above, and organizations like ACORN, which is under investigation in TEN (make that thirteen now) states for voter registration fraud. He has funneled money through them, has given them money this year, which his campaign admitted, and tried to get them to receive a HUGE chunk of the bailout repayment (which fortunately the Senate didn’t agree to). But hey – don’t worry about voter fraud. It’s already happened this year and too many people were willing to look the other way.

All I know is if Hillary or John or ANYONE had just ONE of those kinds of associates in their closet that Obama has in plain sight, they would have been drummed out already, but clearly, the FACTS about Obama mean nothing to his followers (I might add, my sister kept bringing up the Keating 5 – I told her that John Glenn was also one of the Keating 5, and is now campaigning for Obama, but that is okay, of course. No matter how many times I told her McCain AND Glenn were exonerated, she continued to maintain McCain was guilty. Sigh.). You’ll just listen to his (plagiarized) speeches, stolen policies, and bask in the shine of The One. (Oh – and now he is MAD at McCain for taking Hillary’s mortgage policy, and giving her CREDIT for it, because he was going to claim it for his OWN. And since McCain beat him to it, he is now claiming it won’t work. Gimme a break – at least McCain gives credit where credit is due – Obama just thinks every idea someone else has is due him and takes it without remorse.)

Whatever. If you care more about attacking other people based on lies rather than actually looking at your candidate, his character, his lack of judgment, his lack of qualifications, and his nefarious friends, there is nothing I can say that will change that.

True that. But it doesn’t mean that we can stop fighting the good fight, and getting this information out there. Fight on we must, good people. For our country, for voter rights, to combat voter fraud, and to keep the biggest fraud who has ever run for president out of the White House. To restore our honor and our integrity. Fight on!

* Each of these claims has been covered in full at No Quarter, so I am not going to add in links for every single one. Alert readers alreayd know these facts anyway.

Caution: Put down any sharp instruments and hot liquids. Sit down before watching and have a barf bag handy.

This horrendous video needs no further explanation.

Hold the phone, let me back up here.

The other night when my partner and I were at the airport, we had dinner at Chili’s while we waited for our next flight. All of a sudden, my partner said, “Ohmygosh, that’s James Carville!” Sure enough, it was. And he was sitting right beside us, presumably with his wife. They didn’t say a word to each other the whole time, so I’m pretty sure it was Mary (teehee). Anywho – they were both reading, and I wasn’t going to bother them, though I WANTED to ask, “So, James – why DID you stab Hillary in the back? Just wondering!” Ahem.

Then, we were making our way down the concourse to our next flight. My partner very kindly was getting me a beverage (iced latte with an extra shot, if you must know – yes, I am one of those who are addicted to fancy coffee drinks. I prefer cappuccinos, myself, and have my very own espresso machine which I use daily. A lot. And Peet’s is my brand, but they don’t have those here on the East Coast, so Starbucks it was. Aren’t you glad I shared?). I noticed these two men walking past me, and as the light dawned, I realized one of them was my old seminary professor, Cornel West (his companion looked like someone with whom I went to seminary). Yep, there he went, one of the premier philosophers of our time. Okey dokey, a trip down Memory Lane for me, but so what? I’ll get to that soon.

First, just a little background on Cornel West. Some of you may know him from one of his books, Race Matters, which propelled him into the national spotlight. That book was followed by Democracy Matters. He taught at Union Theological Seminary for a while, and is now at Princeton. This excellent article, Imagining Social Justice: Cornel West’s Prophectic Public Intellectualism, by Gary Darrien, also a professor at Union, is a great resource on Cornel West, and includes much of his history, in terms of his upbringing, his intellectual pursuits (he attended Harvard for his undergrad, and was admitted to the doctoral program in Philosophy at Princeton at the age of TWENTY), and how he came to be at Union:

By the mid-1970s West was already acquiring a reputation as an intellectual spellbinder. The first time that I saw him, in 1975, he had attracted a sidewalk crowd of a dozen people at Harvard Divinity School and was expounding exuberantly on the varieties of black nationalism. The crowd got larger as passersby judged, as I had, “That must be Cornel West.” Two years later he began his teaching career at Union Theological Seminary, which seemed to him the perfect home for his broad intellectual and activist interests.

“You know, my aim was always to teach at Union Seminary,” he later recalled. “Union Seminary, for me, was the real institutional site that brought together all of my interests. It was a Christian seminary, it was deeply shaped by progressive politics, Marxism, feminism, antihomophobic thought and black liberation theology.”

West continued about his decision to teach at Union:

“I decided to teach at Union Seminary for three reasons: It was (and still is) the center of liberation theology in the country; it was one of the best places for black theological education in the country; and it allowed me to teach and read widely in philosophy, social theory, history, literary criticism and cultural thought. Union was the perfect place to become a broadly engaged cultural critic with a strong grounding in the history of philosophy and criticism.”

That’s my alma mater! I took several classes with Professor West, and remember well an exchange that happened in one of his classes. But to set the stage, I was the Student Senate Rep from the Lesbian/Gay Caucus all three years of the M.Div. program, and was completely out. At some point in the classroom discussion the topic of which I cannot recall, I said, “Oh, for God’s sake,” to which one of the African American students in the class looked at me, and said, “for whose sake?” in such a way, and in context with the discussion that clearly implied I was not in a position to call on God given my sexual orientation. That pissed me off, needless to say. I got up and walked out. Another student, and African American woman, came after me to talk about it. We were sitting in the Student Union when class let out, and Cornel West came over to see why I had left class. After I explained to him what happened (he couldn’t hear it where he was), he just lowered his head, shook it, and said, “We have such a long way to go.” He didn’t just talk the talk about “antihomophobic thought,” he walked it, too.

Imagine my surprise then, when I read this:

(West) replied that it should be possible to defend the progressive possibilities of heterosexual marriage from a feminist and egalitarian standpoint without being accused of bigotry against gays, lesbians, and single parents. Repeating a central argument of his book on the family, West contended that children did best when raised by two biological parents that were married to each other. The empirical evidence on this point was terribly clear, and important, he urged. To set progressivism against it was disastrous for progressivism and for children: “We make it clear that this does not stigmatize single mothers and fathers, disqualify loving gay or lesbian parents, or preclude successful adoption of children.” He took no interest in bolstering discrimination against gay or lesbian parents. Progressivism had to be against that, just as it had to “put a premium on the well-being of children.”

Huh – that sounds a whole lot like McCain’s response to the Washington Blade the other day in response to a question on adoption. I admit I was a little surprised by West’s response. It is hard to reconcile his statement with the man who was upset by how I was treated in his classroom. Just goes to show that McCain’s position is not all that unique, even in progressive circles.

As I mentioned above, this is not just a trip down Memory Lane for me. You may recall that Larry Johnson had an excellent piece in No Quarter entitled, “Barack Obama’s Revolutionary Buddies,” in which he mentioned “Progressives for Obama.” Wanna take a guess who one of those Progressives are? Yep, you got it, Cornel West. He was one of those listed from this organization.

Now I should add, and the article from which I have been quoting is quite clear, that West is a socialist. Here is more from Prof. Dorrien’s excellent piece (bear with the introduction of two other socialists – it helps for the context):

Harrington was eloquent about the structural injustices of capitalism, but he passed over its equally devastating operations on the cultural level.

That was never true of West, who emphasized cultural criticism, writing about popular music, television, sexuality, identity politics, black culture, white supremacism, the culture of nihilism, and the cultural limitations of progressive organizations dominated by whites. West’s pamphlet for DSA, “Toward a Socialist Theory of Racism,” was a signature statement for him and the organization. (Emphasis mine.) Stressing the Marxist bias of most American socialist theorizing about racism, West delineated four main types. The first viewed racism as an epiphenomenon of the class struggle, subsuming racial injustice under the general rubric of working class exploitation. Eugene Debs, an icon of this approach, had a simple answer to the question of what socialism offered blacks: “Nothing, except socialism.” Debs took for granted that racism was a divide-and-conquer ruse of the ruling class. To him, a socialist revolution was the only solution to racial injustice and all other social evils; any solution outside the labor framework was racism in reverse. West acknowledged that Debs, having fought racism bravely, was an honorable example of the color-blind strategy; nonetheless, socialist reductionism was not the answer, since it ignored the complexity of the problem.

And this ties into Matthew Weaver’s outstanding piece, “Obama Is Hiding A Radical Past,” in which he details Barack Obama’s membership in the DSA, and its implications for this election. If you have not read it, I highly recommend it to you.

I have to say, though, in full disclosure, that Professor West originally supported Hillary Clinton. Check out this video from the State of Black America and his challenges to Obama’s ability (major H/T to WasLn, etc., for leading me to the New Zealand site, another one at which real investigation into Obama’s Socialist ties is taking place):

Too bad he didn’t leave it at that. Check out this video and how he introduces Obama (again, H/T to the New Zealand site):

Oh, dear. “Comrade”? Um, yeah. The evidence is quickly mounting that, indeed, Obama is a Socialist, and a card-carrying one at that. Now, I freely admit that I have socialistic tendencies insofar as I am a firm believer in sharing the wealth with those who are less fortunate – I think that is a biblical mandate. And, you would most likely win a game of Monopoly with me (“oh, you need some money? Here, take some of mine!”), but I am not running for president, nor am I a card-carrying member of an official Socialist movement with a capital “S.” There is a difference after all. But, Obama is. And many of his associates are.

I wonder when the MSM is going to pick up THIS story?? So far, it’s looking like NEVER. So the DNC has selected (and I am using that word intentionally) a card-carrying Socialist as the Democratic Presidential Nominee. I wonder how THAT’S gonna play in Kansas? I can tell you that I don’t think it would go over too well here in SC. And that is just the point – the majority of people have no idea that this is the case. Add to that his ties to Black Nationalism as expressed through the rantings of Rev. Jeremiah Wright (and really – since when is a millionnaire considered to be “poor”?), the connection of his church to the Nation of Islam in general, and Louis Farrakhan in particular (not to mention the proximity of Farrakan’s complex to both Ayers’ and Obama’s houses), and it is painting a picture of a man who, at the very LEAST, does not represent the majority of Americans. At most, it has the very real potential of putting a tremendous amount of power in the hands of a man whose mindset would lead us down a dangerous road.

The bottom line is this: Obama continues to be an unknown quantity, with less than a month to go before the election. The vast majority of Americans have NO idea who this man really is, and it seems his handlers have worked very hard to ensure that is the case. But thanks to the efforts of people like Matthew Weaver, Larry Johnson, and New Zeal Research Associates, we are finally learning more. I hope it is not too late…

UPDATE: Alert reader, hadenough, provided documentation that contradicts my claim that Cornel West had been a Clinton supporter before he became an Obama supporter. The information I had was erroneous, and hadenough was correct. It does not change the fundamental issues regarding Obama and his “comrades,” but in the interest of accuracy, I feel it is important to note this change. Here is the LINK to the documentation regarding West’s support of Obama.

Obama has a friend or associate that is questionable.

Video or articles surface of Obama thanking them, supporting them, writing a blurb for their book, organizing events for them, campaigning for them, campaigning with them, playing poker with them, serving on boards with them, buying homes with them, dining with them, praising them, using them to prove his christian faith, or hiring them.

Obama then denies their tight relationship – brushes the association off as *a guy in the ‘hood*, claims they are someone who doesn’t advise him, minimizes the actual number of times he attended church, says he can’t vet his vetters, or flat out lies.

Obama THEN completely denies any knowledge of who they really are, denies ever knowing who they were, what they said, what they did, how corrupt they were, any fraud they were up to, and what they were preaching.

People – this isn’t a coincidence. One or two nefarious associations can be examined and written off. But there is a looooooooong list of people that Obama is close to – whether they be family members, business partners, friends or co-workers who are either radicals, criminals, racist, or anti-American.

This list, compiled by The Daily Antikos, is great, but forgot a few people/organizations (that I added at the end):

Jeremiah Wright – Obama’s Pastor for 20 years. Obama did not distance himself until it was political.

Father Pflager – Speaks at Obama’s former Church (only after embarrassment) and Obama gave him money & here they are in 2000.

Bill Ayers – Terrorist. Member of the Weather Underground. Killed Americans. Launched Obama’s Political Career.

Tony Rezko – bought land and sold it to Obama at a discount. Oh yeah, and he is a convicted felon.

Raila Odinga – Defeated in his bid for the Kenyan Presidency. Led Supporters in a Violent Uprising. Obama Campaigned for him in 2006. (at tax payer expense)

Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al-Mansour – I can’t even get started. This is Obama’s Political Grand-father, and his intentions do not seem to be too honorable.

Franklin Raines – Cooked the Books at Fannie Mae. Obama hired him as an advisor on Housing and Urban Affairs.

Frank Marshall David – Communist Obama Mentor.

Emil Jones, Jr. – Ugh… Just Read It.

Rev James Meeks – Spiritual Mentor

Rashid Khalidi – PLO Terrorist.

Here are a few more:

Larry Walsh is the Will County (IL) County Executive, good buddy, political confidante, and frequent poker player with Barack Obama. He is currently being investigated by the FBI.

Kwame Kilpatrick, former mayor of Detroit, convicted felon, has been charged with 10 felonies including perjury, obstruction of justice and assaulting a public safety officer. He will be sentenced October 28th. In June, Kwame Kilpatrick gave Barack Obama his endorsement as a Democratic Party Superdelegate.

Gov. Blagojevich, who is under investigation.

Marilyn Katz, a former member of the ’60′s anti-war group SDS, led protestors against the police outside the Democratic Convention in 1968. Protestors threw nails in the street to impede the police and clashed with police on this occasion and others. Katz has said of her activities that she wanted the U.S. to become a socialist paradise. She is a close friend of Barack Obama. Katz is a member of Obama’s national finance committee.

James Johnson, Former Fannie Mae executive who was vetting candidates for Obama for his VP but had to resign. Johnson is drawing fire over his jumbo home loans from Countrywide Financial, a major actor in the subprime mortgage mess, that may have been below market rates.

Louis Farrakhan, leader of the NOI. Obama helped to organize his Million Man March in ’95, and he is tight with Reverend Wright and Phleger.

Fannie Mae and Freddi Mac – Obama has recieved the most donations, second only to Dodd, from these companies, and also was thanked, in part with the Congressional Black Caucus, for *being like family* with Fannie and Freddi.

ACORN – Obama is the former Director of Illinois Project Vote, and they have been raided and charged for fraudulent voter registration practices. They are also linked to some of the above associations of Obama’s.

Michelle Obama. *First time in my adult life, I am proud of my country.* Nuff said.

How does someone hang out with that many people, who are, as I said, criminals, radicals, racists or just plain anti-American, and not share some of those characteristics?

And the best excuse Obama can ever come up with is *they aren’t the person I thought I knew* or *I never heard them say those things* or *I did not know they were a domestic terrorist when I was having my first fundraiser in their living room*.

Are we to believe that he truly didn’t know, that he is that uninformed, that naive, that, dare I say, stupid? Or is he just lying?

Why would someone who associates with all those people WANT to be President? And more importantly, why would anyone WANT him to be President?

I just don’t get it.

Part 5 of 6

Part 6 of 6

Please share your comments about all six parts here.

::::::::::::

Note: Here are links to the important comments posted by our readers in open threads last night, during and after the show: first thread, second thread, and third thread. (Readers continued to comment throughout the night.)

So as I listened to Michelle Obama introduce her husband at the DNC, I wondered why she didn’t include his educational achievements. Since the multi-racial Obama poses as an African American (although he is not descended from slaves and his family never suffered under Jim Crow), and uses the “self-made man” mythology to sell himself–raised by a single mother, fed on food stamps, etc–you would think that graduating from Columbia and going to Harvard Law would be hawked in detail. We have heard that he was the first African American to become president of the Harvard Law Review, only to learn it was a political move by Harvard during a time of racial tensions on campus.

Moreover, Obama appears to have never actually written anything. That’s sort of like becoming the head chef of a fancy restaurant but never cooking.

In fact, Obama’s educational history has been intentionally omitted throughout his political primetime. When asked about his undergraduate training at Columbia University, The New Times states that Obama “declined repeated requests to talk about his New York years, release his Columbia transcript or identify even a single fellow student, co-worker, roommate or friend from those years.” Why would that be?

What we know is that Obama graduated from a Hawaiian prep school with a B- GPA. He then went to Occidental College, about which we know little to nothing, and then to Columbia University. According to conservative journalist, Jack Cashill:

We know enough about Obama’s Columbia grades to know how far they fall below the Harvard norm, likely even below the affirmative action-adjusted black norm at Harvard.

So how did Obama get into Harvard Law School five years after graduating from Columbia? if his LSAT scores had been something to brag about, you know he would be bragging.

Connections are everything, as the saying goes, and that is nowhere more true than in academia. During his time at Columbia, Obama made two very important connections: Bill Ayers and Edward Said. Cashill reports:

There are any number of possible reasons for Obama’s reticence about Columbia: his grades, the courses he took, his writing samples and, of course, his associations.

At that time, for instance, both Bill Ayers and Obama fell within the orbit of left-wing Columbia superstar Edward Said. Just recently out of hiding, Ayers was attending the Bank Street College of Education, which adjoins the Columbia campus.

Edward Said (pronounced Sayeed)

Edward Said became famous for his critique of American attitudes toward eastern cultures, particularly Islamist Arabs. His scholarship contributed to the concept of “the other,” a useful way of understanding prejudices and biases The idea that some people discriminate against others whose beliefs, skin color, sexual orientation, gender, etc, differs from their own is helpful in understanding and correcting discrimination and in teaching our children to be open minded.

However, this theory is now put into service by the so-called “progressives,” who use it to ridicule people who differ from them: Clinton Democrats, Republicans and certain strata of Americans. Rooted in anthropology and literary theory’s appropriation of Marxism, the postcolonial theory of Said et al is at the root of Obama’s distain for the “bitter” working class Americans who cling to their guns and their religions.

It is of course ironic that the educated latte drinking members of the so-called “Whole Foods Nation” find “others” inferior to themselves. As anthropologist Clifford Geertz writes:

What [educated people] worry about is provincialism — the danger that our perceptions will be dulled, our intellects constricted, and our sympathies narrowed by…acceptance of our own society.

Provincialism is not a compliment. It means unsophisticated and “country”–as in country-and-western, backward, rural, redneck, hick, shitkicker and so on. Said taught that Americans were biased against Arabs, but the American students who studied with him use this theory as justification to be biased against America.

Obama studied with Said at Columbia. Said was a Palestinian by birth and a pro-Palestinian activist in life. He said that he was a “Christian wrapped in a Muslim culture.” Said’s essay, Between Worlds, reveals an even greater connection between student, Obama, and professor, Said:

With an unexceptionally Arab family name like Said connected to an improbably British first name (my mother much admired the Prince of Wales in 1935, the year of my birth), I was an uncomfortably anomalous student all through my early years: a Palestinian going to school in Egypt, with an English first name, an American passport and no certain identity at all.

Barack Obama breaking bread with Edward Said

No Quarter has many excellent posts on radical Bill Ayers and his long relationship with Barack Obama. And to complete this three-way embrace, Edward Said wrote a back-cover endorsement on Bill Ayers’ 2001 Fugitive Days. Said reveals how close they are, at least ideologically, when he wrote:

“For anyone who cares about the sorry mess we are in, this book is essential, indeed necessary reading.”

Khalid al-Mansour

Donald Warden (aka Khalid Al Monsour), founded the Berkeley based African-American Association (AAA) and became the mentor of Huey Newton, one of the founders of the Black Panthers. The Black Panthers are said have broken from Warden’s AAA group due to disagreements about economics. According the UC Berkeley’s chronology of the Black Panthers:

(1961) Huey Newton, a black militant activist student, meets Bobby Seale while attending Merritt College (Oakland, California). Both join the Afro-American Association, a black cultural organization led by Donald Warden.”

(1965) Huey Newton’s mentor, Donald Warden, creates Economic Night in a storefront located next door to the future Black Panther Party office on Grove Street, Oakland.

Larry wrote this piece on Khalid al-Mansour, the person who helped Obama get into Harvard. Al-Mansour is a Texas-born African American whose birth name was Donald Warden. Among other things, he is known by some for his rabid anti-Semitism (see this video). And Cashill adds this:

As far back as 1988, however, Obama had serious pull. He would need it. As previously reported, Khalid al-Mansour, principle adviser to Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, lobbied friends like Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton to intervene at Harvard on Obama’s behalf.

An orthodox Muslim, al-Mansour has not met the crackpot anti-Semitic theory he could not embrace. As for bin Talal, in October 2001, New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani sent his $10 million relief check back un-cashed after the Saudi billionaire blamed 9/11 on America.

Percy Sutton, a Manhattan Borough president for 12 years was among the most powerful black politicians in New York. In the YouTube below (previously posted by Larry, but please watch it again), Sutton describes how al-Mansour introduced him to Barack Obama, asking him to help get Obama into Harvard.

Cashill writes:

“I was introduced to [Obama] by a friend,” Sutton told the interviewer. Sutton named the friend as “Dr. Khalid al-Mansour.” Sutton described al-Mansour as “the principal adviser to one of the world’s richest men.” The billionaire in question is Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal.

Knowing that Sutton had friends at Harvard, al-Mansour asked Sutton to “please write a letter in support of [Obama] … a young man that has applied to Harvard.”

So who is this Dr. Khalid al-Mansour? A quick Google search finds this biography from African Venture Partners:

Dr. Khalid Abdullah Tario Al-Mansour is an internationally acknowledged advisor to Heads of State and business leaders in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and North America. He has been actively involved in structuring investments and joint ventures worldwide for over 35 years. Dr. Al-Mansour was also responsible for the Africa investment activities of Kingdom Holdings, Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal’s investment company. During his distinguished career, Dr. Al-Mansour has been a guest lecturer at Harvard University, Bombay University, Columbia University, UCLA, University of Kenya, London School of Economics and the University of Ghana.
In addition to Africa Venture Partners, Dr. Al-Mansour sits on the Boards of: Saudi African Bank; Kingdom Holdings, Africa; Multimedia Super Corridor (Malaysia); Space Tech Inc.; AmNet Corp. International; New Avenues Fund Ltd; United Bank for Africa; United Networks; and Landmark Entertainment.

Dr. Al-Mansour has authored 24 books and is listed in Who’s Who in the World; International Who’s Who in the Arab World; Two Thousand Men of Achievement; Royal Blue Book of London; World’s Who’s Who of Intellectuals and American Hall of Fame.

Dr. Khalid Al-Mansour has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Howard University (Phi Beta Kappa) and Doctor of Jurisprudence from the University of California at Berkeley.

In a fascinating academic article entitled The US Organization, Black Power Vanguard Politics, and the United Front Ideal: Los Angeles and Beyond, Scot Brown discusses the history of various Black nationalists groups. He states this pertinent information about Donald Warden/Khalid al-Mansour:

IN 1963, KARENGA met with Donald Warden, a bay area nationalist who headed the Afro-American Association. Bay Area activists Ernie Allen, Jr. (Ernie Mkalimoto), Huey Newton, Bobby Seale and Ken Freeman were also members of this group. Karenga accepted Warden’s invitation to head the Los Angeles chapter of the group. Ayuko Babu, Tut Hayes, Akida Kimani, and Lloyd Hawkins figured prominently in the association’s Los Angeles chapter. The association functioned primarily as a study group and lecture forum — members frequently spoke outdoors to black community audiences (sometimes called “street speaking”).

DONALD WARDEN RECORDED his association’s street-speaking style in an album called Burn Baby, Burn, released in the aftermath of the Watts explosion. An instrumental track and chorus-like affirming voices that call and respond to his assertions, accentuate this recording’s non-stop nationalist proselytizing.

For those of us who remember the Watts riots of 1965, the phrase “Burn Baby, Burn” has very specific associations of molotov cocktails, bloody street fights, “race” riots and death.

What does it take to get into Harvard Law School?

Khalid al-Mansour (aka Donald Warden) asked his friend, Percy Sutton, to help Obama get into Harvard. With friends like al-Mansour, who needs good grades, high scores or affirmative action?

The relationship between Obama and al-Mansour deserves further research.

We have written in detail about the Obamas’ associations with other Black nationalists, and this information about Khalid al-Mansour adds yet another layer to the story.

Check out other related No Quarter reports:

Black Liberation Theology

Obama the Stealth Socialist

What Lies Beneath Barack Obama

Wheel…of…Theology