Obama Deepens His Problem

Barack Obama gave his big "racism" speech today (transcript here), which was billed as the equivalent of Mitt Romney's "religion" speech (my post here) of a few months ago. About the only thing similar between them was that they were speeches given about a specific topic in which the candidate was perceived to have a "problem" with voters.

No one doubts that Barack Obama is a smart guy. Intelligence and oratory both being his strong suits, I fully expected him to come out this morning and eliminate this problem from sight, moving forward with his campaign again. I knew it would be difficult but that he has a silver tongue and would recognize that by severing all connections with that church and its pastor, he could put out the fire, regroup, and continue on to the nomination. I expected all this, and yet he did almost the exact opposite, in my opinion making his situation actually worse. He did not divorce himself from the church or its pastor, and did not admit that he had done anything wrong or even made a mistake that could be forgiven. In fact, he actually re-asserted that he'd done nothing wrong and that he would maintain his relationship with both entities, moreover that he could not do so. By saying this so forcefully, Obama has actually deepened the hole he's in and simultaneously cut off his only escape route.

Obama again disavowed all the hateful vitriol spewed by Rev Wright. But he stopped there, moving into "dreamy" mode, where he hypnotizes his audience with eloquent statements full of lengthy platitudes about liberty and the meaning of life, etc., mesmerizing listeners. Here is one example, from the very beginning of Obama's speech today:

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign - to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together - unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction - towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.

He is setting the stage for more class warfare rhetoric, and he couches it in very flowery language that makes you think of the "American messiah" caricature that so many liberal media outlets have been publishing the last few weeks. Speechwriting like this strikes me, a former Toastmaster, as someone who likes to hear the sound of his own voice shouting from the proverbial mountaintop like the late great Martin Luther King, Jr. In Obama's case (not MLK's), more Style than Substance. He sounds like he believes his own press, that he's the savior of the country. Big talk from a man who has accomplished virtually nothing of note.

BO on the Reverend

After he acknowledged the controversy with Rev Wright, Obama had this to say about him:

As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect....I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother...These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

I'll give him points for honesty on this one. Here is a man who has been a close mentor for years and Obama refuses to walk away from him, despite the obvious fact that it's politically expedient to do so. Instead he stands by the man. That's impressive and gutsy. Unfortunately it's the wrong move because the reverend and his comments are too hate-filled and offensive to the vast majority of people who might vote for Obama. That kind of a stand, alongside that kind of pastor, might work when your target audience is Chicago South Side blacks, but when you have to appeal to whites from Oklahoma as well, it's a losing move.

I think it gets worse, though.

• Obama has admitted to knowing about Wright's rhetoric for nearly a year, as he said the other day that he addressed it with a press release at that time. He also said that it had been the first time he'd heard of any of this. But that is not at all a credible statement. In fact, Obama seems to be the only one in Chicago, to say nothing of the church's congregants, who had not heard of Rev Wright's insane sermons and beliefs. As I said before, he is a smart man; it's unbelievable - literally - that he had no knowledge of this. So he appears to be lying.
• BO has claimed that without exception (to back up his previous claim), he was not present when Rev Wright delivered any of his hate-filled and blasphemous rants from the pulpit. This is remarkable because if he's lying about this, too, it will not be long before someone will come forward and report how they saw him there, which will be followed by investigations by the media and new reporting. This will happen every time, re-opening this wound each time it starts to heal. And that's regardless of whether they're ever proven right or not. If they do prove to be credible reports, he will be outed as an obvious liar.
• He referred to Rev Wright twice today as his "former" pastor, also mentioning that he had given his last sermon as he is retiring. Isn't that convenient? One wonders when the Reverend made this decision to retire.
• Rev Wright has apparently disappeared. He has gone off on a trip to Africa, though no one is saying exactly where. Fox News has dispatched a reporting crew to try and track him down, but so far no luck. So no one can ask him the above question, or anything else.
• Obama has obviously said he will not disavow the pastor or the church, which means that whenever he visits Chicago, he will presumably be attending church at UCC. Every time he does this, cameras will follow him. And every time, people will again be talking about the vitriol from that pulpit.
• Speaking of the vitriol, even if Rev Wright is stepping down, his successor looks like a Nation of Islam member, complete with bow-tie. He's not afraid of the camera, either; last week they filmed him, from the pulpit, making aggressive gestures and saying simply, "Hannity!" several times, as though he was looking to brawl with Sean Hannity. Guess what kind of sermons those will be?
• The operative question is to what extent have the Obama's - Barack, Michelle, and their daughters - been influenced by Rev Wright. He claims he doesn't believe the vitriol that Wright spews, and I'm willing to believe him. But people are already digging around for signs of Wright's influence, and have pointed to issues like Obama's neglecting to wear an American flag lapel pin; and his wife Michelle's ridiculous comments of a few weeks ago in which she - a $300,000/yr attorney - has never in her adult life been proud of America until now. Barack's refusal to distance himself from Wright's rhetoric will permit pundits to suggest, whenever they see or hear something like this, that its root cause can be traced back to their pastor and his teachings. Like the other issues, this will come up again and again during the campaign.

Simply put, Obama is being foolish in this instance. I am surprised to sit here and say I think it may sink him.

The rest of Obama's speech this morning was pretty standard far-left victimhood rhetoric. Blacks are oppressed; poor people are oppressed; black schools don't get as much funding as white schools; black kids growing up don't have enough parks, cops, garbage collectors, etc. It goes on and on and on... He plays the race card a remarkable number of times, and can't get off the whole "victim" mentality:

...for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn't make it - those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations - those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways.

Here was one particularly idiotic statement:

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning

This from a man who attends a "black liberation theology" church. I can guarantee you that I have more blacks, Indians, Phillipino's, Asians, and Hispanics in my church, all of whom attend with me every single Sunday morning, than Obama has whites in his church in Chicago.

He heads toward the home-stretch of his speech by informing whites that we need to do our part to help lift up black people:

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging
that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds
of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of
discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be
addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds - by investing in our schools and
our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our
criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of
opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations

This is offensive because its speaker is refusing to acknowledge that this is already happening and has been for many many years. White racists are universally rejected whenever they are brought out into the light for even the slightest misstep. Careers are ended for uttering a single racist epithet (think Al Campanis; Jimmy the Greek; Imus; etc.). In fact, white people who actually are not racists are often dragged out into the light and accused of such -- Geraldine Ferrarro, for one -- while black racists like Reverend Al Sharpton run for President, and other black racists like Reverend Jeremiah Wright are defended by the front-running nominee for POTUS. So give it a rest, Obama.

He wrapped up his speech with a John Edwards-esque recounting of a nine-year-old girl who fought poverty when her mother lost her job, got cancer, and lost her health insurance. This girl, now 22, is a volunteer for Obama's campaign and is supposedly inspiring others around her to also volunteer for Mr. Obama. The message is, people from the grass roots are looking to the Obama-Messiah to become POTUS so that he can get them free health insurance, find them jobs, and make their lives better. And the socialist empty suit will be happy to oblige.

Obama Finally Steps In It

The media is (finally / belatedly) abuzz with video of Barack Obama's pastor in Chicago, Rev Jeremiah Wright. Wright is a "black liberation theology" preacher on the South Side of Chicago, and the videos of him are truly disgusting to watch. He basically hates America. He said at one point "not God Bless America! God Damn America!" and then went on to repeat the G-D-A phrase over and over for emphasis. To wild applause. And it goes downhill from there.

So finally the media are sitting up and playing these videos as much as they can, and finally Obama has had to answer for them. The reason he has had to answer for them is that he has been attending that church for nearly 20 years, and is very close to this pastor. Wright married Barack and his wife Michelle; he baptized both their children; he provided the inspirational title "The Audacity of Hope" of Barack's book. Barack has described Wright as his spiritual advisor and still says they are very close. Result: The guy turns out to be an America-hating racist and you have to answer for it.

No one has yet suggested that Obama holds the views espoused by Wright, but I believe it is heading in that direction. Sean Hannity has already pointed out that wife Michelle seems to have similar, if toned-down, opinions. She recently got herself and her husband into all kinds of trouble when she mentioned in two separate speeches that for the first time in her adult life, she was actually proud of America. Conservative pundits started to knock her around for it, but didn't hit too hard because she's not the one running and it hardly seemed fair, plus there was the question of whether her comments were isolated or if she had held them for some time.


So it is fair that Obama must respond to this, and everyone seems to think (except Democrat shills) that he needs to also repudiate the man and have nothing more to do with him. As someone said this afternoon, "he's not running for state senator; he's running for President of the United States." It seems clear that Obama should, without any hesitation, cut off all ties to this man and repudiate everything he says. Surprisingly, even in one-on-one interviews and given chance after chance to do so, Obama has instead chosen to repudiate the comments, or the sermons, of the preacher, but only those in which these kinds of things were said and not in any way to reflect poorly toward the man himself.

I am always interested to find out what the Left believes about issues like this, to see whether it makes more sense than the conservative position with which I always identify. What I've found so far is, like usual, the Dem's are making very little sense. Democrat activists who are out there defending Obama are suggesting that the video clips we see are selective and that he doesn't ever preach like that at other times. They also point to Obama's claim that he never heard of these comments in particular, or even that this pastor had a proclivity for delivering such incendiary sermons. This despite his two-decade close relationship with his pastor. To me this is just not credible. I don't think Obama is racist the way Wright is; but the problem is I don't know about his wife's feelings on this, nor do we really know Barack. Have Wright's sermons and teachings "sunk in" with the Obama's? And if so, how will those beliefs manifest themselves if he is elected president?


As to the "selected video" complaint, it's true we don't know when they were all filmed, but does it matter much? There are a lot of videos, and he's saying hateful stuff in all of them. What are the chances we only have those few where he does that, and he's preaching peace and love for all humanity all the rest of the time?

Another strategy the Democrat pundits are using is to try and compare Obama's relationship with his pastor to various endorsements that John McCain has recently received from admittedly controversial people. On "Hannity & Colmes", liberal Alan Colmes complained about an Ohio preacher named Rod Parsley, who endorsed McCain and who has said some inflammatory things about gays and apparently Muslims. Colmes's point is that unless conservatives believe that McCain should repudiate Parsley's comments, then Obama shouldn't have to repudiate Wright's comments. Colmes asked this of a couple of his conservative guests and of his co-host Sean Hannity, but none would answer.

After seeing video clips of Parsley and reading his page on Wikipedia, I don't see why they would hesitate to answer; there's nothing serious there. Parsley is shown making statements like, "in essence, the Supreme Court...legalized the perverted act of sodomy," and "this is not about homosexual rights or lesbian rights. This is about the destruction of the very covenant...," as well as "in other words they are intending to pervert God's original intention." McCain has apparently said Parsley is a "spiritual guide" for him, so in Colmes's argument, he is tainted by these comments. My response would be, so what? Most conservatives would agree with all those statements anyway!

Calling homosexuality a perversion is hardly the same evil thing as saying that our country should be called the "U.S.KKK of A" and that it is "run by rich white men" who oppress blacks. Or that "the government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color." But equating these two speakers is what passes for deep liberal thought and argument today. Pathetic and sad. Liberals are so invested in Barack Obama's presidential campaign that they can't call a spade a spade; can't admit when a guy is just flat-out wrong. That last statement by Rev Wright was made in April of 2003! How credible is it that Obama had never heard of it before, or that the guy who made the statement was not the same guy Obama knew so well, all these years?

Some believe this scandal is going to sink Obama's presidential aspirations. I'm not so sure, though I do think it will certainly damage him. I also don't think we've heard the last of this. Obama has not come out forcefully enough against Rev Wright, nor do I think he's likely to unless, as was the case today, he is forced to. This is not a new story, yet all of a sudden Barack Obama has clued-in to it, as though he didn't see it coming. Fox News' Major Garrett reported that as of this morning, when he emailed Obama's campaign chair about whether they felt Obama needed to do anything at all to further distance himself, or explain away, the Reverend's comments, the "one-word response" he got was: "No". So clearly, Obama's repudiation of Wright's comments this afternoon was not planned even as late as this morning, and the only reason he did it at all, obviously, is because the fire was starting to rage out of control. That is, for political expediency, not because he felt personally compelled. Again, sad and pathetic.

How Life Changes in Just a Few Days

For the first time in months, I'm actually getting excited about the presidential campaigns again.

When my guy Mitt Romney dropped out of the race, I went into a funk. I didn't like how John McCain had attacked him during their race (unfairly) and I couldn't get excited about McCain or Huckabee as a candidate, as they were not sufficiently conservative for my tastes. I still feel good about the way in which Mitt left the race, with dignity, earlier than many had expected him to, and ostensibly for the good of the country so that the GOP could more quickly focus on the upcoming general election and its presumptive nominee, McCain. Unfortunately, Mike Huckabee showed none of the class of Romney, staying in the race (and keeping the GOP from naming its candidate) until he was finally knocked out quietly yesterday. In my opinion, Huckabee went from "decent and credible candidate" to "goat" in the past month.

To make matters worse, Empty Skirt Hillary Clinton, as I predicted, got steamrolled by Empty Suit Barack Obama, with media and public fervor for Obama reaching Messianic proportions. It really was getting ridiculous, all the swooning for Obama, and it showed no sign of stopping. With a 72-year-old poor orator like John McCain up against a late-40's brilliant orator like Obama and his supportive media entourage, the GOP was doomed and we had 9 months to consider that (and slowly watch it unfold).

Some remarkable things happened this week, though. First off, Rush Limbaugh came up with an interesting idea: In the big, pivotal primaries in Texas and Ohio, Republicans should cross over at the polling place, re-registering as Democrats, and vote for Hillary. This would have the effect of helping her to win those states, stopping the Obama steamroll and hopefully creating a donkey bloodbath. Conservative Republicans did this in droves, and reported later that they felt "dirty" and "sick to my stomach," along with "I hope we know what we're doing, here" as they pulled the handle for Clinton. Remarkably -- and we don't know how much Republicans had to do with it -- Hillary did, in fact, win both those primaries, which did stop the Obama juggernaut, did re-invigorate the Clinton campaign, and is generating the predicted bloodbath. This whole episode alone is cause for celebration.

Two proofs of the bloodbath having begun: 1) Obama has taken the first big swing of the bat at Hillary that I've seen since his campaign began: questioning, even ridiculing, her supposed "experience" as a politician, traveling the world and making an impact (as First Lady). Sounding like a Republican, Obama said yesterday, "What exactly is this foreign experience that she's claiming? I know she talks about visiting 80 countries [as First Lady, but] it's not clear what she had negotiated -- treaties or agreements, or she was handling crises during this period of time? My sense is, the answer is no." Yay!

2) Hillary's campaign has finally come out hard in support of including the vote counts from the Florida and Michigan primaries that were held in February, which she only won because Obama never campaigned there. He didn't campaign because the DNC said "don't campaign there" and further that those two states' delegates were not going to be counted because the states had moved up their primaries to earlier on the calendar, and this was their penalty. So Hillary won and it was barely even reported because it wasn't supposed to matter. Well now that she sees these two states as her ticket to actually beating Obama, she is fighting hard to get them included. This, of course, will turn out very badly for the Democrats no matter what. She looks bad because she's very clearly cheating (her friend Lanny Davis was on Sean Hannity's radio show the other day offering up a really ugly rationale for why she supposedly was not cheating by attempting this). The DNC looks bad because they have to respond to her while also not alienating the Florida and Michigan voters who they intended to penalize, and who are getting increasingly irate that their millions of votes are not being counted. This is cannibalism-as-entertainment.

Next, Hillary got really desperate and started swinging hard. The media still likes her and actually researched some of the chum that she was throwing out into the water. They finally clued in yesterday that one of Obama's close associates in Chicago politics, Tony Rezko, was going into trial that very day on fraud charges. This actually led to real questions being asked of Mr. Obama, and the very first gaffes by him since the campaign began. Perhaps the media honeymoon is over? Surely the media can now admit that they have never vetted this candidate, yes?

Finally, now that Hillary has had these two big wins, she not only has stalled Obama's momentum, but she has also closed the gap in delegate count. She still trails, but she is again within the "super delegate" margin. Super Delegates (Democrat party leaders) number in the hundreds and are allowed to vote their conscience, regardless of how their state voted. They overwhelmingly support Hillary, and could hand her the nomination at the convention, but not without seriously irritating the Obamamaniacs who will see it as an unfair twist and thwarting of the will of the people. It also makes the whole Florida/Michigan controversy that much more juicy. If those two states are included, then out of about 14 million votes cast, Hillary would trail Obama by about 3,000 votes. That's it. A race that close means the two candidates will practically try to kill each other until the very end, promising chaos and drainage of Democrat bank accounts for the next several months. All this while John McCain coasts.

So I'm downright giddy this week. And it's only Wednesday.