Originally Posted by doc

yea they showed that video clip of him not saluting the flag last night again on the news and made mention of his middle name "hussein"

He wasn't saluting the flag because he doesn't have to in that situation.

As for the middle name, if your first name is Josef, does that automatically make you a mass murderer of Russians?

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The Black Kennedy: But does anyone know the real Barack Obama?

By PETER HITCHENS - More by this author » Last updated at 20:46pm on 2nd February 2008

..................continued.


Obama bought a new home, a big Edwardian-era detached house in fashionable Kenwood, soon after he won his Senate seat in 2004.

The former owner apparently wasn't willing to sell the house without a large chunk of land next to it, which Obama seemingly couldn't afford. The house cost $1.65 million and the land $625,000.
Rezko's wife Rita bought the vacant land. Six months later, she sold Obama a slice of it for $104,500 so that he could extend his garden.
By that time, Tony Rezko was already under federal investigation. Worse, letters have since come to light in which Obama lobbied city officials on Rezko's behalf.
The Clintons don't dare make too much of this Obama skeleton because people will remind them of their own odd dealings with property companies and commodity traders.
But one Chicago Democratic professional told me: "I cannot believe Obama got so beholden to that man just to buy a big house."
Obama now says he agrees, describing the transaction as "boneheaded". But it cannot now be undone.
It suggests very bad judgment, as do strong, persistent suggestions that Obama also accepted quite small contributions from extreme Left-wing veterans of the terrorist Weather Underground now living in Chicago.
His list of contributions shows one for $200 from a certain William Ayers. Can this possibly be the same William Ayers, now a Chicago professor, who used to plant bombs in the Seventies and has said: "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough"? His partner, Bernardine Dohrn, once "declared war" on the US government.
It wouldn't be surprising. Those (like me) who know the Left-wing codes notice things about Obama that suggest he is far more radical than he would like us to know.
His famous speech against the Iraq War was timely and brave, but few recall that it contained a dumb Marxoid conspiracy theory passage claiming the war was "an attempt to distract us" from domestic problems.
His memoirs give friendly mentions to figures such as Frantz Fanon and Malcolm X, heroes of the wild Left in the Sixties.
His mother and father met on a Russian-language course at a time when the Russian language was inextricably mixed up with communism.
And his spin-doctor David Axelrod, a fabled master of the black arts, is a New York Left-winger and child of the Left-wing movement.
Then there is the Trinity United Church of Christ, the large and prosperous tabernacle where Obama, raised partly as a Muslim, embraced Christianity.
This is no ordinary church and it is not an ordinary black church either.
Religion in America is still divided by an apartheid more rigid than anything that ever existed in South Africa. But it is a voluntary apartheid, at least in one direction, and on several visits to black American churches I have always found a moving, kind welcome - as I did at Trinity, which lies in Chicago's deep south, at the end of a train line where white passengers are a rarity.
Trinity says it is "unashamedly black and unapologetically Christian". And so it is. A male choir in smart suits sings and sways and on the night I visited, a charismatic preacher, Pastor Otis Moss III, expounded from Exodus with wit and power.
My neighbours in the upholstered pews were younger and less formally dressed than some black congregations, and spent much of the time embracing me, helping me find my place and gripping me by the hand. This is not a haunt of anti-white racialism.
But it is pretty radical.
. A large chunk of the sermon was devoted to urging black Americans not to allow themselves to be relegated to second-class citizenship.
The retiring Senior Pastor, Jeremiah Wright (who brought Obama to Christianity), is famous for preaching in African robes. He is also noted for his Church's "disavowal of the pursuit of middle-classness" which sets it apart from many black churches.
!"
Obama has been sneered at by black radicals such as the former Black Panther Bobby Rush for not being "black enough".
They whisper that he talks and walks like a white man. By embracing the "unashamedly black" Trinity church and by making much of his Kenyan roots, he fights off this attack and keeps connections in the black part of town.
But his home is far from Trinity, in Chicago's equivalent of Islington, an agreeable quarter of older houses near the university, one of the rare places where the dream of racial integration comes true.

You can see here the raw stardom, plus what is obviously a genuine niceness and a graceful writing and speaking style, that has carried this man so far.
You can also see how good it would make America, black and white, feel about itself if it chose a black man to sit in the White House, so wiping away at least some of the long shame, resentment and fear that slavery - and what followed - have caused here.
But symbolic victories don't make much difference in the real world. America is not electing a national father figure or good neighbour, but the mighty chief executive of a world power.
When Obama first became famous, the perceptive Peggy Noonan (once Ronald Reagan's speechwriter) issued a warning.
She described America's last decade as "the long freakout", during which parties chose presidential candidates because they could win, on appearance rather than reality.
The result was repeated pain. Clinton appalled half the country, George W. Bush enraged the other half.
Obama's "sudden rise and wild popularity", she said, "seem more symptom than solution".
And as one veteran of Chicago black politics said to me wistfully: "He is a smart, talented and handsome person, but I am not sure which of those matters most to the American people."
That is not what he really meant. He knew perfectly well that it was the camera's power to make Obama shimmer and glow that makes him so important.
And yet a better person might look terrible and sound worse.
How long can the great democracies survive in the face of television's ability to make some of us look like gods when we are not?
Those who now laud him will probably be flinging abuse at him within two years of his election, and heaven knows how he will be able to continue to be the good family man he is, or walk round to the Hyde Park Hair salon for a trim and a chat with Zariff.
By becoming President he will instantly cease to be what everyone wants him to be.
But by then, of course, it will be too late.

Well, do you have a better option? A John McCain that is essentially a carryover of George Bush? Or Hillary Clinton? or Ralph Nader?

I don't consider the article a put down of Obama, it is simply the result of a visit to obtain as much of a picture of a shooting-star as possible, just to shine a light. The author is a seriously aggressive independent with no respect whatsoever for our political right or left and with strong experience in USA.

He draws on the similiarity of the hopes for another shooting star, Bill Clinton, compared with the perceived realitiies which unfolded. He asks, is this yet another case of style over substance as the bait. (As it happens, personally I must admit to having been something of a fan of Bill, on the basis of what the great communicator may have achieved on the world stage.)

No, it's a pretty biased article. And I don't even like Obama.
Also, what's up with the whole thing about "Hussein"?
Has everyone forgotten that while Saddam Hussein was doing his thing, the late King Hussein of Jordan worked hard to maintain good relations between his kingdom and the West. Which is no small task.

Where does the bias go? In what direction? No-one else has been able to offer any info re. Obama. Someone bothers to take a look and shine a light and immediately we have 'put that light out!'

Why vote for someone or something you know nothing about?

We get the government we deserve.

Originally Posted by the_13th_redneck

No, it's a pretty biased article. And I don't even like Obama.
Also, what's up with the whole thing about "Hussein"?
Has everyone forgotten that while Saddam Hussein was doing his thing, the late King Hussein of Jordan worked hard to maintain good relations between his kingdom and the West. Which is no small task.

The great American game of pulling things out of context and only making news out of what you want to make news out of.

Frankly if this the best the GOP can do, make fun of Obama name and criticize which church he attends it means that they are scared absolutely stiff about him.

Well, the article i posted does not mock the name 'Hussein' or his church at all, so do not let us lump all the negatives seen on this thread together as one; the article does not have a Republican agenda, the author has credentials of disliking everyone equally!

Everybody else seems to register questions only, re Obama , and once you start comparing the 'clean record' of candidates, as has happenned already, then it becomes right that everybody must get stoned; it is not enough that two out of three should be up for the flak, but that the third should be excused because not sufficient is recorded to do anything other than claim him as the 'the cleanest' purely through lack of information.

The article should not be dismissed as election propaganda but as a quiet warning not to get carried away by the band-wagon, which, incidentally, is also carrying folk away on this side of the pond. That is the result of carefully nurtured and presented charisma.

That doesn't mean that Obama is dodgy, only the caution that he is not necessarily wonder-man.

Originally Posted by Del Boy

Well, the article i posted does not mock the name 'Hussein' or his church at all, so do not let us lump all the negatives seen on this thread together as one; the article does not have a Republican agenda, the author has credentials of disliking everyone equally!

Everybody else seems to register questions only, re Obama , and once you start comparing the 'clean record' of candidates, as has happenned already, then it becomes right that everybody must get stoned; it is not enough that two out of three should be up for the flak, but that the third should be excused because not sufficient is recorded to do anything other than claim him as the 'the cleanest' purely through lack of information.

The article should not be dismissed as election propaganda but as a quiet warning not to get carried away by the band-wagon, which, incidentally, is also carrying folk away on this side of the pond. That is the result of carefully nurtured and presented charisma.

That doesn't mean that Obama is dodgy, only the caution that he is not necessarily wonder-man.

Easy Del Boy, I wasn't refering to your Article. I was only referring to the campaign tactics I have seen in the past week. Is Obama perfect? No. For one, His healthcare plan stinks, Hillary's is actually better, and McCain is the status quo (throw more money at HMOs).

But overall, hes the best of the lot, at least in my opinion.