Obama acknowledges his Muslim faith



It could be just another of his almost daily gaffes but maybe it is a Freudian slip too. A "slip of the tongue" can be revealing. Obama's 20 year attendance at a church of hate (where black Muslims were praised) is more reminiscent of Islam than of the God of Love. More commentary and background here.







Obama says he wanted to join the army but there wasn't a war on!

Tom Maguire's skeptical given that he's conspicuously failed to mention it until now, but I'll take Barry at his word simply because there's no way to prove he's lying - a point which didn't give a moment's pause to our nutroots betters in their hot pursuit of the shocking truth behind McCain's cross-in-the-dirt story a few weeks ago. (The shocking truth: Two other POWs remember Maverick talking about it in the early 70s.) I trust Sullivan will be taking a breather from his 24-hour Palin baby watch to track down the facts behind this dubious, politically self-aggrandizing personal anecdote. As for the e-mails I'm getting pointing out that he couldn't have registered for the selective service in 1979 because it wasn't reinstated until 1980, yes, that's true - he simply spaced on the date. His registration went through in September of the following year.

That's the first clip. Below that you'll find The One floating the argument that there is indeed a candidate trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq - and it ain't him. Which, in fairness, earns him an extra smidgen of respect from me just for having the sheer balls to attempt it. Even Ace, who can pop out a 5,000-thousand-word rant effortlessly, is left well-nigh speechless at the thought of Captain Withdrawal accusing someone else of fumbling the ball out of bounds on the way to the end zone. A golden moment.

Update: "Vote for Barack Obama - It is only due to bad timing he didn't get to kill livestock, cut off ears, ravage villages, blow up bodies, and behave in a fashion reminiscent of Jenjhis Khan."





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With A Straight Face And A Pure Heart

NY Times Public Apologist Clark Hoyt explains the Times' role as an earnest servant of a curious public in these parlous times, with their coverage of Sarah Palin as a launch point:

In our instant-news and celebrity- obsessed culture, Palin went from Sarah Who to conservative rock star in less than a week. In less than two months, she could be elected vice president to serve under the oldest president, at 72, ever elected to a first term, and one with a history of recurring melanoma. Intense, independent scrutiny by The Times and the rest of the news media of Palin's background, character and record was inevitable and right.

Intense and independent! This from the Public Editor of the paper that has yet to use the phrase "Annenberg Challenge" in a story noting that Barack Obama and Bill Ayers worked together on education reform while with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, disbursing roughly $160 million in a venture ultimately judged by the Annenberg Foundation itself as having "limited impact".
Why isn't this news fit to print? The Times did report on the Ayers/Obama connection when George Stepanopolous brought it up during the Philadelphia debate last April. And they intensely and independently probed the right wing group that aired an ad linking Obama and Ayers, almost reporting on the Obama/Ayers link in the process. This is what they let slip:

Mr. Ayers, now a professor of education in Chicago, was a founder of the Weather Underground, which bombed government buildings in the early 1970s. He was indicted on conspiracy charges that were thrown out for prosecutorial misconduct. He served with Mr. Obama on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, a charitable organization, and, along with his wife, the former Weather Underground member Bernardine Dohrn, hosted Mr. Obama at his home in 1995 when he was running for state office. Mr. Obama has called Mr. Ayers "'somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old."

Fox News Channel and CNN declined to run the spot amid legal questions. But the commercial, a minute long, has run at least 100 times since Saturday, heavily in East Lansing and Pittsburgh.

Saying that Mr. Obama's supporters had sent 93,000 e-mails to the Sinclair broadcasting company for carrying the advertisement, Tommy, a campaign spokesman, said, "Other stations that follow Sinclair's lead should expect a similar response from people who don't want the political discourse cheapened with these false, negative attacks." The fight may move to another front this week.

The University of Illinois at Chicago is in the process or releasing documents detailing Mr. Obama's involvement with a non-profit education project started by Mr. Ayers.

That last sentence is the newspapers entire coverage of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge controversy. As I recall, they also had one post at The Opinionator blog. And their mention that Obama worked with a group Ayers founded hardly captures the fact that Ayers worked closely with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge for several years while Barack was the chairman approving funding proposals. Obama did not merely work at a group Ayers founded - he almost surely worked closely with Ayers, and is concealing that now.

Sarah Palin is running for Vice President. Obama is running for President. Maybe it is time for an independent look at his record. Or maybe a candidate's history and experience with public school reform (and current cover-up of same) is simply not as newsworthy or relevant to the average voter as a story about a candidate's pregnant daughter.

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Roster of Hate: Guide to Barack Obama's Extremist Ties

Post below recycled whole from Doug Ross. Pay him a visit to thank him for the huge amount of work in it

These are the documented connections -- using attribution from mainstream media sources -- that should have people thinking twice before they consider voting for Barack Obama.

The Los Angeles Times ("Allies of Palestinians see a friend in Barack Obama") reports that in 2003 controversial academic Rashid Khalidi was toasted at a going away party by Obama. Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced "about meals prepared by Khalidi's wife... and conversations that were 'consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases." Who is Khalidi, now an academic at Columbia? MSNBC reported that Khalidi is a virulent opponent of the Jews and "Zionists", stating that "Israel is a 'racist' state with an 'apartheid system' and that America has been 'brainwashed' by Israel." Khalidi also served as a spokesman for the PLO. In 2000, the Khalidis held a fundraiser for Obama's unsuccessful congressional bid. The next year, a group headed by Mona Khalidi received a $40,000 grant from the Woods Fund of Chicago, when Obama served on its board of directors.

The Jewish Press ("Obama Served On Board That Funded Pro-Palestinian Group") reports that Mona Khalidi's group -- a pro-Palestinian organization called the "Arab-American Action Network" (AAAN) received a total of $75,000 from the Woods Fund during the time Obama served on its board. The AAAN "considers the fact that Israel exists a 'catastrophe' and supports initiatives for illegal aliens to obtain driver's licenses and education benefits." It promotes open borders immigration policies and favors giving illegal aliens who attend Illinois high schools (dubbed "undocumented students" by AAAN) "the opportunity to pursue higher education".

The Wall Street Journal ("Obama's Muslim-Outreach Adviser Resigns") wrote in August that Barack Obama's choice for Muslim outreach resigned after his affiliations to radical extremists were revealed. Mazen Asbahi is a frequent speaker before several groups in the U.S. that scholars have associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Egyptian group whose credo reads Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope. Mr. Asbahi also briefly served on a board with Jamal Said, the imam at a fundamentalist-controlled mosque in Illinois, who the Justice Department named an unindicted co-conspirator in a 2007 racketeering trial of several alleged Hamas fund-raisers.

The Los Angeles Times ("Allies of Palestinians see a friend in Barack Obama") reports that the Anti-Defamation League is concerned about Obama's 20-year relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose racist and anti-Israel rhetoric recently came to light. Wright's church bulletin reprinted a Times op-ed written by a leader of Hamas that advocated violence against Jews. "In the context of spending 20 years in a church where now it is clear the anti-Israel rhetoric was there, was repeated, . . . that's what makes his presence at an Arab American event... a greater concern."

The Los Angeles Times ("Allies of Palestinians see a friend in Barack Obama") reports that in 1998 Obama attended a speech by Edward Said, a leading Palestinian advocate, who called for a "campaign against settlements, against Israeli apartheid." Said wrote numerous position papers that pilloried America and Israel for its maltreatment of the Palestinian people: "For the American Zionist, therefore, Arabs are not real beings... To submit supinely to a Zionist-controlled Middle East policy... will neither bring stability at home nor equality and justice in the US."

The Atlantic ("Obama on Zionism and Hamas") stated that Hamas leader Ahmed Yousef did not aid Barack Obama's cause in May when he endorsed the senator. "We like Mr. Obama and we hope that he will win the election." Why? "He has a vision to change America." Of course, Hamas' preference for American presidents may not sit well with some. Yousef described Jimmy Carter as a "noble man" who "did an excellent job as President."

Israel National News ("Arab-American Activist Says Obama Hiding Anti-Israel Stance") states that Ali Abunimah -- a Palestinian activist who runs the website Electronic Intifada -- says he knows Obama well and met him during many pro-Palestinian meetings. Abunimah said he knew his state senator for many years and that Obama "used to attend events in the Palestinian community in Chicago all the time." At a 2004 dinner gathering, Abunimah said, Obama greeted him warmly and said privately that he needed to speak cautiously about the Middle East: "that he was sorry he wasn't talking more about the Palestinian cause, but that his primary campaign had constrained what he could say."

Investor's Business Daily ("Barack Obama - Magna Cum Saudi?"): New York's Inside City Hall recently featured an interview with Percy Sutton, a one-time candidate for mayor of New York. Sutton stated that an associate, Dr. Khalid al-Mansour, asked him to write a letter of reference for Barack Obama who was applying for admittance to Harvard Law School. Sutton said al-Mansour "is the principal adviser to one of the world's richest men. He told me about Obama." al-Mansour reportedly represented Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a nephew of Saudi King Abdullah. The question that comes to mind is: why?

ABC News reports that Minister Louis Farrakhan recently endorsed Barack Obama as president. "I like him very much. I like him, he has a fresh approach," the Nation of Islam's leader said. "And I'm fearful, because there's a structure in our government that no matter who sits in the seat of power, there are forces that one has to contend with if one is able to attract the masses of their votes... If avoiding me would help him to become president, I'd be glad to stay in the background, because of the taint that's on the minister." Said taint includes accusing whites of being devils created by an evil scientist, describing Judaism as a gutter religion and referring to the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler as "wickedly great."

The Chicago Reader ("What Makes Obama Run?") notes that Obama was a key figure in Farrakhan's Million Man March. Biography states that Obama and Al Sharpton were among the prominent leaders who participated. Jeremiah Wright, who CBS said was "for over two decades a sort of intellectual father figure" to Obama, also "helped organize the 1995 Million Man March on Washington" with Farrakhan. Wright, of course, was the controversial and divisive preacher of Trinity United Church during Obama's long association with the man and the church.

The New Republic ("The Agitator - Barack Obama's unlikely political education") noted that Wright's background is unique for a preacher. Wright is, in fact, a former Muslim and current black nationalist who instilled in Trinity a guiding principle called the "Black Value System" -- included a "Disavowal of the Pursuit of 'Middleclassness.'" Among Wright's bizarre actions: reprinting an op-ed by Mousa Abu Marzook, a leader in the terrorist group Hamas. Hamas' charter is straightforward: it calls "for the death of all Jews." Marzook was deported in 1997 when Federal Judge Kevin Duffy wrote "Abu Marzook engaged in and intended to further the aims of [a terrorist] conspiracy by his membership in and support of the Hamas organization... [and] probable cause exists that Abu Marzook knew of Hamas's plan to carry out violent, murderous attacks, that he selected the leadership and supplied the money to enable the attacks to take place, and that such attacks were, therefore, a foreseeable consequence of the conspiracy."

* * *
MSNBC ("Obama under fire for comment on Palestinians") states that Iowa Democrats were troubled after a 2007 campaign stop in which Obama stated that "nobody's suffering more than the Palestinian people." His campaign later recanted, saying the statement had been misinterpreted.

The Washington Post ("Obama Backs Away From Comment on Divided Jerusalem") reported that Obama acknowledged that the status of Jerusalem would need to be negotiated, reversing a statement made days earlier to AIPAC that the city "must remain undivided." After Palestinian leaders complained, Obama "quickly backtracked yesterday in an interview with CNN."

* * *
Jim Hoft offers the best summary I've read.

Anyone who believes that Barack Obama, who spent 20 years in a Jew-hating church, with a Jew-hating pastor, and hung around Jew haters, is going to be a friend of Israel is a fool.

Corsi rebuts Obama's 'Unfit for Publication'

'Attack piece' targeting 'The Obama Nation' reveals campaign doesn't want people to read it

"Unfit for Publication" - The Cover

The cover of the 41-page Obama rebuttal to "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality" is entitled "Unfit for Publication." The cover appears to be an imitation of the cover for "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out against John Kerry," which I co-authored in 2004. A seal on the cover proclaims, "Brought to You by: Bush/Cheney Attack Machine."

The mocking tenor of the cover characterizes the Obama rebuttal not as a piece of serious scholarly or legal analysis of "The Obama Nation," but as a political attack piece. What proof is there that "The Obama Nation" is a product of the "Bush/Cheney Smear Machine"? What proof is there that a Bush/Cheney "smear machine" even exists? Even more fundamentally, what do we mean by a "Bush/Cheney smear machine" in the first place, since the term is asserted but never defined.

A quick examination of my prior book entitled "The Late Great USA: The Coming Merger of Mexico and Canada" (Jerome R. Corsi, The Late Great USA: The Coming Merger with Mexico and Canada (Los Angeles, CA, WND Books, Published by World Ahead Media, 2007) involved a sharp criticism of the Bush/Cheney Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, or SPP. That book argued the Bush administration was leading the U.S. on a similar path to that taken in Europe over the now more than 50 years since 1957, where trade agreements led to the formation of a regional government complete with a regional currency.

By placing "Unfit for Publication" as the title of the mock-book, does the Obama rebuttal mean to suggest an Obama administration might have a censorship department in which a book critical of a President Obama might be banned from publication? Then, the bottom bar on the cover reads, "An Investigative Report on the Lies in Jerome Corsi's 'Obama Nation.'" This statement presumes as true I have lied in writing "The Obama Nation," when whether or not I have lied remains to be proved by the body of the document.

In other words, the point of writing a legitimate rebuttal would be to prove that I have lied in writing "The Obama Nation," not simply to assert so. As we shall see, asserting as true that what is not yet proved is only one of the many glaring logical errors made in the Obama rebuttal. "Unfit for Publication" is so defective on logic, argumentation and evidence we wonder if the Obama campaign ever reviewed the piece before the Obama operatives rushed it into print.

Finally, a bar from Time Magazine proclaiming "The Obama Nation" is "Trash" and "Poisonous Crap" is insulting, but not proof. Placing this bar on the mock-cover's upper right corner only emphasizes that "Unfit for Publication" is a political attack piece aimed at a book the Obama campaign would prefer no one would read.

First Page of "Unfit for Publication"

The first page of "Unfit for Publication" is titled "Setting the Record Straight on the Lies in Jerome Corsi's 'The Obama Nation.'" Again, we repeat the logical error here is to assert with out proof that there are lies in "The Obama Nation."

The political bias of this page is apparent. My name is introduced as "bigoted fringe author Jerome Corsi," an intentionally derogatory statement that is asserted without proof. Launching such abuse on critics would be beneath the dignity of most presidential political campaigns at the highest level, but hurling insults seems the modus operandi of the Obama campaign in their reaction to "The Obama Nation." The first page next asserts "claims" never made in "The Obama Nation."

"The Obamas never gave a million dollars to a Kenyan politician," the first page asserts. Yet "The Obama Nation" never made this claim. "The Obama Nation" notes a memorandum is circulating in Kenya that "Friends of Senator BO" gave approximately $1 million to the presidential campaign of Raila Odinga, but "The Obama Nation" noted the authenticity of that document is still in question.

The first page asserts "Obama has no secret plan to destroy the military." Again, "The Obama Nation" made no such claim. "The Obama Nation" claimed instead that an Obama presidency would leave the United States a militarily weakened nation.

Following a heading in bold print entitled, "The author: a discredited, fringe bigot," the Obama rebuttal mocks as a "conspiratorial view" that "He [Corsi] believes that President Bush is trying to merge the United states (sic) with Mexico and Canada." As I documented in my last book, "The Late Great USA," the SPP created 20 bureaucratic trilateral working groups dedicated to "integrating and harmonizing" a wide range of U.S. administrative laws and regulations with Mexico and Canada. Does the Obama campaign deny the existence of the SPP working groups as documented on the government's own website at www.spp.gov.?

The Obama campaign would also be well advised to consult Christopher Booker and Richard North's 2003 book entitled "The Great Deception," (Christopher Booker and Richard North, The Great Deception: The Secret History of the European Union (London and New York, Continuum, 2003) in which they argue an elite in Europe executed an agenda never fully disclosed to the European people, with the aim of creating an European Union out of a series of economic agreements beginning with the coal and steel agreement reached in 1957. The argument of North American integration has historical precedent in Europe and is not an argument that rational thinkers can dismiss without debate.

Next, the Obama rebuttal asserts, "He [Corsi] believes that there is a literally unending supply of oil beneath the ground." This is not a necessary corollary of the abiotic theory of the origin of oil which I argue in my book co-authored with Craig Smith, entitled "Black Gold Stranglehold." (Jerome R. Corsi and Craig R. Smith, Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of Oil (Nashville: WND Books, an Imprint of Cumberland House Publishing, Inc., 2005) As we demonstrated in this book, the Russian-Ukrainian theory of abiotic oil has predominated in the Russia and the Ukraine since the end of World War II. Russia is now the world's second largest producer of oil, despite U.S. geologists driven by the organic theory of the origin of oil telling the Soviet Union at the end of WWII that the country's potential for finding oil was minimal. The book predicted correctly oil would hit $100 a barrel and that new deep-earth finds of oil would be made, such as the discoveries recently made in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean off Brazil. Even if oil is made on a continuing basis by chemical processes occurring in the mantle of the earth, that alone would not necessarily imply the supply of oil is "unending."

Then, the Obama rebuttal claims, "And in perhaps the gravest sign that his views can't be trusted, he [Corsi] alleges a government cover-up of the 9/11 attacks and denies that airplanes were to blame for the towers' collapse." The Obama campaign can find nothing I have ever published to substantiate those claims. I did publish, however, an article in WorldNetDaily on Feb. 29, 2008, that examined a test conducted at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The video accompanying my article showed a F4 jet vaporizing on impact with a 700-ton concrete block. (Jerome R. Corsi, "Sept. 11 redux: Video shows jet vaporizing," WorldNetDaily, Feb. 29, 2008.) The test was conducted to demonstrate whether a proposed Japanese nuclear power plant could withstand the impact of a heavy airliner. As I noted in the article, the video of the F-4 being pulverized on impact with a hardened target provides evidence to answer 9/11 skeptics who question why so little identifiable airplane debris remained after the hijacked American Airlines Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon.

Let me state categorically here that I continue to support the conclusions of the 9/11 Commission that the cause of the 9/11 attacks were the hijackers who flew the airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I see no credible evidence that the U.S. government was involved or complicit in causing the 9/11 attacks.

Next, the front page references comments I wrote anonymously on FreeRepublic.com. I have repeatedly apologized for these comments and stated the comments did not reflect my true beliefs then or now. Yet, the Obama rebuttal reports these comments as if the campaign found them for the first time in 2008, neglecting the extensive vetting of the comments that has occurred since they were first discovered in 2004.

As noted before, "Unfit for Publication" is an attack piece that makes no claim of fairness or even accuracy in asserting their one-sided presentation of half truths. Finally, even if the arguments of "The Late Great USA" and "Black Gold Stranglehold" were false, that alone would not prove false what is written in "The Obama Nation." Logically, the argument that statements made in "The Obama Nation" are "lies" is not proven by reference to other works, including books I have written on totally unrelated topics. Nor are the "lies" proven by reference to my unrelated and now disavowed comments on FreeRepublic.com. Proving "lies" in "The Obama Nation" demands proving the statements cited by the Obama rebuttal from "The Obama Nation" itself are false, without reference to any of my other writings.

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Election `08: Coming down to Authenticity?

Bill Whittle, writing at NRO, nails it; he explains why the left is having so much trouble "getting" Palin. And why, when CNN uses the spectacularly unsympathetic son-tasing "poor fired trooper" to hurt Palin, it backfires on them. The elites don't understand how much every part of her story resonates with us in one way or another.

She is so absolutely, remarkably, spectacularly ordinary. I think the magic of Sarah Palin speaks to a belief that so many of us share: the sense that we personally know five people in our immediate circle who would make a better president than the menagerie of candidates the major parties routinely offer. Sarah Palin has erupted from this collective American Dream - the idea that, given nothing but classic American values like hard work, integrity, and tough-minded optimism you can actually do what happens in the movies: become Leader of the Free World, the President of the United States of America. (Or, well, you know, vice president.)

The thing is, Palin knows she is ordinary. She knows that her story is quite a lot of "our" stories, and she knows that we know she's authentic. There is something really healthy in all of that. Contrast it with this 1998 audio of Sen. Obama suggesting that his salvation is wrapped up in our "collective" salvation.

".my individual salvation is not going to come about without a collective salvation for the country. Unfortunately I think that recognition requires that we make sacrifices, and this country has not always been willing to make the sacrifices necessary to bring about a new day and a new age."

Obama may be taken out of context, so I don't want to overdo, but in listening to Obama, here, what I'm getting is a sense of man who is looking to satisfy something inside himself, and his satisfaction (or validation) cannot be found within, so he is looking externally - and taking action externally - to bring it about. He needs to "save" the whole country, to "save" himself.

People do this all the time on a small scale, but to want do it on a large scale - a "world-changing" scale, complete with grandiose pageantry - suggests an appetite that cannot be sated in "ordinary" and "authentic" ways. And that is a little troubling. Most Americans will tell you they don't need Barack Obama to help them with their salvation, thank you, very much; much less "the whole country."

I don't want to be unfair. This audio is ten years old. But nothing Sen. Obama is saying today - and I'm talking about his alarming "service" program that is not getting much scrutiny in the press, and his wife's warning that "Barack is going to make you work." - sounds markedly different.

Yesterday, a Obama-supporter asked me, why I responded more positively to McCain's invitation to volunteerism over Obama's. A fair question. The difference, I think, is the understanding of the words "service" and "volunteerism."

I used to volunteer at a local hospital, working with patients recovering from brain accidents, and also at a local Alzheimer's facility. I did that because I wanted to, I was not compelled to do it (except, perhaps by the Holy Spirit). Because it was truly voluntary, it was real, authentic service. When McCain said, "nothing brings greater happiness in life than to serve a cause greater than yourself," I understood what he was saying.

But the thing is, you have to want to do it. You have to be serving with a willing heart, with a "servants heart" as Palin would say, otherwise, it is not "service" to something "greater than yourself" but mere "working." And if the cause "greater than yourself" is some socialist ideal, well, history has not shown that equalizing endeavor to be a bearer of great happiness.

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(For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena . For readers in China or for when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)