The Last Word on Obama's Character

I am convinced that Obama is pursuing a sort of liberal radical chic acceptance. That this half-black Harvard grad has gone all Patty Hearst on us. That he deliberately chose the most distressed blackfolks in his ambit to align himself with their desperate hopes in a paternalistic way in order to develop the kind of credibility and ‘authenticity’ he believes that he needs as a politician.

Both he and Michelle are very clueless as to what their privileges in America mean, and the fact that they keep bringing up the “He could have had a Wall Street job but instead came to work in the projects” is their story and they’re sticking to it, like missionaries in the jungle trying to convince themselves of the righteousness of their mission. They expect to be respected as long suffering souls who have made their sacrifices for the most noble of causes, and believe me they want the rest of us to sacrifice too - they’re after that tax.

Black politicians have accused Obama of cherry picking, and that is what I take to be his career. He was made by an old school first generation black pol, and took all the glory.

Yes, there is a fraction of the desperate black electorate who are in a strange psychological state and who need ‘get whitey’ to get through their day. I think Obama has taken 20 years to ‘feel their pain’ and speak their language and understand their frustration and that this is very deeply his connection to his blackness - that ultimately he is alienated from both communities he straddles and does not truly believe in either.

You know in black upper middle class circles, there are parents who grew up in the ‘hood who despair that their kids are growing soft. I’ve heard the confessions that they want to send their kids back to grandma in the South to toughen them up on grits and okra, or back to the ghetto to get ‘real’. I happen to be one of those who finds little ennobling in poverty itself, I don’t believe that the poor in spirit will inherit the earth. I’m not down with this sort of immersion program, but I recognize that there are millions of Americans who have no idea how wealth and privilege can be moral in its own right. Surely the Obamas haven’t done the hard work of meeting a payroll, what with board memberships paying their bills - they are strangers to all but academic hard work. They actually needed to see what the meritocracy of Wall Street was all about. Oh but they’re making sure that their kids don’t grow up overprivileged. They are professionally slumming.

Half-white, growing up in Hawaii, Harvard Law, light skin, non-jive talking Barry would be absolutely devastated by the label of Uncle Tom. His relationship with black demagoguery is absolutely crucial, but does he believe it? About as much as Oxfam volunteers believe in the witch doctors in Africa they feed. If Barack Obama had married Shaniqua instead of Michelle, I’d take his attraction a lot more seriously, but now I think he’s managing his obsession quite well.

Comments

[cnulan]

at the end of the day, I'm increasingly inclined to agree with M. Fisher's summary take on your Obama hateration.

The more fundamental set of holes in your increasingly leaky bucket, however, have to do with the top down nature of elite party structure and control. The fact that what passes for "analysis" hereabouts has NEVER yet considered any of the gamut of elite strategic approvals and grassroots party endorsements Obama has successfully negotiated, and the profound change that he represents "coalition-wise" when compared and contrasted with the pig-Penn coalition constructed by the Clintons and the DLC over the 90's.

Clearly you have no working concept of what Obama represents in the democratic wing of the national duopoly. Clearly, your designated candidate du jour selections have been predicated on less than rigorous criteria and all you've got to show for yourself is some rather pitiful and handwavy post hoc rationalizations.

Please don't make any further specious claims to a scientific or engineering bent....,

[cnulan]

Both parties have contrived to limit electoral participation, gerrymander constituencies and divide up the electoral spoils within the competitive political landscape of America — greatly aided by the first-past-the-post system. At stake, for both parties,
has been the problem of mobilizing maximum electoral support for policies that are not primarily conceived in the interests of the middle-class voter.

Obama has managed to upset the DLC program for republicanizing the democrat party and further marginalizing the Black voting block.

both parties have structured their economic policy so as to try to maximize support in the upper class of the population—the 25 per cent of the population that makes above $75,000 a year in family income. Without any meaningful choice on economic questions, voters have been forced to choose between the parties on cultural issues alone.

The recent withdrawal of the two parties behind the winner-takes-all ramparts of the red-state/blue-state division, GOP/DLC, leave only a dozen states genuinely competitive, and represents a further diminution of the real electorate, narrowing the already circumscribed space available for meaningful political participation.

You for your part sir, have never yet managed to republicanize any Black folks, or civilize any of the tribal GOP base to which you fervently pander.

[jdallen]

It looks to me like Obama is playing to the general population (race-wise) as best he can, while attempting to keep his huge majority in the black portion of it.

Not that different from any politician who wishes to be elected and needs more than one segment's votes. Work the numbers. That's what the campaign advisers do, and I guarantee that's what the politicians do. Or lose.

[A. Charles]

A local article on Obama, from 1995:

http://www.chicagoreader.com/obama/951208/

And while I'm typing:

Emil Jones made Barack Obama like Paul Brown made Jim Brown. And Jones uses football analogies, too:

More recently, Emil Jones, Jr., the president of the state senate and a senior figure in Illinois black politics, has heard other members of the black caucus in Springfield complain that he has been favoring Obama, giving him credit for their legislative work in order to build up his protégé’s résumé. Jones scoffed at the complaints when we talked. (“Crabs in a barrel.”) Obama, he said, was an extremely unusual politician, able to work with all sorts of people, even white conservatives. It made him the obvious leader on important bipartisan legislation. Jones didn’t deny having a role in helping Obama succeed: “You can have a dynamic running back, but if he can’t get out of the backfield he can’t show what he can do.”

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/05/31/040531fa_fact1?currentPage=4

Obama's peers in the Illinois Senate aren't guys who ran the ball 99 yards down the field and then watched a goal-line back come in and get the TD. They're the guys who weren't producing, got benched, and then watched the guy brought in to replace them become All-Pro.

[unclesmrgol]

The recent withdrawal of the two parties behind the winner-takes-all ramparts of the red-state/blue-state division, GOP/DLC, leave only a dozen states genuinely competitive, and represents a further diminution of the real electorate, narrowing the already circumscribed space available for meaningful political participation.

Huh? Who's the real electorate if it isn't us? We made the red states, and we made the blue states, and we even made the purple states. We can unmake them if they fail to serve our purposes.

The superdelegates were made by the Democrats to fix a problem, and they may well be taken away for causing another problem, or maybe (if Cobb is right) the superdelegates will fix the problem they were made to fix. But it's the Democrats' choice as a party to do things like disenfranchise the state delegations from Florida and Michigan, or to make superdelegates. It's their choice whether or not to undo whatever it's in their power to undo.

With respect to Obama, he's doing the best he can in letting proxies (like Michelle or Rev. Wright or Susan Rice) fight in the areas he can't go without alienating some segment of his support. Sometimes if you stand too close, you get spattered a bit with the goo; you just gotta wipe it off and hope nobody noticed. That's Barack -- covered with goo and wiping frantically.

I have a feeling that Michelle chose the church, because it matches her basic philosophy, and Barack is now paying the price for not paying attention. I guess there was no Sister Mary Elephant to wake him up during the sermons.

One has to love democracy at work, even if the lowest common denominator (or demonimaker) sometimes floats to the top.

Cobb, my children are "alienated" from both communities where Dad and Mom came from. They only partially belong to either, and they realize that, even though the Government wants them despirately to declare allegience. Remember the 2000 census? My son (who was eleven at the time) got a form to fill out. They wanted to know his ethnic identity (as in "caucasian/white, hispanic, black/african american, asian/apa, other). And the wording was specific -- Rocky had to state his identity himself. So I called Rocky in and gave him the question. He looked at me after hearing the choices explained and said "other". But "other" had a line after it indicating you had to tell the Bureau of the Census what "other" meant. So I said, "they want to know what you mean when you say 'other'" "Space Alien" "Rocky, this is the United States Government you are talking to. Do you really want to put down 'Space Alien' on an official form?" "Yes. That's what I am. A Space Alien." So I wrote in "Space Alien" on the form. I think that response cost the Government several hundred dollars, because first a low level census worker showed up and asked to interview Rocky directly. She takes him off to a corner and gets the same answer he'd put on the form. A few days later, her supervisor showed up and asked to see Rocky. He listened to Rocky, wrote something down on a notepad, and drove off. I suspect he made Rocky into something other than a "Space Alien", a category the United States Government currently claims does not exist. So Barack, who grew up white but who has a black heritage, discovered that in our world he can't be a "Space Alien". He needed to peg himself to get elected, and now he's stuck in the hole.

[Michael Fisher]

"half-black", "half-white", "missionaries in the jungle", "witch doctors in Africa", "Shaniqua instead of Michelle" (and what is your wife's name?), "Barry".

You've just crossed the border-line from the plain obtuse into the deeply offensive white racist and most disgusting race-bating I have seen yet.

Michael David Cobb Bowen, with your ad-hominem attacks you're showing yourself to be a very small person.

[Michael Fisher]

unclesmrgol...

"So Barack, who grew up white but who has a black heritage,"

How the hell does a non-white person grow up "white"? This is absolutely the stupidest, most ignorant, statement I have read yet.

unclesmrgol, as far as white folks are concerned, you don't even make the "moron" cut.

[Blue Moon]

Michael Fisher: How the hell does a non-white person grow up "white"?

I wish someone would explain this to me as well, since I have had dozens of otherwise intelligent black people accuse me of this all of the time.

[Cobb]

Fish, this is the second time in as many days as you've done the exact thing you accuse me of in the same post. I'm cracking up. Anyway, Obama is what he is and he is objectively all about getting radical street cred. I'd gladly spin up the wayback machine to question about whether he was 'black enough' - it's not as if it was never an issue. So he went to the Afrocentric church. It's not a big surprise. Lots of rich bourgie African Americans make loud noises and are deathly afraid of being called sellouts and so they pander to the most ghettofied blacks they can find.

[Cobb]

Nulan,
The only thing power respects is power, and I've dealt with my doubts about blackifying the GOP. I set very modest goals for that. I've always only suggested that the distance between black conservatism and the GOP was short, and I only ever expected to get about 15%, as class affinities inevitably trump racial affinities. Sooner or later the Old School will have its appropriate power. I'm not impatient - we've got nothing to lose.

Forget the GOP for a moment. I don't have any big hangups with blacks in the upper classes who defy, for class reason, blacks in the lower classes. I don't much care what Cosby's politics are vis a vis party partisanship, I recognize his contempt for what it is. The reason I am content to highlight this conflict is because I am convinced without a doubt that black racial solidarity uber alles is an error of tremendous consequence.

As for Obama's rhetorical patronage of the black underclass, I find that to be a rather unforgivable crime, which is typical of white liberals and the sorts that show up at King Day parades. Like I said, he's Barbara Boxer in a black man suit.

As for what that represents in the duopoly - I haven't really focused on that, so you're halfway right there. I think he's a master coalition builder and he's taking advantage (as Ferraro suggests) of his multicultural skills. After all, he's done Harvard and he's done South Side. He can unite the Ned Lamont / Howard Dean barking moonbat left, and proletariat, the snide, hiphop, goth & wigger youth, the limousine liberals, the reactionary anything but GOP independents, the We Are The World Sundance film festival crowd, the intellectual left, the black bourgie vote and all the urban voters everywhere who know Will I Am from Will Smith. That's enough to knock Hillary out the box. Now with Richardson! (tm), who would make a sterling Veep.

But if you ask me how exactly he fits in with the Afrocentrics & Wright, (which is the original context of this post - it's a comment pulled directly from Patterico in which I am explaining the apparent contradiction between Obama's affiliation with Wright & Trinity and his simultaneous dismissing of Wright's demogoguery), I stand by this character assessment. I don't think Obama is a hater or a racist, I think he'll channel Malcolm, JFK or Lincoln to suit his purposes. What does he really believe? He really believes in his momentum and his coalition.

[cnulan]

This is how Black partisanship looks to someone with no interpersonal communion with Black folks outside their immediate family.

Cobb writes and thinks like a suburban middle-class white male simply because he lives exactly like one.

[A. Charles]

So he went to the Afrocentric church. It's not a big surprise. Lots of rich bourgie African Americans make loud noises and are deathly afraid of being called sellouts and so they pander to the most ghettofied blacks they can find.

Trinity is not ghettofied; a politician does not go there to pander to ghetto folks. When he goes where the doctors and judges and CPAs go, it is not to get "radical" street cred, it is to get street cred from the folks who can give your future campaigns meaningful support in a town where you're unlikely to get it in the usual way (being born into it or waiting your turn for twenty or thirty years to inherit it.)

[Cobb]

That's upper middle class beach community to you Nulan. I thought you said there was nothing to 'acting white'. Fix that.

--
Sorry AC, I don't mean to suggest that Trinity is ghettofied, but that like Oxfam, they have tied their moral wagon to the fate of the ghettofied. There seems to me no other reason for them to have an Afrocentric distinction which supports the kind of rhetoric one would expect to hear from Khalid Muhammad. Surely not every black political church in Chicago with doctors, judges and CPAs is on the exact same track, or is Trinity more like First AME in LA, where you basically don't have a choice. It is *the* pre-eminent black political church. After a moment's thought, I'd guess the latter.

[cnulan]

The reason I am content to highlight this conflict is because I am convinced without a doubt that black racial solidarity uber alles is an error of tremendous consequence.

making up straw men..,

The only thing power respects is power

clearly, but you don't evince the humility or perspecacity to exhibit solidarity with the most successful Black male member of the class to which you aspire.

it may be time for you to chill and instead of making pajama's media worthy noise, take some time to think practically, analytically, and deeply for a change, cause what you've been saying about politics in general and Obama in particular has your credibility running somewhere between LaShawn Barber and a plugged nickel.

But if you ask me how exactly he fits in with the Afrocentrics & Wright, (which is the original context of this post - it's a comment pulled directly from Patterico in which I am explaining the apparent contradiction between Obama's affiliation with Wright & Trinity and his simultaneous dismissing of Wright's demogoguery), I stand by this character assessment.

As a nominally Black man in America - you DO realize that testifying to taking "Patterico's" word for Obama's character - over what should be your own infinitely greater subject matter expertise - has just made you out as BooBoo the Fool.

stop playing yourself Cobb....,

[cnulan]

I thought you said there was nothing to 'acting white'. Fix that.

There isn't.

What you've been expressing is complete ignorance.

Fix That!

[Cobb]

Go read the thread and come back when you have a clue.

Obama is not a success of the sort I'm aiming towards. He hasn't shown me his ability to succeed in any area of economic import. I'm an order of magnitude more impressed with Lee Archer. Obama doesn't even come close.

What you fail to consider is that Obama is at bottom a politician, and he doesn't appear to be one who has the interest or capability of defending the national interest as befitting this moment in history either from an economic or geopolitical perspective.

[cnulan]

Phuk Christopher Hitchens!

(I just now peeped the link, I'm not even thinking about clicking it and reading a gottdayyum thing that that asshat atheist sack of shit has to say about anything!)

Back to you, Mr. Parrot-a-Pale-Pundit.

I haven't failed to consider anything.

As you're well aware, I've clearly and stridently written my dissent to G-Dub's catastrophically failed adventurism - since before it erupted to the Nation's neverending disgrace and the world's neverending enmity and chagrin.

The ONLY credible defense of the "national" interest at this juncture is of a sweep and scale that no mainstream politician dares even begin attempting to articulate. You CLEARLY need to go and try to borrow a clue concerning just how jacked up things are at the present moment.

The ONLY kind of politician with any chance of being able to stabilize the nation against the rising tides of internal and external resentment is someone with Obama's exceptional natural gifts. Both Clinton and McCain are abject mediocrities - in general - by every conceivable objective measure. (but hell, you originally endorsed Thompson, so WTF would you know about it anyway? Seriously?)

Obama - OTOH - is exactly as exceptional as he's been widely made out to be. At the present moment, and given the way in which leaders are selected/elected - only an Obama is capable of maintaining any degree of stability in the face of what's pending.

Now maybe if you didn't get all your opinions third-hand and filtered through the solipsistic lens of shrill ethno-nationalist white male suburbanites, you'd have the eyes to see and the ears to hear. As it is, Cobb old bean, you really, really, need to go axe somebody...,

[Michael Fisher]

Cobb...

"Fish, this is the second time in as many days..."

Michael what I find objectionable is your liberal use of white racist code language to tear Obama down.

[Cobb]

Fish,
I don't believe there is a such thing as white racist code language, and I don't believe there is a such thing as black racist code language. I am telling both sides to grow some balls and stop whining about racially offensive speech while it's still a free country. Either you are a racist or you're not. If you are, you're either dangerous or not. People at Patterico's and Belmont have been whining about Wright being a dangerous racist. I said he's a bloviating scold like Don Imus. And just like most black people pay no attention to Imus' politics and influence, most white people don't pay attention to black liberation theology and its influence. Both side take soundbites way out of proportion and all they can do is point fingers and scream hatemonger. Pathetic.

Furthermore I say Wright's racism, even if you grant that for the sake of argument, doesn't rub off on Obama, and that Obama is no more a black racist 'who doesn't care about white people' than Bush is a white racist 'who doesn't care about black people'. All this 'coded language' and 'secret racism' is just paranoia and projection. Everybody is playing the victim here and I'm sick of it.

[Michael Fisher]

Mr. Geriatric: "Already tight household budgets are getting tighter". Incredible grasp of macro-economics.

ROTFLMAS

[Michael Fisher]

Cobb...

"I don't believe there is a such thing as white racist code language..."

Like I said. Narnia.

As to Rev. Wright. What exactly that he said was factually incorrect?

[Cobb]

CN,

Please, there is no black dynamic in the universe, much less the planet, written in English that I am incapable of decoding, and I have yet to read, divine, vulcan-mind meld or otherwise use any human faculty to determine that Obama is anything more than a mere political hero to any of his constituents, black, white, moderate, liberal or otherwise. He's a politician. One who is good enough, intelligent enough, crafty enough, charismatic enough and in all communicative ways the superior candidate. But he's going to transform America like Francis Fukyama is going to transform the Middle East, in theory only.

Fully three quarters of the electorate is unconvinced. Half are Republican the other half are in Hillary's pocket. What part of that math do you not comprehend? Obama is not magic, and you need to step out of that Vegas audience and breathe the fresh reality of enlightened self-interest, not to mention the belly of this non-revolutionary beast. Obama's promise of instant gratification is empty, and if anyone with the courage of their convictions is prepared to start the Audacity Party, feel free. Who knows, Ross Perot may yet have a few million pieces of advice and dollars for you. In the meantime, Obama needs to concentrate on America's Ex Wife and her army of flying monkeys, and figure out how to turn his momentum and rhetoric into real power in the Democrat party. Because right about now he's headed the way of Howard Dean, if that.

[Cobb]

I don't care about Wright. He's irrelevant now.

[cnulan]

activat 8000 horsepower strawblower;

He's a politician. One who is good enough, intelligent enough, crafty enough, charismatic enough and in all communicative ways the superior candidate. But he's going to transform America like Francis Fukyama is going to transform the Middle East, in theory only.

Who said he was going to "transform" anything. I said he was the only candidate with the wherewithal to have a fighting chance of keeping America from flying apart at the seams from the turbocharged stupidity and incompetence inflicted on it for the past 8 years.

[cnulan]

Because right about now he's headed the way of Howard Dean, if that.

puff, puff, pass, homey...., puff, puff, pass.

[Michael Fisher]

Cobb...

"I don't care about Wright. He's irrelevant now."

Yeah, now when it comes to dealing with the facts...

[Pat J]

Obama has nailed the black vote just as the jury in the OJ trial voted for acquittal because he is one of their own. The media, and many of the liberal blogs are as much in awe of him as the Repugs who revere Reagan. They don't really care what he represents, what consists of his experience, what ideology he actually carries, or whether he is strong enough to be president. Winning a Senate seat against Alan Keyes is not much to brag about and the bashing of a female from his staff and supporters is acceptable. It has only served to alienate much of the electorate who supports Hillary, the same group he will need in November if he is to defeat McBush. This is not a good sign and the dem leadership is failing us miserably.

[Pat J]

Obama has nailed the black vote just as the jury in the OJ trial voted for acquittal because he is one of their own. The media, and many of the liberal blogs are as much in awe of him as the Repugs who revere Reagan. They don't really care what he represents, what consists of his experience, what ideology he actually carries, or whether he is strong enough to be president. Winning a Senate seat against Alan Keyes is not much to brag about and the bashing of a female from his staff and supporters is acceptable. It has only served to alienate much of the electorate who supports Hillary, the same group he will need in November if he is to defeat McBush. This is not a good sign and the dem leadership is failing us miserably.

[A. Charles]

Yep, Obama is just as much one of the black community as that other Illinois Senator and noted Democratic primary vote-getter Carol Mosely Braun, who, just four years ago, parlayed all those racial votes to the same heights that Obama is reaching now.

Didn't she?

Oh, and while it's true that beating Alan Keyes isn't much to brag about, beating Dan Hynes in a Democratic primary sure is.

[Gringo]

Michael Fisher:
How the hell does a non-white person grow up "white"? This is absolutely the stupidest, most ignorant, statement I have read yet

How the hell does a half-white or non-white person grow up "white"? By being raised by a white mother and grandparents.
Obama definitely has issues: the Man Without a Country, the man who has never belonged, who has fit in chameleon-like to whatever environment he finds himself. Given the many divisions in his childhood, this is perhaps inevitable. Given what I have observed of parents of one race raising a child of another or mixed race, Obama has turned out remarkably well.
I know of two cases of interracial adoptions from my childhood, where white professionals adopted an Asian child in one case, and a black child in the other case. There was plenty of love from the parents, but the reality was that having one racial identity when the parents had another was a difficult matter, and the children suffered in later life for not having been prepared for how people outside the family might treat them.
The Asian child fit in quite well in a prosperous suburb. When the family moved to California for a year, peers informed her that Asians and whites were expected to socialize with their own race. This created problems for the adopted Asian child, who heretofore had never any experience with being categorized as an Asian. She ended up years later killing herself. The black child adopted by white professionals, living in a 99+% white environment, identified with his white parents, and later had difficulty in being viewed as a black. A black friend from childhood informed me that when visiting the black child adopted by white parents, who lived in a different town, that the black adoptee had the attitude: what are you doing here? The black child adopted by white professionals ended up in prison.
IOW, while parents or grandparents can offer love and care in raising a child of another or mixed race, the child may face problems in being treated differently outside the family circle due to the child’s race. Caretakers need to take this into account, and educate the child accordingly.
Obama’s living overseas, while it was definitely alienating for him, giving him the feeling that he did not belong anywhere, prepared him for life in the US, where he would have to cross boundaries. Being treated as an American and also as a mixed race when in Indonesia prepared him for the way that American society might treat him differently from the way his white mother and grandparents treated him. While I would not vote for Obama, given my Ex-Liberal political beliefs, he has shown remarkable resiliency in coping with a wide variety of issues in his childhood. His mother and his grandparents deserve high praise for how well Barak Obama has turned out. But I still will not vote for him.

[Scott]

As you're well aware, I've clearly and stridently written my dissent to G-Dub's catastrophically failed adventurism - since before it erupted to the Nation's neverending disgrace and the world's neverending enmity and chagrin.

I get the impression that every word of that sentence could have been a link.

What exactly that he said was factually incorrect?

That the US government invented AIDS? Or did I hear that incorrectly?

[Beth]

in a paternalistic way

Bingo. The Democratic Party/Liberalism in a nutshell. Because they know what's best for the "little people!" No thanks.

The ONLY kind of politician with any chance of being able to stabilize the nation against the rising tides of internal and external resentment is someone with Obama's exceptional natural gifts

Nulan, I'm sorry, but that is the biggest fallacy I've seen yet. And to call McCain "mediocre" is so patently false it's frankly absurd. You, sir, are drunk on the Kool-Aid. I don't expect anyone to change your mind and make you reject liberalism or Obama, but get real. (Similarly, I doubt you and Fisher are going to change Cobb's or anyone else's minds by employing argumentum ad hominem.)

Finally, with the Left's abject dishonesty in attacking McCain as "mediocre" or "McSame" or any of the other silly lies, I'd say Obama is not the solution to "internal resentment." The only real solution is for people to accept differences of opinion without demonizing the opposition. Is it so difficult to reject McCain's--or Cobb's--politics, but still respect the man? This is the failure of the Left, and Barack Obama is not magic, able to create sunshine and rainbows for "internal and external resentments." That's just fantasy. And I assure you, if Barack Obama is elected, the right isn't going to suddenly abandon conservative thought and go along with everything he wants just because he's an interesting speaker or because he's The First Black President. He's still a liberal.

[cnulan]

The AIDS Conspiracy Handbook gives some sense of why folks believe HIV/AIDS was a manmade biological warfare agent, without reference to the insidious historical experimentation on Black folks that sets the stage for significant mistrust.

But outside of that, there is the peculiar fact that biological warfare research has been underway for decades. Numerous weaponizable pathogens have been produced - and - the government has a peculiarly namby pamby way of addressing itself to this elite realm of institutionalized evil. F'zample, the Amerithrax Investigation allegedly underway now for 7 years has produced no results. How many people in the world, in the U.S. have been involved in biological warfare research? In objective terms, this is NOT a hard case to close.

Inability to close a case with fewer than 100 suspects worldwide - suggests something very peculiar about how federal law enforcement works with regard to elite levels of "research" and "development". It suggests that prime suspects have a very great deal of leverage with respect to the treatment accorded "ordinary" citizens under the law.

Long and short - there are a lot more reasons to believe that HIV/AIDS is a manmade pandemic than to believe that it's a fluke. Rev. Wright can't prove it any more than the FBI can prove that apartheid south african trained biological warfare expert Steven Hatfill was the American anthrax terrorist.

[cnulan]

Beth, why you still trying to peddle that turkey on wonder bread slathered up in mayonnaise?

[Dick Stanley]

"Long and short - there are a lot more reasons to believe that HIV/AIDS is a manmade pandemic than to believe that it's a fluke."

That really is some cockamamie bull, but at least you couch in reasonable-sounding terms. When Rev. God damn American says it, he doesn't pull any punches. It WAS invented by the government in order to kill black people.

That it happened to wipe out a lot of white gays first, I suppose, was just a bennie.

What he (and I suppose you, as well) don't want to recognize is that you've got a lot of black gays out there who are carrying the virus and who go both ways.

[Beth]

Beth, why you still trying to peddle that turkey on wonder bread slathered up in mayonnaise?

Okay, that was funny. LOL. ;-P

[cnulan]

What we know for sure Dick, is that Black folks haven't been exploring the furthest reaches of human evil..., so if it sounds cockamamie to you to suspect the worst from folks who have historically exhibited the worst - well - maybe you're just a not-see?

What he (and I suppose you, as well) don't want to recognize is that you've got a lot of black gays out there who are carrying the virus and who go both ways.

You didn't ask me what I do or don't recognize, did you? In addition to a high-level of promiscuity, let's not forget the uniquely high incarceration rates that contribute mightily to the amplification of unsafe practices and a culture of promiscuity.

[as]

"Furthermore I say Wright's racism, even if you grant that for the sake of argument, doesn't rub off on Obama..."

How is Wright racist? Which part of the snippet is racist? "God Damn America" ??? "The Government created AIDS to kill Black People" ??? Racist?

I don't get it. Unless you equate "America" or "Government" with "white." Those statements are not racist.

Anti American or unpatriotic... perhaps. But even in context "God damn America for its treatment of Black people..." isn't unpatriotic either. Unless your patriotism includes slavery and Jim Crow.

[Cobb]

You have to ask people who say he is, how they say he is racist. I say he's using racially offensive speech, which he clearly is. For me that qualifies as 'third degree racism'. It's stereotypical, hostile, rude, annoying and false and conscientious people should steer clear of it, but it never killed anybody. It's not a crime, but it's a threat to civility. If people don't take third degree racism seriously, I don't fault them.

[cnulan]

The response you get to that query, as your recent experience at Patterico has shown, is the specious logical inversion which unilaterally equates racism to any description by a non-white observer of white ethnonationalist behaviour.

The sad truth here is that this is the primary conservative perversion of pre-Poor People's Movement MLK. It is the individualist mythos, converted into an erroneous litmus test by which racism is not measured in terms of group values, institutional practices and the allegiance to those institutions and practices on the part of whole cultures, but as a matter of individual attitudes.

Anyone pointing as Rev. Wright did to historical, cultural and institutional realities is erroneously called a racist purveyor of “hate". Pretty artful this radical exploitation of logic and language to deform values.

But as Malcolm X said, “For the white man to ask the black man if he hates him is just like the rapist asking the raped, or the wolf asking the sheep, ‘Do you hate me?’ The white man is in no moral position to accuse anyone else of hate!”

[Blue Moon]

A. Charles said:
Oh, and while it's true that beating Alan Keyes isn't much to brag about, beating Dan Hynes in a Democratic primary sure is.

Not to pile on, well... maybe I will. Becoming a carpetbagger and beating Rick Lazio ain't nothing to brag about either. Married the biggest p-hound ever elected president and parlaying sympathy and guilt into a presidential run on the other hand...

[Ron]

You're dead on here. Dead on. I can see why folks don't like it, but...I've echoed similar points for a while now.

[section9]

Set aside Obama's peculiar appeal to white liberal guilt; he has run two masterful campaigns.

His good fortune is that he has run two masterful campaigns against bad candidates. First, the Illinois senate race against Alan Keyes was something of a joke. Now in the Republican Party, Alan Keyes is worshipped by Movement Conservatives who should know better, but don't. Alan Keyes was the kind of guy who liked to hear himself talk, and he was the worst kind of candidate to run against Obama. Or anyone.

It said something about the Illinois Republican Party that they dragooned this carpetbagger to run against Barack.

If they held an election for Mayor of Hiroshima, Alan Keyes would have lost to Paul Tibbets.

Beating up on Alan Keyes is not exactly akin to beating Darius at the Granicus.

Then to Hillary. Obama has built a fundraising machine that is second to none, and allows for repeat business because it is based on small donations that remain below the cap. Hillary foolishly maxed herself out on her large donors so she can't go back to them. There is in Obama's campaign a huge flaw.

Most of Obama's vote total spread comes out of Illinois. Most of Obama's victories are from states that McCain will win. Hillary's victories in Big Blue states have been large spreads-she's holding on to the Working Class, which tells me that Obama will have trouble against McCain in the fall with working class voters. The Clintons know this-and you'll see this play out in Pennsylvania. She's not getting out of the race simply because she knows that working class white voters are suspicious of upper class elitists black candidates-which is what Barack and Michelle have become.

Do not understate the class element here-it will work in JMC's favor in the fall, especially after he trumps the race angle with an inside straight and picks Rice as his VP, but that's another issue.

You cannot, cannot get away from class in the Democratic race. Barack and Michelle are elitists. My father-in law is a dyed-in the wool Yellow Dog Democrat, as D as I am an "R". Yet we can have a civil conversation about politics. He was a firm Edwards man and couldn't abide Barack or Hillary because neither of those two were actually addressing the concerns of the working class the way Edwards was. Barack's great failing is that he is elitist.

Cobb's point is telling: Michelle's name is not Shaniqua. Black voters will probably pay that no mind as they look up to their first candidate with a real shot at 1600 PA. However, the class thing will make itself felt in ways that we don't see yet, and I suspect that McCain will be able to connect in ways that are real to voters that Barack won't. Eventually, the JFK act starts to wear thin. That's what Long Campaigns do.

Lastly, and this is the most telling point about Democrats, Barack may have trouble garnering about 15% to 20% of their voters in the fall for a simple but sad reason-they haven't left the Klavern yet. Ray Malone was one of the more experienced Republican operatives in Ohio politics, and one of the rules he found out from long experience was that about 15% (at least) of white Democrats would never, EVER, pull the lever for a black man.

Period.

Even if their Kleagle told them it was okay.

This is the dirtly little secret that White Liberal Democrats try to live down and don't dare tell their Black Liberal Democratic brethren. The MSM politely calls this "the Bradley Effect", but it's out and out racism, pure and simple, and it will kill Obama in the fall. The Clintons know this, and that is what they have been telling the Supers. The Supers know this, too.

For all the rhetoric about racism that liberals direct against the Republican Party, the legacy of the Empire of Jim Crow that the Democratic Party ran will be the undoing of Barack. He will either lose a critical percentage of white voters who will stay home, not pull the lever for him, or vote in the downticket races.

Barack Obama will find out that everything, and I mean everything that his white liberal friends have been saying about the loyalty of rank and file Democratic voters to him was a lie. If he's as smart a politician as I think he is, he will have understood that his white liberal friend were lying to him from the getgo.

[Hathor]

"Light Skin" Isn't that third degree colorism?

[Hathor]

Or is this post just first degree Green?

[Cobb]

'light skinned' is a factual observation.

[A. Charles]

When I first noticed the mention that Obama's name was "Michelle" and not "Shaniqua," I thought it was a semi-comic reference that nobody would actually be attaching any significance to. Since folks seem to be making something of it, though, I feel the need to point out what is obvious, at least to somebody of my personal demographic.

Michelle Obama was born in 1964, not 1984. There weren't no Shaniquas back then. Michelle was a common, standard-issue black girl name for working class south siders, just like Denise and Debra, Valerie and Pam, Donna and Angela. Wherever she may be or think she is right now, she is not to the manor born, and there's nothing in the circumstances of her birth or upbringing that is elitist.

[Hathor]

Cobb,
We can see, since we were reading this blog.