Obama’s Faster Pastor Disaster

Mark Steyn, as per normal, hits one out of the park with his writeup of Obama and the not so. Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Obama is all about backing away from this racist hate filled clown, now that his statements have been brought out.

But should we point out that there are a number of others who mouth similar hateful nonsense about America that Obama has been associating with for years… including his wife? Forgive me, gang, but I find such denials after being caught, do not ring true.

As to this supposed “pastor”, I’ll tell you this; It never ceases to amaze, the number of things that get attached to the name of my Savior, that by my studies, he would have had nothing to do with. In my view, Wright is just another huckster operating under the name of Jesus.  I suspect when they get together in a few years time …and they will, albeit briefly… the Lord will have a few things to say to him, that neither will take any joy from.  To put some context around this, consider that the only people Jesus ever really spoke up against in the 33 years he was on this earth in human form, was religious leaders who misled their flocks.  To tie this back to Obama, consider that Obama took Wright as his spiritual and moral leader.

Given the lack of morality displayed by this huckster, what kind of moral center might we find in Obama, his student?

Maybe we should ask Tony Rezko. He could give us a clue, I bet.

Yeah, Billy, you’re correct in that this is nothing new. Such is normalcy, I suppose for working on such projects. Construction, as you know from first hand experience can be, and is, dangerous.

But you know… there’s something else, here too, that troubles me; The neighbors had been complaining since the plans were announced for the project. Before the first construction worker showed up. They didn’t want the building there. The early stories on this make that overtone quite clear.

How much of the complaining I see going on about the construction project being not to code, is the neighbors doing what they can by way of the power of an over-intrusive government, to stop the project from ever being built? We keep hearing words from the neighbors which strike me as quite similar to the noises being made by Hugo Chavez… “Greed”, etc.

Oh, please. How seriously am I to take this nonsense?

As an example…Supposedly, the day before the thing fell over, someone called to complain that the crane itself wasn’t fastened down correctly. Yet the resulting inspection showed no problem.

Photo is from Toronto’s Globe and Mail, who reports:

City officials said they had issued 13 violations to the site in the last 27 months, a normal amount for a project of that size. Inspectors examined the crane Friday and found nothing wrong with it.

Calls like that were happening all the time, and were pretty much always found to have no basis in fact.  We will doubtless see charges that the inspectors were paid off, which is how they passed the inspections. Sorry, but abesent proof, I don’t buy into that idea, particularly given we’re not seeing a number of incidents that would be consistent with such shoddy inspection work. It doesn’t mesh.

James Joyner:

Thomas Ricks reports that Matt Matthews, a historian at the Army’s Combat Studies Institute, has written a new report concluding that “five years of fighting insurgents in Iraq may also have dulled U.S. soldiers’ skills at more conventional combat.”

The study, apparently, isn’t a case study of the U.S. military but rather the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war and Israel’s woeful performance.

The fight at Wadi Saluki, for example, revealed the failure of tank commanders and crewmen to use their smokescreen systems, the lack of indirect fire skills, and the total absence of combined arms proficiency. The IDF lost many of these perishable skills during its long years of COIN [counterinsurgency] operations against the Palestinians.

[…]

While the U.S. Army continues to perform irregular warfare operations throughout the world, it must not lose its ability to execute major combat operations.

Well, a couple points:

First, I’m not convinced there is what we are pleased to call a ‘conventional war’ on our horizon. There’s nobody at this stage with the military strength to wage such a war against us, who actually would do so. Those with enough strength to do so, would undoubtedly use Nuclear weapons, instead. China leaps to mind.  Those without the strength to do so… say, the Islamist Extremists, for example, would use the kind of insurgency we’re seeing now.

Seondly, I submit that part of the reason those traditional skills have atrophied is because so much of our training, anymore centers not on fighting skills but on keeping the military trained as a ‘meals on wheels’, and on being subordinate to the so called United Nations.

That was considered a good trade, back in the day, because those directing such operations always assumed that with such training and such actions in place, we’d never have to go to war with one another again. And no, those words are not idly chosen.

Barack Obama in thirty seconds, video:

[wp_youtube]AKslEIBCjqI[/wp_youtube]

Hat tip: John Hawkins, Right Wing News.

Barrack Obama is increasingly exposing himself as someone who has serious problems with the truth:

The Chicago Sun-Times today:In an extensive 80-minute interview with the Sun-Times,White House hopeful Barack Obama laid out just how close he and indicted Chicago businessman Tony Rezko grew personally and financially.

Rezko could have donated as much as $250,000 to Obama’s campaigns over the years — much more than the $60,000 to $70,000 Obama’s campaign initially estimated, Obama said.

“Rezko was not my largest fund-raiser but a significant fund-raiser” on his campaign for U.S. Senate, Obama.Obama estimated a total of $170,000 was raised by Rezko, he said. Could it be more than $170,000, Obama was asked. When pushed, he said it could be as high as $250,000.

“It’s hard for me to know precisely,” Obama said. “I may not know who are friends of his.”

Sounds almost Clintonesque, doesn’t it? If this Rezko thing were the only lie that had been exposed of late, I suppose Obama would not be facing the problems he is, currently. But the fact is, the list of Obamalies(TM) being exposed gets longer by the day. Like what you see, America?

Bruce says:

Spc. Brown became only the second woman in the War on Terror to receive the Silver Star and the first woman in Afghanistan. Spc. Brown, a 19 year old medic with 4th Squadron of the 73rd Cavalry Regiment, was there for them that day in Afghanistan when her comrades need her most.

Read the whole story, here.

Project Hero, is a worthy attempt on McQ‘s part to remind us that we have heroes among us. Further, that these need to be honored as such. We at BitsBlog are proud to lend our voice to such a project.

Barrack Obama, and a lot of the leftards like to lay the claim that

“There was no such thing as al-Qaida in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade Iraq. … They took their eye off the people who were responsible for 9/11 and that would be al-Qaida in Afghanistan, that is stronger now than at any time since 2001.”

So along comes some Intel by way of a Stephen Hayes tome in the Weekly Standard:

Throughout the early and mid-1990s, Saddam Hussein actively supported an influential terrorist group headed by the man who is now al Qaeda’s second-in-command, according to an exhaustive study issued last week by the Pentagon. “Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda’s stated goals and objectives.” According to the Pentagon study, Egyptian Islamic Jihad was one of many jihadist groups that Iraq’s former dictator funded, trained, equipped, and armed.The study was commissioned by the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia, and produced by analysts at the Institute for Defense Analyses, a federally funded military think tank. It is entitled “Iraqi Perspectives Project: Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents.” The study is based on a review of some 600,000 documents captured in postwar Iraq. Those “documents” include letters, memos, computer files, audiotapes, and videotapes produced by Saddam Hussein’s regime, especially his intelligence services. The analysis section of the study covers 59 pages. The appendices, which include copies of some of the captured documents and translations, put the entire study at approximately 1,600 pages.

An abstract that describes the study reads, in part:

Because Saddam’s security organizations and Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network operated with similar aims (at least in the short term), considerable overlap was inevitable when monitoring, contacting, financing, and training the same outside groups. This created both the appearance of and, in some way, a ‘de facto’ link between the organizations. At times, these organizations would work together in pursuit of shared goals but still maintain their autonomy and independence because of innate caution and mutual distrust. Though the execution of Iraqi terror plots was not always successful, evidence shows that Saddam’s use of terrorist tactics and his support for terrorist groups remained strong up until the collapse of the regime.

Among the study’s other notable findings:

* In 1993, as Osama bin Laden’s fighters battled Americans in Somalia, Saddam Hussein personally ordered the formation of an Iraqi terrorist group to join the battle there.

* For more than two decades, the Iraqi regime trained non-Iraqi jihadists in training camps throughout Iraq.

There’s far more of course… a rather lengthy article which breaks all this out in far more detail. It’s worth your time.

So, yet another claim of Barrack Obama is made out a lie. The anti-war left is left naked in the breeze, without even thecover of question… there is no question any longer. There were solid connections between Saddam and BinLaden.

Here it is, people: Facts disprove liberalism.

But there’s more, of course. As a Senator, were he really interested Obama might have known, had he gotten his head out from between his cheeks long enough. He had access to this intel.  But Barrack Obama isn’t interested in facts.

From Bluto:

From MSNBC:

 

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., condemned racially charged sermons by his former pastor Friday and urged Americans not to reject his presidential campaign because of “guilt by association.”

Obama’s campaign announced that the minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., had left its spiritual advisory committee after videotapes of his sermons again ignited fierce debate in news accounts and political blogs.

When the “association” lasts twenty years, including marrying you and your wife and baptizing your kids, supplying the title for your book, and being your “spiritual advisor,” the “guilt” is yours as much as his, Barack

More Obama’s fault, actually… and the rest of the congregation, of course… for putting up with it. After all, who is the bigger fool? The fool, or the fool who follows him?

That’s why this is such a problem. Someone I want for President would have stood up and walked out. He didn’t. It doesn’t take a great mind to see why.  He stayed in that church because he believes the hateful racist nonsense this guy spews. He calls the man his mentor for 20 years. Now that we see what Obama has been taught, for those 20 years, it’s all so heartwarming that he had such a great influence in his life, isn’t it?

Now he’s willing to publicly…if not in reality… shed those beliefs because he sees it getting between him and the political power he wants. But what is to say he will not ACT on those hateful beliefs once he obtains that power?

Pray we never allow the test to be made.

CR passes along a response to a post of mine yesterday:

I’ve said it a number of times here in the past: the real power is in the US Congress.  Presidents can negotiate with foreign leaders, take military action (to an extent), and manage the administration as approved (more or less) by Congress.  And then a little here and there with Presidential Executive Orders.  And of course, the President can submit legislation and veto bills (it’s rather insignificant to mention the power to sign bills into law, but it is there).  But the President cannot get the legislation to his/her desk without Congress passing the bills.

And the President cannot stop Congress from creating earmarks.  I take a story from BitsBlog in toto:

WASHINGTON – FOX- The Senate rejected calls from both parties’ presidential candidates to take an election-year break from pork-barrel spending as a Democratic-run Congress passed budget plans that would torpedo hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts won by President Bush.

I make the point again: We’ve tried decades of Democrat-dominated Congresses. We’ve tried it with Democrat run congresses with a razor thin majority for them. We’ve tried Congresses with a razor thin majority for the Republicans. The one thing we’ve not tried is a Republican dominated Congress.  One with a large enough majority that the Republicans are not beholding to their own left to get every vote they can.

Nothing else has worked. Can we try a true Republican dominated Congress, now?

Please?

I strongly agree with BitHead’s assertion here.  How can we continue to sit idly by watching a Congress that calmly thumbs its collective nose at us?  Unacceptable!  We talk and talk about how if we’re not happy with our representatives, we should hold them accountable at the polls.  It’s time we did that.

Here is a list of the senators that voted against the earmark moratorium (from the US Senate Web Site).  Pay close attention to this list:

Akaka (D-HI) Baucus (D-MT) Bennett (R-UT) Biden (D-DE) Bingaman (D-NM) Bond (R-MO) Boxer (D-CA) Brown (D-OH) Brownback (R-KS) Bunning (R-KY) Byrd (D-WV) Cantwell (D-WA) Cardin (D-MD) Carper (D-DE) Casey (D-PA) Cochran (R-MS) Coleman (R-MN) Collins (R-ME) Conrad (D-ND) Craig (R-ID) Crapo (R-ID) Dodd (D-CT) Domenici (R-NM) Dorgan (D-ND)

Durbin (D-IL) Feinstein (D-CA) Gregg (R-NH) Hagel (R-NE) Harkin (D-IA) Hatch (R-UT) Hutchison (R-TX) Inouye (D-HI) Johnson (D-SD) Kennedy (D-MA) Kerry (D-MA) Klobuchar (D-MN) Kohl (D-WI) Landrieu (D-LA) Lautenberg (D-NJ) Leahy (D-VT) Levin (D-MI) Lincoln (D-AR) Lugar (R-IN) Menendez (D-NJ) Mikulski (D-MD) Murkowski (R-AK) Murray (D-WA) Nelson (D-FL)

Nelson (D-NE) Pryor (D-AR) Reed (D-RI) Reid (D-NV) Roberts (R-KS) Rockefeller (D-WV) Salazar (D-CO) Sanders (I-VT) Schumer (D-NY) Shelby (R-AL) Smith (R-OR) Snowe (R-ME) Specter (R-PA) Stabenow (D-MI) Stevens (R-AK) Tester (D-MT) Vitter (R-LA) Voinovich (R-OH) Warner (R-VA) Webb (D-VA) Whitehouse (D-RI) Wicker (R-MS) Wyden (D-OR)

All three senators that are running for President voted in favor of this amendment.  3 other Democrats (Bayh, Feingold, and McCaskill) also voted in favor.  As you can see, quite a few Republicans also voted against it, which should make us just as unhappy as the Democrats.  This is truly disappointing.  I think you’ll notice that almost all of the Republicans on this list have been around for a while.  I say vote them out as well and get some fresh conservative blood in there.

Here’s the thing; If past be prologue, we’ll see objections to all this, on the idea that the conservatives aren’t any better at this than the Democrats are. The problem with that statement, of course, is that a goodly number of the Republicans we tried those majorities with were not conservatives. And since our press leans so far left, they can’t tell the difference, and so neither can their viewers, in large part.

I’ll add one more point; Since we don’t seem to have a real conservative in position for the White House this cycle, it’s all the more of import to have conservatives in Congress to balance McCain and his leftist tendencies off.

It’s time, folks.

Sister Toldjah rips Barack Obama.  a.k.a BO Plenty:

By the way, I’m calling Barack Obama out on the outrageous lie he told today about not being present in Wright’s church when he made the offensive hateful remarks that have been circulating in the news media this week. As I said earlier, this is like Al Gore’s “iced tea” defense – and similar Bill Clinton’s stupid claim that he “didn’t inhale” a joint when he had one in his mouth

Michelle Malkin says that BO has lost his halo:

Wow. You could see Glowbama’s halo flickering. He looked and sounded nervous, shifty, and truth-challenged as he tried to have it both ways with Jeremiah Wright (whom he continued to praise as a “Biblical scholar” and “well-regarded” even as he paid lip service to disavowing him and denied eeeever hearing Wright’s vitriol).

In other words, he looked like a typical politicianT

Near the end of her article, the Sister puts up a Fox News interview between Major Garrett and Bacack Obama.    In that interview, BO denies that  Wright’s views reflect either his or his wife’s views.  But Wright’s view, hatred of the United States, does reflect Michelle Obama view.    BO is lying about his wife’s views.  BO is lying about his own views.    Little wonder BO doesn’t wear a flag lapel pin

.

• A first at the OTB Caption Contest. Like shooting chickens in a barrel.
• Boortz is suggesting “God Bless America” as a national anthem. Come on, Neal, let’s not mess with the anti-God freaks, again, huh?
• Oh, speaking of Neal… he points out that they’ve not labeled Spitzer a Democrat, yet. But they’ve labeled him a Republican. Here’s the link, but I doubt it’ll work much longer. The caption reads, as this is typed:
  

  “Eliot Spitzer (R) holds a news conference in New York City with his wife Silda by his side”

• Speaking of Spitzer, you’ll recall the noise I made last night (I think) about the left wanting prostitution legal. Balkinization explores how such a case might look, if Spitzer ever tried to get his case set aside.
• A slow day, anti climatic given the noise of the last few days over Spitzer’s exercise routine. I guess the left still hasn’t figured out how to spin all of this.
• Working on the blog tonight, in the background. Been noting some performance issues, and I’m doing some work to cure that.  Database stuff, mostly. I’m off to do it.

Update: (Bit) They finally got around to admitting the error at AFP, says LGF.  All together, now: “What Biased Press?”

I still like my question – when does the reconciliation begin? Barack’s wife is angry, his minister is foaming, yet we are supposed to elect Barack as Mr. Sunshine and Unity. Why aren’t the people closest to him sunny and united?

Tom Maguire, Just One Minute.

The Reverend Fred Phelps is a bigot and by the media’s definition homophobic.   Suppose a presidential candidate, say the late Pat Paulson, was member in good standings of Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church,    Our ever vigilant media, after twenty years, just now discovers that Paulson has been a member of Phelps’ congregation.

In response, Paulson repudiates Phelps and leaves the WBC.   Would that suffice? Would repudiation absolve Paulson?   I say no.   No fox will spend twenty years in a hen house unless he likes chickens.   Would the GLT population accept Paulson?   Should they?

Jeremiah Wright is a racist and has been Barack Obama’s minister since 1991.   Whether mere repudiation alone will do is a academic question.    Obama has not even done that much yet.   Mrs. Barack Obama, Michelle, is a racist.   Obama’s minister is a racist.    Anybody up o making that case the Barack Obama is not a racist?

Hat tip photo:  Fox News.

Rich Lowry notes something that’s been unsettling to me the last several days:

When an unimpeachably liberal former vice-presidential candidate of the Democratic party is likened to David Duke by a liberal media hero, the political apocalypse — or at least a grievance-politics cataclysm — is upon us.

In one of his sputtering-mad “special comments” usually devoted to damning President Bush to hell, Keith Olbermann of MSNBC accused Geraldine Ferraro of employing the “vocabulary of David Duke,” and of “insidious racism that is at least two decades old.” Back in the glory days of liberaldom, this would have been like Edward R. Murrow calling Eleanor Roosevelt a fascist — in other words, utter madness.

The Democrats are famous for forming circular firing squads. But apparently the real gunplay doesn’t begin until every member of the firing squad thinks he or she has been the victim of racism or sexism. Then, the smell of gun smoke is mingled with self-pitying and overwrought accusations of race or gender bias.

OK, I’ve said this before, I know… but it bears repeating:

Identity politics is of course, by its very nature, racist, sexist, etc. The real fun comes from watching its adherents try to avoid that basic fact. Certainly, identity politics is at the center of what the Democrat party is all about. Oh… they do have to have a certain mindset… they’d not be interested in Shelby Steele, or Condi Rice. I guess they’re just racist, huh? Or maybe this is simply a way to keep your opponant on the defensive?

And, here’s the thing; As Rich points out these are Democrats fighting Democrats with this nonsense. Imagine the charges of racism that will now be floating across the ether, toward McCain. I suppose that to be true regardless of who it is that gets the Democrat nod. But this gets particularly true if as we now suspect, Obama gets it. Fox News reports:

Barack Obama’s longtime pastor once questioned America’s role in the spread of the AIDS virus, suggested that the United States bore some responsibility for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and said “God damn America” for policies he said has discriminated against blacks.

…

“We bombed Hiroshima. We bombed Nagasaki. And we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye,” Wright said.

“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because of stuff we have done overseas is now brought back into our own backyard. America is chickens coming home to roost.”

The pastor also said: “The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied.”

In another fiery sermon in April 2003, Wright said: “The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes three-strike laws and wants them to sing God Bless America. No! No No!

“God damn America …  for killing innocent people. God damn America for threatening citizens as less than humans. God damn America as long as she tries to act like she is God and supreme.”

This is a man who Obama has called a guide and mentor for 20 years.  What is equally alarming is the shouts of approval to this racist nonsense, coming from the man’s congregation. the charges this ‘pastor’ is laying out are pretty much the same as what William Ayers was spouting around the time he bombed the Pentegon…and about the time Obama was visiting him like a student at his master’s feet, as a right of passage, when he was coming up in Democrat Circles.

 These kind of charges and utter anti-american nonsense, is what’s currently being fired back and forth among Democrats.  If Obama takes this stuff seriously… and at the moment this is being written we still lack evdience he doesn’t…  we’re going to have even MORE rabid anti-American nonsense directed at McCain after the Democrat convention.

And here’s the thing; I doubt the majority of the American people are going to put up with it. If there’s a reason Obama cannot win the general election it’s because his rhetoric will have long since passed the limit of the patience of the American voter.

WASHINGTON – FOX- The Senate rejected calls from both parties’ presidential candidates to take an election-year break from pork-barrel spending as a Democratic-run Congress passed budget plans that would torpedo hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts won by President Bush.

I make the point again: We’ve tried deacdes of Democrat-dominated Congresses. We’ve tried it with Democrat run congresses with a razor thin majority for them. We’ve tried Congresses with a razor thin majority for the Republicans. The one thing we’ve not tried is a Reublican dominated Congress.  One with a large enough majority that the Republicans are not beholding to their own left to get every vote they can.

Nothing else has worked. Can we try a true Republican dominated Congress, now?