Senator Barack Obama's charismatic message of "hope," "change," and "yes, we can" have inspired many on the political left to believe that America will undergo a makeover in the political scene and win credibility with the rest of the world.
Keyword: credibility.
Just how credibile is Senator Obama? We will soon learn of his techniques, his values, and of course, his major controversies that have been swept under the rug in exchange for the media coverage of a silly picture of Obama in a turban.
Needless to say, even the mainstream media's coverage of his minor controversies, such as the Che Guevarra flag at his Houston campaign headquarters and his wife's recent comments about being proud of her country for the first time have sparked plenty of curiousity about Obama's background. This is a continuous exploratory of what is not being covered day in and day out.
Just Plagiarism
News has recently come to light about Barack Obama's use of plagiarism, borrowing at verbatim segments from a speech from Massachussetts governor and personal friend Deval Patrick. While Governor Patrick has defended Obama, it should not necessarily discredit the charge unless Obama is willing to cite his sources.
Just Words Pt. I:
Just Words Pt. II:
Just Words Pt. III:
The Afrocentric Trinity United Church of Christ
Unlike others on the political right, I am not one to dispute Obama's claim as a born-again Christian. However, I will make clear where his Christian values come from, if I should be loose with my rhetoric.
The TUCC of Chicago that Barack Obama attends is arguably separatist in addition to being Afrocentrist. From its own website:
"We are a congregation which is Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian... Our roots in the Black religious experience and tradition are deep, lasting and permanent. We are an African people, and remain "true to our native land," the mother continent, the cradle of civilization. God has superintended our pilgrimage through the days of slavery, the days of segregation, and the long night of racism. It is God who gives us the strength and courage to continuously address injustice as a people, and as a congregation. We constantly affirm our trust in God through cultural expression of a Black worship service and ministries which address the Black Community."The church is led by Jeremiah Wright, a controversial black liberation theologian who has praised and had associations with Louis Farrakhan, the hard-lined anti-semitic leader of the Nation of Islam. The reverend has rightfully expressed some concern over Obama's Jewish support as a result. "When [Obama’s] enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli to visit Colonel Gadaffi with Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell."
Wright has praised Farrakhan, calling him "an unforgettable force, a catalyst for change and a religious leader who is sincere about his faith and his purpose" with a "depth of analysis when it comes to the racial ills of this nation," and a man of "integrity and honesty."
Four years after 9/11, Wright wrote that the terrorist attacks proved that "people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just ‘disappeared’ as the Great White West went on its merry way of ignoring Black concerns."
Whatever that means.
A Communist Mentor
Although Obama admits in his books that he attended socialist meetings and came into contact with Marxist literature, it is surely surprising for the voting population to learn that one of his most closest and most formative political mentors was Frank Marshall Davis, a Communist Party USA member who advised Obama not to "start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that shit."
This is not a rush to judgement.
In Barack Obama's book, Dreams From My Father, the presidential hopeful identifies repeatedly as "Frank" a man who offered Obama political advice and shaped his political philosophy. Obama's critics have tracked Obama's communist ties from his life in Hawaii during the 1970s, when he first met Frank Davis, all the way up to his sponsoring of the Global Poverty Act, which was actually a Communist Party USA initiative to redistribute billions of US tax dollars to third-world countries.
Now why wouldn't he identify him by his full name?
The link is clear from this speech that was delivered at the reception of the Communist Party USA archives at the Tamiment Library at New York University:
When these sources are explored, I think scholars of the future will be struck by, for example, the response in Honolulu when tens of thousands of workers went on strike when labor and CP leaders were convicted of Smith Act violations in 1953 – a response totally unlike the response on the mainland. Of course 98% of these workers were of Asian-Pacific ancestry, which suggests that scholars have also been derelict in analyzing why these workers were less anti-communist than their Euro-American counterparts. In any case, deploring these convictions in Hawaii was an African-American poet and journalist by the name of Frank Marshall Davis, who was certainly in the orbit of the CP – if not a member – and who was born in Kansas and spent a good deal of his adult life in Chicago, before decamping to Honolulu in 1948 at the suggestion of his good friend Paul Robeson. Eventually, he befriended another family – a Euro-American family – that had migrated to Honolulu from Kansas and a young woman from this family eventually had a child with a young student from Kenya East Africa who goes by the name of Barack Obama, who retracing the steps of Davis eventually decamped to Chicago. In his best selling memoir ‘Dreams of my Father’, the author speaks warmly of an older black poet, he identifies simply as "Frank" as being a decisive influence in helping him to find his present identity as an African-American, a people who have been the least anticommunist and the most left-leaning of any constituency in this nation – though you would never know it from reading so-called left journals of opinion. At some point in the future, a teacher will add to her syllabus Barack’s memoir and instruct her students to read it alongside Frank Marshall Davis’ equally affecting memoir, "Living the Blues" and when that day comes, I’m sure a future student will not only examine critically the Frankenstein monsters that US imperialism created in order to subdue Communist parties but will also be moved to come to this historic and wonderful archive in order to gain insight on what has befallen this complex and intriguing planet on which we reside.
Friendship With A Pentagon Bomber
A recent story was broken by The Politico that linked Barack Obama to Bill Ayers, the man responsible for bombing the Pentagon during Nixon's term in office.
"I don't regret setting bombs," Ayers has said. "I feel we didn't do enough."
The article suggests that Obama's relationship with Ayers was not limited to one meeting that took place in the 1960s with young, radical college kids. In fact, Obama has been reported to have visited Ayers at his home, and a prominent Chicago physician and health care advocate has described Obama and Ayers as "friends."
Abortions on Newborns
It is not uncommon for the Democratic Party to back a pro-choice candidate. This time around, the three major Democratic presidential contenders all stood against the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the partial-birth abortion ban. Evidently, Barack Obama would not only roll back legalized partial-birth abortion, but take matters one step further. So says his record as an Illinois state senator.
As a state senator, Obama jumped on a fervent crusade to kill a bill that would have protected newborns who survived partial-birth abortion attempts from induced labor abortions. Induced labor abortions are performed by medicating the mother of the child to stimulate a premature birth. The babies that survive this horrific procedure are left untreated to die.
In 2000 and 2001, Jill Stanek, a nurse, testified to the U.S. Congress about how her hospital handled this procedure.
"One night, a nursing co-worker was taking an aborted Down's Syndrome baby who was born alive to our Soiled Utility Room because his parents did not want to hold him, and she did not have the time to hold him. I couldn't bear the thought of this suffering child lying alone in a Soiled Utility Room, so I cradled and rocked him for the 45 minutes that he lived."I doubt most Americans understand that this procedure was even legal in their own country. It should be sickening to realize that it was, thanks to men like Obama. Considering that the US Senate passed a bill similar to the one Senator Obama killed, maybe "change" isn't such a great idea after all.
