Politwix

As more tapes of Barack Obama’s vitriolic preacher Jeremiah Wright are released, Senator Obama’s chances of holding on to his lead in the race for the presidential nomination narrow.  Americans may not know if Obama shares the same level of anger at their country that Wright seems to feel, but my instinct says they don’t want to vote the man into the White House to find out.

Obama’s appearances on Fox and CNN yesterday to address his relationship to his pastor did little to quell the collective anxiety of the Democratic electorate. Even supporters that can suspend disbelief to accept that Obama had not personally heard these bitter rantings acknowledge that Obama’s close personal ties to Wright may make him unelectable.

Whether or not the impression is accurate, Obama’s associations create a certain apprehension based on the swirl of radicalism in his inner circle. The truth is, we do not know this man. To compound the unease, there seems to be an underlying bit of code being used to align African Americans against Hillary Clinton, who ironically has fought for their causes since she was in college. This comes in the form of Obama’s lifting of lines from the movie Malcom X in his campaign speeches. You probably have heard Obama tell his supporters that they are being “hoodwinked” and “bamboozled”.  Below is an excerpt from the movie Malcom X:

Malcolm X: “I must emphasize at the out start that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is not a politician. So I’m not here this afternoon as a Republican, nor as a Democrat; not as a Mason, nor as an Elk; not as a Protestant, nor a Catholic; not as a Christian, nor a Jew; not as a Baptist, nor a Methodist; in fact, not even as an American, because if I was an American, the problem that confronts our people today wouldn’t even exist. ”

“So I have to stand here today as what I was when I was born:

A black man.

Before there was any such thing as a Republican or a Democrat, we were black.

Before there was any such thing as a Mason or an Elk, we were black.

Before there was any such thing as a Jew or a Christian, we were black people!

In fact, before there was any such place as America, we were black!

And after America has long passed from the scene, there will still be black people.

I’m gonna tell you like it really is. Every election year these politicians are sent up here to pacify us!

They’re sent here and setup here by the White Man!

This is what they do!

They send drugs in Harlem down here to pacify us!

They send alcohol down here to pacify us!

They send prostitution down here to pacify us!

Why you can’t even get drugs in Harlem without the White Man’s permission!

You can’t get prostitution in Harlem without the White Man’s permission!

You can’t get gambling in Harlem without the White Man’s permission!

Every time you break the seal on that liquor bottle, that’s a Government seal you’re breaking!

Oh, I say and I say it again, ya been had!

Ya been took!

Ya been hoodwinked!

Bamboozled!

Led astray!

Run amok!

This is what He does….”

With the candidate using the words of Malcom X in his campaign, it becomes quite natural to be skeptical of claims that Obama is a uniter. No one questions that Malcom X was a member of the Nation of Islam…and this writer does not submit that Barack Obama is.  However, he is associating himself by his words with a radical Muslim that proselytizes against white America.  What kind of a message is that sending to those that mean to do us harm? I think that is a fair question, and again one that goes to judgment.

Jeremiah Wright uses many of these same expressions, and as a matter of fact, the sermon on September 16, 2001 by Wright in which he declares that “America’s chickens are coming home to roost” is actually from a speech by Malcom-X called that he gave December 4^th, 1963. “God’s Judgment of White America”.

Per the website Malcom-X.org:

“This speech is sometimes called “The Chickens Come Home To Roost,” because of an answer Malcolm X gave in response to a question following the speech. The question concerned the late President John Kennedy. It was Malcolm X’s answer, that the Presidents death was a case of “chickens coming home to roost” — that the violence that Kennedy had failed to stop had come back to him, this resulted in the Elijah Muhammad silencing him. Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam a short time later.”

Here is one of many inflammatory passages from that Malcom X speech:

“White America is doomed! God has declared that The Honorable Elijah Muhammad is your only means of escape. When you reject The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, when you refuse to hear his message or heed his warning you are closing your only door of escape. When you cut yourself off from him, you cut yourself off from your only way out of the divine disaster that is fast approaching White America.

Before your pride causes you to harden your heart and further close your ears, and before your ignorance provokes laughter, search the Christian Scriptures. Search even the histories of other nations that sat in the same positions of wealth, power, and authority that these white Americans now hold…and see what God did to them. If God’s unchanging laws of justice caught up with every one of the slave empires of the past, how dare you think White America can escape the harvest of unjust seeds planted by her white forefathers against our black forefathers here in the land of slavery!”

We all remember the horror that occurred on September 11th, 2001 and the strong emotion felt afterward. It was a shared pain that affected most people, regardless of race, in a similar way. But apparently not Jeremiah Wright. 

Obama is also well acquainted with 1960’s leftist radical William Ayers of the militant and violent Weather Underground, who claimed responsibility for bombing the Capital building and the Pentagon.  Ayres admitted to the bombings but could not be prosecuted because of procedural failings.  These speeches, coupled with Obama’s association with William Ayers of the Weather Underground stirs apprehension in some quarters that some kind of an internal leftist coup is in process. 

Ayres fully admitted to participating in the bombings of the New York Police Headquarters in 1970, The U.S. Capitol building in 1971 and the Pentagon in 1972.

On September 11, 2001, the New York Times quoted him as finding “a certain eloquence in bombs.”  Did he regret what he had done all those years ago?  “We didn’t do enough,” said Ayres. 

Under the category of “You’ve got to be kidding”, William Ayers is now a “Distinguished” Professor of Education and University Scholar at the University of Illinois. 

Who could blame Americans for being a little uneasy about Obama?

Ayres and Obama served as directors of the Woods Foundation that figured in grants made to Chicago area Palestinian groups.

The Woods Foundation made grants to a Palestinian advocacy group in Chicago, co-founded by Professor Rashid Khalidi, then at the University of Chicago. He currently holds the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies and director the Middle East Institute of the School of International and Public Affairs. Senator Obama served as an unpaid director in 2001 and 2002 on the Woods Foundation when they made grants of $40,000 and $35,000, respectively to the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), a Chicago based group co-founded by Khalidi. Khalidi. Khalidi had close connections to the PLO that was listed as a terror group by our State Department.

According to The WorldNewsDaily:

AAAN co-founder Rashid Khalidi was reportedly a director of the official PLO press agency WAFA in Beirut from 1976 to 1982, while the PLO committed scores of anti-Western attacks and was labeled by the U.S. as a terror group. Khalidi’s wife, AAAN President Mona Khalidi, was reportedly WAFA’s English translator during that period.

Khalidi held fund-raisers for Obama during his failed 2000 Congressional campaign. Both had taught at the University of Chicago; Khalidi was on the Middle East Studies faculty and Obama taught in the Law School, until the latter’s 2004 run for the US Senate seat in Illinois.

Obama has also had at least a fifteen-year relationship with a federally indicted political fixer, the Syrian-born Tony Rezko. Besides Rezko’s current play-to-pay trial, there are other allegations that he is closely tied to an Iraqi Billionaire, Nadhmi Auchi, now living in the U.K., which may have been part of the Iraqi Oil-For-Food Program scandal and is purported to have sold arms to Hussein. Rezko has received wire transfers from Auchi on at least two occasions. Rezko has also directed at least $250,000 to Obama’s various political campaigns and it would be helpful to know if money from this Iraqi billionaire somehow found its way into Obama’s coffers, in hopes of currying favor with the Senator.

It is possible that all these associations are just a matter of coincidence, inconsequential, and that they do not in any way define Barack Obama. However, I am beginning to wonder what this jumble of associations adds up to. Maybe nothing. Are we judging guilt by association? Maybe. But are these red flags…definitely.  

The desire for a change in the way the country does business is palpable after seven years of the corruption, aggressive self-interest and warmongering by the current administration and many feel a radical change is needed in this country. But how radical is radical? 

Mr. Obama, I sure wish I knew you better.