NObama
“I found solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother’s race,” states Senator Barack Obama in his book, Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. Contrary to what the media will have you believe, contrary to what your fellow students may tell you, and contrary to the pervasive attitude that has swept the country like muggings in a fog, Barack Obama represents the collective embodiment of radical left ideas, and his ascension to power representative of underlying currents of American racism.
Americans, sadly, have little hope for Black America. This is a double-edged sword, covered extensively throughout many other works, some of which I have authored. Thanks to the discussion dementia caused by the so-called political correctness revolution that former President Jimmy Carter began, and furthered throughout the Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton administrations, people fear one another. Black Americans and White Americans continue to harbor discussions of race in closed, contained spaces — a family table, a local bar, a union meeting, or a church festival. These spaces remain segregated, such that the development of ideas only polarizes the respective demographics further from any reconciliation of 150 years of name-calling and mutually terroristic treatment of one another.
The climate for true discussion of true change, something that will be built upon in later statements in this article, has created a situation that is far from calm. This article does not concern itself with this phenomenon in its entirety, however. This article intends to place Senator Obama in a fair light, one that is untainted by racial expectations, and bolstered by facts about colorless issues, such as voting records, truthfulness of campaign themes and statements made, and projections about where a presupposed Obama administration could potentially position the great American global machine.
Hope & Change — a volatile pair of buzzwords that Senator Obama has tossed about like confetti in a ticker-tape parade. Obama claims that he represents a fresh departure from Washingtonian institutions such as lobbyist influence, corporate interest groups, and soft money. Unfortunately, much of this rhetoric is baseless.
Obama has a long-standing relationship with FBI-indicted extortionist Antonin Rezko, who has raised more than $168,000 for Senator Obama’s campaign. Rezko also successfully petitioned Obama to obtain more than $14 million dollars in federal funding for apartments for senior citizens, himself receiving $855,000 in “development fees.” Obama falsely claims he has no knowledge of Rezko, though the Chicago Sun-Times has stacks of paperwork detailing the aforementioned claims, in addition to hundreds of others demonstrating a long-term you-scratch-my-back sort of relationship between Rezko and Senator Obama.1
Obama claimed, during a taping of Meet the Press on Jan. 22, 2006 that he believed the root of all evil in politics is the money of lobbyists.
I think the problem of money in politics is bipartisan. I think that all of us who are involved in the political process have to be concerned about the enormous sums of money that have to be raised in order to run campaigns, how that money’s raised, and at least the appearance of impropriety and the potential access that’s given to those who are contributing. That’s a general problem with our politics. The specific problem of inviting lobbyists in who have bundled huge sums of money to write legislation, having the oil and gas companies come in to write energy legislation, having drug companies come in and write the Medicare prescription drug bill-which we now see is not working for our seniors-those are very particular problems of this administration and this Congress. And I think Jack Abramoff and the K Street Project, that whole thing is a very particular Republican sin. 2
Yet Obama is no stranger to sketchy contributions. The Capital Eye reported that, “[a]ccording to the Center for Responsive Politics, 14 of Obama’s top 20 contributors employed lobbyists this year, spending a total of $16.2 million to influence the federal government in the first six months of 2007.” Likewise, Obama’s top three campaign contributors spent more than $8 million dollars lobbying congress in 2007.3
It would seem that the “sins” of the Republican Party have rubbed off on the Senator. However, he seems to be in a league of his own when it comes to his voting record. In January of 2008, The National Journal ranked legislators by their voting records, and taking the #1 spot as most liberal senator was none other than Sen. Obama.4 Interesting, considering that Obama remarked that:
“There is not a liberal America and a conservative America – there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America – there’s the United States of America.”5
Despite these rather dubious claims to bipartisanship, it is striking that the Senator’s voting record is so far left, considering that he rarely votes at all. Throughout February, Obama abstained from 25 of 30 votes.6 Overall, on key votes concerning welfare and healthcare, Obama abstained from 4 of 6 key issues. On issues concerning Foreign Intelligence Surveillance, or FISA courts, Obama abstained on 50% of the key votes.7
On seven key votes for healthcare, Obama voted aye for multiple amendments to the Medicare program for senior citizens.7 Despite this alarming turnout for an otherwise often-absent Senator, Obama has outright waffled on the issue of socialized medicine. (Note that single-payer healthcare is a Washington euphemism for socialized medicine.) Observe two quotes:
“I happen to be a proponent of single-payer universal healthcare coverage. That’s what I’d like to see.”
Five Years Later:
“I never said that we should try to go ahead and get single-payer (healthcare).8
In 2004, Senator Obama told a group of reporters in Boston that the United States had an “absolute obligation to remain in Iraq,” and he furthered this point of view by telling the Christian Science Monitor that same year that “the failure of the Iraqi state would be a disaster, and that it would dishonor those who have died serving, to bring the military out of Iraq abruptly.” Yet, only weeks ago, he claimed that he would have left Iraq, “yesterday.”10
In light of the bevy of evidence extant to discredit the junior Senator, whose record demonstrates an oscillatory commitment to liberal ideals, with no tolerance for more conservative ones (Obama voted nay on the Protection of Marriage Act, and several spending caps, along with nay on a proposal to prevent riders, or extra legislation commonly known as pork), Obama is a risk to the general welfare of a free, capitalistic state. His inability to set his mind to anything is offset in the public domain by his ability to leverage speechwriter Jon Favreau’s remarkably transparent and vague voice of old-line reason and undeniable tenets of how America should be, despite how Obama plans to shape it.
The audacity of hope, indeed. And, if Barack Obama represents the reincarnation of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, then I suppose that his brother will be acquitted of second-degree murder after drunkenly driving a female aide off of a bridge. Vacations will be spent with cousins who bludgeon to death a fifteen-year-old girl, using only a six-iron. He will appoint the next Robert McNamera, who will begin a war more complicated and deadly than Iraq could ever be, open a World’s Fair without European Sanction because, of course, we must restore international credibility, and he may attempt to invade Cuba. He will then die young enough for people to forget about his affairs and poor decision-making, and he will forever be enshrined in the public eye.10
Barack Obama is no Kennedy — one can only hope that his relatively clean personal life, which has primarily been marred by the affair concerning Pastor Jeremiah Wright (which I will not build upon, in my commitment to remove race from the equation), will not ever reach that of a Ted Kennedy or a Robert Skakel. However, Obama shares a tie with the late President: a thin veil of popularity overshadows his missteps, and his political career is peppered with contradictions. Obama’s presidential candidacy is built on the idea that he can transcend partisan politics, yet the evidence clearly cites the contrary. He is neither less liberal nor less corrupt, than John Edwards (with the blood of thousands of dead mothers on his hands, thanks to his cesarean-section lawsuits, which largely funded his campaign for President) or Hillary Clinton (with her sketchy real-estate dealings, long-rumored plot to overthrow private medicine, and scads of personal hypocrisy of her own).
Now, we return to my initial postulation concerning race. I have attempted to evaluate Obama without regard to his race or religion (whatever it may be, today). However, the clear logical conclusions that I have drawn have not yet descended upon the American body politick, critically due to media inattention. Barack is relatively untouchable, because White America believes that his eloquence is special; a Black man who speaks without the gritty racism of the late Jesse Jackson, or the call to action of former Black Panthers, Bobby Seale, or all-around crackpot Maulana Karenga — individuals that Americans are used to experiencing. It is true that Black America needs a role model (just as White America needs some new role models) and Barack fits the bill.
My point of contention here is that Obama is running for the highest office in the free world, on a far-left platform marked by the same conflicts of interest and same sins of his fellow candidates, making him both equally corrupt and outlandishly liberal — a dangerous combination. I personally would have liked to see Condoleezza Rice seek the oval office on the Republican ticket, though not because of her gender or race. America needs a qualified, restrained individual, who won’t redistribute my income, appoint judges who interpret constitutionality of things never meant to be debated, or attend church with a racist Marxist who may influence his opinion. This is something that I believe Barack H. Obama does not, nor cannot espouse, when it comes to the future of America.
References
(1) Free Republic Online: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1960154/replies?c=98
(2) Notable Quotes: http://www.notable-quotes.com/o/obama_barack_iii.html
(3) Democrats for Hillary-Stop Obama: http://www.stop-obama.org/?p=449
(4) http://nj.nationaljournal.com/voteratings/
(5) Quotes Online: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/b/barack_obama.html
(6) Open Congress: http://www.opencongress.org/people/show/400629_barack_obama
(7) VoteSmart.org: http://www.votesmart.org/voting_category.php?can_id=9490
(8) Freedom’s Enemies citations to AFL/CIO debate & Jan 21st Democratic Debate
(9) New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/fashion/20speechwriter.html
(10) Talk given by Trevor J. Drummond on April 7, 2008
