evolution

1. Would it be possible to arrange a Presidential candidate that isn’t BFFs with a subhuman lowlife? Obama has Bill Ayers, the Clintons have… how many?, and John McCain has the Keating Five and G. Gordon Liddy.

2. Dude: G. Gordon Liddy? He is still alive?

I feel sort of like a hack for writing this post, because everyone on Earth has already written their own, but that hasn’t stopped me for six solid years and three thousand other posts, so here we go.

If indeed the Jeremiah Wright thing is over, I’ll be glad. It was an issue, a relatively minor one — I went to a church as a teenager where intolerant statements were sometimes made, and I turned out okay. It’s fair to ask why he joined the church in the first place, but again that’s a minor issue as well.

What about Obama’s “connection” — some might say “working relationship” — with Weatherman terrorist William Ayers.

Now that we’re all finished with Jeremiah Wright, I’d like to see some questions asked about that.

Of course, we won’t — the full court press on his behalf has already started, and will be like a tidal wave between now and June; possibly after then.

The newest agent of change is… Jim Slattery. Fortunately for us (and undeservedly so), we have people like Washburn’s Bob Beatty:

Bob Beatty, associate professor of political science at Washburn University, said Roberts must be considered the front-runner, given the GOP’s dominance in voter registration.

Beatty said critical numbers in the general election would be 41 and 26.

“Roberts has been in Washington 41 years and Slattery for 26 years,” Beatty said. “It’s a battle of which person who spent a lot of time in Washington is an agent of change.”

Slattery, who lost the 1994 gubernatorial race to Republican Bill Graves, said he was running again for public office because the U.S. Senate was “simply not getting the job done.”

Slattery, if you’re not aware, has been… a lobbyist in the time since he was… a Congressman. For six terms.

We are all idiots.

And the time we’re all supposed to pretend never occurred, and the people we’re supposed to pretend never existed.

I’ll keep this short, because it’s past my bedtime:

Told ya.

To quote one of their own: It’s who they are, and it’s what they do.

I don’t have much to say about it. Except this - the thought that he or anyone who follows him can bring about a post-race politics given what we have already seen is a thought held only by fools.

The only thing I can think when I look at Barack Obama now is, ironically, a line many think was taken from the Bible: There are none so blind as those who will not see. Make no mistake; a lot of people don’t want to see.

UPDATE: It’s still possible — and I think the most likely explanation, the thing that I myself believe — to believe that Barack Obama is not the radical, but rather that Michelle Obama, his wife, is the radical. Any man who has been married for a long time will tell you that he has done things he didn’t believe in to please his wife. My own grandfather, who I have never heard utter a single word that could be taken as a theological thought or position, still goes to church with my disabled grandmother after 55 years of marriage. I haven’t seen a whole lot of evidence that Barack Obama is a radical (although I’ve seen some), fostering the very division he claims to want to heal. I’ve seen plenty of evidence of the latter, however.

It’s not nothing, though. One cannot overlook his long, documented association with a place where hateful statements are not only uttered but appreciated. From the comments of this post at the Belmont Club (which also has the full text of Obama’s speech):

It is flatly wrong for Mr. Obama to equate the disgust Americans feel about America’s racial classification system with the anti-American hatred of Jeremiah Wright. Racial discrimination is wrong regardless of whom the beneficiaries are. If we ought to live in a non-racial future, why not live it right now?

The principal reason why I don’t believe it is true that most black people don’t want to be fellow citizens is because I don’t want to believe it. I want a future where one is judged by the content of one’s character and not by the color of one’s skin. And yet, if rejecting Jeremiah Wright on the basis of his character truly means rejecting the entire black community, the choice to many non-black Americans is obvious.

Mr. Obama is effectively raising the ante of his political campaign. By equating a rejection of Jeremiah Wright with a rejection of black people in general, he sows the wind. His remarks are a complete repudiation of desegregation. If a majority of black people refuses to distance itself from Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright, the dream of integration is gone.

I will say this, though — there were parts of that speech that were indeed bold, even if I hold little hope that any of the things described therein will come to pass and less that Obama is the man to make them come to pass.¹ Others — dare I say certainly not white “others” — would not have touched (or been able to touch) these matters with a ten-foot pole.

More:

• Slate roundup (Warning: contains Sullivan link, don sanctimony-protection gear)
• Allahpundit files a post more hopeless and cynical than mine. (UPDATE 2: And even more so here.) I should say at this point that I’m an Allahpundit fanboy going way back. It’s not without reason — we’ve both been in this blog-world for a long time, and we’ve both been on the receiving end of so many bad-faith arguments that it’s hard not to get hopeless and cynical. Just Technorati for mccain hagee. I just don’t think there’s as much cause for it with Obama personally as others, although I still don’t believe that Obama is the man to do it. I went to a church for my entire childhood where things were said — some fairly radical — that I didn’t believe in, and I turned out okay.
• My pal Joel’s take is somewhat… different from mine, but worth reading.

1. This is not even to touch the issue as to whether government — any government — can or should be what makes it come to pass. [↩]

I’m not going to belabor this, because others have already done that. I’m just going to say that while I am mildly disappointed — I had thought that, whatever Obama would have brought with him in to office that I don’t want, he would have brought about a post-race politics — I am not surprised about what has been revealed, whether it be the church environment he’s spent his adult life in or the company he kept when he came up. There is a large segment of people out there, as I have come to learn in my six years in the political blog world, who like him just for those reasons.

McCain: Congress ‘disconnected’ from Americans (CNN)

I hate to bag on him too much here, because he’s on the side of the angels regarding earmarks.

I would remind Senator McCain, though, of the un-Constitutional act of Congress that bears his (and Russ Feingold’s) name. Perhaps the sense of entitlement created by this act is at least partially responsible for this disconnection.

Possibly.

Samantha Power, you’ll recall, was one of Barack Obama’s senior foriegn policy advisers. I say “was” because she was fired after referring to Hillary Clinton as “a monster” to The Scotsman (fired after what, an hour?) and an el foldo by the Obama people.

Turns out, as this Obsidian Wings post shows, she may have formed that opinion long before she ever met Barack Obama, based on her evaluation of how the Clintons, the worthless State Department¹, and the U.S. government dealt with the Rwandan genocide of the 1990s.

The content of the post is shocking (but hardly surprising) if it is an accurate portrayal of events — and I must say that I believe it is. Be sure to read it all.

1. Just because State was staffed by Democrats then isn’t what makes it worthless. It’s headed by Republicans now, and it’s still just as worthless. [↩]

First, the “Muslim” garb. I don’t care about this; it wasn’t “Muslim” garb (unless said Muslim was from a cartoon — there’s a Muslim man who does his prayers near my office and he usually wears a suit); I wouldn’t have cared if it were Muslim garb, and here’s why:

Just in case you can’t or didn’t want to watch that, that’s President Bush — dancing with and kissing a scimitar while locking arms with a Saudi prince, whose family is among the leading funders of radical madrassas in the world. I personally think that clip should be played in the corner, like the ASL translator on PBS, every time Bush is giving a speech about “fighting terrorism”. (Nick Berg’s head could not be reached for comment.)

Second: the “Hussein”. No one who brings this up is fooling anyone as to why. The same excuse the Clinton campaign gave for pushing the “Muslim garb” photo was used by others to justify referring to Obama at every opportunity by his full given name. It’s pure coincidence, a happenstance of his birth, and everyone knows it.

There’s enough not to like about the Obama candidacy. Leave these things out.