May 25, 2008
A BLACK COLUMNIST WRITES ABOUT OBAMA
A REALISTIC OVERVIEW
Ken Blackwell
Columnist for the New York Sun
It's an amazing time to be alive in America. We're in a year of firsts in this presidential election: the first viable woman candidate; the first viableAfrican-American candidate; and, a candidate who is the first front running freedom fighter over 70. The next president of America will be a first.We won't truly be in an election of firsts, however, until we judge every candidate by where they stand. We won't arrive where we should be until we no longer talk about skin color or gender.
Now that Barack Obama steps to the front of the Democratic field, we need to stop talking about his race, and start talking about his policies and his politics. The realty is this: Though the Democrats will not have a nominee until August, unless Hillary Clinton drops out, Mr. Obama is now the frontrunner, and its timeAmerica takes a closer and deeper look at him.
Some pundits are calling him the next John F. Kennedy. He's not. He's the next George McGovern. And it's time people learned the facts. Because the truth is that Mr. Obama is the single most liberal senator in the entire U.S. Senate. He is more liberal than Ted Kennedy, Bernie Sanders, or Mrs. Clinton. Never in my life have I seen a presidential front runner whose rhetoric is so far removed from his record. Walter Mondale promised to raise ourtaxes, and he lost. George McGovern promised military weakness, and he lost. Michael Dukakis promised a liberal domestic agenda, and he lost. Yet Mr. Obama is promising all those things, and he's not behind in the polls.Why? Because the press has dealt with him as if he were in a beauty pageant.
Mr. Obama talks about getting past party, getting past red and blue, to lead the United States of America. But let's look at the more defined strokes of who he is underneath this superficial 'beauty.'
Start with national security, since the president's most important duties are as commander-in-chief. Over the summer, Mr. Obama talked about invading Pakistan, a nation armed with nuclear weapons; meeting without preconditions with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who vows to destroy Israel and create another Holocaust; and Kim Jong II, who is murdering and starving his people, but emphasized that the nuclear option was off the table against terrorists - something no president has ever taken off the table since we created nuclear weapons in the 1940s. Even Democrats who have worked in national security condemned all of those remarks. Mr. Obama is a foreign-policy novice who would put our national security at risk.
Next, consider economic policy. For all its faults, our health care system is the strongest in the world. And free trade agreements, created by Bill Clinton as well as President Bush, have made more goods more affordable so that even people of modest means can live a life that no one imagined a generation ago.Yet Mr. Obama promises to raise taxes on 'the rich.'
How to fix Social Security?Raise taxes.
How to fix Medicare? Raise taxes.
Prescription drugs? Raise taxes.
Free college? Raise taxes.
Socialize medicine? Raise taxes.
His solution to everything is to have government take it over. Big Brother on steroids, funded by your paycheck.
Finally, look at the social issues.
Mr. Obama had the audacity to open a stadium rally by saying, 'All praise and glory to God!' but says that Christian leaders speaking for life and marriage have 'hijacked' - hijacked - Christianity. He is pro-partial birth abortion, and promises to appoint Supreme Court justices who will rule any restriction on it unconstitutional. He espouses the abortion views of Margaret Sanger, one of the early advocates of racial cleansing. His spiritual leaders endorse homosexual marriage, and he is moving in that direction. In Illinois, he refused to vote against a statewide ban on all handguns in the state. These are radical left, Hollywood, and San Francisco values, not Middle America values.
The real Mr. Obama is an easy target for the general election. Mrs. Clinton is a far tougher opponent. But Mr Obama could win if people don't start looking behind his veneer and flowery speeches.
His vision of 'bringing America together' means saying that those who disagree with his agenda for America are hijackers or war mongers.
Uniting the country means adopting his liberal agenda and abandoning any conflicting beliefs. But right now everyone is talking about how eloquent of a speaker he is and -yes - they're talking about his race. Those should never be the factors on which we base our choice for president.
Mr. Obama's radical agenda sets him far outside the American mainstream, to the left of Mrs. Clinton. It's time to talk about the real Barack Obama.
IN AN ELECTION OF FIRSTS, LET'S FIRST MAKE SURE WE ELECT THE PERSON WHO IS QUALIFIED TO BE OUR PRESIDENT IN A NUCLEAR AGE DURING A GLOBAL CIVILIZATIONAL WAR.
Showing posts with label Christianity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christianity. Show all posts
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Friday, October 10, 2008
CAROLE'S POLITICAL VIEWS
Obama 'Lying' About Muslim Past, Expert Says
Thursday, October 9, 2008 12:19 PMBy: David A. Patten
Sen. Barack Obama “is lying” when he insists that he has never prayed in a mosque and was never a Muslim, a prominent Middle East expert and journalist says. Daniel Pipes, founder of the Middle East Forum think tank, says he fully accepts that Obama is a Christian now. But there is strong evidence that Obama received a Muslim upbringing during his years in Indonesia, Pipes said. “It’s fine with me that he was a Muslim and a convert to Christianity,” Pipes told Newsmax. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal “is a convert from Hinduism. I have no problem with his conversion. What I have a problem with is that he’s lying” when he says he was never a Muslim.
Newsmax asked whether Pipes is alleging outright that Obama has lied about having a Muslim upbringing. Pipes’ response: “The evidence suggests to me that he is lying, yes.”
Pipes told Newsmax, “It would start with the fact that his father was a Muslim — granted, not a practicing Muslim, but in the Muslim world, if your father is a Muslim, you’re a Muslim. His father named him Hussein, which is a name only given to Muslim babies. He went with his stepfather to a mosque. They celebrated certain Muslim holidays at the mosque together. He had knowledge of the Koran. He had knowledge of Muslim prayers. You put all this together, he was a Muslim.”
Pipes contends that a Nov. 12 post on Obama’s Web site headlined, "Barack Obama Is Not and Has Never Been a Muslim," stated: "Obama never prayed in a mosque. He has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian."
Today, that post bears the same headline, but does not include an assertion that Obama “never prayed in a mosque” and “has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim.” The page now bears a quote Obama made during the Jan. 15 debate on MSNBC: “In the Internet age, there are going to be lies that are spread all over the place. I have been victimized by these lies. Fortunately, the American people are, I think, smarter than folks give them credit for.”
The current post, which includes links intended to debunk any Muslim connection, is headlined “Obama Has Never Been A Muslim, And Is a Committed Christian”. Several media outlets, including the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, have reported on Obama’s schooling in Indonesia, where he lived from 1967 to 1971, which included Muslim religious studies.
It is known, for example, that Obama’s designation as a Muslim while attending a Catholic school may have simply reflected the fact that his stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, was Muslim. Still, Obama was grouped with Muslim students at the school and engaged in weekly religious studies, including studying the Koran and learning Muslim prayers.
In 1970, Obama’s family moved and he was enrolled in a public school where children such as Obama who were identified as Muslim spent two hours a week studying Islam. A March 2007 Chicago Tribune article by Kim Barker, which stated several accounts had “distorted the reality” of Obama’s years in Indonesia, reported that he did irregularly attend Muslim prayer services at the local mosque.
Obama’s third-grade teacher at the Catholic school, Fermina Katarina Sinaga, told Barker that Obama accompanied his stepfather to pray at the mosque, doing so “rarely.” Pipes said Barker’s story bolsters his position that Obama was raised as a Muslim while he lived in Indonesia. His accounts of Obama’s upbringing have received a “very severe reaction from the left” and threats from some Muslims, he said. “The Islamists murmur and threaten,” Pipes said, declining to specify the threats he has received.
Pipes sees a whopping double standard in how the mainstream media has reported on Obama’s past. “It’s been quite fascinating to watch the careful picking over of Sarah Palin’s record, down to her library policies as mayor of Wasilla, and her possible false pregnancies, and so forth, an analysis that involved excruciating details in her case.”
He contrasts that to the “the general pass” the media has given Obama, whether over his career in the Illinois Senate, the Annenberg library papers, or his upbringing in Jakarta. Pipes said his reports have “simply been dismissed as untrue without any facts to counter it.”
The McCain campaign “has been very cautious about looking into Barack Obama at all,” said Pipes, adding that the GOP has demonstrated a general reluctance to raise questions about Obama’s past.
Pipes has posted four articles on his Web site, “DanielPipes.org”, defending his view that Obama was a Muslim. The articles include the assertion that “for some years (Obama) had a reasonably Muslim upbringing under the auspices of his Indonesian stepfather.” As a measure of the interest in Obama’s background, Pipes’ articles have attracted close to half a million hits.
One point of contention they raise: When someone is born of a Muslim father, do Muslims automatically consider him a Muslim? A group of more than 50 scholars recently posted a statement on tabsir.net, a Web site dedicated to fostering an understanding of Islam, that seeks to refute that assertion. The statement maintains that distortions about Obama’s past are “part of an Islamophobic hate campaign that fuels prejudice against Americans who practice their Islamic faith and Muslims worldwide.”
Their statement says, “The vast majority of Muslims accept the Qur’anic message that there is no compulsion in Islam. Since Senator Obama was not raised as a Muslim, he cannot be held accountable for the religious status of his father.”
That assertion sounds logical to Western ears, but Pipes’ rejects it flatly. "There is no doubt: It is a fact in Islam that the religion passes on through the father,” he told Newsmax. “And yet it’s denied as a falsehood by people who know better. They know better. It’s Islam 101.”
Supporting Pipes on that point is Shireen K. Burki, an adjunct professor of political science at the University of Mary Washington. Burki, who spent her childhood studying Islam at a school in Islamabad, Pakistan, has first-hand experience as the daughter of a Muslim father and a Christian mother.
“According to Islamic jurisprudence,” she wrote in a May article in the Christian Science Monitor, “children of a Muslim father — even an apparently nonpracticing one, such as Obama’s father, and irrespective of the mother’s faith — are automatically Muslims. Most Muslims around the world agree: A child of a Muslim father is a Muslim. Period.”
Given that Obama’s profession of Christianity is essentially uncontested, one might wonder whether it really matters whether Obama once was Muslim. To many of the world’s approximately 1.4 billion Muslims, it apparently would matter a great deal. Experts on Islam generally agree that someone who is born a Muslim (in effect, someone who had a Muslim father), who later renounces Islam, is considered an apostate.
Burki writes, “Should Obama become U.S. commander in chief, there is a strong likelihood that al-Qaida’s media arm, As-Sahab, will exploit his background to argue that an apostate is leading the global war on terror (read: attacks against fellow Muslims). This perception would be leveraged to galvanize sympathizers into action.”
She suggests the apostate tag would be a powerful propaganda weapon that al-Qaida could wield to marginalize America’s Middle East allies, causing “enormous difficulties” in the war against terror.
© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Thursday, October 9, 2008 12:19 PMBy: David A. Patten
Sen. Barack Obama “is lying” when he insists that he has never prayed in a mosque and was never a Muslim, a prominent Middle East expert and journalist says. Daniel Pipes, founder of the Middle East Forum think tank, says he fully accepts that Obama is a Christian now. But there is strong evidence that Obama received a Muslim upbringing during his years in Indonesia, Pipes said. “It’s fine with me that he was a Muslim and a convert to Christianity,” Pipes told Newsmax. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal “is a convert from Hinduism. I have no problem with his conversion. What I have a problem with is that he’s lying” when he says he was never a Muslim.
Newsmax asked whether Pipes is alleging outright that Obama has lied about having a Muslim upbringing. Pipes’ response: “The evidence suggests to me that he is lying, yes.”
Pipes told Newsmax, “It would start with the fact that his father was a Muslim — granted, not a practicing Muslim, but in the Muslim world, if your father is a Muslim, you’re a Muslim. His father named him Hussein, which is a name only given to Muslim babies. He went with his stepfather to a mosque. They celebrated certain Muslim holidays at the mosque together. He had knowledge of the Koran. He had knowledge of Muslim prayers. You put all this together, he was a Muslim.”
Pipes contends that a Nov. 12 post on Obama’s Web site headlined, "Barack Obama Is Not and Has Never Been a Muslim," stated: "Obama never prayed in a mosque. He has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian."
Today, that post bears the same headline, but does not include an assertion that Obama “never prayed in a mosque” and “has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim.” The page now bears a quote Obama made during the Jan. 15 debate on MSNBC: “In the Internet age, there are going to be lies that are spread all over the place. I have been victimized by these lies. Fortunately, the American people are, I think, smarter than folks give them credit for.”
The current post, which includes links intended to debunk any Muslim connection, is headlined “Obama Has Never Been A Muslim, And Is a Committed Christian”. Several media outlets, including the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, have reported on Obama’s schooling in Indonesia, where he lived from 1967 to 1971, which included Muslim religious studies.
It is known, for example, that Obama’s designation as a Muslim while attending a Catholic school may have simply reflected the fact that his stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, was Muslim. Still, Obama was grouped with Muslim students at the school and engaged in weekly religious studies, including studying the Koran and learning Muslim prayers.
In 1970, Obama’s family moved and he was enrolled in a public school where children such as Obama who were identified as Muslim spent two hours a week studying Islam. A March 2007 Chicago Tribune article by Kim Barker, which stated several accounts had “distorted the reality” of Obama’s years in Indonesia, reported that he did irregularly attend Muslim prayer services at the local mosque.
Obama’s third-grade teacher at the Catholic school, Fermina Katarina Sinaga, told Barker that Obama accompanied his stepfather to pray at the mosque, doing so “rarely.” Pipes said Barker’s story bolsters his position that Obama was raised as a Muslim while he lived in Indonesia. His accounts of Obama’s upbringing have received a “very severe reaction from the left” and threats from some Muslims, he said. “The Islamists murmur and threaten,” Pipes said, declining to specify the threats he has received.
Pipes sees a whopping double standard in how the mainstream media has reported on Obama’s past. “It’s been quite fascinating to watch the careful picking over of Sarah Palin’s record, down to her library policies as mayor of Wasilla, and her possible false pregnancies, and so forth, an analysis that involved excruciating details in her case.”
He contrasts that to the “the general pass” the media has given Obama, whether over his career in the Illinois Senate, the Annenberg library papers, or his upbringing in Jakarta. Pipes said his reports have “simply been dismissed as untrue without any facts to counter it.”
The McCain campaign “has been very cautious about looking into Barack Obama at all,” said Pipes, adding that the GOP has demonstrated a general reluctance to raise questions about Obama’s past.
Pipes has posted four articles on his Web site, “DanielPipes.org”, defending his view that Obama was a Muslim. The articles include the assertion that “for some years (Obama) had a reasonably Muslim upbringing under the auspices of his Indonesian stepfather.” As a measure of the interest in Obama’s background, Pipes’ articles have attracted close to half a million hits.
One point of contention they raise: When someone is born of a Muslim father, do Muslims automatically consider him a Muslim? A group of more than 50 scholars recently posted a statement on tabsir.net, a Web site dedicated to fostering an understanding of Islam, that seeks to refute that assertion. The statement maintains that distortions about Obama’s past are “part of an Islamophobic hate campaign that fuels prejudice against Americans who practice their Islamic faith and Muslims worldwide.”
Their statement says, “The vast majority of Muslims accept the Qur’anic message that there is no compulsion in Islam. Since Senator Obama was not raised as a Muslim, he cannot be held accountable for the religious status of his father.”
That assertion sounds logical to Western ears, but Pipes’ rejects it flatly. "There is no doubt: It is a fact in Islam that the religion passes on through the father,” he told Newsmax. “And yet it’s denied as a falsehood by people who know better. They know better. It’s Islam 101.”
Supporting Pipes on that point is Shireen K. Burki, an adjunct professor of political science at the University of Mary Washington. Burki, who spent her childhood studying Islam at a school in Islamabad, Pakistan, has first-hand experience as the daughter of a Muslim father and a Christian mother.
“According to Islamic jurisprudence,” she wrote in a May article in the Christian Science Monitor, “children of a Muslim father — even an apparently nonpracticing one, such as Obama’s father, and irrespective of the mother’s faith — are automatically Muslims. Most Muslims around the world agree: A child of a Muslim father is a Muslim. Period.”
Given that Obama’s profession of Christianity is essentially uncontested, one might wonder whether it really matters whether Obama once was Muslim. To many of the world’s approximately 1.4 billion Muslims, it apparently would matter a great deal. Experts on Islam generally agree that someone who is born a Muslim (in effect, someone who had a Muslim father), who later renounces Islam, is considered an apostate.
Burki writes, “Should Obama become U.S. commander in chief, there is a strong likelihood that al-Qaida’s media arm, As-Sahab, will exploit his background to argue that an apostate is leading the global war on terror (read: attacks against fellow Muslims). This perception would be leveraged to galvanize sympathizers into action.”
She suggests the apostate tag would be a powerful propaganda weapon that al-Qaida could wield to marginalize America’s Middle East allies, causing “enormous difficulties” in the war against terror.
© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)