“HATE” is the ugliest four letter word. We have seen way too much of it displayed during the last 18 months.

I’m not talking about criticizing candidates on their policies, actions, decisions, or experience, so long as the content isn’t made up of whole cloth. Lively debate is not always polite.

I’m talking about blatant expressions of hate as revealed as ominous threats or actions that cause others real harm. Many Hillary Clinton supporters who found Barack Obama seriously wanting have learned what being hated feels like. I learned this early on when a threatening coward posted a Google map to my home on another blog.

But turn-around is not the correct response. Despite Richard Nixon’s travails, he had some important things to say in his day, and this quote to his administration from 1974 as he was leaving office is one of them:

“Always remember, others may hate you. Those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.”

We condemn threats or hate crimes against anyone. Race threats and crimes have apparently increased since the election Barack Obama. USA Today describes cross-burnings, racist chanting among school children, Black figures hung from nooses, racial epithets scrawled on homes, and other documented crimes that exceed the usual rate. The New York Times details a case whereby a Black youth on his way home on November 4th after Obama was declared the winner was attacked with bats by two white men who uttered nothing except the name of the President-elect.

Yes, I know. A mannequin likeness of Sarah Palin hanging by a noose in front of a West Hollywood home was dismissed by both local and federal law enforcement as “artistic expression” that was “distasteful but not hateful” for days until the outrage overwhelmed their wretched, misogynous defenses.

Yet, when something is wrong, it is just plain wrong no matter who the target.

The image above was posted on Post Secret on November 8, 2008. I have no doubt that the dominate narrative of this campaign — the forceful suppression of women — is responsible for the author’s “secret.” In the Obama-realm, feminism isn’t just bad, it’ll ruin your life. One only need to look to Hillary and Sarah Palin as examples.

Dr. Violet Socks writes:

A few days ago I was asking you all to think about why there is still so much deeply-felt resistance to women’s equality. This is the lesson of radical feminism: that the gender revolution requires just that — a revolution.

Why does there need to be a revolution for equality? Because this year misogyny was used a political tool. As many of us witnessed, this election was so poisoned with hate speech against women that it’s not an exaggeration to say that the FBI would have been investigating the perpetrators if it had been against any other oppressed group.

Let’s be clear: Hillary Clinton was the choice of most Democrats this year. The Democratic establishment, consisting of Donna Brazile, Howard Dean, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and many others, worked furiously to keep Hillary Clinton from receiving the Democratic nomination. Their left-wing allies and the media worked to sabotage her campaign at every turn.

It’s not entirely clear why there was such intense animous towards Hillary by such a large and diverse group. We do know, however, that the most vile tactics were used to suppress Hillary’s campaign; caucus fraud, race-baiting, and outright misogyny comes to mind. As examples, the Obama campaign initiated a not-so-secret whisper campaign that President Clinton was a racist when Clinton called Obama’s Iraq War position a “fairy tale,” Hillary was accused of waiting for the unthinkable to happen to Obama when she mentioned the length of the 1968 campaign and Bobby Kennedy and, from January on, there was a constant drumbeat that she must leave the race.

Running below the murky currents of this campaign, however, was a sexism so deep and so pervasive that it can be said that sexism defined this campaign. Indeed, I believe the subtext and central narrative of Obama’s campaign was sexism. Because two women were the biggest political threat to his campaign, Obama needed to unleash sexism.

Dr. Socks continues:

Narratives: think about narratives. Anthropologists of gender, like Peggy Reeves Sandy, talk about “scripts”: the stories that a society tells itself to explain the world. How men are. How women are. How they should be.

The Obama campaign, with the help of the media and “progressives” blogs, pushed a narrative against Hillary and later Sarah Palin, that invalidated them as public servants because on their gender. Misogyny, wrapped in the protective shell of race-baiting, was the central narrative of the Obama campaign.

I subscribe to the bumper sticker view that “feminism is the radical notion that women are people.” My wife and I are expecting a girl in January. I want this girl to live the full and free life our son enjoys, without gender being an obstacle in her path. I don’t want my daughter to be called a “bitch,” or for someone to wear a t-shirt calling her a “cunt.” Put in those terms, the Obama movement unleashed something very ugly into the culture. The Obama campaign, in its subterranean narrative, encouraged the hatred of women. It is little wonder then that the author of the Post Secret card blames feminism for her unhappiness; she’s witnessed that women who expect equal treatment will be beat down.

Giving him his due, Charlie Rose’s show last night (damn, the video isn’t up yet!) is very interesting — David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, has particularly insightful remarks. Michael Beschloss, the presidential historian, is also on, and I always get the giggles when I see him because I recall how the great Yale Shakespearean scholar Harold Bloom verbally condemned Beschloss and his books to the ash heap of history, as only the acerbic Professor Bloom can.

Charlie’s show last night includes a segment aired in June 2008 with the three Emanuel brothers. You’ve probably heard the remark that his mother said that Rahm is the least successful of her three sons, one being a renowned physician and the other being such a great Hollywood agent that HBO’s “Entourage” character Ari was inspired by the real Ari Emanuel. Perhaps NOW Rahm’s mom will grant Rahm equal status! I write that with affection, all the politics aside. Ah! I found the video of the three brothers last June, in full. Now, POLITICS ASIDE, this should be a fascinating show to listen to (Charlie’s videos rarely require that one also watch, so you can browse our blog and the Web while listening) + I found the YouTube snippet of the show:

In fact, I INSIST that you watch this entire show because Ezekiel Emanuel, M.D. has written what the famed economist Larry Summers (now an Obama economic adviser) calls the most important book on health care — and his ideas may well contribute substantively to the new health care systems for this nation! (I SO HOPE that that plan will be called the Clinton Plan, since it must be HILLARY CLINTON who introduces and succeeds in getting a health care plan for ALL Americans! She deserves nothing less.)

That was the more positive, interesting and forward-looking side of politics at present. Then there’s this: Someone sent me this comment that was posted at Atlas Shrugs. Okay, I’m scratching my head. We get this kind of sociopathic and sometimes psychopathic behavior here too. What happened in four years to change “Democrats” (I use the term advisedly) from civilized people into monstrous thugs?

In 2004, which I recall vividly, we sort of glared at the Kerry supporters at the county convention, and they sort of glared at us, but that was it! In the end — it took a while — we joined in supporting Kerry because at least he had SOME qualifications. When Kerry lost, we were grief-stricken, but soldiered on. Together. But now? Whatever happened to far too many of you?

You people are pathetic!

Your racist fear mongering will not go unchallenged! Soon we will shut down your hate spewing web sites. We will confiscate your firearms. In prison, you will get an education on the error of your ways. We will take your children and raise them as our own and instill in them the values of social justice. We will have a new American Republic of justice and order for all!

You time is almost up! Prepare for the dung heap of history!

Of note, Atlas Shrugs — whose writers would not probably want much to do with me because I’m too liberal for their tastes, but who cares — has a couple articles worth perusing, described below:

SCOTUS SOUTER TELLS OBAMA TO PRODUCE BIRTH CERTIFICATE DECEMBER 1 UPDATED: /OR NOT

– I hope this is entirely true and thoroughly fact-checked. We haven’t taken the considerable days (not hours) it would require to even begin to study this, and we’d need the expertise of many attorneys. So, all i hope is that this story has merit.

PERHAPS IT WAS AHMAD NIHAD’S APARTMENT….

Snippet:

How gruesome. Terrible. Imagine they planning that goes into such a thing. Planning by what was arguably the most modern, cultured state in Europe. So close at our backs, the damaged still walk among us with vacant eyes.

   
Report: Plans for Auschwitz found in Berlin apartment

Those so odious, and sociopathic and psychopathic would find much in common with some people in the U.S. who despise and wish to destroy all who disagree with them: the THUGS who are so mentally ill that, in the midst of a historic victory, they cannot stop hating for one second.

:::::::

* Footnote: Casey Anthony is charged with first-degree murder, based on state-of-the-art forensics, although the body of her three-year-old Kaylee hasn’t been found yet. (I am adding this because one of our writers, who doesn’t watch cable news, didn’t know who Casey Anthony is, and asked me to explain.)

This is one of those cases that has seized the attention of all the cable news networks. This is, and it makes me so upset, yet another instance in which a missing WHITE child or woman gets all the attention and resources of cable news outlets, whereas a missing BLACK or BROWN child rarely gets any attention. And it shames CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News that they go overboard on missing WHITE children or women — particularly if they’re pretty — but so rarely focus on children or women who are not white.

It must outrage people of color everywhere. And they deserve to be outraged.

Obama told MTV he believes marriage is “between a man and a woman” and that he is “not in favor of gay marriage.”

At the same time, Obama reiterated his opposition to Proposition 8, the California ballot measure which would eliminate a right to same-sex marriage that the state’s Supreme Court recently recognized.

“I’ve stated my opposition to this. I think it’s unnecessary,” Obama told MTV. “I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage. But when you start playing around with constitutions, just to prohibit somebody who cares about another person, it just seems to me that’s not what America’s about.”

In other words, he will triangulate on the backs of gay men, lesbians, transsexuals and Others in a vain attempt to curry favor with Christian conservatives and other assorted homophobes who will never vote for him. Some will call Obama’s heteronormativizing discourse nuanced, while those of us who are LGBT will view it for what it is: unrestrained and untempered homophobia couched in subtle but nonetheless injurious terms. Besides, his personal opinion on the matter is irrelevant. Indeed, it is a constitutional problem, a Civil Rights problem, not a problem of Barack Obama.

Barack Obama has a long and elaborate history of homophobia, while Sarah Palin, the Republican Vice Presidential candidate, has a record of vetoing homophobic legislation and of defending the rights of same sex couples. I revive an article I wrote on this subject last month:

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BARACK OBAMA’s COMPULSIVELY REPEATED GAY BASHING RISKS THE LOSS OF A KEY VOTING BLOCK

Obama never had the support of the LGBT community. Indeed, 63% of LGBT Democrats supported Hillary Clinton during the California primary, while a paltry 29% cast their votes for Barack Obama. I imagine LGBT support for Clinton was equally strong in other states, for according to a poll conducted last November, this constituency favored Clinton by a staggering 41 point margin.

There are reasons the LGBT community supported Clinton over Obama: Obama refused to be photographed with Gavin Newsom in 2004, when the San Francisco Mayor was the center of a national uproar for his support of gay marriage; Obama participated in a gay bashing “Gospel Tour” in South Carolina with Donnie McClurkin, an African-American minister who views homosexuality as a disease Jesus Christ can cure; Obama cites his Christianity when he mentions his opposition to gay marriage in his text entitled The Audacity of Hope; Obama stigmatizes and minoritizes gay marriage when he refers to it as such in his political speeches and texts; Obama admits to seeking spiritual counsel from a certain Rev. James T. Meeks, a homophobic minister in inner city Chicago who was named by the Southern Poverty Law Center as one of the “10 leading black religious voices in the anti-gay movement;” Obama refuses to march in gay pride parades; and Obama will not allow himself to be interviewed by the LGBT press. Because Obama has a record of homophobic speech, actions and affiliations, the LGBT community rallied behind Hillary Clinton. And they may rally behind McCain-Palin, for Obama’s continued disrespect for this constituency will compel many LGBT voters to reconsider their support for the homophobic Democrat.

Obama, according to The Advocate, will launch a gay bashing “Faith, Values and Family” tour with homophobic Catholic legal scholar Douglas Kmiec. I quote with added emphasis:

The Christian Broadcasting Network is reporting that the Obama campaign next week will kick off “Barack Obama: Faith, Family, and Values Tour,” designed to woo the votes of left-leaning Catholics, progressive Evangelicals, and some conservative mainline Protestants. If LGBT people find the tour eerily reminiscent of the South Carolina gospel tour the campaign arranged last year with antigay “ex-gay” gospel singer Donnie McClurkin, their instincts may not be far off.

CBN names Catholic legal scholar Douglas Kmiec as one of the religious surrogates who will hit the road stumping for Obama. Kmiec wrote a June 13 op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle supporting California’s Proposition 8, the ballot measure to ban same-sex marriage, titled “On Same-Sex Marriage: Should California Amend Its Constitution? Say ‘No’ to the Brave New World.” Kmiec’s first two sentences in the piece read, “The California ballot initiative intended to set aside the state supreme court’s judicial invention of same-sex marriage deserves public support. Maybe it is enough to say, as many do in conversation, that it merely re-secures a millennia of tradition and common sense.”

Obama, in other words, will campaign with a legal scholar who believes “a millennia” of “tradition,” “common sense” and homophobia should be preserved. Kmiec, by the way, is the former constitutional legal counsel to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Republican jurisprudence is the change in which the LGBT community can believe, I guess.

But it gets worse, for Kmiec writes the following in his 13 JUN op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle. I quote with emphasis added again:

Separating marriage from procreation may also have other remote, but frightening, ill consequences. Society should be skeptical of wider use of asexual procreation. An earlier dark moment in U.S. history employed eugenics to forcibly sterilize the mentally disabled. The push for artificial wombs and the genetic manipulation of intelligence already peppers scientific literature - a push that would no doubt grow, accommodating even the minimal same-sex desire for simulating natural child birth - claimed to be of interest for 20-30 percent of same-sex couples. When carefully assessed, the acquisition of unnatural reproductive means often advances the interests of the very affluent through a libertarian exercise that would threaten all hope of democratic equality.

According to Kmiec, gay marriage is a harbinger for a social eugenics that manipulates the human genome in the name of maintaining social hierarchies. A threat to democracy, the LGBT community in Kmiec’s warped mind is attempting to eliminate the heterosexual population. Raising specters gleaned from science fiction novels, Kmiec stokes the fires of a fear of a queer planet.

For some reason Barack Obama finds this entirely acceptable. Indeed, Barack Obama desires to use the campaign funds he has collected from Democrats and from members of the LGBT community to give this Catholic legal scholar of the lunatic, Republican fringe a platform in Colorado, Indiana, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Florida, New Mexico, Virginia and Wisconsin. If we witness a spike in hate crimes against the LGBT community in any of these states before votes are cast in November, we will only have Barack Obama and Douglas Kmiec to blame.

We also know who to blame if Barack Obama loses the general election. For the LGBT community does not take too kindly to gay bashing in the name of garnering votes from Evangelicals and other conservative Christians. Barack Obama never had our votes, and he certainly will not gain them if he continues to terrorize devout Christians with the specter of a queer planet.

Obama, by the way, refuses to attend LGBT Democratic events: Michelle Obama was the one who addressed the Gay & Lesbian Leadership Council of the Democratic National Committee in New York City in June, and she was the one who headlined the lunch for LGBT delegates in Denver during the August convention. Barack Obama was nowhere to be found. But then again, the man who has received spiritual guidance from homophobic ministers probably fears that the audience would try to genetically clone him into a gay man.

How odd it is that the Democratic Presidential candidate is a gay basher and the Republican Vice Presidential candidate is a woman who vetoed anti-gay legislation. While Obama is routinely criticized in the LGBT press for his homophobia, Sarah Palin receives accolades from Gay.com for joining the cause of the ACLU and nine homosexual couples employed by the state of Alaska and by the city of Anchorage. Perhaps the LGBT community is one of those constituencies Barack Obama and Donna Brazile believe they can shed as so much toxic waste from the Democratic Party’s past. If this is the case, then I guess the LGBT community should consider supporting the McCain-Palin ticket. After all, Palin supported the community while Obama was bashing it with Donnie McClurkin and Reverend James T. Meeks.

And now Obama will bash the community with the former legal counsel to the Bush and Reagan administrations in 12 states. While this may yield one or two Evangelical votes for Barack Obama, Obama’s continued and unrestrained gay bashing will also result in tens if not hundreds of thousands of LGBT votes for John McCain and Sarah Palin. For similar to the Evangelicals and conservative Christians Obama and Kmiec will court, the LGBT community votes “ALL our values.”

Also see Reverend Amy’s essay on Barack Obama’s second gay bashing tour.

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Read Rabble Rouser Reverend Amy’s essays for more compelling reasons to reject and rebuff Barack Obama on the grounds that he is a raging homophobe who has a long record of bashing and exploiting the LGBT community.

Because Obama has a pattern of demonizing the LGBT community in a vain attempt to gain the support of Christian conservatives and others who will never support him, I ask the LGBT community to cast their votes for McCain/Palin or for a third party candidate who actually supports the community.

A vote for Obama aids and abets the gratuitous gay bashing of a representative of a Party that has traditionally defended our rights and freedoms. If we desire to ensure LGBT will have a voice in the Democratic Party, we will reject Barack Obama. It is really that simple.

That said, I can’t tell you how many times I heard and read during the primary that people were, “not opposed to a woman President, just not THAT one.”

I can’t tell you how many disparaging, sexist, misogynistic, hateful, violent, horrific, insulting attacks I heard and read about Hillary Clinton, during the primary.

Every day four women die in this country as a result of domestic violence, the euphemism for murders and assaults by husbands and boyfriends. That’s approximately 1,400 women a year, according to the FBI. The number of women who have been murdered by their intimate partners is greater than the number of soldiers killed in the Vietnam War.

There were threats of violence towards her, and a belittling of her accomplishments, and insulting comments on her looks. And these were just the ones from the media!

Some of the attacks I heard:

She only got to where she is because of her husband.
She is too old, too ugly.
She cried. She’s a whiner.
She didn’t shed enough tears. She’s cold hearted.
She was racist.
She didn’t have any experience, she just hosted tea parties.
She was a liar.

The attacks went on and on.

So, now what? Now we have a female candidate, who, for all intense and purposes, is the complete opposite of Hillary Clinton. And we find ourselves right back where we were during the primary.

Sarah Palin is the victim of disparaging, sexist, misogynistic, hateful, violent, horrific, insulting attacks. There are threats of violence towards her, a belittling of her accomplishments, and insulting attacks on her looks.

Although only 572,000 reports of assault by intimates are officially reported to federal officials each year, the most conservative estimates indicate two to four million women of all races and classes are battered each year. At least 170,000 of those violent incidents are serious enough to require hospitalization, emergency room care or a doctor’s attention.

But, she did not get where she is on the back of her husband. She is self made. She worked hard, and got where she is on her own. (As did Hillary, in my opinion.)
She is not old, and she is not ugly. (and neither is Hillary)
She has shown an emotional side, and she is tough as nails (with polish) (as has Hillary)
She is a working mother, with a large family, and a loving husband. (well…Hillary and Bill are loving partners with issues, and they have raised an outstanding daughter)

They differ on party, issues, age, accomplishments, successes, family life, personality and looks. They both have major accomplishments, and they are both intelligent. I don’t think either of these women would be where they are now, if they were not smart as whips.

They have different styles, and they have had different paths. They have had different educations, and different life experiences.

But the thing that these two have in common, above anything, is that they are both women. Women who have chosen to serve the people. Women who have dedicate their lives, to serving others.

They are both women, who have been the victims of disparaging, sexist, misogynistic, hateful, violent, horrific, insulting, personal, personal, personal attacks. Attacks coming from both men and women.

Every year approximately 132,000 women report that they have been victims of rape or attempted rape, and more than half of them knew their attackers. It’s estimated that two to six times that many women are raped, but do not report it. Every year 1.2 million women are forcibly raped by their current or former male partners, some more than once.

Why? We can disagree on policy, but this is not what these attacks are about.

What links these two women is that they are both smart, successful women, who have managed to maintain a family and career, and have chosen to serve the public, through political office. Long story short - they are women.

So, when Hillary haters claimed, *it is not that they are opposed to a woman, not just THAT woman*, they were really saying - *I am opposed to a woman*.

So, I ask, if not now, when? If not Geraldine, or Hillary, or Sarah, then who?

As I see it, if we don’t put a stop to these attacks, if women don’t stop attacking each other, and until women are treated with respect and equality, we will never get passed this. Women will never *overcome* if they are treated this way, and if they attack this way.

Violent juvenile offenders are four times more likely to have grown up in homes where they saw violence. Children who have witnessed violence at home are also five times more likely to commit or suffer violence when they become adults.

And the attacks are not just aimed at Clinton or Palin. They are aimed at women who support them. The ugly attacks that are left on blogs are beyond the pale. Absolutely disgusting.

I am not a psychiatrist, or socialigist, or expert in any way, but I do see a direct correlation in the way women are treated publically, to how they are treated behind closed doors. And, until something changes, we will keep digging those graves. Four women a day.

“Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials said the mannequin sporting a beehive hairdo, glasses and a red coat does not rise to the level of a hate crime. If the same display had been made of a Barack Obama-like doll, for example, authorities would have to evaluate it independently, Whitmore said. “That adds a whole other social, historical hate aspect to the display, and that is embedded in the consciousness of the country.”

“Morisette acknowledged to FOX 11 news that had he depicted Barack Obama in the same scene, it would not have gone over as well, because the history of a hanged black man in America is a lot more intense than a hanged white woman.”

It’s clear to many Democrats that a radical clique has taken control of the Party. Democratic ideals once held to be sacrosanct, including freedom of speech, one person one vote, and an intolerance of sexism have been violently pushed aside for the benefit of Obama. The media drumbeat for Obama is incessant; the media has even stopped pretending to be neutral. We’re seeing the country through Alice’s Looking Glass now and everything is upside-down and backwards. In an effort to save our Party and country, many Democrats are actively working to defeat Obama.

In 1980, the last Japanese soldier of World War Two, Captain Fumio Nakahira, was discovered on Mt. Halcon, Mindoro Island, Philippines. During the previous 35 years, Captain Nakahira had survived alone, serving his Emperor and believing that the War had not yet ended. (This was 15 years after the Gilligan’s Island episode).

Captain Nakahira comes to mind when I think about the thousands of disaffected and disillusioned Democrats across the country who will not be voting for Obama. If Obama is elected despite our efforts to defeat him, it will codify for a generation the Chicago corruption, race-baiting, and misogyny practiced by Obama and his minions; tactics which caused many of to leave the Party. And Obama’s race-baiting, misogynistic thugs will say: Good riddance!

Camping out on our own private Mt. Halcons, many thousands of men and women will remain committed to the causes which brought us to the Democratic Party in the first place. We won’t stop being concerned about sexism, race relations, economic opportunity, and national security.

It’s now dawning on Republicans and independents that a creeping totalitarianism is sweeping the country. Obama’s Truth Squads use the power of the state to stifle free expression, McCain supporters are jeered in public, and Obama’s shock troops — in a form of hate speech so ugly that it can only be described as a pogrom against women — wear clothing which declares that the Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, is a “cunt.” Sexual terrorism is the new form of Left-wing Kristallnacht.

Where did this come from?

The ecstatic mania of Obama’s supporters comes from many places, and I don’t pretend to understand all of the sources. Many who support Obama are low-information liberals, do-good progressives, proud African Americans, and fed-up independents. I can’t blame these groups; the Bush Administration has been a disaster. There is, however, a core group of Obama supporters who believe that the Senator from Illinois will bring revolutionary change. And their desire for the revolution is all-consuming and any tactic is considered fair game: caucus fraud, sexism, race-baiting, voter intimidation, online smear campaigns, sexual terrorism, and voter fraud. Anything to win.

I hold Obama accountable for the tone of this campaign and the actions of his supporters. From “hoodwink and bamboozled” to his “lipstick on a pig,” Obama’s sexist double-speak and race-baiting innuendos have unleashed something very ugly into the ether. Obama has given his supporters the tacit encouragement to cross lines of acceptable discourse in order to destroy his political opponents. In the Obama world, Bill Clinton is a racist, Hillary is a bitch, Sarah Palin is a cunt, and John McCain is erratic and senile. I fully expect that an Obama Administration, like all recent Administrations, will continue in campaign mode and I expect these tactics to continue. This was the reason, to borrow a phrase, that we sought to fumigate our Party.

Like many of you, I won’t have anything to do with Obama or his party. Obama’s tactics go against the reason I was a Democrat and no pleas and no threats will force me to give up my principles. Above my computer I have postcards with the images of Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy; my Hillary poster is in the corner and remains unframed.

The recent, reluctantly released papers from Obama’s time as head at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) and his time on the board of the Woods Fund sheds new light on his relationship with Bill Ayers and the seamy milieu of Farrakhan’s Chicago.

The CAC and Woods Fund money paved the way for Obama’s political career:

the monies doled out through the Woods Fund to these groups, including [Bill] Ayers own Annenberg Challenge, helped cement Obama’s political relationships and bond with key players in Chicago.

Stanley Kurtz said that CAC money did not go directly to schools:

“Instead of giving money directly to schools, they gave to what they called external partners, and these external partners were often pretty radical community organizer groups.”

And Steve Diamond writes that Ayers was focused on what:

Ayers calls “social justice” approaches to teaching and “small schools” as well as race-based approaches to curriculum in the public schools.

Ayers and Obama funneled money intended for education to race-based curriculum. Matthew Weaver reports:

let’s also not forget organizations that received funding from Barack and Bill [Ayers], such as:

Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) Arab American Action Network (AAAN) founded by husband and wife Rashid and Mona Khalidi. Maoist Mike Klonsky, another terrorist member of the Weatherman Children and Family Justice Center, Bernardine’s organization. Trinity Unity Church and Rev. Wright.

Ayers is an important part of the Chicago racial Left, a loosely affiliated group of churches, academics, and activists who include Jeremiah Wright, Pfleger, Farrakhan, the group ACORN, and many others. The racial Left is not committed to fighting racism — a noble cause — but instead looking at the world through a racial lens. This means that issues of class — which affects whites, women, gays, etc. — is frequently dismissed. Instead, there are disquisitions on “white privilege,” without discussing the fact that poverty knows no color. The racial Left, of course, is a class struggle between those who have and those who do not, and many of it’s proponents have attended the best schools and hold the highest positions in the academy and in government. It’s no accident that Bill Ayers, the scion of a wealthy family, is a primary member of the racial Left. And it’s no accident that Obama, surrounded by millionaires in San Francisco, pointed out that his difficulties in Pennsylvania were due to skin color (identifying those resistant to him as white) and then ridiculing them as religious, intolerant of immigrants, and as the owners of guns, all cultural indicators to the racial Left of the despised lower-income whites. He could just have easily said those who are bitter cling to Jeff Foxworthy, shop at Wal-Mart, and hump their sister, or any other stereotype used against low-income whites.

The racial Left is about protecting status:

Not only is Ayers using Obama’s rapid ascent to celebrity in order to capitalize on his own unquenchable thirst for fame by having his memoir Fugitive Days reissued in January 2009, he is also working with Hollywood to have his memoir turned into a movie. As if that’s not enough, he and his wife, Bernardine Dorhn, have authored a book, soon to be released, entitled Race Course Against White Supremacy.

Belying it’s title, this book is NOT about white supremacists, such as the Aryan Brotherhood, but instead states that “white supremacy is the dominant political system” in American’. From Amazon’s Product Description:

Arguing that white supremacy has been the dominant political system in the United States since its earliest days—and that it is still very much with us—the discussion points to unexamined bigotry in the criminal justice system, election processes, war policy, and education. The book draws upon the authors’ own confrontations with authorities during the Vietnam era, reasserts their belief that racism and war are interwoven issues, and offers personal stories about their lives today as parents, teachers, and reformers.

Stanley Kurtz has uncovered that Obama attended Farrakhan’s Million Man March, and Obama’s close friend, Michael Pfleger, is close to Farrakhan:

Although it’s been discussed before (because it confirms that Obama attended Louis Farrakhan’s Million Man March), a 1995 background piece on Obama from the Chicago Reader has received far too little attention. Careful consideration of this important profile makes it clear that Obama’s long-standing ties to Chicago’s most rabidly radical preachers call into question far more than Obama’s judgment and character (although they certainly do that, as well). Obama’s two-decades at Trinity open a critically important window onto his radical-left political leanings. No mere change of church membership can erase that truth.

As Matthew Weaver posted, Rev. Farrakhan just pronounced Obama the Messiah (watch the video here):

“You are the instruments that God is going to use to bring about universal change, and that is why Barack has captured the youth. And he has involved young people in a political process that they didn’t care anything about. That’s a sign. When the Messiah speaks, the youth will hear, and the Messiah is absolutely speaking.” - Louis Farrakhan

In addition to being the leader of NOI, Farrakhan is first and foremost a politician, and one of the most powerful in Chicago. And Obama has at least one NOI member on his payroll.

In a June article from Reuters entitled “BREAKING NEWS: Nation of Islam Activists on Obama Camp Payroll” states that

“Sen. Barack Obama employed and continues to employ senior staffers who belong to the Nation of Islam, and the presidential candidate has some “worrying” ties to the controversial group headed by Louis Farrakhan, a former key Obama insider told AARON KLEIN… The former insider confirmed Obama is directly aware of the Nation of Islam members on his staff.”

“A key constituency for Obama was Hyde Park, where Farrakhan lives. To be successful politically in that area, you need to be involved with Farrakhan, since he’s a strong power in the district,” said the former insider.”

“The former insider identified former Obama worker Shakir Muhammad as a Nation of Islam activist. Muhammad was paid by Obama’s office as a photographer…According to a black supremacist source tied to Farrakhan, Muhammad previously worked as a bodyguard for the Nation of Islam chief.”

In fact, according to the article, Cynthia K. Miller, a known Nation of Islam activist who served Obama in his early state Senate days and was treasurer for his U.S. senatorial campaign, and a paid consultant in 2003 and 2004, was the beneficiary of help from Obama by another one of his Chicago friends, Tony Rezko.

“The former insider said Obama asked indicted Chicago businessman and Obama financier Tony Rezko to get his treasurer, Miller, a state government job with
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.”

While researching the source of Michelle Obama’s alleged “whitey” rant, we discovered direct connections between the Nation of Islam (NOI), Stokely Carmichael, Jeremiah Wright’s Black Liberation Theology and, most prominently, Louis Farrakhan.

According to Larry Johnson’s sources, the Michelle Obama tape captures her in sordid company:

The sources who have seen the tape report that Michelle says
disparaging things about “whites” and that Louis Farrakhan is visible.
There is no identifying information on the segment they have seen to
identify the location or time when this was recorded. [emphasis added]

Those who are following this matter will recall that Michelle Obama, when asked about these allegations, is reported to have said that “whitey” is not a word used by African Americans today. However, we documented that Mrs. Obama’s primary text for her Princeton thesis was Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton’s 1967 book Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America, and we showed how Carmichael used the term “whitey” repeatedly, thereby establishing an epistemological connection between Carmichael and Mrs. Obama. In other words, Michelle Obama is the intellectual offspring of Stokely Carmichael.

Before going further, it should be noted that Reverend Jeremiah Wright was once a member of the Nation of Islam, though it’s not clear when he was involved with NOI. Ryan Lizza of the New Republic first reported that:

Wright was a former Muslim and black nationalist who had
studied at Howard and Chicago, and Trinity’s guiding principles–what the church calls the “Black Value System”[Emphasis added]

But back to Stokely Carmichael. Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, the Federal Bureau of Investigations has released hundreds of pages from their files on Stokely Carmichael. It’s a treasure trove for those interested in the history of the civil rights movement. What we found most interesting, however, were the large number of documents connecting Carmichael with the NOI. For instance, the document below is an Airtel sent to Director Hoover on July 29, 1966, from Chicago. The subject is Stokely Carmichael and it concerns NOI leader Elijah Muhammed’s “CALL FOR SUMMIT MEETING, MAJOR CIVIL RIGHTS LEADERS.”

There are three areas of interest for us: first, the Airtel came from the city of Chicago; second, the year 1966 (more on that later), and third, that the Nation of Islam — in the manner of the infamous mob meeting in Apalachin in 1957 — was organizing all of the major civil rights groups.

It has been widely reported, and documented here, that Carmichael was an “Honorary Prime Minister” of the Black Panther Party, and that he was the leader of the innocuous sounding Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The following document, however, shows that Carmichael was open to violence as a political tool–see the highlighted sentence below–”This nonviolence bit is just a philanthropic hang-up,” and that he was indeed a founder of the Black Panther Party:

In the following document we initially noticed Carmichael’s willingness to use violence. He is paraphrased as saying that “in his opinion, the black man is justified in using any means at his command to obtain what he believes is due him,” indicating an acceptance of violence as seen through a racial frame. What’s more interesting, however, is the next paragraph. “Louis Walcott, Minister of the New York City Muslim Mosque, Nation of Islam, also participated in this conference.” See the second paragraph below:

The name Louis, of course, was glaring. Could it be he? A quick Google search linked to a 1996 Morning Edition transcription of a Bob Edwards piece on Farrakhan:

The early life of Louis Farrakhan, who grew up as Louis Eugene Walcott, was heavily influenced by his loving but demanding mother and his poor but safe neighborhood of Roxbury, Boston, in the late 1940s.

Over the last decade, Louis Farrakhan has emerged as one of the most visible and formidable black political leaders in America

Let’s add up what we have so far: Stokely Carmichael, Michelle Obama’s primary source and intellectual ancestor, shared the stage with Louis Farrakhan, the same man who she allegedly shared a stage with when she said “whitey.”

Carmichael and Farrakhan may have shared more than a stage. The document below indicates but doesn’t conclude that Carmichael may have been a Muslim himself. Although heavily redacted, the FBI’s source said that “Stokely Carmichael, [redacted] as ‘one of us’ which this source interpreted as meaning a member of the Muslims.”

Whether or not Carmichael was a Muslim is unclear. What is clear is that at sometime in the summer of 1966 there was a meeting of the minds between some civil rights groups, black radicals, and the Nation of Islam. These groups organized into a force promoting and preaching a racist form of black nationalism. The document below describes a meeting that clearly shows this union of forces: Carmichael and Minister Louis “made it clear they wanted to unite with all Negro groups regardless of philosophy.” Note the date of August 18, 1966:

This takes us back to Jeremiah Wright and the question of when Wright was a Muslim. According to Wright’s Wikipedia entry:

In 1963, after two years of service, Wright joined the United States Navy and entered the Corpsman School at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center. Wright was then trained as a cardiopulmonary technician at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

“In 1966, as a U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman,” the Wikipeida entry continues, Wright assisted with the care of President Johnson. Extrapolating from these dates, it appears that Wright was in Maryland between 1964 and 1966, and this may have been the time when he was a member of NOI. Wright didn’t start at Trinity until 1972, and evidently received spiritual training after receiving a master’s degree in English in 1969.

Also in Maryland in 1964 was Stokely Carmichael, where he was arrested “as a result of demonstrations in that city.” This doesn’t mean that Wright knew Carmichael, but surely Wright was cognizant of Carmichael’s work and of NOI as well. This is likely the time when he was a “Muslim and black nationalist.”

However Wright was radicalized, it is clear that he consciously appropriated the language and tenor of the Nation of Islam.

Wright’s statement that 9/11 was deserved retribution (“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans…America’s chickens are coming home to roost”) is a perfect echo of Malcolm X’s statement that “The assassination of Kennedy is a result of that way of life and thinking. The chickens came home to roost.”

Although it appears that Wright began his focus on Black Liberation Theology sometime after 1966, his racial attitudes and rhetoric have imitated that of NOI since at least 1970. Wright’s blaming the United States for creating AIDS to kill minorities is but just one example of his thinking being in lockstep with NOI.

Black Liberation Theology was first formed in 1966. According to NPR:

Black liberation theology originated on July 31, 1966, when 51 black pastors bought a full page ad in the New York Times and demanded a more aggressive approach to eradicating racism. They echoed the demands of the black power movement, but the new crusade found its source of inspiration in the Bible.

Keep in mind that NOI’s Elijah Mohammad called for a summit of black leaders on July 11, 1966, only 20 days prior to the official formation of Black Liberation Theology. If the dates don’t convince you of a synergy between NOI and Black Liberation Theology, please note Wright’s mentor — and Black Liberation Theology founder — James Cone’s words about NOI’s Malcolm X:

Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man ‘the devil.’ The false Christianity of the white-devil oppressor must be replaced by an authentic Christianity fully identified with the poor and oppressed.

The black intellectual’s goal, says Cone, is to “aid in the destruction of America as he knows it.”

Couple these words with Wright’s own view that:

There will be no peace in America until whites begin to hate their whiteness, asking from the depths of their being: ‘How can we become black?’

In 1998, Louis A. De-Caro, Jr. published a book titled Malcolm and the Cross: The Nation of Islam, Malcolm X, and Christianity. De-Caro’s book underscores the racial nature and revolutionary intent of the NOI’s promotion of a black “Christianity”:

Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam based their religious orthodoxy more on the Bible than on the Qur’an. In part, this was because they sought to convert black Christians. More- over, Elijah Muhammad taught that the Bible, actually the story of “dark people,” had been distorted by the white man in order to enslave and oppress black people in the United States.

The Nation of Islam and Black Liberation Theology are two doors to the same room. Black Liberation Theology is a “palatable” form of “Christian” black nationalism. The fiery anti-American, race-baiting words of Wright, Ayers, Meeks, Pfleger, and Moss are from the same philosophical cauldron as the Nation of Islam. It’s obvious now why Wright’s Trumpet Magazine featured Farrakhan on the cover:

Some have said that Michelle Obama’s thesis proves nothing because it was written more than 20 years ago. We suggest that it was no accident that the Obamas sought out Wright a mere 2-3 years after she wrote her thesis and stayed with him for nearly 20 years, even while he preached the vilest and most hateful sermons that our nation has been forced to hear. TexasDarlin writes:

It’s no wonder that the Obamas joined Trinity United, grew close to Jeremiah Wright and Michael Pfleger, and actively defended the church. And there is no doubt in this alert reader’s mind that Michelle Obama clung to Trinity as long as possible politically and, unfortunately for her husband, perhaps many years too long for most voters’ palates.

But the Obamas’ connections to the Nation of Islam go deeper than Rev. Wright. Louis Farrakhan’s political connections extend to the Obamas directly through Chicago politics and Tony Rezko. Larry Johnson writes that:

Before Barack came on the scene, THE MAN in his political district was Louis Farrakhan. No one could take Alice Palmer’s seat without Farrakhan’s blessing. No one. I do not fault Barack Obama for seeking out the blessing of Farrakhan, but the story of what was done behind the scenes to get rid of Barack’s predecessor—Alice Palmer—has not been told. A knowledgeable source tells me that Tony Rezko played a direct role in this feat. And Rezko has been tight with Farrakhan.

At some point, probably between 1964-66, Jeremiah Wright was a member of the Nation of Islam and was indoctrinated into its odious brand of racist theology. And make no mistake, Wright’s race-baiting is not indicative of the vast majority of black churches. A pastor at LivePrayer writes:

Please hear me very clear. Black liberation theology is a perverse view of the Scriptures and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is a radical view held by a very small minority of black pastors. This is NOT representative of the black church or the overwhelming majority of black pastors who preach and teach the true Gospel of Jesus Christ without looking at it thru the lens of color. Every black pastor I know condemns Dr. Wright and this perverse racist theology.

In 1966, a group of “Christian” ministers, at the behest of Elijah Mohammad, began to preach the same teachings as NOI. Stokely Carmichael and Louis Farrakhan actively worked to bridge the gap between these two groups, and Carmichael would soon publish a book espousing much the same separatist ideas. Carmichael’s book “guided” Michelle Obama’s thesis and soon she and Barack would join Trinity United Church of Christ.

The continuity of the teachings of Carmichael, Farrakhan, Cone, Pfleger, Wright, and Ayers is incontrovertible; it’s all about skin color.

Christopher Hitchens asks:

how is it that the loathsome Wright married him, baptized his children, and received donations from him? Could it possibly have anything, I wonder, to do with Mrs. Obama?

Obama’s targeted use of Malcolm X’s super-charged racial code words (”hoodwink, bamboozled”), and his followers’ continuous charges of racism against Obama’s opponents as a political tool has been well documented. It shows that Obama has a studied understanding of the racial radicalism of Malcolm X, Farrakhan, Wright, Pfleger, and Ayers coupled with the cold-blooded instincts of a heartless politician. The Obama campaign has already smeared as racists vast swaths of the Democratic Party, people who were drawn to the Party for its commitment to civil rights. Now he employs the same tactics against John McCain, a champion of immigrants who has never had a hint of racism associated with his name.

Sinclair Lewis is frequently quoted as saying: “When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”

In today’s upside down world, racism has come to America embodied in a multi-racial politician and carrying the banner of the Democratic Party.

Sarah Palin has become my new hero. While I don’t agree with some of her political positions, I love that she is unapologetically herself. And she is a REAL feminist, representing many of us who don’t toe the line of some definition of what that is. The so-called “progressives,” men and women alike, don’t approve of anyone diverging from their definitions. Like me, Palin could care less what they think. From her interview with Curic:

I’m a feminist who believes in equal rights and I believe that women certainly today have every opportunity that a man has to succeed and to try to do it all anyways…[A feminist is] someone who would not stand for oppression against women.

I like that definition. I like it because I am a lifetime radical feminist who believes that real feminism is not about receiving the approval from a misogynist like Andrew Sullivan, but rather about women living full and free and authentic lives. I may disagree with Palin on some matters of policy, but I agree with her that feminism is about the existential choices women make for themselves. It’s all about freedom: women can stay home or work, get married or have a partner, take their husband’s name or keep their own, have children or not, run for office or run corporations, be a Democrat or a Republican. Feminism is freedom and it dovetails perfectly with American freedom.

I love listening to Palin calling out the Poster Boy of Male Privilege, Obama, for his lies and omissions, and she does it with relish. WaPo quotes Palin:

Okay, so, Florida, you know that you’re going to have to hang on to your hats, because from now until Election Day, it may get kind of rough.

And while the Democrats and the main stream media attack her for everything from her mothering to her idiomatic, “Joe six pack” speech, The Barracuda flexes her muscles and says:

“For me, the heels are on, the gloves are off”

Sharpening her attacks against Obama’s lack of support for our troops, she has the audacity to speak the truth:

Obama doesn’t like American soldiers. He said that our troops in Afghanistan are just, quote, ‘air-raiding villages and killing civilians’

Palin continues to hammer home Obama’s close association with unrepentant domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers:

Obama held one of the first meetings of his political career in Bill Ayers’s living room, and they’ve worked together on various projects in Chicago. These are the same guys who think that patriotism is paying higher taxes — remember that’s what Joe Biden had said. “And I am just so fearful that this is not a man who sees America the way you and I see America, as the greatest force for good in the world. I’m afraid this is someone who sees America as ‘imperfect enough’ to work with a former domestic terrorist who had targeted his own country.

You can see this speech in a post by SusanUnPc, which also includes Paul Villareal’s videos.

I love Sarah because she’s one of us. As Truthteller documented, like us, she’s been accused of racism for daring to criticize Dear Leader. She’s been accused of being a hick, a barbie, a pig with lipstick, and in Ani’s post about the misogyny that has welcomed her onto the national stage, Palin has even been called “disabled.” The insults range from the horrendous to the ridiculous, as in NewHampster’s post about the extreme closeup designed to expose Palin’s wrinkles. The list goes on and on.

In a brilliant post, feminist writer Dr. Violet Socks suggests that the attacks on Palin from women are sycophantic acts to gain favor with the “liberal,” male power structure:

Whenever women in a patriarchal society buck male opinion, there’s hell to pay and they know it. Women in America really went out on a limb this year by backing Hillary in the face of withering derision from men (and from young women attempting to curry favor with men, consciously or not). Now they’re making amends by piling on Palin.

Ridiculing Sarah Palin as a moron — which she clearly is not — is de rigueur for everybody now in the Obama camp. It’s their preferred sport. It’s true that Palin is verbally awkward in interviews, but then, Obama himself is a man whose unscripted remarks are so confused they defy belief. A teleprompter-deprived Obama thinks there are 57 states in the Union, believes Oregon is in the Great Lakes region, doesn’t know which states border his own state of Illinois, and has no idea which Senate committees he’s on.

But still: people always make fun of their political opponents, and they’re rarely fair about it. What interests me about the Palin attacks is their vigor. To a large extent, it’s a continuation of the misogyny that is such an integral part of the Obama movement: from the campaign itself, from the media collaborators, from the male supporters, from the self-loathing young female supporters.

Typical of liberal sexism, PBS’s program NOW has a poll asking if Palin is qualified to serve as vice president, although Palin has more executive experience than any of the three male candidates, their names are conspicuously absent. Why the question is not asked of Obama, a man who was in the senate for 143 days prior to running for president (and before that a part-time state senator) just shows the incredible bias against women who seek power. Vote in the poll here.

The sexists attacks on Palin are the same sexists attacks on Hillary, and from the same sordid cast of characters: Obama, Sullivan, MoDo, Josh Marshall, Chris Matthews, et al. An Obama victory will codify sexism in the media and Democratic Party for a generation. That’s why I can disagree with Palin and oppose Obama.

When asked in an interview what attacks on her REALLY get to her–which ones wake her up at night–Palin just laughed and said something like, none, that it comes with the territory. But then she paused and looking deadly serious for an instant and said that the attacks against her children got to her and brought out her “mama bear.”

Pit Bulls can do serious damage, but if you get between a mama bear and her cubs, you’re lunch.

(You can watch the two-part interview at the Patriot Room linked here.)

The Obama campaign has had a deliberate strategy of calling the Clinton campaign racist and the media has allowed itself to be led along. Obama himself confessed to this strategy in the Nevada debate when shown a copy of a campaign memo directing campaign workers to use race-bating to defame Hillary Clinton.

January 27, 2008:

Please, just fuck off. Bill Clinton made exactly the right point and Obama’s defenders are playing into the worst of the Right-wing racist tropes, that there is something tainted about successful black candidates who get majority black support.

January 28, 2008:

I’ve spent a good amount of time here on this blog defending HRC against bogus claims of racism, and I’ve smacked The Golden One around for engaging in his own race-baiting, trying to milk liberal white guilt for all it is worth.

There is no person, no campaign, no victory that can justify deliberate use of racial divisions. Leave it to the Republicans to immolate themselves on the pyre of racism come November.

February 2, 2008:

Then begins the long slog towards South Carolina, with the media, the blogosphere and Obama’s campaign screaming at every turn that the Clintons are racists.

March 31, 2008:

My point here is not to promote the Clintons (though I think they deserve it), but to emphasize the way in which they are demonized by their own party. They become the embodiment of the old South, the unrepentant, segregationist South, just as northern blue collar voters who challenge the party orthodoxy are labeled Archie Bunkers.

April 5, 2008:

Here is the challenge to the Democrats – how to cease treating working class whites the eternal “Other” of the party, the roadblock to fulfilling the promise of the nation, and seriously address the ways in which the party will help all Americans live their lives with dignity.

April 28, 2008:

I have seen it put cynically (hell, I have put it cynically myself) that Obama was just promising the (mostly white) comfortable class of the party that he wouldn’t insist on looking at those nasty claims of justice if they would just elect a black dude and redeem their souls.

May 2, 2008

The assault on the Clintons has no basis in policy or political philosophy. It is an attack on uppity white trash who dares to succeed in the world without assimilating into the ruling elite, and for the added insult of being adored by the nation precisely for their common connections.

May 4, 2008:

Hannah Arendt, my favorite political theorist, has been excoriated as a racist for pointing out that integration and post-racial sociality is not such a big deal when the person being integrated is already part of your socio-economic class, remains a numerical minority within your enclave, and is no threat to your social standing or economic power.

May 6, 2008:

Obama’s campaign is certainly doing pernicious race-baiting, but mostly to initimidate critics and shame wavering white voters.

May 8, 2008:

What I’m seeing is an amplified, exaggerated perversion of the lessons, biases and attitudes I encountered in my very liberal college education, things that resonate with me in strange ways, playing on the way I learned to see the world as divided into evil whites, good whites and the oppressed Others we good whites had to free from the evil whites.

May 18, 2008:

I don’t see the Hillary campaign saying a bad word about the voters, even those who vote for her opponents. I don’t see the campaign explaining away their losses because of some flaw or failing in the voters.

May 21, 2008:

Failure to create the conditions under which vast majority of the party will have no doubts that he will serve the interests of the party and be protective of those who dissent from him will leave not just Obama but the party itself in dire straits in the months to come. Riverdaughter has a brilliant post up on The Confluence. You need to go read it all beause it is good in every regard

May 23, 2008:

I’m reading the reports on the mendacious attacks the Bogger Boyz are making on Hillary by completely perverting her comments about RFK.

Rather than weigh in on the current idiocy (which is being handled very nicely by Riverdaughter & Co. over on the Confluence. If you have not read that blog, stop, go there, read and bookmark. I’ll be here when you’re done.)

May 31, 2008:

1. I am not saying in any way shape or form that Larry Johnson is lying about the existence of some video of Michelle Obama. Please. Larry would not do that. A video of some kind exists.

2. If you read his posts closely, Larry does not claim to have seen the video in question himself. I may have missed a post where he did state this, but in the posts I have read, he does not. He was very clear that he has spoken to at least two people who do not know each other, who he trusts completely, and who have attested to the existence of a video.

September 24, 2008:

When Democratic women say “The Obama camp has run a sexist, mysogynistic campaign,” we are told we’re wrong, no such thing, there was not any sexism there, except maybe some from Tweety. When Democratic women say, “No, it’s not his race, it’s his lack of commitment to the programs that matter to us,” we are told that, no, we’re all just racist bitches, and that it’s our fault if he doesn’t win.

September 16, 2008:

The ultimate shadow of Reagan is that you don’t win by defending losers, only by securing the interests of the winners. That is the dark heart beating in the chest of the Unity Democrats. They are done with the losers.

May 2, 2008:

It is the deep guilt of the liberal upper class that we know, every last miserable one of us, that our privilege is due to centuries of white supremacy and to the informal, unspoken, but pervasive advantage our skin color and behavioral patterns gives us in this society. It is our Moby Dick, the whale we pursue obsessively through political seas, frantic to have material proof that we are innocent of the crimes of our nation.

There are reasons the LGBT community supported Clinton over Obama: Obama refused to be photographed with Gavin Newsom in 2004, when the San Francisco Mayor was the center of a national uproar for his support of gay marriage; Obama participated in a gay bashing “Gospel Tour” in South Carolina with Donnie McClurkin, an African-American minister who views homosexuality as a disease Jesus Christ can cure; Obama cites his Christianity when he mentions his opposition to gay marriage in his text entitled The Audacity of Hope; Obama stigmatizes and minoritizes gay marriage when he refers to it as such in his political speeches and texts; Obama admits to seeking spiritual counsel from a certain Rev. James T. Meeks, a homophobic minister in inner city Chicago who was named by the Southern Poverty Law Center as one of the “10 leading black religious voices in the anti-gay movement;” Obama refuses to march in gay pride parades; and Obama will not allow himself to be interviewed by the LGBT press. Because Obama has a record of homophobic speech, actions and affiliations, the LGBT community rallied behind Hillary Clinton. And they may rally behind McCain-Palin, for Obama’s continued disrespect for this constituency will compel many LGBT voters to reconsider their support for the homophobic Democrat.

Obama, according to The Advocate, will launch a gay bashing “Faith, Values and Family” tour with homophobic Catholic legal scholar Douglas Kmiec. I quote with added emphasis:

The Christian Broadcasting Network is reporting that the Obama campaign next week will kick off “Barack Obama: Faith, Family, and Values Tour,” designed to woo the votes of left-leaning Catholics, progressive Evangelicals, and some conservative mainline Protestants. If LGBT people find the tour eerily reminiscent of the South Carolina gospel tour the campaign arranged last year with antigay “ex-gay” gospel singer Donnie McClurkin, their instincts may not be far off.

CBN names Catholic legal scholar Douglas Kmiec as one of the religious surrogates who will hit the road stumping for Obama. Kmiec wrote a June 13 op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle supporting California’s Proposition 8, the ballot measure to ban same-sex marriage, titled “On Same-Sex Marriage: Should California Amend Its Constitution? Say ‘No’ to the Brave New World.” Kmiec’s first two sentences in the piece read, “The California ballot initiative intended to set aside the state supreme court’s judicial invention of same-sex marriage deserves public support. Maybe it is enough to say, as many do in conversation, that it merely re-secures a millennia of tradition and common sense.”

Obama, in other words, will campaign with a legal scholar who believes “a millennia” of “tradition,” “common sense” and homophobia should be preserved. Kmiec, by the way, is the former constitutional legal counsel to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Republican jurisprudence is the change in which the LGBT community can believe, I guess.

But it gets worse, for Kmiec writes the following in his 13 JUN op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle. I quote with emphasis added again:

Separating marriage from procreation may also have other remote, but frightening, ill consequences. Society should be skeptical of wider use of asexual procreation. An earlier dark moment in U.S. history employed eugenics to forcibly sterilize the mentally disabled. The push for artificial wombs and the genetic manipulation of intelligence already peppers scientific literature - a push that would no doubt grow, accommodating even the minimal same-sex desire for simulating natural child birth - claimed to be of interest for 20-30 percent of same-sex couples. When carefully assessed, the acquisition of unnatural reproductive means often advances the interests of the very affluent through a libertarian exercise that would threaten all hope of democratic equality.

According to Kmiec, gay marriage is a harbinger for a social eugenics that manipulates the human genome in the name of maintaining social hierarchies. A threat to democracy, the LGBT community in Kmiec’s warped mind is attempting to eliminate the heterosexual population. Raising specters gleaned from science fiction novels, Kmiec stokes the fires of a fear of a queer planet.

For some reason Barack Obama finds this entirely acceptable. Indeed, Barack Obama desires to use the campaign funds he has collected from Democrats and from members of the LGBT community to give this Catholic legal scholar of the lunatic, Republican fringe a platform in Colorado, Indiana, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Florida, New Mexico, Virginia and Wisconsin. If we witness a spike in hate crimes against the LGBT community in any of these states before votes are cast in November, we will only have Barack Obama and Douglas Kmiec to blame.

We also know who to blame if Barack Obama loses the general election. For the LGBT community does not take too kindly to gay bashing in the name of garnering votes from Evangelicals and other conservative Christians. Barack Obama never had our votes, and he certainly will not gain them if he continues to terrorize devout Christians with the specter of a queer planet.

Obama, by the way, refuses to attend LGBT Democratic events: Michelle Obama was the one who addressed the Gay & Lesbian Leadership Council of the Democratic National Committee in New York City in June, and she was the one who headlined the lunch for LGBT delegates in Denver during the August convention. Barack Obama was nowhere to be found. But then again, the man who has received spiritual guidance from homophobic ministers probably fears that the audience would try to genetically clone him into a gay man.

How odd it is that the Democratic Presidential candidate is a gay basher and the Republican Vice Presidential candidate is a woman who vetoed anti-gay legislation. While Obama is routinely criticized in the LGBT press for his homophobia, Sarah Palin receives accolades from Gay.com for joining the cause of the ACLU and nine homosexual couples employed by the state of Alaska and by the city of Anchorage. Perhaps the LGBT community is one of those constituencies Barack Obama and Donna Brazile believe they can shed as so much toxic waste from the Democratic Party’s past. If this is the case, then I guess the LGBT community should consider supporting the McCain-Palin ticket. After all, Palin supported the community while Obama was bashing it with Donnie McClurkin and Reverend James T. Meeks.

And now Obama will bash the community with the former legal counsel to the Bush and Reagan administrations in 12 states. While this may yield one or two Evangelical votes for Barack Obama, Obama’s continued and unrestrained gay bashing will also result in tens if not hundreds of thousands of LGBT votes for John McCain and Sarah Palin. For similar to the Evangelicals and conservative Christians Obama and Kmiec will court, the LGBT community votes “ALL our values.”

Also see Reverend Amy’s essay on Barack Obama’s second gay bashing tour.