BeldarBlog

Obama renews his acquaintance with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright

Was your last vote for Barack Obama based in any part upon the careful reassurances he gave the American public in April 2008 when he threw his longtime Chicago pastor and spiritual mentor — the Rev. Jeremiah "God DAMN America" Wright — under the proverbial campaign bus?

If so, this six-second snippet from a Looney Tunes classic exactly illustrates what President Obama has just done to you:

Recall that Rev. Wright and Barack Obama were joined at the hip for two decades in Chicago. In his sermons, Rev. Wright actually originated the phrase that became the title of Obama's second book, "The Audacity of Hope." But when even the mainstream media finally began to focus on what Obama himself conceded were "some inflammatory and appalling remarks [Rev. Wright had] made about our country, our politics, and [Obama's] political opponents" during the 2008 presidential campaign, candidate Obama was obliged to assure the public in writing and on television that he "vehemently disagree[d] and strongly condemn[ed] the statements that have been the subject of this controversy." And candidate Obama didn't just denounce Rev. Wright's inflammatory statements, but also "the person" who'd made them (boldface mine):

I have been a member of [Rev. Wright's] Trinity United Church of Christ since 1992, and I've known Reverend Wright for almost 20 years. The person that I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago.

Indeed, Barack and Michelle Obama very publicly left Trinity only a few weeks later, in June 2008, and they unequivocally identified their split with Rev. Wright as the explanation:

Barack Obama announced Saturday that he and his wife had resigned as members of their Chicago church in the wake of controversial remarks from its pulpit that have become a serious distraction to his presidential campaign.

In a letter dated Friday to the pastor, the Rev. Otis Moss III, Obama said he and his wife, Michelle, had come to the decision "with some sadness." But they said their relations with Trinity United Church of Christ "had been strained by the divisive statements" of the retiring pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., "which sharply conflict with our own views."

The Illinois senator's decision to break with the church that he has credited with shaping his faith came after months of controversy over racially charged remarks Wright made to the 8,000-member congregation on Chicago's South Side.

And Team Obama has been careful to avoid any public ties to Rev. Wright ever since.

Until now, as let slip — doubtless to the intense chagrin of the Obama-Biden campaign — deep within a San Francisco Chronicle op-ed by the venerable and pernicious Willie Brown, former Democratic mayor of San Francisco and speaker of the California State Assembly (boldface mine; hat-tip Ed Driscoll guest-blogging at Instapundit):

By my estimate, you have to build in a three- to five-point slip from the poll numbers for any black candidate on election day. To overcome the slip, you need to pump up the black vote by equal measure.

And that's not easy, because brothers and sisters aren't among the top turnout groups.

In 2008, Barack Obama was able to compensate for the slip and then some. You would have thought it was Nelson Mandela coming out of jail. This time it's not going to be that easy.

If Obama looks as if he's going black, he could turn off white people. So he's largely been lying low on the race issues — visibly pushing for the Latino vote, the gay vote, the women's vote, but not the black vote.

But last weekend, he held a conference call with a collection of black preachers that included his old pastor, Jeremiah Wright. He wanted to talk to them about getting out the vote.

Mayor Brown didn't volunteer any further details about Rev. Wright's participation in the conference call. But you know someone on the conference call made a recording.

Once upon a time, some eager Woodward-and-Bernstein wannabe would actually be beating the bushes, working Democratic fundraising sources, trying to get a copy to make public, and dreaming of Pulitzers to be earned through a thorough investigation into this sort of stealth about-face conducted by a sitting President seeking reelection.

But those days are gone, and the "cleaners" from Team Obama's rapid response team doubtless began their scrubbing, shredding, and stonewall-building just as soon as they had conducted a mild but vivid session of political reeducation with Mayor Brown. Perhaps tomorrow Mayor Brown will extend and revise his op-ed to clarify that the voice of Jeremiah Wright he heard on that GOTV conference call was somehow also not the same man Barack Obama met twenty-plus years ago.

Free exercise of religion, cultural relativism, principled distinctions, and foreskins

This report troubles me (link in original; hat-tip Althouse):

A German rabbi is facing charges for performing a circumcision, less than two months after a Cologne court outraged Jews and Muslims by outlawing the procedure.

Rabbi David Goldberg has become the first rabbi to face possible legal action for performing the ritual after an unidentified doctor filed a criminal complaint against the spiritual leader, alleging "bodily harm" to the child involved, the Times of Israel reported.

The German equivalent to our Constitution and Bill of Rights — their "Basic Law" — contains sweeping language based upon, and apparently equivalent to, the Free Exercise Clause of our own revered First Amendment. Will it be interpreted to give Rabbi Goldberg a defense? And if not, how much more are we bothered by that specifically because this is happening in Germany?

Because I've been to law school, however, I have voices in my head which insist on complicating this issue even further. "What about so-called 'female circumcision' as practiced in some cultures? If the Free Exercise Clause, or its German counterpart, prevents the state from prosecuting Rabbi Goldberg for performing male circumcision, would it not also protect those engaging in 'female circumcision'?"

"But," my pre-law school ethical self retorts, "what they call 'female circumcision' is really just genital mutilation. It's not comparable."

"Po-TAY-to, po-TAH-to, Beldar," replies my inner law professor. "So say concerned citizens of San Francisco about male circumcision. Can these enlightened people from the City by the Bay be wrong?"

Heavens forfend!

But if I can't eliminate those voices, I can at least hush them for a while: "Enough of the false equivalencies! I am comfortable that I can draw a principled distinction between these two things. I am confident that I am not guilty of hypocrisy in holding one to be a constitutionally protected liberty, and the other a barbaric and cruel practice inflicted to subordinate one gender to the other."

"Sez you," say the voices.

"Yes," I mutter to myself, "sez me, exactly. Yes, there are indeed cultures which promote genital mutilation of children. But mine doesn't, and shouldn't, and in my confident if ultimately somewhat subjective judgment, my culture is, as a consequence of that, better than it otherwise would be. Sez me."

Wait, but ... Really? You're sure there's an Article VI in the Constitution?

If, like me, you're a fan of Iowahawk's satires, then I also commend to you this fine one from my friend Dafydd ab Hugh at Big Lizards:

In Case I Ever Contract Mad-Cow Disease and Decide to Run for President...

Beldar on Emanuel on Obama on Israel's future

If you're Barack Obama, then by the time you've run and won a presidential election campaign, you know better than to defend your disastrous Middle East policies with the old cliché, "Some of my best friends are Jewish!"

Instead, you get your loyal vassal and bannerman — until recently your chief of staff, now returned to your and his hometown cesspool of politics, Chicago — to declare, "Hey, I'm a Jew, and Barack Obama's one of my best friends!"

That's the entire explanation for, and most of what you need to know about, Rahm Emanuel's WaPo op-ed this week. Emanuel would have had the same concluding paragraph no matter what:

As an American and a Jew, however, I am grateful that this president has not given up trying to find a path that would bring the parties back to the negotiating table. I applaud his continued effort to work on and invest himself in this increasingly vexing and dangerous conflict. All who care about a safe and secure Jewish state of Israel should as well.

Emanuel has seen Obama up close, he assures us, and then lists several Obama decisions that can be spun as pro-Israel. Trust me, Emanuel is saying, Obama's really not as anti-Israel as his history and his words and his deeds all indicate.

Uh-huh. But what of the contrary evidence, the calculated undercutting of Israel's negotiating position in Obama's May 19th speech to the State Department?

Emanuel simply pretends that that speech was pro-Israel. 

He (or the editorial staff of the WaPo) helpfully included a link to the May 19th speech. And Emanuel quotes what he calls the "one sentence" of Obama's that has "received the most attention," viz — "The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states." He insists that prior American presidents and Israeli governments have dealt with the notion of swapping land for peace, and that Obama wasn't tilting American foreign policy away from Israel, so this is all much ado about nothing.

But he completely ignores what Obama said immediately after that controversial sentence (emphasis mine):

These principles provide a foundation for negotiations. Palestinians should know the territorial outlines of their state; Israelis should know that their basic security concerns will be met. I’m aware that these steps alone will not resolve the conflict, because two wrenching and emotional issues will remain: the future of Jerusalem, and the fate of Palestinian refugees. But moving forward now on the basis of territory and security provides a foundation to resolve those two issues in a way that is just and fair, and that respects the rights and aspirations of both Israelis and Palestinians.

The policy that Obama announced on May 19th was "Borders first, Jerusalem/right of return later." No other interpretation of Obama's words is possible. And no American president had ever before proposed that.

In responding to Emanuel's op-ed, was Roger L. Simon hyperbolic in this comparison?

[W]hen we are reading Emanuel’s piece, we are doing more than running our eyes rapidly down another dull oped. We are taking a time trip back into the 1930s when Jews made all kinds of rationalizations for all kinds of behavior. We all know the results of that.

Perhaps so. Obama's not rounding up Jewish families and putting them on trains to death camps, so the behavior that Emanuel is rationalizing isn't as noxious as the Nazi's.

But then again, Mr. Simon's implied (and more apt) comparison is not Obama & Emanuel to the Nazis, but Obama & Emanuel to the American leaders (including American Jews) of the 1930s and 1940s — leaders who took a "hands off"/"It's their problem" attitude over what Germany was doing to its Jews for years before war broke out. I don't think Godwin's Law applies when one's talking about the consequences of the actual Holocaust, including the origins of and the continued need for the State of Israel.

I'm willing to grant that Emanuel is a smart guy. How else (*cough*cough*) could he have turned a degree in ballet from Sarah Lawrence College, with no experience in business or finance, into a post-Clinton investment banking job at a branch office of Wasserstein Perella which netted him more than $18 million in just over two years? And I'm in no position to pass any judgment as to whether Emanuel is compromising his faith or his family or his heritage in his unswerving and, apparently, entirely uncritical support of Barack Obama.

But I'm very, very sure that Barack Obama is trying to turn America away from its best ally in the Middle East. And when someone like Rahm Emanuel tries to deny that, or distract attention from it, by saying, "Trust me, I'm a Jew" — I'm not impressed by that argument. I don't trust Rahm Emanuel, nor his liege-lord either.

Liz Cheney parallels (but doesn't quite match) Beldar's prescription for what Obama should say about U.S. aid to Egypt

On this morning's "Fox News Sunday," Liz Cheney made a point very similar to the one I made in my post from last Friday (my transcription from DVR; boldface mine):

[Chris Wallace:] Would you like to see him [i.e., President Obama] openly support the freedom fighters, the protesters, in Iran?

[Liz Cheney:] Absolutely! He should have done it last June. Had he done it, frankly, in June of 2009, we might have a very different Iran today. I think that — you know, you have a situation where the [Obama] Administration is constantly playing catch-up. And one of the things that they clearly are going to be doing now is adding more money to the democracy programs. As they do that, they need to be held to account: Not a single taxpayer penny should go to the Muslim Brotherhood. The Administration so far has refused to declare their opposition to that. The Muslim Brotherhood is not democratic. They clearly support the imposition of Sharia law —

[Wallace:] — You're talking of course in Egypt —

[Cheney:] — and the return of the Caliphate in Egypt. But I think they'll face this issue across the region with Islamic organizations.

Of course no U.S. taxpayer money should ever go directly, or be permitted to be funneled indirectly, to the Muslim Brotherhood. And of course Obama should make that point clearly and publicly and now.

But it's not just the cash now that's important. It's the Egyptian people's understanding of the likelihood of a continuing sustained cash-flow in the future, the cash-flow they've been enjoying since, basically, the Camp David accords in 1978. With or without U.S. assistance, and indeed despite any efforts we might make to undercut their fund-raising elsewhere, the Muslim Brotherhood will find plenty of sources of cash that can be used to sway a "one man, one vote, one time" election.

But that's still chump change compared to the billions of U.S. aid dollars we've been sending to Egypt year in and year out. And the Egyptians who might be tempted by the Muslim Brotherhood's pitch, or intimidated by their threats and violence, need to understand that Uncle Sam's teat is going to be permanently withdrawn if the Muslim Brotherhood even shares power in a new Egyptian government.

(Postscript: While looking for a suitable photo to pirate "fair-use republish" for this post, I was amused to see that among the companies buying advertising bandwidth from Foxnews.com is ... the New York Times. Oh, how the mighty are falling!)

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UPDATE (Sun Feb 20 @ 4:15pm): This post from Andy McCarthy illustrates exactly why I think this message so badly needs to be sent, and without further delay (link his):

In another worrying sign, there are indications coming out of Egypt and Israel that the Egyptian military provided security for Qaradawi’s appearance before the throng. This, you might say, is to be expected in a potentially unstable situation with the government in flux and a throng of hundreds of thousands (at least) gathered in Tahrir Square. But the reports further suggest that the military let the Muslim Brotherhood take the lead in orchestrating Friday’s events and that opposition leaders who are not Islamists were not permitted to speak. I am not in a position to verify or disprove these reports, but if they are true that would be very ominous indeed.

It's the colonels and the generals who've been spending a whole bunch of that American foreign aid, and who need to be stripped of any illusions that it would continue if the Muslim Brotherhood were part of Egypt's new government.

Still more mush from the wimp — this time re the Muslim Brotherhood

I really, really hope that in his campaign for re-election, President Obama will make heavy use of that elder statesman of the Democratic Party, Jimmy Carter. After all, in what he has to say in general, and in what he has to say in particular about the Middle East, Mr. Carter is exactly as credible as Mrs. O'Leary's cow giving a lecture on fire prevention. Here's just the latest proof, as delivered by the old gasbag from the LBJ Library in Austin (bracketed portion mine, parenthetical by the American-Statesman; h/t InstaPundit):

[LBJ Library Director Mark] Updegrove, who characterized Carter as the president most associated with the Middle East, having helped to broker a peace accord between Egypt and Israel in 1978, asked the former president how the United States should view the Muslim Brotherhood, an influential group in Egypt that has ties to Hezbollah and may influence Egypt in the future.

"I think the Muslim Brotherhood is not anything to be afraid of in the upcoming (Egyptian) political situation and the evolution I see as most likely," Carter said. "They will be subsumed in the overwhelming demonstration of desire for freedom and true democracy."

Yes, absolutely! We should no more fear the Muslim Brotherhood than we should fear, say, that a bunch of "students" might "spontaneously" decide to take over an American embassy and hold everyone there hostage for 444 days. Couldn't possibly happen, huh, Mr. Carter?

I know there are a few Democrats who occasionally see my blog. Are any of you willing to "associate yourself," as they say on Capitol Hill, with Mr. Carter's latest remarks? Any of you willing instead to admit that the old goat has become an international embarrassment — not just a bad one-term president, not just the worst president of the 20th Century, but absolutely the worst ex-president ever?

What Obama ought say to Egypt

Obama should say — right away, and bluntly — “Lest there be a miscalculation from uncertainty about America’s position, Egypt should know that the day the Muslim Brotherhood becomes part of Egypt’s government is the day American foreign aid ends.”

But he won’t.

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When Obama fails to do this, should then Boehner, as Speaker, say "I predict that the House won't appropriate money for foreign aid to Egypt if the Muslim Brotherhood is part of the government"?

I think so. I think it would be a truthful prediction that would likely prove accurate. And it's within Boehner's institutional province so long as it's carefully phrased. But Boehner should privately twist Obama's arm first, to give him the opportunity to speak for America as its chief of state.

Obama: L'État c'est Moi! And my job is to tell you, my subjects, what your values should be

One would expect even a junior state senator from Illinois to have a better grasp of politics than Barack Obama has shown in his comments about the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero. One would certainly expect even a junior lecturer, much less a senior one, from Chicago Law School to have an instant grasp of the difference between whether something's legal and something's wise. Basically, I'd expect anyone running for high school senior class president to be able to draw this kind of distinction with great ease and indisputable clarity if he wished to opine on one question but not the other.

"Amateurish" is insufficient. "Embarrassing" would be presumed, except that Obama has still shown himself to be, quite literally, incapable of being ashamed.

Do you remember all the classic cartoons — Tom & Jerry, for example — in which very large, fierce watch-dogs get very excited, and they run from their doghouses across their yards as fast as they can? And they're practically flying, and they're really about to finally catch the cat when — boing! — they hit the end of their leashes and they're are yanked violently, hilariously, to a complete stop? That's what I was reminded of in reading, first, Greg Sargent's WaPo post from Saturday morning about Obama's Friday night speech being "one of the finest moments of Obama's presidency" precisely because Obama didn't just address the legal issue, but instead expressed his full support for building the center near Ground Zero because it would be flat-out un-American not to welcome and respect the group proposing to build this center; and, second, Mr. Sargent's wounded and genuinely pathetic one-line update after Obama's Saturday "clarifications." (H/t Patterico.) Repeat after me, Mr. Sargent, with more feeling this time: "We've always been at war with Eastasia ...." If you can't pivot on a dime, you're useless as a shill, Mr. Sargent!

But as our mirth finally subsides, let us consider the premise of this entire Obama pratfall, as very deliberately emphasized and then re-emphasized by the president's top handlers and spin-meisters, as reported in their camp newsletter newspaper of choice (emphasis mine):

Faced with withering Republican criticism of his defense of the right of Muslims to build a community center and mosque near ground zero, President Obama quickly recalibrated his remarks on Saturday, a sign that he has waded into even more treacherous political waters than the White House had at first realized....

....

... Mr. Obama’s attempt to clarify his remarks, less than 24 hours after his initial comments at a White House iftar, a Ramadan sunset dinner, pushed the president even deeper into the thorny debate about Islam, national identity and what it means to be an American — a move that is riskier for him than for his predecessors....

....

“I think it’s very important, as difficult as some of these issues are, that we stay focused on who we are as a people and what our values are all about,” the president said here on Saturday.

....

White House aides say Mr. Obama was well aware of the risks. “He understands the politics of it,” David Axelrod, his senior adviser, said in an interview....

....

Mr. Obama has typically weighed in on such delicate matters only when circumstances have forced his hand, as he did during his campaign for president, when he gave a lengthy speech on race in America in response to controversy swirling around his relationship with his fiery former pastor, Jeremiah Wright.

Debate about the Islamic center had been brewing for weeks, yet Mr. Obama had studiously sidestepped it.

But the Ramadan dinner seemed to leave the president little choice. Aides said there was never any question about what he would say.

“He felt that he had a responsibility to speak,” Mr. Axelrod said.

So let's put aside, for the nonce, whether this issue is remotely comparable in any way to candidate Obama's warm embrace and then bus-throwing-under of Rev. Wright (a political embarrassment unique to Obama and of own making). Let's not necessarily attribute to Obama or his staff, but instead let us assume for now the responsibility of the NYT's writers and editors, for the positively insane assertion that the Islamic religious calendar ever could or should leave the President of the United States "with little choice" or "force his hand." (After all, Obama can not only draw on all of his power as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive, he can fire up his special personal magic to lower the oceans and heal the planet; and you're telling me he's helpless, hopeless, and without alternatives that would let him even choose his own topics of discussion at a short speech at a dinner held to show respect to a religion he insists he doesn't belong to?)

And contrary to Obama's characterization, this controversy is in no way "difficult": Regardless of his or her political preferences, only a moron could fail to understand that (1) it's probably legal but (2) a spectacularly bad idea, as a matter of taste and policy (not law), for an Islamic center of the sort these particular folks are proposing to be built by these particular folks where they're proposing to build it. The only reason this controversy is still getting so much traction is that the 80% of Americans who instinctively understand and accept this simple distinction are quite properly annoyed that Barack Obama and the remaining 20% of Americans continue to insist on arguing about First Amendment rights.

But read again the part I've highlighted with green print — the part about "stay[ing] focused on who we are as a people and what our values are all about." And then re-read the reasoning for why Obama and his staff thought they were compelled to take a position, any position, in this local land use controversy. This administration has once again told you, America, in just so many words, that it sees the President's job as telling you what your values are and, indeed, what they should be.

In fact, Obama and his administration see his role as national nanny and instructor in matters moral to be so paramount that he was forced, despite knowing the risks, to "wade deep" in controversy, to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous political fortune, just to set us straight on Friday. (And then to set us, uh, straighter, on Saturday.) Oh, poor, poor under-appreciated, misunderstood Barry! Because that's the spin, folks: Obama, according to Axelrod, hasn't been at all politically inept on this, but rather, he's been brave and selfless.

Now aren't you ashamed of yourself? You definitely should be!

The arrogance, the condescension, and the megalomania of Barack Obama and his minions continues to amaze me. Is there no political strategist with access to the Obama White House who can point out the obvious to them — that Obama's credibility has long since been exhausted, that even his relevance is fading, and that the single very best thing he could do for himself and his party right now would be to stop his own endless hemorrhage of talk, talk, talk?

POTUS as the Great Defender of the Faith

Did you have the same reaction that I did back in 2001 when — in an official speech specifically directed to the Christian world during one of his trips to the Middle East, a speech whose official theme was "A New Beginning" — President George W. Bush firmly rejected the constitutional separation of church and state, and instead proclaimed that his official duties included the defense and promotion of one religion (emphasis mine):

So I have known Christianity on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed. That experience guides my conviction that partnership between America and Christianity must be based on what Christianity is, not what it isn't. And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Christianity wherever they appear. (Applause.)

Except ...

That was actually today, not 2001. It was President Obama, not President Bush. And it was Islam, not Christianity.

It's fine for an American President to try to understand, respect, and avoid giving unnecessary offense to Muslims, in or outside of America. But pandering to them is unseemly. And pretending that "fight[ing] against negative sterotypes of Islam wherever they appear" is "part of [the] responsibility [of the] President of the United States" is grotesque. Did our self-proclaimed former professor of constitutional law actually read this speech before he delivered it from his teleprompter? If he did, then that raises the question: Has he actually read his present job description, or the rest of the Constitution and its amendments?

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UPDATE (Mon Jun 8 @ 7:40pm): As commenter K~Bob mentioned below, Houston-based talk-radio host (and AM Operations Manager for Clearchannel AM stations KTRH, KPRC, and KBME) Michael Berry, guest-hosting for Mark Levin on his syndicated national radio show last Friday, twice referenced and read approvingly from this post on the air. Mr. Berry was kind enough to phone me today and also to send me a link to a podcast of the broadcast, for all of which I'm genuinely grateful!