For example, there’s a treasonous pig in a night shirt living in Pakistan who says:

The financial crisis sweeping the United States is Divine Punishment for the war in Iraq and other “sins,” an American member of Al Qaeda charged. Adam Gadahn, a California native now living in Pakistan who has been indicted in a Los Angeles court for treason, said in a half-hour video speech that the economic woes serve as evidence of punishment to the “enemies of Islam.”

How does this “divine punishment” thing work exactly Adam? You and your friends are living in dusty cave in the arm pit of the world surrounded by a society and culture that is stuck at about 1000 years ago with a last-century infrastructure, and you believe your Allah is happy with you and mad at Americans because some of them are taking hits on their 401k?  Uh huh.

When Barack Obama meets unconditionally with his buddy Mahmoud they can exchange high fives. It looks like Obama, and his supporters here (Farrakhan, Wright, liberals in general - “chickens coming home to roost”) and in Iran are all on the same page:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad earlier this week joined the Arab world’s delight over the American economic crisis and said that Americans are “oppressors…Systems based on oppression and unrighteous positions will not endure.”

 

An Iranian senior cleric, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, declared, “We are happy that the U.S. economy is in anarchy and the anarchy is reaching Europe.”

Nasty partisan rhetoric? Not if its true. There is no doubt in my mind liberals at all levels, inwardly or outwardly, are joyous when the see bad news. It’s axiomatic, what’s bad news for American is good news for liberals. Bad news always seems to drive a few more misguided handout seekers willing to give them power in exchange for handouts their way.

The party isn’t going to go on forever for the totalitarian Islamists.

However, Iran and oil-rich Arab countries also are feeling the repercussions of the impending recession accompanying the crash of American banks and stock markets around the world. The price of oil has plunged in the past several weeks from a record high of more than $140 a barrel to less than $80.

Isn’t it about time the people who’ve always blamed Bush and the evil rich oil companies for high gas prices now throw them a parade?

Tags: islam, oil, iran, economy

I am praying that over 150,000,000 people will register and vote in this election season. The opportunity to vote is both a right and a privilege. With the advent of the Internet, online voter registration is easier than ever. While concerns over voter fraud have attorneys piling up the fees, it should not keep anyone away from the polls. You should register online and vote.

If I were to pray about such a thing, I’d basically be praying for the opposite. It is now October, just a few weeks before election day. I’ll go out on a limb here and say the vast majority of those who have existed through the primaries and all the hullabaloo that has been this election season, and haven’t registered to vote yet - have not already made it a priority, should just stay home that day and forget about it.

Voting is serious business and it should be left to serious people who are already invested and engaged. If someone needs to be bribed, cajoled, begged, or pleaded with before they’ll get off their dead ass and go register, they shouldn’t be involved in the political process. If someone needs to track them down and stick a registration form in their face and give them a pep talk, they shouldn’t be voting.

Just my opinion. I’m not necessarily calling for a law against it - just saying what I think. It’s sort of like my position that people shouldn’t go out and feed vagrants (aka homeless) “out of the goodness of their hearts.” But that’s another post.

There is a big difference between voting for a candidate and picking a candidate. There are already enough people who will pick one of the candidates November 4th rather than vote for one. What do I mean by that? I’m saying voting means knowing what is going on in the world, having a set of ideas about what should be done based on sound principles, and knowing the candidates well enough to distinguish which one is most likely going to further your agenda. If a history of moose hunting, skin color, who has the nicest smile, and the like are a consideration, that is picking a candidate.

Anyone who has been paying attention, who knows what is happening in this country (is happening to this country) already has all the motivation they need and has already made arrangements to engage in the process of electing our next president and members of Congress. Anyone who doesn’t know enough to feel invested, or knows but doesn’t care enough to open a phone book, make a phone call, and find out what they need to do to become involved, doesn’t belong in a voting booth.

Even if there were a Constitutional right for individuals to vote (and there isn’t) I still wouldn’t encourage anyone to go round people up. There is a right to freedom of speech but I don’t go around trying to talk people into expressing themselves. There is a right to bear arms but I don’t beg anyone to buy a gun.

I can’t help the fact that a lot of uninformed Americans are going to be pulling levers for wrong reasons this election on their own steam, but I can discourage my friends from rounding up more of them.

Tags: vote, election, ballot,

I’m a person that doesn’t understand everything about politics but I do care for this this country which gives me so much opportunity and freedom.

With this upcoming election, watching the news and listening to people really scares me. Most people are concerned so much with what the politicians are promising them and where the economy is going. That worries me too, but my biggest concern is what kind of person these politicians are.

What are their values in life? What kind of people are they associating with? I have to know what kind of person you are first, what you have done, and who you are with before I’ll take your words.

Some people are just good at promising but after the election they can’t fulfill what they  promised. Same thing when you apply for a any job. Even if you are well qualified for a job, they always ask for references before they hire you.

For these politicians, if the public has questions about their character they should come clear with no lies and explain themselves before they lay out their plan.

Also, the media should not take sides. Their job is to tell the truth to the public. They should work for the public not for themselves.

Remember the election of 2004? To listen to the political liberal talking points at the time you’d think having served in Vietnam was the top qualifier for the office of the president. Mind you, Democrat John Kerry was in Vietnam about four months.

In 2004, military service of Democrat and Republican candidates for president was a political issue

President Bush was evil “because he avoided service in Vietnam.” Kerry dragged as many Vietnam vets as he could find on stage with him, and the liberal peanut gallery learned the term “chicken hawk” and John Kerry’s Democrat supporters regurgitated it at every opportunity.

Kerry Hams for the camera with Vietnam vets at a political event

Robert Poe wrote a tedious article for Salon.com where he was all over the liberal talking points at the time:

“The more veterans appear in political settings, the more neocons will find themselves facing the kinds of questions they’ve managed to dodge for most of their adult lives.

… If you believe that patriotism should be wholehearted, and should transcend politics and selfish concerns, what does it say about your patriotism that you didn’t volunteer for Vietnam? … Or, as a vet might be tempted to put it: If you’re such a great patriot, why didn’t you go fight like we did?

Bush and Co. have been enormously successful in avoiding such questions. We know that Dick Cheney famously “had other priorities,” but that’s no answer. What does the public know about John Ashcroft’s reasons for not serving in Vietnam? Richard Perle’s? Paul Wolfowitz’s? Not to mention all their comrades in Congress and the right-wing media. … The central question is not whether they did anything illegal to avoid military service. It is how they justified their avoidance in the first place.”

Doesn’t that just take you back? Throughout John Kerry’s entire presidential campaign if there were a microphone within shouting distance, you could bet he’d start yammering about serving in the Vietnam war, and the moonbats supporting him drowned him out with their echos.

Democrats and liberals loved to talk about John Kerry’s Vietnam experience when he was running for president

I just did a google search of The Daily Kos and Huffington Post for pages that mention “Kerry” and “Vietnam.”

2500 hits

3300 hit Huffington Post

Daily Kos: 2500 hits. Huffington Post: 3300 hits.

Pages upon pages where you find deep thinker “Kos” saying things like “While Kerry was taking incoming, Bush was playing “all-day water volleyball games” with “ambitious secretaries”.”
Needless to say, I could go on and on demonstrating how the left exploited Kerry’s four months in Vietnam for everything it was worth.

Now that John McCain is running for president in 2008, Vietnam experience is no longer a political issue

Since John McCain began running for president I can remember hearing him mention his service on one occasion – at the Saddleback forum. He’d been asked about the most gut-wrenching decision he’d
ever made and how faith had worked in his life.

John McCain while prisoner of war

What have liberals to say now about service in Vietnam? In response to the one occasion, where personal questions on things like faith were asked, where McCain described his experiences at the request of the moderator, former president Jimmy Carter said McCain is “milking every possible drop of advantage from his status as a POW.”

Kerry spent four months in Vietnam, McCain spent more than five years.

Kerry needed a band aid or a few stitches for his Purple Heart injuries – McCain needed surgery and still suffers from the resulting disabilities.

I’m not sure how often Kerry faced the enemy – McCain faced them every day and withstood torture.
Kerry got to go home on a technicality after a few flesh wounds, McCain refused the offer to leave the POW camp on principle.

Four years ago, to qualify as a patriot you had to have served in Vietnam, not just any military service would do. This election, that’s all gone – you get your taxes raised – that makes you a patriot.

Old news: Republicans think and do. Democrats feel and react.

The point to all this is this is what the left has to offer. Where conservatives are always strongest is when they are appealing to people’s common sense. The left appeals to emotion. Conservative Republicans try to get people thinking, liberals try to get people feeling. It doesn’t matter what they feel, as long as it makes them feel like putting liberals in power.

Double standards abound. How many times have you heard people criticize President Bush for his decades-old DUI? How sick did everyone get over seeing his record in the National Guard raked over the coals? Recall how detestable it was for Democrats that Dick Cheney had connections in the energy industry.

Democrat political strategy: if you can’t beat Republicans, smear them

This election, the Democrats have made Sarah Palin’s daughter’s boyfriend’s Myspace page an issue for national scrutiny. We’ve had to get to the bottom of whether Sarah Palin’s religious activities may have included speaking in tongues. The list goes on.

The same people making an issue of all those things condemn questions – even the mere mention of Obama’s 20-year associations with a mad man who cavorted with Louis Farrakhan in Libya visiting Muammar al-Gaddafi, said our country deserved 9/11, and cried “god damn America.” Off limits also are his choice of associates like the America-hating terrorist Bill Ayers. All the sudden things that were happening around the time George W. Bush served in the National Guard took place too long ago to matter.

Now that Cheney is on the way out, we are no longer allowed to be concerned about how associates like Bill Ayers or Jeremiah Wright might influence someone’s agenda. Andrew Wilkow made the point the other day: imagine if John McCain had a relationship with someone who had bombed an abortion clinic comparable to Obama’s relationship to Ayers.

Make damn sure when you refer to Barack Obama you use his name, but make doubly damn sure you don’t use his full name. It is ill-mannered to use his middle name. Ever heard a liberal of any import call for some decorum when discussing George Bush? Heard any of the things they’re calling Sarah Palin?

Democrats like Barack Obama value control not consistency, power not principle

If liberalism had an ideology that would sell – that people would embrace having thought it through, then liberals wouldn’t embarrass themselves with these double standards, the appeals to emotion, and the endless internal inconsistency and self contradictions that follow. If the media weren’t heavily biased the left would be called to account for their dishonesty and inconsistency.

What the left has is an agenda no one in their right mind wants and an insatiable appetite for power along with the support of the national media who agrees, at least implicitly, that rules of logic, facts, and decency are a small sacrifice in exchange for contol.

Why do we care about these uncommitted voters?

Oh yeah, because these people in the wishy washy, fence sitting, uninformed (yes, I said uninformed) middle are the ones who decide elections. Republicans and conservatives don’t, Democrats and liberals don’t, 3rd party wackos sure as hell don’t, the people who can live through at least a year of campaigning, primary season, conventions, with 24/7 cable and network news coverage, daily front page headlines in the paper, blogs, web sites, radio - these people who still haven’t picked a side are basically the ones who decide the elections.

I have more respect for the Daily Kos kool-aid drinkers who’d vote for Obama if he were caught red handed with child porn on his laptop and a million dollars in bribe money in his freezer (and they really would vote for him) than I do these so-called “independents” who seemingly have no principles whatsoever to guide their choice.

So they look to things like who has more experience, who is older, who is younger, who is black, who isn’t black, who talks nice, who is mean, who seems strong, and they may even tune into a few convention speeches, debates, and if they live in a battleground state, they see the ads while watching American Idol or Heroes or whatever it is people watch on network TV these days.

Apparently they don’t have a set of issues that are important to them. They don’t care what happens to their taxes, they don’t care whether Constitutional rights are eroded, they certainly can’t be bothered with understanding the difference between the kind of judges a liberal or conservative nominates. They aren’t concerned with the safety of the country, where are troops are sent, how we deal with other countries, what we’ll do about bad ones who can, might, or have produced or procured chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons.

If they cared about any of these things, if at least one or two of these issues were important, wouldn’t they have figured out who’s taking what position on them?

No.

Instead, they wait for someone like Katie Couric to tell them what the big issue is today and what to think about it. They might even decide that being things basically suck right now, and being the guy in the White House has an R next to his name, the guy running with the R next to his name must be bad. Way to connect the dots. Never mind that the suckitude may be completely or partly beyond the control of the current president, and never mind the guy running to replace him has a completely different position.

So, when you watch a debate, or a speech, or a press conference, and the candidate is talking baby talk, pulling punches instead of describing what an incompetent fool his opponent is, when you see Obama being able to get mileage out of a problem that he and his friends and colleagues who share his ideology created - its because of the “uncommitted voters.” The kind of voters we need less of, but are pandered to instead.

If you are reading this, and you still haven’t made up your mind. If you’re still on the fence. If you are still not sure who would be better for the country, do me a favor, do the right thing and don’t bother. Just stay home on Wednesday November 5th, stay home on super-Wednesday and don’t go out and vote. Leave that to those of us who are informed.

Oh yeah, stay home the day before too. Rent some DVDs or go see a movie. Whatever you do, don’t turn on the TV, there won’t be anything good on anyway, just politics and stuff.

What happened to “we can walk and chew gum at the same time?” Just days ago Obama didn’t want to be distracted from his campaign by actually doing something about the economy problem. He didn’t call one legislator prior to the first vote in the House to secure support for the bailout bill.

Senator Obama didn’t mind distractions yesterday when he set up a web site and released a 13 minute ad about the Keating Five.

There is a definite need to talk about both the economy and either candidate’s background, character, and judgement. I want to hear what McCain plan to do exactly and I want to hear exactly what Obama plans to do to fix this mess, but we need to know what kind of person we’re putting in the White House to. The president manages more than the economy.

Time has shown that conservatives get no quarter by pussy-footing around. They are aghast that McCain and Palin are actually exercising some scrutiny while Obama was running ads attacking McCain on his age and disabilities weeks ago.

Palin is making no apologies.

“And then there’s even more to the story,” Palin told voters in Clearwater, Fla. “Barack Obama says that Ayers was just someone in the neighborhood, but that’s less than truthful. His own advisers said they were quote certainly friendly. In fact Obama held one of his first meetings of his political career in Bill Ayers’ living room and they worked together on various projects in Chicago.”

Palin did not say the claim that Obama “pals around” with a terrorist, but did repeat a line she used over the weekend that Obama “sees America as imperfect enough to work with a domestic terrorist who had targeted his own country.”

Here’s a summary of the ways Obama is connected to Ayers:

• Obama held a political meeting in Ayer’s home.
• Obama and Ayers worked together on various projects.
• Obama served on a charity board with Ayers.
• Ayers hosted a fund raiser for Obama when Obama rand for state office in the ’90s.
• Obama promoted Ayers book in 1997.
• Obama and Ayers exchanged emails and phone calls as recently as 2005.

“Does Barack Obama truly expect the American people to believe that he had no idea about his friends past as the infamous founder of the domestic terror group The Weather Underground or is he just lying?” asked McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds.

Good question. Obama is dodging:

“I was a little surprised over the last couple of days to hear … Sen. McCain’s campaign say that we want to turn the page on discussions about the economy…”

It is no surprise at all Obama wants to stay off that page. He wants to milk this phenomena of gaining in poll numbers over the economic fiasco fallout when it was McCain who’s been warning us about it and Obama was in bed with the top figures who made it happen.

That’s another one McCain needs to hit hard. And the economic crisis does not make the question of Obama’s judgement and character and integrity any less important, in fact, it makes it more important. People need to know what kind of power hungry scammer they’re turning the keys over to.

Source news story

It is big news, reported by Warren Throckmorten, that Shelly Mandell, the head of the LA Chapter of National Organization of Women has endorsed the McCain ticket.

The real news is that this isn’t in the news. Why isn’t this all over the front page?

Says Throckmorten:

Imagine Jim Dobson or Rick Warren endorsing Barack Obama. Imagine the headlines and news stories which would derive from such an endorsement.

Now imagine a major Democratic operative, who is heads one of the largest chapters of the National Organization for Women endorsing John McCain and Sarah Palin, primarily due to Sarah Palin’s place on the ticket.

Both would be big news, right?

One would think either scenario would be reported widely. However, when Ms. Shelly Mandell endorsed Sarah Palin in Carson CA, on Saturday October 4, it was not reported widely.

Great points!

Mandell says she disagrees with Palin on some issues, probably life, but she believes Palin cares about fairness to women and will shake things up in Washington. Mandell is a former supporter of Hillary Clinton.

This is refreshing as it has become gnawingly obvious that NOW is not now, and hasn’t been for a long time an organization that supports anything that doesn’t mesh with the liberal DNC agenda.

Dr. Bruce pointed out the hypocrisy of NOW on his blog earlier.

NOW no longer seems to care about any women’s issues other than one. Abortion. It no longer matters if you are a successful woman yourself, trying to break through a glass ceiling, whether you promote and exemplify women’s contributions. The litmus test is the position on abortion and it better be pro-abortion.

As Rett Hatcher points out:

NOW says that although Sarah Palin is a woman she does not support women’s rights. I have a hard time believing that Sarah Palin is not for pay equality and is not against violence towards women. So in reality, NOW is only concerned about a candidate being pro-abortion. I say pro-abortion as opposed to pro-choice because if they were really pro-choice then they wouldn’t have a problem with a woman choosing to be pro-life, choosing not to condone sex outside of marriage, and choosing options other than abortion. These are their big issues with Sarah Palin. Here we have a successful, articulate, intelligent mother of five as a vice-presidential candidate but NOW won’t get behind her because she is against letting them kill unborn women (and men).

39 new state polls released in the first three days of October have given Barack Obama his first lead over the magic number of 270 since mid-July. Minnesota (10 EV) and New Hampshire (4 EV) both moved from toss-up to Obama, giving him 273 electoral votes to McCain’s 163, with 102 votes remaining as a toss-up. If the election were held today, Obama would win every state John Kerry won in 2004, while adding New Mexico (5 EV), Iowa (7 EV), and Colorado (9 EV) to his coalition. Remember, though, that these state polls are a lagging indicator and most do not include any surveying done after the vice-presidential debate on Thursday night.

This is encouraging. Why? Because the election isn’t going to be held today, it will be held a month from now. A lot can and undoubtedly will happen between now and then. Also because these numbers don’t reflect the bounce Palin will have scored in the VP debate.

McCain has to do everything right between now and then - and that means letting the people in on what kind of politician and leader Obama has proven to be with his thin resume.

“My commitments are to the values of that church…” -Barack Obama, May 4, 2008

A few imbeciles on the right have gone to great lengths attempting to paint Barack Obama as some sort of closet Muslim. Apparently, the conspiracy theory-like narrative goes something like “Obama attended a school as a youngster where he was indoctrinated with Islamic views sympathetic with bomb belt Muslims, then went underground for the next forty years, waiting for his chance to become president and…”

It is just too stupid. I cringe every time I see an idiot attempting to make the connection because I know in mind of the American Idol-watching neutral observer hearing this implausible scenario, the credibility of Obama’s critics who have sound, reasonable, and responsible causes for concern, is compromised.

One of those sound, reasonable, and responsible causes for concern is Obama’s actual religion. I’m talking about the one he has practiced openly for the last twenty years. The collection of beliefs that has guided, comforted, and connected him with his chosen community and power base as an adult.

Does his religion and personal beliefs matter? Ultimately, the reader can make up their own mind. The point here is to inform more than persuade. The current president’s references to innocuous things like prayer, faith in God, and other mainstream Christian beliefs and practices have been liberally (no pun) scrutinized over the last eight years, but two wrongs don’t make a right. However, not all religions and religious beliefs are created equal, some may invite themselves to scrutiny more than others. Add the information here to whatever you already know, do some research on your own, check my facts, and decide for yourself.

I’ll start in the middle with the Obama’s chosen church, Trinity United Church of Christ, and its stated values. But first, another thing needs to be clear up front. What follows in this and upcoming parts of the series is about a specific and distinguishable belief system, not black churches in general. While this belief system is, with few plausible exceptions, practiced only by predominately black churches, only a (hopefully small) portion of black churches wholly subscribe to this belief system.

This belief system is usually referred to as “Black Liberation Theology” or the “Black Liberation Movement.” Somewhat of a misnomer because no one is going to be liberated from anything by it and it has little if anything to do with theology. There has been volumes of text written on the now-famous sound bites of Jeremiah Wright. They’ve been exposed, even in the Obama-sympathetic mainstream media, and seemingly put to bed by the same. Now that Wright is no longer given a voice by the media, fired from Obama’s campaign, carefully denounced by Obama, and retired from his “ministry,” is all well and good at Trinity United Church of Christ?

A scan of the church web site isn’t promising. From the site’s “about” page you can navigate to another page titled “The black value system.” Stopping right there, I have to say this galls me. What can be more racist than the assertion that one race could, would, or should have a separate or unique set of values? Reading this page, I actually have little complaint with most of them. Taken individually, some of them are entirely laudable and something for everyone of any race to aspire to. Going down the page, I especially liked the following one when I saw it. Number 6:

Adherence to the Black Work Ethic. “It is becoming harder to find qualified people to work in Chicago.” Whether this is true or not, it represents one of the many reasons given by businesses and industries for deserting the Chicago area. We must realize that a location with good facilities, adequate transportation and a reputation for producing skilled workers will attract industry. We are in competition with other cities, states and nations for jobs. High productivity must be a goal of the Black workforce.”

High productivity. Nothing wrong with that. If you want to attract industries and jobs, be known for the city with the most productive people. Then, only a couple paragraphs down is this – number 8:

Disavowal of the Pursuit of “Middleclassness.” Classic methodology on control of captives teaches that captors must be able to identify the “talented tenth” of those subjugated, especially those who show promise of providing the kind of leadership that might threaten the captor’s control.

Those so identified are separated from the rest of the people by:

1. Killing them off directly, and/or fostering a social system that encourages them to kill off one another.

2. Placing them in concentration camps, and/or structuring an economic environment that induces captive youth to fill the jails and prisons.

3. Seducing them into a socioeconomic class system which, while training them to earn more dollars, hypnotizes them into believing they are better than others and teaches them to think in terms of “we” and “they” instead of “us.”

4. So, while it is permissible to chase “middleclassness” with all our might, we must avoid the third separation method - the psychological entrapment of Black “middleclassness.” If we avoid this snare, we will also diminish our “voluntary” contributions to methods A and B. And more importantly, Black people no longer will be deprived of their birthright: the leadership, resourcefulness and example of their own talented persons.

I want to note here that the preceding 7 “black values” were each followed by a portion of scripture, apparently from the King James Version of the Bible. This one wasn’t. Instead it was followed by this crazy list. One of the first things that crossed my mind is this contradicts the exhortation of number 6 to “be productive.” Before I begin unpacking what was said, I have to point out a quote from Michelle Obama lest anyone begin to question whether the Obamas ever bought into this kind of “thinking” or integrated it in their own individual world views.

Michelle Obama earlier this year, speaking to a group in Zanesville, Ohio:

“We left corporate America, which is a lot of what we’re asking young people to do… Don’t go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. Those are the careers that we need, and we’re encouraging our young people to do that.”

I’ll argue that if her directions to the women to refrain from “going into corporate America” were not inspired by her church’s call for a “disavowal of middleclassness” they were certainly on the same wavelength.

It was somewhat difficult to process this particular “value.” It seemed very much out of place with the others and has a somewhat incoherent, paranoid, deranged feel to it, as if penned by someone suffering a mental illness. According to the web site, the church adopted these “black values” in 1981and an annual scholarship was issued in their name, long before Obama joined Trinity United Church of Christ.

I’d be eager to ask the author or someone with in-depth knowledge of this text several questions.

The term “talented tenth” originated in 1896, after the end of slavery, with Northern whites from the American Baptist Missionary Home Society – their goal was establishing black colleges intended to educate black teachers and professionals. Why then, is it associated with this “classic methodology on control of captives?”

Several years later, W. E. B. Dubois used the term in reference to the blacks he hoped would become leaders and intellectuals through higher learning. Dubois wrote:

“The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men. The problem of education, then, among Negroes must first of all deal with the Talented Tenth; it is the problem of developing the Best of this race that they may guide the Mass away from the contamination and death of the Worst, in their own and other races.”

“…the Talented Tenth as they have risen among American Negroes have been worthy of leadership…”

Why was this term so violently yanked out of the original context and framed as the words of an imaginary captor of some sort providing instruction on how to best eliminate these threats to his control? Dubois’s books and writings are promoted by the church and available in the church bookstore.

The author goes on to say this talented tenth are to be killed off directly, placed in concentration camps, and the leftovers that don’t fit in the concentration camps are seduced into earning lots of money so they think they are better off than others, and …this one just throws me… taught to think in terms of we and they?

Taught to think in terms of we and they? I guess this means that they’d start thinking crazy stuff such as a set of values can be designated to persons of a particular skin color. Then the clencher – the promise is, the logic… if “we” avoid getting sucked into the trap of being successful we won’t be as likely to be lynched, killing each other, put in jails, and concentration camps.

I fail to see how or why someone with a Harvard education, or any thinking person, would expose themselves to this kind of craziness. This isn’t just making up or believing mystical stories – even a staunch atheist would admit that at least there is a coherent chain of logic once you buy into the supernatural part of traditional Judeo Christian belief systems and other major world religions.

Here you have something so disjointed and unrealistic it can’t, in my mind, be excused as a private, personal, religious belief.

I suppose an apologist for Black Liberation Theology might say the language is metaphorical, but that still leaves the problem of flipping the initial meaning behind “talented tenth,” not to mention the bigger problem that when you already have an actual set of circumstances in your history involving real captors and real slaves, you don’t need to create an imaginary bogeyman that doesn’t even behave in a rational way, especially not when the real “monster” (slavery, then Jim Crow, segregation, racial discrimination, etc) has been defeated.

A mainstream evangelical Christian believer or any race would no sooner darken the door of Obama’s church, at least not once they’d been exposed to their theology and preaching, than a Mormon would settle for a Baptist church because its closer and located in his community, or a committed practicing Catholic would worship at Presbyterian church because that’s where her friends go. I’m not making this point to indicate one is better or worse, right or wrong – for now I just want to stress that the defining beliefs of churches like Obama’s and those of a mainstream Christian church are hardly comparable and never interchangeable.

The “theology” of Trinity United Church of Christ is more about a movement - cultural and social agendas than it is about theology. For this reason, this movement and its beliefs must be examined carefully before electing president someone who claims to subscribe to them.

I do not believe there should be a religious test for the president of the United States, so if the only problem I could find with Black Liberation Theology and Obama’s church were things like the belief that Jesus was black, I could and would easily set those aside. Obama is entitled to his beliefs, but we need to know what shapes his agenda, his philosophy, his ideology - these are the things that will directly influence how he would make decisions in the Oval Office.

This has been an introduction that will hopefully leave you with more questions about the religion of Barack Obama, his faith, his mentors, and what has guided, inspired, and shaped the man who wants power over the country.

Does Obama really believe this stuff?

Why did he join this church?

What else do they believe?

Where do beliefs like this come from?

In future parts of this series of posts, I’ll answer those questions and continue to explore the religion of Barack Obama. Subscribe to the feed now so you won’t forget to check back. You can also have future posts in this series emailed directly to your inbox.

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