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The potential significance of the 2007 Obama Hampton video… — 24 Comments

  1. Ann Althouse says that focusing on the Obama speech makes us look ugly. I say that she has lost her mind. The president stirs up racial hatred with lies and slanders and she thinks it is wrong to point that out?!

    Of course, she also says she still hasn’t decided who to vote for — which means she gave up on logic a while ago.

  2. Obama’s ‘long hard look’ clearly extended to the woman who would be the mother of his children (and perhaps ‘beard’).

  3. What is with people like Althouse? Do those elitists live in a different world? Maybe it comes from drinking too much French water.

    Well, Neo I borrowed from your post and sent it to my mailing list (with all of the links), especially to the recalcitrant ones who claim to still be Obama supporters. As is often the case I think you summarize the issue quite clearly.

    I frankly asked the question: “How can rational people still support a man for President who deliberately sets out to stir up resentment and hatred among the population, without regard for the effect on the country?” I await responses. Oh, and I used the information you provided on the waiver to the Stafford act, and the amount of Federal money spent on Katrina relief/reconstruction, to point out that he is a liar, who lies without flinching.

    Thank you. I was going to research the issue, and you did the work for me.

  4. I believe Obama will be a little angry and bring up the 47% and attack Romney – go on the offensive.

    I believe he’ll do that just like the DNC convention in order to whip up more passion on the left.

    I believe it’s Obama’s only option at this point.

    Here’s Ann’s problem. She isn’t inclined to understand or even listen to a conservative point of view.

    Hey! I call it like I see it. When the logical bones are gone. All you have is a limp spine with no conviction.

    When I first started hearing an alternative view pioint in 1991. It IMMEDIATELY made sense to me and I took to it like a fish to water.

    I went to the library 3 times a week that year hungering for information to CEMENT in place a libertarian / conservative view point.

    Easy enough. When Ann hears it. She has her figurative finger in her ear. Horrible.

  5. For goodness sakes Ann,

    please consider that the divider is the originator of the dividing comments not the messenger.

    The divider in chief continually strikes a very negative and INACCURATE message when speaking about Republicans and/or conservatives.

    Are you Ann inclined to believe the negative talking points?

    Let’s boil it down like this:
    1) Forget the personalities and politics of who is who Romeny vs. Obama. – ARE YOU ANN, conservative or liberal on fiscal issues? Are you for personal responsibility? Are you for strong national security?

    2) If you are indeed like 80% of us then you should stop being misinformed on the personality of Romney/Obama and know with just a minimal amount of research that Obama is not fiscally responsible – not for personal responsibility (see Sandra Fluke) and NOT for strong national security.

    Period.

    You cannot honestly (key word honestly) after doing due diligence believe that Obama is anywhwere near a good leader on these areas.

    Therefore you are either dishonest or you continue to be lazy (not doing the due diligence required to make any informed decision).

    You can’t have gone almost 4 years since your original misinformed vote and still not know with cruelty how you will vote

    That’s just pure idiocy or laziness – you choose.

  6. Having killed Bin Laden does not make a president strong on national security by the way.

  7. To quote Edwin Edwards, I fear that the only thing that could derail Obama would be being found in bed with a dead woman or a live boy. So now we know he is a race baiter and a liar who tailors his accent to his audience. Gambling in Casablanca.

  8. And Mr. Frank, that happened (in bed with a live boy) to Michael Jackson, with no real repercussions that I could see.

  9. In reading Ann Althouse’s response to this video I got the impression that she was reacting to the racial aspect of the video itself.

    Obama promised to close Gitmo and Gitmo still operates. Are references to Gitmo ugly? Obama promised to halve the deficit. Are references to Obama’s profligate spending ugly? If neither of the above is true, then why should probative information regarding race baiting be ugly when it reveals that the “post-racial” president is in fact the race-baiter in chief?

    Hard evidence is sometimes ugly, ask any prosecutor who shows a jury photos of bodies in a murder investigation, but the character of the evidence is conditioned by the nature of the crime. So, too, in this case, and ugly or not I hope that this video gets much much air time in the court of public opinion.

  10. Since she’s now “come out” on Instapundit [using her [temporary? experimental?] guest-hosting privilege], I wonder whether Ann A might see herself as something of a mediator between Left and Right; I think that subjectively she means well and intends her racialist comments to serve as helpful warnings to conservatives who just don’t “get” the mindset of the “undecided voters” with whom she says she identifies. Maybe she’s trying to act as an “interpreter” of sorts because she knows and speaks the language of both tribes? I would like to think so, but in my experience “left is left and right is right and never the twain shall meet”.

    Re her still being “undecided” after 4 years, I liked Bill Whittle’s comment on her blog at 11:45AM this morning. Indeed, how, for Pete’s sake, could any adult still be undecided after having lived in the USA these past 4 years ?

  11. carl in atlanta and others:

    About Althouse, a few observations:

    (1) If you read her blog regularly it appears that she sees it as a kind of provocative theater, where she sometimes is intentionally ambiguous about her message in order to stimulate discussion and tweak her readers. In 2008 and again this year, she’s adopted a stance (a sincere opinion or a pose, I don’t know which) of “cruel neutrality” about the election, I suspect partly to stimulate discussion, partly to keep people guessing how she’ll vote in the end, and partly who knows what else. Perhaps she really made up her mind a long time ago; I really don’t know.

    (2) Althouse has also long shown a strong tendency towards extreme sensitivity to anything she perceives as smacking of racism on the part of white people. Sometimes it takes very odd forms where it appears she is imagining it—witness this, from 2008, and this takedown of it. There was also this very odd incident from 2006.

    Lately she has also condemned Rush for being racist, or at least playing on racist elements, when he played the Obamaphone lady tape over and over. This latest incident with the Obama Hampton tape and blaming the messenger would also be in that vein, also, as she indicates here:

    Those of you who are pleased with these seemingly exciting new weapons to use in the fight to defeat Obama are losing perspective. You are not thinking about how you look to the people you need to convince. Here’s a clue: You look ugly.

    Let’s leave Ann herself aside for a moment. It’s an interesting Catch-22 she presents, and I think it’s a real one that Obama has long exploited. He is allowed to do and say racist things, and those who point it out look ugly (which is another way to say, I think, that somehow they look racist; I’m not sure what else the “ugly” word could mean in that context). McCain dealt with it by never going there—never exploiting the awful Rev. Wright stuff, for example. Romney hasn’t gone there either, but Hannity and Tucker Carlson did.

    The question is how much truth can people stand, if the truth makes a black person look bad (or racist)? Have we bent over backward so far to redress racism that we wink at black racists and are not allowed to expose them without looking bad ourselves? If it’s come to that, we’re in deep deep doo-doo.

    I don’t know whether it has. I think most people have more common sense than that, and that Althouse is actually describing a liberal mindset more than she’s describing what she thinks she’s describing, a middle-of-the-road mindset. But I confess I’m not really sure.

    I also think she’s describing an attitude towards emphasizing the appearance of things and whether they look ugly, and whether we should therefore be protected from seeing ugly things that are in fact true, an attitude that is more commonly held by women than men.

    Is it sexist of me to say that? Or am I allowed to say it because I’m a woman?

  12. I do not read AA’s blather very often, so perhaps I’m not seeing the forest and instead I am focusing on the trees, but IMO she’s a prima donna who believes, or at least pretends to believe, she is the arbitrator of what is up and what is down.

    “… an attitude towards emphasizing the appearance of things and whether they look ugly, and whether we should therefore be protected from seeing ugly things that are in fact true, an attitude that is more commonly held by women than men.”

    I agree females in general wish to avoid or ignore the ‘ugly’; but the ‘ugly’ in life has to be faced square on, judged ‘ugly’, and dealt with. The real racists are those who make excuses for ugly behavior based on the race of the perpetrator. In my world ugly is colorblind for ugly is as ugly does.

  13. One more thing. I’ll be surprised if Glenn Reynolds continues his group-blogging experiment for much longer and will be interested to see who gets invited back — or not — to guest blog for him next time he goes on vacation.

    It addition to having to address AA’s provocative (and perhaps presumptive?) post, he’s also had to distance himself from at least two quotes that were mis-attributed to him by other blogs, including POLITICO.

  14. Neo,

    I refer back to your comment @4:42 about Ann Althouse, whose blog I read regularly. I respond, again by pointing out my own “ugly” comment above @4:11.

    Althouse is a prof. of law. In litigation, both the prosecution making its case and the defense defending the accused get ugly. I can understand on one hand why she might mention revulsion at something she considers ugly. What I can’t understand is why that’s not an acceptable (as opposed to desirable) part of the process for someone schooled in law and presumably litigation. Especially in the case of Obama whose minions play the race card with impunity to the point that it’s virtually meaningless in the national dialogue.

    Furthermore, as an intelligent woman, I can’t for the life of me understand how she can not be decided with regard to her vote. I can understand a battle between intellect and emotion, but I’m confounded by any prof. of law (and this will include many other law profs.) who seem to tolerate Obama’s end runs around Congress, legislation and the Constitution itself. If there anything that’s truly ugly and unconscionable its Obama running legal roughshod over the rule of law.

  15. HYPOCRASY: Obama voted AGAINST a waiver of the Stafford Act requirement of 10% matching local funds for federal Katrina funding just 14 days BEFORE his speech!!!

    Obama had voted to keep in place the very things that he condemns in his speech — all with a straight face.

    There he is playing the race card (then denying he’s playing the race card in the next sentence) all the while knowing that he voted to support what he is condemning!

    Here is the link to he “Nay” vote:

    http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=1&vote=00181

    Is this the kind of man we deserve to have as our president???

  16. Ken: extraordinary and quite fascinating.

    I looked at this list, and the “nays” were mostly Democrats. Apparently this was because there were also some Iraq war appropriations as part of the same bill? See this.

    So to protest the Iraq War, Obama was willing to throw the Katrina victims under the bus. He was one of only 14 votes in the Senate against the bill.

  17. T: all I can say is that Althouse’s stand does not surprise me. I know many many people whose intelligence I deeply respect who will be voting for Obama. It is a conundrum I have never been able to solve.

    The only illumination I can give on the subject is that I believe if I hadn’t gotten into reading a lot of conservative writers after 9/11 (something I didn’t even realize I was doing at the time; I thought I was just reading stuff that was interesting that I found online) I might have been among them.

    I like to think I would not have supported Obama even had that not happened, however. But I’ll never know.

  18. I know many many people whose intelligence I deeply respect who will be voting for Obama. It is a conundrum I have never been able to solve.

    Intelligence isn’t a scalar; it’s a tensor.

  19. I know quite a few highly intelligent people–nuclear scientists, biochemists, etc.–who support Obama. They have a very selective intelligence, not a practical survival-value intelligence. Their livelihoods depend on living in an orderly civilized society. They would be dead meat in many cultures.

    As I said on a previous post re Althouse, she lives in a bubble and doesn’t understand how the world works. She also belongs in that class of people who live for the utopian dream and not the doable reality.

    In reality, the world will never be free of racism. Anyone who studies this subject will learn that right away. Ditto for theft, thuggishness and demagoguery.

    As various posters above pointed out, Althouse ignores all the criminal and irresponsible things Obama has done because she wants to be a “good person” who doesn’t want to be racist.

    But, of course, she is the worst kind of racist because she would allow a so-called black man to stomp all over the rest of the American people, white or black or mixed or whatever. Obama is a Mugabe/Mussolini/Chavez wannabe, but Alhouse is too lazy to explore the real world to see how that works.

    There’s a reason why academics are said to be living an ivory towers.

  20. Neo,

    Yes a conundrum, indeed. As I said I can understand the tug of emotion v. intellect. I can also understand those who don’t see the world through economic eyes. The confounding thing with Obama is that he has sullied everything he’s touched. What is is about failure that these people don’t understand and why would anyone want to suborn failure? Or is it just that they are incapable of admitting to themselves that they made a mistake in 2008?

  21. Promethea says, “I know quite a few highly intelligent people…”

    What we determine to be intelligence is rather selective and many of the ‘intelligentsia’ are rather impractical and would, as you note, be dead meat in a more harsh environment. I have neighbors who are very good, considerate neighbors and they are ‘intelligent’ in that they are well educated and are employed as professionals; but a few of them have Obama-Biden signs (far fewer than in 2008) out on their lawns. When I try to engage them in a friendly manner as to why they support Obama their responses are based on a visceral, emotional and out of touch with reality concept that voting for Obama is in the end PC. They are oblivious when it comes to BHO’s record as POTUS or his prior history.

    Go figure.

  22. Watching the debate. If one does not know the information, Obama comes off as quite convincing while he mouths statistics and numbers that are factually incorrect.

    He is a consummate liar.

  23. I know many many people whose intelligence I deeply respect who will be voting for Obama.

    The brightest person in my high school class has spent the last 3 1/2 years working in the Obama White House.

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