BORIS PART I: “Neither Barack’s name nor his appearance will scare practically anyone.”

STATING A FACT IS DIFFERENT FROM HAVING FEAR OF SOMETHING, REAL OR IMAGINED, fool.

BORIS PART II: “I suppose most people here believe that poverty is rampant in African American communities only because of some flaw in the people themselves and that centuries of oppression have left no mark. What does that sound like to you?”

Aside from the well-stated liberal “Great Society” comments above, MY answer to your “(w)hat does that sound like to you?” bleating is: PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. Y’know, that thing which CAN be learned and CAN BE passed down from parent/neighbor to child…IF DESIRED.

NOT that I expect Leftists to be high on “responsibility” when they can whine on about transferring it in guilt-n-payments to others….

try ending up on the “other” side of any of his immediate righthand supporters, people who he cannot possibly not know who they are and exactly what they are doing, and see what kind of personality these peeps in his know have.

you are what you eat.

and the company you keep.

friendly and mild, my fat fanny.

One of the more puzzling developments in Obama’s career is how he has been able to position himself as a reform style politician – as an outsider who can come in and clean up the mess politicians have made. This simply doesn’t match reality. And yet the media seems uninterested in exploring and explaining Obama’s past.

At the start of his career you could make the argument that this is the kind of politician Obama was seeking to become, but his ambition seems to have quickly pushed this idealism aside. Making his career in Chicago, and Cook County Illinois, gave Obama the chance to put some substance behind his words. But at practically every opportunity he has chose the safe route rather than the route of reform; of challenging the system. Back in July Michael Van Winkle, a Chicago resident, offered a quick rundown of this rarely talked about aspect of Obama’s career:

He has a track record of putting party over principle.

In 2006, he endorsed the re-election of Rod Blagojevich, despite very real concerns about the Governor’s ethics. Since the endorsement, Blagojevich has come very close to full blown indictment, so close that some Illinois Democrats tried to have him recalled. But Obama’s voice has been silent on the matter.

In 2007, incumbent Cook County Board President and long-time Machine candidate, John Stroger, faced a tough challenge from a reform candidate in the Democratic Primary. Obama refused to make an endorsement.

When John Stroger was incapacitated by a stroke two weeks before the election, Obama was silent. When the Machine told us Stoger was fine and only admitted the seriousness of the stroke once the deadline for candidate filings had passed, Obama remained silent. And when the Machine replaced John Stroger with his inexperienced and unimpressive son, Todd, well Obama endorsed him.

Since Obama’s endorsement, Todd Stroger has gone on to break promises, lie to the public, and raise taxes to support six-figure salaries for his family and friends.

Even now, Obama is putting politics over principle in Illinois. Illinoisans have a chance to reform state politics by voting “yes” for a consitutional convention on a November ballot question. But Obama’s own campaign mastermind, David Axelrod, has been hired to oppose the effort.

I’m not blaming corruption in Illinois on Obama; let’s be clear. But he’s done very little to stand up for principles and good governance in a state that deperately needs principled and bipartisan leadership.

Tom Bevan provides further details on the consequences of Obama refusing to take a stronger stand in the Cook County Board election:

Whether Obama’s endorsement would have mattered or not is beside the point. Endorsements are, as a matter of practical politics, mostly symbolism. By choosing to stay neutral in the race and to not go the extra distance to endorse Claypool, Obama signified that he was for reform and change – but only up to a point.

As it turned out, there was a bizarre epilogue to this race – and one that proves these kind of decisions have real world consequences. A week before the primary, Stroger suffered a severe stroke. The resulting outpouring of sympathy played at least some part in the final outcome: the reformer Claypool lost by six points, 53 to 47.

Stroger stayed out of sight for weeks and eventually it came to light that after recognizing he would not be able to stand for re-election, he engineered a deal from his hospital bed to install his son, Todd Stroger, on the ballot.

The move was decried by many, including Claypool, for what it was: a bald act of nepotism. Despite Todd Stroger’s youth, inexperience, and his reputation as a corrupt, machine-style ward boss, Obama not only endorsed Stroger in the general election but heaped praise on him as a “a good progressive” – a claim that no one who knows him could make with a straight face.

In the end, Todd Stroger won election in November 2006. Since taking office as Cook County Board President, however, he has been an unmitigated disaster. With runaway tax increases and the county hospital system in crisis, Stroger has been busy packing the County payroll with allies at the expense of taxpayers, including more than a dozen friends and relatives making more than $100,000 per year.

As I noted yesterday, Obama likes to talk about his stance against the war in Iraq as difficult and courageous when it was really just smart politics. Here was a true chance to be courageous, to put real political capital on the line, and Obama refused to stand up to the political machine. And there were real world consequences in the form of continued corruption, nepotism, and bad government.

Only those who view Obama through rose colored glasses, however, will be surprised by any of this history. Obama’s political mentor, and the politician who gave Obama what little legislative accomplishments he has, was a member of the Chicago machine and continues to treat public office like a family business.

Nobody expected Obama to become a one issue crusader against corruption in Chicago. Even most anti-machine politicians attempt to work within the system. But it is one thing to remain silent and another to use the system to climb the ladder and then claim to be something different. Obama’s record is the record of a politician accommodating himself to the system not challenging it. But of course, it is hard to win elections running as just another politician.

Obama’s reformer image is an illusion and a dangerous one because it hides his real record and masks his real character.

I used to live on the streets for two weeks while i got a job ,then used my first check to get an apartment.Minimum wage to start.Ive lived on welfare for four years under a socialist govt the NDP of Ontario during the nineties and didnt get another job until Mike harris came in ,a conservative.He slashed welfare and raised the minimum wage.Ive never looked back and have been working ever since.Socialist states encourage welfare and if it becomes totalitarian ,theres a sure resource of fighters for the military.Just my story amongst millions on the world.

thanks for rehashing the party line.

Please, Javelin…point us to this mythical “party line” that I’ve rehashed.

And while you’re at it, please refute the FACT that the 70s/early 80s saw a wave of business flight from urban areas due to high taxation.

And please refute the FACT that when jobs dried up due to this flight, small businesses in urban areas began to go under.

And please refute the FACT that when chronic unemployment set in these areas, levels of substance abuse and criminality exploded.

And please refute the FACT that when the black community began being hammered on the crucibles of unemployment, substance abuse, and criminality, there was a subsequent explosion of out-of-wedlock child births as millionsblack men were either too broke, too strung-out, or too locked up to be fathers to their children.

And please refute the FACT that a lack of strong, consistent male presence in black households has lead millions of neglected and forgotten young black males to desperately seek out and embrace the only supply of “maleness” that’s being offered to them in their communities – namely, the nihilistic culture of the “thug” and “gangsta”.

And please refute the FACT that when millions of black children have grown up in households where no one has ever worked, that those children are not going to have the work ethic that’s a necessary starting point for pulling one’s self out of poverty.

And then, considering all of the above, please explain how what we’ve seen happen in the black community over the past 40+ years is a mystery.

…blacks were the poorest element in the society, usually consigned to the menial services and agricultural laborer segment of the work force. They were always poorer than the equivalent whites.

Replace “blacks” with any other ethnic group that’s arrived in this country, and you’ve got the same story. The difference is that those groups were left alone to pull themselves up with their own hard work and through the resiliency and support of their families and communities…aspects of personal and community life that weren’t decimated by Leftist do-gooding, all so that underprivileged whites could “feel” good and “progressive”.

But at least most of them were employed and they had more stable families, which mitigated the worse aspects of being poor.

And which, if they had simply been left alone, would have been more than enough to begin a slow but steady integration into American society…much more so than has occurred with the “help” of the Left.

Barack is right about one thing. He isnt like those people on the one and five dollar bills. They had courage and were steadfast. If he was President then, we would be a British colony, divided in half!

But not Senator Obama. According to his famous 2002 anti-war speech, Bush was manipulated into the Iraq war by Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, who were pursuing an unnamed “ideological agenda,” according to the Anointed One. Hmmmmmm…..wonder what that agenda could be?

But the Messiah speaks only in parables. We members of the uninitiated and masses cannot handle the direct truth.

As for the notion that we haven’t yet talked about what happened to the Indians or the blacks, I was at the hairdresser the other day when the stylist informed me she did not allow her family to celebrate Thanksgiving because of what hypocritical Americans had done to them.

Wanna hear something funny? This dumbass is a Serbian national!

Think we’ve talked about it enough yet? Even Serbians know about it.

I remember that.

Such a refreshing answer beside all the Bono types and self-righteous hand wringers everywhere who (from their own comfortable and overly wealthy aeries) find it fashionable to emote over the plight of Africans.