Anger? How about righteous indignation?

[geiger]

I recently had a very depressing conversation with my mother, who had just read Obama Nation by the Kenyan man who just got deported for trying to incite violence against the leadership in his own county. This is the same cynical opportunist that wrote "Unfit for Command," about John Kerry when the book in reality should have been about George Bush, as it looks like it is turning out to be.

Anyways,I understand the psychology about how people read and believe stuff that re-inforces other stuff that they already come to believe as truth, but nevertheless....

Here is what the publisher offers on amazon.com as a summary (Threshold Publishers is G.O.P. strategist Mary Matalin's conservative-minded imprint of Simon & Schuster's Pocket Books division, also reportedly in the running for publishing Karl Rove's memoirs): The book is characterized to "document:"

Obama's extensive connections with Islam and radical politics, from his father and step-father's Islamic backgrounds, to his Communist and socialist mentors in Hawaii and Chicago, to his long-term and close associations with former Weather Underground heroes William Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn....
...-Barack and Michelle's 20-year-long religious affiliation with the black-liberation theology of former Trinity United Church of Christ Reverend Jeremiah Wright, whose sermons have always been steeped in a rage first expressed by Franz Fanon , Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X....
...-Obama's continuing connections with Kenya, the homeland of his father, through his support for the candidacy of Raila Odinga, the radical socialist presidential contender....
...-Obama's involvement in the slum-landlord empire of the Chicago political fixer Tony Rezko, who helped to bankroll Obama's initial campaigns and to purchase of Barack and Michelle's dream-home property.
-the background and techniques of the Obama campaign's cult of personality, including the derivation of the words "hope" and change"
-Obama's far-left domestic policy, his controversial votes on abortion, his history of opposition to the Second Amendment, his determination to raise capital-gains taxes, his impractical plan to achieve universal health care, and his radical plan to tax Americans to fund a global-poverty-reduction program
-Obama's nave, anti-war, anti-nuclear foreign-policy, predicated on the reduction of the military, the eradication of nuclear weapons and an overconfidence in the power of his personality, as if belief in change alone could somehow transform international politics, achieve nuclear-weapons disarmament and withdrawal from Iraq without adverse consequences, for us, for the Iraqis or for Israel.

Not exactly an "unbiased" scholarly work as it is marketed (now, hopefully you don't have to go buy the book), but I just have one question. Even if a person is a racist, like my mother is unfortunately, how do you expect an intelligent man to turn his back on his whole upbringing, ethnicity and roots. How can you expect him not to draw on his experiences to shape his belief systems? How could you not think he loves this country with every fiber of his being, with all the opportunities he has been afforded, coming from nowhere. How would you not expect his wife to be the proudest she has ever been in her life, to see the man she loves most overcome prejudice, cynicism and corruption, to be in the position that he is today.

Now that I think of it, I guess I have a second question. James Madison, one of our founding fathers and authors of The Constitution, once wrote something to the effect that the plurality of religions and religious beliefs would keep our democracy viable. Since when did the religion of Islam get scratched off the list? Even if you want to accept the premise that the present leaders of this country have entered into an illegal occupation of a country to fight extremists, that's what they are, they are extremists, who do not represent the majority of the faith.

The vile that spews from the mouths of the radical idealogues and their rabid followers about this decent and honest man (now even McCain has had to acknowlege this) is not befitting the principles and values that we are supposed to hold dear as a democracy. Or as loving Christians, for that matter.