Thread: Politico.com: Obama on small-town PA

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http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/ ... gb.01.html

Hello, America. I got an update for you on that monkey business story we gave to you last night, as our PC culture goes on yet another fishing expedition for racism.

Last night, I told you about a Hispanic Obama delegate who was asked to step down by the Obama campaign because police fined her 75 bucks for disorderly conduct after she apparently referred to the children of her African-American neighbors as monkeys. They were swinging in the tree. Wait till you hear it in context.

So here`s "The Point" tonight. This is a trumped-up race charge that ignores context. It defies all kinds of common sense. This poor woman is finally fighting back. My spiritual adviser says amen. And here`s how I got there.

Linda Ramirez-Sliwinski, she says -- I think I just butchered that name, but we`re going to go on anyway. She said the word "monkey" was not a racial insult. Her mayor agreed with her. He disagreed with the police, said she should have never been given a ticket. And now she`s standing up for herself. She said she`s not apologizing or stepping down. You go girl, mm-hmm.

Now, I`ve got to move from racism to Marxism, and Obama is still in the center of it. For months, I`ve been telling you, Barack Obama, and more his wife than Barack, I mean, at least looking at her language. I believe there`s a socialist agenda there for America.

And Michelle ain`t helping him any. She`s adding fuel to the fire. Remember, Michelle is a campaign surrogate for her husband. So he can`t be everywhere. So he sends her out to speak for him.

This is what she said at a North Carolina campaign stop, and I quote.

"The truth is most Americans don`t want much. Folks don`t want the whole pie." I do. But I have a fat man screaming to get out of me. "Most Americans feel blessed to thrive just a little bit." Well, good, let`s lower the bar. "But that`s out of reach for them." And then she continued, "The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so someone else can have more."

Well, hello and welcome back, Karl Marx. A redistribution of pie doesn`t make me feel any better. Thanks, but no thanks, Michelle. When it comes to pie, or money, I`ll take all I can get. I want all my pie. I should be able to keep my pie. And you know what? I want you to have a huge piece of pie, as well. Have the whole thing. It`s not because I`m -- I`m selfish. I`m not. Unlike the Obamas, I happen to give away more than 1 percent of my income to charity.

The bottom line is this. Success and money, it`s not finite. This is America. That`s not a zero sum game. There`s as much as you feel like working for it. You know, you`ve got to -- you`ve got to look at money and success as the ocean. It doesn`t hurt the ocean to back a dump truck up to it and take a bunch of water out of it. There`s more. Stand in line, go get it.

Let`s stop thinking about pieces of pie, and remember that if you want to look at it as pie, this is America. We`re a freaking bakery. Bake more. Make as many pies as you want.

Mark Steyn is the author of "America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It." It`s out in paperback this -- this week. And you`ve got to read this book, if you never have. Why? Because Canada is trying to ban it.

Mark, talk to me about this pie stuff. I think -- I think there is hidden language in especially Michelle Obama. Her language is riddled with socialism.

MARK STEYN, AUTHOR, "AMERICAN ALONE": Yes, I think she`s a conventional university socialist.

SEE ABOVE LINK FOR FULL TRANSCRIPT

MICHELLE OBAMA-SHE SHOWS US WHAT OBAMA IS ABOUT

Lou Barletta needs to jump on this big time. He needs to ask Rep. Kanjorski what he thinks of Obama's words. Go Lou jump on it.

Oh ya, Rasmussen said tonight on Hannity and Colmes that this will help Clinton big time in PA. They were coming together in the percentages in PA, now it is changing.

She said the word "monkey" was not a racial insult.

Neither is the term "illegal alien"!!!!!!!

And Michelle ain`t helping him any. She`s adding fuel to the fire. Remember, Michelle is a campaign surrogate for her husband. So he can`t be everywhere. So he sends her out to speak for him.

This is what she said at a North Carolina campaign stop, and I quote.

"The truth is most Americans don`t want much. Folks don`t want the whole pie." I do. But I have a fat man screaming to get out of me. "Most Americans feel blessed to thrive just a little bit." Well, good, let`s lower the bar. "But that`s out of reach for them." And then she continued, "The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so someone else can have more."

AWWW HELL NO! A huge piece of my pie is already taken by this government! Why don't YOU give up a bigger piece of YOUR pie Michelle? Where in the world is she getting that most Americans don't want much??? This from the mouth of someone who makes well over $300k a year?!?!?! Ludicrous!

The speech on race that Obama gave (and was heralded for) a couple of weeks ago came across the same way to me.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

So he is basically saying that while white people feel resentment over getting the shaft in some misguided attempt to make all things equal, too bad. " Reverse racism" (whatever that is) is apparently something white people made up on talk radio if you live in Obamaland.

Obama's contempt for middle America is astounding if not surprising. He repeats just about every predictable liberal cliche in the book. Furthermore, although it's sad to say, Geraldine Ferraro was right about him.

I got this in my email this morning:

http://projectusa.org/2008/04/12/embitt ... go-not-pa/

Embittered do turn to religion–in Chicago, not PA
April 12th, 2008
by Craig

Pennsylvanians facing tough times are embittered, according to Barack Obama, and so they turn to guns, and religion, and hold anti-immigration and anti-trade views. But the Pennsylvanians I’ve come across don’t seem all that bitter to me–they seem pretty normal, in fact. And compared to a famously bitter Chicagoan named Jeremiah Wright, Pennsylvanians seem downright suffused with Christian joy.

Granted, the bitter ravings of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright have about as much to do with real religion as a rain dance has to do with real science, but the Obama family, including the manifestly bitter Michelle Obama, turned to that embittered fount for its religious needs. For my money, the south side of Chicago is where the embittered turn to “religion.â€

[quote="butterbean"]I got this in my email this morning:

http://projectusa.org/2008/04/12/embitt ... go-not-pa/

Embittered do turn to religion–in Chicago, not PA
April 12th, 2008
by Craig

Pennsylvanians facing tough times are embittered, according to Barack Obama, and so they turn to guns, and religion, and hold anti-immigration and anti-trade views. But the Pennsylvanians I’ve come across don’t seem all that bitter to me–they seem pretty normal, in fact. And compared to a famously bitter Chicagoan named Jeremiah Wright, Pennsylvanians seem downright suffused with Christian joy.

Granted, the bitter ravings of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright have about as much to do with real religion as a rain dance has to do with real science, but the Obama family, including the manifestly bitter Michelle Obama, turned to that embittered fount for its religious needs. For my money, the south side of Chicago is where the embittered turn to “religion.â€

Obama concedes remarks were ill chosen
By JIM KUHNHENN and CHARLES BABINGTON, Associated Press Writers
1 hour, 8 minutes ago

MUNCIE, Ind. - Democrat Barack Obama on Saturday conceded that comments he made about bitter working class voters who "cling to guns or religion" were ill chosen, as he tried to stem a burst of complaints that he is condescending.

"I didn't say it as well as I should have," he said at Ball State University.

As he tried to quell the furor, presidential rival Hillary Rodham Clinton hit Obama with one of her lengthiest and most pointed criticisms to date.

"Senator Obama's remarks were elitist and out of touch," she said, campaigning about an hour away in Indianapolis. "They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans."

At issue are comments Obama made privately at a fundraiser in San Francisco last Sunday. He explained his troubles winning over working class voters, saying they have become frustrated with economic conditions:

"It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

The comments, posted on the Huffington Post political Web site Friday, set off a storm of criticism from Clinton, Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain and other GOP officials. It threatened to highlight an Obama weakness — the image that the Harvard-trained lawyer is arrogant and aloof.

His campaign scrambled to defuse possible damage caused with working class voters that Obama needs to win in upcoming primaries in Pennsylvania and Indiana.

There has been a small "political flare-up because I said something that everybody knows is true, which is that there are a whole bunch of folks in small towns in Pennsylvania, in towns right here in Indiana, in my hometown in Illinois, who are bitter," Obama said Saturday morning at a town hall-style meeting at the university. "They are angry. They feel like they have been left behind. They feel like nobody is paying attention to what they're going through."

"So I said, well you know, when you're bitter you turn to what you can count on. So people, they vote about guns, or they take comfort from their faith and their family and their community. And they get mad about illegal immigrants who are coming over to this country."

After acknowledging his previous remarks in California could have been better phrased, he added:

"The truth is that these traditions that are passed on from generation to generation, those are important. That's what sustains us. But what is absolutely true is that people don't feel like they are being listened to.

"And so they pray and they count on each other and they count on their families. You know this in your own lives, and what we need is a government that is actually paying attention.

Clinton attacked Obama's remarks much more harshly Saturday than she had the night before, calling them "demeaning." Her aides feel Obama has given them a big opening, pulling the spotlight away from more troubling stories such as former President Clinton's recent revisiting of his wife's misstatements about an airport landing in Bosnia 10 years ago.

Obama is trying to focus attention narrowly on his remarks, arguing there's no question that some working class families are anxious and bitter. The Clinton campaign is parsing every word, focusing on what Obama said about religion, guns, immigration and trade.

Clinton hit all those themes in lengthy comments to manufacturing workers in Indianapolis.

"I was raised with Midwestern values and an unshakable faith in America and its policies," she said. "Now, Americans who believe in the Second Amendment believe it's a matter of constitutional right. Americans who believe in God believe it's a matter of personal faith."

"I grew up in a churchgoing family ...," she continued. "The people of faith I know don't 'cling' to religion because they're bitter. People embrace faith not because they are materially poor, but because they are spiritually rich ...

"I also disagree with Senator Obama's assertion that people in this country 'cling to guns' and have certain attitudes about immigration or trade simply out of frustration," she said.

"People don't need a president who looks down on them," she said. "They need a president who stands up for them."

One of Clinton's staunchest supporters, Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., acknowledged there was some truth in Obama's remarks. But Republicans would use them against him anyway, Bayh said.

"We do have economic hard times, and that does lead to a frustration and some justifiable anger, it's true," Bayh told reporters after introducing Clinton in Indianapolis. "But I think you're on dangerous ground when you morph that into suggesting that people's cultural values, whether it's religion or hunting and fishing or concern about trade, are premised solely upon those kinds of anxieties and don't have a legitimate foundation independent of that."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080412/ap_ ... ma_clinton

At issue are comments Obama made privately at a fundraiser in San Francisco last Sunday. He explained his troubles winning over working class voters, saying they have become frustrated with economic conditions:

Comments made PRIVATELY at a fundraiser.....what a joke!

Comments were made during a speech--not a private conversation.

What does he PRIVATELY propose for our nation?