Monday, July 21, 2008

MSM is not telling us about Michelle Obama

Writing in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Ralph Reiland gives us his take on the articulate, accomplished woman who wants her husband to be President of a “downright mean country.”

Here's the first part of Reiland's column with my comments below the star line:

"We don't need a world full of corporate attorneys and hedge-fund managers," Michelle Obama told a crowd in a Baptist church in South Carolina in January. "But see, that's the only way you can pay back your educational debt!"

It's true, exactly 20 years after graduating from Harvard Law School, she's still complaining about her tuition payments, even while living in a $1.65 million house and with a household income that puts her firmly in the top 1 percent of U.S. families.

"The couple's combined salaries were more than $430,000 in 2006, according to their tax return," reported Los Angeles Times writer Robin Abcarian in February. "In addition, Barack Obama earned $551,000 in book royalties."

In 2007, the year prior to Mrs. Obama's perpetual bellyaching on the campaign trail about her tuition bill, Barack Obama was paid $4 million in book royalties, as reported on his financial disclosure report in June.

The philosophy? We wouldn't need "a world full of corporate attorneys and hedge-fund managers" -- i.e., a world full of self-seeking individualism and capitalist compromises -- if tuition were free and we could all be debt-free community organizers, working the streets to make everything "free."

As it now stands, according to Michelle Obama, we're stuck in a pre-Obama nation that's "just downright mean," a country of "broken souls" that never much made her proud.

And the salvation, the way to mend our mean and busted spirits? Times writer Abcarian reports Mrs. Obama's answer: "She talks about how brilliant he is and often implies that voters would be crazy not to vote for her husband, calling him 'the only rational choice.' She calls his candidacy a 'once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us to be graced with a man like him.'"

We will have "to sacrifice for one another to get things done," explains Mrs. Obama, and "Barack Obama is the only person in this who understands that" -- not only the "only person" who understands, she says, but also "one of the smartest people you will ever encounter who will deign to enter this messy thing called politics."

The definition of "deign": "to condescend, to do something that one considers to be below one's dignity." One wonders if Michelle also thinks that Barack's 20 years with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was below his level of elevated dignity.

Just as "our souls are broken in this nation," Michelle Obama claims that we've been going straight down economically for four decades.

"The life that I am talking about that most people are living has gotten progressively worse since I was a little girl," she asserts. "And this is through Republican and Democratic administrations. It doesn't matter who was in the White House."

And her challenge if you disagree? "If you want to pretend there was some point over the last couple of decades when your lives were easy, I wanna meet you!" …

The rest of Reiland’s column’s here. It includes information about the growth of living standards in recent decades. Reiland ends by recounting what happened to a man who passed on the corporate life in order to “minister” to Chicago’s South Side poor.
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Comments:

Americans need to hear more about what Michelle Obama thinks.

What makes America “a downright mean country?” What was it about Rev. Jeremiah Wright that convinced Michelle and Barack Obama to take their daughters to his church for their religious instruction?

Sen. Obama claims never to have heard any of Rev. Wright’s “controversial" sermons. What about Ms. Obama? Did she hear any of them? Did she ever discuss them with her husband?

We don’t have answered to those questions. Why? It's almost five months since Americans first began to learn about what Obama’s supporters call Wright’s “snippets.”

That those and other important questions about the Obamas remain unanswered gives us some idea of the extent to which the Obama campaign and a largely fawning press have combined to avoid telling the American people things we should know before deciding whether to elect Barack Obama President.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

John:

"a largely fawning press have combined to avoid telling the American people things we should know before deciding whether to elect Barack Obama President"

It may seem that the populance is not listening. As a litmus test, I asked my girlfriend what she thought of Obama. (She is typically not interested in politics and normally leans to the left.)

Her comments on Obama and his wife suggest his/her message have, surprisingly, gotten through.

Her statement: "He would destroy America."

I believe Obama-mania has peaked.

Ken
Dallas

Anonymous said...

Ken: My fondest wish at this moment is that you are right. Your girlfriend certainly is! Steve in New Mexico

Anonymous said...

@Ken Dallas

I applied a litmus test to my spouse, and sure enough, it read violet (Hot Blooded Romanian - typical) Then as another litmus test I asked about Obama AND McCain (my spouse is interested in politics, the economy, the world, and everything) the answer was "Either one would destroy America if elected POTUS. But, McCain, if elected, would then piss on the pieces."

Go figure. Perhaps we need more data points? :-)

Anonymous said...

John -

Several points about Michelle Obama's rants.

One of the first things that jumped out at me was the following: We don't need "a world full of corporate attorneys and hedge-fund managers" -- i.e., a world full of self-seeking individualism and capitalist compromises -- if tuition were free and we could all be debt-free community organizers, working the streets to make everything "free." ... We will have "to sacrifice for one another to get things done ... "

If you or any of your readers have read Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg, those statements sound like they are right out B. Mussolini and A. Hitler's playbook. Ms. Obama, having feasted off the fat of the land would now turn on it to re-make it a national socialist dystopia. Just to reinforce that feeling, recall that St. Barack wants to have his acceptance speech in a stadium in Denver. Do I remember certain other national socialists who used to address the masses in stadiums?

Then, Ms. Obama wants everything to be free. Ah, wouldn't it be nice if good and services came down from heaven like manna? But as Milton Friedman onces said -- there is no such thing as a free lunch. Someone has to pay for it. After Ms. Obama's plans are put in place for the economy, there will be no one left to pay for anything, and lo and behold we will have achieved equality - we will all be equally poverty-stricken. Everything will be free and nothing will be available. I think before we get there, there would be a major revolution in the country that would tear it apart. Wouldn't our enemies like that?

Another point that jumped out at me was her statement (or paraphrases from it): Just as "our souls are broken in this nation," Michelle Obama claims that we've been going straight down economically for four decades. "The life that I am talking about that most people are living has gotten progressively worse since I was a little girl," she asserts. "And this is through Republican and Democratic administrations. It doesn't matter who was in the White House."

Really? What is true is that there has been creeping government interference in our lives, and right now the economy is in a mild rough patch (which I blame in part on government action in the 1990s). But to claim that things have gotten progressively worse is to create a meta-narrative (a la Nifong & co.) or to be living on another planet. When I was child in the 1950s, we were far poorer and constrained than we are today, in terms of goods and services. Just to name a few things - the US has seen an explosions in the ownership of cars and homes beyond anyone's wildest dreams; we have moved from slow vacuum tubes to superfast computing machines; we have gone from piston engine airplanes to 100% (or nearly 100%) jet fleets; we have color TVs that were simply unavailable in the 1950s but today are dirt cheap, and we are now on to the spread giant flat-screened digital TVs; we have VCRs and DVDs and iPODS; we have cell phones that have become ubiquitous as compared to the 1950s when they were dreams found on Dick Tracy's wrist watch in cartoons; we have spacecraft that have gone to Mars and beyond; and from the mean profit-hungry drug companies we have a plethora of wonder drugs that have made us all far healthier or have otherwise ameliorated life-threatening conditions. All this from the capitalist system, the attorneys, the bankers, the capitalists, the entrepreneurs and the profit seekers generated by a free society.

These are hardly symptoms of a society progressively getting worse. Only in the addled brain of the true believing national socialist who has been imbued with a hatred of capitalism by Bernardine Dohrn and William Ayers and Saul Alinsky can this country be seen as getting progressively worse. Most of us see our material life only getting better; and we see a much more open country and accepting country than existed in the 1950s.

Heaven help us if the St. Barack and this wicked witch get into the White House.

Jack in Silver Spring