"I Was Born in Colombia, But I Was Made in the USA"

I was bursting with pride when I read this account of Colombian-born Tito Munoz giving the liberal media a piece of his mind at a McCain rally in Virginia. Anyone who loves America can relate to Tito, but his story particularly resonates with me. Byron York of the National Review has the scoop:

Someone asked why Munoz had come to the rally. “I support McCain, but I’ve come to face you guys because I’m disgusted with you guys,” he said. “Why the hell are you going after Joe the Plumber? Joe the Plumber has an idea. He has a future. He wants to be something else. Why is that wrong? Everything is possible in America. I made it. Joe the Plumber could make it even better than me. . . . I was born in Colombia, but I was made in the U.S.A.”

Exactly right. Everything is possible in America and that's why so many of us immigrated here in the first place, from Colombia or elsewhere. What I suspect is driving Munoz is the fear that, under an Obama adminstration, no longer will America be the land of limitless opportunity, but will instead become a stagnant socialist economy supposedly built on "fairness" -- just like, say, France. Indeed, Obama's "fundamental change" mantra seems to call into question the very idea that America is fundamentally good and fair, for if it were, why would "fundamental change" be necessary?

Meanwhile, the great debate was continuing, with Tito the Construction Worker and David the Journalist trading points. Much of it wasn’t terribly informative, but there was one lovely moment when a shouting match turned into a lesson on the fundamental meaning of American constitutional rights — and the immigrant was the teacher.

“Let me talk,” Munoz said to Corn. “I know the Constitution, and I know my First Amendment — ”

“I’m not the state,” Corn said. “I can’t take that right away from you.”

“No, no,” Munoz shot back. “Even the state, the state cannot take that right away.”

“Right, right,” Corn quickly agreed.

“Nobody can take that away,” Munoz said.

Gotta love it! The Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones gets schooled by little ol' Tito Munoz! That, folks, is America.

Colin Powell's Bizarre Rant about Obama and Islam

Colin Powell launched into a bizarre rant on Meet the Press today in which he endorsed Obama largely because of anti-Muslim bigotry that Powell believes has become commonplace in the Republican party. Here is what Powell said:

I'm also troubled by – not what Senator McCain says – but what members of the Party say, and it is permitted to be said: such things as, "Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim." Well, the correct answer is he is not a Muslim. He's a Christian; has always been a Christian.

It is puzzling that Powell would claim that Obama "has always been a Christian" whereas in fact the evidence shows that Obama was raised as a Muslim in his early years in Indonesia. In any event, Powell continued:

But the really right answer is, "What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?" The answer's "No, that's not America." Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim American kid believing that he or she could be President? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own Party drop the suggestion he's Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America. ... Now, we have got to stop polarizing ourself in this way. And John McCain is as non-discriminatory as anyone I know. But I'm troubled about the fact that within the Party we have these kinds of expressions.

Let me get this straight. John McCain is as non-discriminatory as anyone Powell knows, yet Powell is endorsing Obama to combat the bigotry of other, unnamed members of the Republican party? So by Powell's own admission, McCain is no bigot, whereas it is an established fact that Obama attended an openly racist church for 20 years and considers the racist Reverend Wright to be his personal mentor. And if the bigotry of other members of each party were somehow relevant, why is it not appropriate to mention that the most senior Democrat in the Senate is a former KKK leader?

McCain's Greatest Act of Patriotism Yet

Ok, I'll admit it -- I've been as puzzled as anyone about McCain's refusal to use Reverend Wright against Obama. But I'm starting to look at things differently.

Let's be clear about something: Reverend Wright is Kryptonite to Obama. Wright is a racist, America-hating, Farrakhan-supporting lunatic who just happens to have been a father figure to Obama. If I were running McCain's campaign, I'd spend every last dollar running ads juxtaposing Reverend Wright's hate-filled rants with Obama's lavish praise for the man. And I'm sure it would work.

By resisting this tactic, McCain is likely sowing the seeds of his own defeat. The only plausible explanation for McCain's decision is a moral conviction that doing so would greatly diminish the ability of our next president to be a leader for all Americans. That McCain is willing to go down in defeat rather than hang Reverend Wright around Obama's neck is an act of patriotism like none of us has ever before witnessed. This, above all else, may be the greatest act of patriotism that John McCain has ever given his country.

Would I make the same decision as McCain? In all honesty, no. But I am not the patriot that John McCain is.

Confirmed: Vera Baker - - Alleged Obama Girlfriend - - *Was* His Finance Director

The conservative blogosphere is buzzing about a potential bombshell -- Obama may have had an affair with a former staffer named Vera Baker. See here, here, here and here. According to the rumor, Baker has now been "exiled" to the Caribbean on Michelle Obama's orders.

Who is Vera Baker and is this story true? I don't know. Apparently, some of the uncertainty centers on whether Baker actually served on Obama's staff, in particular as finance director. Although this hardly constitutes proof of an affair, this 2004 piece from the National Journal confirms that Baker did in fact serve as Obama's finance director:

Congress Daily
Copyright 2004 National Journal, Inc.

April 29, 2004

HOME SWEET HOME. Doug Thornell says his experience as former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean's traveling secretary during the Democratic presidential campaign was "thrilling," but he's happy to be back in Washington. "It's nice to get to sleep in the same bed every night now," says the Silver Spring, Md., native, who returned to D.C. in mid-March after a vacation in California. Thornell just started his new job as a deputy political director at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. He replaced Vera Baker, who is now the national finance director for Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama's Democratic U.S. Senate campaign. Thornell shares the deputy political director title with colleague Jamie Linski, former assistant political director at the DSCC, who was promoted to the deputy slot.


And here is some additional background information on Vera Baker:

African American professionals can build prosperous careers in the capital city, especially those hoping to play a role in national politics. "There's a mentality here that there's enough for everyone; you're not competing for what feels like a limited number of opportunities," says 29-year-old Muthoni Wambu.

Like most Washingtonians, Wambu is a transplant. She left New York City's Upper West Side to study journalism at Howard University and then networked her way into a political fundraising job with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. This was a new aspect of politics for Wambu, who soon discovered that it "brought together my strengths in a way that I'd never anticipated."

In 2000, Wambu and Vera Baker, another Howard alum, started Baker-Wambu & Associates. The firm has raised over $3 million for the campaigns of members of Congress and other politicians. "Washington is the best place for our firm to blossom and grow, and one of the only cities where two 24-year-old African American women [could have built a successful business] with pennies and a dream," she says.

Explosive New Details About Osama's Older Brother

Steve Coll's book, The Bin Ladens, has some explosive new details about Osama's older brother, Salem Bin Laden:

He had a particular habit, remembered by many of his friends and employees, of speaking frankly about the gas he passed. Once, in the company of the august governor of Riyadh, Salman bin Abdulaziz, Salem noisily let himself go. This was as taboo in Bedouin culture as in a French drawing room. Prince Salman asked Salem what had happened. "I just farted, Prince," he answered. Don't you fart sometimes?" [p. 163]

Osama's big bro was even willing to let loose around the King, himself. Once, when King Fahd complained that he was tired of so many Bedouins waiting in a line to meet him, Salem proposed a ripping solution:

"I can solve this problem," Salem replied. You let me know one day before, and all day long I'll eat food. Some dark beans. You put me in front of the queue, and I'll start farting, and all the Bedouins will disappear." Fahd laughed so hard that his doctor feared he might have a heart attack, so Salem was hauled away." [p. 166]

But all kidding aside, it seems there was something profoundly wrong with Salem Bin Laden:

His need for constant companionship grew increasingly awkward. When he used the bathroom, for example, he kept the door open and demanded that his friends sit nearby and talk to him as he sat. If no members of his entourage were around, he called down to the front desk and offered to pay for a maid or maintenance man to come to his room, to sit outside the bathroom and keep him company while he did his business. [p. 316-17]

The New Republic Says It: Obama Hates White People

A must-read article from The New Republic:

The Barack Obama who appears in Dreams, and, one presumes, in his own continuing interior life, is not a comforting multiracial or post-racial figure like Tiger Woods or Derek Jeter who prefers to be looked at through a kaleidoscope. Though there are many structural parallels between Dreams and Invisible Man, Obama believes in the old-fashioned, unabashedly romantic, and, in the end, quite weird idea of racial authenticity that Ellison rejected. He embraces his racial identity despite his mixed parentage through a kind of Kierkegaardian leap into blackness, through which he hopes to become a whole, untroubled person.
....

Obama's decision to identify with the lineage of his black Kenyan father to the exclusion of his white U.S.-born mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, and her parents allows him a measure of release from the cruel racial logic that binds Ellison's narrator--he comes from outside American society, and therefore he is not entirely bound by the overdetermined racial logic that unites the children of slaves and masters. Yet, while Obama's rejection of his "white blood" may seem familiar from the writings of African American authors like Malcolm X, it is actually much stranger; Obama's partial "whiteness" is not the product of an ancient rape by an anonymous slave-master but is instead the color of the mother who raised him.
...

The assumption that Obama racially identifies to some strong extent with his white mother and grandparents comes naturally to white people, but it is contradicted by the evidence of his work. ... Dreams from My Father does not end with the expected discovery that we are all radically alone in the world, but rather with the discovery that he is a member of a strong and loving black African family--even if the father he identified with as a child is a myth created by guilty white liberals. Throughout his narrative, Obama's evolving "blackness" requires a deliberate and increasing degree of mental and physical alienation from the white relatives who cared for him as a child.

And as the author also observes, Obama's campaign is one big cover-up -- he simply cannot reveal who he really is to the American people:

While the identity that he constructed for himself in his autobiography has allowed him to blossom as a man and as a politician, it bears little resemblance to the conventional narratives of white men who run for president--and contains elements that are likely to frighten off large portions of the electorate, before or after November 4. The story of a man who identifies with a foreign father, and with people who are not Americans, and who does so on the basis of the color of their skin, flies in the face of the simplistic racial pieties that white Americans have embraced since the end of Jim Crow. The identity that Obama so painstakingly created for himself is not one that he can share with the electorate, and so the price of his political success is that he is forced to sublimate the material he had so painfully excavated and again become invisible.

Read the entire piece. It is probably the most accurate depiction of Obama I've seen in any mainstream publication.

Was Obama a Member of the Socialist "New Party"?

I've been attempting to shine light on Obama's hidden Marxist past, so I've been excited to see a buzz in the blogosphere today about Obama's affiliation with a socialist party called the New Party. See here, here and here, for example.

I just wanted to mention that this month's issue of the invaluable Commentary Magazine has the low-down on Obama and the New Party (and much more) in an article entitled Obama's Leftism, which I have linked to before. The article should be mandatory reading for all Americans. In any event, here's the excerpt on Obama and the New Party:

In his campaign for the Illinois senate, Obama was endorsed by the New Party (NP), a coalition of socialists, Communists, and other leftists. According to the newsletter of the local chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, whose members were said to constitute 15 percent of the Chicago New Party, “Once approved, candidates must sign a contract with the NP [which] mandates that they must have a visible and active relationship with the NP.” Apparently, Obama signed such a pledge. After winning the primary (unopposed because his lawyers had succeeded in knocking all three opponents off the ballot), he appeared at a New Party membership meeting to voice his thanks.

Amazing, isn't it? Four weeks to go and a socialist with a 20-year membership in a black supremacist church is the odds on favorite to be president.