Obama in the spotlight: What you should know (Media has elected Obama President!)

One rival politician from his home state of Illinois has called Barack Obama "the Tiger Woods of politics."

But that comparison is unfair - to Obama. The 42-year-old U.S. Senate front-runner and Tuesday night's keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention is having a much, much better year than the struggling golfer.

Obama's already been the subject of a publicity avalanche that's included a 5,744-word profile in the New Yorker - not bad for a politician who's never been elected to anything higher than the Illinois state Senate.

Bidding to become just the third African-American since Reconstruction to win a Senate seat, Obama has been leading by 20 percent in the polls - and that was before his original GOP foe dropped out because of a lurid sex scandal.

Even before the balloons and confetti were swept up from his Democratic primary victory in March, the Chicago Sun-Times wrote: "If he is elected in November, Obama will immediately replace Colin Powell as the person most talked about to be the first African-American elected president of the United States."

Who the heck is this guy? Here are 10 things you might want to know about Tuesday night's star, Barack Obama.

1. He has a remarkable bio - one that prompted the Democrat's 2000 keynote speaker, Harold Ford Jr., to call him "an American story."

His father was a Kenyan - also named Barack Obama - who was studying economics in Hawaii and later left for Harvard and then his home country, never to return. His mother was an 18-year-old white woman from Kansas. Her second husband was an Indonesian oil manager, so Obama spent part of his youth in Jakarta.

His family struggled, but Obama went to Hawaii's top prep school, then Columbia and Harvard Law School, where he was the first African-American to edit the law review.

2. His first name means "blessing" in Swahili. On the campaign trail, he wins voters over by joking about his unusual name and says that it rhymes with "Yo Mama" - although he steers away from its rhyme to a certain Middle Eastern terrorist.

3. He declared that Iraq didn't have ties to al-Qaida or weapons of mass destruction - back in 2002. The same autumn that candidates John Kerry and John Edwards were voting to authorize President Bush to go to war, Obama was speaking at anti-war rallies.

"I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars," he said two years ago.

4. He can be candid about his past. In 1995, he published his autobiography, "Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance," and admitted that as a teenager he experimented not only with marijuana but with cocaine.

"I guess you'd have to say I wasn't a politician when I wrote the book," he told the New Yorker. "I wanted to show how and why some kids, maybe especially young black men, flirt with danger and self-destruction."

5. He's very supportive of Bill Cosby's recent controversial comments about African-American teenagers, their parents, and black popular culture.

"I understand the basic premise that Bill Cosby was talking about, and I think he's right about it," Obama said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "There's got to be an element of individual responsibility and communal responsibility for the uplift of the people in inner-city communities."

6. When asked, he says he considers himself an African-American. "The reason that I've always been comfortable with that description is not a denial of my mother's side of the family," Obama told the New York Times. "Rather, it's just a belief that the term African-American is by definition a hybrid term. African-Americans are a hybrid people. We're mingled with African culture and Native American culture and European culture."

He added later: "If I was arrested for armed robbery and my mug shot was on the television screen, people wouldn't be debating if I was African-American or not. I'd be a black man going to jail. Now if that's true when bad things are happening, there's no reason why I shouldn't be proud of being a black man when good things are happening, too."

7. He's unapologetically liberal. After law school, Obama shunned white-shoe law firms and worked as a community organizer in a poverty-stricken Chicago neighborhood.

As a state lawmaker, he pushed for death-penalty reforms and an end to racial profiling. He also pushed for health-care coverage for children.

8. He's not only a good candidate, but a lucky one. The man he was supposed to run against, Republican Jack Ryan, dropped out recently when unsealed divorce papers said he had dragged his wife, TV actress Jeri Lynn Ryan, to sex clubs. Possible replacement candidates, like former Chicago Bears football coach Mike Ditka, have shied away from taking on Obama.

If he wins in November, Obama will become only the second black Democratic senator, after Carol Moseley Braun, also of Illinois. Massachusetts elected a black Republican, Edward Brooke, in the 1960s and '70s.

9. He's ready for prime time, but apparently not on the major broadcast networks. ABC, NBC and CBS, which used to offer wall-to-wall convention coverage, didn't televise the convention at all Tuesday night.

When Obama took the stage around 10 p.m., the networks were airing shows like "Last Comic Standing" and "Navy NCIS." But you could catch the speech on the major cable news channels or C-SPAN.

10. He really could end up in the White House. Why not? He's not only brilliant and a good public speaker but has movie-star good looks and a great story to tell. He's a bit to the political left, but some pundits already see Obama drifting to the center.

Illinois state Senate President Emil Jones recently told a youngster at an event that if his parents voted Obama into the Senate, then he would have a chance to vote for him for president someday.

Yes Obama "looks" and "sounds" good but this guy is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, that is why he is politically dangerous/scary. He will be foisted upon the masses by the liberal media because of what he believes in his heart of hearts = liberal through and through, because of his being a liberal "person of color" (as opposed to a conservative like Congalesa Rice or Clarence Thomas), because of his background = broken home/no father, non-“traditional” family upbringing, and lastly because of his "Bill Clinton/John Kerry" brand of Christianity = “holds to a form of godliness while denying the power thereof” i.e., Christless Christianity.

Everything one needs to know about Mr. Obama is found below:

http://www.illinoisleader.com/printer/article.asp?c=17943

… Obama the Christian is a devout believer in unlimited abortion rights. He denies the existence of Hell. He came to Christianity through social organizing with activist religious. His devout Christianity derives from the secular humanist “values” his atheist mother imbued him with. He believes, with all his heart, in the separation of church and state - except when he reportedly campaigns in black churches, in violation of that separation, and of the tax code. (According to U.S. tax law, any house of worship that permits politicians to campaign within its walls, loses its tax-exempt status. But then, as another Chicago politician, Cong. Jesse Jackson Jr., announced on a radio show in October, 2000, the separation of church and state and the tax code simply don’t apply to blacks.) Obama wears his religion on his sleeve in black churches, but in dealing with the mainstream media, criticizes such behavior. Regarding Obama’s religiosity, which appeared out nowhere following his graduation from law school during his social organizing work, a line from Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass comes to mind, when he explained why Mike Ditka was not prepared for political life. “Ditka doesn't need a political life. And he hasn't spent decades planning for the scrutiny.”

Obama’s closest religious advisers -- Fr. Pfleger, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, and Illinois State Sen. James Meeks, who moonlights as the pastor of Chicago's Salem Baptist Church - may have quotes from Scripture handy, but are theologically closer to Karl Marx and black nationalism, than to Christianity. (Union Theological Seminary theologian James H. Cone, who is credited with founding liberation theology, is a black nationalist who speaks the lingo of Marxian dialectic. And as white Marxists have over the past 30 years adopted the language of race war, socialism and black supremacy have come to resemble each other. I call the common movement, which is more typically referred to as “multiculturalism,” racial socialism.)

The transcendent-non-transcendent motto the Rev. Wright has given Trinity is, “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian.”

According to State Sen./Rev. James Meeks’ humble, personal church Web page, “Meeks’ practical and charismatic style of instruction motivates the hearer to take action and has resulted in accomplishments of miraculous proportions.” When the good Senator/Reverend is not accomplishing miracles and other feats “never before documented in history,” he serves as the executive vice president of Jesse Jackson Sr.’s National Rainbow-Push Coalition. (Why a man of God would want to be identified with Jackson’s personal den of iniquity is a question only the Rev. Meeks can answer.)

Don't sell this guy Obama short, he is politically dangerous and will be lifted up as a media darling.

I have just one question that will put this all into perspective, only one:

If Obama were not a LIBERAL "Christian," "man of color" but a genuine born again/evangelical Christian, a man of faith who unequivocally believed the Bible is God’s Word and upheld the principles of scripture regarding homosexuality and abortion, along with following and proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord and mankind’s need to accept Him alone in order to gain eternal life. What would the media be saying about him then, how far would he get politically in this day of blind hatred towards those who name the name of Christ?

Answer: Nowhere, the media and political pundents would write him off and kill him politically.

I watched his speech last night.

For what it's worth, here are my impressions: He reminds me of many young liberals who are going through the "no heart" (Churchill) phase of their life. He struck me as a social conservative in many ways. He said that with minor adjustments to welfare policies many people could be helped who really need help, but his overall message was people need to take charge of their own lives and lift themselves up to success.

Most of his speech segments could have been delivered at an RNC convention. Typically, I thought, "Everything you just said is true, but you've come to the wrong (i.e. vote for kerry) conclusion!"

Like many blacks, he has conservative values, but like most blacks he believes the lies of the lefties and fails to identify himself with conservatives.

Specifically, he spoke against people who label themselves as "_________-Americans" (fill in the blank - he gave several examples.) He spoke against the poverty pimps when he echoed Cosby's recent rants about education.

I hope he matures and passes into Churchill's second phase quickly. There is a lot of good in him.

Thanks

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