"His commentaries have been heard on National Public Radio."

Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 8:42 AM When Politico.com surfaced the 1995 questionnaire that Barack Obama filled out while running for the Illinois state senate --the one with Obama's hand-written notes on it-- it contained a "biographical sketch," one obviously supplied by the campaign. That sketch included the statement that Obama's "commentaries have been heard on national Public Radio."

This caught my eye as I worked for PBS Los Angeles-affiliate KCET throughout the '90s, and knew that the radio commentaries from our sister network would sometimes make for pretty far out listening.

Off I went to the transcript data base of NPR and discovered exactly one commentary delivered by Barack Obama on October 28, 1994: "Charles Murray's Political Expediency Denounced."

The commentary itself is pretty predictable. Charles Murray is denounced as being "interested in pushing a very particular policy agenda, specifically, the elimination of affirmative action and welfare programs aimed at the poor."

"With one finger out to the political wind," Obama continued, "Mr. Murray has apparently decided that white America is ready for a return to good old-fashioned racism so long as it's artfully packaged and can admit for exceptions like Colin Powell."

Obama strikes a note that foreshadows Bill Cosby: "For blacks, that means taking greater responsibility for the state of our own communities. Too many of us use white racism as an excuse for self-defeating behavior. Too many of our young people think education is a white thing and that the values of hard work and discipline and self-respect are somehow outdated."

That being said, it's time for all of us, and now I'm talking about the larger American community, to acknowledge that we've never even come close to providing equal opportunity to the majority of black children. Real opportunity would mean quality prenatal care for all women and well-funded and innovative public schools for all children. Real opportunity would mean a job at a living wage for everyone who was willing to work, jobs that can return some structure and dignity to people's lives and give inner-city children something more than a basketball rim to shoot for. In the short run, such ladders of opportunity are going to cost more, not less, than either welfare or affirmative action. But, in the long run, our investment should pay off handsomely. That we fail to make this investment is just plain stupid. It's not the result of an intellectual deficit. It's the result of a moral deficit.

Read the whole thing. (At a one-time cost of $3.95. Sheesh. Doesn't taxpayer-funding get access to 195 archives?) Murray fans and others can pick apart the rhetoric --the refusal to spend more and more on failing schools represents a moral deficit?-- but I was struck by the fact that this is the only Obama commentary in the NPR data base. The biographical sketch provided by Obama promised "commentaries." I had assumed a monthly contribution, or at least a batch of broadcasts.

Perhaps the data base is incomplete, though it has the appearance of the sort of comprehensive catalog that only a government subsidy can deliver. If it is incomplete, NPR would certainly do its taxpayer sponsors the service of producing the other Obama commentaries in its archives. Or the Obama campaign could produce the evidence that Obama hadn't gone Joe Isuzu as early as '95.

If, on the other hand, it is the only commentary Obama did, do we another little instance of Obama's puffery? Resume padding by a first time candidate isn't big news or even little news. More like an interesting detail in a yet to emerge comprehensive biography of Senator Obama. But Team Clinton did warn us on 3/25 of "Senator Obama's Record of Exaggerations & Misstatements."

Getting the full bio on the likely Democratic nominee is a MSM assignment that is overdue. When do we get the Occidental, Columbia and Harvard Law School transcripts for example. (Senator Obama graduated Magna Cum Laude from HLS, so he's got nothing to hide.) When do we get the run-down on the Chicago "community organizer" years? Or does Obama's account simply get accepted by a MSM eager for the triumph of the most left-wing major party candidate in American history?

Give me a break!!

Let me make it clear right up front: I am NOT a racist. I supported Herman Cain in his run for the Senate. And if he ever runs again, I would probably support him again.

I also consider Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams two of the finest economists and minds extant today. In case you don’t know them, both are black.

Sowell, Williams and Cain – among others — have spoken out against those fellow blacks who castigate and vilify America for a slavery now long in our past. And ALL thinking men and women oppose the periodic calls for reparations.

The fact is that the modern descendants of slaves brought here in chains in admittedly miserable, soul-gutting conditions now calling for reparations need to remember something:

They should not only be glad to be in America, they should be glad to be ANYWHERE!

Had their ancestors NOT been brought OUT of Africa – many by Muslim slave raiders —the blood of those ancestors would have run into the earth over there several centuries ago, victims of the OTHER black tribes that captured them in one of the interminable tribal conflicts STILL ravaging that sad continent and these modern day would-be “plaintiffs” would not even exist.

And I would remind you that slavery is STILL practiced in parts of Africa (mainly by muslims) and Asia today.

95% of the African slaves who were transported across the Atlantic went to South and Central America, mainly to Portuguese, Spanish and French possessions, and that less than 5% of the slaves who crossed the Atlantic went to the United States, it was remarkable that the vast majority of academic research, films, books and articles concerning the slave trade concentrated only on the American involvement, as though slavery was a uniquely American aberration.

And should the great-great-great grandchildren of SLAVE OWNING BLACKS also be subject to PAYING these reparations? If so, how do we find THEM?

And I have traced MY family back to the SLAVS. For those who don’t know, that word means “slave.” Do I qualify for reparations? From whom??

The official US Census of 1830 lists 3,775 free blacks who owned 12,740 black slaves. Furthermore, the story outlines the history of slavery here, and the first slave owner, the Father of American slavery, was Mr Anthony Johnson, of Northampton, Virginia. His slave was John Casor, the first slave for life. Both were black Africans. The story is very readable, and outlines cases of free black women owning their husbands, free black parents selling their children into slavery to white owners, and absentee free black slave owners, who leased their slaves to plantation owners.
-”Selling Poor Steven”, American Heritage Magazine, Feb/Mar 1993 (Vol. 441) p 90

Of course, a full telling of Black History would not be complete without a telling of the origin of slavery in the Virginia colony:
Virginia, Guide to The Old Dominion, WPA Writers’ Program, Oxford University Press, NY, 1940, p. 378

And the holier-than-thou Northern liberals are strangely silent on recent archeological evidence from NEW YORK CITY clearly tracing the financing of the slave trade to NORTHERN BUSINESSMEN!!

At the height of his remarkable boxing career, Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Clay), once declared “I’m glad my great-grandpa got on that boat.”

And author Robert Hitt Neill tells of attending a Tennessee Mountain Writer’s Conference years ago with several other authors. Among them was Alex Hailey, celebrated author of “Roots.” Watching a TV news show, a group of them watched a demonstration in a Southern state against the “Rebel” flag incorporated into that state’s flag. The very next report covered a famine in Africa. Graphic images showed dead bodies, starving children with distended tummies and runny noses and dying people covered with flies, too weak to brush them away.

Mr. Hailey intoned in a low, serious voice, “Every time an American black sees a story like that, they should find a Confederate flag and kiss it.” He then pointed to the TV screen and continued, “Because these would be me and my descendants, except for American slavery. I thank God that my family and I are here instead of there.”

Next problem!

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