Obama doesn't see the mob closing in

The Aurora Sentinel ^ | August 19, 2010 | Chuck Green

[2ndDivisionVet]

Let’s Make a Deal.

A radical Muslim cleric can build his mosque two blocks from Ground Zero as soon as town officials in Mecca approve plans for a synagogue in the center of the holy city. Maybe President Barack Obama could broker the deal — he gets his mosque and Jews get their synagogue.

On the other hand, we may not have a deal after all.

It baffles me how Obama can see a mosque near Ground Zero as a symbol of religious freedom and tolerance. By its very nature, the structure would be a monument to religious intolerance, hatred, mass murder, unspeakable violence toward women, and centuries of despotic leadership and oppression.

Now there’s a legacy to be celebrated by a landmark building in lower Manhatttan.

What a bunch of radical Muslims — financed, trained and encouraged by a handful of Islamic nations — did on Sept. 11, 2001, was to destroy another landmark, the World Trade Center, which stood for freedom, international commerce, tolerance of differing cultures (many foreigners were killed in the attack), and the hustle and bustle of life.

Let’s Make a Deal.

Let’s trade a symbol of freedom and tolerance for a symbol of oppression and hatred.

President Obama, in his speech to a group of Muslims celebrating their holy period of Ramadan last Friday, unnecessarily injected himself into the New York City mosque debate. He pointed out the obvious — which no one had disputed — that anyone, including a radical Islamic Imam, has property rights and can build a structure which conforms to land-use laws on privately owned land.

(In America, not in Iran.)

Why the president was compelled to remind Americans of property rights remains a mystery. Just a day or two earlier, his press secretary (otherwise known as the Class Clown) insisted that the mosque issue was a local zoning matter and did not require White House intervention.

Nevertheless, Obama weighed in — to his everlasting regret.

The next morning, not even waiting until High Noon, the president began backtracking. He wasn’t expressing his opinion on the “wisdom” of building the mosque so near Ground Zero, he merely was ruling on the legal rights of Muslims.

Duh. Nobody had questioned the legal-rights non-issue.

What Obama actually was doing on Friday night was playing to an audience — the Ramadan dinner crowd. The next morning he was playing to a different audience: an outraged American public.

The sad thing is that he didn’t have to do either. But this president can’t avoid playing to a crowd — whether it is a crowd of auto workers or farmers or Hollywood celebrities or jobless fishermen in Louisiana.

The guy loves a crowd.

Unfortunately, his arrogance is getting in the way of his governance.

Elected on a pledge of unifying the nation, he has divided the nation into ugly camps of rich and poor, black and white, Christians, Jews and Muslims, left and right, socialists and entrepreneurs.

Not since the upheavals of the era of Martin Luther King’s and Robert Kennedy’s assassinations has the American public been so divided, so internally hostile. Obama has turned the calendar back to the 1960s and 70s, after decades of healing and conciliation.

That’s not exactly the “change” most Americans had in mind when they pulled the voting-booth lever in November 2008.

It’s gotten to the point that even Democrats are starting to waver in their support of the president. They can’t seem to abide by his increasingly iron-fisted rule over legislation and policy. Senate leader Harry Reid, the president’s most-loyal general, broke ranks with his commander in chief on the mosque issue (Reid is desperately trying to keep his seat in a heated election back home in Nevada).

The bottom line of Obama’s problem is that he and his advisers are terribly out of touch with the average American family.

As families are facing the loss of their jobs and their homes, the Obamas are living the high life. Michelle, demanding privacy on her vacation with one of her daughters, has lunch with the King and Queen of Spain at their Mediterranean retreat. While soldiers are dying in Afghanistan, the president is golfing in Virginia. With taxpayers are paying the transportation bill, the president attends a lavish, celebrity-studded Democrat fund-raiser in Hollywood.

The president’s problem is that he was elected by the little people, as they are sometimes called, but he has utterly forgotten them in his newly adopted world of unrestrained arrogance and power. The crowd he so admires now is about to turn into an angry mob in November, and he doesn’t see it coming.

*****

Chuck Green, veteran Colorado journalist and former editor-in-chief of The Denver Post, syndicates a statewide column and can be reached at chuckgreencolo@msn.com and 303-588-4138.

[dixiechick2000]

Yep...anyone who believes that Obama didn’t hear what the Rev. Wright had to say during 20 years of attendance at his church should do somethng about that lack of intelligence.

OR...fess up as to his real agenda and feelings towards race.

BUT...I think most people who vote know about this, so it’s a moot point.