Typical White People.

On a Philadelphia radio station yesterday, Barack Obama tried to explain why he threw his grandmother under the bus while trying to defend his moonbat racist pastor. His response?

"The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn't. But she is a typical white person who, uh, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know, there's a reaction that's been bred into our experiences that don't go away and that sometimes come out in the wrong way and that's just the nature of race in our society. We have to break through it."

Now, first of all, clearly if this had come out of anyone but Obama's mouth, about anyone other than a white person, this would've been labelled as racist.

After all, the textbook definition of racism is stereotyping a group of people based on the color of their skin, is it not?

But, take a minute and re-read his statement. Look at what he's saying about 'typical' white people.

He's saying that white people are naturally racist. It's bred into us by our experiences. When we see black people on the street, we're afraid of them and we are 'naturally' distrustful of them. Why? Because we're white and, because we're white, we're also racist.

Well, it sure is a good thing that all of us 'typical' white folks can all 'break through it' by, apparently, overcoming our inherent racist tendencies and voting for Obama. Gee golly am I'm glad he's here to help me become a better, less inherently racist person.

NPR: The Mystery of Global Warming's Missing Heat

According to a story this morning on NPR, scientists are having trouble figuring out why the Earth isn't as warm as their predictions say it should be.

Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them.

This is puzzling in part because here on the surface of the Earth, the years since 2003 have been some of the hottest on record. But Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming.

In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. So Willis has been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments called the Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans.

Hmm. Weird. All that warming of the Earth and, in the place where it's most relevent and most influential and we can't find any evidence of it whatsoever.

Whodathunkit, right?

Oh, but wait. It gets better.

"There has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant," Willis says. So the buildup of heat on Earth may be on a brief hiatus. "Global warming doesn't mean every year will be warmer than the last. And it may be that we are in a period of less rapid warming."

So, not only is there no evidence that the world is warming, but the oceans are actually cooling slightly.

I won't say I told you so, but I did.

The explanation though -- hey, it does come from NPR after all -- isn't that Global Warming is a sham (but it is) or a hoax, but rather that we simply don't understand what our instruments are telling us and that maybe Global Warming has been on hiatus.

And, on top of all of that, NPR reveals that scientists don't even know how to track or account for this little built-in thermostatic system that the Earth has called 'clouds'.

But if the aquatic robots are actually telling the right story, that raises a new question: Where is the extra heat all going?

Kevin Trenberth at the National Center for Atmospheric Research says it's probably going back out into space. The Earth has a number of natural thermostats, including clouds, which can either trap heat and turn up the temperature, or reflect sunlight and help cool the planet.

That can't be directly measured at the moment, however.

"Unfortunately, we don't have adequate tracking of clouds to determine exactly what role they've been playing during this period," Trenberth says.

Uh-huh. Well, it's a good thing these scientists are factoring in everything when making their calculations about how much the Earth is (or isn't) warming and how much effect we have on it.

"I suspect that we'll able to put this together with a little bit more perspective and further analysis," Trenberth says. "But what this does is highlight some of the issues and send people back to the drawing board."

Whoa. Hang on there, Trenberth and Willis. Al Gore told me this debate was settled. I don't think you can just be going 'back to the drawing board' all willy-nilly now ...

Trenberth and Willis agree that a few mild years have no effect on the long-term trend of global warming. But they say there are still things to learn about how our planet copes with the heat.

Oh, well, that's good.

I mean, I thought that for a minute there that these guys might use the scientific method and, when through experimentation, they get data that directly conflicts with what they expected, revise their hypothesis.

Clearly, though, they're doing 'the right thing' and not letting these new facts get in the way of whether or not they toe the Global Warming line ...

On Obama's 'A More Perfect Union' Speech

There are so many things I could nitpick about Obama's speech that I have trouble finding just a few to comment on.

Obama, for example, said of the anti-white, anti-American, anti-Semitic, hate-filled Rev. Jeremiah Wright today:

"I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother."

My response to that is simply: Bullsh-tuff.

You can't pick your grandparents. You CAN and DO pick your church.

You don't get to make a choice about who you're related to, but you CAN and DO make a choice to walk into that church each week, and plant your butt in a pew, and listen to the rhetoric that Rev. Wright was spewing.

And, in the past, Obama has been clear that he chose that church specifically BECAUSE OF what Rev. Wright was spewing.

I'm also struck by the fact that it appears Obama's having a bit of trouble getting his story straight. In his speech today, he said (SOURCE):

Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely.

However, that's a bit contradictory to what he said over the weekend before the issue blew up.

From Anderson Cooper 360 (SOURCE):

COOPER: But, I mean, uncles are blood relatives who you're kind of stuck with at family gatherings, even when they say outrageous things. You can't get rid of them. You can walk out of a church. You can walk go up to a pastor and say, this is wrong.

(CROSSTALK)

OBAMA: And, as I said, Anderson, if I had heard any of those statements, I probably would have walked up, and I probably would have told Reverend Wright that they were wrong. But they were not statements that I heard when I was in church.

So ... which is it, Barack? Did you hear him make the controversial statements or not?

And, if they weren't 'particularly controversial' last week, before the issue really came to light and blew up in your face, what makes them suddenly something that you need to distance yourself from now?

Or, is your sudden revelation that you need to distance yourself from Rev. Wright and his hate-filled statements contrived, too?

After all, according to Jeremiah Wright himself, you said back in April 2007 -- almost a year ago -- that you'd probably have to distance yourself from him.

“If Barack gets past the primary, he might have to publicly distance himself from me,” Mr. Wright said with a shrug. “I said it to Barack personally, and he said yeah, that might have to happen.”

And then, just a couple of weeks ago, before ABCNews ran the video of the hate that flows from Rev. Wright's mouth, Rev. Wright told the New York Times:

Mr. Obama then told him, “You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we’ve decided is that it’s best for you not to be out there in public.”

That sounds, to me at least, like the same sort of "I'm going to tell the voters one thing, but don't think I actually mean it" under-the-table dealing he did with Canada over the NAFTA comments he'd made.

And, even the folks over at the Huffington Post are noting how Barack's repudiation of the statements, rather than an outright repudiation of Jeremiah Wright himself, isn't going to be enough.

Obama said he repudiated the statements but not the man, and Olbermann did not follow up. Note that in his Special Comment earlier in the week, [Olbermann] had specifically said to Hillary Clinton that it was not enough to reject the comments of Geraldine Ferraro, she had to "reject and denounce" the person or else Ferraro was "speaking with your approval."

Boy, it's sure a good thing Obama's different from all of the other politicians, eh?

On Obama's lunatic pastor Jeremiah Wright, Part II

In response to the criticism of his anti-American, anti-Semitic, racist pastor that has begun to boil since ABCNews put out a story on the subject last week, Barack Obama has tried to distance himself.

However, while Barack continues to deny having ever heard anything 'particularly controversial' over the past 20 years that he's been attending church there, a brief glimpse at the church's website reveals that Wright is a practitioner of Black Liberation Theology.

The vision statement of Trinity United Church of Christ is based upon the systematized liberation theology that started in 1969 with the publication of Dr. James Cone’s book, Black Power and Black Theology.

And, just what does 'black liberation theology' preach? Well, for that, let's go to a column on the subject in the Asia Times:

Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community ... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.

Darn it if I'm not still right there with Barack struggling to find anything 'particularly controversial' about the blatant racism and 'kill whitey' theology that this 'church' seems to represent and preach to its parishioners.

Now, for his part, Obama has issued a statement denouncing 'the statements that have been the subject of ths controversy' (note: without actually specifying which statement(s) he finds to be 'so contrary to [his] own life and beliefs').

On the Huffington Post, he states:

Let me repeat what I've said earlier. All of the statements that have been the subject of controversy are ones that I vehemently condemn. They in no way reflect my attitudes and directly contradict my profound love for this country.

Uh-huh.

On Friday night, Obama also gave an interview to Major Garrett of the FoxNews channel, from which they report:

Obama told FOX News he wouldn’t have quit Wright’s congregation if the pastor’s more controversial statements were isolated, but if that became “the tenor or tone on an ongoing basis of his sermons” Obama said he would have quit.

“Obviously they are ones that are from my perspective completely unacceptable and inexcusable,” Obama said ...

“If I thought that was the repeated tenor of the church then I wouldn’t feel comfortable, but frankly that has not been my experience at Trinity United Church of Christ.”

Oh, well, that's a relief.

I mean, if Rev. Wright had spoken repeatedly -- if it had become the tenor and tone of his sermons on an on-going basis -- well, then Obama would've made the right decision and quit the church. Right?

And, certainly, he wouldn't have made the questionable judgment call to continually put his children in a church pew where they'd be fed the type of bile and hatred that we'd quoted last week, right?

Unfortunately, no.

In fact, this new (and timely) denial stands in direct opposition to what he wrote in his own memoir, Dreams of My Father:

The title of Reverend Wright’s sermon that morning was “The Audacity of Hope.” He began with a passage from the Book of Samuel—the story of Hannah, who, barren and taunted by her rivals, had wept and shaken in prayer before her God. The story reminded him, he said, of a sermon a fellow pastor had preached at a conference some years before, in which the pastor described going to a museum and being confronted by a painting title Hope.

“The painting depicts a harpist,” Reverend Wright explained, “a woman who at first glance appears to be sitting atop a great mountain. Until you take a closer look and see that the woman is bruised and bloodied, dressed in tattered rags, the harp reduced to a single frayed string. Your eye is then drawn down to the scene below, down to the valley below, where everywhere are the ravages of famine, the drumbeat of war, a world groaning under strife and deprivation.

“It is this world, a world where cruise ships throw away more food in a day than most residents of Port-au-Prince see in a year, where white folks’ greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere ... That’s the world! On which hope sits!”

And so it went, a meditation on a fallen world. While the boys next to me doodled on their church bulletin, Reverend Wright spoke of Sharpsville and Hiroshima, the callousness of policy makers in the White House and in the State House. As the sermon unfolded, though, the stories of strife became more prosaic, the pain more immediate. The reverend spoke of the hardship that the congregation would face tomorrow, the pain of those far from the mountaintop, worrying about paying the light bill ...

So, long before Rev. Wright's anti-white, anti-American comments became 'controversial', Obama cited them as being 'inspirational'. In fact, he states that the very sermon that inspired the title of his book 'The Audacity of Hope' contained the same kind of vitriol that Obama is now denouncing, and he says he had his children sitting right there beside him the whole time.

That's a bit problematic, isn't it?

And, ironically, even his supporters are finding his Clitonesque denials implausible:

There was no more traumatic event in our recent history than 9/11. Reverend Wright's comments would have raised a ruckus at most places in America, coming so soon after the the attack itself ...

If the parishioners of Trinity United Church were not buzzing about Reverend Wright's post 9/11 comments, then it could only seem to be because those comments were not out of character with what he preached from the pulpit many times before. In that case, I have to wonder if it is really possible for the Obamas to have been parishioners there--by 9/11 they were there more than a decade--and not to have known very clearly how radical Wright's views were. If, on the other hand, parishioners were shocked by Wright's vitriol only days after more than 3,000 Americans had been killed by terrorists, they would have talked about it incessantly. Barack--a sitting Illinois State Senator--would have been one of the first to hear about it.

Can't you imagine the call or conversation? "Barack, you aren't going to believe what Revered [sic] Wright said yesterday at the church. You should be ready with a comment if someone from the press calls you up."

I don't think this is going to go away anytime soon.

To paraphrase Rev. Wright: Barack has supported inflammatory and racist rhetoric against the Jews and white Americans, and now he's indifferent because the stuff his pastor has done is now brought right back to his own front yard. Barack's own chickens are coming home ... to roost.