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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (251963)	5/28/2008 1:54:40 PM
From: Paul Smith	Respond to of 793917

Shouldn't a Presidential Candidate, Like, Know Stuff? Wed, May 28, 2008 at 8:09:36 am PST The Washington Post “Fact Checker” has been going very easy on Barack Obama, but today they’re actually asking the pertinent question about Obama’s “Auschwitz” tale: Where in the world is Auschwitz? - Fact Checker. Granted, it is getting late in the campaign. The candidates are tired, and prone to making silly mistakes. Many Americans might have problems distinguishing Buchenwald and Ohrdruf from Auschwitz. But should we not expect more from a Harvard-educated presidential candidate? Is it too much to ask that an aspiring commander-in-chief knows (1) that Auschwitz (like many of the other Nazi death camps) is in Poland, and (2) that the eastern advance of the U.S. Army in World War II stopped on the river Elbe? Let me know what you think. Yes, we should expect more from any presidential candidate, not just one educated at Harvard. I’ve written several times that I suspect Barack Obama of being almost completely ignorant of world history. All it would take to reveal the depths of this ignorance would be a few serious historical questions from a reporter who isn’t blinded by the messiah’s halo—but nobody seems to care. littlegreenfootballs.com

To: LindyBill who wrote (251963)	5/29/2008 3:21:22 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793917

So how, pray tell, is Obama staying informed about what's going on in the world? When he's pressing the flesh at crummy rural diners and speaking before 75,000 adoring acolytes, he's talking, not listening. Don't you think a guy who might be president would be obsessed with world events? Don't you think that obsession would have driven him into the race? And don't you think as a potential wartime leader he might be using his downtime to study, just in case he wins? For instance, Barack Obama obviously knows nothing of war, but he could help himself if he opted to read some Thucydides rather than watch SportsCenter. Obama has made a habit of coming across like a man who doesn't know what he's talking about. That's bothersome enough, but what's more worrisome still is how comfortable he is with not knowing what he's talking about, and how convinced he seems that his rhetorical flourishes will obscure his ignorance. That strategy may work on the campaign trail, but it certainly won't help him govern. Hugh Hewitt noted on his show today that he and Dean Barnett sat down and independently wrote the same column this morning. To my mind, Obama's insouciance ties in closely with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, black liberation theology, and its attitude to historical facts. In a nutshell, they do not value facts. They regard them as part and parcel of the white man's conspiracy. Therefore they consider themselves quite justified in teaching that Jesus was black, rather than teaching what the church fathers actually had to say, or the historical facts of Roman Judea. I don't know enough to say, but I worry that this meme of "facts don't matter, they're just invented as political props anyway" runs through a lot of black thinking, as a reaction to a history in which they are not pictured favorably and a school system where they persistently do badly despite the "help" of affirmative action. If you believe that the government created AIDS and Jesus was black, then you've bailed on any kind of rules of evidence. It's down to "you have your [white] authorities who say one thing, and I have my [black] authorities who say something different, so there. How do you expect me to see the world the same as you when I suffer under your racism?" What do you think? Do you think my reaction is one that many other people will have too?