[](/sites/default/files/uploads/2012/10/Obama-Hampton-2007-speech-screenshot1.gif)To those who have been willing to see Barack Obama for the man he is, the newly released video of the racialist stupidities he spewed for 40 minutes in a 2007 speech in Virginia is not the least bit surprising. The video only confirms what has long been obvious—that the President is a bitter, angry man who views the United States as a profoundly racist nation—hence the need to “fundamentally transform” it, as he says, “brick by brick, block by block.” Only such a man—an America-hater to his core—could have willfully allied himself for years with the likes of Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Jeremiah Wright, Derrick Bell, and Van Jones, to name just a few.
Obama is also a man whose stock in trade is, as the godfather of community organizing, Saul Alinsky, put it, to “rub raw the resentments of the people.” Toward that end, Obama has relentlessly pitted women against men, poor against rich, nonwhite against white—all to gain political currency for himself and his agendas. What is new in this latest video, however, is the cadence—which bears a striking resemblance to the seething, vengeful combativeness of yet another America-hating racial arsonist, Al Sharpton. Ultimately, there is not dime’s worth of difference between these two men, in terms of their politics, goals, and worldviews. Obama and Sharpton are ideological mirror images of one another, differing only in their style, their packaging. Consider, for a moment, where they stand, respectively, on virtually any important issue you can name.
Sharpton applauded the passage of Obamacare, though the new legislation was not nearly transformational enough for Sharpton’s taste. “I happen to advocate and have for a long time, a single-payer plan,” says Sharpton. That position is indistinguishable from that of Obama, who has likewise stated: “I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer, universal health care plan.”
In January 2012, Obama issued an edict mandating that the health insurance plans provided by religious hospitals, schools, and charities offer “free” contraception, abortifacient pills, and sterilization services—even if doing so violated their moral codes and the teachings of their churches. Sharpton supported Obama’s decision. Like Obama, Sharpton believes abortion should always be legal.
Obama and Sharpton both believe that human industrial activity causes global warming, and thus favor a cap on carbon dioxide emissions.
They both favor “comprehensive immigration reform” with a path to citizenship for illegals currently residing in the United States.
They both view ever-escalating infusions of cash as the key to improving America’s public education system. From listening to Obama and Sharpton, one would never know that American taxpayers already spend some $600 billion annually on public schools.
Just as Obama opposes school voucher programs, so does Sharpton, saying: “I think that the moneys ought to be applied to public schools and not any form of privatization and I consider vouchers part of a gradual step toward privatization.”
Obama’s denunciations of tax cuts for “millionaires,” “billionaires,” and “corporate jet owners” are by now the stuff of legend. Sharpton, likewise, has railed against tax cuts for “the rich” and for “billionaires,” lest such cuts result in a situation where “grandmothers” can no longer “afford their prescription drugs.”
Obama and Sharpton both support increases in capital gains taxes and inheritance taxes.
They both blame corporate “greed” and “deregulation” for the housing crisis, rather than the government-mandated policies (which Obama and Sharpton approved) that, in the name of “social justice,” forced private-sector banks to abandon common-sense lending practices.
Obama’s devotion to redistribution, class envy, and socialist economics is longstanding and easily easily demonstrable. Sharpton’s economic leanings can scarcely be differentiated from Obama’s. Indeed he was once a featured speaker at the Socialist Scholars Conference in New York—part of the same series of Conferences as those Obama had attended at least twice during his time in New York in the 1980s.
The same voter ID laws that the Obama administration has opposed as racially discriminatory, Sharpton has classified as “a slap in the face” not only to democracy, but “to all those who sacrificed so dearly in order to secure our liberties.”
Further, Obama and Sharpton both favor affirmative action (i.e., racial preference) programs in academia, employment, and government contracting.
Both support massive increases in taxpayer funding for childcare programs and housing assistance.
With regard to national security, Sharpton opposes expenditures on missile defense technology. Obama, for his part, boasted in a 2008 campaign ad: “I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending. I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space.”
Both men also oppose the use of military tribunals to adjudicate terrorism cases. In fact, Obama’s first act as U.S. President was to order their swift suspension. It was not until April 2011 that Obama reversed his position and decided to try 9⁄11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (and four co-conspirators) in a military tribunal. But Obama did not make this move because he had experienced a change of heart. He did it to avoid political suicide, as the policy of trying terrorists in civilian courts was proving to be immensely unpopular with the American public.
Sharpton has long viewed the American criminal-justice system as discriminatory. His condemnations of racism in policing and sentencing are legion. Obama’s views are no different. Indeed, the President has complained that “the criminal-justice system is not color-blind” and “does not work for all people equally.” He laments that “African-Americans and whites, for the same crime … are arrested at very different rates, are convicted at very different rates, receive very different sentences.” And he charges that “certain sentences … are based less on the kind of crime you commit than on what you look like and where you come from.” All of these charges are demonstrably false, but no matter—their purpose is not to instruct, but to further “rub raw” the racial resentments of people.
As regards their views on Israel and the Jewish people, the similarities between Sharpton and Obama are numerous enough to fill a book. Obama, for his part, has repeatedly snubbed Israel and undermined its security interests, causing Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren to lament: “Israel’s ties with the United States are in their worst crisis since 1975 … a crisis of historic proportions.” Obama’s recent decision not to meet personally with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu during the latter’s visit to New York has a noteworthy parallel with Sharpton: Exactly eleven years ago, Sharpton likewise made headlines for choosing, in that case, to cancel a scheduled meeting with Jewish victims of terrorism, and electing instead to have lunch with Yasser Arafat, the most prolific Jew-killer since Adolf Hitler. And just last week, Sharpton—already infamous for the role he played in fomenting deadly anti-Semitic riots and boycotts in New York during the 1990s—delivered the keynote address at the annual banquet of CAIR, a notoriously anti-Semitic, anti-Israel outgrowth of the Islamic Association for Palestine, which was established by a senior Hamas operative.
Obama’s former green jobs czar, Van Jones, once explained that he (Jones) had decided, somewhere along the way, to “forgo the cheap satisfaction of the radical pose for the deep satisfaction of radical ends.” In other words, rather than present himself as the militant, America-hating radical that he actually was, he would put on a suit and tie, present himself as a reasonable moderate, and quietly infiltrate the political system for the purpose of transforming it from within. Barack Obama made precisely the same choice, most likely in the mid-1980s. He packaged himself very differently than Sharpton did, thereby making himself politically marketable to the American public in a way that Sharpton never could. But Obama’s view of the world, and the nature of his agendas, are utterly indistinguishable from Sharpton’s. Thus it is hardly surprising that Obama has called Sharpton “a voice for the voiceless and … dispossessed,” and has praised Sharpton’s “commitment to fight injustice and inequality … across America.” That pretty much says it all.
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