Some Republicans today are dismissing the 2007 tape of then-Sen. Barack Obama delivering an address at Hampton University as nothing new. Some on the left are suggesting that it’s old news. The latter focus on the shout-out to Rev. Jeremiah Wright, which had been played on network TV when Wright first stirred controversy for Obama in 2007. But the networks never aired the most important part of the speech. That part of the address reveals a divisive, race-baiting version of Obama that the man and his handlers have successfully kept under wraps for years.
The most important, and most divisive, part of the speech is when the future president explains his version of events following Hurricane Katrina. Obama’s version of events puts race at the center of the tragedy. Obama also put race at the center of the national response to the terrorist attacks on 9-11-01.
“Down in New Orleans, where they still have not rebuilt twenty months later there’s a law, federal law — when you get reconstruction money from the federal government — called the Stafford Act,” Obama told his audience in 2007. “And basically it says, when you get federal money, you gotta give a ten percent match. The local government’s gotta come up with ten percent. Every ten dollars the federal government comes up with, local government’s gotta give a dollar.
“Now here’s the thing. When 9-11 happened in New York City, they waived the Stafford Act — said, ‘This is too serious a problem. We can’t expect New York City to rebuild on its own. Forget that dollar you gotta put in. Well, here’s ten dollars.’ And that was the right thing to do. When Hurricane Andrew struck in Florida, people said, ‘Look at this devastation. We don’t expect you to come up with y’own money, here. Here’s the money to rebuild. We’re not gonna wait for you to scratch it together — because you’re part of the American family.’
“What’s happening down in New Orleans? Where’s your dollar? Where’s your Stafford Act money? Makes no sense! Tells me that somehow, the people down in New Orleans they don’t care about as much!”
As a senator, Barack Obama was in a position to know both where New Orleans’ money was and that the Stafford Act had been waived several times for the people of New Orleans. He was also in a position to know that the Bush administration had offered assistance to Louisiana and to New Orleans before the hurricane struck, but the local governor and mayor — both Democrats, and one of them black — had turned the administration’s offer down. Obama was also in a position to know that at the height of the disaster, as New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin screamed “Where are the buses?” to get people evacuated, dozens of city-owned buses had been left unused, and they flooded. The city of New Orleans, it turned out, had dozens of ghost police officers on the rolls to pad their federal grant money, and did not even have a comprehensive list of its city school bus drivers, so they could be contacted to help evacuate stranded citizens. Sen. Obama was in a position to know all of this, yet he chose to channel Kanye West and suggest that the disaster in New Orleans was a result of racism.
He did this off the script. It’s what he really believes, or at least believed in 2007. That is not old news.
Obama and his handlers have also been aware, for five years, just how incendiary and dishonest, and potentially damaging, his off-the-cuff Hampton speech comments were. The version of that speech that BuzzFeed posted Tuesday afternoon had been edited to remove the inflammatory sections, effectively sanitizing the speech. The media dutifully reported that speech in 2007, minus the racist conspiracy theory. The quote above doesn’t appear anywhere on the Internet prior to last night.
So, obviously, it’s not “old news.” It’s an old speech that tells us something new about Barack Obama.
Well, It would be OLD NEWS if the Alphabet Soup media had covered it properly at the time.
It’s our fault. We thought we heard that he was going to be the post racial president. What he actually said was that he was going to be the most racial president.
“It’s an old speech that tells us something new about Barack Obama.”
And something about the press.
Ann Althouse has a ‘flaming’ response to use of this self-incriminating video against Obama. She calls herself undecided. Given Obama’s truly abismal record in the economy, national security and race relations, this makes me think she is crazy as Andrew Sullivan. There’s no defending racism which is exactly why the race baiting divisive speech of Obama is unacceptable. Ann should be ashamed of herself.
this.
I think the analogy of Althouse with Andrew Sullivan is spot on. Toss in Charles (little footballs) Johnson and you have the makings of a trend: Althouse, Sullivan and Johnson.
This and many other responses to events during the past few months have utterly destroyed the last vestiges of the “well-intentioned incompetence” defense as a cover for the countless treasonable acts that have been committed by Obama and his administration very deliberately since (before) day one.
Because Prof. Althouse’s delicate sensibilities possibly about having fallen for the Obama scam four years ago makes her so exquisitely sensitive to the meanies who are telling the truth.
Ya know, I followed Althouse’s blog for awhile (I used to live in Madison, law prof, etc.) but drifted away.
After seeing that she (a) voted for Obama in 2008 (b) is genuinely undecided this time around (meaning she may vote for him again, after the colossal clusterfuck of the last four years) and (c) thinks that airing in full his 2007 race-baiting speech is “repellent”.
Now I know why I quit reading her.
I swear, it felt like I was losing IQ points reading her.
And Althouse digs in deeper with her reply, saying, essentially, that no one should challenge the racialist rhetoric of the left because doing so will offend those inclined to believe the rhetoric.
It’s The Whine who looks ugly, Ann, not us. I can somewhat understand & forgive Jeremiah Wright for his race-baiting, but don’t tell me on one hand that you’re going to be the post racial president, and then give a most racial speech that’s full of lies that you, as a sitting Senator, should know are lies.
Totally agree that Ann Althouse is incorrect. This is not old news because no has seen it except the liberals who hid it. Also, it is not ugly, it is his speech. Now, as a woman I wonder how she could come up with this conclusion? Please rethink your conclusion especially in the light of his failed presidency.
Althouse is quite mistaken, and because of squishes like her liberty will either die outright, or will have to be redeemed one day at a steep price.
She is a coward.
Ann Althouse is a liberal law professor at the University of Wisconsin and voted for Obama in 2008. Can you expect anything better from her than continuing stupidity?
She’s not smart enough to be Liberal. She’s something else. Go read her stuff on her blog. At some point you’ll get the picture of what’s going on. And it isn’t pretty.
I don’t expect Althouse to be invited back to Instapundit again.
Really, her arguments are of the worst sort of fuzzy-headed thinking and inability to make decisions or good choices. She voted for Obama in 2008 and has never expressed any remorse about it.
If we’re going to feel sad about this we should feel sorry for Meade, the guy who met Althouse through her blog, dumped his life, moved to Madison and married her. He is a very smart, well-spoken, reasonable guy. Now look what he is stuck with.
So, here’s the takeaway: we’re stuck with a nation overrun by an awful lot of poorly reasoning, not very bright people like Althouse. And the best we can hope for is that at some point these people marginalize themselves out of polite company like Althouse has done.
Really, it’s quite pathetic. And like I said, I feel badly for Meade.