<p>Tourguide, he wrote the book years ago when he was a Harvard law student. What would be the reason? </p>
<p>It may indeed be a relevant issue to explore but, as I said, if you’d done just a tiny bit of research, you would know that he was not raised a Muslim, as you stated.</p>
<p>Right-wingers on the subject of Obama: </p>
<p>Obama had a Muslim father who left him when he 2? He lived in Indonesia for a couple of years and went to a school with Muslims? Raises doubts about his fitness for office.</p>
<p>Right-wingers on George W. Bush:</p>
<p>His actions during the Vietnam War happened so long ago, they aren’t relevant to his fitness for office today! How dare anyone uncover his drunk driving arrest! You can’t prove he did cocaine!</p>
<p>Yeah, whatever. His Muslim heritage is only going to be of interest to the kind of bigots who wouldn’t vote for a Muslim in the first place, and those people tend to vote Republican. (Note: I am not saying that all Republicans are bigots, just that in a Venn diagram of the Republian party and bigots, there will be a healthy overlap.)</p>
<p>DPX–as you of course aware, and I already said, the smear isn’t that he is or is not Muslim, but that he is being accused of lying about it.</p>
<p>I would hope that those who keep spreading this chain-letter level of “information” have no judgment on his actual religion, nor are spreading this in order to feed others’ judgment of that.</p>
<p>Thanks for the explanation, Irishmomof2; appreciate that.</p>
<p>I feel better knowing that though all of us are stupid, only most of us are bigots.</p>
<p>This bothers me less than his stance on the environment, which has been fairly wishy-washy. Reducing mercury and lead poisoning is a very small step, albeit in the right direction.</p>
<p>“I just wanted to get it out on the table that there appears to be a Muslim connection to Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.”</p>
<p>Yup. There is. I have teeth, too.</p>
<p>…only 2???</p>
<p>Two…in the front.</p>
<p>“Hanna, I really don’t care if anybody discounts my quote or not…I just wanted to get it out on the table that there appears to be a Muslim connection”</p>
<p>Facts be darned – you’re going to demand debate on this issue whether it’s based in fiction or not!</p>
<p>But if you don’t care whether people take your quote seriously, then why did you bother to post it? With quotation marks, no less? Why didn’t you just say what you thought?</p>
<p>Henceforth, I’m going to cite to Harry Potter novels to prove that Karl Rove is actually Lord Voldemort in disguise. Better yet, I’ll quote the books without attribution. And I don’t care whether you have evidence that JK Rowling made them up…I want to get it out there on the table!</p>
<p>The listing left side of the good ship Lolly-pop had better tether its cannons lest it blow a pirates hole in its hull.</p>
<p>It is <em>of course</em> fascinating that B. H. Obama was abandoned by a father that left him but not until leaving him with a Muslim name; and that he spent a part of his childhood in Indonesia wherein he attended, as befits his given name, a Muslim public school. Not the least so when we are reaping the whirlwind in the Islamic world and he pretends to be the leader of the (largely Christian/secularist) free world.</p>
<p>So just how milquetoast does a Democrat-candidate have to be to be considered soft and cuddly in cc[caramel-candy]-land?</p>
<p>How much more so if he is black?</p>
<p>These are questions worth answering.</p>
<p>There was a 200 page thread on a drop-dead peroxide blonde with inflatable breasts; and yet the education–in classical sense–of Barak Hussein Obama is uninteresting to you?</p>
<p>I rather like the experience of Senator Obama’s life and feel no need to employ a brush while others are trying to white-wash it (no pun intended—even where it applies).</p>
<p>I once worked for S. W. Goldschmidt. He went to NYC Public Schools. All of his teachers were Jewish. Most of his friends, too, as 90% of his class was Jewish. He took off all the major Jewish holidays, as the schools were closed on those days, and some of the minor ones, too. He knew the dredle song, and what a Macabee was, and when to eat Latkes and when Macaroons.</p>
<p>He just happened to be The Reverend Canon Doctor Sidney W. Goldschmidt IV, who worked for the Episcopal Church Pension Fund. But he was never able to escape the truth of his Jewish background.</p>
<p>“Facts be darned – you’re going to demand debate on this issue whether it’s based in fiction or not!”</p>
<p>For the left/Dems this is from the “Shoe is on the other Foot” department. It is hard to answer false charges, no? Kind of like the White House trying to respond to Dan Rather’s “proof” in writing that GW pulled strings to shirk his duty in the service or that soldiers at Gitmo had flushed copies of the Koran down the toilet to annoy Muslim inmates.</p>
<p>I hope you were as incensed about the unfairness of those charges once the stories were shown to be fabricated/unsubstantiated.</p>
<p>Ok, can we agree that his father and stepfather were Muslims? Can we agree that he went to a Muslim school for a while? Can we agree that his name is Barack Hussein Obama? Ok, assuming that we agree on those, my question is if he were President, what impact would those factors have on our relations with the Muslim countries that seem to hate us (especially Iran)? Would it help un-demonize the USA? Would he be branded some sort of religious traitor by those countries? My question wasn’t about what AMERICANs think of any Muslim ties, but about how those in predominantly Muslim countries would react. Those folks so eager to crucify anybody who is even aware of a candidate’s religion seem to think that such a blase’ attitude would be mirrored in other countries.</p>
<p>And all the smokescreens about Harry Potter and the Tooth Fairy and the ad hominems against Republicans are pathetic efforts to dodge my original question and the issue in general. They are weak ploys used by people who are afraid of questions.</p>
<p>Mini,</p>
<p>…perhaps we would be appropriately awed if <em>Sidney</em> had been educated for a time in Tel Aviv after having been abandoned by his orthodox Jewish father–after having named him Chayim Edelstein–whereupon his mother remarried to another Muslim man and eventually relocated the boy to the USA and, even stranger, he up and ran for president of the United States of America.</p>
<p>At least that’s my take on the <em>subtle</em> difference.</p>
<p>Even at that, you found old Sidney’s history of enough import to remember it after all these years and render it here…</p>
<p>…insignificant you say?</p>
<p>-don’t forget to floss.</p>
<p>.</p>
<p>Limited though it may be, Obama’s legislative voting record is fair game for distortion and innuendo in a presidential campaign. He is welcome to explain his votes, if he so desires.</p>
<p>One of the dynamics in this race is that Obama is totally unchallenged to this point in his political career. That won’t continue as a presidential candidate. His opponents will be digging for every little morsel of dirt. Clinton, on the other hand, is essentially immune. She’s been the subject of one of the most intense barrage of political attacks for fifteen years now. Every nanospeck of dirt that can possibly be dug up has already been thrown at her, relentlessly…even to point of attacking the appearance of her daughter.</p>
<p>She’s like a heavyweight fighter that has taken punches for 14 rounds and springs up to start the 15th round saying, “Is that all you got?”</p>
<p>The decade and a half of pounding has taken a toll on her “negative ratings” in the polls, but it also immunizes her against further attacks. Her opponents are all punched out when it comes to swiftboating Hillary Clinton. What else have they got? Innuendo that she’s a lesbian? Rumors that she killed Vince Foster? Oh wait…they’ve already tried those.</p>
<p>“At least that’s my take on the <em>subtle</em> difference.”</p>
<p>Actually, Sidney’s Jewish education was in fact much, much deeper than it would have been had his mother been the atheist Mrs. Edelstein and received a secular education in Tel Aviv. Your “subtle” difference lacks “subtlety”.</p>
<p>How do to deal with Newt’s psychological illness, or Rudy’s multiple squeezes (and court decisions to bar contact with his own children), or Romney’s flip-flopping is going to require a lot more subtlety than that.</p>
<p>mini et al,</p>
<p>You mistake me; Barak Hussein Obama’s cultural background recommends him to this multiculturalist. </p>
<p>Not only do I not have a problem with the facts of the Senators well traveled cultural and religious background it tends, in my eyes, to set his shoulders back and raise his chin.</p>
<p>It is funny to me that you and your co-religionists (in the broadest sense) feel differently about his unique cultural pluralism; it is clearly easier to champion, in the abstract, than to embrace, in the event.</p>
<p>, milquetoast being the only thing the rank & file CC glib can wrap their fluffy thoughts around.</p>
<p>Ah…where, where are the multiculturalists in our hour of need?</p>
<p>-let the backtracking begin!</p>
<p>“For the left/Dems this is from the “Shoe is on the other Foot” department. It is hard to answer false charges, no?”</p>
<p>I’m sorry, but “everybody else lies too!” is not an effective excuse for anyone who has graduated from the third grade. Spreading lies is inexcusable no matter who’s doing it.</p>
<p>Furthermore, I am not “the left/Dems,” and I am not responsible for what “the left/Dems” say. Nor am I holding anyone accountable for anything Karl Rove, fundingfather, or anyone else has said.</p>
<p>TourGuide, you posted a bunch of bunkum as though it were true. YOU are failing to either explain why that was a proper thing to do or acknowledge that you were wrong to do so.</p>
<p>No, once you’ve explained the lies you posted, then we can move on to discussing the truth (Obama’s stepfather was a secular Muslim, his middle name is Hussein, and so forth).</p>
<p>Edited to address the right comment to the right poster.</p>
<p>“Ah…where, where are the multiculturalists in our hour of need?”</p>
<p>I wouldn’t mind in the least if Rudy Giuliani or Barack Obama had a religious Muslim upbringing. But the facts are that neither did.</p>
<p>What excites me is that Obama had an ATHEIST background - that is very different, and places him in an excellent position to appeal to religious pluralism.</p>
<p>All those present votes make me wonder if he’s just taking up space, walking on eggshells so as not to attrack criticism. They are not insignificant. Milquetoast is a good way to describe that preservation instinct. I want a leader.</p>
<p>To answer Tourguide: Whether he is a non-practicing Muslim or has never-been a Muslim will not matter to any radical Muslims. They will lump him in with the Jewish apes & pigs and assorted infidels who must be eliminated.</p>
<p>But at least as Senator Biden has pointed out, he is a very clean black man.</p>