Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Tuesday that the Bush administration has done nothing to defuse a "quiet riot" among blacks that threatens to erupt just as riots in Los Angeles did 15 years ago.
The first-term Illinois senator said that with black people from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast still displaced 20 months after Hurricane Katrina, frustration and resentments are building explosively as they did before the 1992 riots.
"This administration was colorblind in its incompetence," Obama said at a conference of black clergy, "but the poverty and the hopelessness was there long before the hurricane.
"All the hurricane did was to pull the curtain back for all the world to see," he said.
Obama's criticism of Bush prompted ovation after ovation from the nearly 8,000 people gathered in Hampton University's Convocation Center, particularly when he denounced the Iraq war and noted that he had opposed it from the outset.
Repeatedly, he referred to the riots that erupted in Los Angeles after a jury acquitted four police officers of assault charges in the 1991 beating of Rodney King, a black motorist, after a high speed chase. Fifty-five people died and 2,000 were injured in several days of riots in the city's black neighborhoods.
"Those 'quiet riots' that take place every day are born from the same place as the fires and the destruction and the police decked out in riot gear and the deaths," Obama said. "They happen when a sense of disconnect settles in and hope dissipates. Despair takes hold and young people all across this country look at the way the world is and believe that things are never going to get any better."
Good grief. Yet another liberal calling the Bush administration racist -- I'm so surprised I think I may have a heart attack! Yawn.
Yeah, yeah, I got it, I got it. The LA riots from sixteen years ago -- why are we still discussing this? -- are all white America's fault. We're all a bunch of big, fat racists trying to keep the black people down. The LA riots were just a bunch of people trying to make a political statement, driven to the point of desperation. So they rioted, stealing and fighting and generally causing chaos and destruction. And it's all our fault, and the same thing's gonna happen all over again because us white racists are just keeping the minorities under our collective thumb.
Is this the best that the "articulate", "intelligent" Barack Obama can come up with? If I ever see a liberal black politician have an original thought in his head about race, then I will truly die of shock. Because for liberal minorities, its always the same: keep stirring up racial tensions, blame every ill that befalls a minority group on white America, and never allow them to take responsibility for anything. And always remember: you are a victim! It is NOT your fault! A bunch of black people that you don't know and aren't related to who have been dead for over a hundred years were enslaved by white people (and Africans enslaved other Africans first... in Africa... before selling them to us here in the USA... but that doesn't fit into the liberal agenda)! You deserve reparations!
I'm not excusing slavery, or racism, or the KKK, or anything else like that. But good grief, I am so sick and tired of white people, and/or the Bush administration, being blamed for every single little thing that goes wrong for minorities. Katrina must be Bush's fault -- not the idiot (and black) mayor of New Orleans, who didn't think ahead to use the hundreds of buses in bus barns (which were later flooded) to evacuate low-income families who couldn't get out in time, or the female governor of Louisiana (who waited over 24 hours to contact federal authorities about making Louisiana a national state of emergency).
And of course, the obvious answer to ending the poverty and homelessness and hopelessness that plagues minorities in America would be to send taxes skyrocketing through the roof, and socialize everything, right? Of course the best course of action would be to throw those low-income minorities onto every government aid program known to man, rather than making them take responsiblity for themselves and, oh, I don't know, stand on their own feet?
And since when did Barack Obama want to give hope to people? Wasn't his book called The Audacity of Hope?
Hmm... what exactly is the meaning of the word audacity?
au·dac·i·ty
–noun, plural -ties.
1. boldness or daring, esp. with confident or arrogant disregard for personal safety, conventional thought, or other restrictions.
2. effrontery or insolence; shameless boldness: His questioner's audacity shocked the lecturer.
3. Usually, audacities. audacious acts or statements.
- Synonyms:
1. nerve, spunk, grit, temerity, foolhardiness. 2. impudence, impertinence, brashness.
The nerve of hope... the insolence of hope... the shameless boldness of hope... yep, audacity just had a better ring to it. I'm sure that Obama truly wants to inspire hope for minorities. A liberal would never try to stir up racial tensions for their own political gain. Just ask Rev. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
