Stupid Political Moves, US Version - Take 1

"...what's troubling is the gap between the magnitude of our challenges and the smallness of our politics -- the ease with which we are distracted by the petty and trivial..." - Barack Obama

Apparently, Obama attended a Muslim school as a child, living in Indonesia.

Now, Obama has been pretty upfront about his background. His mother (white) married a black, Muslim man from Kenya. Obama was born. They split when he was two. She then married an Indonesian, and they lived in Indonesia for a few years when he was a child. He moved back to Hawaii and, it seems, was raised by his (white) grandparents.

According to the New Republic Online:

"...For Obama, the product of a brief marriage between a Kenyan father and a white mother, racial ambiguity was an early fact of life. Obama's mother married an Indonesian man shortly after his parents' separation, and the family moved from Hawaii to Indonesia when he was still in elementary school. Obama recalls in his 1995 autobiography, Dreams From My Father, how his mother fed him a steady diet of idealized black images during his years in Indonesia: "She would come home with books on the civil rights movement, the recordings of Mahalia Jackson, the speeches of Dr. King." It was only at age nine, when Obama stumbled across a picture of an African American who'd tried to lighten his complexion, that he discovered that being black might be a source of shame to some in the United States.

The years that followed were no less confusing. Obama returned to Hawaii the following year to live with his white grandparents and attend the elite Punahou School, where he was one of only a handful of African American students..."

Apparently, he is hiding his "Islamic past."

"...my experience in these kinds of things is that what comes up must come down..." - Barack Obama

Work with me here for just a minute. His Christian mother married a Muslim and they had a child. The husband/father went to Harvard, leaving them in Hawaii, and then back to Kenya (I'm assuming there's a divorce in there somewhere). She then marries an Indonesian student and they move to Indonesia, where he resumes his life as a manager in an oil company. They live the life of Riley as only the wealthy (or, frankly, middle class in a country like Indonesia) can. Initially, he attends a Catholic school, then is moved to a Muslim one. Four or five years later, he is shipped back to Hawaii to live with his maternal (Christian) grandparents. He goes to Columbia, then HUNTS for a job helping the downtrodden (ending up working for a Christian-based organization in Chicago). He goes back to school (Harvard) for his law degree, and while articling, meets his soon-to-be-(Christian)-wife. They have kids (somewhere in here, he was a civil rights lawyer for a while), and attend church probably more often than me, but not every Sunday.

But he's hiding his Muslim past? For crying out loud, the kid was what, 5 or 6 when his parents moved him from a Catholic school to a Muslim one? And then, probably prior to junior high, he was shipped back to Hawaii to his maternal (Christian) grandparents for ostensibly the balance of his childhood and basic education. He attends church (somewhat) regularly. He hunted for, and found, a do-gooder-type job with a church. And Hillary's team thinks he's HIDING SOMETHING? WTF kind of BS slur is that?

Well, apparently, Hillary's background-checkers are completely unaware of Indonesia's recent history. So allow me, Dear Reader, to fill you in (in case you, too, are unaware). And for the distrustful, I am ignoring Wiki. For purely lazy reasons, I am cutting and pasting my comment at Jack's site:

"...The guy is 45? Were ‘wahhabists’ a big issue 35-40 years ago? (see below: No) Were Saudis funding Indonesian schools then? (see below: No) The country was being run by the dictator Suharto - I doubt he’d have put up with interference from any other state in education, nor would he have put up with any schools advocating violence, as he’d have expected it to be directed at him. Read this summary of the fall of Suharto in 1998 - the only reference to religion is “Javanese” beliefs in the amount of power in the universe being constant, with distribution thereof the only thing capable of changing.

I haven’t had time to read all of the article Genealogies of Islamic Radicalism in post-Suharto Indonesia, but the first 1/4 or so covers off Islam under Suharto. During the initial years of his dictatorship, he was supported by the moderate Masyumi movement of Islam, a movement driven by western-educated, democracy-supporting Muslims (who I guess saw him as the lesser of evils?). It appears that the Saudis didn’t start funding Islamic schools until the 70’s/80’s, well past the time that Obama would have attended schools there..."

My prediction? Hillary just shot herself in the foot with a Bazooka (are those still in use?).

h/t Jack's Newswatch.

And for the record: I want to state clearly and unequivocably that I am absolutely appalled at some of the blatantly racist and/or vicious remarks and comments that I have read in the 'sphere about this man. I don't give a flying rat's a$$ if you agree with his politics or not, but to jump on the "smear" bandwagon, including pointing out his middle name (Hussein, if you don't know) as if he had ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT, just because he's a Democrat nominee vs a Republican (and let's not forget that the Conservative Party of Canada is left of the Democrats on pretty much everything except maybe Afghanistan) is disappointing and frankly, undignified. My father-in-law's name was Adolf, as his parents were German and he was born in the 30s before Hitler's true plans & character were known to all. I have no idea how common a name Hussein is in the Muslim/Arab world, and frankly, I don't give a damn. Obama has no more control over his middle name than anyone else in the world, and to mock him over his parent's choices is petty, at best. And don't get me going on whether he's a "real" African-American or not. He's American by birth, and African by descent. WTF more do you want?

As for the "he has no real experience" crowd, I would argue that he has just as much experience as Stephen Harper did prior to taking office, because years in Opposition (as either an MP or leader) do not count when it comes to running something as complex as a country, nor do a few years as president of an organization with a handful of staff. At least, that kind of experience is not "better" than time in private practice, plus 6 years as a State legislator and 2 years as a federal Senator, not in my estimation, anyway.

Bloggers on the right like to point at trash like rabble and mock. All I can say is look in the mirror. If you can.

Editor's note: I reserve the right to rip Obama a new one over any policies that I disagree with, and I'm sure there are some. I just get really pi$$ed of at petty, irrelevant and worse, racist BS. Canadians seem to pride themselves on being "better" than Americans. So WTF are people doing, rolling in the gutter on this issue?