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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review April 17, 2008 / 12 Nissan 5768

Obama: ‘bitterly’ out of touch

By Larry Elder


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | "Bitter," says Sen. Barack Obama, the man of hope and change, about those who live Pennsylvania, small towns and the Midwest.


"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania," Barack Obama said two Sundays ago to the Brie-and-chardonnay crowd at a fundraiser in San Francisco, "and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years, and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate, and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."


I spent nearly 20 years living in the Midwest. I attended law school in Michigan, and moved to and lived in Ohio for another 15 years. I married a woman from Menominee, a small town in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Her strong, values-oriented, working-class parents produced a doctor and two computer engineers.


Yet people living on the East Coast and West Coast, and those with "superior education and breeding," often dismiss those living in the Midwestern and other states, especially small towns, as existing in "flyover country."


Where to begin with Obama's statement about bitterness?


"Cling" to guns? Never mind that many people in this country hunt, grow up in a "gun culture," and believe strongly that guns provide self-defense. This belief holds in both good times and bad — not a result of some new phenomenon over "bitterness."


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"Cling" to religion? Obama here insults all religious Americans, 80 to 90 percent by some polls. Obama apparently believes one embraces religion out of bitterness, not due to spirituality, values, belief in or the acceptance of and submission to a higher power. Perhaps this explains why Obama clung to the Trinity Church of Christ for 20 years, with its anti-Semitic, anti-white, anti-American, conspiracy-believing pastor, Jeremiah Wright. If Obama attended the church out of "bitterness," surely, his reasoning goes, others do so as well.


"Anti-immigrant sentiment"? Obama here makes no distinction between the legitimate resentment over illegal aliens versus legal immigrants. Obama ignores the cost to society and the damage to America's values as a result of our porous borders and our failure to reach a consensus on what to do about the presence of illegal aliens. A newly released study by Manhattan Institute adjunct fellow Edwin S. Rubenstein analyzed immigrants' fiscal impact on 15 federal agencies. Rubenstein, a noted economist, found that each immigrant costs taxpayers more than $9,000, or $36,000 for an immigrant household of four.


"Anti-trade sentiment"? Didn't Obama, too, criticize NAFTA for shipping jobs overseas? (Of course, Mexico, the United States and Canada are contiguous, with no "sea" between them. But never mind.) Obama says the "bitter" blame trade, but didn't Obama — apparently insincerely — promise to renegotiate NAFTA as a result of its alleged negative economic impact? He implicitly acknowledges the statement by a Canadian official, who said that an Obama campaign aide contacted him and labeled Obama's anti-trade remarks as "campaign rhetoric."


So, Obama considers small-town Pennsylvanians and Midwesterners stupid, irrational gun-toters, religious zealots, hicks lacking the sophistication, knowledge and worldliness possessed by him and his Harvard-trained wife, Michelle, who only recently became "really proud" of her country.


Obama, by the way, made his "bitter" analysis on a Sunday, but not until Friday did this become a major media story. Why so long? No doubt, the anti-Second Amendment, secular media — to say nothing of those in attendance — agreed with Obama's analysis of the unsophisticated little people. Obama is, therefore, "in touch."


But remember the recent Bush press conference, when Bush responded with skepticism about a reporter's prediction of impending $4-a-gallon gas? The next day, page A-1 in the Los Angeles Times: "$4-a-Gallon Gas? It's News To Bush; President's Surprise at the Idea Fuels a Sense That He's Out of Touch." But as to the newsworthiness Obama's insult to Midwesterners — it made pages A-13 and A-17, in the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times, respectively.


Here's the line. Obama insults the Midwest in particular and people of religion in general. Yet he remains in touch. President George W. Bush, because of skepticism of $4-a-gallon gas, becomes the poster boy of the inability to relate to the little guy.


So who's "bitterly" out of touch?

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Larry Elder is the author of, most recently, "Stupid Black Men: How to Play the Race Card--and Lose." (Proceeds from sales help fund JWR)

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