A popular theme of Barack Obama’s campaign, going back to the opening of his 2004 Democratic Convention keynote address, is the love of his parents. Here’s the beginning of that famous speech, following a few introductory formalities:

Tonight is a particular honor for me because - let’s face it - my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely. My father was a foreign student, born and raised in a small village in Kenya. He grew up herding goats, went to school in a tin-roof shack. His father - my grandfather - was a cook, a domestic servant to the British.

But my grandfather had larger dreams for his son. Through hard work and perseverance my father got a scholarship to study in a magical place, America, that shone as a beacon of freedom and opportunity to so many who had come before.

While studying here, my father met my mother. She was born in a town on the other side of the world, in Kansas. Her father worked on oil rigs and farms through most of the Depression. The day after Pearl Harbor my grandfather signed up for duty; joined Patton’s army, marched across Europe. Back home, my grandmother raised their baby and went to work on a bomber assembly line. After the war, they studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through FHA, and later moved west all the way to Hawaii in search of opportunity.

And they, too, had big dreams for their daughter. A common dream, born of two continents.

My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or “blessed,” believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success. They imagined me going to the best schools in the land, even though they weren’t rich, because in a generous America you don’t have to be rich to achieve your potential.

They are both passed away now. And yet, I know that, on this night, they look down on me with great pride.

I stand here today, grateful for the diversity of my heritage, aware that my parents’ dreams live on in my two precious daughters. I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on earth, is my story even possible.

With that, he tapped into a load of powerful sentimental fantasies rampant in America today, many of them contradictory. For example, Harold Meyerson claims today in the Washington Post:

“Now, I mean to take nothing away from McCain’s Americanness by noting that it’s Obama’s story that represents a triumph of specifically American identity over racial and religious identity. It was the lure of America, the shining city on a hill, that brought his black Kenyan father here, where he met Obama’s white Kansan mother. It is because America is uniquely the land of immigrants…”

Where to begin? First, Barack Obama Sr. was not an immigrant and didn’t conceive of himself as one– he was a foreign student, who acquired a bachelor’s and master’s degree in the U.S. in order to quickly return to Kenya and grab for the brass ring of political power.

There was nothing special about America offering scholarships to Kenyans. Barack Obama Jr.’s kinsman and sometimes political ally, Luo warlord and Kenya’s new Prime Minister, Raila Odinga, got his degree in East Germany at about the same time.

And for the love of God, Obama wrote a 442 page book about his pursuit of a racial identity, not of a “specifically American identity.”

But, let’s leave aside Meyerson’s obsession with promoting immigration and examine the warm romantic glow that surrounds so many accounts of Obama’s parents. When examined carefully, their relationship turns out to be a sordid one, with disastrous long-term consequences. That’s hardly uncommon, but what is uncommon is positioning your parents’ squalid, catastrophic relationship as a major reason for electing you President!

Let’s ask a question that I haven’t seen before:

How old was Ann Dunham when Barack Obama Sr., an already married 24-year-old, impregnated her?

Barack Obama Jr. tells us that he weighed eight pounds, two ounces when he was born on August 4, 1961 (p. 22 of Dreams from My Father), so we can assume he went close to full term, or nine months.

His parents’ bigamous marriage took place six months before on 2/2/1961, when she’d be about starting to show.

Nine months before Obama’s birth would be early November 1960, about three to four weeks before Ann Dunham’s 18th birthday on November 29, 1960.

So, Barack Sr., a married man of about 24, almost certainly impregnated a 17-year-old girl.

Recall how the big scandal discovered in the raid on the Fundamentalist Mormon town in Texas were all the girls ages 13-17 who were pregnant by polygamous older men? So, the much admired All-American love of Obama’s parents turns out to be basically the same …

Barack Sr. then bigamously married Ann, then soon abandoned her and her son because the scholarship offer from the New School of Social Research that would have paid for the whole family to move to New York City wasn’t as prestigious as the scholarship offer to Harvard that paid just his own living expenses.

The candidate’s father then married another American woman bigamously, took her back to Kenya, but carried on polygamously with his original Kenyan wife, until wife #3 divorced him. There was another kid by a fourth woman. Somewhere along the line he killed a man in a drunk driving incident, then got himself killed in another.

Meanwhile, the candidate’s mother married an Indonesian guy who tried to bring home the bacon for her and another man’s kid, but she got tired of him, had a baby with him anyway, then abandoned him, but then lived most of the rest of her life in Indonesia, anyway.

It’s the American Dream!

In August 2006, Omeed Aziz Popal, a Muslim born in Afghanistan, purposely ran down more than a dozen people in San Francisco after killing Stephen Jay Wilson in Fremont by the same means. Another victim, Susan Rajic, then a 43-year-old massage therapist, may be a quadriplegic for the rest of her life.

See my report from 2006, SUV Jihad in San Francisco?

Naturally, he is pleading insanity rather than jihad. But in a KTVU television segment shortly after the rampage was stopped, a witness reportedly said the driver (Popal) called himself a “terrorist.”

A 31-year-old Fremont man accused running down and trying to kill pedestrians in San Francisco entered a plea today of not guilty by reason of insanity to 35 felony counts.

Omeed Aziz Popal is accused of 16 counts of attempted murder, 16 assault charges and other crimes stemming from the attack Aug. 29, 2006, in which people were run down in at least 11 spots from the Tenderloin to Laurel Heights.

Prosecutors have argued that Popal drove around the city seeking out victims, even circling the block to return to “kill zones” by aiming his Honda Pilot at people prone in the street from his first try.
[Hit-run rampage suspect enters insanity plea, San Francisco Chronicle, May 13, 2008]

I find it odd that Popal drove from Fremont to San Francisco (a 33-mile trip that includes crossing the 8.4-mile Bay Bridge and would take at least 40 minutes midday traffic) in order to kill random people when he was closer to the larger San Jose (population around 974,000). More curious is how his route within the city brought him close to the two synagogues on California Street. One victim was a block away from the synagogue located at the corner of Webster (see map). When Popal reached the Jewish Community Center near Presidio, he ran down two people on the sidewalk.

Did Popal travel to San Francisco to kill Jews? Maybe. Or was his Muslim sensitivity offended by San Franciscans’ famously edgy lifestyles enough to make that city his target? Also possible. And given the political correctness of the “justice” system, we’ll probably never know for sure.

On April 16, Eric Dewayne Boyd was convicted in federal court as an accessory after the fact (PDF) to carjacking, for helping Lemaricus Davidson hide out from the police, following the January 7, 2007 carjacking-kidnapping-gang-rape-torture-murder of the white couple, Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, in Knoxville, Tennessee. Boyd faces up to 22 years in prison, at his August 12 sentencing hearing. (Davidson and three co-defendants are to be tried separately, beginning possibly in December, for theft, kidnapping, rape and murder. Boyd and the four co-defendants are all black.)

Davidson’s white former girlfriend, Daphne Sutton, testified that:

· Davidson had told her that his half-brother and co-defendant, Letalvis Cobbins, had forced Channon Christian to shoot her boyfriend, Christopher Newsom, to death. (Sutton’s hearsay claim was refuted by other witnesses.); and

On January 9, 2007, she had “hindered the investigation” by lying to police investigators hunting for Davidson, in denying that she had seen him since January 7, and that she had helped Davidson elude capture only hours earlier, by dropping him off near Boyd’s mother’s Knoxville house.

Last June, Knox County District Attorney General Randy Nichols asserted, based on the then-unnamed Sutton, that the atrocity could not have been racially motivated.

“We know from our investigation that the people charged in this case were friends with white people, socialized with white people, dated white people. So not only is there no evidence of any racial animus, there’s evidence to the contrary.”

Note that when white men are charged with racial attacks against blacks, having a black girlfriend is always ruled out of bounds as exoneration against charges of “racism.”

Boyd’s attorney, Phil Lomonaco, has insisted that Sutton was not prosecuted because she was white and had an uncle in the Knoxville PD, Officer Dennis R. Bible, and that since Sutton was not prosecuted, neither should Boyd have been. Actually, the logical conclusion is not that Boyd should have been let off, but that Sutton should also be prosecuted.

This is from the Lew Rockwell blog a week ago:

May 07, 2008
Backwards Illegal Immigration Policy
Posted by Anthony Gregory at May 7, 2008 09:24 PM

Arresting illegals trying to leave the United States. That makes sense. Thanks to Manuel Lora for the link.

Well, in fact it does make sense, since according to the story, [Feds arrest illegal immigrants who are trying to leave USA, USA Today, May 7, 2008] which is scalping an LA Times story, Border busts coming and going, May 7, 2008, the agaency says that:

“If our officers come upon people who are here illegally . . . regardless of whether they’re leaving the country, we detain them, make a record of the fact they were here illegally and return them to Mexico,”

That way they’ll know, if the illegal comes back again, that it’s not a first offense. Also

Federal agents say the checkpoints are a productive way to stop dangerous criminals, drug shipments and money launderers.

The illegal immigrants they apprehend are typically turned over to the U.S. Border Patrol for processing. Unless they have serious criminal records or numerous immigration violations, most are returned to Mexico within a few hours, the agents say

I presume they also check to see if they are out on bail and have promised to appear in court to answer criminal charges, since it’s common for Mexican illegals to skip bail and head to Mexico. On the larger border control issue, illegals are more or less ignoring the border–see my blog item Illegal Aliens Commuting To American Schools.

There’s also a larger Lew Rockwell problem–while some paleolibertarians recognize the need for countries to control their borders, there’s a lot of Open Borders nonsense on Lew Rockwell.com

Being Illegal
Or
Why Ron Paul Stands Head and Shoulders Above his Challengers on Immigration

by Rick Fisk, September 1, 2007
The worst rhetorical device used when discussing immigration and border control is the ad hominem, “illegal alien.” It is used daily but its absurdity is rarely challenged other than to suggest it is a politically incorrect term.

There is no such thing as a person whose very nature makes him illegal. Nobody is born into a state of illegality.

[Blah, blah blah...]
Geographical location is thus not a barrier to the endowment of one’s rights. We possess rights by virtue of being alive. Merely being alive can never be construed, either morally or logically, to be an illegal act.
[Blah, blah blah...]

A border is not a property boundary; it is a demarcation of legal jurisdiction. A person, who crosses a border, has not committed a common law crime. If he hasn’t trespassed, there isn’t a moral or just legal reason to demand he show papers or submit to a search. By making this demand, the government is insuring that those who want to retain their privacy do so by trespassing.

[There's a lot more, all very silly]

Tonight we plan to do a full-scale article on LewRockwell.com, examining this tendency. Look for it on the front page.