http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=310259670675314 All Charisma, No Heart
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, October 30, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Character: Barack Obama would "spread the wealth" as president, but until lately the Obamas were giving less than 1% of their own high incomes to the needy and neglecting even poverty-stricken blood relatives.
Sen. Barack Obama is apparently quite a cheapskate when it comes to giving to charity. From 2001 to 2004, the tax returns for Mr. and Mrs. Ebenezer Obama show less than $8,500 in donations out of the nearly $1 million they made.
In 2005 and 2006, with book royalties making them millionaires, their charitable contributions rose to about 5% of income. But how "charitable" are some of the causes Obama supports? In 2006, for instance, he gave more than $20,000 to the notorious Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.
Imagine that. Giving tens of thousands of dollars to someone who preaches "not God Bless America; God damn America!" from the pulpit. It remains incomprehensible that John McCain chose not to hammer home Obama's close association with Wright. The Wright issue has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with radical ideology.
Another supposed charitable donation was the more than $13,000 Obama gave to the Congressional Black Caucus. The CBC last year confirmed that it is a hard-core segregationist organization. When white liberal Democrat Steve Cohen ran in a majority-black House district in Memphis in 2006, he pledged to become the first white CBC member. But once he won, caucus members told him that whites need not apply.
Juxtapose that with the South Carolina state Republican Party chairman feeling compelled last month to resign his 12-year membership in an exclusive whites-only country club. Imagine the uproar if McCain, like Obama, had given a $13,000 "charitable donation" to a group that restricts membership based on race.
How can Obama spare thousands for Chicago's Muntu Theater of African dance, while allowing his 56-year-old Aunt Zeituni, about whom he reminisces fondly in his best-selling "Dreams From My Father," to live in a South Boston slum, as exposed by the Times of London this week? While Obama was swimming in well over $600 million in cash contributions, his underprivileged Kenyan-born auntie actually sent his campaign a modest donation.
A 2003 Associated Press story profiling poor people who buy lottery tickets at check-cashing stores apparently quotes Obama's Aunt Zeituni, describing her as unemployed and cash-strapped.
Obama's Uncle Omar, also described affectionately in his book, was apparently evicted from his Boston home in 2000 after losing his job. Then there is Obama's 26-year-old half brother, George Hussein Onyango Obama, discovered by the Italian edition of Vanity Fair to be living in a hovel near Nairobi, claiming to earn "less than a dollar a month."
It's funny how Obama can sell his memoir exploiting his relatives and humanize himself for voters, yet be too busy getting ready to change the world to be there for them when they need a hand.
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