Minor Thoughts from me to you

One of the things that has continued to disturb me about Senator Obama is the gap between his rhetoric and his actions. He continually talks about changing politics for the better. But every time he has the ability to actually change things, he votes for keeping the status-quo. Earlier, I wrote about his endorsements of Chicago machine politicians. Yesterday I read that he's endorsed thuggish Kenyan politicians.

National Review's Andy McCarthy summarized a Washington Post story about Senator Obama's connections to unsavory Kenyan politicians.

Odinga evidently has a very close relationship with Obama. He is native of Kenya's Luo tribe, the same one to which Obama's father belonged. In fact, in early 2008, Odinga told the BBC he is Obama's cousin (i.e., that Obama's father was Odinga's "maternal uncle").

Like other Obama connections -- Ayers, Dohrn, Wright, and Mike Klonsky (about whom I have an article today) -- Odinga is a socialist. He was educated by Soviets in East Germany, he named his oldest son after Fidel Castro, and his father was the leader of Kenya's Socialist opposition.

The former Kenyan government of Daniel Arap Moi was pro-American. (ACM -- I can attest to this personally, having worked with Kenyan authorities extensively during the investigation of the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, which was carried out by the jihadist cells al Qaeda established in Kenya in the early Nineties.) Odinga served eight years in jail because he was implicated in a violent coup attempt against Moi's government in 1982.

Odinga sought the presidency in Kenya's December 2007 election. In 2006, Obama came to Kenya and campaigned for him, simultaneously voicing sharp criticism of the pro-American government. His comments will sound familiar to Americans. As Hyman writes, Obama declared, "The [Kenyan] people have to suffer over corruption perpetrated by government officials[.]... Kenyans are now yearning for change." Obama's visit, the culmination of consultations with Odinga that had gone on for years, vaulted Odinga's candidacy.

(ACM -- the outraged Kenyan government issued a rebuttal, greatly disturbed that Obama had represented that he was coming to Kenya to nurture Kenya/U.S. relations but, in fact, had used the trip as a platform to lecture to Kenya about social justice. Obama's interference in a foreign election, transparently designed to topple a government cooperative with the United States, comes close, to say the least, to violating the Logan Act, 18 U.S.C. 953.)

Are any of Obama's supporters the least bit concerned about this display of hypocrisy? Are any of them even aware of it?