Posted on 06/05/2007 10:51:13 AM PDT by Rodney King
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HAMPTON, Va. (AP) - Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Tuesday that the Bush administration has done nothing to defuse a "quiet riot" among blacks that threatens to erupt just as riots in Los Angeles did 15 years ago.
The first-term Illinois senator said that with black people from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast still displaced 20 months after Hurricane Katrina, frustration and resentments are building explosively as they did before the 1992 riots.
"This administration was colorblind in its incompetence," Obama said at a conference of black clergy, "but the poverty and the hopelessness was there long before the hurricane.
"All the hurricane did was to pull the curtain back for all the world to see," he said.
Obama's attack on Bush got ovation after ovation from the nearly 8,000 people gathered in Hampton University's Convocation Center, particularly when he denounced the Iraq war and noted that he had opposed it from the outset.
Repeatedly, he referred to the riots that erupted in Los Angeles after a jury acquitted four police officers of assault charges in the 1991 beating of Rodney King, a black motorist, after a high speed chase. Fifty-five people died and 2,000 were injured in several days of riots in the city's black neighborhoods.
"Those 'quiet riots' that take place every day are born from the same place as the fires and the destruction and the police decked out in riot gear and the deaths," Obama said. "They happen when a sense of disconnect settles in and hope dissipates. Despair takes hold and young people all across this country look at the way the world is and believe that things are never going to get any better."
He argued that once a hurricane hits or a jury renders a not guilty verdict, "the frustration is there for all to see."
Obama, who is bidding to become the first black president, took the stage after a succession of ministers repeatedly brought the crowd to its feet, singing, praying and swaying to music.
According to those two leftists we are under mob rule. Which is why we need to elect someone—other than those two clowns—who will stop the anarchy.
Excellent tune!
The biggest threat to low income blacks comes from the illegal alien invasion.
If Obama cares for his people, he better come out against this amnesty bill and the open border waves that will follow.
It should be illuminating to black America that both the Republicans AND Democrats have dumped them in favor of the increasing hispanic minority (soon to be majority, gringo). LaRaza has replaced the NAACP as the special interest du jour.
Not likely. Their Latin rhythms will protect them. The most amazing thing is how the lead singer can still yell in tune like that.
We need to call out the Democrats on these types of issues.
For example, the ghettos of New Orleans and other cities were hell holes and wastelands during the Clinton administration, the Carter administration, and the administration of Mr. War on Poverty, Lyndon Johnson. The problems of the inner cities were there long before Bush and are not the fault of this administration.
And since the Democrats are so big on government programs to help fight poverty and its related problems, we should ask Obama, and anyone else, questions about how effective these programs have been over the past 40 years in fighting poverty.
If they want a war of words about how effective the war on poverty has been, let’s bring it on. How can they honestly say that the various Great Society programs have worked as intended? I would love to see this debate.
Obama said “the poverty and the hopelessness was there long before the hurricane.”
Then it was also there long before Bush took office. Will Obama have the guts to lay the blame on Hillary’s husband, too? Or would that seem too cynical.
Or will they note the city has been governed by democrat mayors for years and was at the time governed by Ray Nagin? I wonder if any reporters will ask Nagin about the ‘long-held’ black hatred against his policies.
Liberal blacks and Muslims are expert at it, and it works.
Oh, does he mean like when OJ got away with killing two white people?
}:-)4
And the horse Obama rode in on! Veiled extortion from a candidate who has been treated with kid gloves due entirely to his semi-black hide!
I’m having a quiet riot, myself, and it’s going to become a noisy riot if the Washington establishment stops representing itself and starts representing the country.
Hmmmm. Wants to be President, and threatens that the minority population on non-workers, in an area that leads the nation in murders and aggravated crime, is not getting "their fair share" of Amercia's bounty?
The entitlements' crowd is willing to loot the taxpayers for handouts, and Osama Obama panders to them to assure they'll vote Democrat, so they can be kept on the Democrat Plantation.
Yeah, this is the voterbase of the Democrats, alright, and they want to expand the entitlements' base to include 20 million other non-English speaking patrons now, too.....
Is this a GREAT country now, or what?
should read “doesn’t stop representing itself”.
They aren't displaced. They decided not to go back to that quagmire. Katrina was the best thing that ever happened to them.
So Osama Obama is threatening to incite riots if the black folks don’t get more handouts? Just like Maxine Waters did. How many billions of my tax dollars have been handed to New Orleans? This reminds me of the South Central riots where the rioters burned down the post office, and there were crowds in the street demanding their welfare checks.
The way I figure it, blacks largely bring the poverty and despair problem onto themselves by voting for Democrats who only encourage them to become more hopelessly dependent on government handout programmes. Nothing saps your self-respect and initiative like have some nanny-state leftist give you everything instead of encouraging you to work for it yourself.
Obama makes an underlying assumption that blacks are violent just like McCain suggested that Mexicans will rise up if not given amnesty.
Obama makes an underlying assumption that blacks are violent just like McCain suggested that Mexicans will rise up if not given amnesty.
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