Cheney and Obama are distant cousins

[waltky]

Granny always thought there was a resemblance...

October 17, 2007 - THERE'S no sign a family reunion is planned, but US Vice President **** Cheney and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama are distant cousins.

So says the Vice President's wife, Lynne Cheney, who said she discovered that her husband of 43 years is eighth cousin to the senator from Illinois.

The two men could hardly be more different. Mr Cheney is an advocate for pursuing the war in Iraq to try to stabilise the country, while Senator Obama wants to get US troops out of Iraq.

Mrs Cheney told MSNBC overnight that it was "an amazing American story that one ancestor ... could be responsible down the family line for lives that have taken such different and varied paths".

The common ancestor was Mareen Devall, who the Chicago Sun-Times said was a 17th century immigrant from France. Mrs Cheney said she discovered the link through family research for her new book, Blue Skies, No Fences, about growing up in Wyoming.

Cheney and Obama are distant cousins | NEWS.com.au

[waltky]

Looks like Obama got some other connections...

Gov't says case against Rezko is strong
Feb. 9, `08 -- In advance of Chicago developer Antoin Rezko's trial, federal prosecutors said that he had been involved in an extortion scheme with "Co-schemer A."

Rezko has had close ties to U.S. Sen. Barack Obama and has become an issue in the Democratic presidential battle. Obama has returned Rezko's campaign contributions.

The Chicago Tribune identified "Co-schemer A" as William Cellini, a Republican power broker in Illinois. Prosecutors say that he worked with Stuart Levine, expected to be a prosecution witness in Rezko's trial, to get kickbacks from firms that wanted to do business with the state government.

The government made the claim in a filing to counter a defense motion to keep some evidence out of the trial. Rezko's lawyers argued that the prosecution case depended heavily on an unreliable witness, Levine. Rezko was also a major fundraiser for Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

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Not an unlikely scenario...

Obama will be assassinated if he wins: British Nobel laureate
9 Feb 2008 : If Barack Obama becomes the next US President, he will surely be assassinated, British Nobel literature laureate Doris Lessing predicted in a newspaper interview published in Stockholm on Saturday.

Obama, who is vying to become the first black president in US history, "would certainly not last long, a black man in the position of President. They would murder him," Lessing, 88, told the Dagens Nyheter daily.

Lessing, who won the 2007 Nobel Literature Prize, said it might be better if Obama's Democratic rival Hillary Clinton were to succeed in her bid to become the first woman President of the United States.

"The best thing would be if they (Clinton and Obama) were to run together. Hillary is a very sharp lady. It might be calmer if she were to win, and not Obama," she said.

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[waltky]

Say what???...

Obama: Sermon on Mount Justifies Same-Sex Unions
March 03, 2008 - Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) told a crowd at Hocking College in Nelsonville, Ohio, Sunday that he believes the Sermon on the Mount justifies his support for legal recognition of same-sex unions. He also said his position in favor of legalized abortion does not make him "less Christian."

"I don't think it [a same-sex union] should be called marriage, but I think that it is a legal right that they should have that is recognized by the state," said Obama. "If people find that controversial then I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount, which I think is, in my mind, for my faith, more central than an obscure passage in Romans." St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans condemns homosexual acts as unnatural and sinful. Obama's mention of the Sermon on the Mount in justifying legal recognition of same-sex unions may have been a reference to the Golden Rule: "Do to others what you would have them do to you." Or it may have been a reference to another famous line: "Do not judge, or you too will be judged."

The Sermon, recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, includes the Lord's Prayer, the Beatitudes, an endorsement of scriptural moral commandments ("anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven"), and condemnations of murder, divorce and adultery. It also includes a warning: "Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves." The passage from St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, which Obama dismissed as "obscure," discusses people who knew God but turned against him.

"They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised," wrote St. Paul. "Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion." On the topic of abortion, Obama said his support for keeping it legal does not trespass on his Christian faith.

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[waltky]

possum thinks mebbe Obama gonna choose Bill Cosby as his running mate...

Obama tells black fathers to 'act like men'
17 Jun 2008, WASHINGTON: White House contender Barack Obama on Sunday demanded fathers, especially black men, shoulder their responsibility to heal broken families and restore hope in crime-ridden communities.

In a Father's Day speech at a Chicago church, the Democrat also pressed for government action to help struggling parents, through tax breaks, job training and family-friendly employment laws. The Illinois senator amplified one of his campaign themes in condemning absent fathers who have "abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men." "You and I know how true this is in the African-American community," Obama said, recapping government statistics showing more than half of all black children live in single-parent households.

Such children are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime, nine times more likely to drop out of school, and 20 times more likely to end up in prison, he said. "And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it," said Obama, who dwelt on his own challenges growing up with a single mother from the age of two after his Kenyan father abandoned them.

Highlighting one of the signature themes of his presidential bid, Obama said the "greatest gift" that fathers can give their children is hope. "I'm not talking about an idle hope that's little more than blind optimism or willful ignorance of the problems we face," he said. "I'm talking about hope as a spirit inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better is waiting for us if we're willing to work for it and fight for it. If we are willing to believe.”

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China state paper says Obama unlikely to deliver
Tuesday, June 17, 2008 - China's top state newspaper said on Monday Barack Obama is unlikely to bring the dramatic changes that he has promised if he wins the U.S. presidency and that his rise confirms, rather than challenges, racial divisions.

The Chinese government has avoided comment on the U.S. presidential contest, but the commentary in the overseas edition of the People's Daily shed a little light on how the ruling Communist Party views the prospect of Democratic Party hopeful Obama winning the November election.

In the view the party's mouthpiece, Obama is unlikely to usher in a promised transformation of Washington politics if he beats the Republican contender, John McCain. Obama has opposed the Iraq war but is less clear about how and when he would remove U.S. troops, the paper said in a front-page commentary by a senior editor.

"Nobody believes that such a complex problem can be resolved by just relying on a resolute stance," the editor Ding Gang writes. "The same problem faces any transformation in the economy, social security and education." The overseas People's Daily is a small-circulation offshoot of the Party's top paper, and it often issues more forthright views than the main domestic edition.

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