Afro-Obamania?!

An Obama Africa support group? Forgive me for wondering if Mr. Obama has instead won the Democratic party's ticket for a nomination to the sovereignty of Africa. While I can understand the excitement at Obama's nomination in the US, what does Africa have to do with it?

Such is the excitement in east Africa that newly-appointed Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga has even claimed a distant relation to the Illinois senator. Does the prospect of an American president with African heritage bode anything at all for the continent itself?

An article, ' What Obama could teach Africa', in the Washington Post yesterday http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/njoroge_wachai/2008/06/what_obama_could_teach_africa.html#more

raised varying, but fiery comments:

Anonymous wrote:
Here is the recipe of his "success" in a nutshell. Be a consummate BS artist.Create the illusion of a victim class of which you are clearly a charter member - even though you and your disgusting wife are millionaires.Get the universities - which are populated with empty minds quickly being filled with liberal nonsense - to support you. Why? Because you have a track record of successful legislation? Because you are sqeaky clean? Because you have exhibited good judgement?No. Because of the exact opposite. But you can cultivate the myth of the underdog and the myth of having answers to unanswerable questions. Are you a staunch America supporter? No. But then the universities have been going full tilt to teach that America is the root of all evil in the world. Not because they participated in any of the wonderful things America actually has done - but because they avoided risk and stood on the side lines and jeered.

Look at Mugabe - and see Obama. He destroyed the white infrastructure and thereby destroyed Zimbabwe. His platform was predicated on the promise of ignorance and hatred. It worked - for him.

Mike in Reno wrote:
How the world turns here we have an African advising African leaders to adopt Obama's policies while Michelle and Barak are preparing to implement African socialist principles. In her speech introducing Barak at the University of Reno here in Nevada Michelle called for "Economic Justice." For most in the audience the term flew over their heads but for political science majors they recognize the term which is only used in Socialist rhetoric and refers to the need to redress perceived inequalities in the distribution of wealth. Chavez's policies are a good example of implementing the "economic justice " agenda. Zimbabwe's Mugabe policies which have destroyed Zimbabwe's once vibrant economy into the socialist paradise of equal misery for all is another.

In Obama's Minnesota "tonight is our moment" speech he said "we need to reward work not just wealth" as though wealth is unearned and magically appears without work.This is also a socialist principle "consciousness is determined by being" meaning only work as defined by the state produces anything of value all else in unearned and unjustly taken from someone else. This concept forgets to include creativity, risking ones own time and money to launch a start up and intellectual property and entrepreneurship.The most extreme example of a socialist trying to implement this policy was Pol Pot of Cambodia when he marched all people out of their homes in the cities of Cambodia one sweltering afternoon into the jungle and forced them to work the earth literally in state run forced labor farms.His idea was that the act of "working the land" would transform their bourgeois corrupt notions into pure workers paradise thoughts. You know "from each according to their ability to each according to their need" another socialist notion. The Soviets showed us how it works out in practice. The people in the soviet system used to smile sardonically and say " they pretend to pay us so we pretend to work."Should we look forward to the new Department of Excess Profits Redistribution in the second Obama term? If so we shouldn't be surprised if our boat, snow mobile, third car, motorcycle, summer home, stock accounts, inheritances from our dad and mom and grandparents, need to be included in "the count" for Obama's excess profits redistribution.
Maybe these are some of the green jobs Barak Obama has been referring to, thousands of new wealth redistribution agents and excess profits checkers will certainly need to be hired creating a wonderful economic boom, as they redistribute your green money.

And then this pearl of wisdom:

If Barack Obama becomes president, I predict the USA will go the way of Rhodesia, South Africa and all the other corrupt, mismanaged hellholes in that dark continent. Black run countries just do not remain prosperous or productive. If Africa is to be taken as a model for the future, America is in grave danger.
George ManuelianSan Jose, CA

It is tragic, that in a purportedly enlightened world the sentiments driving the notion of Africa, as 'the dark continent' continue to thrive. I have no beef with Obama, perhaps he will go on to be a great president of the USA, but I think our expectations of him as such, should be tapered.