Opinion Talk

By Grandfather

June 24, 2008 8:05 AM | Link to this

If Obama lama can’t find real victims he will make up his own stats. He has done it his whole career. Why won’t he answer the question about where did he get he money to buy a $1.4 million house in Chicago. Pretty good for a social worker. Also if you think he has abandoned the Rite Reverand Bishop Prophet Jeremiah Wright you are sadly mistaken. The sad part of all this is the McCain is no better in other areas. I stand by my belief that today we have no patriots only politicians. Sad.

By Josh

June 24, 2008 8:18 AM | Link to this

Obama or McCain…pick the lesser of the 3 evils! I’m usually a republican but I’d actually vote for Hillary over any of these two candidates!

By Josh

June 24, 2008 8:18 AM | Link to this

Obama or McCain…pick the lesser of the 2 evils! I’m usually a republican but I’d actually vote for Hillary over any of these two candidates!

By Josh

June 24, 2008 8:18 AM | Link to this

Obama or McCain…pick the lesser of the 2 evils! I’m usually a republican but I’d actually vote for Hillary over any of these two candidates!

By Freedom

June 24, 2008 8:21 AM | Link to this

He just makes things up as he goes and gets away with it. Then, if anyone calls him on it, Obama has a clear M.O., call anyone who criticize him a racist. As an Asian, I find it humorous and sad that all these white supporters fawn at his feet b/c of some historical sense of “white guilt” and repentence. At least if you are going to support a minority, could you have picked someone who has actually accomplished something, say like a Bobby Jindal? All I can say is that affirmative action is alive and well, just look at the Democratic nominee. Oh, and before the Obama defenders run to list his accomplishments, do your homework. They pale in comparison to Jindal.

By AH

June 24, 2008 8:23 AM | Link to this

Obama will do or say anything to win an election. Don’t be surprised by anything he says.

By JB

June 24, 2008 8:24 AM | Link to this

Grandfather Obama has sold hundreds of thousands of books and recieved a book advance for his second book. That is where he got the money to buy a 1.4 million dollar house. Also if people listened to his whole message he was not talking about vicitmization. He was actually talking about men taking responsiblity for theirselves and do the right thing, like be a good dad, stay out of trouble, and look to doing positive things in your neighborhood. Don’t be a victim of your own actions. His words are being distorted.

By Rob

June 24, 2008 8:28 AM | Link to this

Will someone please tell me what qualifies Obama to hold the most powerful title in the world? Was it his 156 days he spent as an IL senator before announcing his presidential bid, the two books he wrote or was it his work as a community organizer on the south side of Chicago?

By Josh

June 24, 2008 8:29 AM | Link to this

Why couldn’t have Colin Powell or Condalisa(spelling?) Rice have run? I’d vote for either one of them over Obama. Obama scares the hell outta me!

By Marie

June 24, 2008 8:35 AM | Link to this

Not only does George Will take issue with Obama’s statement; there are other journalists and/or columnists who have written on this same subject. And I too take issue with this nonesense. Enough is enough — facts are facts and lies are lies.

And it simply is not true that there are more African-American men in prison than there are in colleges. Obama knows this, Al Sharpton knows this, and other black or white liberal who continues to spout this lie know it’s not true.

Their false statement is based on data that includes ALL black men in prison versus the number of black men in college; and that is not an apples to apples comparison of just young men of college age (18-24) that are in prison.

And when you compare on that data alone the numbers are not even close. According to the US Justice Dept, in 2005 there were 106,000 African-American men of college age (18-24) in prison. And according to the 2005 US Census Bureau statistics there were 530,000 African-American men in college (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/13/AR2007121301803.html). Almost four times as many. But since that doesn’t fit Obama’s “blame it on America” template he shifts the data to suit his perverted needs.

And lets be clear, so what if there are more 18-24 year old African-American males in prison than there are in college? If a person is guilty of committing a violent crime then let him/her do the time. That’s not America’s fault no matter how much you want to blame it on poverty, homelessness, the justice system or bad schools.

Violent crime is an issue of an individual’s heart — no more no less. If the heart is full of evil then evil will proceed from that heart via a person’s actions.

By Boon

June 24, 2008 8:40 AM | Link to this

I agree Josh. Or, how about J.C. Watts. I’ve always like him.

By Copyleft

June 24, 2008 9:08 AM | Link to this

Obama: We have a system that locks away too many young, first-time, nonviolent offenders for the better part of their lives.

Will: From 1999 to 2004, violent offenders accounted for all of the increase in the prison population.

Okay, Mr. Will, but… what does that have to do with Obama’s point?

You can cherry-pick your statistics and date ranges to “prove” whatever point you like—but Obama’s comment about too many nonviolent offenders’ lives being wasted remains valid.

America is obsessed with excessively harsh sentencing, particularly against “safe” targets like minorities and nonviolent “criminals.” That neeeds to change.

By James

June 24, 2008 9:25 AM | Link to this

This is simple. Obama would feel differently is he had his credit identity stolen or his family (especially his two daughters) were victims of a horrible crime. Then he would be crying for their heads. This is nothing but demagoguery at its worst !!!

By Ray

June 24, 2008 9:29 AM | Link to this

You can knitpick the system all you want but committing a crime in our society is a personal decision made by the perpetrator and not by the public punishing him/her for their deeds. Gangs, rites of passage by getting thrown in jail, being “cool”, getting back at the man, laziness, little to no personal responsibility for your actions….. do you think that this might have anything to do with the 40 something percent of black males in our prisons who only represent about 6% of the total population?

By BFKaJ

June 24, 2008 9:30 AM | Link to this

Good morning all. Obama lied and Oprah cried. I never heard of Heather MacDonald, but she is dead-on about prison. Mostly “the system” tries to avoid the real costs of jailing criminals, since most criminal charges are truly self-destructive things like drunk driving and drug possession. It would not be true to assert that people do not go to jail on a first offense, but it is generally true that those held in state prisons majored in sociopathology. Like the people who are guests at GTMO, most of the people in prison are not people who need to be on the streets.

Nevertheless, it does not follow logically that I believe all of those in prisons had to be there for evil acts. I believe crime is progressive (and the converse, progressives are criminals) but the gateway crimes – marijuana possession, underage drinking, reckless driving – are the wild oats of youth, and not evil acts. Once people are caught in the system they never escape, mostly because “the System” magnifies its own value by controlling the sad souls who are there. I would abolish supervised probation, as the greatest problem in continuing the cycle of crime. Unsupervised probation would be fully sufficient to achieve the same purpose.

By AH

June 24, 2008 9:33 AM | Link to this

Can we get the AJC to moderate some of the blatant racism on this site? I know Obama likes to through race around but I don’t think we need it here.

By Fix-It

June 24, 2008 9:39 AM | Link to this

Obama is a true politician, this means he in an unemployable lawyer, and a professional liar. I would never let a first year medical student do heart surgery on me, so why would you elect a first year congressman to run the country? Only and idiot would not see the truth that we are not electing Obama, we would be electing George Soros. Why do you think he turned down government funding? He would have to tell us where his money is coming from then. Guess who funded his exploration committee? George Soros. If you look deep enough you will see that thousands of people gave $2100 to his campaign, doesn’t that seem a bit funny? That is because Soros is giving money to people to donate in their name. Does that sound familiar? Remember Henry Hsu? Obama is NOT new politics he is OLD politics with a new face. Wake up America!

By HateLives

June 24, 2008 9:47 AM | Link to this

Hey, the AJC is censoring me. I wrote two posts for this blog and they have not posted the first one, posted the 2d for about a minute, then pulled it. Was it too truthful?

By Marie

June 24, 2008 10:15 AM | Link to this

Copyleft you are too slow to get George Will’s point. Obama stated that the system puts too many nonviolent offenders in prison for the better part of their lives. George Will is stating a FACT that the increase within the prison population for a period of 5 years was made up of VIOLENT offenders.

Let me see if I can break it down for you. It is not possible for the US to be locking up non-violent offenders for long periods of time if violent offenders account for ALL the increase in the prison population. You also conveniently leave out the 2nd point that MacDonald was making which is the criminal justice system does everything it can to avoid giving non-violent offenders prison time. That is until it reaches a point where the knucklehead just will not learn his/her lesson and avoid staying out of trouble.

Tell us Copyleft how many times should we allow a non-violent perp to be a habitual lawbreaker before we finally say enough is enough and lock the clown away?

By RealityKing

June 24, 2008 10:56 AM | Link to this

And when did liberals start caring about facts when referencing Obama’s speeches??

Oh wait…, they don’t!

By RealityKing

June 24, 2008 11:04 AM | Link to this

Can anyone name a first-time, non-violent offender that was locked up for the better part of his life?

One non-violent crime, anyone…!?

By James

June 24, 2008 12:10 PM | Link to this

This is simple. Obama would feel differently is he had his credit identity stolen or his family (especially his two daughters) were victims of a horrible crime. Then he would be crying for their heads. This is nothing but demagoguery at its worst !!!

By rightytighty

June 24, 2008 1:32 PM | Link to this

The ability to accept these types of statemens without question reveals major personality flaws. Personality flaws that obviously contribute to liberals, and their corrupt media cohorts, being misled so easily..

By StevenCee

June 24, 2008 1:58 PM | Link to this

So it’s only “Liberals” that are so easily misled? Was it only liberals misled on Iraq, the cost of the Rx Drugs Bill, the feds doing no wiretapping w/o warrants?

Anyway, you’re being misled if you believe MacDonald’s assertion that “the criminal justice system does everything it can to avoid giving non-violent offenders prison time”, as well!

Barack is absolutely correct that far too many incarcerated men are for non-violent, usually drug-related, offenses, and those very same 2005 DOJ statistics bear that out! In fact 8 of 10 drug arrests were for mere possession (not a violent crime, last time I looked).

Those very same FACTS, show that despite 66% of crack-users being white, blacks make up 80% of those sentenced, with less than 7% being white. And that same outrageous, even unconstitutional, example of blatant racial profiling applies to other drugs as well.

Of course, when you systemically begin locking up a disproportionate number of the young men of any race or cultural group, especially a less-empowered minority, you will find them, unable to access college & tracks to professional careers & incomes, on the road to more & more criminal behavior.

And THAT is the real story……

By rightytighty

June 24, 2008 2:33 PM | Link to this

How many of those 8 of 10 drug arrests for mere possession, in the first degress, resulted in the person spending the better part of their life in prison?? NONE!!

And when you start talking about disproportionate number of the young men in prison from a less-empowered minority Well then…, shouldn’t the focus be on the reasons of less empowerment for that minority group? And since other minority groups don’t seem to have the same problems.., perhaps a highlight of their leaders and what is being preached at that minority group is in order!?

Yes in deed, a “less empowered group”. And dare I say, by self anointed design..

By gttim

June 24, 2008 3:31 PM | Link to this

“Actually, more than twice as many black men 18-24 are in college as there are in jail.”

Which is not what Obama said.

Obama last September said, “We have a system that locks away too many young, first-time, nonviolent offenders for the better part of their lives.” Will counters, ” Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute, writing in the institute’s City Journal, notes that from 1999 to 2004, violent offenders accounted for all of the increase in the prison population.

The “increase is prison population” and the “prison population” are two completely different things. Just because there was no increase in non-violent offenders incarcerated does not mean we have not been locking up countless non-violent offenders every year, just that there had been no increase in the number of non-violent offenders incarcerated every year.

George Will is intellectually dishonest, and is frequently just a liar. But hey, what can you expect from a Republican or a Republican hack?

By gttim

June 24, 2008 3:35 PM | Link to this

And who posted this nonsense, Wooten? Anybody with any kind of logical mind should have easily seen that Will was comparing apples and oranges and tossed this in the garbage. Journalists should be trying to find the truth, not spread untruths.