by va
Two thoughts, if I may, about the story of Zeituni Onyango, Obama's aunt.
1) It took an illegally disseminated Republican smear for the media to talk about impoverished people & how they're dealt with administratively. Her story is sympathetic, and if I was the Obama campaign, I wouldn't push back too hard on it.
2) It seemed weird to me that the pictures the media were using of Zeituni's building made it look like a serene collegiate dorm.
Turns out this development was renovated pretty recently under the HOPE VI program, which is in place to renovate distressed public housing. (Or, per Wikipedia, "to revitalize the absolute worst public housing projects into mixed-income developments.") It has been controversial; the program integrates people with varied income levels into the same space but at the cost of low-income units. Seems to me like a good project that's seen iffy execution. Naturally, Republicans don't like it. Indeed, Bush's infamous 2004 budget "proposed to eliminate the Hope VI program."
The completely unsurprising conclusion? As the Bush administration jacked up military and security spending, it wanted to fuck people like Zeituni.
Third Thought: The Obama campaign's response that "all laws should be followed" is just about inhuman. Jesus.
Added thought by Thers: The information on Obama's aunt may have been revealed illegally, but it was revealed for purely patriotic reasons. Now, looking up Joe the Plumber's records, that, my friends, is fascism. Which is not to say that looking up Mr Wurzlefluffel's records was kosher; it wasn't. But he's also not threatened with getting deported. And he's not nearly so scary and well-connected as this old woman who, as Michelle Malkin helpfully points out, WAS BREAKING THE LAW and IS PROBABLY A TERRORIST:
As I’ve pointed out countless times since 9/11, systemic immigration loopholes and deportation failures that have benefited peaceful illegal aliens have also benefited illegal aliens with nefarious intent....
And lucky for Aunti, anyone who thinks she should face the music and get the boot is considered a “hater” and a “xenophobe” and a RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACIST.
It really is awful how people like Michelle Malkin could ever be called "haters." That's the real crime here.
