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Posted on 07/04/2008 12:11:35 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

In his "I Have a Dream" speech, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said: "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

Character is defined as the essence of a person and determines a person's judgment, or what a person will do when no one is looking. Dr. King's admonishment is relevant during this 2008 election, and black Americans should evaluate the candidates based on competence to be our Commander in Chief, not skin color. We need the right president, not just a black president.

So, who has the character and judgment to be our president? You decide.

Obama The Radical

National Journal: "Obama has the most liberal voting record in the US Senate." When we look beyond Senator Barack Obama's soaring rhetoric, we find an arrogant, elitist millionaire whose voting record is even more liberal than Senator Hillary Clinton.

Obama's radical associations reflect on his character and judgment. Obama established a 20-year relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright who damned his own country and declared that innocent Americans deserved to be killed by Jihadists on September 11, 2001. Obama has a longtime association with Underground Weatherman Bill Ayers, an unrepentant domestic terrorist. Obama also kept a 20-year relationship and made a shady real estate deal with Tony Rezko who was convicted of fraud.

Obama opposes school choice scholarships. Obama puts the special interest of the teachers' unions above the interest of poor black children trapped in failing schools. He wants to deny black parents school choice scholarships and calls successful charter schools a mere "experiment".

Obama has done little to help blacks. Obama claims to care about poor blacks, but he has a dismal record. He promises to raise the minimum wage, but he voted against the minimum wage bill that was finally passed in Congress. Obama was a "community organizer" in Chicago. If his messianic message of "Hope" and "Change" is so powerful, why are poor blacks in Chicago still poor? Socialism does not work.

Obama supports anti-God secularists. Obama is aligned with left-wing secularists who are suing the Boy Scouts because they have God in their pledge and refuse to let homosexual men be in charge of young boys. The secularists are also stopping children from saying prayers in school, preventing local governments from displaying religious symbols and pushing same-sex marriage against the will of the people. Obama opposes the Defense of Marriage Act, a law that allows state governments to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. This law was passed by Congress in 1996 and signed by former President Bill Clinton.

Obama is the most radical, pro-abortion candidate in our nation's history. Obama is so pro-abortion that, as an Illinois state senator, he refused to support legislation to provide health care to babies who survived late-term abortions. In a cold-blooded speech on the Illinois Senate floor, Obama said that he did not want to recognize as "persons" babies born fully outside their mothers' wombs, even with their hearts beating and lungs heaving. This is chilling.

Obama is weak on national security. Obama wants to go backwards, treat terrorist atrocities as a crime and do nothing until after Americans are killed. The Jihadists declared war on America in the 1980's and attacked us numerous times-including the bombing of the World Trade Center, first in 1993 and again in 2001. Obama wants to hand the terrorists a victory and let them have an oil-rich country from which to attack us at will.

Obama ignores the facts that Congress authorized President George W. Bush to go to war in Iraq, and the surge pushed by McCain is working. Obama refuses to acknowledge that the Clinton Administration's policy was regime change in Iraq, and Bill Clinton and his advisers said Saddam Hussein had WMDs. Bush took the terrorists' declaration of war seriously, fought back, and we have had no more attacks on America since September 11, 2001.

Obama opposed the surge in Iraq which has now proved highly successful-a fact that Barack Obama ignores. He is unreasonably tied to a year-old plan to rapidly withdraw all American troops from Iraq-a plan offered when he wrongly believed that the situation in Iraq would get worse with American troops in that country.

Obama has not visited Iraq since January 2006 and did not seek a meeting with our military commander, Gen. David Petraeus, when he was in Washington. Since Obama has no military service experience, he does not understand veterans or military issues. His foreign policy adviser, Richard Danzig, said on national television that the cartoon character "Winnie the Poo" is a good source for foreign policy. This would shame us.

Obama wants to raise taxes. Obama wants to raise taxes even above the levels of the Clinton era. Obama wants to tax poor people, dead people and small business people. He wants to raise the payroll tax that would hurt working people. He wants to raise the death tax that would tax average Americans twice-once while they are alive and again after they die. He wants to raise the capital gain tax that would make many small business people go out of business. He wants to increase domestic spending massively and create a costly healthcare plan that would plunge our government into an economically disastrous budget deficit. This is change that we do not need.

Obama wants to raise gas prices higher. Obama said on CNBC that high gas prices were "good," and his only concern was that the increase in price be a "gradual adjustment." He does not want to drill for oil in America. He does not support the federal "gas tax holiday" that would help poor people afford more gas. He is aligned with the environmental extremists and is out of touch with average Americans, since 73% of the American people agree that, with appropriate safeguards to protect the environment, we should drill for oil off America's coasts to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Obama and other Democrats in Congress are blocking drilling by America while the Communist regimes of China and Cuba collude to exploit the oil and gas resources off our own Gulf Coast.

In 2006 when the Democrats took over Congress, they issued a press release which stated that the Democrats had a "common sense plan to reduce gas prices." The report card is in, and the record shows that by 2008, Americans have suffered from record high gas prices, the highest in the history of our country. A June 6, 2008 NBC/Wall Street Journal public opinion survey revealed that the Democratic-controlled Congress has a dismal 13% job approval rating, with 79% of the American people expressing disapproval of the miserable job that Democrats are doing running the legislative branch of our government.

Obama is a hypocrite. Obama calls for a "new" kind of politics but his record is filled with promises broken for political expediency. He broke his promise on campaign funding. He said he wants to speak directly to the American people, then rebuffed McCain's bid for weekly town-meeting debates. Obama also skipped the Detroit Debate organized by the Congressional Black Caucus, but castigated McCain for his decision to skip the Morgan State Debate.

Obama recently wrote a letter of support for former Klansman Democrat Senator Robert Byrd who helped the racist Democrats smear Dr. King during the 1960's. Yet McCain is assailed for not voting to make the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. a holiday, after McCain returned home from being tortured as a prisoner of war and relied on negative information Democrats put out about Dr. King-a vote McCain now regrets. No recognition is given to Republican President Ronald Reagan who supported and signed the law making Dr. King's birthday a holiday, after Democrat Presidents, including former President Jimmy Carter, refused to support such a law.

McCain The Statesman

McCain is a man of courage and integrity. Senator John McCain is a war hero who was tortured as a prisoner of war while serving his country with honor and distinction. He has championed campaign finance reform and has a proven record of ensuring that legislators and policy makers put the interests of the American people above those of special interests. In spite of efforts of his detractors to tarnish his image, McCain remains a champion of the people, and his long voting record demonstrates his sound judgment.

Notably, in its final November 20, 1991 report, the Senate Select Committee on Ethics completely exonerated Senator McCain's conduct in the so-called "Keating Five" investigation. The Ethics Committee wrote: "Senator McCain has violated no law of the United States or specific Rule of the United States Senate; therefore, the Committee concludes that no further action is warranted with respect to Senator McCain on the matters investigated during the preliminary inquiry."

McCain supports black political and economic equality. McCain supports policies that are better for urban communities because his policies are based on helping the poor with a hand up, not a hand out. His philosophy is founded on the fact that if you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day, but if you teach a man how to fish, he will feed himself for a lifetime. In addition to the $500 billion that is spent each year on poverty programs, McCain wants to enact policies that encourage personal responsibility and bring an end to the failed socialist policies of the Democrats which foster dependency on government handouts and generational poverty.

McCain supports school choice scholarships. McCain supports quality education for blacks. He sides with black parents who want school choice scholarships, home schooling and charter schools. He believes that competition is the key to success in educating our children. He understands that if educators concentrate on teaching well, the passing of standardized tests will come naturally. McCain believes that the tax payers' money for education belongs to the people, not the buildings controlled by the teachers' unions.

McCain favors religious freedom in pubic places. McCain voted yes to legislation that says putting up religious symbols and praying on public school campuses as part of a memorial service does not violate the First Amendment to the Constitution. The law also provides legal assistance to any government entity defending these religious freedoms. McCain supports protecting the unborn and the Defense of Marriage Act which helps preserve marriage as a union between one man and one woman.

McCain wants to lower taxes and gas prices. McCain supports our free market economy based on the principles of limited government and low taxes for both families and small businesses. These principles have led to America being the most prosperous nation on earth. He advocates promoting our nation's economic prosperity through sound economic policies and keeping gas prices low. He supports the "gas tax holiday" and offshore drilling while protecting our environment. He supports constructing new power generating facilities and developing new, clean alternative energy sources like solar, wind and clean coal, while expanding the use of nuclear power.

McCain supports a strong national defense. McCain understands that the first obligation of our president is the safety and security of this nation and the men and women who defend it. He has the military experience, judgment and principled leadership to be our Commander in Chief. McCain advocated the surge strategy in Iraq that has been hugely successful. Violence is down enormously, and the Iraqi parliament has passed almost all of the "benchmark" legislation demanded by the Democratic Congress. McCain knows that we have enemies for whom no attack is too cruel, even on innocent life. The Jihadists would, if they could, strike us with the world's most terrible weapons. McCain is a proven leader who has the character and judgment to be president.

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Frances Rice is chairman of the National Black Republican Association and may be contacted at: www.NBRA.info

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