Trump the racist?

I was sitting in a hotel dining area in Texas eating breakfast when I heard Donald Trump announce on the television behind me his intention to run for the Republican presidential nomination. I knew that when he mentioned illegal immigration, his political opponents -- who knew that they’d be actual enemies? -- would twist his statement into hatred of Mexicans and people of Mexican descent.

He denounced David Duke in the '90s;

He’s repeatedly denounced racial hatred in general and anti-Semitism in particular;

He’s been the best friend Israel’s had in the White House in at least a generation;

It turns out that Mexico also opposes illegal immigration -- when they’re the victims of it; and

Cohen's "racist" has been refuted by Candace Owens and Lynne Patton.

A standard response (and more) to the vulgar and idiotic racists emboldened by Donald Trump

The Vile Orange Bigot has coaxed out of the shadows a lot of his fellow racist swine. Rather than waste time refuting every attack individually, it seemed prudent to cobble together several responses to their nescience.

Here is a synthesis of several replies to one of these witless worms and his Trump-inspired, profanity-laden cowardice:

Name-calling, character assassination, and bigotry from another racist Democrat.

This isn't elementary school; you're defaming someone you know nothing about, and you're doing it on racial grounds. Are you always such a lying, vulgar idiot? You see my nom de guerre and assume that you know something about me.

If you weren't such an historically-illiterate coward, then you would know that Santiago Matamoros is a first-century Jew, an Apostle. Saint James the Moor-slayer, the patron saint of Spain during its eight-hundred-year Reconquista to free itself from Islamic tyranny.

But you don't care about facts. It's not up to a Trump supporter to know anything about the things on which he comments. Just like your candidate -- who has already promised touch-back amnesty and negotiations on deportation, credulous loser -- you attack first and think after, if at all.

How does it feel to make Obama supporters look informed, patriotic, and noble?

Crawl back under the liberal rock from which you slithered, vulgar wretch.

Here's a recent head-shot that found its mark:

What's in a name, illiterate racist?

Trump says that he loves the ignorant.

You must be his favorite.

And another:

Wonderful! Another vile, racist Democrat.

Facts are "stupid" only to tyrants and slaves, and your red-faced, orange-haired buffoon has certainly clowned you.

As for your idiotic and bigoted smear, if you had any integrity, any historical literacy, any dignity at all, then you would know that my nom de guerre belongs to a first-century Jew, one of Christ's Apostles, the patron saint of Spain's eight-hundred-year war to free itself from Islamic tyranny.

You're such an ignorant coward. You deserve Trump.

And another:

How can a first-century saint be "illegal," nescient?

You're a credit to your candidate, illiterate racist.

And another:

Inapt, clumsy, and nescient.

Try again, racist Democrat.

And another:

So, you're just another historically-illiterate and racist Democrat. You know literally nothing about either Santiago Matamoros or me.

Can you be any more nescient?

And another:

The ignorant racists are oozing out of the woodwork, aren't they?

You know, if you had any intellectual integrity, historical literacy, or basic human decency, then you'd have saved yourself the embarrassment of exposing your bigotry over a nom de guerre honoring the patron saint of Spain's eight-hundred-year Reconquista to free itself from Islamic oppression.

But not you. Attack however stupidly whomever points out that you're being played for a fool by the other pathologically-lying liberal from New York.

The racist party hates Reagan

Yes, there is little to distinguish many of the two parties' leaders, but the principles those politicians are supposed to represent couldn't be more diametric.

A response to this with credit to this:

A greater percentage of Congressional Republicans than Democrats supported the Civil Rights Act.

You ought to ask the reasons for Reagan's positions, but you won't, since facts are anathema to you.

Blacks benefited from Reagan's economic policies more than Whites (color-based identifiers are revolting, but since you define people by the melanin-content of their skin cells, so be it).

Pat Buchanan (who's got his own issues with jihad and Israel) invented the term "Southern strategy"; what did he say about the "change" in Republicanism?

"We would build our Republican Party on a foundation of states' rights, human rights, small government, and a strong national defense, and leave it to the ‘party of [Democratic Georgia Gov. Lester] Maddox, [1966 Democratic challenger against Spiro Agnew for Maryland governor George] Mahoney and [Democratic Alabama Gov. George] Wallace to squeeze the last ounces of political juice out of the rotting fruit of racial injustice.”

If Southerners wanted to stay with the racist party, they'd have stayed Democrat. They went to the Republican Party because of the freedom issues Buchanan noted.

And right after Reagan's "states rights" speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi -- where Democrat Michael Dukakis spoke eight years later -- he went to New York to speak before the Urban League.

Reagan opposed "affirmative action" -- racial quotas -- just like JFK, Bayard Rustin, and the Urban League board of directors. He hired Clarence Thomas and Colin Powell. And Reagan signed Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday into a national holiday and approved a 25-year extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Why do you hate "states' rights, human rights, small government, and a strong national defense"? Why do you hate America and its citizens of every hue?

Democrats depend on the obedience -- and ignorance -- of "minority" voters in fastening their chains on them.

You're either too gullible to realize it or too complicit to admit it.

"Authentic Jews" peddling inauthentic history . . . and theology

(The true) God is not racist.

Some are so tormented by sentiments of racial inferiority that they are unable to evaluate and represent facts faithfully.  Like those who want to make Jesus African, so too some want desperately for Hebrews/Jews from Abraham to Moses to the Sephardim (Iberian Jews) to be black (this trend is color-blind; some want Anglo-Saxons to be the lost tribes of Israel).  Following are a few observations on one site's false claims regarding Israel and Africa:

"This makes it seem likely that the Afroasiatic languages originated in Africa and then spread to the Asian continent."

Since all descend from Noah and his sons, and their common language was confused at Babel, no language "originated" in Africa.

"the ancient Hebrews came out of North AFRICA (Egypt)."

The Israelites came out of slavery in Egypt led by Moses, at YHWH's command, and by His power.  Their ancestors -- Jacob and his family -- entered the land as honored guests because Joseph was so esteemed that he attained a position in all of Egypt second only to Pharaoh's.  His father Jacob (Israel) was the grandson of Abraham, and he was from Mesopotamia ("Ur of the Chaldees"), not Africa.

Sometime before the Exodus, while in exile from Egypt, Moses married Zipporah, a Cushite (Ethiopian) woman, a daughter of Reuel, the priest of Midian.  Five hundred years later, King Solomon received the Queen of Sheba (Ethiopia) as a guest in Israel.  Regarding "Cushite" and "Sheba," some dispute the two terms as referencing Ethiopia, but the imperial family of Ethiopia traces its lineage to the union of Solomon and the Queen, and Josephus identified her as a "Queen of Egypt and Ethiopia."  He comments regarding the nation of Cush, son of Ham and grandson of Noah:

"For of the four sons of Ham, time has not at all hurt the name of Cush ["Chus"]; for the Ethiopians, over whom he reigned, are even at this day, both by themselves and by all men in Asia, called Cushites ["Chusites"]" (Antiquities of the Jews 1.6.2).

So, one branch of "authentic" Jews is Ethiopian.

The author of Authentic Jews continues:

"The largest centers of Jewish population and learning were once in Africa, NOT EUROPE."

Until Islam.  And before that, in Israel, Mesopotamia, Persia, Babylon.  Wherever Jews go, there is a center of learning.

Here is more evidence that racial grievances and the need for religious/political esteem has compromised the author's intellectual integrity:

It was April 9th, 1865, on the Roman/Gregorian calendar but, the HEBREW calendar corresponding date was the 13th day of the Hebrew month of Abib/Nissan, the Hebrew year being 5625, on a Sunday.

The news of Gen. R.E. Lee's surrender was received in Washington DC after nine o'clock on Sunday evening, April 9th, and at a somewhat later hour in other cities.

This made it Passover, for the sun was down, that is when the Hebrews in the U.S.A were freed, 1435 was when the Portuguese began removing the YIsraelites from West Afrika, and 1865 was when General Lee surrendered in the civil war.
430 Yrs is how long our forefathers were in slavery in Kemet {Egypt}.

Both times the Israelites were freed on the Passover, after 430 Years!

The author's history here is just wrong: America was not a nation until 1776 by Declaration, and in reality at the successful conclusion of our War of Independence in 1783.  American slavery ended by Proclamation in 1863 and in practice at the close of the War Between the States in 1865.  The longest "American" slavery could have lasted was 89 years.  Even if you include Colonial times, slavery there began as indentured servitude for a variety of "races;" it was not until the seventeenth century that slavery in America became distinctly racial:

in Maryland and Virginia, both of which passed laws that made black indentured servants slaves for life; these laws also segregated free blacks from European-Americans by making intermarriage between blacks and whites illegal.

If you want to consider the Atlantic (Old World/New World) Slave Trade, the earliest date I can find for the beginning of the capture, transport, and selling of African slaves is 1444 (or 1441) by the Portuguese; Brazil abolished slavery in 1888 (that's 447 years).

And none of this includes Islam's millennium of enslaving Africans, or the practice of slavery in general throughout human history, which includes African kings taking slaves for human sacrifice and the Aztecs doing the same.  As soon as one group of people was strong enough to use force against its neighbor, slavery was born.

I appreciate a person wanting to take pride in one's ancestry.  But that should be grounded in truth.  All of us are descended from Noah and his sons; the flexibility in genetic expression allowing the variety in human appearance we see today does not change the fact that we are one race.  Sadly, the "authentic Jew" is so focused on "blackness" that it's affected his ability to deal honestly with the facts.

So, who are "authentic Jews"?

A Jew might say, "It depends on the Jew you're asking;" an Evangelical might answer, "Someone who observes the Mosaic Law;" a Muslim might respond, "Those who 're-vert' to Islam;" and a liberal might reply with, "Those who vote Democrat."  But what does the God of Israel say?

The Apostle Paul, a Pharisee who referred once to himself as a "Hebrew of Hebrews" and recognized the myriad  blessings God had given to the nation of Israel, says that the "true Israel" are not those who are genetically-Jewish only, but those who live by faith in the Promised Messiah, whether they are Jew or Gentile. He writes:

"not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but 'Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.' This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring" (Romans 9:6-8).

"no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God" (Romans 2:28-29).

We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified" (Galatians 2:15-16).

Christ is the Savior of the Jew first and then the Gentile, the Messiah promised to Adam, Abraham, and Moses.  He is our salvation.

B. Hussein Obama only cares about school kids when they advance his agenda

Pomona high school students make a video articulating how the failing economy hurts them (just about everyone is affected), and Obama rushes out to the West Coast like a lawyer chasing an ambulance.

Why not waste thousands of taxpayer dollars even though we're facing "the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression"? It's a chance for a photo-op and an opportunity to bash the former president! You might even find a female, Hispanic-with-hyphenated-surname superintendent for your administration.

But little kids from Virginia coming to the White House for a visit, a trip they've planned for a year?

No, he can't.

It's good to see that the Chief Executive has his priorities straight: Terrorists can get into the U.S., but five- and six-year-old schoolchildren can't get into the White House:

Parents say they tried to make it on time, but their chartered buses hit heavy traffic that slowed them down substantially. They thought they were supposed to show up by 10:15, but they say they arrived at 10:25 instead, and couldn’t get in.

"The person who headed this White House trip up came out and said, 'I’m sorry, the White House tour's off.' There were a lot of crying kids," parent Barbara Stine said.

. . . "Here we have President Obama and his administration saying, 'Here we are for the common, middle class people,' and here he is not letting 150 5- and 6-year-olds into the White House because he’s throwing a lunch for a bunch of grown millionaires," Stine said.

The racist in the White House

Sure, before the election, America knew (or should have known from his own writings) that B. Hussein was racist. That one of his benefactors exhorted his listeners to rip white people apart, assuring them that Allah likes it. That B. Hussein's spiritual adviser of twenty years -- the person to whose insane rants the President subjected his two little daughters -- is a white-hating, friend of quasi-Muslim anti-Semites. That Obama's allied himself with various Jew-hating liberals.

But that was just the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy making things up, right?

Well, for those who hoped that all that was just political expediency, the Most Powerful Man on Earth has affirmed his support of Muslim terrorists by phoning first Mahmoud Abbas. He also included in his inaugural ceremony a "benediction" that could have been delivered by the vile irReverend Wright himself. Joseph Lowery ended his blasphemy with this wretchedness:

Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around ... when yellow will be mellow ... when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right.

Would such racist condescension be accepted from anyone else?

Just to show the "prayer" wasn't an accident, Obama adviser Robert Reich fretted recently over how to keep white males from benefiting from government welfare in a post called (oddly enough), "The Stimulus: How to Create Jobs Without Them All Going to Skilled Professionals and White Male Construction Workers" (no, I didn't make that up!):

if there aren't enough skilled professionals to do the jobs involving new technologies, the stimulus will just increase the wages of the professionals who already have the right skills rather than generate many new jobs in these fields. And if construction jobs go mainly to white males who already dominate the construction trades, many people who need jobs the most -- women, minorities, and the poor and long-term unemployed -- will be shut out.

What to do? There's no easy solution to either dilemma.

You wouldn't want people being hired on the basis of merit. And we can't have things like bridges or very tall buildings being built by skilled professionals.

The federal government discriminating on the basis of color. Someone ought to make a law against that.

So, terrorists will have their four-star halal resort in Guantanamo closed, interrogation techniques used to obtain information from them that have saved untold innocent lives are banned, and they are afforded greater legal protection by the nation they're trying to destroy, but Americans are discriminated against on the basis of their skin color.

Martin Luther King never dreamt of such a thing.

There is no defense for Barack Hussein Obama's 20-year endorsement of an America-hating racist

Or for his own racism and deceit.

UCLA Bruin and Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has a 'blog.

Comments are moderated there; we'll see if Kareem will post this.

I disagree respectfully with any defense of the "reverend" Wright.

If he has experienced discrimination, then anger and resentment are understandable. As a free man in a free society, he has the right to speak his mind.

Slavery and the discriminatory laws that followed were evil, unjust, and contrary to America's founding creed, but it was Americans (Christians at that) who brought the nation's laws in-line with its confession.

The Declaration itself, the Abolitionist movement, the election of Abraham Lincoln (the staunchly anti-slavery and first Republican president), and the Civil Rights Act are all the will of the American people. They are expressions of their fundamental belief in justice and Liberty derived [ultimately] from Christ's teachings.

(It always saddens me when African-Americans -- understandably embittered by racism they've experienced -- reject Christianity as a "white man's religion" and embrace Islam, not realizing that both are Middle Eastern religions and that while Christ taught true equality for all, Mohammed commanded slavery [of] and offensive warfare against all who refuse the invitation to Islam.)

Racist, hate-filled rants from a pulpit would be despised if coming from a white man; racism and hate should be no more acceptable coming from a black man.

As for the senator, what discrimination has Barack Obama experienced? He is living proof that in America all have the opportunity to achieve success as they define it.

Senator Obama grew up in Hawaii, is of a mixed-race background, lived for a time asa Muslim in Indonesia, was elected to state government, and is now a United States Senator with an excellent chance at becoming president.

How is America racist?

Thought cannot be legislated. All people -- regardless of ethnicity -- can be racist, ascomments by Wright and Obama prove.

Not voting for someone because of the amount of melanin in their skin is wrong; voting for someone because of it is irresponsible.

I will not vote for Obama, not because of his skin color, but because of his 20-year endorsement of an America-hating racist, his own racism and deceit, his ties to Muslim thugs in Kenya, and his rabid socialism.

Update, April 10: Since submitting my comments for moderation several days ago, one new post has been added, and it wasn't mine. So much for Kareem's tolerance for uncomfortable facts.

Barack Hussein Obama, racist, liar, and future Muslim-in-Chief?

I asked a coworker today, "How about the good reverend?"

"People are blowing it out-of-proportion."

"An America-hating racist?"

"I can understand why he thinks like that." This from an Irish-German overachiever.

When asked if such nonsense would be tolerated from a white guy, my coworker responded with something along the lines of, he wouldn't understand.

So, black racism is okay.

This is another example of white, liberal guilt masking the latent, passive racism of holding (most) non-whites to a lower standard of expectations: "You can't expect better from a (insert ethnicity here)."

It's the same thing that happens with Islam. Genocide? Slavery? Gang-rape of non-Muslims? We just don't understand their culture.

Barack Hussein Obama is a racist. Will anyone have the guts to call him on it?

Ann Coulter with some salient observations on our future Racist-in-Chief:

If characters from "The Hills" were to emote about race, I imagine it would sound like B. Hussein Obama's autobiography, "Dreams From My Father."

Has anybody read this book? Inasmuch as the book reveals Obama to be a flabbergasting lunatic, I gather the answer is no. Obama is about to be our next president: You might want to take a peek. If only people had read "Mein Kampf" ...

Nearly every page -- save the ones dedicated to cataloguing the mundane details of his life -- is bristling with anger at some imputed racist incident. The last time I heard this much race-baiting invective I was ... in my usual front-row pew, as I am every Sunday morning, at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.

Obama tells a story about taking two white friends from the high school basketball team to a "black party." Despite their deep-seated, unconscious hatred of blacks, the friends readily accepted. At the party, they managed not to scream the N-word, but instead "made some small talk, took a couple of the girls out on the dance floor."

But with his racial hair-trigger, Obama sensed the whites were not comfortable because "they kept smiling a lot." And then, in an incident reminiscent of the darkest days of the Jim Crow South ... they asked to leave after spending only about an hour at the party! It was practically an etiquette lynching!

So either they hated black people with the hot, hot hate of a thousand suns, or they were athletes who had come to a party late, after a Saturday night basketball game.

In the car on the way home, one of the friends empathizes with Obama, saying: "You know, man, that really taught me something. I mean, I can see how it must be tough for you and Ray sometimes, at school parties ... being the only black guys and all."

And thus Obama felt the cruel lash of racism! He actually writes that his response to his friend's perfectly lovely remark was: "A part of me wanted to punch him right there."

Listen, I don't want anybody telling Obama about Bill Clinton's "I feel your pain" line.

Wanting to punch his white friend in the stomach was the introductory anecdote to a full-page psychotic rant about living by "the white man's rules." (One rule he missed was: "Never punch out your empathetic white friend after dragging him to a crappy all-black party.")

Obama's gaseous disquisition on the "white man's rules" leads to this charming crescendo: "Should you refuse this defeat and lash out at your captors, they would have a name for that, too, a name that could cage you just as good. Paranoid. Militant. Violent. Nigger."

For those of you in the "When is Obama gonna play the 'N-word' card?" pool, the winner is ... Page 85! Congratulations!

When his mother expresses concern about Obama's high school friend being busted for drugs, Obama says he patted his mother's hand and told her not to worry.

This, too, prompted Obama to share with his readers a life lesson on how to handle white people: "It was usually an effective tactic, another one of those tricks I had learned: People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves. They were more than satisfied, they were relieved -- such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young black man who didn't seem angry all the time."

First of all, I note that this technique seems to be the basis of Obama's entire presidential campaign. But moreover -- he was talking about his own mother! As Obama says: "Any distinction between good and bad whites held negligible meaning." Say, do you think a white person who said that about blacks would be a leading presidential candidate?

The man is stark bonkersville.

He says the reason black people keep to themselves is that it's "easier than spending all your time mad or trying to guess whatever it was that white folks were thinking about you."

Here's a little inside scoop about white people: We're not thinking about you. Especially WASPs. We think everybody is inferior, and we are perfectly charming about it.

In college, Obama explains to a girl why he was reading Joseph Conrad's 1902 classic, "Heart of Darkness": "I read the book to help me understand just what it is that makes white people so afraid. Their demons. The way ideas get twisted around. I helps me understand how people learn to hate."

By contrast, Malcolm X's autobiography "spoke" to Obama. One line in particular "stayed with me," he says. "He spoke of a wish he'd once had, the wish that the white blood that ran through him, there by an act of violence, might somehow be expunged."

Forget Rev. Jeremiah Wright -- Wright is Booker T. Washington compared to this guy.

Obama lied about hearing his mentor's anti-American and racist tirades. He's lied about his past immersion in Islam. Is he also lying about his devotion to Allah?

Obama's comfort with Wright's comfort with Farrakhan makes more sense now.

More disturbing information from WND on Obama's non-Muslim upbringing:

JERUSALEM – Was Sen. Barack Obama a Muslim? Did he ever practice Islam?

The presidential candidate officially rejects the claims, but the issue of Obama's personal faith has re-emerged amid conflicting accounts of his enrollment as a Muslim during elementary school in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.

Widely distributed reports have noted in January 1968, Obama was registered as a Muslim at Jakarta's Roman Catholic Franciscus Assisi Primary School under the name Barry Soetoro. He was listed as an Indonesian citizen whose stepfather, listed on school documents as "L Soetoro Ma," worked for the topography department of the Indonesian Army.

Catholic schools in Indonesia routinely accept non-Catholic students, but exempt them from studying religion. Obama's school documents, though, wrongly list him as being Indonesian.

After attending the Assisi Primary School, Obama was enrolled – also as a Muslim, according to documents – in the Besuki Primary School, a public school in Jakarta.

The Loatze blog run by an American expatriate in Southeast Asia who visited the Besuki school, noted, "All Indonesian students are required to study religion at school and a young 'Barry Soetoro' being a Muslim would have been required to study Islam daily in school. He would have been taught to read and write Arabic, to recite his prayers properly, to read and recite from the Quran and to study the laws of Islam."

Indeed, the Israel Insider online magazine points out in Obama's autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," he acknowledges studying the Quran and describes the public school as "a Muslim school."

"In the Muslim school, the teacher wrote to tell mother I made faces during Quranic studies," wrote Obama.

The Indonesian media have been flooded with accounts of Obama's childhood Islamic studies, some describing him as a religious Muslim .

Speaking to the country's Kaltim Post, Tine Hahiyary, who was principal of Obama's school while he was enrolled there, said she recalls he studied the Quran in Arabic.

"At that time, I was not Barry's teacher but he is still in my memory" claimed Tine, who is 80 years old. The Kaltim Post says Obama's teacher, named Hendri, died.

"I remember that he studied 'mengaji (recitation of the Quran)," Tine said, according to an English translation by Loatze.

Mengaji, or the act of reading the Quran with its correct Arabic punctuation, is usually taught to more religious pupils and is not known as a secular study.

Also, Loatze documented the Indonesian daily Banjarmasin Post caught up with Rony Amir, an Obama classmate and Muslim, who describe[d] Obama as "previously quite religious in Islam."

"We previously often asked him to the prayer room close to the house. If he was wearing a sarong (waist fabric worn for religious or casual occasions) he looked funny," Amir said.

The Los Angeles Times, which sent a reporter to Jakarta, quoted Zulfin Adi, who identified himself as among Obama's closest childhood friends, stating the presidential candidate prayed in a mosque, something Obama's campaign claimed he never did.

"We prayed but not really seriously, just following actions done by older people in the mosque. But as kids, we loved to meet our friends and went to the mosque together and played," said Adi.

Obama's official campaign site has a page titled "Obama has never been a Muslim, and is a committed Christian." The page states, "Obama never prayed in a mosque. He has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ."

But the campaign changed its tune when it issued a slightly different statement to the Times stating Obama "has never been a practicing Muslim."

An article last month by the Chicago Tribune seems to dispute Adi's statements to the L.A. Times. The Tribune catches up with Obama's declared childhood friend, who now describes himself as only knowing Obama for a few months in 1970 when his family moved to the neighborhood. Adi said he was unsure about his recollections of Obama

But the Tribune found Obama did attend mosque.

"Interviews with dozens of former classmates, teachers, neighbors and friends show that Obama was not a regular practicing Muslim when he was in Indonesia," states the Tribune article.

It quotes the presidential candidate's former neighbors and 3rd grade teacher recalling Obama "occasionally followed his stepfather to the mosque for Friday prayers."

Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, notes the Tribune article – cited by liberal blogs as refuting claims Obama is Muslim – actually implies Obama was an irregularly practicing Muslim and twice confirms Obama attended mosque services.

In a free-ranging interview with the New York Times, Obama described the Muslim call to prayer as "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.”

The Times' Nicholos Kristof wrote Obama recited, "with a first-class [Arabic] accent," the opening lines of the Muslim call to prayer.

Israel Insider's Reuven Koret notes the first few lines state:

"Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme!
Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme!
I witness that there is no god but Allah
I witness that there is no god but Allah
I witness that Muhammad is his prophet... "

Some attention also has been paid to Obama's paternal side of the family. His father, described in some reports as an atheist, polygamist and alcoholic, was buried in Kenya as a Muslim. Obama Sr., also named Barack Obama, had three sons with another woman who reportedly all are Muslim.

Obama's brother Roy is described as a practicing Muslim.

Writing in a chapter of his book describing his 1992 wedding, the presidential candidate stated: "The person who made me proudest of all was Roy. Actually, now we call him Abongo, his Luo name, for two years ago he decided to reassert his African heritage. He converted to Islam, and has sworn off pork and tobacco and alcohol."

Still, Obama says he was raised by his Christian mother and repeatedly has labeled as "smears" several reports attempting to paint him as a Muslim.

"Let's make clear what the facts are: I am a Christian. I have been sworn in with a Bible. I pledge allegiance [to the American flag] and lead the pledge of allegiance sometimes in the United States Senate when I'm presiding," he told the UK's Times Online earlier this year.