Barack Obama visits his grandmother

Roger, I hope you don't consider yourself a journalist.

1) The article you cited does not say anything remotely similar to "he was there when his mother died."

2) A one-second search of the internet revealed at least one article that says he admits he was not with her at hear death (and none saying he was). It also notes that his memoir talks a lot about his dad but hardly mentions his mom, and when asked about it, his mom said it was "something he has to work out." That wasn't that long ago.

He comes across on camera like a steady guy, but I find it scary to think that a guy who couldn't even make peace with his mother when in his 30's could be running this country in his 40's.

As with many cases of cancer, Senator Obama's family did not know how much time his Mother had left.

He got there a bit too late.

My brother died of liver cancer in four days...they told us he had months.

Be careful of judging others. God is watching.

How incredibly offensive SKL. I wasn't with my mother when she died; instead I got the call in the middle of the night. it was the worst moment of my life. I never got to say good bye in person to her. Am I suddenly now a bad person? You apparently think so. My love for her is not diminished in anyway because I wasn't able to be there when she passed. Not everyone is as fortunate as you think people are in planning someone's death. When it happens it happens. I have read many of your posts, but I have now lost all respect for you.

Julie, it is my understanding that he chose not to visit her because he wasn't on good terms with her. It is clear from other contemporaneous evidence that he didn't demonstrate love and respect toward her. His mother didn't die suddenly; he knew she was in the hospital with cancer and could have visited her if he wanted to. Obviously if he actually wanted to be with her during her tough times, I would have compassion for him in that respect.

He can say whatever he wants now that he knows he's under a microscope. Of course he's not going to admit now that he didn't get along with his mother when he was in his 30's. That's why it's more instructive to look at contemporaneous statements and evidence rather than statements made later.

I have a friend who first informed me of these facts (which I confirmed through research), and he said the main reason he's not voting for Obama is that Obama's relationship issues with his mother indicate that he isn't emotionally ready for an office as important as the presidency. I noticed that this matter hasn't been discussed in the media that I regularly read, so I pointed it out.

SKL ~ You are obviously such a crack journalist that you are not even aware that his memoir was written in 2004, which is nine years after his mother died so she could not have commented a word on his book. His second book was published in 2006!!! You really need to be careful about what you cite as resources. Just because you google something, doesn't mean the reference is truthful or valid!

NO there is no double standard here Obama purely personal reasons, McCain reason. Business, McCain did so because that's his JOB! Didn't he say at one of the debates that he suspended his campaign to help the country? I think mentioning that at a political event move it into the realm of politics.

In response to Sandyone: When will you and people like you come to an understanding that no one likes abortion, no one wakes up and says I'm going have fun aborting babies today. Rather that people have a bigger fear of an over reaching government, that some things that people consider horrible are necessary to protect the rights of everyone.

I think Abortion is horrible, but I also think a women has a right to do what she pleases with her body. If you really want to prevent abortions perhaps start voting for candidates that want to promote real sex education instead of abstinence, which has never worked. Maybe you should vote for candidates that support idea of critical thinking so that kids can really think about what the consequences of their actions before they act. Maybe you should donate money to research that shows when exactly life begins instead of what your local religious organization says, that way you can have some proof to show that life begins at contraception.

Abortion is easy to stop promote sex education, teach children the consequences of their actions, and stop trying to create a theocracy out of our democracy. We all have the freedom of religion and freedom from religion, why not let people do as they choose, after all if you believe in a supreme being their judgment will come after death, and should not come from you.

Ok, Don… Let’s talk about this…

First, thanks for making my point for me on the two “suspensions of campaigning” – Obama did it for personal reasons, and he’s being praised. McCain did it because it’s his JOB (which, incidentally, both candidates have the same JOB, and yet, Obama continued to pursue a new JOB, rather than attending to the current one), and he was ostracized by both Obama and the mainstream press.

Second… regarding abortion.

There are plenty of anti-abortion, pro-CHOICE people out there who aren’t religious. I’m one of them. I believe it’s a woman’s CHOICE to not have sex in the first place. I believe it’s also a man’s choice not to have sex. Or to protect themselves against unwanted pregnancy. Further, except in the case of “forced” pregnancy (rape, incest), permission should be required from both parents, not just the woman, because it’s not just her baby. It’s his, too. If she didn’t want her body used as an incubator, she should have said no.

If abortion was so “easy to stop”, as you so eloquently put it, why hasn’t it? After all, plenty of schools are handing out condoms and demonstrating their use. You can walk into any Wal-mart in the country and buy condoms. Planned Parenthood GIVES them out for free. And yet, abortion continues, despite all of this readily available information and prevention.

So far, I don’t see religion playing into this at all. I see a lack of personal responsibility, though. And a group of people saying, “don’t worry about all that, you can just get an abortion”.

When does life start? Well, according to Mayo Clinic (http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/prenatal-care/PR00112), the brain begins to develop four weeks after the sperm enters the woman’s body. She might not even know she’s pregnant at this point. By the time the heart beats at five weeks, she’s probably taking a pregnancy test, and now does, indeed, have a LIVING BEING inside of her. So, I’m guessing that if you want to abort a group of cells, you’d better do it before Week 4. Because after that, it’s murder.

And last time I checked, Mayo Clinic didn’t get their research from the Bible.

Finally, I’m guessing that you’re an Obama supporter. Bully for you. But you’d better check your rhetoric about “responsibility” then. Because if you remember the brouhaha from last week, and “Joe the Plumber”, Obama wasn’t against Mr. Joe working, but he was sure in favor of taking what Joe had and “spreading it around”.

Giving out handouts does not promote personal responsibility.

Don, you didn't do a thorough job reading. It's got nothing to do with religion. The baby I was talking about actually survived the abortion. She was her own person, not living inside of *anyone*. By the logic of "a woman has a right to do with her own body", you would admit that what happened to Shanice Osborne (or Osbourne...I'm not sure) was murder, correct? Obama does not agree that it was murder. He thinks it was just fine for that baby to be stuffed into a bleach filled bag and stored on a rooftop until she died.

Abortion has nothing to do with religion. Check out www.feministsforlife.org or http://www.godlessprolifers.org/library/jones1.html It's a human rights issue. When does a human get rights in this country? Obama wouldn't answer that question and twisted it so that he could answer the question of 'when does human life begin?' Human rights and human life are, legally, different. Obama didn't say it that night, but his answer is 'human rights begin when the mother says they begin.'

Obama doesn't restrict abortion to what happens inside of the woman's body. He believes that if the woman wants the baby dead, the woman should have the baby dead, even if the death occurs outside of her body, when the baby is clearly not "the woman's body".

This sounds like something that is so outrageous that no one could possibly support it, doesn't it? That's what Obama is counting on...for you to dismiss his vote as something that pro-lifers are making up. How could a decent human being ever think that stuffing a baby into a bag of bleach is acceptable? Obama would never support something like that. The truth is that he did support it.

We will never, ever stop abortion. It has been with us from the beginning of unintended pregnancy and it will remain with us. What must be stopped is the government's denial of human rights and the idea that it's ok to kill a certain class of people. We managed to stop it with black slaves, we managed to stop it in Hitler's Germany. We'll manage it with unborn babies. Science is showing us what that 'blob of cells' looks like from a very early age. People are learning about exactly what happens in an abortion.

This whole "quit imposing your morality on me" is garbage. Every one of us has morality imposed upon him. Is it legal to punch your neighbor when he throws a loud party? Is it legal to kill the man who molested your young child? Is it legal to kill anyone? These are all moral judgements that our govt has deemed to be wrong.

Go read this open letter from an atheist pro-lifer and then tell me that it's all about religion.
http://www.godlessprolifers.org/library/jones1.html

LS, I have a question. No one's really every explained this to me - what makes the unborn child of a "forced pregnancy" less worthy of life then the unborn child of two stupid kids who fooled around in the backseat of a car?

(I'm pro-choice, for the record. I don't like abortion, I don't think I could ever have one myself and advocate adoption wholeheartly - but I full support a woman's right to do what is physically and mentally best for her whether I like it or not. )

Anyway, my question is this if the argument being used is the sanctity of life, then why is okay to abort a rape baby or an incest baby and not okay to "murder" an oopsie baby? That argument has never made any kind of sense to me. Why is one baby's life more sanctified then another. Either a woman has the right to an abortion, under any circumstances, or she does not have the right to an abortion, under any circumstances. When you begin to get into the grey area of "well, sometimes it's okay, and sometimes it's not" and let someone else decide which babies deserve life and which babies don't, the argument of life being a sacred thing that has to be protected at all costs gets a little dicey, in my book.

Kirstie:

You know, you ask a really good question. One that I'm not sure I have the answer to. I think that, in online discussions, I put the "except for rape and incest" thing in there to keep people on track to my main point. I've had so many discussions degrade into focusing on those statistically small exceptions, rather than focusing on the main topic - should abortions happen or not. (or, in this case, whether Obama should go visit his ailing grandmother.... yeah, we're SPOT ON target this time!! ;) )

For me, personally, I don't think that rape should be an exception. But then, I'm married to a man who was adopted, we've always kept adoption on the table as an option for us, and I've never been raped. Perhaps my mind would change if I was a Rape Victim.

Frankly, I've always felt that the incest thing is such a statistically small portion of the abortion controversy that it shouldn't really be in there - but then I also understand that those who want abortions legal will use any tactic available.

Does that make sense?

To add to what LS said:

Most Americans are opposed to abortion on demand. However, the "pro-choice" people are always saying "why should a victim of rape or incest have to carry the resulting child?" Even though most abortions have absolutely nothing to do with rape or incest, this touches many pro-life Americans. By including these numerically minor exceptions in a pro-life law, it would facilitate its passage, which would be a lot better than getting deadlocked in a "what about rape" discussion and never pass any law.

Personally, I don't agree with a rape or incest exception on a philosophical level, except in the case of a very young victim who would risk significant physical harm if required to carry the child. That said, rape and incest ARE special cases from the mother's perspective. Excluding rape and incest from a general ban on abortion allows lawmakers to develop a more focused and compassionate approach without supporting the millions of abortions that result from the mother's own choices.

Simply not true. Saving the life of a child was already protected by law. It is part of the hypocritic oath as well. Please stop accussing this wonderful man of dastardly untrue deeds.

Actually, Mary, they weren't. The law that was already on the books only protected 'viable infants' and prosecutors wouldn't have enough power to prosecute. Obama, who in 2003 became the chairman of the state senate's Health and Human Services Committee, argued not that existing law did everything the newly proposed measure would do, but that the born-alive bill would put too much of a burden on the practice of abortion.

Today, he says he was against the bill because it was redundant. Back then, he argued differently. He said, ''As I understand it, this puts the burden on the attending physician who has determined, since they were performing this procedure, that, in fact, this is a nonviable fetus; that if that fetus, or child - however way you want to describe it - is now outside the mother's womb and the doctor continues to think that it's nonviable but there's, let's say, movement or some indication that, in fact, they're not just coming out limp and dead, that, in fact, they would then have to call a second physician to monitor and check off and make sure that this is not a live child that could be saved.''

He's lying when he gives his reasons for being against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. Why would he lie? Because he knows how bad it makes him look.

Barrack Obama visiting his grandmother is showing that he has his priorities straight! He is also setting an example in the matter of family relationships. He is a good husband, father and grandson. For many men, this shows them what they need to do as "head of a family"....

Barrack Obama has lost his father, his mother, his grandfather... and now his grandmother is ill. My prayers are with him and his family at this time.

We Americans know how to set aside partisan politics at such moments and give a leader our support and comfort.