Sunday, October 19, 2008

"What if he is?"

Obama ran into some nasty and wildly uninformed folks at a diner in North Carolina today, including a Diana Fanning, who chanted "socialist, socialist socialist" at him when he entered. Fanning refused to shake his hand, and then demanded to know Obama's thoughts on a favorite trope of right-wing paranoia, the "North American Union:"

Fanning asked Obama about a North American union, and Obama responded: “Well, you know, I am opposed to it if it were happening. But it doesn’t seem to be actually be happening. The truth of the matter is there is no plans. I’ve talked to a lot of people, including folks down in Texas. There’s no plan to create a common government between Mexico, U.S. and Canada. That’s just not … that’s just not happening. I know some people have been hearing rumors about it. But as far as I can tell, that’s just not something that’s happening. We would never give up our sovereignty in that way. Any other questions?

In an interview, Fanning said, “I still think he’s a closet Muslim.”

Fanning must have missed Colin Powell's powerful words on this topic this morning:

And it is permitted to be said such things as, "Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim." Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he's a Christian. He's always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president?

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