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The spine of Obama’s speech is a parable about a pregnant woman shot in the  stomach during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The baby is born with a bullet in her  arm, which doctors successfully remove. That bullet, Obama explains, is a  metaphor for the problems facing black America, namely racism. (At a similar  speech he gave in April of 2007 at the First AME Church in Los Angeles to  commemorate the 15th anniversary of the riots, according to a church member who  was there, Obama described the slug as, “the bullet of slavery and Jim  Crow.”)

At least 53 people were killed during the chaos in Los Angeles, many of them  targeted by mobs because of their skin color. But Obama does not describe the  riots as an expression of racism, but rather as the result of it. The burning  and shooting and looting, he explains, amounted to “Los Angeles expressing a  lingering, ongoing, pervasive legacy, a tragic legacy out of the tragic history  of this country, a history this country has never fully come to terms with.”

And with that, Obama pivots to his central point: The Los Angeles riots and  Hurricane Katrina have racism in common. “The federal response after Katrina was  similar to the response we saw after the riots in LA,” he thunders from the  podium. “People in Washington, they wake up, they’re surprised: ‘There’s poverty  in our midst! Folks are frustrated! Black people angry!’ Then there’s gonna be  some panels, and hearings, and there are commissions and there are reports, and  then there’s some aid money, although we don’t always know where it’s going — it  can’t seem to get to the people who need it — and nothin’ really changes, except  the news coverage quiets down and Anderson Cooper is on to something else.”

It’s at about this point that Obama pauses, apparently agitated, and tells  the crowd that he wants to give “one example because this really steams me up,” an example that he notes does not appear in his prepared remarks:

LISTEN TO THE DIFFERENCE:

“Down in New Orleans, where they still have not rebuilt twenty months later,” he begins, “there’s a law, federal law — when you get reconstruction money from  the federal government — called the Stafford Act. And basically it says, when  you get federal money, you gotta give a ten percent match. The local  government’s gotta come up with ten percent. Every ten dollars the federal  government comes up with, local government’s gotta give a dollar.”

“Now here’s the thing,” Obama continues, “when 9-11 happened in New York  City, they waived the Stafford Act — said, ‘This is too serious a problem. We  can’t expect New York City to rebuild on its own. Forget that dollar you gotta  put in. Well, here’s ten dollars.’ And that was the right thing to do. When  Hurricane Andrew struck in Florida, people said, ‘Look at this devastation. We  don’t expect you to come up with y’own money, here. Here’s the money to rebuild.  We’re not gonna wait for you to scratch it together — because you’re part of the  American family.’”

That’s not, Obama says, what is happening in majority-black New Orleans. “What’s happening down in New Orleans? Where’s your dollar? Where’s your  Stafford Act money?” Obama shouts, angry now. “Makes no sense! Tells me that  somehow, the people down in New Orleans they don’t care about as much!”

It’s a remarkable moment, and not just for its resemblance to Kayne West’s  famous claim that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people,” but also  because of its basic dishonesty. By January of 2007, six months before Obama’s  Hampton speech, the federal government had sent at least $110 billion to areas  damaged by Katrina. Compare this to the mere $20 billion that the Bush  administration pledged to New York City after Sept. 11.

Moreover, the federal government did at times waive the Stafford Act during  its reconstruction efforts. On May 25, 2007, just weeks before the speech, the  Bush administration sent an additional $6.9 billion to Katrina-affected areas  with no strings attached.

As a sitting United States Senator, Obama must have been aware of this. And  yet he spent 36 minutes at the pulpit telling a mostly black audience that the  U.S. government doesn’t like them because they’re black.

Read more:  http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/02/obama-speech-jeremiah-wright-new-orleans/#ixzz28G6iGgZV