'My cousin in Kenya'

Barack Obama had some interesting things to say in Italy to a group of African leaders.

We don't have a transcript of the exact words. What we have instead is an account from Obama Deputy National Security Adviser Michael Froman.

"He shared a personal story," explained Froman. "Everybody knows that his father was from Kenya, that he still has relatives living in poverty, and that while he's president of the United States, he feels poverty in a very personal way because of his family situation."

Now understand the context of this statement. Obama was talking about a plan he and other G-8 leaders have been working on to transfer more of your wealth to Africa.

Obama has managed to accumulate quite a bit of wealth himself very quickly through his community organizing and book-writing. Apparently, he doesn't feel any sense of personal responsibility toward his own family members in Kenya, many of whom he actually knows through his visits there. Instead, he feels only a "collective" sense of responsibility in which all Americans should be coerced into making life better for his relatives.

Do you get the picture here?

Froman continued to paraphrase Obama: "His cousin in Kenya can't find a job without paying a bribe, and that's not the fault of the G-8. And when companies can't operate without paying, in some parts of Africa, without paying the 25 percent fee off the top in bribes, that's not colonialism."

Let the world know you stand with the Constitution and transparency. Display the "Where's the Birth Certificate?" magnetic bumper sticker.

What Obama appears to be saying here is that it doesn't matter who is taking a cut of the action – it's still destructive to the economy. But isn't that exactly what Obama proposes to do here in the U.S. to pay for all his programs – be it "cap and trade" or nationalized health care? Doesn't he want the federal government to take its cut of the action? And isn't that action far bigger than the 25 percent shakedown fee being collected by the thugs in Kenya?

I also just can't help but wonder what, if anything, Obama has done personally to help his destitute relatives in Kenya. I'm glad that he feels a sense of compassion for them. But he has the material wealth to aid them. Has he done so? Can he show us through that example how transferring wealth results in long-term success? If it doesn't work on a personal basis – family member to family member – why does he expect it to work through the coercive power of government?

I think you know where I'm going: He doesn't expect it to raise the standard of living in those foreign countries. That's not even the point. The point of these programs is to lower the standard of living right here in the U.S. That's his goal.

One other amazing comment by Obama in this meeting was translated for the public through Froman's statements to the press.

He said the president shared that when his father, Barack Obama Sr., came to the United States from Kenya, that African nation's GDP was higher than Korea's.

There's a couple of historical reasons for that:

Kenya was then under the colonial rule of Great Britain.
South Korea had just been laid to waste by an invasion from the north. The devastation of that war can hardly be overstated. The city of Seoul, today a sophisticated and wealthy metropolis comparable to the very biggest cities in the U.S., was destroyed – with not a significant building standing.

Today, the country that did that damage, North Korea, is literally starving. Americans cannot even comprehend the poverty and misery of the place. People eat grass to survive. They are deprived of the most basic freedoms in a totalitarian nightmare world. It is hell on earth. That's all because government runs everything – at the point of a gun.

South Korea, on the other hand, went a different direction. It gave its people freedom – free enterprise – and the results were spectacular. The country was rebuilt from devastation in one generation.

Obama either doesn't get this, or, more frighteningly, he does understand it.

He doesn't want us to choose the path of South Korea. Instead, his model is total state control – like North Korea.

But there's even more to this story.

Obama was complaining about the rotten conditions in Kenya. What he didn't say was that rotten government in Kenya was installed in a crooked election he helped finance and engineer.

As senator, he raised money for the corrupt politician in charge in Kenya – and now he has the "audacity," and I use that word advisedly, to complain about the bed he made there.

Notice he avoided going to Kenya on this African trip.

Why?

Did he just want to avoid running into those impoverished relatives?

Or did he not want to give the press a chance to associate him with the corruption he sowed in that country?