[The Obamas will celebrate] American poetry and prose by hosting a gathering of poets, musicians and artists.
Those slated to attend include Elizabeth Alexander, Billy Collins, Common, Rita Dove, Kenneth Goldsmith, Alison Knowles, Aimee Mann and Jill Scott. The performers, using music and verse, will highlight poetry's influence on American culture, according to the Associated Press.
As per usual, Michelle Obama will use the event to teach young ones. The first lady will host an afternoon workshop connecting students from all across the country to the evening's performers.
"An Evening of Poetry" is part of White House's music series, which began in 2009 with a jazz studio. Since then, Michelle Obama has hosted a celebration of country music, classical music, Motown music, Latin music, a salute to Broadway, music of the civil rights movement and a dance tribute to Judith Jamison.
"An Evening of Poetry" doesn't sound very controversial, but it is.
The source of the controversy is the White House invitation for Common, aka Lonnie Rashid Lynn, Jr., a poet and rapper from Chicago, to participate in the event.
Common and the Obamas go way back.
They were all members of the very controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ.
Watch Common freestyle the sermon, and campaign for Obama, at the Church's 2008 New Year celebration.
Common defended his pastor when Wright came under fire back in 2008. Obama, of course, eventually threw Wright under the bus.
Here's another performance by Common, "Can a Black Man be a President."
Clearly, Common is politically active and a longtime Obama supporter. He's done plenty of campaigning for Obama. Watch "Vote Hope: Common for Barack Obama."
Given their history, it's no surprise that the Obamas would want Common to attend their celebration of American poetry.
The issue is some of Common's "poetry."
One of his "poems" speaks of killing police and burning President George W. Bush.
That violent imagery is a problem, especially since Michelle intends to use the event as a teaching moment for kids.
As per usual, Michelle Obama will use the event to teach young ones. The first lady will host an afternoon workshop connecting students from all across the country to the evening's performers.
I don't know that it's a good thing to connect American students with Common.
Common writes some rough, hateful stuff. I don't think that's a good message to send to kids.
Use your mind and nine-power, get the government touch
Them boys chat-chat on how him pop gun
I got the black strap to make the cops run
They watching me, I’m watching them
Them dick boys got a lock of cock in them
My people on the block got a lot of Pac in them
and when we roll together
we be rocking them to sleep
No time for that, because there’s things to be done
Stay true to what I do so the youth dream come
from project building
Seeing a fiend being hung
With that happening, why they messing with Saddam?
Burn a Bush cos’ for peace he no push no button
Killing over oil and grease
no weapons of destruction
How can we follow a leader when this a corrupt one
The government’s a g-unit and they might buck young black people
Black people In the urban area one
I hold up a peace sign, but I carry a gun.
Peace, ya’ll.
I have no problem whatsoever with Common expressing himself through his art.
However, because some of his work contains very violent imagery and inflammatory rhetoric like calling to "Burn a Bush," I don't think it's appropriate for the Obamas to highlight him at their poetry soiree.
Where's that new tone of civility?
Common's "A Letter to the Law" isn't vague. It's very specific about President Bush and police being the enemy, and dealing with them violently.
Would the Leftists mind if a Republican president invited a performer to the White House who called for Obama to be burned?
Talking with Charlie Rose, Moyers blathered about his days in politics and applied his experiences to today.
Moyers plays the role of a wise elder, a man of flawless character. He wallows in being a god among the lib media elite.
I don't know why libs are so willing to overlook the real Moyers. I don't get why they forgive him when they are so rigid and unforgiving when it comes to the actions, real or imagined, of conservatives.
Rose and Moyers talked about JFK and Lyndon Johnson. Moyers compared Barack Obama to JFK. No surprise there.
He brought up the Cuban Missile Crisis and how the inexperienced JFK masterfully handled it, suggesting that Obama's intuition is all the experience he would need to be president. (God help us.)
Nuclear annihilation reminds me of Moyers giving the green light to the "Daisy Ad," a political ad so despicable that it only aired once.
What integrity!
Moyers talking about the great patriot Jeremiah Wright made me sick. He acted as an apologist for Wright. It was nauseating.
Moyers loved it when Rose cited an article from Salon.
Rather than mellowing with age, Moyers, now 68, has arguably become the lone radical on television, openly challenging our national failure to confront fundamental issues of class, money and power. On his current magazine-style show, "NOW With Bill Moyers" (which airs Friday nights on PBS), he has the same shock of schoolboy hair -- now completely white -- and the same air of polite, bespectacled concern as ever. He still looks and sounds like the über-square Texas divinity student and ordained Baptist minister he once was.
What tripe!
It's not surprising that Rose didn't question Moyers about his abuse of power while serving in Johnson's administration.
Under the Johnson administration, the FBI was used to gather and report political intelligence on the administration's partisan opponents in the last days of the '64 and '68 presidential election campaigns. In the closing days of the '64 campaign, presidential aide Bill Moyers asked the FBI to conduct name checks on all persons employed in Senator Goldwater's Senate office and information on two staff members was reported to the White House.
And Moyers complains about the Bush Administration's abuse of power!
When Moyers was yapping about the Dem messiah Obama, he didn't mention that he was in on the investigation into Martin Luther King, Jr. He didn't talk about bugging the great civil rights leader.
The Johnson Administration's willingness to permit the FBI to continue its investigation of Dr. King also appears to have involved political considerations. Bill Moyers, President Johnson's assistant, testified that sometime around the spring of 1965 President Johnson "seemed satisfied that these allegations about Martin Luther King were not founded." Yet President Johnson did not order the investigation terminated. When asked the reason, Moyers explained that President Johnson:
was very concerned that his embracing the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King personally would not backfire politically. He didn't want to have a southern racist Senator produce something that would be politically embarassing to the President and to the civil rights movement. We had lots of conversations about that.... Johnson, as everybody knows, bordered on paranoia about his enemies or about being trapped by other people's activities over which he had no responsibility.
Intelligence reports submitted by the Bureau to the White House and the Justice Department contained considerable intelligence of potential political value to the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations. The Attorneys General were informed of meetings between Dr. King and his advisers, including the details of advice that Dr. King received, the strategies of the civil rights movement, and the attitude, of civil rights leaders toward the Administrations and their policies.
Knowing this truth, it was hard to hear the hypocritical Moyers hawk his new book, Moyers on Democracy.
He doesn't acknowledge the reality of his role in our history. Not pretty.
Sen. Barack Obama won a convincing victory over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton Tuesday in North Carolina and nearly toppled her in Indiana, twin results that could ramp up pressure on the New York senator to reconsider her candidacy for the Democratic nomination.
Clinton claimed a 51 percent to 49 percent victory in Indiana, a margin of just 22,000 votes statewide out of 1.2 million votes cast. The result was badly delayed due to extremely slow counting of votes in Lake County, a northwestern area seen as strong Obama country.
...The North Carolina electorate divided sharply along racial lines. As has been the case in nearly every state to vote so far in the nomination fight, African American voters went overwhelmingly for Obama -- 91 percent for the Illinois senator to just six percent for Clinton, according to exit polling. Clinton carried white voters in the Tarheel State convincingly, taking 60 percent to Obama's 38 percent.
Whites are significantly more likely to vote for Obama than blacks are likely to vote for Hillary.
Regarding the black vote, this Dem primary is playing out like a general election, with Obama being the Dem and Hillary being the Republican.
Blacks are completely abandoning Hillary.
Over 90 percent of blacks vote for Obama even though Hillary and Obama aren't essentially different in terms of the issues.
The difference is skin. It's race.
Although Hillary carries white voters, the margins are nowhere near the overwhelming number of black voters that Obama carries.
It's about race. When given a choice between a comparable white Dem and a black Dem, blacks go with the black candidate.
That's racist.
It's the elephant in the room.
Blacks used to support Hillary. Then Obama came along.
In North Carolina, Mr. Obama’s performance was bolstered by a strong black vote. He captured more than 90 percent of those voters in that state, where blacks accounted for one in three voters.
Exit polls in North Carolina and Indiana show that race is key.
Race again played a pivotal role in Tuesday's Democratic presidential clashes, as whites in Indiana and North Carolina leaned solidly toward Hillary Rodham Clinton and blacks voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama, exit polls showed. Almost half said they were influenced by the focus on Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Obama, the Illinois senator battling to become the first black president, again failed to gain ground with a crucial voting bloc that has consistently eluded him — working-class whites. But he pieced together coalitions that besides blacks included the young, first-time primary voters, the very liberal and college graduates, plus sizable minorities of whites.
According to exit polls of voters, about two-thirds of whites in both states who have not completed college were supporting Clinton. The New York senator could use that to fortify her argument that she would be the stronger Democratic candidate in the November general election. Of 28 states that held primaries in which she and Obama competed before Tuesday, Clinton had prevailed with working-class white voters in 25.
...The six in 10 whites in both states supporting Clinton were similar to her margin over Obama among whites nationally so far, showing he continues to have trouble cutting into her support from those voters. Even so, his lopsided backing from blacks meant he didn't need white majorities Tuesday to be competitive.
...Nine in 10 blacks in both states were backing Obama — an even stronger margin than usual for a group he has dominated. That proved decisive in North Carolina, where they comprised about a third of voters — nearly double their proportion in Indiana.
All the talking heads keep stressing that Obama hasn't managed to win the Archie Bunker vote. Those blue-collar, uneducated bigots won't vote for the "exotic" Obama.
Jeremiah Wright had an impact on the way these bigots voted.
Actually, the pundits and columnists sound like bigots to me.
They completely ignore why blacks aren't voting for the white candidate.
NBC removed the video, but the segment is available on O'Brien's NBC site for now. Go to "full episodes," April 30, 2008. It begins after the first commercial break, about 11 minutes into the program.
Transcript
O'BRIEN: Welcome Rev. Wright. Thank you for joining us tonight.
WRIGHT: Good evening, Conan. And G--damn you.
O'BRIEN: Rev. Wright, I haven't even said anything.
WRIGHT: Neither did I. What are you talkin' about?
O'BRIEN: You just said, 'G--damn you.'
WRIGHT: Now you're taking the whole thing outta context. That's not all I said.
O'BRIEN: OK, what else did you say?
WRIGHT: I said, 'Good evening, Conan. G--damn you.'
O'BRIEN: OK. OK, I see. You were just being polite.
WRIGHT: It was a greeting.
O'BRIEN: Yes, OK. Now what about this clip that everybody's been hearing where we hear you say, 'G--damn America.'
WRIGHT: I didn't just say that. What you're hearing is a sound bite, Conan, taken out of context so that the political analysts can simplify and distort the whole thing.
O'BRIEN: OK, well why don't you help us out? Go ahead and provide the whole context.
WRIGHT: Alright. What I said was: 'G--damn America. G--damn it to hell. Burn, baby, burn. O.J. was innocent.' Now do you see how it's different in the context, when you take the statement and don't break it down?
O'BRIEN: Yes, very different in the context. Yes. Thank you.
WRIGHT: Thank you. And G--damn you.
O'BRIEN: Reverend, supposedly you're a supporter of Barack Obama, but certainly you realize every time you speak in public all you're doing is hurting Barack's chances to win the White House.
WRIGHT: Hurting? Hurting Barack Hussein Obama? All I'm doing is helping Barack Hussein Obama. I'm defending my church so people aren't afraid of Barack Hussein bin Laden Obama. That's all I'm doing.
O'BRIEN: Wait a minute, just yesterday, you seemed to threaten Sen. Obama. You said, 'Come November the 5th, I'm comin' after you.'
WRIGHT: No, no, no, Conan. It's a sound bite, Conan. When are you gonna listen to the whole thing, the whole context?
O'BRIEN: Well, go ahead. Give us the context.
WRIGHT: What I said was: 'Come November the 5th, I'm coming after you. And I'm coming after your family. G--damn America. G--damn all the Americas.'
O'BRIEN: OK, I see the context now.
WRIGHT: I'm not finished: G--damn North America. G--damn South America, Miss America, Six Flags over Great America. G--damn American Idol, America's Got Talent, America's Next Top Model. G--damn America Ferrera, An American Tail: Fievel Goes West....
O'BRIEN: Wait a minute. What the hell are you talking about?
WRIGHT: Everyone knows Fievel Goes West is the worst in the whole series. G--damn Fievel Goes West.
O'BRIEN: Alright, alright.
WRIGHT: You see the context now, when it ain't broken down into teensy weensy sound bites. Do you see what I was trying to say?
O'BRIEN: Well, actually, no, I don't really see. So let's sum it up: You cursed America and you're going after Obama and his family.
WRIGHT: No way. I would never hurt Barack Saddam Hussein Obama, or his two daughters, or his two daughters Uday and Qusay.
O'BRIEN: Oh for God's sake, Rev wright! Now let's talk about some of the more controversial statetments.
WRIGHT: What controversial...?
O'BRIEN: You have claimed that the United States government created HIV to suppress the black community.
WRIGHT: Well, that's right. And even worse than that they, not only did they create HIV, the government also invented blackne.
O'BRIEN: Blackne? What's blackne?
WRIGHT: Yes, black acne. Come on, you know it's true. Don't you see?They invented blackne, and they used it to break up Kid 'n Play.
O'BRIEN: Oh for God's sakes.
WRIGHT: They're suppressing us. Ask yourself this: How come only white men have walked on the moon, even though a black man invented moonwalking? And Conan, the government's using their tricknology to confuse us. They made Lewis Black white and Barry White black.
WRIGHT: That is true. And just this year, they saw that a black man had a good shot to become president, so they invented a crazy black preacher to ruin his chances.
O'BRIEN: OK. Are you by any chance talking about you?
Barack Obama's church, Trinity United Church of Christ, has a new pastor. Out with Jeremiah Wright and in with Otis Moss.
Yesterday on Meet the Press, Obama talked about Wright and Moss:
MR. RUSSERT: You're done with [Wright]? If you're elected president, you won't seek his counsel?
SEN. OBAMA: Absolutely not. Now, I think it's important to keep in mind, Tim, that I never sought his counsel when it came to politics. And I--you know, some, some of the reporting that implies that somehow he's my spiritual advisor or mentor, as he himself said, overstated things. He was my pastor, and he built a terrific church. I'm proud of that church. We've got a wonderful young pastor who's there who's doing--continuing the terrific work that the church does. And that's my commitment. My commitments are to the values of that church, my commitment is to Christ; it's not to Reverend Wright.
I don't know what Obama's standards are when it comes to being a "wonderful" pastor, but they're nothing like mine. He's right about that "wonderful young pastor... continuing the terrific work that the church does." Moss echoes Wright in his sermons.
There's no change. The message from the pulpit is the same as it has been for the past 20 years.
Otis Moss, the man slated to become the new chief pastor at the Trinity United Church of Christ, referenced a rap song during one of his recent sermons that includes among its lyrics "F--- America" and states the U.S. is "still with triple K" – referring to the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan.
Moss was lauded last week by Sen. Barack Obama as a "wonderful young pastor," and an acceptable choice to replace retiring pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose controversial remarks landed the presidential candidate in hot water.
...Following a series of national media interviews given by Wright last week, Obama strongly denounced some of Wright's statements as "divisive and destructive."
OK. Wright spews divisive and destructive statements and Obama has condemned him. Obama says Moss is different. He's "wonderful."
Really?
The 37-year-old Moss, nicknamed the "hip-hop pastor" by congregants, will become the head of Trinity Christ in next month.
In an interview in March with National Public Radio, Moss said he welcomes media scrutiny of his future sermons, calling the expected publicity "exciting."
"I'm excited because I'm hoping some people will get saved in the process," he said.
But his recorded March sermons are already revealing some controversial rhetoric.
In his Easter sermon, Moss spoke at length about the media attention received by Wright. Moss claimed Wright was "lynched" by the international media.
"No one should start a ministry with lynching, no one should end their ministry with lynching," Moss said.
In a section of the sermon being circulated on You Tube Moss went on to quote a song by the rap artist Ice Cube:
"Do you know who's got our back? If I was Ice Cube, I would say it a little differently – you picked the wrong folk to mess with," Moss exclaimed.
The song Moss was referring to is actually titled "Wrong N-gga to f--- with." It includes the lyrics "F--- America, still with the triple K" and it uses the spelling "AmeriKKKa."
The full lyrics provided in the album:
"Down wit the niggaz that I bail out I'm platinum b-tch and I didn't have to sell out F--- you Ice Cube, that's what the people say F--- AmeriKKKa, still with the triple K Cause you know when my nine goes buck it'll bust your head like a watermelon dropped from 12 stories up Now let's see who'll drop"
The cover image of Ice Cube's album, titled "Death Certificate," features a dead man identified as "Uncle Sam" who is covered by an American flag.
Moss compares the "public lynching" of Wright to the "public lynching" of Jesus.
He calls being black comparable to being a leper and having a "skin disease."
"You see they still are lepers. They still have a skin disease. They had a skin disease. They had a skin disease. Based on their skin condition, they were considered to be second-class citizens. They had a skin issue. They had a skin disease.
"And the lepers lived in a leper project. The lepers had bad health care. The lepers were disrespected. They had funny names for lepers. The lepers were considered inferior. They had an inferior school system. The lepers lived in a ghetto leper colony. The lepers were segregated from everybody else," he continued.
Moss went on to imply those who segregated blacks are the "enemy."
"But they (blacks) refused to give up. They decided to leave the city. They said that's not going to stop me from my destiny. Once they left the particular area, they then find out God has cooked things up. The camp of the enemy ... nobody is there. So they go into the enemy's camp. They find food. They find shelter. They find gold. They find silver. They even find some drink. In the enemy's camp. They find gin and juice. In the enemy's camp."
Obama thinks Moss is a "wonderful young pastor"?
This guy is out of the same mold as Wright.
I don't know why Obama keeps stepping in the same pile.
It's ridiculous to suggest that John McCain's connection with figures such as John Hagee and Rod Parsley even remotely resembles Barack Obama's relationship with Jeremiah Wright.
If turnabout is fair play, then John McCain critics believe his association with controversial pastors should be held to the same scrutiny as Barack Obama’s ties to Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
After all, they point out, one of McCain’s religious supporters, John Hagee, called the Roman Catholic Church “the great whore.”
Another, Rod Parsley, referred to Islam as a “false religion” that America was called on to destroy.
Still, when McCain’s link to both men came to light, the backlash was negligible compared with the furor Obama has faced for nearly two months over his relationship with Wright, his former pastor.
“McCain got a bit of a pass on that,” Democratic strategist Bob Beckel said.
Political analysts and the McCain campaign say it was the difference in his relationships with those pastors — more than the news media’s decision to use kid gloves — that spared him the kind of public trial Obama endured.
Hagee and Parsley are just supporters, McCain’s campaign points out. Obama’s relationship is personal, with Wright having officiated at the candidate’s wedding and baptized his two children.
“I didn’t attend Pastor Hagee’s church for 20 years,” McCain said last week, taking a shot at Obama. “There’s a great deal of difference in my view between someone who endorses you and other circumstances.”
But while Obama has repeatedly moved to reject and denounce such supporters, McCain will only go so far. And critics warn the issue could come back to hurt him.
Both Dems and Republicans have drawn support and endorsements from controversial people.
That's nothing new.
Obama's 20-year personal relationship with the racist Wright is in a totally different league. Obama's dramatic refusal to disown the hate-spewing Wright, and then his sleazy, lame about-face press conference cannot be compared to the support McCain has received from controversial pastors. Those associations are distant. I don't think McCain considers Hagee or Parsley to be like uncles to him.
Barack Obama said he wouldn't do it. He said he couldn't do it. But yesterday, he tried.
He threw dear "old Uncle" Rev. Jeremiah Wright out of the house and slammed the door in his face.
Barack Obama claimed that he couldn't take it anymore.
In order to keep his candidacy alive, he had to break off his relationship with Wright. He knew he had no choice. Obama's quest for personal power trumped loyalty for his pastor of 20 years.
Of course, the lib media are in full spin over this, contorting to rationalize and excuse Obama's amazingly transparent politically expedient move.
Poor Obama. He was in such an awkward position. It's so hard to run for president. Vetting is hard!
Wright was so selfish. Remember, he betrayed Obama, not the other way around.
In the The New York Times' account of this very public personal break-up, one is encouraged to feel Obama's pain.
“We’ve got nine elections to go through June 9,” [Bob Mulholland, a superdelegate from California], said in an interview. “I’ve never been involved in a successful presidential race where the candidate had no trouble in the primary. It’s challenging to him. He is a young man, and this is the first time he’s run for president. I see this as a learning experience.”
Asked how he thought Mr. Obama was doing, Mr. Mulholland paused before responding. “Getting better,” he finally said.
Awww. Obama is a young guy. This is his first time running for president. He needs to learn. Cut him some slack. After all, Day One is still months away.
The appearances by Mr. Wright, which began Friday and concluded Monday, were anticipated by the Obama campaign, but aides said they were taken aback by the tenor of the remarks. His first interview, with Bill Moyers on PBS, offered few hints of what he intended when he arrived at the National Press Club on Monday.
Why was Obama's campaign taken aback by the tenor of Wright's remarks?
What he said was the same old, same old.
“At a certain point, if what somebody says contradicts what you believe so fundamentally, and then he questions whether or not you believe it in front of the National Press Club, then that’s enough,” Mr. Obama said. “That’s a show of disrespect to me. It’s also, I think, an insult to what we’ve been trying to do in this campaign.”
Wright was so mean to Obama. Poor baby.
Mr. Obama became a Christian after hearing a 1988 sermon of Mr. Wright’s called “The Audacity to Hope.” Joining Mr. Wright’s church helped Mr. Obama, with his disparate racial and geographic background, embrace not only the African-American community but also Africa, his friends and family say.
Mr. Obama had barely known his Kenyan father; Mr. Wright made pilgrimages to Africa and incorporated its rituals into worship. Mr. Obama toted recordings of Mr. Wright’s sermons to law school. Mr. Obama titled his speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention “The Audacity of Hope,” and gave his next book the same name.
My eyes are welling up with tears....
Obama was abandoned by his biological father. Now, Wright has hurt him, too.
As Mr. Wright’s more incendiary statements began circulating widely, Mr. Obama routinely condemned them but did not disassociate himself from Mr. Wright. In his speech in Philadelphia, Mr. Obama tried to explain his pastor through the bitter history of American race relations.
Five weeks later, the men seem finished with each other.
“Whatever relationship I had with Reverend Wright has changed as a consequence of this,” Mr. Obama said Tuesday. “I don’t think that he showed much concern for me. More importantly, I don’t think he showed much concern for what we’re trying to do in this campaign and what we’re trying to do for the American people.”
Oh, how sad!
All the father figures in Obama's life let him down.
Maybe if people vote for him to be the next president then he'll feel valued and loved.
Barack Obama is mad that his hate-filled spiritual mentor Jeremiah Wright is still an issue.
He's offended that his previous denouncements of Wright didn't take. He's horrified that they might have been seen as political posturing.
"I did not vet my pastor before I decided to run for the presidency."
How about vetting his pastor to be his pastor?
Obama knows that Wright is a real problem for him. Obama not only disowns SOME of Wright's statements now. He has officially disowned Wright.
Talk about floundering!
"After seeing Rev. Wright's performance, I felt there was a complete disregard for what the American people are going through."
"There was a sense that that did not matter to Rev. Wright."
I guess Obama is a little slow.
Obama said he wanted to use this press conference to make absolutely clear that his relationship with Wright has changed.
"I want to make absolutely clear that I do not subscribe to the views that he expressed."
"What Rev. Wright said yesterday directly contradicts EVERYTHING... that I've been saying."
"There wasn't anything constructive out of yesterday. All it was was a bunch of rants that aren't grounded in truth."
"I can't construct something positive out of that."
Obama said Wright's comments have insulted him and what he's been trying to do in his campaign.
When asked why he stayed at a church based in liberation theology, Obama side-stepped the question.
"In terms of liberation theology, I'm not a theologian."
Obama repeatedly said none of this is about political posturing.
BS.
It's all about political posturing.
Supposedly, his speech in Philadelphia (the one some loons considered to be Lincoln-esque and as great or better than Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech) was intended to provide context for Wright's remarks but not excuse them.
Obama said he used that speech to try to get Americans to understand Wright and black churches.
He said that Americans were troubled by the way Wright shouted in his sermons.
Yeah, right.
I think Americans were troubled by WHAT Wright said, not his fiery preaching style. If he had been shouting about love and Jesus and how great America is I don't think anyone would have been disturbed.
More quotes:
"Yesterday, I think he caricatured himself. That made me angry but it also made me sad."
"I do not see that relationship being the same after this."
"He was never my spiritual mentor. He was my pastor."
Obama said the press was inaccurate about calling Wright his spiritual mentor. (I believe Obama was inaccurate about that in the books Obama wrote.)
So, it's done.
Obama has had an epiphany. Wright really is a divisive, bad guy.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.
Today, he said: Never mind.
How embarrassing!
Apparently, Obama is one of the dumbest men on the planet.
He didn't realize the truth about Wright. Again, BS.
And apparently, Obama thinks Americans are the dumbest people on the planet. It's as if he thinks we're incapable of understanding what he's doing, the politically expedient.
I think Obama planned to use Wright's high profile appearances as an opportunity to disown him.
Wright's appearance today at the National Press Club will begin the annual Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference. The conference, named for the noted religious scholar, will bring black religious leaders from across the country to Howard University. And at the center of the discussions will be the powerful and provocative tenets of liberation theology.
"Powerful and provactive" is a sanitized way of putting it. Angry and divisive might be more appropriate. In short, lies.
At Wright's NAACP speech Sunday, Barack Obama's spiritual mentor didn't sound like he did with Bill Moyers. This was not the soft-spoken Wright we saw with Moyers. The Wright who showed up at the NAACP dinner was the one we've come to know.
Most of Wright's speech addressed the theme of the dinner, “A Change is Gonna Come,” talking about the differences between different cultures and races, saying "a change is coming because we no longer see others as being deficient…Different doesn't mean deficient."
"The black religious tradition is different," he said in comments that seemed to address the controversy about his sermons. "We do it a different way."
Wright discussed how different groups have seen other groups as "deficient." After saying English-speakers saw Arabic-speakers as "being deficient," Wright mentioned Obama almost as an aside.
"Please run and tell my stuck-on-stupid friends that Arabic is a language -- is a language, it is not a religion," he said. "Barack HUSSEIN Obama," he said, emphasizing the Illinois senator's middle name dramatically, "Barack HUSSEIN Obama, Barack HUSSEIN Obama. There are Arabic-speaking Christians, there Arabic-speaking Jews, Arabic-speaking Muslims and Arabic-speaking atheists. Arabic is a language, it is not a religion. Stop trying to scare folks by giving them this Arabic name like it's some disease."
The bulk of his remarks addressed, however, different groups seeing each other as deficient. He acted out the differences between marching bands at predominantly black and predominantly white colleges. "Africans have a different meter, and Africans have a different tonality," he said. Europeans have seven tones, Africans have five. White people clap differently than black people. "Africans and African-Americans are right-brained, subject-oriented in their learning style," he said. "They have a different way of learning." And so on.
Oh my God. Wright is a real piece of work.
Because of his close and decades-long relationship with Barack Obama, Wright certainly knew that everything he said and did during his address would be analyzed.
"White people clap differently than black people"?
Really?
Africans and African-Americans "have a different way of learning"?
Their brains are different? Does science back that up?
This is racist tripe.
If you wondered whether the portions of Wright's sermons picked up and played by the media unfairly depicted Wright, wonder no more.
Senator Barack Obama is starring in a growing number of campaign commercials, but the latest batch is being underwritten by Republicans.
In a sign that the racial, class and values issues simmering in the presidential campaign could spread into the larger political arena, Republican groups are turning recent bumps in Mr. Obama’s road — notably his comment that small-town Americans “cling” to guns and religion out of bitterness and a fiery speech by his former minister in which he condemned the United States — into attacks against Democrats down the ticket.
“The public, week by week, is becoming more familiar with his big-government, far-left vision for America,” said Ed Patru, a spokesman for Freedom’s Watch, an advocacy organization that is portraying Mr. Obama as ultraliberal in an advertisement running in Louisiana before a special election for a House seat.
Republicans say the new focus on Mr. Obama reflects their view that he remains the more likely Democratic presidential nominee since he continues to lead Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in convention delegates. It also shows that Republicans, who have for months characterized Mrs. Clinton as the contender who would most energize Republican voters, now see vulnerabilities in Mr. Obama that could be liabilities for other Democrats on the ballot.
“There were times when Republicans reacted with just horror that he would lead the ticket,” said Stuart Rothenberg, a nonpartisan political analyst. “Now there is not the sense of him being invulnerable, the magic bullet. I think there has been a major change.”
The growing Republican emphasis on Mr. Obama could also help Mrs. Clinton plead her case that she is more electable, bolstering her argument to superdelegates that Republicans are poised to pounce on her relatively untested opponent.
...At the same time, some Democrats privately said the new Republican push could be a backdoor effort to buoy Mrs. Clinton, the candidate Republicans initially saw as the Democrat who would most rally Republicans and spur fund-raising. It has not been lost on Republican strategists that they can give pause to superdelegates leaning toward endorsing Mr. Obama.
...Democrats say Republicans are going to vilify either Democratic contender and distort his or her record in an effort to weaken the nominee and drag down fellow Democrats.
“We know they will use Karl Rove/Lee Atwater tactics no matter who the nominee is,” said Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Republicans have lost their credibility on the issues they want to scare people on, like national security, so they will try a different strategy.”
Oooh, those evil, scheming Republicans.
Imagine. "Democrats say Republicans are going to vilify either Democratic contender and distort his or her record in an effort to weaken the nominee and drag down fellow Democrats."
What have the New York Times and the Washington Post and other media publications been doing to McCain? And what have NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, and MSNBC been doing to McCain?
They certainly have not been taking the high road.
When the Republican nomination was still up for grabs, the lib outlets vilified and distorted the records of the Republican candidates, particularly the more conservative Republicans.
After McCain clinched the nomination, the New York Times actively campaigned to drag him down.
In spite of giving McCain its endorsement, there's been a whole lotta vilifying going on by the Times.
It's especially sleazy that the attacks weren't about matters that surfaced since the newspaper gave McCain its support.
The stories were tired, old ones that the Times tried to resuscitate.
All are planted to raise doubts about John McCain and his conservatism.
All regurgitate old news to make stories out of nothing.
I suspect the New York Times plans to run more goofy slop on McCain, desperately throwing anything against the wall in hopes that something will stick.
The Washington Post is also part of the "Attack McCain" apparatus.
It's so hypocritical to charge the Republicans with dirty campaigning, when the Dems and their mouthpieces in the media engage in it as well.
"Karl Rove/Lee Atwater tactics"--
What a joke!
Obama continues to lie about McCain and his line about being in Iraq for 100 years. It's an intentional distortion. Obama is lying to the American people about his opponent.
The reality is Obama is very vulnerable.
In addition to matters involving Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers being problematic, there's his extreme liberalism and inexperience and his disdain for gun-toting, religion-clinging Americans. His fear of the American flag doesn't help him either. Oh, yes... and he can't bowl.
As we get to know him, we see his arrogance and smugness, and his disingenuous. His disastrous performance in the last debate had to give Dems pause about Obama as their savior. What earlier seemed like a fresh face ushering in a new era of politics, now is exposed as the same old, same old.
The stunts like the fainting episodes at his rallies make Obama seem insincere. The snippy side of him, taunting Hillary Clinton, isn't very attractive.
He's a radical Leftist.
He's not a victim of dirty politics.
Obama drags himself down. The Republican Party really doesn't have to manufacture anything to do it for him.
Bill Moyers is helping Jeremiah Wright attempt to transform the public's perception of him from the hate-filled, racist, anti-Semitic, anti-American pastor and spiritual mentor of Barack Obama into a soft-spoken man of God.
In the PBS interview on the "Bill Moyers Journal," Wright complains that reporters picked sound bites from his sermons with the intent of defaming him and, by association, Obama.
"At a political event, he goes out as a politician and says what he has to say as a politician," Wright told Moyers. "I continue to be a pastor … He's a politician. I'm a pastor."
...In the Moyers interview, a soft-spoken Wright expresses his horror that the media has made him a bogeyman, endlessly replaying sound bites of fiery sermons which he claims were taken out of context.
"I felt it was unfair. I felt it was unjust. I felt it was untrue," the former pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ told Moyers, adding that some of the snippets were taken from many years ago.
For instance, after the 9/11 attack, Wright famously preached that the "chickens had come home to roost." Wright said it was clear to those present for the sermon that he was quoting President Reagan's former ambassador to Iraq.
"I think his manner, his demeanor, comes off being very appealing … but if you actually look at the snippets for what they are, where he's damning America, or the KKK in America, or the white government spreading AIDS in America, it's just so unappealing. At some point it's hard to explain away why the words were coming from his mouth. And then it invites to question Barack Obama's judgment, in sitting there all those years and being part of that kind of, what he calls by his own admission, 'divisive, hate speech,'" said [Juan] Williams.
..."The church members are very upset because they know it's a lie, the things being broadcast," Wright said, adding that there have even been death threats on him and bomb threats on his church.
Death threats and bomb threats are inexcusable. I
While it's appropriate to be very disturbed by Wright's rhetoric, that's no reason to morph into Obama's friend Bill Ayers. (Of course, Ayers was behind more than threats. He wasn't just talk. He actually walked the terrorist walk and still brags about it.)
If the rest of the interview is anything like the tease video, Moyers really whores himself.
I agree with Juan Williams. There's just no way to explain away what Wright has said.
Wright says, "The church members are very upset because they know it's a lie, the things being broadcast."
A lie?
From what I know about Wright, it seems that what will be broadcast tonight on Bill Moyers Journal will be the whopper of all whoppers.
I expect to see "a freak show of political pornography: lies, distortions, and half-truths -- half-truths being perhaps the blackest of all lies."
...As for the return of his controversial former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright who gave a recent interview to Bill Moyers and said Obama played politics in his response to the controversy, Obama said Wright's response was "to be expected".
"He is obviously free to express his opinions on these issues. I've expressed mine very clearly. I think that what he said in several instances were objectionable and I understand why the American people took offense and, you know, and as I indicated before, I took offense."
The debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama didn't turn out too well for Obama.
He was so bad that he chose to address his dismal debate showing on the campaign trail. Naturally, Obama isn't saying he blew it. No, he blames moderators Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos.
They weren't fair. They were too tough. They didn't ask the right questions.
Other assorted Lefties have leveled the same charges. Tom Shales went off the deep end and mercilessly attacked Gibson and Stephanopoulos for, among a long list of things, being slanted against Obama.
I think the libs are mistaking a poor performance by the debate moderators for Obama's miserable performance.
The fact is Gibson and Stephanopoulos' questions revealed some of Obama's weaknesses. The libs want to blame the messenger.
All this criticism being directed at Gibson and Stephanopoulos is a clear indication that even his supporters believe Obama fell flat on his face.
The political fallout from the Philadelphia face-off between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton was all but eclipsed yesterday by a fierce debate about Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos.
The ABC moderators found themselves under fire for focusing on campaign gaffes and training most of their ammunition on Obama. Huffington Post blogger Jason Linkins called the debate "utterly asinine." Washington Post television critic Tom Shales called the duo's performance "despicable." Philadelphia Daily News columnist Will Bunch said the moderators "disgraced the American voters, and in fact even disgraced democracy itself."
Tough crowd out there.
"I think the questions were certainly pointed -- tough at times, as they should be in a presidential debate -- but not inappropriate or irrelevant at all," Stephanopoulos said yesterday. "The questions have been part of this campaign and in the news. We did our job. You're not going to satisfy everyone."
In the first 40 minutes of Wednesday's two-hour Democratic debate, the moderators asked Obama about his remarks that small-town residents bitterly cling to guns and religion; the inflammatory sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright (Stephanopoulos follow-up: "Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?"); why Obama doesn't wear an American flag pin; and his relationship with William Ayers, a former Weather Underground radical who has acknowledged involvement in several bombings in the 1970s.
In the only comparably aggressive question directed at Clinton, Stephanopoulos cited a Washington Post-ABC News poll challenging her honesty and tied it to her false tale of having once come under sniper fire in Bosnia.
"Senator Obama is the front-runner," said Stephanopoulos, the network's chief Washington correspondent and a former Clinton White House aide. "Our thinking was, electability was the number one issue," and questions about "relationships and character go to the heart of it."
Besides, he added, "you can't do a tougher question for Senator Clinton than 'six out of 10 Americans don't think you're honest.' "
Obama, for his part, complained about "gotcha games," saying yesterday: "I think we set a new record, because it took us 45 minutes before we even started talking about a single issue that matters to the American people."
Clinton spokesman Jay Carson countered that "the press is supposed to ask every candidate tough questions. . . . If you can't handle tough questions from a TV anchor, how will you handle the Republicans or a hostile world leader?"
The pro-Obama libs are acting like whiny little kids.
Obama had a very bad night. Deal with it.
...The liberal advocacy arm of MoveOn.org, which has endorsed Obama, said it will run an ad against ABC if 100,000 people sign a petition accusing the moderators of abusing "the public trust" by asking "trivial questions . . . that only political insiders care about."
That's so ridiculous it's funny.
Maybe this Dem primary has gone on too long. The Left is really losing it.
...Some critics, including MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, pounced on the question about Ayers, saying that conservative radio hosts Sean Hannity and Steve Malzberg had suggested it when Stephanopoulos appeared on their programs this week.
But Stephanopoulos said he had been following the issue since the Politico reported it in February. "What finally tipped the balance on whether to ask it or not was that as far as we could tell, Obama had never answered the question," he said.
It's about time that Obama had to address the matter of his personal connection with William Ayers.
Obviously, Ayers is viewed as a problem for Obama or the libs wouldn't be going so crazy over Stephanopoulos' Ayers question.
As the AP notes, "Stephanopoulos' question about a former Weather Underground official had received barely little notice in the campaign."
That's exactly why it was a good question. Finally, more American people are learning about Obama's ties with this unrepentant enemy of America.
In an opinion piece from February 26, Jonah Goldberg provides some information on Ayers.
'Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon."
This excerpt from William Ayers' memoir appeared in the New York Times on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 -- a few hours before Al Qaeda terrorists crashed hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Ayers, once a leader in the Weather Underground -- the group that declared "war" on the U.S. government in 1970 -- told the Times, "I don't regret setting bombs" and "I feel we didn't do enough."
... Ayers, now a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is apparently a left-wing institution in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood, and Obama visited Ayers' home as a rite of passage when launching his political career in the mid-1990s. The two also served on the board of the charitable Woods Fund of Chicago, which gave money to Northwestern University Law School's Children and Family Justice Center, where Ayers' wife (and former Weather Underground compatriot) Bernardine Dohrn is the director.
...The question of why Ayers isn't in jail is moot; he was never prosecuted for the dozen or so bombings the Weather Underground claimed responsibility for. But Ayers and Dohrn are unrepentant about their years spent waging a violent campaign against the government. "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at," Ayers was widely quoted as saying at the time (though he told the Times he couldn't remember if he said it).
Yes, Ayers has a blog, and a few weeks ago he wrote a post, "Episodic Notoriety–Fact and Fantasy," that attempts to dismiss his involvement in bombings against the government while justifying his actions.
He seems to think he's clarifying while he's actually contradicting himself.
Very odd.
Bottom line: Ayers says he has regrets but he has no regrets. He's a lot like Jane Fonda in that sense.
Obama is "friendly" with Ayers, this American terrorist.
Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama D-Ill., serves burgers to Alisha Cordell from Raleigh, N.C., during a lunch with supporters at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., Saturday, April 12, 2008. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Look at this photo. I know what Barack Obama is doing, but what is he doing???
Acting like a waiter is a little weird at this stage in the primaries.
And he should be wearing gloves when handling prepared food. He should issue an apology for that. After all, this has become an Apology Weekend for Obama.
MISHAWAKA, Ind. -- A political tempest over Barack Obama's comments about bitter voters in small towns has given rival Hillary Rodham Clinton a new opening to court working class Democrats 10 days before Pennsylvanians hold a primary that she must win to keep her presidential campaign alive.
Obama tried to quell the furor Saturday, explaining his remarks while also conceding he had chosen his words poorly.
"If I worded things in a way that made people offended, I deeply regret that," Obama said in an interview with the Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal.
That sort of an apology bugs me.
IF I offended....
I can't stand that. It's not a question of "if." He did offend people and he knows it. Why does he add that "if" qualifier?
Of course, Obama deeply regrets being caught exposing himself to be a liberal elitist snob. Of course, he'd regret that his condescending comments were made public and his true attitude about hard-working Americans was revealed.
For someone so articulate, you'd think he'd be able to get an apology right.
Frankly, his apologies suck.
Something like this would be good:
The things I said at that big bucks San Francisco fund-raiser were inexcusable. I know I offended Pennsylvanians and many other Americans as well when I said their frustration and anger with Washington causes them to cling to their guns and their religion. I demeaned them for exercising their rights. I berated their values and opinions on issues. I completely trashed the working-class, America's backbone. I'm so ashamed. I acted like an arrogant jerk and for that I am truly sorry. Please forgive me. Oh, and I'm sorry for handing out burgers without wearing food service gloves. That was bad.
I think Obama could benefit from some spiritual counseling, but from someone other than his spiritual mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
It hasn't worked, so he determined that it was time to stop the bleeding by acknowledging he didn't phrase his remarks as well as he should have.
That sounds arrogant, too. He only slightly stepped back from his comments.
Just as in the case of the Rev. Wright matter, Obama is hedging.
Do you know what this means?
It means that Obama may need to deliver a dramatic, media-hyped major speech on American bitterness to smooth things over, like his racial understanding speech, supposedly one of the greatest speeches ever made since human beings strung words together to make sentences.
When backed against a wall, he gives a "courageous" speech. He tells Americans what we need to hear, like only Obama the Great can.
Right.
MUNCIE, Ind. -- Democrat Barack Obama on Saturday conceded that comments he made about bitter working class voters who "cling to guns or religion" were ill chosen, as he tried to stem a burst of complaints that he is condescending.
"I didn't say it as well as I should have," he said.
As Obama tried to quell the furor, presidential rival Hillary Rodham Clinton hit him with one of her lengthiest and most pointed criticisms to date.
"Senator Obama's remarks were elitist and out of touch," she said, campaigning about an hour away in Indianapolis. "They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans."
...The comments, posted on the Huffington Post political Web site Friday, set off a storm of criticism from Clinton, Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain and other GOP officials. It threatened to highlight an Obama Achilles heel — the image that the Harvard-trained lawyer is arrogant, aloof and carries himself with an air of superiority.
His campaign scrambled to defuse possible damage caused with working class voters that Obama needs to win in upcoming primaries in Pennsylvania and Indiana.
"Lately there has been a little typical sort of political flare up because I said something that everybody knows is true, which is that there are a whole bunch of folks in small towns in Pennsylvania, in towns right here in Indiana, in my hometown in Illinois who are bitter," Obama said Saturday morning at Ball State University. "They are angry. They feel like they have been left behind. They feel like nobody is paying attention to what they're going through."
"So I said, well you know, when you're bitter you turn to what you can count on. So people, they vote about guns, or they take comfort from their faith and their family and their community. And they get mad about illegal immigrants who are coming over to this country."
After acknowledging that his previous remarks could have been better phrased, he added:
"The truth is that these traditions that are passed on from generation to generation, those are important. That's what sustains us. But what is absolutely true is that people don't feel like they are being listened to.
"And so they pray and they count on each other and they count on their families. You know this in your own lives, and what we need is a government that is actually paying attention. Government that is fighting for working people day in and day out making sure that we are trying to allow them to live out the American dream."
Blah, blah, blah.
That fact is Obama's "America sucks" shtick is flawed.
Sure, people are ready for change and the Constitution guarantees that we're going to get a change in leadership; but his negativity has come back to bite him.
His campaign taps into anger, rather than pride in the country.
...One of Clinton's staunchest supporters, Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., acknowledged there was some truth in Obama's remarks. But Republicans would use them against him anyway, Bayh said.
"We do have economic hard times, and that does lead to a frustration and some justifiable anger, it's true," Bayh told reporters after introducing Clinton in Indianapolis. "But I think you're on dangerous ground when you morph that into suggesting that people's cultural values whether it's religion or hunting and fishing or concern about trade are premised solely upon those kinds of anxieties and don't have a legitimate foundation independent of that."
True.
Obama screwed up royally.
In a way, I think his comments to the San Francisco millionaires may do more damage to him than the days and weeks (and months?) of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's racist, anti-Semitic, anti-American remarks being played in an endless loop.
When Obama personally berated the values of Americans, he attacked something sacred-- the American soul and freedom.
Controversial minister Jeremiah Wright will speak at the Detroit branch of the NAACP 53rd Annual Fight for Freedom Fund dinner.
Wright, the former minister of presidential candidate Barack Obama, has been under fire for remarks he’s made during his sermons about race relations, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and black separatism. He recently retired as pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, a 10,000-member megachurch located in Chicago.
The Fight for Freedom dinner, which annually attracts about 10,000 people, will be held April 27 at Cobo Hall. The gathering is a key fund-raiser for the Detroit Branch NAACP, and is billed as the largest sit-down dinner in the country.
Although Wright is still "TBD," the page boasts of illustrious speakers at past dinners.
Beginning with Thurgood Marshall as the first keynote speaker, the Fight For Freedom Fund Dinner has brought to its platform a virtual constellation of distinguished speakers and entertainers, among them, Barbara Jordan, Roy Wilkins, Howard Thurman, Senator Edward Brooks, U.S. Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, Governor Mario Cuomo, Senator Ted Kennedy, Chief Justice Earl Warren, Joint Chief of Staff, Chairman, General Colin Powell, Ron Brown, Kweisi Mfume, Lee Iaccoca, Sammy Davis, Jr., Aretha Franklin, Anita Baker, Dick Gregory, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Vice President Al Gore, President Bill Clinton, Danny Glover, Julian Bond,Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator Barack Obama, Manning Marable, and Congresswoman Shelia Jackson Lee.
There are some very distinguished people on that list. There are also some controversial figures.
Why would the NAACP choose Wright to be the speaker for this year's event?
It is a fund-raiser. Perhaps Wright is seen as capable of selling plenty of tickets and bringing in lots of cash.
It's a shame that someone like Michael Steele isn't speaking. He was a member of the NAACP.
In a November 2005 interview with Jay Nordlinger, Steele discussed his affiliation with the group:
"Yes, it's true. That reminds me: I have to renew my membership." He stresses the bipartisan, or nonpartisan, roots of that organization. "Julian Bond and others have turned it into something else, but the NAACP was always above party and ideology, interested in only what was right, period." Steele is not yet ready to give up on it.
I don't know if he did renew his membership. I know the NAACP didn't want anything to do with Steele when he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2006.
Whatever, I suppose an African-American Republican and potential running mate for John McCain wouldn't fit the agenda of Detroit's NAACP Fight for Freedom Fund dinner.
On the other hand, Barack Obama's spiritual mentor, the racist, anti-Semitic, America-hating Wright, is a perfect fit for the event.
Obama himself probably would have been the dream speaker for the fund-raiser, but Wright is close enough. __________________
This is a pricey event. See what big bucks can buy.
Photo With Keynote Speaker 60-Second Video Shown At Dinner Two (2) Dais Seats WIth Keynote Speaker Spokesperson has opportunity to give 1- minute remarks Special recognition in Corporate Campaign video Five (5) Tables of 10 (Three (3) in Priority Seating) Website Link - Over 10,000 Visits Per Month Promotional materials for attendees Stand Alone Signage At Event Double Page Spread, preferred placement in Souvenir Journal Ten (10) Invitations To VIP Reception & President's Reception Recognition As Co-Sponsor Of President's Reception One Full Page Color Ad In Souvenir Journal Sponsorship Of Six (6) Youth Tables With Signage Video Credits Comcacst Cable Re-Broadcast
Diamond $35,000
Photo With Keynote Speaker 60-Second Video Shown At Dinner Two (2) Dais Seats WIth Keynote Speaker Special recognition in Corporate Campaign video Four (4) Tables Of Ten (10) - Two (2) Of The Four (4) In Priority Seating Website Link - Over 10,000 Visits Per Month Banner Recognition Eight (8) Invitations To VIP Reception Eight (8) Invitations To President's Reception Recognition As Co-Sponsor Of President's Reception One Full Page Color Ad In Souvenir Journal Sponsorship Of Five (5) Youth Tables With Signage On Each Table Video Credits Comcacst Cable Re-Broadcast
Gold $25,000
One (1) Dais Seat WIth Keynote Speaker Three (3) Tables Of Ten (10) - One (1) Of The Three (3) In Priority Seating Website Link - Over 10,000 Visits Per Month Banner Recognition Six (6) Invitations To VIP Reception Six (6) Invitations To President's Reception Recognition As Co-Sponsor Of President's Reception One Full Page Color Ad In Souvenir Journal Sponsorship Of Three (3) Youth Tables With Signage On Each Table Video Credits Comcacst Cable Re-Broadcast
CARPENTERSVILLE, Ill. -- An Illinois delegate for Democratic Sen. Barack Obama resigned after using the word "monkeys" to describe black children playing in a tree, the Obama campaign said Tuesday.
Linda Ramirez-Sliwinski, a trustee in the Chicago suburb of Carpentersville, was issued a $75 ticket for disorderly conduct after neighbors complained to police. She says the word wasn't meant racially and she will fight the ticket.
"Given the incident, Linda Ramirez-Sliwinski is stepping down as a delegate and will be replaced," said Obama spokeswoman Amy Brundage.
The incident occurred Saturday, when two children were playing in a tree next door to Ramirez-Sliwinski's house.
She said the parents were outside supervising the children, but she went over and told them to get out of the tree because she was concerned about the boys' safety and because the small magnolia tree was being damaged.
The father of one of the boys told her it was none of her business, she told the Chicago Tribune, and "I calmly said the tree is not there for them to be climbing in there like monkeys."
The mother of one boy called police.
Cmdr. Michael Kilbourne said Tuesday a ticket was issued because the ordinance bans conduct that disturbs or alarms people. One of the boys told police he was scared by her comment and a mother said she was disturbed, he said.
This really is lame.
I do not consider referring to kids climbing in a tree "like monkeys" to be a racial offense. Calmly intervening to prevent children from hurting themselves or damaging a small tree is not worthy of a ticket. It's commendable.
What's next? Is it racially offensive now to say "monkey bars"?
Good grief.
Ramirez-Sliwinski is stepping down as a delegate for Barack Obama over this?
Rev. Jeremiah Wright can be overtly racist and talk about the "US of KKK-A" yet Obama won't disown him.
If Ramirez-Sliwinski is ticketed for what she said, I think Wright certainly deserves a ticket too, for "conduct that disturbs or alarms people."
Over the last five weeks, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York has featured in her campaign stump speeches the story of a health care horror: an uninsured pregnant woman who lost her baby and died herself after being denied care by an Ohio hospital because she could not come up with a $100 fee.
The woman, Trina Bachtel, did die last August, two weeks after her baby boy was stillborn at O’Bleness Memorial Hospital in Athens, Ohio. But hospital administrators said Friday that Ms. Bachtel was under the care of an obstetrics practice affiliated with the hospital, that she was never refused treatment and that she was, in fact, insured.
“We implore the Clinton campaign to immediately desist from repeating this story,” said Rick Castrop, chief executive officer of the O’Bleness Health System.
Linda M. Weiss, a spokeswoman for the not-for-profit hospital, said the Clinton campaign had never contacted the hospital to check the accuracy of the story, which Mrs. Clinton had first heard from a Meigs County, Ohio, sheriff’s deputy in late February.
A Clinton spokesman, Mo Elleithee, said candidates would frequently retell stories relayed to them, vetting them when possible. “In this case, we did try but were not able to fully vet it,” Mr. Elleithee said. “If the hospital claims it did not happen that way, we respect that.”
The sheriff’s deputy, Bryan Holman, had played host to Mrs. Clinton in his home before the Ohio primary. Deputy Holman said in a telephone interview that a conversation about health care led him to relate the story of Ms. Bachtel. He never mentioned the name of the hospital that supposedly turned her away because he did not know it, he said.
Deputy Holman knew Ms. Bachtel’s story only secondhand, having learned it from close relatives of the woman. Ms. Bachtel’s relatives did not return phone calls Friday.
As Deputy Holman understood it, Ms. Bachtel had died of complications from a stillbirth after being turned away by a local hospital for her failure to pay $100 upfront.
“I mentioned this story to Senator Clinton, and she apparently took to it and liked it,” Deputy Holman said, “and one of her aides said she’d be using it at some rallies.”
Indeed, saying that the story haunted her, Mrs. Clinton repeatedly offered it as a dire example of a broken health care system. At one March rally in Wyoming, for instance, she referred to Ms. Bachtel, a 35-year-old who managed a Pizza Hut, as a young, uninsured minimum-wage worker, saying, “It hurts me that in our country, as rich and good of a country as we are, this young woman and her baby died because she couldn’t come up with $100 to see the doctor.”
...“We reviewed the medical and patient account records of this patient,” said Mr. Castrop, the health system’s chief executive. Any implication that the system was “involved in denying care is definitely not true.”
It's not OK to be telling untruths on the campaign trail.
Hillary has to be more careful about what she's saying. She has to have her facts straight.
That said, I think the lib media are holding Hillary to a standard that they don't apply to Barack Obama. He lies repeatedly about John McCain and his "100 years in Iraq" comment, but Obama gets a pass.
He lied about being unaware of his spiritual mentor's outrageous views and then later admitted that when he attended services he heard Rev. Jeremiah Wright say controversial things.
And when Al Gore was running for president in 2000, the lib media certainly didn't call on him to explain his laundry list of whoppers.
I'm not excusing Hillary for "misspeaking" or failing to give voters accurate information.
However, I do find it strange that the media jump down her throat for inaccuracies while looking the other way when Obama "misspeaks."
They didn't demand that Gore retract his lies.
Bottom line: The media are not treating Hillary fairly. They're treating her like a Republican.
A young Barack Obama was searching for answers, and perhaps a place to belong, when he decided to visit a fast-growing church recommended by friends. What he heard left him in tears.
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright preached that day about suffering — about the seemingly endless problems of the world and of individuals. But he also talked about the importance of hope, the audacity of believing things can be made better.
"Hope is what saves us," Wright said.
That message moved Obama to embrace Trinity United Church of Christ, along with its philosophy of translating faith into action. But it's a side of Wright that has been overshadowed by his inflammatory remarks about everything from race relations to the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
The furor over Wright's remarks has provoked the greatest crisis for Obama's presidential campaign thus far, but Obama has refused to leave Trinity or sever his ties with Wright, saying there is much more to Wright and the church.
Asked Wednesday on MSNBC's "Hardball" if he thought the questions about his relationship with Wright were unfair, Obama said: "I think that's fair game in the sense that what my former pastor said was offensive. I think that in politics, whether I was white, black, Hispanic or Asian, somebody would be trying to use it against me. I do think that it is important to keep things in perspective."
Poor Obama.
His political enemies are using his spiritual mentor's words to attack him.
Wright has said some controversial things, but he's really a good man.
Trinity is a predominantly black congregation in a mainline, mostly white denomination — the United Church of Christ. Its 8,000 members include politicians, doctors, lawyers and other leaders on Chicago's South Side.
The rapper Common, the former director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, the former director of the state Department of Professional Regulation, and at least one state representative are members of the church. Oprah Winfrey has attended services there.
The church offers a long list of services — housing and employment programs, scholarships, a ministry to people with HIV/AIDS — that mesh well with Obama's political philosophy.
"It's his deep faith in God and his desire to be an agent of change in the world. That's kind of the Trinity mantra," said the Rev. Michael Pfleger, a priest at a South Side Roman Catholic church.
...Obama argues it would be wrong for people to judge Wright solely on a handful of remarks. He has tried to place Wright's comments in the context of anger from a black man who came of age in a time of segregation and civil rights turmoil.
Oooh! Politicians, doctors, and lawyers attend the church.
And Oprah went to services there.
OK. Never mind. It must be a good place.
Yeah, right.
...People familiar with Trinity compare its emphasis on African culture to the way some Catholic churches play up Irish or Italian roots.
ENOUGH.
I have attended thousands of Masses at Catholic churches. I can't count how many different priests have presided, but at no time, EVER, did I hear a homily that was remotely like Wright's message of "God damn America."
I've been at plenty of Masses that played up the people's Irish and Italian and Polish roots, but they weren't divisive at all. They weren't separatist.
NEVER did I hear the sort of hate spewed by Wright at a Catholic Mass.
Put simply, it's an absolute crock to equate Trinity's black separatist theology, with the services and missions of Catholic parishes.
HANNITY: I studied theology; I went to a seminary. And I studied Latin.
WRIGHT: Do you know black liberation theology?
HANNITY: I'm very aware of what you're calling black liberation, but let me get my question out.
(CROSSTALK)
WRIGHT: I said, do you know black theology?
HANNITY: Reverend, I'm going to give you a chance to answer my question.
WRIGHT: How many of Cone's books have you read? How many of Cone's book have you read?
HANNITY: Reverend, Reverend?
(CROSSTALK)
WRIGHT: How many books of Cone's have you head?
HANNITY: I'm going to ask you this question...
WRIGHT: How many books of Dwight Hopkins have you read?
HANNITY: You're very angry and defensive. I'm just trying to ask a question here.
(CROSSTALK)
WRIGHT: You haven't answered — you haven't answered my question.
HANNITY: And it seems to be, when you say the black community, black family, black work ethic, black community...
(CROSSTALK)
WRIGHT: It seems arrogant, ignorant...
(CROSSTALK)
WRIGHT: I'm asking you...
(CROSSTALK)
WRIGHT: ... how many books of Dwight Hopkins have you read?
HANNITY: Sir, I'm going to say this whether you like it or not. I'm going to get my words in, and I'm going to tell you right now...
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: As a Christian, sir, I think, as a Christian, you should not separate by race in this day and age. And that's why a lot of people are going to look at that and say, "We're all supposed to be united under Christ, aren't we?"
Wright certainly holds up Dwight Hopkins and James Cone as his mentors.
As part of his theological analysis, Cone argues for God's own identification with "blackness":
The black theologian must reject any conception of God which stifles black self-determination by picturing God as a God of all peoples. Either God is identified with the oppressed to the point that their experience becomes God's experience, or God is a God of racism...The blackness of God means that God has made the oppressed condition God's own condition. This is the essence of the Biblical revelation. By electing Israelite slaves as the people of God and by becoming the Oppressed One in Jesus Christ, the human race is made to understand that God is known where human beings experience humiliation and suffering...Liberation is not an afterthought, but the very essence of divine activity. (A Black Theology of Liberation, pp. 63-64)
"The black theologian must reject any conception of God which stifles black self-determination by picturing God as a God of all peoples. Either God is identified with the oppressed to the point that their experience becomes God's experience, or God is a God of racism."
As a Christian, as a Roman Catholic, that's not what I was taught. That's not what I believe.
I don't buy this attempt by the lib media to makeover Wright.
I buy that he preached about love and service to the community. But he also preached racism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Americanism. He is what he is.
Wright can't divorce himself from the hate that he's preached. And Obama won't divorce himself from Wright.
Barack Obama's church, the Trinity United Church of Christ, honored Obama's spiritual mentor Rev. Jeremiah Wright last night with a two hour service.
CHICAGO (CBS) -- In his second public appearance in less than a week, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was honored by his former congregation at Trinity United Church of Christ Monday night.
As CBS 2' Mai Martinez reports when Wright and his family entered they the church they greeted by a thunderous, almost deafening, round of applause and standing ovation by people showing support for the recently retired pastor.
The special prayer meeting was called to allow people who care about Wright to stand up and speak not only to him, but for him.
Several speakers defended Wright against what they feel have been unfair attacks in the media.
Addressing the recent controversy, Trinity's current pastor the Rev. Ottis Moss III, said "the church will not be silent." He went on to stress the importance of the church having a voice.
Another speaker, Dr. Conrad Worrill praised Rev. Wright's theology as "consistent with the black church's tradition of freeing us from oppression."
Worill went on to liken the present day persecution of Wright to that of Jesus Christ saying Jesus was not politically correct and "Jesus upset the status quo" and so did Rev. Wright.
I am so sick of Wright being compared to Jesus.
Yes, Jesus upset the status quo, but He didn't preach a message of hate.
Without question, some of Wright's sermons do not reflect the teachings of Christ.
I wonder what Obama thinks of his church (the one he has funded with his donations of tens of thousands of dollars) having a rally to defend the hate-spewing, racist, anti-Semitic, anti-American Wright.
