I had brought this up in another thread with all the Obama supporters attacking this very article. I'm with you with a lot of what you have been saying. This isn't so much about Obama's pastor or his beliefs as it is about Obama's judgment. As I've said before and I'll say again, How "Convenient" that Wright "RETIRES" or takes a "Leave of abscence". I wonder who forced him to do that. Now the Trinity Church is saying this is an attack on all African American Church's? Who's the one making this a Race issue now? So much for the Democratic party being the party to UNITE the people. So much for the Republicans being the racist party. It just goes to show you that there is enough racism from BOTH parties to go around.
It is very sad that this kind of sketchy political manuvering is the exact same thing Obama was running to change...and a reason he must hide. Ah well, politics. Good thing for McCain that Islam-hating is en vogue, no one seems to be truly questioning his judgement based on his pastor; and yet this is a president that must deal with such crucial allies as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. I'd be more worried about that, if I were worried about sketchy attacks on candidates' characters...
He retired in early February, when this was all a non-story... at age 67, which is, oddly enough, retirement age. Conspiracy theories certainly are a lot more fun, though.
If the Clintons' pastor had been heard to say remarks disparaging America would the Obama campaign and their supporters lay off that? I think the question in regard to McCain has already been answered since there is a thread disparaging comments made by a spiritual guide of McCain. LIke it or not you are judged by the company you keep especially in a matter like this. The religious institution you choose and the clerics you choose to associate with are matters of personal judgement.
So are you saying that all pastors are supposed to retire at 67? Regular working people retire at 65. Most pastors and priests still preach long after the age of 67. C'mon man. The Trinity church and Obama camp KNEW this issue was going to come up once he ran for President. So back in February..THIS WAS an issue for Obama's camp. I'm sure if Obama wasn't running for President he would still be preaching. Someone or some people forced him to retire. I'm sure he'll be preaching again after the election is over.
That was useful when he later ran for US Senate. It is also useful now. That's why he haven't repudiated the man yet.
McCain Thread: 4 pages (2 of which are dedicated to a pro-religion/anti-religion debate) Obama Thread: 9 pages and counting. Besides which, I think there's a reason why we hear more negative dirt on Obama then on Hillary. And no, it has nothing to do with Hillary being a perfect angel (in fact, quite the opposite.)
Maybe because we are just now finding out the negative dirt on Obama. Hillary, we all know she's dirty.
So you're arguing he joined a black church w/ a crazy radical pastor because he thought it would be helpful to a run for US Senate 15+ years later in a state that has just 10% black voters?
Oh sure, it has nothing to do with how each respective campaign is ran. <object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/fjdh8zigMg8&hl=en"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/fjdh8zigMg8&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>
The percentage is 15.63% according to 2005 Census. You can check wikipedia. He had ambition to run for Illinois Governor back in the days of Harvard Law. This is reported in that Alice Palmer article. So what is so surprising he started doing that when he is out of school. But then, if this is not for political gain, then that means he subscribe to part of the church's view. That's also bad. So you can choose your poison.
I said black voters, not people. In 2004, 10% of the people that voted were black (minorities traditionally have lower turnout than others). Regardless of it was governor or senate, how does associating himself with a radical church benefit him politically? Every election he has won has been with massive support from white voters. Black voters vote Democrat in mass numbers anyway - he got basically the same percentage (90%) as Kerry in 2004. As politically strategy, you'd be better off assuming the black vote and trying to do things to win the white vote if you're a Democrat - especially a black Democrat. I'm sure he does subscribe to part of the church's view. Why is that bad? You think everything the church preaches is bad? Did you read the "Audacity to Hope" sermon? I think I read somewhere that it's the largest UCC Church in America. I'm assuming it's located somewhere near where he lived when he first joined, long before getting involved in politics. Why is it surprising that he would attend it? I agree that putting Wright on his religious outreach team or whatever was a stupid and indefensible idea. But continuing to attend the church that he had attended for years before entering politics? Not a big deal at all to me.
Interesting news: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/03/obama_to_give_major_speech_on.php Obama To Give Major Speech On Race, Wright By Eric Kleefeld - March 17, 2008, 2:06PM Barack Obama is set to deliver a major speech tomorrow on racial issues — a sign that the campaign realizes they have to directly address the Jeremiah Wright controversy and the larger racial implications and polarization of the campaign. "I am going to be talking about not just Reverend Wright, but the larger issue of race in this campaign," Obama told reporters about a half-hour ago, adding that part of the speech would be about how racial issues are perceived from within the black church.
Obama is going down. Good riddance, mofo. Website says Obama attended anti-white Wright sermon; campaign says no In a posting this evening, Newsmax.com reports that its correspondent witnessed Sen. Barack Obama attending one of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's anti-white sermons on July 22 and nodding his head in agreement with the black congregation. The report on the conservative website directly contradicts the Democratic presidential candidate's recent statements that while he denounced the pastor's controversial anti-American and anti-white rhetoric, he had never heard such declarations himself in church or in private. Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, immediately denied the Newsmax report, saying Obama was in Miami that day. He referred to an item hastily posted on the Obama Fact Check website saying simply: "Fact: Obama did not attend services on July 22." The lengthy Newsmax report by Ronald Kessler said its correspondent, Jim Davis, attended services on July 22, 2007, at the Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's South Side and saw Obama in attendance. Kessler's story states: "In his sermon that day, Wright tore into America, referring to the 'United States of White America' and lacing his sermon with expletives as Obama listened. Hearing Wright’s attacks on his own country, Obama had the opportunity to walk out, but Davis said the senator sat in his pew and nodded in agreement." (UPDATE: On Monday the Newsmax site issued a statement with the Kessler story that it stands by the account, despite campaign denials that Obama was in church that day. It points out that he could have attended some services and still traveled to Miami that day and that its correspondent attended several July services and saw the senator and his Secret Service detail witness the service as described in the article. It says Obama spokesmen declined several opportunities to comment before publication of its initial report on the sermon.) The Sunday night Kessler story links to Davis' original account of the ... July 22 service, which was posted on the Newsmax website on Aug. 9, 2007, and headlined: "Obama's Church: Cauldron of Division." In it, Davis describes being initially blocked from entering the church, how few whites (except for Obama's Secret Service detail) were among the 2,500 people in attendance and how skilled an orator the Rev. Wright was. He describes the now-familiar anti-white rhetoric, the excitement of the congregation, Obama's two decades of close ties to Wright and how another congregation member and a prominent Obama supporter, Oprah Winfrey, had joined the church in 1984 but withdrew her membership some years ago allegedly over Wright's preachings. It's an extremely touchy issue for the Illinois senator's campaign. The minister coached and counseled Obama during his early community organizing days, and one of his sermon titles led to the title of Obama's best-selling book, "The Audacity of Hope." Wright married Barack and Michelle Obama and baptized both of their daughters. In a Sunday conference call, Obama campaign manager David Axelrod admitted that the campaign recognized Wright as a potential problem more than a year ago and had disinvited the pastor from giving the invocation at the announcement of Obama's presidential candidacy on Feb. 10, 2007, in Springfield, Ill. On Friday, as the issue and videos of Wright's statements flamed across the Internet and his campaign realized the scope of the controversy, Obama posted a statement on HuffingtonPost.com denouncing Wright's "inflammatory and appalling remarks." The senator added: "I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy. I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it's on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue." Later in his statement Obama added: "The sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn. "The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation. When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign." Kessler's story tonight, headlined "Obama Attended Hate America Sermon," also said: "If Obama’s claims are true that he was completely unaware that Wright’s trademark preaching style at the Trinity United Church of Christ has targeted 'white' America and Israel, he would have been one of the few people in Chicago to be so uninformed. Wright’s reputation for spewing hate is well known." Newsmax.com, which also publishes the magazine Newsmax, was founded in 1998 by Christopher Ruddy, a former journalist who describes the Florida operation as "the leading independent online news site with a conservative perspective." Its early investors reportedly included the family of the late CIA Director William Casey and Richard Mellon Scaife, a well-known conservative publisher in Pittsburgh. -- Andrew Malcolm Pastor Wright Erased From Obama’s Website Just like in the bad old days of the Stalinist Soviet Union, an inconvenient personage has been airbrushed from the Barack Obama campaign’s website. Before, via Google’s cache (as retrieved on Mar 8, 2008 20:01:06 GMT): And the current page: Obama's Church Web Site 'Disappears' the 'Black Value System' (even more content being deleted!) Disavowal of the Pursuit of “Middleclassness” Classic methodology on control of captives teaches that captors must keep the captive ignorant educationally, but trained sufficiently well to serve the system. Also, the captors must be able to identify the “talented tenth” of those subjugated, especially those who show promise of providing the kind of leadership that might threaten the captor’s control.
Wow, as the rhetoric increases in this thread, I am more and more convinced that this, much like swiftboating, is more or less the best shot the Republicans have at taking Obama down. Ah well, viva democracy and all. It's worked once, but I am convinced that Obama is enough of a competent speaker to explain his position that it won't work again.
Interesting article from the son of one of the original founders of the Religious Right: Obama's Minister Committed "Treason" but When my Father Said the Same Thing He Was a Republican Hero by Frank Schaeffer When Senator Obama's preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father -- Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer -- denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr. Every Sunday thousands of right wing white preachers (following in my father's footsteps) rail against America's sins from tens of thousands of pulpits. They tell us that America is complicit in the "murder of the unborn," has become "Sodom" by coddling gays, and that our public schools are sinful places full of evolutionists and sex educators hell-bent on corrupting children. They say, as my dad often did, that we are, "under the judgment of God." They call America evil and warn of immanent destruction. By comparison Obama's minister's shouted "controversial" comments were mild. All he said was that God should damn America for our racism and violence and that no one had ever used the N-word about Hillary Clinton. Dad and I were amongst the founders of the Religious right. In the 1970s and 1980s, while Dad and I crisscrossed America denouncing our nation's sins instead of getting in trouble we became darlings of the Republican Party. (This was while I was my father's sidekick before I dropped out of the evangelical movement altogether.) We were rewarded for our "stand" by people such as Congressman Jack Kemp, the Fords, Reagan and the Bush family. The top Republican leadership depended on preachers and agitators like us to energize their rank and file. No one called us un-American. Consider a few passages from my father's immensely influential America-bashing book A Christian Manifesto. It sailed under the radar of the major media who, back when it was published in 1980, were not paying particular attention to best-selling religious books. Nevertheless it sold more than a million copies. Here's Dad writing in his chapter on civil disobedience: If there is a legitimate reason for the use of force [against the US government]... then at a certain point force is justifiable. And this: In the United States the materialistic, humanistic world view is being taught exclusively in most state schools... There is an obvious parallel between this and the situation in Russia [the USSR]. And we really must not be blind to the fact that indeed in the public schools in the United States all religious influence is as forcibly forbidden as in the Soviet Union.... Then this: There does come a time when force, even physical force, is appropriate... A true Christian in Hitler's Germany and in the occupied countries should have defied the false and counterfeit state. This brings us to a current issue that is crucial for the future of the church in the United States, the issue of abortion... It is time we consciously realize that when any office commands what is contrary to God's law it abrogates it's authority. And our loyalty to the God who gave this law then requires that we make the appropriate response in that situation... Was any conservative political leader associated with Dad running for cover? Far from it. Dad was a frequent guest of the Kemps, had lunch with the Fords, stayed in the White House as their guest, he met with Reagan, helped Dr. C. Everett Koop become Surgeon General. (I went on the 700 Club several times to generate support for Koop). Dad became a hero to the evangelical community and a leading political instigator. When Dad died in 1984 everyone from Reagan to Kemp to Billy Graham lamented his passing publicly as the loss of a great American. Not one Republican leader was ever asked to denounce my dad or distanced himself from Dad's statements. Take Dad's words and put them in the mouth of Obama's preacher (or in the mouth of any black American preacher) and people would be accusing that preacher of treason. Yet when we of the white Religious Right denounced America white conservative Americans and top political leaders, called our words "godly" and "prophetic" and a "call to repentance." We Republican agitators of the mid 1970s to the late 1980s were genuinely anti-American in the same spirit that later Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (both followers of my father) were anti-American when they said God had removed his blessing from America on 9/11, because America accepted gays. Falwell and Robertson recanted but we never did. My dad's books denouncing America and comparing the USA to Hitler are still best sellers in the "respectable" evangelical community and he's still hailed as a prophet by many Republican leaders. When Mike Huckabee was recently asked by Katie Couric to name one book he'd take with him to a desert island, besides the Bible, he named Dad's Whatever Happened to the Human Race? a book where Dad also compared America to Hitler's Germany. The hypocrisy of the right denouncing Obama, because of his minister's words, is staggering. They are the same people who argue for the right to "bear arms" as "insurance" to limit government power. They are the same people that (in the early 1980s roared and cheered when I called down damnation on America as "fallen away from God" at their national meetings where I was keynote speaker, including the annual meeting of the ultraconservative Southern Baptist convention, and the religious broadcasters that I addressed. The far right Republicans are using the "scandal" of Obama's preacher to undermine the first black American candidate with a serious shot at the presidency. Funny thing is, the racist Far Right smear machine proves that Obama's minister had a valid point. There is plenty to yell about these days. http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/03/so-white-people-can-freely-tal.php
