Mr. Obama and race First published: Thursday, March 20, 2008
Barack Obama is right. America's racial stalemate can't be erased overnight or even in a single election cycle, not even when a powerfully articulate black man appeals to enough white voters to have a credible chance at being the next president. That much is clear by the reaction to Mr. Obama's thoughtful, heartfelt but ultimately incomplete speech about race on Tuesday. His unqualified rejection of the hateful words of his former Chicago pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, still isn't satisfactory to many Americans, Republicans in particular. Mr. Obama still will need to address the ramifications of racial tensions and outright hatred, probably for the duration of his campaign. Here's what Mr. Obama did say in his speech in Philadelphia that was reassuring. He said the views of someone who has screeched "God damn America," and made such troubling remarks about AIDS patients, Israel and the Sept. 11 attacks "denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation that rightly offend white and black alike." More personally and more pointedly, Mr. Obama said the man who officiated at his wedding and baptized his daughters had "a profoundly distorted view of this country." So why won't he disassociate himself from the Rev. Wright altogether? His reasons -- thoughtful and forgiving as they are -- are unsettling in their own right. Mr. Obama offers sweeping cultural context, surely, as he says "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community," and goes on to explain "I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother." Mr. Obama's challenge is to stand ever taller on the higher road. His understanding of the era of legal segregation and virulent racism in which the Rev. Wright came of age should be the foundation for overcoming prejudices completely, not accommodating them as imperfections that have to be tolerated for another generation. Mr. Obama is supposed to stand for something so different as to be unprecedented in America. That seemingly unique opportunity comes with its own burden. He should consider his own words, of how the Rev. Wrights' great mistake was "to speak if our society was static, as if no progress has been made." Mr. Obama's quest to be president, remember, is heavily based on his perceived ability to perpetuate that progress. Yet Mr. Obama's critics have obligations of their own. They might listen again to what he did say in his speech as well as dwell on what he failed to address, most notably what now becomes of his relationship with the Rev. Wright and his church. The critics ought to take particular note of the anger that exists in white America, as Mr. Obama described it. "When they are told to bus their children to a school across town, when they hear that an African-American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed, when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time," Mr. Obama said. The America that Mr. Obama is trying to win over and eventually govern rejects an overture of such magnitude at its peril. ISSUE:A leading presidential candidate confronts his country's most divisive issue.THE STAKES:Association with a preacher's hateful words undermines the progress Mr. Obama represents.
Obama Defends Rev. Wright, Blasts Imus Wednesday, March 19, 2008
It took Barack Obama more than a year to repudiate his former pastor's racially charged anti-American tirades, but when it came to denouncing Don Imus for his racial slurs against the Rutgers girls basketball team, it took Obama only a week to demand the shock jock be fired, Fox News notes.
In a major speech Tuesday, Obama condemned the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's shocking verbal assaults against the U.S. dating back to 2001.
But in April of last year, Obama was quick to demand Imus' ouster for making a racially insensitive remark.
“There’s nobody on my staff who would still be working for me if they made a comment like that about anybody of any ethnic group. And I would hope that NBC ends up having that same attitude,” Obama told ABC News in an April 11 interview demanding Imus' resignation.
Obama told ABC in the interview he would never appear again on Imus’ show after Imus set off a firestorm of outrage when he called members of the women’s basketball team at Rutgers University “nappy-headed hos” on his popular morning talk show.
“He didn’t just cross the line,” Obama raged then. “He fed into some of the worst stereotypes that my two young daughters are having to deal with today in America.”
Obama has downplayed Wright for Wright's insensitive remarks, saying he has done good work with the poor and AIDS victims. Yet Obama did not afford the same respect to Imus, who has devoted considerable energy to helping children with cancer, wounded war veterans, and others.
Obama's pastor has blamed the government for HIV, cast the country as institutionally racist, and said God should damn the United States.
But Obama, who Fox recalled has had a 20-year relationship with Wright, claimed in his speech Tuesday that he had no idea Wright had ever expressed such incendiary remarks.
When some of Wright’s remarks were publicized last year, Obama rescinded an invitation for Wright to speak at his Feb. 10, 2007, presidential announcement, but had failed to fully address the matter until Tuesday's speech.
When Fox News asked about the different responses to his pastor and to Imus, Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor questioned the premise of the comparison and defended Obama’s response in each case. “He spoke out both times, so it’s entirely consistent,” he told Foxnews.com Tuesday. While Obama didn’t condemn Wright’s views outright until last Friday, Vietor said Obama had started putting the issue to rest long before now.
“He denounced specific comments months ago and he gave a thoughtful speech today,” Vietor told Fox News Tuesday.
Now that his 'preacher' is marked....so will every other preacher that is mega conservative and their politicians who they support,,,although I'm not sure we know how to separate church and state or when to implement the 'foundation'.....as for Hillary,, might I say--women with testicles parading around as women.....
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
Now that his 'preacher' is marked....so will every other preacher that is mega conservative and their politicians who they support,.
They are FAR from being conservative. They are as liberal as you can get.
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Obama responded to pastor by running for president Susan Estrich Susan Estrich is a nationally syndicated columnist.
It was an eloquent and powerful speech. But Barack Obama’s inspirational oratory left one fundamental question unanswered, at least for this white American — although judging by the reactions I’ve been hearing on local radio, for many others, as well. A pastor is not a relative. The thing with relatives is we don’t choose them. They just are. Pastors and places of worship don’t work that way. You choose where you go. You listen and decide. You’re not born into a church, or if you are, you’re free as an adult to choose a new location, if not a new faith. If Barack Obama heard the anger in his pastor’s voice, why did he stay? If he didn’t hear the anger, was he not listening? If he was listening, why didn’t he speak up? The answer, I think, is that he did. Speaking up is what he is doing in running for president. Offering a different approach than his pastor to the injuries of race and class is what his campaign is actually about. But he has to make that connection. There’s still a step he needs to take. It is clear that this church and this pastor have played an important role in Barack Obama’s development as a black American. The son of a white mother, raised by white grandparents, the church clearly became a version of the black family he didn’t grow up in. The church, and his life inside it, is part of the answer to the question that used to be posed of whether he was black enough, an inartful way of asking whether he understood what it meant to be black, whether he understood the injuries of race. That is clearly why the church was so important to Obama that even now he views his pastor as the uncle with whom he might disagree, but would never disown. But if the church taught him about the pain and injuries of race, made clear what it was like to grow up on the wrong side of every line dividing privilege and access from poverty and denial, what it, and its minister, did not teach him was how to deal with those injuries. His minister’s response has been, as all the awful excerpts reveal, tinged with bitterness, anger and resentment. His minister has embraced the very victimization and demonization that Barack Obama, in his speech Tuesday and in his campaign at its best, has denounced. The case for Barack Obama, and ultimately he has to be the one to make it, is that there is a different answer to the injuries of race than the one his pastor offered to their congregation. The answer is not to denounce America, but to embrace it, not to embrace victimization, but to denounce it. Barack Obama doesn’t want to denounce his pastor, his uncle, but in a way, he already has, both by running for president and by the way he has run. He just needs to say that loud and clear, and not because whites want him to, but because his failure to do so obscures a strength of his campaign for which he deserves credit.
This is where identifying with certain groups and traditions gets hairy...maybe he thought he owed it to himself to seek his black roots??....here's roots we can all share---I need to eat, do you? I need to sleep, do you? I need to breath, do you? I need to talk to people, do you? I need to get dressed everyday, do you? I need to work everyday, do you?......there are some traditions and identifiers we can all say are ours.....the rest is BS!!!!!
shame on us for having these conversations and shame on his pastor....who knows maybe they have had heated arguements at church picnics because they disagree.....I wasn't there.....
PS, did anyone know our governor is black AND blind AND has alot of sex........ Just some more high-fructose corn syrup feed for the sheeple from the news media......
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
ELECTION 2008 Obama church published Hamas terror manifesto Compares charter calling for murder of Jews to Declaration of Independence Posted: March 20, 2008 12:45 pm Eastern
JERUSALEM – Sen. Barack Obama's Chicago church reprinted a manifesto by Hamas that defended terrorism as legitimate resistance, refused to recognize the right of Israel to exist and compared the terror group's official charter – which calls for the murder of Jews – to America's Declaration of Independence.
The Hamas piece was published on the "Pastor's Page" of the Trinity United Church of Christ newsletter reserved for Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., whose anti-American, anti-Israel remarks landed Obama in hot water, prompting the presidential candidate to deliver a major race speech earlier this week.
Hamas, responsible for scores of shootings, suicide bombings and rocket launchings against civilian population centers, is listed as a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department.
The revelation follows a recent WND article quoting Israeli security officials who expressed "concern" about Robert Malley, an adviser to Obama who has advocated negotiations with Hamas and providing international assistance to the terrorist group.
In his July 22, 2007, church newsletter, Wright reprinted an article by Mousa Abu Marzook, identified in the publication as a "deputy of the political bureau of Hamas." A photo image of the piece was captured and posted today by the business blog BizzyBlog, which first brought attention to it. The Hamas article was first published by the Los Angeles Times, garnering the newspaper much criticism.
According to senior Israeli security officials, Marzook, who resides in Syria alongside Hamas chieftain Khaled Meshaal, is considered the "brains" behind Hamas, designing much of the terror group's policies and ideology. Israel possesses what it says is a large volume of specific evidence that Marzook has been directly involved in calling for or planning scores of Hamas terrorist offensives, including deadly suicide bombings. He was also accused of attempting to set up a Hamas network in the U.S.
Marzook's original piece was titled, "Hamas' stand" but was re-titled "A Fresh View of the Palestinian Struggle" by Obama's church newsletter. The newsletter also referred to Hamas as the "Islamic Resistance Movement," and added in its introduction that Marzook was addressing Hamas' goals for "all of Palestine."
In the manifesto, Marzook refers to Hamas' "resistance" – the group's perpetuation of anti-Israel terrorism targeting civilians – as "legal resistance," which, he argues, is "explicitly supported by the Fourth Geneva Convention."
The Convention, which refers to the rights of people living under occupation, does not support suicide bombings or rocket attacks against civilian population centers, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America noted.
Marzook refers to Hamas' official charter as "an essentially revolutionary document" and compares the violent creed to the Declaration of Independence, which, Marzook states, "simply did not countenance any such status for the 700,000 African slaves at that time."
Hamas' charter calls for the murder of Jews. Among its platforms is a statement that the "[resurrection] will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews and the Muslims kill them, and the rock and the tree will say: 'Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, kill him!'"
In his piece, Marzook says Hamas only targets Israel and denies that Hamas' war is meant to be waged against the U.S., even though Hamas officials have threatened America, and Hamas' charter calls for Muslims to "pursue the cause of the Movement (Hamas), all over the globe."
Trinity Church did not respond to a phone message requesting comment.
Obama's campaign also did not reply to phone and e-mail requests today for comment.
A pastor is not a relative. The thing with relatives is we don’t choose them. They just are. Pastors and places of worship don’t work that way. You choose where you go. You listen and decide. You’re not born into a church, or if you are, you’re free as an adult to choose a new location, if not a new faith. If Barack Obama heard the anger in his pastor’s voice, why did he stay? If he didn’t hear the anger, was he not listening?
I believe that Pastor Wright empowered Obama. That's what they do!! I wonder what Oprah is thinking now.
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Logged
Just some more high-fructose corn syrup feed for the sheeple from the news media......
