Obama's Pastor

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
21

I think it is relevant. Obama has built his candidacy on an appearance of being a Unifier and someone interested in post-partisanship, whatever that means. And with the media’s man-crush on him, he has been allowed to stand on the merits of merely proclaiming his post-partisan posture, and supporters believed him.

But now, with a little digging, we discover that Obama’s personal universe is filled with people who are anything but the hopeful, post-partisan types he claims to be - more and more, we see Obama surrounded by ideologues with an ax to grind. From his wife to his foreign policy advisers, and now his pastor, we finally are getting a look at the real Obama.

As more and more of this stuff comes to light, it contradicts everything about Obama’s advertising regarding himself, and he is looking less and less viable as a general election candidate.

I also find it very strange that someone like Obama can get this far into the presidential campaign without having to account for many of these questions. It shows the weakness of the Democratic Party - more interested in celebrity than substance.

Interestingly, Obama’s “Unity” message - already getting wobbly from his various associations - is going to face an even bigger hurdle, should he be the nominee: John McCain. Obama can’t play the “Unity” card against McCain as effectively - here is a man that, whether you agree with his policy or not, has taken positions that have hurt him in order to work across the aisle. From the surge to CFR to the Gang of Fourteen, McCain is a man that has risked legitimate political capital to do some “unity”, and in the process, he broke ranks from his party. Obama has never done such, and never led any movement across the aisle on any issue that took any political courage.

With his “Unity” play neutralized, what other play can he make to the general electorate?

22

Thanks Thunderbolt, I forgot to add “welcome
to post racial America”.

23

While one might legitimately call what Bill
said in South Carolina a cheap shot, the same can’t be said for what Geraldine said.
She was simply stating the obvious as she did about herself years ago. By the way, I
believe I cast the only vote Jesse Jackson
got in an all white precinct in the Dem
primary that year. I have never been a fan of Geraldine but she was right this time.

24

[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:

BostonBarrister wrote:
Is this guy ( http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ODI2NjEyYjA5ZDJmOTcyYzYzY2M1NGNkMzNkNDViMjg= )relevant? Ponnuru thinks so ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/community/groups/index.html?plckForumPage=ForumDiscussion&plckDiscussionId=Cat%3Aa70e3396-6663-4a8d-ba19-e44939d3c44fForum%3A5543a34c-af92-4736-b81b-4aad0ab02e2eDiscussion%3A60ef6534-c61d-41e4-860f-7c49bec7920d ). I tend to agree - particularly as it speaks to his judgment, and the context it gives for his wife’s previous comments.

How would anyone take it if Jerry Falwell was McCain’s weekly pastor?

100meters wrote:
McCain actively seeks the endorsment/s of people who say all kinds of kooky things.

But anyway, we’re in the height of silly season, so no it’s not relevant, but that won’t stop people who can’t win on merits from using it against him.

But isn’t that categorically different from this situation? You have McCain doing some classic political pandering during an election - and you have Obama having attended this guy’s church for years. It’s not as though Obama just started attending during this silly season - so there is the question is how relevant this guy’s views are w/r/t telling us about Obama’s views. And then there’s the separate question of his judgment in choosing him as a spiritual leader - I think most people would assume the views of a pastor of a church that one attends regularly would have influence, so how much judgment did Obama show in putting himself in this situation?

ADDENDUM: Also, apparently in a stark reversal of normal political pandering, the Obamas gave $22,500 to Wright’s church in 2006. See Michelle Obama and the Politics of Candor | The New Yorker (and read it for some more interesting stuff too…)

[/quote]
This is a very good point Boston. Anyone with an IQ above 70 would know that McCain is just “getting into bed” with Farwell types, because this is how he has to get the hardcore Republican vote. If McCain wins, will these religious leaders, or “agents of intolerance” hold any sway with McCain? I highly doubt it.

25

It has been the expressed opinion of many on the religious right that they never got their proper representation with previous Republican administrations. My own gut feeling is that all this talk of the hardcore conservatives voting for Hillary
is ridiculous. You’re right that he won’t be unduly swayed by them if he gets in but
his overtures are probably superfluous.

26

"Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., condemned racially charged sermons by his former pastor Friday and urged Americans not to reject his presidential campaign because of �??guilt by association.�??

Obama�??s campaign announced that the minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., had left its spiritual advisory committee after videotapes of his sermons again ignited fierce debate in news accounts and political blogs."

Obama’s a wimp…no guts to stand for what he truly believes. He sits in this churches pews for 20 years, then when it politically expedient, he folds like a house of cards.

27

His pastor speaks what Obama can’t publicly say. The pastor is kind of like ‘Mein Kampf’ — if only people would listen to what the person REALLY believes.

28

How about his statement that he trusted Rezco? Doesn’t say much for the judgment
of the one who says he will meet uncon-
ditionally with the likes of Chavez and Ahmadinejad. Will he trust them too?

29

And race had nothing to do with him being where he is today, just like religion had nothing to do with the states Huckabee carried and Romney winning Nevada and women had nothing do with Clinton winning New Hampshire. Religion had nothing to do with
Romney dropping out when he realized that
even in politically correct America people
weren’t going to vote for a Mormon. Race had nothing to with Obama getting 91-92% of
the black vote in Mississippi. Time for a reality check. Wake up and smell the polecats.

30

Best thing I’ve read on the subject:

"Obama really shouldn�??t have to answer for what Wright says, but I also think that his loyalty to Wright should not be an occasion for bashing the man. There are plenty of things in his record, or the lack thereof, that provide reasons to find fault with Obama. Despite the manifest unfairness about the way that the Paul campaign was treated over statements in decades-old newsletters that were objectively far less offensive than things Wright has said in very recent memory, especially when compared to the pass Obama has received and continues to receive from the media, and despite the profoundly dishonest double standard applied to Paul and Obama, I am not interested in criticising Obama along these lines. Obviously, I don�??t share Wright�??s views, and Obama claims not to share all of them, but I have to ask seriously what kind of man Obama would be if he disowned his spiritual father for the sake of the approval of others (who may not give their approval even if he did what is being demanded). No one that I would want to entrust with any office of importance, that�??s for sure.

That is the real difference between Obama�??s modest distancing of himself from Wright and McCain�??s embarrassing embrace of Hagee. McCain does not belong to Hagee�??s congregation, he has no duties or obligations to him, and yet he welcomes Hagee�??s support in the most cynical fashion. We take McCain�??s claim that he disagrees with Hagee�??s dreadful views at face value, while he receives credit from Hagee�??s endorsement as evidence that social conservatives and pro-Israel evangelicals have given him their seal of approval. Hagee is absurdly accepted as a mainstream figure because he strikes the �??right�?? pose on Israel policy, whatever his own reasons for doing so, while Wright receives opprobrium at least in part because he does not. At the same time, Obama rejects Wright�??s ludicrous and objectionable views, but for some reason he must go beyond that and publicly turn against the man who brought him into the church. That strikes me as a deeply disturbing demand. If Obama is to be judged by the far-left company he keeps, one need only peruse his voting record.

No doubt Obama would be better off politicaly, and it would help his career, if he dropped Wright like a stone, but he would be a far more respectable and decent man if he refused to throw his mentor under the bus to appease the media, his critics and even his admirers. I still wouldn�??t vote for him, but I could have some respect for him as someone with a degree of integrity."

http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2008/03/13/hagee-and-wright/

31

Politics being what they are, I think it’s
probably too late for Obama no matter what he does. Electing a black president would
be a good sign to the rest of the world but
not this black man.

32

And people chose these creatures over Ron Paul, and laughed the man off the stage. We’re fucking doomed.

33

[quote]skaz05 wrote:
Gael wrote:
When has Obama played the race card?

He doesn’t have to. He has outsourced his race card shield and lets other do it for him.[/quote]

You said Obama plays the race card. Now you have backed off from that. Where and when did he “outsource” the race card? This is an accusation of a deliberate action.

[quote]No one dares to attack Obama? Hahaha. Whatever.

No one is calling him out on his bullshit. No one is valuing him at face value. The ones who do are condemmned by the media as racists. Because of this, fewer and fewer people even dare speak his middle name.[/quote]

His middle name is emotionally loaded, and to say “Barack Hussein Obama” in every instance as Fox has done, is cheap and unfair. It’s also blatantly transparent. There is no point in doing this.

[quote]When has anyone who attacked Obama been labeled racist? It happens everywhere on this forum and I have yet to see anyone labeled a racist.

I am watching the CNN right now, and the headline as of this moment is "Geraldine Ferraro resigns over RACIST remark.[/quote]

Ferraro’s remark wasn’t racist, and aside from sensationalist attention grabbing headlines, no one thinks it is racist. Her comment was a bit stupid, especially in the context of Hillary’s campaign, where her popularity has suffered as the result of a number of attacks and barbed comments. It’s a silly thing to say, and Hillary knows it.

But your original claim was that no one dares attack Obama for fear of being labeled racist, in the midst of a post where you attack him. Obama has been attacked as any politician is, by the Clintons and their campain, by columnists, by Right wing radio – everywhere. What universe are you in? How could you possibly be so clueless as to say “no one dares attack Obama” ?

This irrelevant bullshit has been plastered all over the media. What are you talking about? I have seen it in tabloid covers, magazines and it has been on TV’s in stores everywhere I go.

35

[quote]Gael wrote:

His middle name is emotionally loaded, and to say “Barack Hussein Obama” in every instance as Fox has done, is cheap and unfair. It’s also blatantly transparent. There is no point in doing this.[/quote]

Actually, there is. Obama wants to have it both ways. In an interview with Tavis Smiley, Obama was more than happy to trade on his name as generating a certain response in the world:

[i]Tavis: They would look at the U.S. differently for what reason or reasons?

Obama: Well, I think if you’ve got a guy named Barack Hussein Obama, that’s a pretty good contrast to George W. Bush, to start with.[/i]

http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/archive/200710/20071018_obama.html

So, here we have Obama happy to use his name when he thinks it can help him, but apparently is it off-limits when he thinks it can hurt him.

That isn’t going to work. Once you make it an issue, your opponents get the same opportunity to discuss it.

And we see again the Obama weakness - he is fine as long as no one dare ask any tough questions or force him to do something other than be a pop-culture celebrity candidate. This would be fine were he trying out for a new TV series entitled “The West Wing 2”, but he is running for the Presidency in the real world.

Obama has shown he is the incredible shrinking candidate - the brighter the light shines, the less he takes up the stage.

36

[quote]Mick28 wrote:
Racism works both ways. [/quote]

True. However, you have to remember that black people have suffered at the hands of whites. Not the other way around.

It’s effectively a double standard, but there’s more to that picture than what you are presenting.

37

People have compared Obama to JFK but it
seems to me the situation is more reminiscent of Carter.

First Carter came along when people were ripe for
a change from 8 yrs of Nixon and Ford,
Watergate, Ford pardoning Nixon, etc and they THOUGHT the economy was bad. Whether
it was his fault or not we learned what a bad economy was in Carter’s 4 yrs. Remember
the misery index?

Combination of high interest rates with high unemployment. According to survey courses in economics that was never supposed to happen. If one was up the other was supposed to be down.
But we got change.

Second, like Obama, Carter spoke in broad generalities. One cartoon portrayed him as Jiminy Cricket hopping all over the landscape. I thought Ford would pin him down on at least a few issues in the debates. Didn’t happen.

Interestingly enough, Reagan challenged Ford for the
Republican nomination that yr and was criticized for driving Ford to the right while centrist positions were popular in those days. Ford was pretty lackluster so
Carter won.

Finally, just before the election people started adding up what it would cost to implement Carter’s campaign promises and
questioning where the money would come from.

Recently, I heard an opinion expressed to the effect that Obama’s increase of entitlements would cost about 4 times what the country has coming in. Now I’m all for
universal health care, don’t want anyone going hungry or homeless in this country or any other but let’s not kill the goose that laid the golden egg.

He says pulling out of
Iraq will solve the financial problem. I
don’t think so. In my opinion, the 12 billion dollars a month we are estimated to be spending on Iraq may turn out to be chump change compared to what it costs us to get out. Wait till a few more people like Chavez and Ahmadinejad start selling oil for euros instead of dollars and we’ll find out what a weak dollar really is.

Check out the Bretton Woods agreement and
Opec’s agreement to only accept dollars.
When Nixon abandoned the gold standard
everyone with a master’s degree in economics
was saying our currency should be backed
only by our ability to produce goods and services rather than gold, silver or some commodity like the Australians and Canadians
opted for.

Made sense when we were the number one producing nation in the world and
we’d never heard of a trade deficit. A bit
different now, I’m afraid. By the way, do
you really think anyone in Washington in either party cares about the lead in the paint of Chinese toys? It’s the trade
deficit they’re concerned about.

No matter who wins the election in November
we’re going to be in Iraq for quite some time. Mc Cain admits it and Hillary is smart enough to say she’ll leave enough troops there for this, this and this. Add
them up and it’s about what we have there right now.

But Obama claims he’ll withdraw
immediately and go back in if al-quaeda is
ever found in Iraq. Think we have problems now? Try pulling out and then going back in. No, these promises won’t get any more results than Pelosi’s. Of course one of his staffers assured the BBC that he wouldn’t really pull out.

And what about Hillary? Think the muslims
will respect a country with a woman leader?

Rendell is right, no matter what people say in politically correct America, there are still many who won’t vote for a black or a woman.

Also, while Hillary might lead the country in a direction I don’t want to see it go,
she would do so methodically. With Obama
in the whitehouse, there’d be chaos from day one. At least, that’s my fear.

While I agree with every criticism levelled
at Mc Cain, I intend to vote for him as
the least of three evils. The upside of
a Mc Cain presidency might be his reputation for being about as stable as a trailer park in a tornado.

When people think you’re crazy they tend to back off.
Might work with Iran, Venezuela, etc.
Maybe not but he should do at least as well as we’re doing presently and better than the other 2 options.

What about John Bolton? Remember him? He’d
be my choice for president but he’s not electable. Couldn’t even get ratified by the Senate as UN ambassador. In tight with
Mc Cain though, even though he’s ultra-conservative.

38

[quote]Gael wrote:
You said Obama plays the race card. Now you have backed off from that. Where and when did he “outsource” the race card? This is an accusation of a deliberate action.
[/quote]

You’re absolutely right. I don’t know what I am talking about. But I do think that Obama’s supporters, including the media, by the way they report on criticism of Obama, are using the race card in shielding him from any negative criticism. I see the most vocal supporters of Obama, say things like: “They are afraid of letting a black man win”. Which of course is totally untrue.

The race issue is just there, out in the open, there for everyone to see, and because of this no one really has to bring it up. I think it is a brilliant strategy, letting others use the race card to defend Obama on everything from lack of experience, to “God DAMN America”.

I was thinking about this whole race thing last night, and I am a mixed race like Obama. My father was white, and my mother is Mexican. What does that make me? I have no clear identifiable race to belong to. Neither does Obama. Calling him black, or African American is disingenuous in my opinion. He should have is race card revoked. Mine was.

[quote]
His middle name is emotionally loaded, and to say “Barack Hussein Obama” in every instance as Fox has done, is cheap and unfair. It’s also blatantly transparent. There is no point in doing this.[/quote]

It just a middle name. Seriously. I mean, if it is so transparant, and people detect the bullshit immediately, then why is it such a big deal? Barack Hussein Obama. So what?

[quote]
But your original claim was that no one dares attack Obama for fear of being labeled racist, in the midst of a post where you attack him. Obama has been attacked as any politician is, by the Clintons and their campain, by columnists, by Right wing radio – everywhere. What universe are you in? How could you possibly be so clueless as to say “no one dares attack Obama” ?[/quote]
I don’t hear attacks on Obama, they are all attacks on the democrat party, and the Hillary campaign, attacking Obama. When one person says something, the media makes a big deal out of it. Like when Bubba said that blacks in South Carolina will always vote for the black candidate, and the headline the next day was: “Bill Clinton calls Barack Obama a N****r!” Seriously. The damn media should just stay out of this whole election…

[quote]
This irrelevant bullshit has been plastered all over the media. What are you talking about? I have seen it in tabloid covers, magazines and it has been on TV’s in stores everywhere I go.[/quote]

It is NOT irrelevant. It is not bullshit. Obama wants to be the president of the country that his pastor obviously hates. You don’t associate with people who say things like “God DAMN America” if you want to be the president of America. It doesn’t work that way in the real world.

Obama has been going to this man’s church for 20 years, listening to “God DAMN America”. If I were at church, and the pastor stood up and said “God DAMN America”, I would be horrified. I would have got up and walked out, never to return.

This is totally relevant, and totally appropriate to bring to the public’s attention.

39

[quote]100meters wrote:

Again Obama wasn’t there for any of these crazy sermons, and one would think the minister knew that…
[/quote]

Those crazy sermons were being offered for sale by the Church.

So, how different do you think they were from the sermons that Obama attended?

Do you think the Church only offered a set of Pastors Gone Wild videos?

40

[quote]sherekahn wrote:
In my opinion, the 12 billion dollars a month we are estimated to be spending on Iraq may turn out to be chump change compared to what it costs us to get out. Wait till a few more people like Chavez and Ahmadinejad start selling oil for euros instead of dollars and we’ll find out what a weak dollar really is.[/quote]

The money the US has spent on turning Iraq into terror-land had major effects on the downward spiral the dollar is in. People trade oil in dollars because it is seen as a stable currency. Nowadays, it is threatening to sink everyone who remains loyal to it. The Saudis themselves seem to be distancing themselves from it.

A few months back, and for the first time ever, Ryad refused to cut interest rates along with the American Federal Reserve. Even South Korea is dumping dollar investments.

Meanwhile, what do you do? You continue to alienate Russia by going forward with the Eastern Europe bases plan (which you had to bribe the Polish for). You drove the dollar down and oil up by invading Iraq, which directly benefits Tehran. Plus, you keep treating Latin America with disdain and foster conflicts down there.

I’ll laugh my ass off the day the Iraqis realize they have no choice but to dump the dollar.