Obama's Pastor

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
621

[quote]pittbulll wrote:
100meters wrote:
pittbulll wrote:
BostonBarrister wrote:
pittbulll wrote:

It is feasible to go to church for political gain, I agree. But to make the statement that Barrack only goes to church for political gain is indefensible.

I think you need to look up “indefensible” - I already defended it.

ADDENDUM: In my sarcasm I forgot to note that you are overstating my argument - I didn’t say “only”.

Adj. 1. indefensible - (of theories etc) incapable of being defended or justified
untenable
unreasonable - not reasonable; not showing good judgment

You may have tried to defend your assertion, but to defend it you must state you�??re reasoning for making the statement…

If I quoted you saying you said (only) I apologize, but for you to justify such a statement you would have to have first hand knowledge, or even an author that has heard him say, I only go to church because it is good for my career. That is why I say it is indefensible. You may suspect it but you have to prove it.

Zap has already proven that Obama is a fraud, because he used a line suggested to him by his national co-chair. Obviously if he would use something a friend told him to use in a speech, then he clearly only went to Trinity for political gain. Most of the other members of the Trinity congregation also hope to run for president someday too.

Also his minister said some things with a scary tone. That means you can ignore anything Obama has ever said or will say…

so it’s not really that indefensible.

I doubt any one in this thread ,has said somthing that has not been said before. Does that make all of us frauds ?

[/quote]

By Zap’s logic, yes.

(this excludes me and rainjack of course)

622

Seems like a good place to highlight some typical Olbermann hypocrisy, on Ferraro and Wright (separately) - this is amusing because it is so brazen, given the timing:

http://www.olbermannwatch.com/archives/2008/03/olbermann_great.php

623

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
new2training wrote:
You are also free to be judged on your opinions and associations.

Do my opinions and associations make me less capable of doing my job?[/quote]

Yes, opinions and associations can certainly indicate that someone is not cut out for a certain job.

Whether Obama’s do or not will be decided in November it seems.

624

[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:

pittbulll wrote:

It is feasible to go to church for political gain, I agree. But to make the statement that Barrack only goes to church for political gain is indefensible.

BostonBarrister wrote:
I think you need to look up “indefensible” - I already defended it.

ADDENDUM: In my sarcasm I forgot to note that you are overstating my argument - I didn’t say “only”.

pittbulll wrote:

Adj. 1. indefensible - (of theories etc) incapable of being defended or justified
untenable
unreasonable - not reasonable; not showing good judgment

You may have tried to defend your assertion, but to defend it you must state you�??re reasoning for making the statement…

If I quoted you saying you said (only) I apologize, but for you to justify such a statement you would have to have first hand knowledge, or even an author that has heard him say, I only go to church because it is good for my career. That is why I say it is indefensible. You may suspect it but you have to prove it.

I stated pretty clearly what my supposition rested upon. I also already said that my point wasn’t that he “only” went to church because it was good for his career. My point was that I think he used the church to further his political career and based his decision to affiliate with the church largely on a political calculation. This isn’t a court of law, and I don’t need to prove my assertion beyond a reasonable doubt. That’s my opinion because I think it’s more likely than not, and I’m cynical about him because he’s a politician.

But just for you, here’s an excerpt from and article in Reason referencing Barack’s first memoir, Dreams of my Father:

[i]When Barack Obama chose to join the congregation of Trinity United Church of Christ back in 1987, his decision was partly spiritual, partly calculated. As Obama tells it in his 1995 autobiography Dreams from My Father, he was seeking two things. He was seeking salvation. He was also seeking a secure perch in the volcanic politics of black Chicago. In his interview with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama spoke plainly about his political concerns and Wright spoke back in his own language. “I’ll try to help you if I can,” Wright said. “But you should know that having us involved in your effort isn’t necessarily a feather in your cap. Some of my fellow clergy don’t appreciate what we’re about. They feel like we’re too radical. Others, we ain’t radical enough.”

Wright was not talking about his rhetoric that has since become the stuff of heavy cable rotation. Wright was talking about the church’s flashiness and reputation for a more upper crust following in the black community. But Wright assured Obama that the church had a real presence in Chicago’s South Side and that its “Black Value System,” which Obama read that day, revealed the church’s goals: To keep blacks in the community and to keep them from scattering to the suburbs. “While it is permissible to chase ‘middle-incomeness’ with all our might,” reads the statement, “we must avoid the third separation method�??the psychological entrapment of Black ‘middleclassness.’” Here were the makings of a political base.
[/i]

The author makes a different conclusion than I did, and you’re free to do the same. But my view is defended.
[/quote]

I think the point is �??I think �??You have the right to make assertions, but you state them as fact, with no means proving your point. I am sure Obama got some benefit from belonging to the church, but to make a 20 year commitment to a fraud may show anything, but certainly not the lack of commitment.

625

This is wrong on at least two counts. Firstly, I have always couched it as my opinion, or what I think, as opposed to a fact. It would be pretty silly of me to say that I can as fact say exactly why someone did something. The first time I made the assertion to you was in a post on page 15 of this thread, made on 03-18-2008, 06:10 PM.

The quote:

[i]This avoids the point that this is what he’s teaching now (or was, until he retired in the last year or so), and what he taught 20 years ago. The objectionable parts of what he has said are central ideas - and not just central to him, but central to the whole claimed point of the relationship, which is the religious theology. It’s what he said - not just the way he said it. And it was the underlying theological background from the sources he cited.

I still think it’s likely Obama is insincere about his religion, and joined this church as part of some political positioning.[/i] (bolding added).

Immediately above, I describe it as a “supposition”.

You can go back and re-read the ones in between.

The other way in which you’re incorrect is that I defended it before, and above.

626

[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:

pittbulll wrote:

It is feasible to go to church for political gain, I agree. But to make the statement that Barrack only goes to church for political gain is indefensible.

BostonBarrister wrote:
I think you need to look up “indefensible” - I already defended it.

ADDENDUM: In my sarcasm I forgot to note that you are overstating my argument - I didn’t say “only”.

pittbulll wrote:

Adj. 1. indefensible - (of theories etc) incapable of being defended or justified
untenable
unreasonable - not reasonable; not showing good judgment

You may have tried to defend your assertion, but to defend it you must state you�??re reasoning for making the statement…

If I quoted you saying you said (only) I apologize, but for you to justify such a statement you would have to have first hand knowledge, or even an author that has heard him say, I only go to church because it is good for my career. That is why I say it is indefensible. You may suspect it but you have to prove it.

BostonBarrister wrote:

I stated pretty clearly what my supposition rested upon. I also already said that my point wasn’t that he “only” went to church because it was good for his career. My point was that I think he used the church to further his political career and based his decision to affiliate with the church largely on a political calculation. This isn’t a court of law, and I don’t need to prove my assertion beyond a reasonable doubt. That’s my opinion because I think it’s more likely than not, and I’m cynical about him because he’s a politician.

But just for you, here’s an excerpt from and article in Reason referencing Barack’s first memoir, Dreams of my Father:

[i]When Barack Obama chose to join the congregation of Trinity United Church of Christ back in 1987, his decision was partly spiritual, partly calculated. As Obama tells it in his 1995 autobiography Dreams from My Father, he was seeking two things. He was seeking salvation. He was also seeking a secure perch in the volcanic politics of black Chicago. In his interview with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama spoke plainly about his political concerns and Wright spoke back in his own language. “I’ll try to help you if I can,” Wright said. “But you should know that having us involved in your effort isn’t necessarily a feather in your cap. Some of my fellow clergy don’t appreciate what we’re about. They feel like we’re too radical. Others, we ain’t radical enough.”

Wright was not talking about his rhetoric that has since become the stuff of heavy cable rotation. Wright was talking about the church’s flashiness and reputation for a more upper crust following in the black community. But Wright assured Obama that the church had a real presence in Chicago’s South Side and that its “Black Value System,” which Obama read that day, revealed the church’s goals: To keep blacks in the community and to keep them from scattering to the suburbs. “While it is permissible to chase ‘middle-incomeness’ with all our might,” reads the statement, “we must avoid the third separation method�??the psychological entrapment of Black ‘middleclassness.’” Here were the makings of a political base.
[/i]

The author makes a different conclusion than I did, and you’re free to do the same. But my view is defended.

pittbulll wrote:

I think the point is �??I think �??You have the right to make assertions, but you state them as fact, with no means proving your point. I am sure Obama got some benefit from belonging to the church, but to make a 20 year commitment to a fraud may show anything, but certainly not the lack of commitment.

This is wrong on at least two counts. Firstly, I have always couched it as my opinion, or what I think, as opposed to a fact. It would be pretty silly of me to say that I can as fact say exactly why someone did something. The first time I made the assertion to you was in a post on page 15 of this thread, made on 03-18-2008, 06:10 PM.

The quote:

[i]This avoids the point that this is what he’s teaching now (or was, until he retired in the last year or so), and what he taught 20 years ago. The objectionable parts of what he has said are central ideas - and not just central to him, but central to the whole claimed point of the relationship, which is the religious theology. It’s what he said - not just the way he said it. And it was the underlying theological background from the sources he cited.

I still think it’s likely Obama is insincere about his religion, and joined this church as part of some political positioning.[/i] (bolding added).

Immediately above, I describe it as a “supposition”.

You can go back and re-read the ones in between.

The other way in which you’re incorrect is that I defended it before, and above.[/quote]

I understand we are not in a court of law, but to make statements that are so tenuous seems unfair.

627

[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
Seems like a good place to highlight some typical Olbermann hypocrisy, on Ferraro and Wright (separately) - this is amusing because it is so brazen, given the timing:

http://www.olbermannwatch.com/archives/2008/03/olbermann_great.php [/quote]

Classic.

628

So now it’s bad that I do couch it as an opinion instead of a fact? What are you trying to say?

629

Christopher Hitchens on the Obama/Wright problem (I note in passing that Hitchens is a militant atheist):

(Internal links omitted)

[i]Blind FaithThe statements of clergymen like Jeremiah Wright aren’t controversial and incendiary; they’re wicked and stupid.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, March 24, 2008, at 12:09 PM ET

It’s been more than a month since I began warning Sen. Barack Obama that he would become answerable for his revolting choice of a family priest. But never mind that; the astonishing thing is that it’s at least 11 months since he himself has known precisely the same thing. “If Barack gets past the primary,” said the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to the New York Times in April of last year, “he might have to publicly distance himself from me. I said it to Barack personally, and he said yeah, that might have to happen.” Pause just for a moment, if only to admire the sheer calculating self-confidence of this. Sen. Obama has long known perfectly well, in other words, that he’d one day have to put some daylight between himself and a bigmouth Farrakhan fan. But he felt he needed his South Side Chicago “base” in the meantime. So he coldly decided to double-cross that bridge when he came to it. And now we are all supposed to marvel at the silky success of the maneuver.

You often hear it said, of some political or other opportunist, that he would sell his own grandmother if it would suit his interests. But you seldom, if ever, see this notorious transaction actually being performed, which is why I am slightly surprised that Obama got away with it so easily. (Yet why do I say I am surprised? He still gets away with absolutely everything.)

Looking for a moral equivalent to a professional demagogue who thinks that AIDS and drugs are the result of a conspiracy by the white man, Obama settled on an 85-year-old lady named Madelyn Dunham, who spent a good deal of her youth helping to raise him and who now lives alone and unwell in a condo in Honolulu. It would be interesting to know whether her charismatic grandson made her aware that he was about to touch her with his grace and make her famous in this way. By sheer good fortune, she, too, could be a part of it all and serve her turn in the great enhancement.

This flabbergasting process, made up of glibness and ruthlessness in equal proportions, rolls on unstoppably with a phalanx of reporters and men of the cloth as its accomplices. Look at the accepted choice of words for the ravings of Jeremiah Wright: controversial, incendiary, inflammatory. These are adjectives that might have been�??and were�??applied to many eloquent speakers of the early civil rights movement. (In the Washington Post, for Good Friday last, the liberal Catholic apologist E.J. Dionne lamely attempted to stretch this very comparison.) But is it “inflammatory” to say that AIDS and drugs are wrecking the black community because the white power structure wishes it? No. Nor is it “controversial.” It is wicked and stupid and false to say such a thing. And it not unimportantly negates everything that Obama says he stands for by way of advocating dignity and responsibility over the sick cults of paranoia and victimhood.

That same supposed message of his is also contradicted in a different way by trying to put Geraldine Ferraro on all fours with a thug like Obama’s family “pastor.” Ferraro may have sounded sour when she asserted that there can be political advantages to being black in the United States�??and she said the selfsame thing about Jesse Jackson in 1984�??but it’s perfectly arguable that what she said is, in fact, true, and even if it isn’t true, it’s absurd to try and classify it as a racist remark. No doubt Obama’s slick people were looking for a revenge for Samantha Power (who, incidentally, ought never to have been let go for the useful and indeed audacious truths that she uttered in Britain), but their news-cycle solution was to cover their own queasy cowardice in that case by feigning outrage in the Ferraro matter. The consequence, which you can already feel, is an inchoate resentment among many white voters who are damned if they will be called bigots by a man who associates with Jeremiah Wright. So here we go with all that again. And this is the fresh, clean, new post-racial politics?

Now, by way of which vent or orifice is this venom creeping back into our national bloodstream? Where is hatred and tribalism and ignorance most commonly incubated, and from which platform is it most commonly yelled? If you answered “the churches” and “the pulpits,” you got both answers right. The Ku Klux Klan (originally a Protestant identity movement, as many people prefer to forget) and the Nation of Islam (a black sectarian mutation of Quranic teaching) may be weak these days, but bigotry of all sorts is freely available, and openly inculcated into children, by any otherwise unemployable dirtbag who can perform the easy feat of putting Reverend in front of his name. And this clerical vileness has now reached the point of disfiguring the campaigns of both leading candidates for our presidency. If you think Jeremiah Wright is gruesome, wait until you get a load of the next Chicago “Reverend,” one James Meeks, another South Side horror show with a special sideline in the baiting of homosexuals. He, too, has been an Obama supporter, and his church has been an occasional recipient of Obama’s patronage. And perhaps he, too, can hope to be called “controversial” for his use of the term house nigger to describe those he doesn’t like and for his view that it was “the Hollywood Jews” who brought us Brokeback Mountain. Meanwhile, the Republican nominee adorns himself with two further reverends: one named John Hagee, who thinks that the pope is the Antichrist, and another named Rod Parsley, who has declared that the United States has a mission to obliterate Islam. Is it conceivable that such repellent dolts would be allowed into public life if they were not in tax-free clerical garb? How true it is that religion poisons everything.

And what a shame. I assume you all have your copies of The Audacity of Hope in paperback breviary form. If you turn to the chapter entitled “Faith,” beginning on Page 195, and read as far as Page 208, I think that even if you don’t concur with my reading, you may suspect that I am onto something. In these pages, Sen. Obama is telling us that he doesn’t really have any profound religious belief, but that in his early Chicago days he felt he needed to acquire some spiritual “street cred.” The most excruciatingly embarrassing endorsement of this same viewpoint came last week from Abigail Thernstrom at National Review Online. Overcome by “the speech” that the divine one had given in Philadelphia, she urged us to be understanding. “Obama’s description of the parishioners in his church gave white listeners a glimpse of a world of faith (with ‘raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor �?� dancing, clapping, screaming, and shouting’) that has been the primary means of black survival and uplift.” A glimpse, huh? What the hell next? A tribute to the African-American sense of rhythm?

To have accepted Obama’s smooth apologetics is to have lowered one’s own pre-existing standards for what might constitute a post-racial or a post-racist future. It is to have put that quite sober and realistic hope, meanwhile, into untrustworthy and unscrupulous hands. And it is to have done this, furthermore, in the service of blind faith. Mark my words: This disappointment is only the first of many that are still to come.[/i]

630

[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
Christopher Hitchens on the Obama/Wright problem (I note in passing that Hitchens is a militant atheist):

(Internal links omitted)

[i]Blind FaithThe statements of clergymen like Jeremiah Wright aren’t controversial and incendiary; they’re wicked and stupid.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, March 24, 2008, at 12:09 PM ET

It’s been more than a month since I began warning Sen. Barack Obama that he would become answerable for his revolting choice of a family priest. But never mind that; the astonishing thing is that it’s at least 11 months since he himself has known precisely the same thing. “If Barack gets past the primary,” said the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to the New York Times in April of last year, “he might have to publicly distance himself from me. I said it to Barack personally, and he said yeah, that might have to happen.” Pause just for a moment, if only to admire the sheer calculating self-confidence of this. Sen. Obama has long known perfectly well, in other words, that he’d one day have to put some daylight between himself and a bigmouth Farrakhan fan. But he felt he needed his South Side Chicago “base” in the meantime. So he coldly decided to double-cross that bridge when he came to it. And now we are all supposed to marvel at the silky success of the maneuver.

You often hear it said, of some political or other opportunist, that he would sell his own grandmother if it would suit his interests. But you seldom, if ever, see this notorious transaction actually being performed, which is why I am slightly surprised that Obama got away with it so easily. (Yet why do I say I am surprised? He still gets away with absolutely everything.)…[/i][/quote]

He gets it.

631

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
BostonBarrister wrote:
Christopher Hitchens on the Obama/Wright problem (I note in passing that Hitchens is a militant atheist):

(Internal links omitted)

[i]Blind FaithThe statements of clergymen like Jeremiah Wright aren’t controversial and incendiary; they’re wicked and stupid.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, March 24, 2008, at 12:09 PM ET

It’s been more than a month since I began warning Sen. Barack Obama that he would become answerable for his revolting choice of a family priest. But never mind that; the astonishing thing is that it’s at least 11 months since he himself has known precisely the same thing. “If Barack gets past the primary,” said the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to the New York Times in April of last year, “he might have to publicly distance himself from me. I said it to Barack personally, and he said yeah, that might have to happen.” Pause just for a moment, if only to admire the sheer calculating self-confidence of this. Sen. Obama has long known perfectly well, in other words, that he’d one day have to put some daylight between himself and a bigmouth Farrakhan fan. But he felt he needed his South Side Chicago “base” in the meantime. So he coldly decided to double-cross that bridge when he came to it. And now we are all supposed to marvel at the silky success of the maneuver.

You often hear it said, of some political or other opportunist, that he would sell his own grandmother if it would suit his interests. But you seldom, if ever, see this notorious transaction actually being performed, which is why I am slightly surprised that Obama got away with it so easily. (Yet why do I say I am surprised? He still gets away with absolutely everything.)…[/i]

He gets it.[/quote]
yeah he really got away with, hardly covered at all…

632

[quote]100meters wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
BostonBarrister wrote:
Christopher Hitchens on the Obama/Wright problem (I note in passing that Hitchens is a militant atheist):

(Internal links omitted)

[i]Blind FaithThe statements of clergymen like Jeremiah Wright aren’t controversial and incendiary; they’re wicked and stupid.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, March 24, 2008, at 12:09 PM ET

It’s been more than a month since I began warning Sen. Barack Obama that he would become answerable for his revolting choice of a family priest. But never mind that; the astonishing thing is that it’s at least 11 months since he himself has known precisely the same thing. “If Barack gets past the primary,” said the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to the New York Times in April of last year, “he might have to publicly distance himself from me. I said it to Barack personally, and he said yeah, that might have to happen.” Pause just for a moment, if only to admire the sheer calculating self-confidence of this. Sen. Obama has long known perfectly well, in other words, that he’d one day have to put some daylight between himself and a bigmouth Farrakhan fan. But he felt he needed his South Side Chicago “base” in the meantime. So he coldly decided to double-cross that bridge when he came to it. And now we are all supposed to marvel at the silky success of the maneuver.

You often hear it said, of some political or other opportunist, that he would sell his own grandmother if it would suit his interests. But you seldom, if ever, see this notorious transaction actually being performed, which is why I am slightly surprised that Obama got away with it so easily. (Yet why do I say I am surprised? He still gets away with absolutely everything.)…[/i]

He gets it.
yeah he really got away with, hardly covered at all…
[/quote]

Obama’s speech was “a gift to the country”. Did you hear his passport file was breached? Hillary Clinton wasn’t shot at?

633

Just when the story was losing a little steam, Hillary piles on:

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/breaking/s_558930.html

634

Thomas Sowell weighs in:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/03/post_25.html

[i] The Audacity of Rhetoric
By Thomas Sowell

It is painful to watch defenders of Barack Obama tying themselves into knots trying to evade the obvious.

Some are saying that Senator Obama cannot be held responsible for what his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, said. In their version of events, Barack Obama just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time – and a bunch of mean-spirited people are trying to make something out of it.

It makes a good story, but it won’t stand up under scrutiny.

Barack Obama’s own account of his life shows that he consciously sought out people on the far left fringe. In college, “I chose my friends carefully,” he said in his first book, “Dreams From My Father.”

These friends included “Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk rock performance poets” – in Obama’s own words – as well as the “more politically active black students.” He later visited a former member of the terrorist Weatherman underground, who endorsed him when he ran for state senator.

Obama didn’t just happen to encounter Jeremiah Wright, who just happened to say some way out things. Jeremiah Wright is in the same mold as the kinds of people Barack Obama began seeking out in college – members of the left, anti-American counter-culture.

In Shelby Steele’s brilliantly insightful book about Barack Obama – “A Bound Man” – it is painfully clear that Obama was one of those people seeking a racial identity that he had never really experienced in growing up in a white world. He was trying to become a convert to blackness, as it were – and, like many converts, he went overboard.

Nor has Obama changed in recent years. His voting record in the U.S. Senate is the furthest left of any Senator. There is a remarkable consistency in what Barack Obama has done over the years, despite inconsistencies in what he says.

The irony is that Obama’s sudden rise politically to the level of being the leading contender for his party’s presidential nomination has required him to project an entirely different persona, that of a post-racial leader who can heal divisiveness and bring us all together.

The ease with which he has accomplished this chameleon-like change, and entranced both white and black Democrats, is a tribute to the man’s talent and a warning about his reliability.

There is no evidence that Obama ever sought to educate himself on the views of people on the other end of the political spectrum, much less reach out to them. He reached out from the left to the far left. That’s bringing us all together?

Is “divisiveness” defined as disagreeing with the agenda of the left? Who on the left was ever called divisive by Obama before that became politically necessary in order to respond to revelations about Jeremiah Wright?

One sign of Obama’s verbal virtuosity was his equating a passing comment by his grandmother – “a typical white person,” he says – with an organized campaign of public vilification of America in general and white America in particular, by Jeremiah Wright.

Since all things are the same, except for the differences, and different except for the similarities, it is always possible to make things look similar verbally, however different they are in the real world.

Among the many desperate gambits by defenders of Senator Obama and Jeremiah Wright is to say that Wright’s words have a “resonance” in the black community.

There was a time when the Ku Klux Klan’s words had a resonance among whites, not only in the South but in other states. Some people joined the KKK in order to advance their political careers. Did that make it OK? Is it all just a matter of whose ox is gored?

While many whites may be annoyed by Jeremiah Wright’s words, a year from now most of them will probably have forgotten about him. But many blacks who absorb his toxic message can still be paying for it, big-time, for decades to come.

Why should young blacks be expected to work to meet educational standards, or even behavioral standards, if they believe the message that all their problems are caused by whites, that the deck is stacked against them? That is ultimately a message of hopelessness, however much audacity it may have. [/i]

635

[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:

Why should young blacks be expected to work to meet educational standards, or even behavioral standards, if they believe the message that all their problems are caused by whites, that the deck is stacked against them? That is ultimately a message of hopelessness, however much audacity it may have. [/i][/quote]

How simplistic. I was raised being told flat out that the cards were stacked against me so that was why I had to work harder. People should lie to their children? Granted, there are far less obstacles for a kid born right now than one born in the 70’s, but because of that, the age of the individual needs to be taken into consideration. I probably would be less likely to have that same discussion with my kids on that same level because of progression in society.

Either way, the fact still stands that many have been raised with the knowledge that they will be degraded for their skin color and to claim that this is what is holding black Americans back is ludicrous. Society did a fine enough job on that all by itself.

636

[quote]Professor X wrote:

…the age of the individual needs to be taken into consideration. I probably would be less likely to have that same discussion with my kids on that same level because of progression in society.[/quote]

How would you square the above sentiment with the fact that the author you are criticizing in the rest of your post is a black man in his 70s that can tell stories of legal segregation when he went to school?

637

[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:

pittbulll wrote:

It is feasible to go to church for political gain, I agree. But to make the statement that Barrack only goes to church for political gain is indefensible.

BostonBarrister wrote:
I think you need to look up “indefensible” - I already defended it.

ADDENDUM: In my sarcasm I forgot to note that you are overstating my argument - I didn’t say “only”.

pittbulll wrote:

Adj. 1. indefensible - (of theories etc) incapable of being defended or justified
untenable
unreasonable - not reasonable; not showing good judgment

You may have tried to defend your assertion, but to defend it you must state you�??re reasoning for making the statement…

If I quoted you saying you said (only) I apologize, but for you to justify such a statement you would have to have first hand knowledge, or even an author that has heard him say, I only go to church because it is good for my career. That is why I say it is indefensible. You may suspect it but you have to prove it.

BostonBarrister wrote:

I stated pretty clearly what my supposition rested upon. I also already said that my point wasn’t that he “only” went to church because it was good for his career. My point was that I think he used the church to further his political career and based his decision to affiliate with the church largely on a political calculation. This isn’t a court of law, and I don’t need to prove my assertion beyond a reasonable doubt. That’s my opinion because I think it’s more likely than not, and I’m cynical about him because he’s a politician.

But just for you, here’s an excerpt from and article in Reason referencing Barack’s first memoir, Dreams of my Father:

[i]When Barack Obama chose to join the congregation of Trinity United Church of Christ back in 1987, his decision was partly spiritual, partly calculated. As Obama tells it in his 1995 autobiography Dreams from My Father, he was seeking two things. He was seeking salvation. He was also seeking a secure perch in the volcanic politics of black Chicago. In his interview with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama spoke plainly about his political concerns and Wright spoke back in his own language. “I’ll try to help you if I can,” Wright said. “But you should know that having us involved in your effort isn’t necessarily a feather in your cap. Some of my fellow clergy don’t appreciate what we’re about. They feel like we’re too radical. Others, we ain’t radical enough.”

Wright was not talking about his rhetoric that has since become the stuff of heavy cable rotation. Wright was talking about the church’s flashiness and reputation for a more upper crust following in the black community. But Wright assured Obama that the church had a real presence in Chicago’s South Side and that its “Black Value System,” which Obama read that day, revealed the church’s goals: To keep blacks in the community and to keep them from scattering to the suburbs. “While it is permissible to chase ‘middle-incomeness’ with all our might,” reads the statement, “we must avoid the third separation method�??the psychological entrapment of Black ‘middleclassness.’” Here were the makings of a political base.
[/i]

The author makes a different conclusion than I did, and you’re free to do the same. But my view is defended.

pittbulll wrote:

I think the point is �??I think �??You have the right to make assertions, but you state them as fact, with no means proving your point. I am sure Obama got some benefit from belonging to the church, but to make a 20 year commitment to a fraud may show anything, but certainly not the lack of commitment.

BostonBarrister wrote:

This is wrong on at least two counts. Firstly, I have always couched it as my opinion, or what I think, as opposed to a fact. It would be pretty silly of me to say that I can as fact say exactly why someone did something. The first time I made the assertion to you was in a post on page 15 of this thread, made on 03-18-2008, 06:10 PM.

The quote:

[i]This avoids the point that this is what he’s teaching now (or was, until he retired in the last year or so), and what he taught 20 years ago. The objectionable parts of what he has said are central ideas - and not just central to him, but central to the whole claimed point of the relationship, which is the religious theology. It’s what he said - not just the way he said it. And it was the underlying theological background from the sources he cited.

I still think it’s likely Obama is insincere about his religion, and joined this church as part of some political positioning.[/i] (bolding added).

Immediately above, I describe it as a “supposition”.

You can go back and re-read the ones in between.

The other way in which you’re incorrect is that I defended it before, and above.

pittbulll wrote:

I understand we are not in a court of law, but to make statements that are so tenuous seems unfair.

So now it’s bad that I do couch it as an opinion instead of a fact? What are you trying to say?
[/quote]

I assume you mean by couch as to express. I think you express your opinion as fact and then build a case on top of your opinion. I think you try to lead people in to believing your opinion with out even stating what your opinion is. I think you post way too many links. I think you muddle conservation in excessive words that do not mesh with your train of thought .I think you unnecessarily complicate issues
As far as what I mean nothing offensive I assure you.

638

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Professor X wrote:

…the age of the individual needs to be taken into consideration. I probably would be less likely to have that same discussion with my kids on that same level because of progression in society.

How would you square the above sentiment with the fact that the author you are criticizing in the rest of your post is a black man in his 70s that can tell stories of legal segregation when he went to school?

[/quote]

That he’s wrong. Why would his race matter in this instance?

Oh, right…we are all supposed to think the same.

639

I don’t think I can be offended by something that makes that little sense.

640

[quote]Professor X wrote:

That he’s wrong. Why would his race matter in this instance?

Oh, right…we are all supposed to think the same.[/quote]

You said:

Here we have a black man who lived through the kinds of discrimination you admit has been diminished with time, hence his experience is empirical rather than speculative - and just as you would be less likely to have the same discussion with your kids based on society’s “progression”, so does Sowell believe that Obama’s discussion isn’t accounting for current “progression”.

Exact same principle - Sowell is saying, “things aren’t like they used to be, I would know, and this is the wrong discussion right now”.

But, in your answer, I am reminded why I don’t look to you for intelligent responses on issues of race.

I’ll seek out others for that. Thanks for the reminder.