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Barack Obama is preparing to deliver a major address Tuesday on race, politics and unifying the country after being hounded by questions about his relationship to a pastor whose sermons have been laced with anti-American invective. In a speech whose religious significance could compare to one given in December by former GOP presidential hopeful and Mormon Mitt Romney, Obama may be forced to explain the philosophy of the 8,000-strong Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where the Democratic presidential candidate has been a congregant for 20 years. In announcing the morning address, to be delivered in Philadelphia, Obama would...

OBAMA WAS ON THE COVER OF REVEREND WRIGHT'S TRUMPET MAGAZINE (THREE TIMES) http://www.trumpetmag.com/pdf/mediakit_sept07/MediaKit2008High.pdf

Ezra Klein’s a smart guy, so I’m assuming this is a parody of liberal cluelessness rather than the real thing: "Does anyone believe a long association with Jerry Falwell's church would have done anything but help McCain in the Republican primary, and gotten Democrats tagged as anti-religion when they tried to point out Falwell's nuttiness in the general? It's fine to be a Christian extremist in America. It's fine to believe, and say publicly, that everyone who hasn't accepted Jesus Christ into their heart will roast in eternal hellfire, fine to believe that the homosexuals caused Hurricane Katrina and the...

The Huffington Post sends us this essay by Frank Schaeffer claiming that Republicans have acted hypocritically in scolding Barack Obama over Jeremiah Wright — because the GOP embraced him and his father. His father is “Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer”, which around here might combine up with a buck to buy a bag of donut holes. Schaeffer fils has repented of his conservativism — hence the appearance at HuffPo — and spends most of it spanking his dad: Take Dad’s words and put them in the mouth of Obama’s preacher (or in the mouth of any black American preacher) and...

Think it’ll have anything to do with the forces of division starting to raise their ugly heads? Barack Obama will give a major speech on “the larger issue of race in this campaign,” he told reporters in Monaca, PA just now.He was pressed there, as he has been at recent appearances, on statements by his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright.“I am going to be talking about not just Reverend Wright, but the larger issue of race in this campaign,” he said.He added that he would “talk about how some of these issues are perceived from within the black church issue for...

This is the idol that both Barack Obama --and-- Hillary Clinton both look up to! If you want to see the original just type the word "Lucifer" into Amazon's search window--GGG “Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins -- or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom -- Lucifer.” --Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals, 1971

Video clips of Obama's former spiritual adviser's most controversial remarks

I had a really good post all ready to go.  There was a video posted by the Trinity United Church of Christ, which I found on their YouTube page, of Louis Farrakhan being honored with the Jeremiah A. Wright Trumpeter award.  It's gone from YouTube.  And there was a video of disgraced Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick receiving a similar award.  It's gone from YouTube, too. But the one I'm really mad about is the one of the church's new pastor, Otis Moss III, talking about gangster rap and crack cocaine.  They pulled that one, as well.  Maybe it had something to...

One of the strangest dialogues in American political history ensued on March 15 when Fox News interviewed Obama's pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, of Chicago's Trinity Church. Wright asserted the authority of the "black liberation" theologians James Cone and Dwight Hopkins: Wright: How many of Cone's books have you read? How many of Cone's book have you read? Sean Hannity: Reverend, Reverend? (crosstalk) Wright: How many books of Cone's have you head? Hannity: I'm going to ask you this question ... Wright: How many books of Dwight Hopkins have you read? Hannity: You're very angry and defensive. I'm just...

Two of the three big news stories last week – those of Eliot Spitzer and Geraldine Ferraro -- are already fading into the dust heap of boneheaded but mostly harmless decisions by people in the public eye. But the third story, that of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, will not go away, much to the detriment of Barack Obama, his supporters, and those who have for years paraded the fiction that identity politics (whether of gender, race, or any other grouping) is a truly uniting force for the Democratic Party. Reverend Wright, who retired in February from his position as head of...

From the very start, Barack Obama's attempt to distance himself from the controversial sermonizing and policies of his pastor Jeremiah Wright has resembled someone trying to thread a needle. When asked at the Democratic debate in Cleveland about the racist Louis Farrakhan's endorsement of his candidacy, Obama's visage became strained, and his subsequent response to the question about whether he agreed with the views of Farrakhan, was measured, pained, judicious and less

Senator Barack Obama is not a Muslim, contrary to invidious rumors. But he belongs to a Christian church whose doctrine casts Jesus Christ as a "black messiah" and blacks as "the chosen people". At best, this is a radically different kind of Christianity than most Americans acknowledge; at worst it is an ethnocentric heresy. What played out last week on America's television screens was a clash of two irreconcilable cultures, the posture of "black liberation theology" and the mainstream American understanding of Christianity. Obama, who presented himself as a unifying figure, now seems rather the living embodiment of the clash.

The Early Show did its best this morning to help Barack Obama climb out of the hole he's dug for himself with his close association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. In a set-up segment, CBS's Dean Reynolds rhetorically asked: "the question is whether the rhetoric is so remarkable, because in African-American churches pastors often seek to rouse their congregants to self-reliance by speaking harshly about the country's troubled racial past and the need to overcome it." Nice try, but how does accusing the US government of introducing AIDS and giving black people drugs equate to a call for self-reliance? Reynolds...

The eruption of outrage, shock and fear that is flowing over Barack Obama’s campaign like hot lava because his pastor has preached some strident sermons tells us one thing for certain: Many white people don’t know black people at all. If they did, they would know that Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago is hardly the only black minister who uses the pulpit to rant against racial duplicity and injustice. The black church has always been the place for letting our hair down and speaking our peace -- a safe haven from the criminations outside. It’s how and why the black...

Obama's War by Peter Wehner Throughout his dramatic campaign to win his party’s nomination for the presidency, Senator Barack Obama has tended to ignore the specifics of policy in favor of the generalities of emotion, centering his appeal to voters on vague promises of “change” and “unity.” But on one issue, above all others, Obama has remained fixated from the campaign’s first moment, and that is the war in Iraq. By Obama’s own account, the consistency of his stand on this war demonstrates more than anything else that he, a one-term United States Senator who arrived in Washington in 2005...

Clarification: The Obama campaign has told members of the press that Senator Obama was not in church on the day cited, July 22, because he had a speech he gave in Miami at 1:30 PM. Our writer, Jim Davis, says he attended several services at Senator Obama's church during the month of July, including July 22. The church holds services three times every Sunday at 7:30 and 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. Central time. While both the early morning and evening service allowed Sen. Obama to attend the service and still give a speech in Miami, Mr. Davis stands by...

Poll: Fifty-Six Percent Say Wright Makes Them "Less Likely" To Vote For Obama By Greg Sargent - March 17, 2008, 11:55AM If the numbers in this new Rasmussen poll are an accurate reflection of the electorate's sentiments, it would seem that Obama has not sufficiently distanced himself from his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, despite an aggressive media push on his part to do just that: Most voters, 56%, said Wright’s comments made them less likely to vote for Obama. That figure includes 44% of Democrats. Just 11% of voters say they are more likely to vote for Obama because of Wright’s...

Historic Contest Verges On Knockdown-Dragout Racial Brawl By JONATHAN TILOVE   Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., (l), with his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. (Courtesy Trinity United Church of Christ)     WASHINGTON — In one corner we have Barack Obama, an African-American senator whose candidacy blossomed when white people saw him as capable of transcending America's divisions _ racial and otherwise. In the other corner is Hillary Clinton, senator and former first lady, who began the drive for the White House even more popular with black voters than Obama.It was clear early...

God's Judgement of White America (The Chickens Come Home to Roost) Malcolm X, edited by Imam Benjamin Karim December 4 , 1963 note - this speech was delivered before Malcolm left the Nation of Islam and accepted true Islam -- so his views in this speech do not reflect his own or those he held near the end of his life. This speech is sometimes called "The Chickens Come Home To Roost," because of an answer Malcolm X gave in response to a question following the speech. The question concerned the late President John Kennedy. It was Malcolm X's answer,...

The Early Show did its best this morning to help Barack Obama dig out of the hole he's dug for himself with his close association with Jeremiah Wright. In a set-up segment, CBS's Dean Reynolds rhetorically asked: "the question is whether the rhetoric is so remarkable, because in African-American churches pastors often seek to rouse their congregants to self-reliance by speaking harshly about the country's troubled racial past and the need to overcome it." Nice try, but how does accusing the US government of introducing AIDS and giving black people drugs equate to a call for self-reliance? Reynolds concluded by...

I recently found this long review of Obama’s first book, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. It was written a year ago by Steve Sailer and its a review of a book in which much is revealed on what makes Obama tick, and why he would be so dangerous as President of our country: Why haven’t many grasped the book’s essence? First, Obama’s elegant, carefully wrought prose style makes Dreams a frustratingly slow read, which may explain why the book was remaindered in 1995, and why so few of the many who have purchased it following...

It was the liberals who spearheaded the civil rights movement. It was the progressives who preached freedom and equality, who challenged tradition, who demanded change and fair treatment. They were the ones who changed the flawed way Americans used to believe. And thanks to them, and the little bit of good within every one of us, racism in the traditional sense – laws denying blacks equal rights as whites – is dead. And yet people like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright Jr. (Barack Obama’s pastor) still seem to be thriving on their incessant and irresponsible patterns of screaming...

Seventy-three percent (73%) of voters say that Wright’s comments are racially divisive. That opinion is held by 77% of White voters and 58% of African-American voters. Most voters, 56%, said Wright’s comments made them less likely to vote for Obama. That figure includes 44% of Democrats. Just 11% of voters say they are more likely to vote for Obama because of Wright’s comments. However, among African-Americans, 29% said Wright’s comments made them more likely to support Obama. Just 18% said the opposite while 50% said Wright’s comments would have no impact. Overall, voters are evenly divided as to whether Obama...

Obama church responds in 9/11 row The church attended by US presidential hopeful Barack Obama has dismissed criticism of its senior pastor over comments he made on race and US policy. Reverend Jeremiah Wright said in 2001 that the 9/11 attacks were like "chickens coming home to roost". After the remarks resurfaced Mr Obama denounced them as "incendiary" and "completely inexcusable". But now the church says the attacks on Rev Wright have been made by "external forces" that want to "vilify us". In a statement released on Sunday, the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago compared the criticism to...

An (almost) airtight alibi, refuting the charge that he was present in church and nodding along last summer when Wright indicted the “United States of White America.” So much for Newsmax’s credibility. People were ripping on me in the comments to the Juan Williams post for having called the Messiah a shrewd politician but just look at the game he’s got us playing here — trying to place him physically at the scene of any single sermon at a church he patronized for 20 years, as if absent that evidence we might have to believe his feigned ignorance. Newsmax’s info...

The videos of Barack Obama's pastor of 20 years, Jeremiah Wright, surpass Saturday Night Live parodies. As his congregants are hopping up and down like hyperactive children and fellow pastors are clapping him on the back, a sashaying Wright allows himself a range of rancid and conspiratorial musings that might even give Cynthia McKinney pause. The feverish racism reaches its high point of buffoonishness when Wright accuses the so-called first black president, Bill Clinton, of "riding dirty," exploiting the black community as he exploited Monica Lewinsky. Under pressure, Obama is crying uncle, literally. He is casting Wright as the unhinged...

No apologies. Instead, they've gone with the "look over there!" approach. “AN ATTACK ON OUR SENIOR PASTOR AND THE HISTORY OF THE AFRICAN AMERICAN CHURCH”: Chicago, Ill. (March 15, 2008 ) — Nearly three weeks before the 40th commemorative anniversary of the murder of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Reverend Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.’s character is being assassinated in the public sphere because he has preached a social gospel on behalf of oppressed women, children and men in America and around the globe. This does not even purport to address the issue. No one is disturbed...

A black Chicago church attended by Democrat presidential frontrunner Barack Obama has removed from the "About Us" page of its website an entire section outlining a radical belief system for blacks, WND has learned. Trinity United Church of Christ, which describes itself as "unashamedly black," drew fire last week after inflammatory sermons by its senior pastor were broadcast on cable TV news. Obama responded he was shocked to hear the profane anti-American and anti-white rhetoric delivered by his Rev. Jeremiah Wright and strongly objected to it. While critics say the sermons reflect militantly segregationist views, Obama says they were taken...

Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago will receive Brite Divinity School's Black Church Leader Award during the weekend activities. Black Church events centered in Metroplex weekend of March 28 Fort Worth, TX 3/13/2008 Black church scholars, advocates, preachers, churchgoers and students are expected to convene in the Metroplex March 28-29 for a series of events honoring the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as the 40th anniversary of his death approaches. The Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright (recently retired from Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago where he was pastor to presidential hopeful Barack Obama and t.v. personality Oprah...

http://boortz.com/nuze/index.html OBAMA AND THE PASTOR Trite? Perhaps so ... cliché? You bet. True? Absolutely. You are known by the company you keep ... especially if you happen to be in politics. There has been talk of Obama's pastor, Jeremiah Wright, for many months now. We've all heard of the frankly un-American rants that the "Rev." Wright has delivered from the pulpit of Obama's United Church of Christ. Obama had always been able to distance himself from Wright's outrageous and bigoted remarks. Obama would tell us that he wasn't there when the sermons were delivered .. and the media seemed willing...

Senator Barack Obama is not a Muslim, contrary to invidious rumors. But he belongs to a Christian church whose doctrine casts Jesus Christ as a "black messiah" and blacks as "the chosen people". At best, this is a radically different kind of Christianity than most Americans acknowledge; at worst it is an ethnocentric heresy. What played out last week on America's television screens was a clash of two irreconcilable cultures, the posture of "black liberation theology" and the mainstream American understanding of Christianity. Obama, who presented himself as a unifying figure, now seems rather the living embodiment of the clash.

Insiders with Barack Obama's presidential campaign acknowledged yesterday that they have been worried for more than a year about the damage his lightning rod of a spiritual adviser would inflict on Obama's bid for the White House. Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, said that Rev. Jeremiah Wright was yanked from Obama's official campaign-announcement lineup in January 2007 because of concerns that he would harm the candidate's message. "There was no doubt that there was controversy surrounding him," Axelrod said. "We did not want to . . . make him a target and make him a distraction on the day that...

Last month, Barack Obama defended a speech he gave, one that resulted in an accusation by Hillary Clinton that he had plagiarized an almost identical speech previously given by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick. The thrust of the speech, in which he repeated famous phrases of speeches given by Presidents John F. Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt, Rev. Martin Luther King and others, was that words do matter. And he is absolutely correct. Obama was baptized in Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s Chicago-based Trinity United Church of Christ. Wright has been Obama’s and his wife’s minister and spiritual advisor for 20 years. He has...

An avid reader, I’ve learned much about individualism and freedom by reading about what life is like when these are taken away from groups of people. I recently finished The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, which tells the story about being a Hazara minority in Afghanistan, and provides insight into the nature of racism and a glimpse of how it might feel as the recipient of that type of evil. For those interested, there are many non-fiction writings available which document the iniquity of racism in this world, for example, Marci Nafziger’s research paper which discusses the extreme injustice that...

The columnist Michael Kinsley once defined a "gaffe" as an occasion when a politician accidentally tells the truth. In our age of political correctness, some would place Geraldine Ferraro's remarks into this category. Long known for speaking candidly, Ferraro recently remarked that "if Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position." There's a molecule of truth in this. Obama's appeal is that he is an African American who doesn't sound one bit like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. Blacks are inspired to see one of their own have a serious shot at the presidency. Whites are...

WASHINGTON -- Hoping to prod Barack Obama into appearing on its show, "Fox News Sunday" launched the "Obama Watch," a weekly update on the number of days the Democratic presidential candidate has failed to appear on the program. Host Chris Wallace said Sunday that Obama promised him in March 2006 that he would appear, but the Illinois senator has since demurred. Since then, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama's rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, has been a guest at least twice since then, and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the likely Republican nominee for president, has shown up at...

Jeremiah Wright’s fiery message from December has been played on all the major networks during the last few days. Many have called the sermon racist. Others have said that it violated 501(c)3 codes for political involvement. Presidential frontrunner, Barack Obama, has already distanced himself from the sermon - using the analogy of an embarrassing relative. As an African American minister who has spent over 25 years attempting to promote racial unity, I am disappointed with Pastor Wright’s presentation of the gospel. His message unhealthily taps into the deep sense of rejection and victimization that many blacks have experienced over the...

-- snip --THE WRIGHT CONTROVERSY threatens to cement Obama's reputation as a stealth radical, cooler in his temperament than overt radicals but equally committed to their goals. It is not surprising to hear Obama casually talk on the campaign trail about confiscating the profits of oil companies given that Wright's "liberation theology," which is Marxist in its premises, has shaped his worldview for over a generation. And why would Americans want to turn their country over to a candidate who attends a straightforwardly separatist church that views America with suspicion if not contempt?-- snip --One reason to doubt Obama's sudden...

One set of facts, two diametrically different NYT op-eds addressing it this morning. The fact: that Barack Obama is backpedaling as fast as he can away from the hateful anti-American rhetoric of Jeremiah Wright. The op-eds: Bill Kristol's, offering a dose of sobering realism about Obama's feet that if not of clay, then are certainly those of a garden-variety politician. And then there's Roger Cohen's, the Obama fan who, in a bit of breathtaking revisionism, would explain away Barack's moonwalk on the theory the candidate has simply "grown beyond" the mettlesome minister. And Cohen's just fine with that. Compare and...

There have been some rumors floating around the internet suggesting I engaged in illegal drug use when I was a professional guitar player in the late1980s and early 1990s. I want to take the time to address these rumors because they are grossly inaccurate and unfair. To be specific, they are grossly inaccurate and unfair because they grossly underestimate my former involvement in illegal drug use. In addition to smoking marijuana – sometimes laced with substances like PCP - for a number of years, I also experimented with drugs like hashish, powdered cocaine, LSD, and methamphetamines (including ecstasy). I regret...

The columnist Michael Kinsley once defined a "gaffe" as an occasion when a politician accidentally tells the truth. In our age of political correctness, some would place Geraldine Ferraro's remarks into this category. Long known for speaking candidly, Ferraro recently remarked that "if Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position." There's a molecule of truth in this. Obama's appeal is that he is an African American who doesn't sound one bit like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. Blacks are inspired to see one of their own have a serious shot at the presidency. Whites are...

Democratic Racial Divide By Robert D. Novak Monday, March 17, 2008 WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Geraldine Ferraro often has seemed puzzled during nearly 24 years since she was thrust from obscurity as a congresswoman from Queens to become the first woman nominated for vice president of the United States. But her current confusion is palpable because she has been condemned for repeating what she has heard from fellow supporters of Hillary Clinton and pursuing an apparent major goal of that campaign: to indelibly identify Democratic presidential rival Barack Obama as an African-American. "If Obama was a white man, he would not...

Barack Obama’s response to the outrageous views and statements of his pastor, Reverend Jeremiah A.Wright Jr., was that he should not be tagged with “guilt by association.” In addition, his surrogates and supporters quickly joined to recite the full gamut of distracting, misdirecting, and irrelevant defenses -- that the pastor doesn’t really mean what he says but uses material to stir up his congregation, whites do not understand the context of the statements, he is permitted these views because of the oppression blacks have endured, if Obama was seeking any other job these statements be irrelevant so ignore them here,...

Juan Williams, a Fox commentator whose book addresses the 'phony leaders and dead end groups that "promote a Culture of Failure and are undermining Black America,” tells Newsmax that Wright’s sermons reflect “the victim mindset that is so self-defeating in the black community and one that is played on by weak black leadership that chooses to have black people identified as victims rather than inspiring them as people who have overcome. In posing as victims, they say the most prejudiced and vicious things, not only about whites but about America. They call it theology. In fact, it’s nothing but bigotry.”...

Washington, DC Good morning. I appreciate the opportunity to speak here at the Call to Renewal's Building a Covenant for a New America conference. I've had the opportunity to take a look at your Covenant for a New America. It is filled with outstanding policies and prescriptions for much of what ails this country. So I'd like to congratulate you all on the thoughtful presentations you've given so far about poverty and justice in America, and for putting fire under the feet of the political leadership here in Washington. But today I'd like to talk about the connection between religion...

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright thinks that, given their treatment by white America, black Americans have no reason to sing "God Bless America." "The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America," he told his congregation. "God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human." I'm not a believer in guilt by association, or the campaign vaudeville of rival politicians insisting this or that candidate dissociate himself from remarks by some fellow he had a 30-second grip'n'greet with a decade...

Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. Senior Pastor, Trinity United Church of Christ, Chicago, IL Senator Obama’s pastor I support Barack because of his incarnated faith – his faith made alive in the flesh. He reaches across all faith communities and even to those who have no faith at all. He is building a community where everyone has worth. That kind of faith is not easy to find in 2007 and a man like Barack is a rarity.

Editor's Note: The following report contains objectionable language. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright's former church sharply criticized the media Sunday for recent coverage of his past controversial sermons, saying in a statement that Wright's "character is being assassinated in the public sphere." The statement comes two days after Barack Obama, a longtime friend of Wright and attendee of the Trinity United Church of Christ, formally denounced the sermons that have recently become the subject of controversy, calling them "inflammatory and appalling." "It is an indictment on Dr. Wright’s ministerial legacy to present his global ministry within a 15- or 30-second sound...

Obama adds a little more cowbell TRIBUNE-REVIEW BY Salena Zito Bristling at charges that, so far, Barack Obama is running a less-than-spectacular race in Pennsylvania, the candidate's chief political strategist told reporters this afternoon that the campaign was going all out to win the Keystone State. "We are gong to contest vigorously in Pennsylvania," David Axelrod said. "We're going to be running a full campaign."