Posted on 03/14/2008 3:29:09 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Friday denounced inflammatory remarks from his pastor, who has railed against the United States and accused its leaders of bringing on the Sept. 11 attacks by spreading terrorism.
As video of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has widely aired on television and the Internet, Obama responded by posting a blog about his relationship with Wright and his church, Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, on the Huffington Post.
Obama wrote that he's looked to Wright for spiritual advice, not political guidance, and he's been pained and angered to learn of some of his pastor's comments for which he had not been present. Obama's statement did not say whether Wright would remain on his African American Religious Leadership Committee, and campaign officials wouldn't say either.
"I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies," Obama said. "I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it's on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Reverend Wright that are at issue."
In a sermon on the Sunday after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Wright suggested the United States brought on the attacks.
"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye," Wright said. "We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost."
In a 2003 sermon, he said blacks should condemn the United States.
"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, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."
He also gave a sermon in December comparing Obama to Jesus, promoting his candidacy and playing down Clinton.
Questions about Obama's religious beliefs have dogged him throughout his candidacy. He's had to fight against false Internet rumors suggesting he's really a Muslim intent on destroying the United States, and now his pastor's words uttered nearly seven years ago have become an issue.
Obama wrote on the Huffington Post that he never heard Wright say any of the statements that are "so contrary to my own life and beliefs," but they have raised legitimate questions about the nature of his relationship with the pastor and the church.
He explained that he joined Wright's church, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, nearly 20 years ago. He said he knew Wright as a former Marine and respected biblical scholar who lectured at seminaries across the country.
"Reverend Wright preached the gospel of Jesus, a gospel on which I base my life," he wrote. "... And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn."
He said Wright's controversial statements first came to his attention at the beginning of his presidential campaign last year, and he condemned them. Because of his ties to the 6,000-member congregation church — he and his wife were married there and their daughters baptized — Obama decided not to leave the church.
Obama also has credited Wright with delivering a sermon that he adopted as the title of his book, "The Audacity of Hope."
"With Reverend Wright's retirement and the ascension of my new pastor, Rev. Otis Moss, III, Michelle and I look forward to continuing a relationship with a church that has done so much good," he wrote.
Also Friday, the United Church of Christ issued a 1,400-word statement defending Wright and his "flagship" congregation. John H. Thomas, United Church of Christ's president, lauded Wright's church for its community service and work to nurture youth. Other church leaders praised Wright for speaking out against homophobia and sexism in the black community.
"It's time for all of us to say no to these attacks and to declare that we will not allow anyone to undermine or destroy the ministries of any of our congregations in order to serve their own narrow political or ideological ends," Thomas said in the statement.
"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye," Wright said. "We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost."
I think the AP ran the denouncement story without ever having run the “controversy” story.
Clever
This requires a suspension of disbelief.
Oh no Senator..., you cannot weasel out of this one so easily. :)
I bet he had his fingers crossed behind his back.
Gosh, you're a racist!
/s
What about your wife and her distaste for our country?
Yes. You are indeed correct. I apologize to weasels everywhere.
too little, too late.
Osama Hussein Obama, IMO, won’t wiggle out of this fiasco by his meager comments. This is only the tip of the Obama iceberg.
Let’s see after 20 years ... it is to late! I love it!
Denouncing Wright is not enough.
Obama gave Wright and his church thousands of dollars as late as 2006.
Obama has attended Wright’s anti-American, black racist rallies for 20 years.
Wright is Obama’s personal “spiritual advisor” and sits on Obama’s campaign committee.
Denouncing Wright is not enough.
Osama Hussein Obama, IMO, won’t wiggle out of this fiasco by his meager comments. This is only the tip of the Obama iceberg.
Hide the apology just before the weekend, get Nedra Pickler to do a late Friday evening media dump (when no one’s looking), and by tommorow morning, the presstitutes can claim this story is “old news”, “let’s move on” and all that.....
The WSJ has one of Wright’s hate America, racist sermons listed on line.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1985856/posts
Wright and Obama: It Only Gets Worse
Confederate Yankee ^ | March 14, 2008 | Staff
Posted on 03/14/2008 3:15:38 PM PDT by jdm
The Wall Street Journal has published yet another damning sermon from Barack Obama’s retiring minister of two decades, Jeremiah Wright.
The displaced anger, bigotry, and hatred displayed is chilling:
“We’ve got more black men in prison than there are in college,” he began. “Racism is alive and well. Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run. No black man will ever be considered for president, no matter how hard you run Jesse [Jackson] and no black woman can ever be considered for anything outside what she can give with her body.”
Mr. Wright thundered on: “America is still the No. 1 killer in the world. . . . We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns, and the training of professional killers . . . We bombed Cambodia, Iraq and Nicaragua, killing women and children while trying to get public opinion turned against Castro and Ghadhafi . . . We put [Nelson] Mandela in prison and supported apartheid the whole 27 years he was there. We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God.”
His voice rising, Mr. Wright said, “We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians and branding anybody who spoke out against it as being anti-Semitic. . . . We care nothing about human life if the end justifies the means. . . .”
Concluding, Mr. Wright said: “We started the AIDS virus . . . We are only able to maintain our level of living by making sure that Third World people live in grinding poverty. . . .”
As the story of Wright’s forceful bigotry finally forced it’s way into the mainstream media yesterday at ABC News with the story Obama’s Pastor: God Damn America, U.S. to Blame for 9/11, the people Barack Obama has chosen to surround himself with has come under sharp focus.
From a self-isolated, self-pitying wife, to a bombastic, bigoted minister, to an unreformed terrorist, Barack Obama has surrounded himself with very questionable ideological company, associations from which he has no defense. He wasn’t forced to chose to spend time with this cadre of believers on the radical fringe, he embraced them willingly.
Predictably, as the media has come to focus on Obama’s two-decade relationship with Wright, Obama supporters have been quick to attempt to minimize the damage. Unable to do it with a forceful denunciation of Wright’s bigotry by Obama (Obama has only uttered the lamest of excuses), they have instead attempted to tar Republican candidate John McCain as being equally bad, for the support he has garnered from controversial evangelists Rod Parsley and John Hagee.
For those of you unfamiliar with these men, Parsley’s most famous controversial statements include calling Islam a “false religion” that must be destroyed, opposition same-sex marriage, partial-birth abortion, hate-crimes legislation, and the separation of church and state. Hagee has been ripped an an anti-Catholic bigot, stated that Hurricane Katrina was an act of God against New Orleans for the city’s “level of sin,” and for claiming that the Qur’an has “a scriptural mandate to kill Christians and Jews.”
There, of course, is a difference between John McCain’s political endorsements by Parsley and Hagee, and Barack Obama’s 20 years of willfully absorbing Wright’s hatred, a toxicity to which he has willfully exposed family.
I addressed this attempt to equivilate Obama and McCain in a comment to the ABC News blog story Obama camp: ‘Deplores divisive statements’, which featured yet another inflammatory speech by Wright.
My comment read:
I see that some are already attempting to trot out a comparative argument, that Wright’s offensive, bigoted, and paranoid rants are somehow lessened by invoking John McCain’s support from John Hagee and Rod Parsley, two prominent evangelists who have also made provocative statements.
But here is the huge gaping difference between these attempts: Barack Obama has spent the better part of the past 20 years of his life listening to, absorbing, and yes, agreeing with Wright’s sermons. If he did not agree with the bulk of those sermons, he would have of course left Trinity for another church—finding a church in Chicago that closely fits your own personal beliefs is not at all difficult, and Obama obviously agrees with Wright far more than he disagrees.
That Obama has spent 20 years listening to Wright, thought enough of him to use one of those sermons as the title of his book, “The Audacity of Hope,” that he was married by Wright, had both of his children baptized by Wright and brought up in this church, listening to these paranoid and racist rants that differ little in substance from the words of a much more famous racist, Louis Farakkan, means that Obama AGREES with Wright far more often than he disagrees with him.
From that, what are we to make of Obama? Actions, indeed, do speak louder than flaccid conciliatory words that have only just now been uttered.
I say again the obvious: no American would spend 20 years listening to a minister with which he vehemently disagreed.
McCain, by comparison, is guilty of pandering to Haggee and Parsley because of the (unfortunate) influence they have over a powerful voting demographic.
I can find scant evidence that McCain has sat though one sermon from Hagee or Parsley, much less 20 years of them.
Which is worse?
The politician that panders for votes, or the man who has listened to and internalized anti-American, anti-Jewish, and anti-white messages for 20 years before ever once publicly disagreeing with them, and who is raising his children in this same toxic environment?
Not only am I certain Barack Obama is unfit to run this nation, I now question his ability to raise his own children, for the hatred he has willingly exposed them to since their births.
Yes, I went there. Read again Wright’s rant in the WSJ article featured above, or some of his other hate speech (for that is what it is), and try to explain to me that a good parent exposes his children to an environment that exudes such naked anger, resentment, defeatism, and conspiratorial paranoia.
Perhaps some of you are comfortable having your children raised in such an environment, but I am not, and I do not think that someone who willingly exposes himself and his family to internalizing such vitriol for 20 years is the kind of person we need or want to lead this nation.
Yeah sure. Obama denounces Wright after Obama had been a member of Wright’s church for 20 years, after Obama was married by Wright and after the Obama’s children were baptized by Wright.
Sure you do, BHO, sure you do.
Now this is a curious statement.
In his book "The Political Man," Dag Hammerskjold, probably the most famous UN Secretary General, droned on about the UN being like a "religion" (it's in there, look it up).
This is just one citation of what seems to be so obvious an overlap of interests that it's taken for granted.
"Spiritual, not political?" We deceive ourselves to think the former does not inform the latter.
Which assertion, being applied to the argument and reduced to its minimum, begs the question: doesn't a pastor's "politics" represent an tangible manifestation of his "spirituality?"
If you claim they are not connected, you are either ignorant or deceptive or both.
Is that the kind of President the people of the US want?
After 8 years of the Clintons, do we really want to be "fooled again?"
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