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To the question of the moment--What did Barack Obama know and when did he know it?--I answer, Obama knew everything, and he's known it for ages. Far from succumbing to surprise and shock after Jeremiah Wright's disastrous performance at the National Press Club, Barack Obama must have long been aware of his pastor's political radicalism. A careful reading of nearly a year's worth of Trumpet Newsmagazine, Wright's glossy national "lifestyle magazine for the socially conscious," makes it next to impossible to conclude otherwise. Wright founded Trumpet Newsmagazine in 1982 as a "church newspaper"--primarily for his own congregation, one gathers--to "preach...

Obama, speaking to a group of supporters in San Francisco, CA. , recently said: "You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment...

Maybe, just maybe, it’s now worth at least asking whether Hillary Clinton might wind up as the Democratic candidate for vice president. When the chatter about a Democratic “dream ticket” began last year, it was easy to dismiss. Either Clinton or Obama would win a clear victory in the primaries and, after what inevitably would be a contentious campaign, each would want as little to do with the other as possible. Clinton, if she emerged victorious, would instead choose some kind of national security graybeard to her political right, a retired general perhaps, or maybe even a Republican. Likewise, Obama...

In some ways, Barack Obama's speech on race last week was as brilliant as it was nuanced. But for all its rhetorical beauty, it was also an enormous step backward and, in the end, a rather self-serving call for more discussion about racial grievance in a country that has already done way too much talking. Until last week, so much of Obama's appeal lay in the fact that he was not asking us to talk about the racial divide. Instead, he offered himself as a living and breathing symbol of racial reconciliation; his very origins pointed to the goal of...

When Democrats contemplate the apocalypse these days, they have visions of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton slugging it out à la Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter at the 1980 convention. The campaign's current trajectory is, in fact, alarmingly similar to the one that produced that disastrous affair. Back then, Carter had built up a delegate lead with early wins in Iowa, New Hampshire, and several Southern states. But, as the primary season dragged on, Kennedy began pocketing big states and gaining momentum. Once all the voting ended and Kennedy came up short, he eyed the New York convention as a...

It is a tribute to Hillary Clinton that even though, rationally, political soothsayers think she can no longer win, irrationally, they wonder how she will pull it off. It's impossible to imagine The Terminator, as a former aide calls her, giving up. Unless every circuit is out, she'll regenerate enough to claw her way out of the grave, crawl through the Rezko Memorial Lawn and up Obama's wall, hurl her torso into the house and brutally haunt his dreams. "It's like one of those movies where you think you know the end, but then you watch with your fingers over...

Hello, Hillary? Hate to wake you, but it's 3 o'clock in the morning, and we have a real crisis. It's your campaign, senator. It's Hail Mary time. You've lost the bid for a revote in Florida and, it seems, in Michigan, which means your prospects for prevailing over Barack Obama in the primary popular vote by June are vanishing fast. The Illinois senator, meanwhile, has just delivered a JFK-like speech on race in America--a savvy move that may well have stanched the hemorrhaging of his campaign over the controversial remarks made by his pastor, Jeremiah Wright. The mood could be...

Even though Barack Obama has "moved on" from the messy association that he has recently been forced to explain to man who had been his pastor for 20 years, it is clear - the voters haven't. There are legitimate questions being raised about a relationship that spans a generation and the beliefs of a man who has on multiple dozens of occasions issued some of the most vitriolic, bigoted, racism imaginable in America today. No doubt one of the most infamous video moments recently unearthed was Jeremiah Wright's use of what he cleverly believed to be a cute play on...

Watching the “Reverend” Jeremiah Wright gesticulate like a horny peacock and spew out ignorance, hatred, and bitterness towards America truly inspired my religious faith. Once Wright pointed out that he was “still in Bible country,” I began to “love the hell out of” rich, white people just as much as Wright does. How could so many people not understand that white people have caused all the world’s problems? As Wright pointed out to his congregation, the Bible says it’s so. I’m not sure what verse actually says that, but I’m now betting that rich, white people are responsible for my...

In Denver. Denver is not equipped to handle any convention scenario other than a coronation, and certainly not the most (potentially) contentious national convention in 40 years. It is important to point out that the state of Colorado, and the city of Denver, is currently nearly completely controlled by Democrats at every level of government. This puts these locals in a box, politically and from a law enforcement standpoint. This sets up a scenario similar to Seattle 1999 WTO debacle. I happened to be living in downtown Seattle during that awful experience, and what stands out is that the city...

Some 50 delegates were reportedly poised to unite behind Barack Obama if he had won by even 1 point in Texas. He lost the popular vote by 100,000 ballots, and now we learn that 100,000 Republicans voted for Hillary Clinton, probably not because of some change in party allegiance but because they thought she would be the easier candidate to beat. This kind of strategic voting often backfires (think Ralph Nader). The Texas crossovers are winners. By helping to prolong the Democratic race, they can claim credit for weakening the eventual nominee, whoever it turns out to be. Obama has...

Mr. Obama’s Philadelphia speech, in spite of its eloquent passages expressing his hope for better racial relations in America, is a mastery example of literary subterfuge, the broadening of the scenery whereby an object of inquiry becomes blurred and lost in the background, or more bluntly, the escaping of a slippery fish from a pond into a lake to hide in a wider expanse of water. His speech is essentially a sophisticated lawyerly defense of Rev Wright’s sin on the basis of self-defense. While Mr. Obama’s understanding on the root causes of America’s racial problems is quite apt, he attempts...

WASHINGTON - Even if Hillary Rodham Clinton and her aides do not mention Barack Obama's fiery-tongued spiritual mentor, don't expect the Illinois senator's well-publicized speech Tuesday to make the controversy disappear, political strategists said this week. Reporters, talk-show hosts and others will keep asking about Obama's close and long-standing relationship to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose most bombastic comments came to dominate the Democratic presidential contest recently, the strategists predicted in interviews. In video clips playing on Internet sites, Wright can be heard arguing that HIV-AIDS was a U.S. government plot to wipe out "people of color," and that God...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Democrat Barack Obama suffered in the polls Thursday after a much-acclaimed speech on race that, pundits said, had failed to defuse voters' anger over rage-filled sermons by his former pastor. Waging an acrimonious battle against Hillary Clinton for the Democrats' White House nomination, Obama confessed to being bruised by the controversy surrounding his longtime Chicago preacher, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. "In some ways this controversy has actually shaken me up a little bit and gotten me back into remembering that, you know, the odds of me getting elected have always been lower than some of the other conventional...

For most white folks, indignation just doesn't wear well. Once affected or conjured up, it reminds one of a pudgy man, wearing a tie that may well have fit him when he was fifty pounds lighter, but which now cuts off somewhere above his navel and makes him look like an idiot. Indignation doesn't work for most whites, because having remained sanguine about, silent during, indeed often supportive of so much injustice over the years in this country--the theft of native land and genocide of indigenous persons, and the enslavement of Africans being only two of the best examples--we are...

It is a major scandal that threatens to derail Barack Obama's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, but the mainstream media is treating it as a minor political scuffle, says Fox's Bill O'Reilly. In his talking points memo Monday night, O'Reilly played tapes of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright's (Obama's former pastor's) rants against the United States and then said that all clear-thinking Americans including Sen. Obama are appalled by what he called "those hateful words." Noting that Obama said that the picture being painted of Wright is not accurate, O'Reilly wanted to know what about it was inaccurate and...