It wasn’t long ago (yesterday) that Michael Bloomberg was being hyped as the answer to Obama’s Jewish problem, but I think the problem goes a lot deeper than floating the self-promoting NY Mayor for a running mate. It now seems Obama’s church has been sending out the most old-fashioned anti-Semitic canards in their newsletter, including the nonsense we have been hearing for years about Israel being an “apartheid state” (shades of the Durban conference). And this was published by the church in June 2007, doubtlessly arriving Chez Obama in the midst of his campaign. (Do his children read the newsletter?) Barack didn’t say anything about it until now. Of course you could just call this all “free speech,” but if such racist bilge came out of any organization I was a member of, I’d be resigning post haste… and this man is running for POTUS.
Just one more point: one of the anti-Semitic screeds in question – with quotations around the ’state’ of Israel – was published over six years after the Taba Conference when a Palestinian state was offered to Arafat by the Israelis and, as we all know, the deceased caudillo walked out for fear he might actually have to govern a country. He launched Intifada II instead. If I were Obama I’d be mighty embarrassed by the rubbish his church is publishing. And now with the current minister accusing Wright’s critics of a “lynching” for expressing their natural indignation toward the retired pastor’s appalling statements, I would be wondering whether my church was indeed “liberal” in any definable sense of the word or simply reactionary.
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15 Comments
1. Lem:From Obama’s book, a glowing review of the very first Jeremiah screed he heard.
It is this world …, where white folks’ greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere … That’s the world! On which hope sits.
Obama basically said that white folks’ greed runs the world in a downward spiral.
Should someone with those views be elected POTUS? I don’t think so, but then again the MSM is letting him get away with it.
Mar 28, 2008 - 1:38 pm 2. GringoTex:As a Gentile who was never going to vote for Obama, but who has also been appalled at the anti-Israel screeds coming out of Wright’s and Obama’s church, here is my take. This has been going on for a long time at Wright’s church.
It is also ironic in view of Wright’s also identifying Blacks with ancient Jews, which followed the historical affiliation of black churches with the plight of Jews enslaved in Egypt: Let My People Go. But coherent thought has never been strong point for the good Reverend.
It is a day late and a dollar short for Obama to take a stand on this. However much he denounces such anti-Israel, and hence anti-Semetic, stances on the part of his church, most will remember that he didn’t say anything until pressure was put on him.
If Obama wins the nomination,this will be the first time in a long time, perhaps the first time ever, that the Jewish Democratic vote will go below 50%. You can’t fool all the people all the time, like the man said.
Mar 28, 2008 - 1:54 pm 3. TerryeL:I will link again to a source I used in another posting. It appears that no matter who wins the nomination, there will be a fair number of Democrats walking away. I just hope that McCain defies demographic realities, and that the Republicans choose a very strong vice-presidential candidate.
I can not understand how rational people can say the kinds of things that Wright says. And I can not understand how a man too gutless to stand up and say it is wrong, thinks he can be President of the United States.
The last guy the Democrats nominated compared his fellow American servicemen to the raping pillaging hordes of Genghis Khan…and now we have a man running whose pastor is an anti Semitic hate mongering bigot.
What is wrong with the Democrats? I mean really, why do they keep promoting people like this?
Mar 28, 2008 - 2:19 pm 4. Rhod:The pastor’s page on Israel is a new fact, and worthy of comment, but an old theme in some quarters of the (radical) Left. That it, appeared on the church newsletter is hardly news.
It’s impossible to believe that Obama was unaware of the church’s position on these matters, because it’s standard revolutionary leftism sprinkled with an odd materialistic, activist Christianity.
Obama has heard this stuff since he was a freshman, long before Trinity, and anyone who was an adult in the 1960’s, knows that its continuation, from screams of “Al Fatah!” then, until today, has been seamless. Christ, the guy went to Harvard, which is a far greater moral problem than Trinity.
Some on the right, like Hannity, are fluttering and blushing about Wright like Maypole maidens who’ve found condoms tied to their ribbons. Where has Hannity been for forty years?
This is the story. Not Trinity, but radical leftism, and the crap about Wright is just a feint. Obama didn’t need to read the pastor’s page to know he was associating with anti-Semites.
Mar 28, 2008 - 4:25 pm 5. 1Banjo:BO is doing a deft Fred Astaire tap dance away from Rev. Wright, a little more each day. “This will not stand” is just a matter of time. One reason Hillary hangs in there despite pressure from the party’s leftwing (which usually includes the MSM and always embraces Obermann and the rest of the MSNBC crowd) is she knows the spread of this poison dooms Obama.
Mar 28, 2008 - 5:14 pm 6. Lem:What is wrong with the Democrats? I mean really, why do they keep promoting people like this?
Terry what we are witnessing among democrats is the inevitable result of identity politics.
Identity politics muffles, starves the real debate we should be having about the challenges we are passing on to posterity.
Identity politics robs the country of an informed choice. That’s why is so easy for Obama to (as 1Banjo put it) tap dance his way out of his 20 year blame America doctrine.
Obama was indoctrined by Jeremiah longer than the Ivy schools padding his resume. If we were to just gather the facts, Jeremiah is the most recent.
What did Obama hear at Princeton and Harvard that made him impressionable to a Jeremiah?
Mar 28, 2008 - 8:19 pm 7. Lem:Let’s say we were to be charitable.
Do we want to elect a man that has been subjected to a constant badgering of the country he is asking us to let him now lead?
Even if we were to say that Obama was not to blame for staying at Jeremiah’s feet, that he was a captive audience, then there are Stockholm syndrome parallels to be considered.
Do we want to elect someone who can be so easily manipulated, so easily dupped?
Mar 28, 2008 - 8:36 pm 8. David Thomson:I suspect “Barry” Obama is lying about a number of racial incidents that supposedly took place during his teen years in Hawaii. I find it hard to believe that a white coach dared to talk about how he distinguished between black players and “niggers.” This incident simply does not ring true. Still, I admittedly could be wrong. We will find out more in the near future as more attention is focused on Obama’s life in the mid to late 1980s.
Mar 28, 2008 - 9:19 pm 9. Gary Rosen:Good point, Rhod. The Wright dustup is not just about race but more generally about Obama’s radical left, anti-Israel fellow travelers. Brzezinski, Malley, Powers and McPeak are all white.
Mar 28, 2008 - 11:47 pm 10. Rhod:Thanks Gary.
My first reaction to Wright was to laugh. He’s a nobody who built a lounge act, like Andrew Dice Clay, on prurience and shock.
Obama finds himself in the tough position of being an Eisenhower communist…in reaction to Birch claims that Ike was a commie, someone said “Eisenhower isn’t a communist, he’s a golfer”.
Obama isn’t a racist, he’s a vapor who wanted to be entertained by one, to be stimulated and religious continuity in political leanings he already has. He’s a golfer.
This is worse than being complicit with a scamming loser like Wright. We don’t draw our Presidents from the audiences of burlesque halls.
Mar 29, 2008 - 4:10 am 11. Rhod:That should be “..and to find religious continuity in…”
Mar 29, 2008 - 4:13 am 12. rojac:“was published over six years after the Taba Conference when a Palestinian state was offered to Arafat by the Israelis and, as we all know, the deceased caudillo walked out for fear he might actually have to govern a country. He launched Intifada II instead.”
Talk about reactionary. I think it was a bit more complicated than that. Not saying I agree with then newsletter’s comments– indeed I don’t– but I’m not sure it’s particularly helpful to answer one reactionary comment with another.
Mar 30, 2008 - 11:45 am 13. TomTom:Obama is a sociopath. He’s a political Ted Bundy.
Mar 31, 2008 - 6:59 am 14. Always right:Obama and his supporters are essentially saying:
“You have NO RIGHT to judge me (or Wright, or Trinity Church) unless you have gone through the exact life experience we have gone through.” but
“You will just have to trust MY JUDGEMENT to lead this country.”
To extend the same logic, unless you have gone through the exact experience as the Jews in Jesus’ time, the Rev. Wright has NO RIGHT to pass his anti-Semitic judgment either.
Unless you are an Iraq War veteran etc. (insert anything here), you have NO RIGHT to arrive at your own judgment, let alone pass it on to someone else.
Nobody has any right to form their own opinion unless you live through it at least once. Isn’t that the inevitable conclusion?
Mar 31, 2008 - 10:18 am 15. Metalguy:“He’s a nobody who built a lounge act, like Andrew Dice Clay, on prurience and shock.”
Thanks, THAT is insightful and claifying. The whole post is on the money and nicely sums things up.
Apr 3, 2008 - 8:29 am