Crazy, this one crazy minister is single handedly tearing Obama's campaign apart.  The shift is going towards Hiltlary, much to my chagrin.

 

        
 

 

I'm not gonna lie but I actually agree with alot of what Wright had to say. Still support Obama tho but this man was unfairly deamonized by mainstream media and for the sake of his reputation had to go out and defend himself. These crooks were playing 30 second snipets from his sermons on a loop (and as somebody who had watched the entire post-9/11 sermon, I did not disagree with a single word he said in that sermon but they used 30 seconds of it to make him seem like some unpatriotic madman which he is anything but).

Welcome to America!

 

Not only are people ignorant of who the real Rev Wright is, but they're proud of it.  They tear him down, and somehow feel patriotic for doing so.  It's fucking sad. 

 

this man may single handedly cost Obama the Democratic nomination. 

 

 

And why is that to your chagrin?  I think the CW on the street is that McCain would have a far better chance against Hillary than he would against Obama.

 Not according to the latest polls. I don't believe these either. I just want zero chance of hillary in the white house.  I think Bill Clinton will be her Revererend Wright eventually.  As for Obama, I think and have always thought that his whole campaign ran on passion, hype and easy answers.  However, when pushed in the general election, this will all die down fast, as it is happening right now with the Democratic nomination. Obama has an expiration date and he's getting stale.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aPb7Gs_irWJk&refer=home

 

April 28 (Bloomberg) -- Hillary Clinton does better than Democratic presidential rival Barack Obama when matched against Republican John McCain, according to the latest Associated Press- Ipsos poll.

Clinton leads McCain 50 percent to 41 percent while Obama is ahead 46 percent to 44 percent, within the margin of error, according to the poll taken after Clinton's Pennsylvania primary victory. Earlier this month, the poll showed Clinton leading 48 percent to 45 percent over McCain, and Obama and the presumptive Republican nominee were tied at 45 percent.

Senator Clinton of New York has been arguing that she has a better chance of beating McCain than Senator Obama of Illinois, who leads in the delegate race for the Democratic nomination. The Democrats' uncommitted superdelegates, drawn from party officeholders and leaders, are in position to determine who gets the nomination.

 

If Hillary is president, I'm going to Holland

I don't think that Wright giving that speech was good strategy, but I don't think he gives a *** about strategy.  My major concern is all of those people trying to muzzle Wright, like he hasn't earned the right to speak his mind after everything he has done.  People telling him to shut up need to take their own advice

 The thing that really sucks about this whole thing is that the media is playing all of us; they don't show us the entire speech, they remove context by showing us bits and pieces and then they analyze it to death until it has no real meaning, just a left wing talking point and a right wing talking point.  It's infuriating...I know they suck and I expect them to suck, but I still get pissed off when it happens.  Why can't they just show us what was said and let us form our own opinions on it? 
 

 

racist liberal media!  

I dunno, Adelman, it doesn't sound like Wright did a good job defending himself, when push came to shove. Sometimes you have to let your anger go for the sake of peace, and that is just what he doesn't seem to want to be a part of.

I personally don't judge Obama by him, and I would still be more interested in seeing Obama run than Hillary. Hillary will be bad, bad news.

xduckshoex:

I don't think that Wright giving that speech was good strategy, but I don't think he gives a *** about strategy.  My major concern is all of those people trying to muzzle Wright, like he hasn't earned the right to speak his mind after everything he has done.  People telling him to shut up need to take their own advice

 The thing that really sucks about this whole thing is that the media is playing all of us; they don't show us the entire speech, they remove context by showing us bits and pieces and then they analyze it to death until it has no real meaning, just a left wing talking point and a right wing talking point.  It's infuriating...I know they suck and I expect them to suck, but I still get pissed off when it happens.  Why can't they just show us what was said and let us form our own opinions on it? 
 

 

 

Because Americans are too busy to hear the entire sermon.  News must be broken up into segments, with snippets played over and over and entire issues sensationalized and broken down in quick and easy 3 or 4 minute segments.   Our news is more or less entertainment now, because the news networks are going after ratings instead of trying to actually report news with no bias.

No one is going to sit through his whole sermon on tv, so they pick out the crazy parts (give no context) and play that crap over and over.  I mean, how many people are going to sit through his whole sermon and come to a conclusion using their own smarts and logic?  C'mon now, Americans never do that.  They expect the media to come up with conclusions for them.  Talk radio, Sean Hannity... those are the people shaping too many peoples' political views now-a-days.

 

I do agree with you about him just doing more damage by speaking out.   I don't think he cares at this point what happens, especially since he feels thrown under the bus by everyone, including Obama. 

 
There is NO WAY Obama could have done anything to make people understand the sermon, the context of those quotes, because that stuff is out there for the public already.  People have already chosen to ignore it, so, like Wright said, Obama the politician had to make a decision.  I think Rev. Wright should be a little bit more understanding of the rock-and-a-hard-place situation Obama is in, but I also understand how he can feel demoralized by the whole thing.
 

 

I thought Obama did a great job with his attempt to explain where Wright was coming from.   You're absolutely correct that he could not make people understand(if only because one speech is not enough to go over everything that needed to be said) but at least he spoke to the American public like they were adults.  I think a lot of people understood what he was getting at and appreciated what he was trying to do.

 I can see why Wright felt like he was thrown under the bus, but I don't think that was Obama's intention.  Obama could very easily have done what most candidates would do in that situation:  say "he does not represent me" and then sever all ties to avoid further damage, but instead Obama distanced himself from the inflammatory statements, not the man making them.  To me, that confirms his respect and admiration for Wright as well as confirming his strength of character.  Giving into some "guilt by association" nonsense is just admitting that you bow to social pressure and lack a mind of your own.  Obama hasn't given in, so this should be a victory for him, but it isn't.  Whatever, I applaud Obama for all of this, giving in to people who are trying Farrakhan/Sharpton him by association(and people are kidding themselves if they think that the motivation behind all of this is not to associate Obama with radical black activists) is a waste of time, he was never going to get those votes anyway.

How is Obama not getting praise for refusing to give in to that pressure from the people who criticize politicians because they only listen to polls and never do what they really feel is right?  Obama is doing exactly what those people would want him to do but they still give him no credit.
 

How the hell is this an issue for some people?

It's the disingenuous: "You said you HATE America, therefore all Americans, and don't support the troops, and are a traitor to your country!" CRAP.


It's f**king retarded.

 

I dunno, ask those racist democrat voters and campaigns!

 

 

Imagine if they held us responsible for associating with Xskball and all the racist crap he spouts.  Everybody knows a lot of people who talk a lot of crap we disagree with.  For some reason, Obama is being held responsible for the ones he knows, while McCain and Clinton aren't.

Rev. Wright is an idiot, happy to let Obama's campaign go down in flames to give himself an extra 15 minutes of media time.  Whether we like it or not, the media has inflated the phony issue of whether Obama should be tied to Rev. Wright's views into a real issue.  But realistically, anyone who votes against Obama because of Rev. Wright was going to vote against him anyway, and was just looking for a reason.

 

 This man was deamonized by every single media outlets. Everywhere he went, people probably looked at him and hated him because he is "anti-American." And nobody did anything to defend him, including Obama. IMO he has every right to go out there and defend his views, and he has every right to be angry at Obama.

greenteam:

Imagine if they held us responsible for associating with Xskball and all the racist crap he spouts.  Everybody knows a lot of people who talk a lot of crap we disagree with.  For some reason, Obama is being held responsible for the ones he knows, while McCain and Clinton aren't.

Rev. Wright is an idiot, happy to let Obama's campaign go down in flames to give himself an extra 15 minutes of media time.  Whether we like it or not, the media has inflated the phony issue of whether Obama should be tied to Rev. Wright's views into a real issue.  But realistically, anyone who votes against Obama because of Rev. Wright was going to vote against him anyway, and was just looking for a reason.

 

no personal attacks please!  mods!

 

 

Adelman:

This man was deamonized by every single media outlets. Everywhere he went, people probably looked at him and hated him because he is "anti-American." And nobody did anything to defend him, including Obama. IMO he has every right to go out there and defend his views, and he has every right to be angry at Obama.

 

 

nope. not because he's anti-american. because he's a loud, angry black man.      

Obama very clearly did defend Wright.  Did you miss that entire speech or something?

 

Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS. In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity: “People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories tha t we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.” That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America. And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years. I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe. These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

 

Most of that speech was spent giving context to Wright's statements so that it would be harder to dismiss him as an uninformed radical...exactly what else do you think Obama could have done?

By defending Wright, I mean actually explaining some of the sound bits taken from his sermons. Despite the fact that Wright was preaching what is obviously truth, the entire media and the majority of America including Obama came out with strong disagreement to his comments.

You expect a presidential candidate to come out and say "You know what, he's absolutely right" to all of the stuff that Wright said?

It's one thing for a citizen to come out and say "God damn America!" and "the government lied about creating the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color!" and believing that America brought the terrorist attack on themselves, but for a presidential candidate to support those beliefs is insane.  The only way that Obama could have supported the statements made by Wright in any public forum is in a fucking concession speech to Clinton because there is no way he would have won afterward.  It doesn't matter whether or not there is any validity to what Wright said from a political standpoint, Obama can't stand behind those statements if he wants to have a future in politics, and you can't expect him to if you want him to have a future in politics.

Wright is just pushing Obama away from him now, which is a stupid move on his part.  If you really want to work for some change, having access to the President and being one of his trusted friends is a fantastic way to start, but Wright is burning that bridge.  I respect  his right to say what he wants and have no desire to see him stop any time soon, I just wish that he would ease up on Obama.

Xskball:

greenteam:

Imagine if they held us responsible for associating with Xskball and all the racist crap he spouts.  Everybody knows a lot of people who talk a lot of crap we disagree with.  For some reason, Obama is being held responsible for the ones he knows, while McCain and Clinton aren't.

Rev. Wright is an idiot, happy to let Obama's campaign go down in flames to give himself an extra 15 minutes of media time.  Whether we like it or not, the media has inflated the phony issue of whether Obama should be tied to Rev. Wright's views into a real issue.  But realistically, anyone who votes against Obama because of Rev. Wright was going to vote against him anyway, and was just looking for a reason.

 

no personal attacks please!  mods!

You have made numerous racial cracks about blacks and Mexicans on this site.  Greenteam has failed to denounce you or repudiate your statements.  Obviously, this calls into question Greenteam's judgement and suitability to be a moderator.  We can only assume that Greenteam's silence on this matter indicates that he agrees with Xskball.  We call on Greenteam to publicly denounce Xskball and his hurtful statements.  Mr. Greenteam, how long can you remain silent on this issue of importance to Americans?  What will you tell 10-year-old Bobby's mother when she asks you how long you can support Xskball's statements?