Barack Obama’s Problems: Racism & Corruption

Barack Obama will continue to have two distinct and separate problems throughout the remainder of the primary, and if nominated, throughout the general election.  Those are racism and corruption.  Just as Bill Clinton had to deal with numerous “bimbo eruptions”, Obama will have to deal with weekly, if not daily racism and corruption eruptions.  While the media gave Bill Clinton a free pass, and the Right was not organized to fully exploit  Bill’s weaknesses, all that changed with John Kerry.  Swift-boating is already coming from the Hillary camp, and will increase dramatically if Obama is nominated.  Obama had a chance to be the first “post-race” black candidate.  His original campaign was run from the perspective that Obama was running as merely another Democrat, not as a black candidate, like Jessie Jackson.  If Obama had been able to continue to run as a “non-racial” candidate he would have been the true transitional candidate Democrats, Republicans and Independents hoped for.  But along the way, the Clinton’s, following their “win at any cost” strategy, screwed it all up for everyone.  Bill Clinton injected race as an issue, by saying there goes Barack Obama, another black candidate, winning SC, just like Jessie Jackson did.  Obama tried, but was unable to resist the bait.  Then, as if on cue from the Clinton’s, along comes Jeremiah Wright, a true race baiter and bigot.  Obama couldn’t resist the temptation.  He had to address the “race” issue head on.  In making his “race” speech, Obama did what no Clinton could do.  He acknowledged that he is in fact a “race” candidate.  This shows extreme poor judgment and character.  So, given what we now know about Barack Obama, here is a preview of what is likely to happen to Obama between now and November.

 

Pastor-gate:  Jeremiah Wright won’t go away.  Until Hillary drops out, the Clintons will continue to raise issues about Wright on a weekly basis.  Don’t be surprised if a video shows up of Wright preaching one of his anti-American sermons, and there’s Obama, Michelle and the children, right in the front.  Once Hillary is gone, then the swift-boaters from the Right take over.  There’ll be more and more information about Wright’s rants.  It won’t stop until November.

 

Black Liberation Theology:  There will continue to be questions about values, beliefs, and judgment.  How will Obama’s even tacit approval of black liberation theology taint his campaign.  Hillary will use it as a wedge issue to pull the Democratic bubba’s and rednecks over to her side.  This is probably the most serious issue Obama faces and the one that most deeply questions his judgment and core values.  How can Americans knowingly vote for someone who embraces a value and belief system that paints the white man as the devil incarnate?

 

Spiritual Advisor eruptions:  James Meeks has been one of Barack Obama’s primary spiritual advisors, second only to Jeremiah Wright.  Meeks will come under increasing scrutiny and there will be a lot of racially tainted statements linked to him.  Obama will have to explain away Meeks, just as he is doing with Wright.  Meeks anti-gay rants won’t go over very well with the gay and lesbian alliance that has good standing with the Democratic liberal left.  Here’s a sample:

 

A spring 2007 newsletter from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) named Meeks one of the “10 leading black religious voices in the anti-gay movement”. The newsletter cites him as both “a key member of Chicago’s ‘Gatekeepers’ network, an interracial group of evangelical ministers who strive to erase the division between church and state” and “a stalwart anti-gay activist… [who]… has used his House of Hope mega-church to launch petition drives for the Illinois Family Institute (IFI), a major state-level ‘family values’ pressure group that lauded him last year for leading African Americans in ‘clearly understanding the threat of gay marriage.'”

 

Probable Corruption Eruptions:  Tony Rezko; Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland law firm; Blagojevich; John Stroger; Todd Stroger; Donna Dunnings; Susan Sher; Alexi Giannoulias.  Just to name a few Obama supporters that are tainted with charges of corruption.  Here’s a sampling:

 

Obama’s ties to the corrupt Daley machine began when he was dating his wife Michelle and she brought him into the fold. Valerie Jarrett, the deputy chief of staff to Mayor Daley, hired Michelle as her assistant in 1991. Daley made Jarrett the chairman of the Chicago Department of Planning and Development and Michelle worked as her assistant in that Department during 1992-93.

 

When it came time for Obama’s US Senate campaign, Valerie Jarrett became the campaign finance chairman and worked hand and hand with fellow finance committee members, Rita and Tony Rezko, and his former boss at the law firm, Allison Davis, in fundraising endeavors.

 

Jarrett is now the CEO of Habitat Co, a real estate development and management firm which manages the housing program for the Chicago Housing Authority, the entity mandated to administer public housing, and she serves as an unpaid advisor to Obama’s Presidential campaign.

  

Obama Needs To Explain His Belief In Black Liberation Theology

Unless you have been living in a cave, most of you know by now that Barack Obama’s pastor Jeremiah Wright is a 100% devotee to “black libertion theology”.  This fact is supported not only by Wright’s sermons, but by the Trinity Church website.  The core theology of Wright, Trinity Church, and by association Barack Obama is black liberation theology.  As David Limbaugh points out below, Barck Obama needs to address to what extent he embraces black liberation theology and how those beliefs would shape his Presidential administration.  Further, Obama needs to explain why he has raised his children in a church that promotes racism.  How much of Barack Obama’s belief in black liberation theology includes Marxist beliefs?  Hillary, Obama Wreaking Presidential Havoc

By David Limbaugh

Many of us understood from the beginning the unrealism in the promises of this extreme liberal partisan to be a messianic uniter. But little did we know that he attended a church whose pastor, Jeremiah Wright, has distinguished himself through anti-American and racist rants and as a scholar and practitioner of black liberation theology. Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell warned on “Hannity & Colmes” that what we really need to focus on with this Obama/Wright flap, are the tenets of black liberation theology and to what extent Barack Obama embraces them, assuming his pastor and church truly endorse this theology. Blackwell said he is concerned this theology supports partial-birth abortion, pacifism in foreign policy, and economic socialism. He suggested that responsible voters have a duty to inquire whether Obama subscribes to these views. As it turns out, Blackwell’s observations are just the tip of the iceberg concerning this theology. If half of what I’ve read about it is true, it promotes anything but a unifying message. Instead of centering on God and his relationship to man, it appears to be unduly man-centered, race-oriented and more political than theological. Rather than adopting Martin Luther King’s colorblind approach, it stresses — according to Anthony B. Bradley of Covenant Theological Seminary — “an unqualified commitment to the black community as that community seeks to define its existence in the light of God’s liberating work in the world.” The theology, says Bradley, “laid the foundation for many [black pastors] to embrace Marxism and a distorted self-image of perpetual ‘victim.'” Doesn’t America have a right to know whether the leading Democratic presidential contender buys into the reputed theology of the church he has attended for 20 years? If Wright’s Trinity Church doesn’t teach this theology, Obama should have no problem telling us so. But if it does, he has much explaining to do. It won’t suffice for him to dismiss the inquiry with the same casual indifference by which he attempted to trivialize Wright’s disturbing sermons as just a few remarks over 30 years condensed into a 30-second sound bite. Even a tenuous connection to black liberation theology undermines Barack’s self-description as a unifier.

http://www.newsmax.com/limbaugh/obama_hillary/2008/03/27/83553.html

 

Obama – All Talk, No Action

There is no denying that Senator Obama gave a very good ‘race’ speech with what Political Night Train calls “surface validity”, that is, it looks good on the surface, its when you dig into the core that you find problems.  Political Night Train is now questioning the basis of Obama’s core values and beliefs and whether they are the values and beliefs we want in a President.  Certainly Senator Obama has plenty of “surface validity” to be President, but does he have the inner values and beliefs we want in a President.  Americans do not deserve another President aka Bill Clinton, with an outer persona that looks good to many people (he was bubba to some, a black man to others), but with an inner core that no one knows.  Apparently Bill Clinton had no inner core of moral values, at least none that we would want to pass on to our children.  One wonders then, what core values are Barack and Michelle Obama passing on to their children?  Are they the beliefs and values you would pass on to your children?  There are many parents in this country who were raised in racist households, black and white.  Yet, at some point, as parents, they made the break, and overtly decided that they would not raise their own children in a hate filled, racist family, and church environment.  This is truly where racism begins to die off, and you can see the effects with the twenty-something’s that are now saying “race does not matter”.  Yet, Obama is not offering them the bridge to a racism free society.  No, he’s offering then explanations as to why people like Jeremiah Wright should get a free pass.  Sorry Barack, but I don’t want my children attending Sunday School with your children, because you’ve passed on the wrong set of values and beliefs. Gil Troy is right when he asserts in his article,(my bold) Here, then, remains the Obama campaign’s great mystery. Many Americans want to believe, to trust that he is what he purports to be, that his gift for words will translate into a genius for governance. But the questions cropping up are not simply about his inexperience but his inaction. He never confronted Jeremiah Wright. He sat silently by as the United Church of Christ to which he belongs passed a resolution advocating divestment from Israel.

Obama’s political rise has been launched on the wings of Americans’ hopes that the healers will defeat the haters. His political progress would be more sure if he could point to actions backing up this rhetoric, to moments when he confronted demagogues and healed rifts. Barack Obama is not too young to have had the opportunity to prove whether he stands by his statements. Americans have the right to ask what he has done when facing the world’s Jeremiah Wrights and Louis Farrakhans. Obama’s worst, and best, moments
By Gil Troy   March 22, 2008

On Tuesday, Senator Barack Obama’s speech on race in America tried to quell the controversy over his America-bashing, race-baiting, Israel-hating pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. For days, video clips of Wright spewing his poison threatened to neutralize Obama’s populist magic. Until Tuesday, the controversy showed Obama at his worst. His response to his pastor’s demagoguery was mealy-mouthed and disingenuous. It was impossible to believe Obama’s Clintonesque claim of ignorance, that he never “sat in the pews” during one of Wright’s wrongheaded riffs. And Obama’s failure over a twenty-year relationship to criticize his mentor’s venom stirred doubts about Obama’s judgment, patriotism, and commitment to the unity he celebrates. Yet once again, Illinois’ rookie Senator hit a grand slam with two strikes against him. Obama’s speech was thoughtful, thought-provoking, rich, complex, effective, poetic, and inspiring. Read the rest of this excellent article at http://web.israelinsider.com/views/12729.htm

How Will Obama Explain Away Rev James Meeks?

 Bill Clinton had his bimbo eruptions.  Now Obama seems to have preacher eruptions.  Each week, along comes another close religious advisor who preaches Liberation Theology and racial hatred.  The latest is James Meeks, pastor of Salem Baptist Church.

Illinois State Senator James Meeks has endorsed Barack Obama for president.

Here is how James Meeks and his relationship with Obama were described in a 2004 Men’s News Daily report during Obama’s 2004 US Senate campaign:

Obama’s closest religious advisers — Fr. (Michael) Pfleger, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, and Illinois State Sen. James Meeks, who moonlights as the pastor of Chicago’s Salem Baptist Church – may have quotes from Scripture always handy, but are theologically closer to Karl Marx and black nationalism, than to Christianity.

….. According to State Sen./Rev. James Meeks’ humble, personal church Web page, “Meeks’ practical and charismatic style of instruction motivates the hearer to take action and has resulted in accomplishments of miraculous proportions.” When the good Senator/Reverend is not accomplishing miracles and other feats “never before documented in history,” he serves as the executive vice president of Jesse Jackson Sr.’s National Rainbow-Push Coalition.

Obama Linked To Another Controversial Minister – Rev James Meeks

An Obama Delegate’s Preaching, On Par With Jeremiah WrightSo, the spin goes, Jeremiah Wright may have said some controversial things. So, maybe Obama has described him as “his mentor”, and maybe they’ve had a close relationship for the past twenty-three years. But Wright has left his largely ceremonial post, and it’s not like he has any direct relationship with Obama’s presidential campaign. I mean, it’s not like we’re hearing this from a Democratic elected official. It’s not like we’re hearing this from an Obama delegate to the Democratic convention or something.It’s not like we’re hearing an Obama delegate from Chicago in a church pulpit saying, “We don’t have slave masters, we got mayors! But they are still the same white people who are presiding over systems where black people are not able to be educated. You got some preachers that are house n———! You got some elected officials that are house n———! Rather than them try and break this up, they’re gonna fight you to protect that white man!”Oh, wait, now we are hearing this. What’s fascinating in the video that Confederate Yankee dug up is the state senator, Reverend James Meeks of the South Side Baptist Church, declaring that the N-word is a “term of endearment.” I kid you not.So… apparently Wright’s not a one-time deal, huh? How many other members of Obama’s crew from Chicago sound like this on Sunday mornings?http://campaignspot.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YjAzNDdkMTAxN2JiNjY4YTkzNzcxYWNkZjYwMTMwNDM=

Basis for Obama’s Belief In Liberation Theology and Socialism

 This is a continuation of Political Night Train’s effort to put some light on the basis for Senator Obama’s core values and beliefs.  Kenneth Blackwell, in his article below, helps us to see what values and beliefs are below the surface of Obama’s public persona.

Eloquent Speech, Troubling Worldviewby Kenneth BlackwellPosted: 03/18/2008Barack Obama just gave an eloquent speech, but one that does not address the underlying nature of Senator Obama’s beliefs. Rev. Jeremiah Wright, like Mr. Obama, believes in a state-centered 21st century form of big-government socialism.  This 21st century form of socialism is at the heart of the Liberation Theology Rev. Wright preaches from the pulpit. Today, Mr. Obama again made it clear, with all his eloquence, that he still embraces these beliefs that would require dismantling the free-market system that has made our country’s economy the most prosperous in all of human history. In contrast to Liberation Theology, the Christian orthodoxy teaches about the nature of God, the nature of man, the relationship between the two in this life, and about the hereafter. Liberation Theology, on the other hand, is a belief system about political agendas, socialistic economic policy, and redistribution of wealth. Proponents of Liberation Theology, like Rev. Wright, teach that God commands us to form a government that will supervise our economy to create government-subsidized jobs under central-government planning; guarantee healthcare and education by having government control both; and achieve ‘economic equality’ by redistributing wealth through massive taxes on the affluent and massive government entitlements for the poor. And it advocates replacing governments that do not embrace this socialistic agenda.  Those are the beliefs of Liberation Theology. Those are the offensive root beliefs underlying many of Rev. Wright’s sermons. And though Barack Obama does not embrace Mr. Wright’s offensive language, he does embrace this government-solves-everything-through-socialism worldview.His speech was magnificent in its elegance and rhetoric, but today Mr. Obama reminded me yet again of his worldview that embraces, among other things, partial-birth abortion,
military weakness, and economic socialism.   Thank God for religious liberty, free market, and free elections!http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=25579 

Is Geraldine Ferraro Another Barack Obama “Typical White Person”?

Political Night Train continues to look into the basis for Barack Obama’s core beliefs and values.  It would seem that Obama has lumped Geraldine Ferraro in the “typical white  person” group with his own grandmother.  Ferraro has express outrage at how Obama, during his race speech, made the incredible leap and compared Ferraro with Jeremiah Wright.  Here is what Ferraro had to say:

Former congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro is upset with remarks Sen. Barack Obama made in Tuesday’s speech, linking her with the controversial the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

 Former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro said today that she objected to the comparison Sen. Barack Obama drew between her and his former pastor in his speech on race relations Tuesday.  In the speech, Obama sought to place the inflammatory remarks of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright in a broader context, in part by placing them on a continuum with Ferraro’s recent remark to the Daily Breeze that Obama is “lucky” to be black.  “To equate what I said with what this racist bigot has said from the pulpit is unbelievable,” Ferraro said today. “He gave a very good speech on race relations, but he did not address the fact that this man is up there spewing hatred.”

Ferraro, the only woman to ever run on a major party presidential ticket, sparked a controversy when she told the Breeze that “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position.”  The resulting controversy was quickly superceded by an even greater furor over Wright’s sermons, in which Obama’s longtime pastor denounced America and argued that the 9-11 terrorist attacks were retribution for U.S. foreign policy.  In an effort to stem the damage to his presidential campaign, Obama gave a 37-minute speech Tuesday in which he used Ferraro’s remarks as a rhetorical foil to Wright’s and drew a parallel between black anger and white resentment.

 

“On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wild- and wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap,” Obama said.  “On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation and that rightly offend white and black alike.” Ferraro, who supports Sen. Hillary Clinton, has been unapologetic about her remarks. Clinton has said she disagrees with Ferraro and has accepted Ferraro’s resignation from her finance committee.

Ferraro said she had “no clue” why Obama would include her in his speech, and said Obama’s association with Wright raises serious questions about his judgment.  “What this man is doing is he is spewing that stuff out to young people, and to younger people than Obama, and putting it in their heads that it’s OK to say `Goddamn America’ and it’s OK to beat up on white people,” she said. “You don’t preach that from the pulpit.”

Ferraro also said she could not understand why Obama had called out his own white grandmother for using racial stereotypes that had made him cringe.  “I could not believe that,” she said. “That’s my mother’s generation.”

Obama returned to Ferraro’s remarks later in his speech, again drawing a comparison between her and Wright.  “We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro in the aftermath of her recent statements as harboring some deep-seated bias,” Obama said.  He went on to argue that such dismissals would foreclose a deeper understanding of racial resentments. Obama appeared to allude to Ferraro once more when he said that it would be wrong to “pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card.”  It was Obama’s campaign that drew the most attention to Ferraro’s remark last week, and suggested they fit with an pattern of racial comments by Clinton surrogates.  “That’s exactly what he did,” Ferraro said. “It was their campaign that started this.” In sum, however, Ferraro said she thought the speech was “excellent,” and said she understood why Obama could not renounce his association with Wright. “I think they got as far as they could go politically,” she said. “They’re looking at their base. Their base is African-Americans. They’re looking at that and they’re trying to walk a very thin line. They don’t want to offend the African-Americans, and this is the way he did it.” http://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_8629143

Obama’s Grandmother A “Typical” White Person?

It seems that Senator Obama believes in the “typical white person”, one that harbors deep seated racial beliefs.  Such typical white persons will see a black person and believe the worst, apparently including Obama’s grandmother.  Where do you suppose Senator Obama formed this opinion, that there are “typical” white people, from his grandmother?  Most likely he formed this opinion, not from someone who gave him the kind of unconditional love reserved for one’s children, but from his minister of 20 years, Jeremiah Wright.  When Political Night Train says we must understand the basis of Obama’s core beliefs and values, this is what we are talking about.  We know of no one who would characterize their grandmother, really, in his case, his mother, the way Obama has characterized his grandmother.  If he will characterize his own grandmother as a “typical white person” how does he characterize other white people.  Did he engage in racist dialogues in a back room with Jeremiah Wright at Trinity Church?  Are those his values? 

Sen. Barack Obama called into sports radio 610 WIP this morning, charming the usually rambuctious morning talk show hosts and winning their endorsements.  “The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity. But she is a typical white person. If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know. . .there’s a reaction in her that doesn’t go away and it comes out in the wrong way.

President Obama’s Neoliberal Theocracy – A Must Read!!

Political Night Train believes gaining insight into Senator Obama’s values and beliefs is essential to the 2008 election.  Lee Cary’s article below provides what is probably the most insightful article to date on how Obama would govern, if elected.  This is also the basis for the theology of many black churches.  If Obama has done nothing else related to religion, he has given white American’s a peek inside black churches.  Most white Americans view the black church based on those scenes of James Brown and the Triple Rock in the movie “Blues Brothers”.

March 16, 2008

A President Obama’s Neoliberal Theocracy

By Lee CaryBarack Obama’s first vocational choice was to help people in a poor African-American community. Later, he joined a church founded on black liberation theology. This combination could result in an Obama presidency that embodies something new in American history — a Neoliberal Theocracy.  When we in the West hear the word theocracy, we think of mullahs, fatwas, and human pronouncements issued with the presumptuous authority of divine edicts.  But not all theocracies are so dictatorially dogmatic. They range from the theocratic-lite nature of the United Kingdom’s monarch as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, to the industrial-strength theocracy of Iran where the two top offices, Supreme Leader and head of the Guardian Council, are reserved for Shiite clergy. A new, softer-and-gentler American theocracy may be in our future.   What does “Neoliberal Theocracy” mean? In a Neoliberal Theocracy the principles of political liberalism that guide decisions of statecraft are aligned with beliefs thought to constitute a moral theology. In other words, the federal government, particularly the Executive Branch, acts in accordance with a defined, theological belief system. Neoliberal is to liberal as neoconservative is to conservative.  It represents the evolution of thinking that occurs when a stable ideological platform (contemporary political liberalism) is applied to new circumstances (Barack Obama’s deeply held theological belief system).  The social gospel of an Obama presidency could be traced back to the race-based class dialectic of the black liberation theology movement. That movement emerged as the theological wing of the broader Black Power movement of the late 1960’s – early 1970’s. Among a constellation of groups and personalities representing Black Power were: the 1968 Olympic Black Power salute; the Black Panthers; Malcolm X; Bobby Seale; the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (“snick”), etc.  Far and away the most important expression of Black Power was Dr. Martin Luther King’s historic leadership in the Civil Rights Movement. Black liberation theology forms the core identity of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ (UCC) – Obama’s home church for two decades.  Today, that congregation espouses a Black Value System.  It reflects the movement’s class dialectic that remains unabashedly race-based. The black values concept was first introduced by one of the founders of the black liberation theology movement, Dr. James H. Cone, in Black Theology & Black Power (© 1969, Harper & Row, 1969, p.127).  “To carve out a Black Theology based on black oppression will of necessity mean the creation of new values independent of and alien to the values of white society…They will be alien because white American ‘Christian’ values are based on racism.” While the media didn’t hesitate to probe the religious beliefs of Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, reporters have been reluctant, until recently, to inquire into Obama’s religious principles. Perhaps political correctness has made them hyper-sensitive to giving the appearance of delving into racial issues. Their hesitancy persists, even though Obama has used biblical literary devices in his speeches.  He has copied several of King’s speech patterns and oratorical motifs.  And, he juxtaposes his interpretation of Christianity to those of the religious right who, he claims, have “hijacked” the faith.  It’s as though he has invited religion questions from a media too timid to ask. When addressing a faith-based audience, Obama, quoting largely from his book The Audacity of Hope (p.202), lent an existential spiritual tone to his campaign.   “They [Americans] want a sense of purpose, a narrative arc to their lives.  They’re looking to relieve a chronic loneliness, a feeling supported by a recent study that shows Americans have fewer close friends and confidants than ever before. And so they need an assurance that somebody out there cares about them, is listening to them – that they are not just destined to travel down that long highway towards nothingness.”    Message: Obama, the helper, cares for those who hurt. In that same speech, quoting again from of his book (p. 207), Obama said, “I believed and still believe in the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change…Because of its past, the black church understands in an intimate way the Biblical call to feed the hungry and cloth the naked and challenge powers and principalities. And in its historical struggles for freedom and the rights of man, I was able to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active, palpable agent in the world. As a source of hope.”   Message: The black church truly understands the social gospel. The channel of Christianity that Obama entered at Trinity UCC gave a theological motive to his preexistent passion to be a helper. There he found a social gospel that, today, undergirds his advocacy for an activist federal government more aggressively involved in social programs, both foreign and domestic.    How would this represent a theocracy of any kind? In this way: His presidential social activism would be based on an economic-based class dialectic that is theologically grounded. In language conveying near messianic overtones, the authors of his primary campaign document, The Blueprint For Change, wrote, “He will help the world’s weakest states to build healthy and educated communities, reduce poverty…”   How might a Neoliberal Theocracy influence U.S. foreign relations?   Tyrants test adversaries they perceive as weak. Khrushchev interpreted Kennedy’s failure to provide American air assets at the Bay of Pigs as weakness, and tested him with missiles in Cuba. The November 26, 1979 cover of TIME magazine displayed a small photo of an unsmiling Jimmy Carter against the full page backdrop of a scowling Ayatollah Khomeini. The caption read: THE TEST OF WILLS.  Khomeini and Ronald Reagan won that test.  Our adversaries would test a President Obama if they perceived him as weak.  How? Imagine these ways: 

• A company-sized, elite unit of North Korean commandos infiltrates across the 38^th parallel, decimates a platoon-sized American unit, then hurries back across the border, taking their own casualties and a few captured U.S. soldiers with them.  Democrats in Congress ask: Why are we still in Korea anyway?  The U.S. protests the incursion to the U.N. Security Council. Then, as a condition of our gradual withdrawal from the Korean peninsula, the N. Koreans blandly apologize and blame the incident on a maverick military commander. Tensions between the two Koreas are eased in favor of N. Korean dominance as a formal end to the Korean War is negotiated.  
• Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez denies any involvement when several hundred lightly-armed students, shouting anti-American slogans, spontaneously invade the U.S. Embassy in Caracas and hold the occupants captive.  Obama and Chavez meet face-to-face in Havana to ease tensions.  Subsequent discussions designed to resolve the crisis are assigned to a three-party Crisis Resolution Commission that includes the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC), since they claim involvement in the embassy take-over. Eventually, the future of the Organization of American States is called into question as Nicaragua, Ecuador, and a reluctant Bolivia begin talks to form a new regional alliance.
• Late one morning, several of the new U.S. Consulates that the Obama Administration had recently opened in Africa, fulfilling a specific campaign pledge, are targets of suspected Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah terrorists, leaving hundreds dead.  A few African nations immediately ask the U.S. to downscale its diplomatic presence in order to lessen the danger to their citizens.  Kenya demands an increase in American aid to better fend off the threat from Islamic insurgents. 

 If you discount these as fanciful and impossible, remember: The last president to flirt with conducting foreign policy from a theological perspective was Jimmy Carter.   Here’s the hub of matter.  In his speech to the Democrat convention in 2004, then Candidate for the U.S. Senate Barack Obama said, “It is that fundamental belief — I am my brother’s keep, I am my sister’s keeper — that makes this country work.” That’s not so. While that may express Obama’s theological worldview, and is an ageless, altruistic principle behind countless good works, it is not what makes this country work.  What makes this country work is the fundamental belief that we are born with the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The two beliefs – keepers of each other and inalienable rights – live independent lives.  And that’s why we should be very wary of a Neoliberal Theocracy, or any theocracy for that matter.  

Want To Know More About Black Liberation Theology?

 Want a peek inside the black church?  It’s not that scene from “Blues Brothers” where Jake and Elwood visit the Triple Rock where James Brown is the preacher.  What to know what black ministers are really preaching to their flock?  Look no further than Jeremiah Wright and Trinity United Church of Christ.  If nothing else, Senator Obama has raised the curtain and let us see what goes for religious services in many black churchs, many but not all.  The following articles help shed light on what is known as Black Liberation Theology.  Political Night Train believes you should know more about the basis for Senator Obama’s values and beliefs and why he aligned himself with Jeremiah Wright and Trinity Church 20 years ago. March 19, 2008

The Real Agenda of Black Liberation Theology

By Jeffrey Schmidt

 The sad truth is that neither the Reverend Wright nor black liberation theology is being misunderstood.  Both, thanks to the candidacy of Barack Obama, are being exposed.  God, in fact, works in mysterious ways.  And unless it’s the aforementioned liberals and Democrats who are trying to hush up Wright, Moss and others of their ilk, sensible Americans want to hear more, for knowledge is power, the power to combat hate.    And make no mistake, what Americans are hearing, they don’t like. In the Rasmussen poll, 73% of voters find Wright’s comments to be racially divisive.  That’s a broad cross section of voters, including 58% of black voters.     

Read more at http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/03/the_real_agenda_of_black_liber.html

 What did Obama know, and when did he know it? Brian Fitzpatrick – Guest Columnist – 3/19/2008 7:45:00 AM 

As reported in the March 22 edition of World Magazine, before it was cleansed of some materials, the Trinity U.C.C. website listed this statement by Wright:
 
“The vision statement of Trinity United Church of Christ is based upon the systematized liberation theology that started in 1969 with the publication of Dr. James Cone’s book Black Power and Black Theology.”
 
World continues: “Cone argued in his 1970 work, A Black Theology of Liberation, that ‘the goal of black theology is the destruction of everything white, so that blacks can be liberated from alien gods.'”

 Associations with pastors are voluntary and normally reflect a consonance in worldview. You choose a pastor precisely because you agree with his theology and you want to learn from him. You don’t sit under his teaching for nearly two decades, have him officiate at your wedding, have him baptize your children, call him your “mentor,” sing his praises in your first book, name your second book after one of his sermons, and support his church with tens of thousands of dollars if you don’t generally see eye to eye with him. 

Read more at http://www.onenewsnow.com/Perspectives/Default.aspx?id=72267

 Reverend Jeremy Wright’s Theology Exposed

In a set of “talking points” on the Trinity United Church of Christ web site, Wright proclaims himself an exponent of “black liberation theology.” He cites James Cone, a distinguished professor at New York’s Union Theological Seminary, whom he credits for having “systematized” this strain of Christianity.

 Here is a quote from Cone, explaining black liberation theology:

“Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community. … Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.”

 

Read more at http://www.agoravox.com/article.php3?id_article=7886

   

Shedding Light On Barack Obama’s Values & Beliefs In Liberation Theology

The following article sheds much light on the basis of Barack Obama’s core values and beliefs, which Political Night Train now believes are rooted in “Liberation Theology” and the writings of James Cone, a person who greatly influenced Jeremiah Wright.  If elected and allowed to govern, Barack Obama would govern not just from the liberal left, but from the “neoliberal” left, with a heavy dose of liberation theology thrown in.  The last time we had a President who tried to govern from a set of theological beliefs, we had four years of Jimmy Carter.   The gospel according to Cone revolves around a single dimension of the Christian faith and necessarily interprets the very nature of “oppression” as solely material and of this world.  In effect, black liberation theology reduces the entire Gospel down to a Marxist people’s struggle and hijacks the Christ for political purpose. “What else can the crucifixion mean except that God, the Holy One of Israel, became identified with the victims of oppression?  What else can the resurrection mean except that God’s victory in Christ is the poor person’s victory over poverty?”  (Speaking the Truth; p. 6) This certainly puts an altogether different light on the crucifixion than any to which I’ve ever been exposed. According to this theology, we are not individually saved by grace.  God hasn’t anything at all to do with salvation or sanctification. “…sanctification is liberation.  To be sanctified is to be liberated – that is, politically engaged in the struggle of freedom.  When sanctification is defined as a commitment to the historical struggle for political liberation, then it is possible to connect it with socialism and Marxism the reconstruction of society on the basis of freedom and justice for all.”
(Speaking the Truth; p. 33; emphases mine) March 15, 2008The Great ObamaAmerica, and especially the America of our imagination, is the land of self-making and the self-made. Our presidential politics are far from the exclusive domain of the self-made, but our most interesting presidents (e.g., Johnson, Nixon, Clinton) tend to come from that category.Barack Obama is the quintessential self-made man. He hails from the periphery, not just of our society but of our geographic boundaries. Lacking any relevant connections, he created his own — with the Ivy League, with the legal elite, with community activists in a town where he was stranger, with black nationalists in that same town, and with rich backers there.In literature, the connections the self-made man creates always come back to haunt him, and so it may now be with Obama. When this happens the question becomes: what lies at the core of the self-made man? In literature, the answer often is, nothing other than the compulsion of self-making and the sum total of the connections and deals that this compulsion yielded. Who, at root, was Jay Gatsby?But Obama is not a fictional character, nor does he seem superficial. Most of his connections may say nothing specific about his core, and in theory this could even be true about his church affiliation and his spiritual adviser. However, Obama’s own writing suggests that his relationship with the Trinity Church and with Jeremiah Wright has been a deep one. He says he attended church regularly, except during specific periods such as after his first child was born. He says Rev. Wright had a significant influence on him and, in fact, played a major role in bringing him to Jesus. If we take Obama at his word, his relationship with Wright was not pure opportunism. Rather there was an affinity. What was the nature of that affinity?I think we should stipulate that it was not Wright’s most extreme racist and anti-American pronouncements. But it also seems clear that it was not traditional Christian belief either. Obama was not looking for that — indeed, he had rejected traditional Christianity before encountering Wright. As just noted, Wright brought him to Jesus. More precisely, Wright’s brand of Christianity accomplished this.What is that brand? According to Wright (for example, during his contentious interview with Sean Hannity last year), the brand is liberation theology. Liberation theology sees the Christian mission as bringing justice to oppressed people through political activism. In effect, it is a merger of Christianity with radical left-wing ideology. Black liberation theology, as articulated for example by James Cone who inspired Wright, emphasizes the racial aspect oppression. It’s easy to see why this brand of Christianity, and probably only this brand, could bring a left-wing political activist like Obama to Jesus.How would the statements of Wright that have recently come to light be viewed in the context of liberation theology? In particular, employing the various terms Obama has used to describe Wright’s statements, which ones would be “not particularly controversial,” which would be “controversial” or “provocative,” and which would be deplorable?Comments about crimes against Palestinians would, I submit, fall within the mainstream of liberation theology, just as they do for most hard-leftists who don’t put Christianity into the mix. Palestinians make the “A List” of oppressed victims of virtually every ideology that sees the world as divided into oppressors and the oppressed.Comments about the U.S. treating some of its citizens as less than human, or bringing 9/11 on itself, or inflicting AIDs on black people would, I take it, be controversial and provocative even within the world of black liberation theology. One can believe that oppression is rampant and that the U.S. is heavily implicated, without going as far as Wright did in these remarks. But Wright’s remarks seem no worse than controversial and provocative within this framework. An oppressor will go to great lengths to oppress, and it is an open question just how far that imperative extends. Wright offers one possible answer to that question: there are virtually no limits. If that answer were beyond the pale of the black liberation theology of his congregation, Wright would not have survived and prospered there. Moreover, certain comments of Michelle Obama are surely uncontroversial in the world of black liberation theology. It would, in fact, be most difficult to reconcile pride in America with that theology. The open question for its adherents is how low their estimation of America should be, and how low they think America would stoop. Pride in America would seem out of the question.In sum, Barack Obama’s close and longstanding affiliation with Wright and his church probably does tell us something important about the man. It doesn’t tell us that he agrees with Wright’s most extreme ravings, but it suggests that Obama is enough of a leftist to be attracted to, and comfortable at, a place where Wright’s most extreme views, though controversial and provocative, are not outrageous. Obama’s current attempts to escape that inference likely have more to do self-making than with historical fact.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/03/020045.php

 

Is “Audacity of Hope” Really Marxism?

 “They (religious seekers) want a sense of purpose, a narrative arc to their lives, something that will relieve a chronic loneliness or lift them above the exhausting, relentless toll of daily life.  They need an assurance that somebody out there cares about them, is listening to them – that they are not just destined to travel down a long highway toward nothingness.”  (Audacity of Hope; p. 202) 

Compare what Barack Obama written in his book, above with Karl Marx, below:

 Marxism is summed up in the Encarta Reference Library as “a theory in which class struggle is a central element in the analysis of social change in Western societies.” What are the Marxist views of religion? The worker is miserable and alienated, and this sustains religion.  Religion, according to Marx was the response to the pain of being alive, the response to earthly suffering. In Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1844), Marx wrote, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the feeling of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless circumstances.” Marx indicated in this writing that the worker is a revoluntary and used to suffering at the hands of the capitalist. This suffering, lack of purpose, relentless toil of daily life, with no one who cares about their plight, with no one to listen to their struggle, provides the need for religion. 

Compare this to Obama’s reasons for people to seek religion: no sense of purpose; loneliness (no one to listen to their struggle); relentless toll of daily life; needing assurance that someone cares about them, will listen to them, that they are nothing.

Jeremiah Wright’s Influence, In Obama’s Own Words

Want proof of Jeremiah Wright’s theological influence on Senator Obama, look no further than Obama’s own words.

Obama 12 years ago

Ed Lasky
Barack Obama, the uniter across party lines, across religions, across racial divides, wasn’t always Mr. Sunshine.   He had a different view 12 years ago, when his campaign was more localized.He was 34 years old: a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School — bastions of power and wealth. He was the beneficiary of the best education America had to offer. What were his feelings at age 34? Resentment, hyper-partisan, and accusatory towards whites, Republicans and the so-called Christian right.  As Barack Obama prepared to run for the state Senate he spoke up shortly after the Million Man March lead by Louis Farrakhan — or as Barack Obama honorifically recently titled him, Minister Farrakhan. Via Newsbusters: [empahses added] These are mean, cruel times, exemplified by a ‘lock ’em up, take no prisoners’ mentality that dominates the Republican-led Congress. Historically, African-Americans have turned inward and towards black nationalism whenever they have a sense, as we do now, that the mainstream has rebuffed us, and that white Americans couldn’t care less about the profound problems African-Americans are facing.“ The right wing, the Christian right, has done a good job of building these organizations of accountability, much better than the left or progressive forces have. But it’s always easier to organize around intolerance, narrow-mindedness, and false nostalgia. And they also have hijacked the higher moral ground with this language of family values and moral responsibility. Barack Obama has commented on the value of words to inspire, to bring about change. What kind of change was he talking about in his mid 30’s when most of us had already given up the rebellion we flirted with, and the resentments that beset us,  in college?

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/03/obama_12_years_ago.html

What Did Obama Know About Jeremiah Wright, & When Did He Know It?

Political Night Train finds it unbelievable that Sen Obama and his wife Michelle were, for more than 20 years, unaware of Jeremiah Wright’s hateful racist sermons.  There are persistent rumors of at least one video of Wright preaching hate and racism where the Obama’s are seen in attendance.  How soon before such a video makes it to YouTube?

Just What Did Obama Know About Wright’s Past Sermons?

ABC News Senior National Correspondent Jake Tapper

March 15, 2008 6:15 PM<!–

MichaelJames

–>In his Friday night cable mea culpas on the incendiary comments made by his spiritual adviser Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., repeatedly said, “I wasn’t in church during the time that these statement were made. I did not hear such incendiary language myself, personally. Either in conversations with him or when I was in the pew, he always preached the social gospel. … If I had heard them repeated, I would have quit. … If I thought that was the repeated tenor of the church, then I wouldn’t feel comfortable there.”

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/03/just-what-did-o.html

Obama’s Fellow Trinity Church Members Speak Out On Influence of Rev. Wright

The following statements have been made by Barack Obama’s fellow members of Trinity Church where Jeremiah Wright has been Obama’s pastor for 20 years:

In speaking about what Jeremiah Wright preaches and promotes at Trinity Church, one congregation member said,  

“I wouldn’t call it radical. I call it being black in America,” said one congregation member outside the church last Sunday.

Another Trinity Church members stated, “He (Rev. Wright) has impacted the life of Barack Obama so much so that he (Obama) wants to portray that feeling he got from Rev. Wright onto the country because we all need something positive,” said another member of the congregation.

What Does Barack Obama Believe? Can Obama Be Trusted?

Political Night Train is posting the following article in it’s entirity, because of the importance of the subject, namely, What Does Senator Obama Believe?  And When Did He Start Believing It?

CRC Open Sources

W. Thomas Smith, Jr., Director, Counterterrorism Research Center

 In this week’s CRC Open Sources we look at – among other issues – the inflammatory and potentially dangerous anti-Americanism exhibited by Barack Obama’s long-time pastor and staunch supporter, Jeremiah Wright.  Some of you might wonder why in “Open Sources” we are addressing what could be deemed political or ideological concerns. But as you will see in the ABC News video, Wright’s public comments – not unlike that spewed by the most radical Islamic fundamentalists – is the kind of inflammatory rhetoric that could lead to far darker actions on the part of followers. Don’t take our word for it. Read and watch.
According to ABC News (watch video):

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“Sen. Barack Obama’s pastor says blacks should not sing ‘God Bless America’ but ‘God damn America.’ … Rev. Wright, who declined to be interviewed by ABC News, is considered one of the country’s 10 most influential black pastors, according to members of the Obama campaign. Obama has praised at least one aspect of Rev. Wright’s approach, referring to his ‘social gospel’ and his focus on Africa, ‘and I agree with him on that.’”

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Obama’s pastor for the last 20 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ, Wright has asserted that the United States brought on the attacks of 9/11 because of “its own terrorism.”

Obama’s relationship with Wright is extremely close. Wright married Obama and his wife. He baptized their children. Obama has paid money to the church. Obama contends his church is not controversial. Obama credits Wright with the title of his book, “The Audacity of Hope.” And the two are close friends.

Wright said:

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“Barack knows what it means to be a black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people. Hillary can never know that. Hillary ain’t never been called a [n-word].

“Hillary is married to Bill. And Bill has been good to us. No, he ain’t. Bill did us just like he did Monica Lewinsky. He was riding dirty.

“The government gives him the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law, and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no. Not ‘God Bless America.’ God damn America. That’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating us citizens as less than human.

“We bombed Hiroshima. We bombed in Nagasaki. And we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon. And we never batted an eye. 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 been brought right back into our own front yard.”

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To be fair, Obama has purportedly “denounced” some – though not all – of Wright’s inflammatory comments (Politically, he had no choice, and he did so only because he was backed into a corner about Wright). But Obama doesn’t believe his church is controversial, and the questions remain: why would a presidential contender stand – and carry on a 20-year relationship – with anyone as provocative, racist, and dangerous as Wright? And why would the American people and the mainstream media continue to give that contender a free pass?

Keep in mind, radical Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan also has announced his support of Obama. Again, why?

UPDATE: Late Friday, Barack Obama published a piece at the Huffington Post and on his website in which he said:  

“The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy  were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation. When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign.”

That means:

a) Obama is not telling the truth.

b) Obama is telling the truth, which begs the question: Do the American people want a president and a wartime commander-in-chief (responsible for all manner of strategic intelligence) who has exhibited as much stark cluelessness about anything as he obviously has regarding his pastor (and close family friend) and the church he was a member of – and donating money to – for 20 years?

Inside Jeremiah Wright’s Theology

The basis for Jeremiah Wright’s theology

 

It would seem that Jeremiah Wright’s theology is based on core values and beliefs that the white, rich man’s God is different from the poor black man’s God.  This is the basis for black liberation theology, the theology preached by Jeremiah Wright.  If in doubt, go to the website of Trinity Church and checkout the things the church values.  These are the values of Jeremiah Wright, the leader of Trinity Church for the past 30 years.  These must also be the values and beliefs of the members of Trinity Church, and the Obama’s are members in good standing, for the past 20 years.  The liberation theology views the world, and it’s belief in God, on one’s place in the world.  Liberation theology is preached in many black churches as the daily struggle of the oppressed black man, looking to God for salvation, while the white man keeps a foot on the black man’s neck.

 

What liberation theology can not come to grips with is the real world.  On Sunday, ministers like Jeremiah Wright preach racism and hatred.  But then the members of those churches go to work Monday through Friday in a world that now offers fair and equal pay, good education, fair housing, a means to get ahead.  Then on Sunday, they get another dose of how down trodden is the black man. 

 

Most churches ask their members to live what is preached in the church.  If this is the case, is Jeremiah Wright asking the members of Trinity Church, Obama included, to go out and hate, to practice racism?

 

From the Gospel of Luke, Jeremiah Wright seems to have the basis for his theology:

 

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, To set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. (Luke 4:18-19).

 

James Cone was also an influence on Jeremiah Wright and this can be seen in many of Wright’s sermons, based on the following from Cone in 1968:

 

“Theologically, Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man ‘the devil.’ The white structure of this American society, personified in every racist, must be at least part of what the New Testament meant by demonic forces…Ironically, the man who enslaves another enslaves himself…To be free to do what I will in relation to another is to be in bondage to the law of least resistance. This is the bondage of racism. Racism is that bondage in which whites are free to beat, rape, or kill blacks. About thirty years ago it was acceptable to lynch a black man by hanging him from a tree; but today whites destroy him by crowding him into a ghetto and letting filth and despair put the final touches on death.”

 

This last sentence from Cone is reflected in many of Wright’s sermons.

Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright – Roots In Black Panthers??

As Mark Stricherz points out, Jeremiah Wright’s sermons may have more to do with how his values and beliefs were shaped by the likes of Eldridge Cleaver and Stokley Carmichael than by his theological beliefs.

Seeking the roots of Wright’s audacityPosted by Mark StricherzMr. Wright, 66, who last month fulfilled longstanding plans to retire, is a beloved figure in African-American Christian circles and a frequent guest in pulpits around the country. Since he arrived at Trinity in 1972, he has built a 6,000-member congregation through his blunt, charismatic preaching, which melds detailed scriptural analysis, black power, Afrocentrism and an emphasis on social justice; Mr. Obama praised the last quality in Friday’s statement.His most powerful influence, said several ministers and scholars who have followed his career, is black liberation theology, which interprets the Bible as a guide to combating oppression of African-Americans. Granted, the two explanations are not mutually exclusive. Every theology is rooted in some historical era. Yet readers of the two stories are confused. Does Wright’s theology owe more to “Soul on Ice” or “A Black Theology of Liberation.” (To her credit, Kantor quoted James Cone, the author of the latter book.)If the public were better informed about this question, they would know more about Obama and Wright.

http://www.getreligion.org/?p=3288

Hillary Memo: Lay Off Jeremiah Wright

Political Night Train believes the Clintons have seen the light and may stop trying to make race an issue.  It seems Obama’s minister, Jeremiah Wright is doing a good job injecting hate and racism into the campaign.

Clinton campaign: Yes on Rezko, no on Wright

by James Oliphant

The memo has apparently gone around the Hillary Clinton camp this morning: Lay off the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.

On a conference call Saturday to talk about the state of the race, Clinton campaign officials just wouldn’t go there.

“That’s really for Senator Obama to address,” said chief strategist Mark Penn.

It’s interesting, because certainly, the Clinton folks have shown very little reluctance to knock Obama around like a pinata every time they come across as what they perceive to be a vulnerable spot.

Take, for instance, Obama’s mea culpa on his dealings with Antoin “Tony” Rezko. The Clinton campaign has been calling on Obama for months to come clean about the full extent of his relationship with the indicted developer. Friday, they got their wish to some degree, but that only racheted up the Clinton attacks.

Penn said Obama’s disclosures were part of a “troubling pattern,” in which Obama’s words don’t match the facts. He said Obama’s advisers on foreign policy and trade haven’t always been on the same page as the candidate. And with Rezko, Penn said, Obama waited too long to tell the full story. The theme, as the Clinton folks have been pushing for weeks, is that Obama’s words don’t add up to very much.

“We tend to learn more in dribs and drabs rather than the kind of transparent candidate and the transparent campaign he says he has been running,” Penn said.

Transparency, of course, is a two-way street. The campaign was asked again whether it would release Clinton’s tax returns, something Obama has been demanding for months. Penn said the returns would be released “around April 15.” When pressed, he pledged they would be made public before the Pennsylvania primary. The Obama camp has been saying returns will shed light on the various sources of income for both Hillary — and especially Bill — Clinton.

Clinton spokesman Phil Singer also wondered why Obama had said he wasn’t aware of Rezko’s legal problems when Friday Obama said that he had indeed read stories about Rezko’s troubles and why Obama said Rezko had raised $100,000 less for his campaign than the developer actually raised.

“Senator Obama needs to answer some basic questions, including why does this story keep changing?” Singer said. He complained that Obama “claims the high ground while attacking Senator Clinton’s character.”

As for staying away from Rev. Wright, it may be that the campaign didn’t want to invite comparisons to Geraldine Ferraro, whose race-based remarks were made seemingly a thousand news cycles ago. Or maybe that talking about race in any context has become such a landmine that they just thought it wouldn’t be prudent.

It certainly wasn’t because there was nothing to say.

Posted by Jim Oliphant on March 15, 2008 1:15 PM | Permalink

WHAT Does Barack Obama Really Believe?

 Ron Kessler, writing in NewsMax poses the following questions about Sen. Obama’s values and beliefs:

Mr. Obama obviously would not choose to belong to Mr. Wright’s church and seek his advice unless he agreed with at least some of his views. In light of Mr. Wright’s perspective, Michelle Obama’s comment that she feels proud of America for the first time in her adult life makes perfect sense. Much as most of us would appreciate the symbolism of a black man ascending to the presidency, what we have in Barack Obama is a politician whose closeness to Mr. Wright underscores his radical record.