How Can Obama Square These? [Update by Larry Johnson]
By NoQuarter on March 14, 2008 at 9:12 PM in Barack Obama, Current Affairs, Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., William Ayers
Can Obama square these facts so that the mainstream American voters — the voters he would need to gain the trust of to win a presidential contest — will be able to support him and vote for him November? I think not. Here are some reasons why:
(1) Square this MSNBC story with a Politico report by Ben Smith:
(A) MSNBC First Read, Friday, March 14, 2008, 3:28 PM: “The Obama campaign says they have no plans to ask the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to step down from a campaign spiritual advisory committee [the African American Religious Leadership Committee] because it “was a laundry list of people associated with the campaign and didn’t really do anything” [the typical "minimization" we're used to from the Obama campaign].
(B) Ben Smith, Politico.com, March 14, 2008, 7:26 PM: “Wright leaves Obama campaign — Spokesman Tommy Vietor emails: ‘Rev. Wright is no longer serving on the African American Religious Leadership Committee’” [how convenient -- just in time for the Keith Olbermann interview at 8:00 PM.]
(2) Square the statements of his pastor Jeremiah Wright with the statements of Obama supporter and fellow board member William Ayers published on the front page of the New York Times on September 11, 2001?
(A) Jeremiah Wright gave a sermon in which he said that “9′11 was a wake-up call for white America”?
(B) Unrepentant terrorist and former Weatherman William Ayers, a regular campaign supporter and fellow board member for the Woods Fund of Chicago, told the New York Times — in a story published on September 11, 2001 — that ”I don’t regret setting bombs,” Bill Ayers said. ”I feel we didn’t do enough.” (The NYTimes story, on the front page that fateful day, was titled, “No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen.”
For more on Ayers, see Larry Johnson’s article here, “Obama Tries to Hide Ayers Tie.”
Read that title again: “Obama Tries to Hide Ayers Tie.”
There’s a pattern, isn’t there.
Obama dissembles, minimizes and then shoves aside his longtime affiliations with extremists like Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers.
The pattern includes him first minimizing the associations, or quite unbelievably saying he just didn’t know they expressed hatred for the United States of America.
Then, when pressure builds, he disavows them, and pushes them off a cliff.
Besides dumping Wright tonight from his committee, there’s also the odd coincidence that Wright retired from the pulpit at the beginning of 2008. Some television commentators wonder about the timing.
For more on these two extremists associated with Obama — he and Jeremiah Wright have been close for 20 years, and he and Ayers have been close for at least 12 years — see our stories here on Ayers and Wright.
UPDATE FROM LARRY JOHNSON: Just to get my two cents in. This is the great bamboozle, the okie doke, the hoodwinking of the American voter. Barack Obama wants to pretend that the comments of Reverend Wright are irrelevant to his quest for the Presidency. However, Reverend Wright is not just some passing acquaintance of Obama. I have a question for folks who have gotten married in a church or synagogue. Did you care you performed your wedding ceremony? I know in my case that my wife and I wanted someone we viewed as a spiritual leader. Someone we respected. Someone who reflected our values.
Are we supposed to believe that Barack and Michelle Obama are different? That they just chose someone who was available? He had Wright baptize his daughters and trusts this guy to instruct his children. I don’t buy it.
And Senator Obama is having a tough time getting his story correct. According to Reverend Wright:
“Fifteen minutes before Shabbos I get a call from Barack,” Mr. Wright said in an interview on Monday, recalling that he was at an interfaith conference at the time. “One of his members had talked him into uninviting me,” Mr. Wright said, referring to Mr. Obama’s campaign advisers. . . .
Mr. Wright said that in the phone conversation in which Mr. Obama disinvited him from a role in the announcement, Mr. Obama cited an article in Rolling Stone, “The Radical Roots of Barack Obama.”
According to the pastor, Mr. Obama then told him, “You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we’ve decided is that it’s best for you not to be out there in public.”
Yet, Obama wrote on the Huffington post just the other day:
Most importantly, Rev. Wright preached the gospel of Jesus, a gospel on which I base my life. In other words, he has never been my political advisor; he’s been my pastor. And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn.
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. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments. But because Rev. Wright was on the verge of retirement, and because of my strong links to the Trinity faith community, where I married my wife and where my daughters were baptized, I did not think it appropriate to leave the church.
Obama wants us to believe that Wright’s statements are some aberration. Nonsense! The Reverend Wright has a long history of radical behavior and statements. Wright himself noted in the New York Times interview:
“When his enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli” to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, Mr. Wright recalled, “with Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell.” Mr. Wright added that his trip implied no endorsement of either Louis Farrakhan’s views or Qaddafi’s.
How completely clueless can the Senator from Illinois be? Wright is no Martin Luther King jr. that’s for sure. He does not preach a message of peace. He does not call on his congregation to turn the other cheek. He does not preach non-violence as the path of Jesus. Instead, he spreads the lie that Jesus was a black man and that the white race is bent on crucifying blacks. Was Barack asleep during the sermons? I think it is the big bamboozle.
Jerome Armstrong on the front page of MyDD:
Answer: The Bus
by Jerome Armstrong, Fri Mar 14, 2008 at 09:10:05 PM EST
“Rev. Wright is no longer serving on the African American Religious Leadership Committee.”
Ben Smith absurdly likens the comments and stepping down by Geraldine Ferraro, while being clumsily blunt, with those of the disgustingly anti-American and racist rantings, and dismissal, of Jeremiah Wright.
I just can’t imagine the worldview that looks toward a person like Wright as someone that I’d attend Church to listen too, someone that I’d choose to get married by, someone I’d watch baptize my two children. I realize these are selective comments in the video, but come on, we all know that there’s a lot more. …
READ ALL.
Barack never heard Wright talk like this. Really?
On the Sunday after 9/11, every person in America who belonged to a church attended it. Where was Barack Obama on that day? Out of town, perhaps, but I imagine we’ll know more soon.
Josh Marshall says Wright resigned from his “ceremonial” position on the African American Religious Leadership Committee with the Obama campaign.
Ceremonial? And Josh wonders why he’s not taken more seriously as a journalist. I remember when he was for the war before he was against it.
This was exactly my reaction.
The Sunday immediately after 9/11, and someone who claims to be a strong Christian isn’t going to go to his church on that day of all days for some perspective and solace?
I can’t help but wonder, what does his faith mean to him if he doesn’t go to church on that day? How sincere might it be?
I watched Obama on Olbermann tonight. He said he had just become aware of Wright’s incendiary rants after the campaign began.
Umm..OK…so how does he square this comment from a Wright interview with the NYT in April 2007?:
Great addition. After I pause for a few — pooped — I should add that to the story, Saul.
Indeed. How can he square that?
His entire excuse-making mission today is b—sh-t.
“Indeed. How can he square that?”
He will do what politicians in a bind always do… lie through his teeth… but he will sound good doing it so the Kool-Aid drinkers will love him even more.
Your are right. Once people get to know the real Obama they will turn on him. No, not the blacks but other races that are offended by his allegiance to such a racist church and Pastor.
Wait until they learn about his ties to Muslims in Kenya….
Rest up susanUnPC, this is just the calm before the storm. Penny bet; those two stories Mr Johnson mentioned that are being sat on are still out there.
Major Garrett on Brit Hume (I’m listening to the DVR’d show):
“To say that Barack Obama’s response has been ‘evolving” is to be charitable.”
Beautiful.
Then he says that he sent an e-mail to the campaign this morning — does the campaign need to distance itself, add anything more, etc. — and he got a one-word response, “No.”
Things have changed during the day, haven’t they. These AMATEURS have no place in the White House.
When somebody YouTubes the interivew Major Garrett of Obama you’ll have to see it. Obama was looking nervous by the end giving one-word answers.
This is the link to that NYT article
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/us/politics/30obama.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin
Just in case you haven’t seen Wright in a video, CHECK THIS OUT.
Voters need to tie Obama’s Iraq War speech and Rev’s Wright speeches. The assumption is that Obama did not want the Iraq war because it would harm america. Maybe he did not want the war because he was more concerned with “whitey” killing more brown people. I am just saying.
In the end, wrong rationale right results.
Was just watching CNN 360, and seems they are doing a great job!
A fantastic job actaully at defending Obama towards Wright, wonder how long this love fest is going to last, it seems like everyone has been scripted on the twists to put on the story to keep Obama alive politically!
There is a huge difference between Ferraro and Wright, Ferraro stated what many believe and Wright exploits peoples minds in a way to think, which is more dangerous a person, and which one has had a more influencial impact on a candidates moral compass?
CNN and MSNBC will carry Obama’s water until the GOP decides its time to take him down IMO. Though herr Olderman will probably follow him to the end like a modern day Renfro following Count Dracula.
But thats not what needs to worry Obama and his yuppie supporters.
Now that the cat is out of the bag. All Rush and Talk radio need to do is play Wright’s greatest hits from now till election day and they’ll have the white working class terrified of Obama. They’ll go running to McCain and hence put a end to the cult of Obama.
Count this life-long Democrat, who’s only voted for ONE Republican in 38 years of voting (a local race for a personal friend) as someone who will vote for McCain over Obama.
I’ve always said I vote for the best candidate… who just happens to the Democrat in every case. If Obama is the nominee, I’ll have to vote for McCain. Coming out of a deep recession, with a war on two fronts, with America’s position crumbling, we simply can’t afford a man like Barack Obama.
The Clinton tactic will only work to bring her and party down.
She can’t win without the black vote and you folks continue to poison the process.
Truth = Clinton Tactic… that’s what I’ve always thought.
Facts are Clintonistas!
Ah, yes, to the Obama faithful, anything that ever comes out about this fraud is always Clinton’s doing. According to you, she must spend 24 hours a day on the internet digging up every last bit of dirt to be found on him. Yeah, right!
As a matter of fact, Hannity over at Fox has been talking about this hateful preacher for over a year and finally people are starting to hear him - particularly after they released one of the most vile tapes of him. So instead of always blaming everything on Hillary, you might want to look at who always gets the dirt on everyone - the wingnuts. They’ve had this stuff a long time and have just started pounding it out there big time. This, by the way, is exactly what many of us have always been afraid of - Obama somehow getting the nomination, and then all they have to do is play endless loops of this preacher, plus Rezko, non-stop until November. McCain wins in a landslide. Carl Rove cackles in the background.
“She can’t win without the black vote”
Let them vote Republican
She can’t win without the black vote”
Let them vote Republican
Since Hillary suggested that McCain was better that Obama that should be the plan.
Hillary. Does. Not. Win.
Denial just ain’t a river in Egypt, Moonbeam.
Obama told Cooper on 360 that he never was in a pew when Wright made those statements, Obama must of been too busy Chairing the Oversight on Europe and NATO committees!
Obama also said he never knew about the Wright statements to Cooper, sounds like the same excuse he used saying he never knew about the prople freezing in the Rezko slums!
Cee says: “The Clinton tactic will only work to bring her and party down. She can’t win without the black vote and you folks continue to poison the process.”
Cee, reality check time, Clinton wasn’t the one injecting race into the campaigns, it was Obama’s campaign who did, actaully Michelle Obama through that flame of fire out! And if it is Clinton as the nominee, you think black folks are going to vote for McCain, and his continuation of the war and his Republican way of lowering life for low and middle class people?
Question why Obama is doing this on a friday night, dumping all this to try to avoid continual press on it and divert it from Rezko, wake up Cee and take your Koom-by-ya tape off and sniff some reality or a few minutes!
I sure don’t want Obama answering the phone at 3AM and then waiting hours till he tracks down Clinton for advice on how to deal with a crisis!…lol
Obama told Cooper on 360 that he never was in a pew when Wright made those statements
How much do you think a video of him there in the pews are worth right about now? GOOD lord, Obama is signing up for a Makaka moment.
Yikes, what an idiot, not to KNOW you don’t make these kinds of statements!
Right now a whole bunch of OT hours are being spent going thru all known video and what then?
Hillary’s New Slogan
“God Bless America”
Brilliant!
“Yes we can! God BLESS America!”
If we had a rating system here I would give your comment the highest rating, then I would sign on as someone else and give it the highest rating. Next I would write all of my friends and ask them to follow suit.
Excellent!
Obama keeps on saying how he wants to move past the Racism in the country to Cooper, if so, then why doesn’t he appologize for the memo his campaign put out in SC on keeping the racial tones going against Clinton’s MLK statement, or make Michelle publically apologize to Bill Clinton over turning a true statement of “fairy tale” over Obama’s Iraq war stance into a racial remark!
If people let these lies of Obama die down, then we are all victims to the sleeziest campaigns in modern history of nominating a candidate and Republicans will bring it all to the forefront and will cause major rifts and racial divides thanks to Obama’s greed for power and self advancement!
Larry, tie this all in to Michelle Obama’s Princton thesis which has been take off the web till after the elections in November!
This church the Obama’s joined and lived in the community of for 20 yrs fits right in by the preachings to Michelle Obama’s thesis!
There she was, a senior at Princeton, and so bitter about how whites treated her on campus. (I wasn’t in her shoes there, but I’m sure she was treated very respectfully and inclusively. Imho, she was too steeped in bitterness and anger to appreciate the friendships she had.)
You have to remember, Michelle was not proud of America yet, so maybe some of that bitterness gave off and aura around her!
Been by Lawrenceville?
Until you walk or imagine walking in someone else’s shoes or admit that you many now know what it is like…WE ALL LOSE.
If you are not black you do not know what it is like, although you may have your own experiences of being oppressed.
I have know idea how Michelle Obama was treated at Harvard. I do have white friends who attended Harvard and they have shared that it is a dog eat dog kind of world.
Yes, nothing like a bunch of psychotically narcissistic no talent effeminate self entitled wannabe elites, going at each other.
And then they move to the US government, after graduation.
And those are just the rich, you should see how you’re treated when you’re middle class, or ethnic, not of the Bush type class.
Kathleen -
Sweetie - pumpkin - Michelle Obama is a lawyer - not a librarian and I mean no offense to librarians.
Lawyering is a fine profession, but an adversarial one. She chose it.
And as an attorney she fought for…
a mansion while black people froze in unsafe buildings…
kicking the poor out of Chicago U Hospital….
outrageous CEO salaries while Latinos lost jobs.
Some people paid for ivy league educations. Some of us earned the grades to get in.
I think Michelle Obama should be grateful not hateful, but my spiritual advisor goes at it a lot differently than Rev. Wright.
Axelrod and Obama knew before South Carolina how easy it was going to be to play the “race-baiting” card and tap into this energy in the Black community. They had witnessed how it worked in the preaching of pastor Wright.
They knew they could charge the Clintons of being racists and the Black community would rally around Obama.
Watch some of those “hoodwinked, bamboozled” speeches - they are pastor Wright sermons toned down and cooled up to get the same message across without the media catching on.
I blame David Axelrod for all of this ugliness. It was a despicable political strategy - but brilliant nonetheless. They couldn’t help themselves, though. They saw the Mississippi demographics and they decided to play the race-baiter card again. And now it has blown up in their faces.
Someone really needs to do a proper expose on Axelrod.
There is one aspect of one of Wright’s remarks that strikes me as particularly ugly, but I haven’t yet seen remarked anywhere.
Wright’s comments on 9/11 mirror almost exactly an infamous comment by Malcolm X:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_X
It’s hard not to believe that Wright wasn’t perfectly aware of that history. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t expect his audience to be aware of it as well.
Personally, I am especially offended by Wright’s claim that AIDS was invented to kill blacks.
Hello? Ever hear about gays?
By the way, Obama says he agrees with Wright’s theology. I’d like some more depth on that answer.
I wonder what Wright had to say about gays. I can’t imagine he had anything nice to say.
[...] See Part i of How Can Obama Square These? [Update by Larry Johnson].” [...]
Obama continues to denegrate the ’60’s and the civil rights movement at the same time that his campaign continues to liken themselves to MLK and JFK. Five minutes into the Olbermann interview, BO inserted this talking point not only meant to absolve Rev. Wright’s radicalism but as a slap at HRC.
“Rev. Wright represents a generation that came of age in the ’60’s. He is a african-american man who because of his life experience, continues to have a lot of anger and frustration and will express that in ways that are very different from me and my generation partly because I benefitted from the struggles of that early generation and so part of what we are seeing here is a transition from the past to the future and I hope that our politics represent that future.”
For Obama to absolve Rev. Wright with these words as well as marginalize the anger and frustration of those in the civil rights movement and insinuate that those feelings and have little place in today’s politic (see Katrina’s victims), I found to be offensive.
Does anyone have the text, complete quote, of what Sen. Obama said about Reagan being an engine for change or something like that? I’m having a hard time finding it. I think it was said before the Las Vegas primary.
I am flabbergasted that anyone calling their self a journalist would let this fluffed up explanation fly unchallenged.
Really great points. Thanks
One aspect of the reverend’s hate-preach is that he constantly focuses on the black “man.” Earth to Wright: women of all colors and nationalities have been treated as non-persons (and even slaves, mere property) for millenia, far far longer than African-Americans. That doesn’t excuse horrible treatment of African-Americans, but it gives context to the arrogantly self-absorbed victimhood the reverend spews.
CAE -
And what about black people treating black people horribly? I guess the Rev. preaches that’s okey dokey?
Obama writes the following at the Huffington Post:
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. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments. But because Rev. Wright was on the verge of retirement, and because of my strong links to the Trinity faith community, where I married my wife and where my daughters were baptized, I did not think it appropriate to leave the church.
But according to one source, he did on 22 July 2007. I quote:
Presidential candidate Barack Obama preaches on the campaign trail that America needs a new consensus based on faith and bipartisanship, yet he continues to attend a controversial Chicago church whose pastor routinely refers to “white arrogance” and “the United States of White America.”
In fact, Obama was in attendance at the church when these statements were made on July 22.
Truthteller,
WOW! You are great at fully documenting every thing you say.
I wish you would post here more often. Your always tinely and well throught through pieces are balm for souls weary, of what seems the constant screeching with no factual base at all.
Sometimes I see you commenting at MYDD. I consider NQ my home base, and your wisdom is s superb way to start the day.
Really good to see you.
It’s been striking to see Obama’s conduct when he encounters some bad story about him, such as here and in NAFTA-gate: he lies both readily and badly.
We Democrats are broad-minded and tolerant enough to not be offended by Rev. Wright, even his “wake up” comments. But Republican jingos and many Independents are not, and will make absolute hay out of him.
Obama wants to hang this albatross around the Democratic neck.
Not this life-long Democrat.
I find a lot of short-comings about our nation, and complain bitterly about them, but that’s not “hate speech”. What Jeremiah Wright has preached at times is exactly that.
And yes, the Democratic Party will pay dearly this, even if Obama is not the nominee.
Not this life-long Democrat, either. I’m not “broad-minded” enough to attend KKK rallies or listen to Michael Savage, I don’t “appreciate” the “nuance” of a good George Lincoln Rockwell speech, and what the Rev. Wright does is spew hate and bigotry.
I won’t look past it. Sorry.
This is what they’re going to do, part of the plan, sorry.
So plan to defend now, because its’ already starting with Kos, and “I expected more of progressives.”
The democrats need to DUMP obama, ASAP.
OTOH, if men like Kerry and Dean take the fall, as they should, they might end up removing a bunch of dead wood from the Democratic party.
The media won’t dare air this.
War on Iraq IQ Test REV. JEREMIAH WRIGHT / Trinity Pastor’s Page 23feb03
War on Iraq IQ Test
REV. JEREMIAH WRIGHT / Trinity Pastor’s Page 23feb03
Take the War on Iraq IQ Test
Do you know enough to justify going to war with Iraq?
1. Q: What percentage of the world’s population does the U.S. have?
A: 6% [correction - 4.8% of world's population - 6.2 billion vs. 280 million]
2. Q: What percentage of the world’s wealth does the U.S. have?
A: 50% [correction - 22% of global GDP]
3. Q: Which country has the largest oil reserves?
A: Saudi Arabia
4. Q: Which country has the second largest oil reserves?
A: Iraq
5. Q: How much is spent on military budgets a year worldwide?
A: $900+ billion
6. Q: How much of this is spent by the U.S.?
A: 50% [explanation - military expenditures for FY2003 may be $460-470 billion including $378.5 billion for the Pentagon, $15.4 billion for nuclear weapons programs, $3.8 billion for foreign military assistance, $1.4 billion for military-related activities of other agencies, $32 billion for military retirement benefits and health care for current employees, $30 billion for the CIA, plus funding for the Homeland Security Department]
7. Q: What percent of US military spending would ensure the essentials of life to everyone in the world, according the UN?
A: 10% (that’s about $40 billion, the amount of funding initially requested to fund our retaliatory attack on Afghanistan)
8. Q: How many people have died in wars since World War II?
A: 86 million
9. Q: How long has Iraq had chemical and biological weapons?
A: Since the early 1980’s.
10. Q: Did Iraq develop these chemical & biological weapons on their own?
A: No, the materials and technology were supplied by the US government, along with Britain and private corporations.
11. Q: Did the US government condemn the Iraqi use of gas warfare against Iran?
A: No
12. Q: How many people did Saddam Hussein kill using gas in the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988?
A: 5,000
13. Q: How many western countries condemned this action at the time?
A: 0
14. Q: How many gallons of agent Orange did America use in Vietnam?
A: 17 million.
15. Q: Are there any proven links between Iraq and September 11th terrorist attack?
A: No
16. Q: What is the estimated number of civilian casualties in the Gulf War?
A: 35,000
17. Q: How many casualties did the Iraqi military inflict on the western forces during the Gulf War ?
A: 0
18. Q: How many retreating Iraqi soldiers were buried alive by U. S. tanks with ploughs mounted on the front?
A: 6,000
19. Q: How many tons of depleted uranium were left in Iraq and Kuwait after the Gulf War?
A: 40 tons
20. Q: What according to the UN was the increase in cancer rates in Iraq between 1991 and 1994?
A: 700%
21. Q: How much of Iraq’s military capacity did America claim it had destroyed in 1991?
A: 80%
22. Q: Is there any proof that Iraq plans to use its weapons for anything other than deterrence and self-defense?
A: No
23. Q: Does Iraq present more of a threat to world peace now than 10 years ago?
A: No
24. Q: How many civilian deaths has the Pentagon predicted in the event of an attack on Iraq in 2003? A: 10,000
25. Q: What percentage of these will be children? A: Over 50%
26. Q: How many years has the U.S. engaged in air strikes on Iraq? A: 11 years
27. Q: Were the U.S and the UK at war with Iraq between December 1998 and September 1999?
A: No
28. Q: How many pounds of explosives were dropped on Iraq between December 1998 and September 1999?
A: 20 million
29. Q: How many years ago was UN Resolution 661 introduced, imposing strict sanctions on Iraq’s imports and exports?
A: 12 years
30. Q: What was the child death rate in Iraq in 1989 (per 1,000 births)?
A: 38
31. Q: What was the estimated child death rate in Iraq in 1999 (per 1,000 births)?
A: 131 (that’s an increase of 345%)
32. Q: How many Iraqis are estimated to have died by October 1999 as a result of UN sanctions?
A: 1.5 million
33. Q: How many Iraqi children are estimated to have died due to sanctions since 1997?
A: 750,000
34. Q: Did Saddam order the inspectors out of Iraq?
A: No
35. Q: How many inspections were there in November and December 1998?
A:300
36. Q: How many of these inspections had problems?
A:5
37. Q: Were the weapons inspectors allowed entry to the Ba’ath Party HQ?
A: Yes
38. Q: Who said that by December 1998, Iraq had in fact, been disarmed to a level unprecedented in modern history.
A: Scott Ritter, UNSCOM chief.
39. Q: In 1998 how much of Iraq’s post 1991 capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction did the UN weapons inspectors claim to have discovered and dismantled?
A: 90%
40. Q: Is Iraq willing to allow the weapons inspectors back in?
A: Yes
41. Q: How many UN resolutions did Israel violate by 1992?
A: Over 65
42. Q: How many UN resolutions on Israel did America veto between 1972 and 1990?
A: 30+
43. Q: How much does the U.S. fund Israel a year?
A:$5 billion
44. Q: How many countries are known to have nuclear weapons?
A: 8
45. Q: How many nuclear warheads has Iraq got?
A: 0
46. Q: How many nuclear warheads has US got?
A: over 10,000
47. Q: Which is the only country to use nuclear weapons?
A: the US
48. Q: How many nuclear warheads does Israel have?
A: Over 400
49. Q: Has Israel every allowed UN weapon inspections?
A: No
50. Q: What percentage of the Palestinian territories are controlled by Israeli settlements?
A: 42%
51. Q: Is Israel illegally occupying Palestinian land?
A: Yes
52. Q: Which country do you think poses the greatest threat to global peace: Iraq or the U.S.?
A: ????
53. Q: Who said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter”?
A: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr
Members of Trinity are asked to think about these things and be prayerful as we sift through the “hype” being poured on by the George Bush-controlled media.
Rev Jeremiah A Wright, Jr.
War on Iraq IQ Test - written by: Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, placed the following ‘War on Iraq IQ Test’ on the Trinity “Pastor’s Page” for Sunday, Feb. 23.
Big deal. Adolph Hitler improved the economy and built good roads. Hate is hate.
Cee: 1,000 good questions (and Wright is hardly an original thinker about this) cannot erase hate-speech.
The fact you are unable or unwilling to recognize this leaves only one possibility: that you agree with Wright 100% and tolerate his hate-speech. That says a lot about you: we get it now.
1,000 good questions (and Wright is hardly an original thinker about this) cannot erase hate-speech.
Andy,
Or speech you don’t like.
What did Wright lie about?
Not this lifelong Democrat either. Hate speech is hate speech and should never be tolerated by anyone.
I will never be “broadminded” enough to tolerate such foul words. That they were uttered in church makes me find them even more disgusting. I thought it was only supposed to be right-wingers that used religion to perpetuate race hate.
Does anyone actually believe that Obama never heard the words: US of KKK A before the press found these videos?
I don’t buy into this Obama explanation crap. I am certain that there is some way of proving he was at this church when the hatred stuff was being said. I doubt one of the parishioners will come out against him even for money. But I wouldn’t be surprised if something doesn’t surface relatively soon that places him at the scene of the crime.
I am going to catch some shit here. But I basically think Wright is right about America. What I do not accept is that Wright uses his pulpit to talk about politics in church…or attempts to effect peoples votes.
Kathleen,
The only thing I wish he hadn’t said was God Damn America.
He didn’t lie about the rest. Even about Jesus not being white.
“We do seem to have a relatively dark skinned Jesus. In contemporary parlance I think the safest thing is to talk about Jesus as ‘a man of colour’.” This probably means olive-coloured, he says.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3958241.stm
A Semitic Jesus is considerably different from the “Black Jesus” Rev’d Wright and many other Afro-Centric-Christians are pushing. True, it’s the flip side of the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Jesus, but just as wrong.
A Semitic Jesus is considerably different from the “Black Jesus” Rev’d Wright and many other Afro-Centric-Christians are pushing.
PMS,
Not to bigots it isn’t. He wasn’t white!
Um, so you believe that 6000 Iraqi soldiers were buried alive by plows attached to American tanks? Really?
Um, so you believe that 6000 Iraqi soldiers were buried alive by plows attached to American tanks? Really?
John,
Considering all of the people who were on that highway, yes.
Kathelee: to you the same anwwer I give Cee:
1,000 good questions (and Wright is hardly an original thinker about this) cannot erase hate-speech.
The fact you are unable or unwilling to recognize this leaves only one possibility: that you agree with Wright 100% and tolerate his hate-speech. That says a lot about you.
Obama comments are preposterous.
How can anyone really believe that
Obama didn’t know about these sermons?
Wright has repeatedly made anti-semitic remarks and hate speech for years. It was not one or two, there were several.
I knew about Wright and his anti-semitic and hate speech for at least a year and I don’t even live in Illinois.
There have been YouTube videos of these
sermons for at least a year and “he didn’t know the extent of his remarks”?
The NYT and RollingStoneMagazine wrote extensive articles in early 2007 on this, citing these sermons and there have been local articles farther back citing the most controversial comments by Wright on 9/11 and about Farrakhan and Wright trip to Lybia and their relationship.
How can anyone really believe Obama didn’t know?
Obama, who is very very tight with his pastor; that has been a member of that congregation for 20 years and attending regularly. Obama who surely knows lots of other members: he didn’t hear from them? Obama is so close to Wright that Obama’s book was taken from parts of Wright’s semron called “the audacity of hope”. And Wright gave Obama the right to use these for his book.
In 2006, Obama donated $22,500 to Wright’s church : that was single largest chariatble donation Obama has ever made. This was for the same year in which Jeremiah Wright gave the awful sermon claiming that the
“government created AIDS to infect and kill black people” among other hateful things about the US. He delievered it at the Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel in Washington on Jan. 15, 2006.
That speech was widley known: I knew about it. And Obama didn’t?
Obama’s “explanations” and “excuses” are so far fetched that they are a clear insult to anyone’s inteligence ( obviously some in the media reacting to this have none)
Obama’s close association to Wright for more that 20 years is extremely troubling. Jeremiah Wright would be a frequent guest and visitor of an Obama’s White House. No doubt about that.
Some folks like the Kool-Aid, and some folks like the truth. The Obamaites have now reached the stage where NOTHING matters except Lord Obama. Nothing.
At the rate this is going, I don’t expect Obama to hold his Senate seat in two years, much less be able to win the presidency (although the lemmings may still yet nominate him).
Sadly, had he waited 4-8 years, he could have solved almost all these problems. But instead, he was rushed in to stop Hillary.
PMS,
And nothing matters to you except Hillary?
Get ready. She won’t win.
Susan,
He doesn’t “square” any of this and the media doesn’t force his hand. But maybe they’ll offer him a pillow? This is what we’re up against.
Andrew
So, kiddiepoos, is the Obama Campaign running it’s own Phoenix Program?
The combat life expectancy of a friend of Barack is approaching the vanishing point.
Hells bells, they aren’t even in the organization.