Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

QUICK TAKES ON BARACK OBAMA

** Update:  "Spread Wealth Around: Obama Aunt found in Boston slum  (HT: Drudge)   - Mark Steyn comments on the story: 

The London Times story of Barack Obama's Aunt Zeituni - like that of his penniless brother and the Kenyan grade school he promised to help - is interesting not only as a reflection on the candidate's belief that "spreading the wealth around" is a centralized government mandate to be imposed on Joe the Plumber rather than a personal act by, say, a wealthy memoirist whose books repackage colorful relatives to highly lucrative effect.

Me: It's the foreign press that investigates.  The American press doesn't.  See the bottom of this Gateway Pundit post for other Obama-related stories first researched by the foreign press.

** Update:  5 Things You Didn't See in Tonight's Obama Infomercial

**  Tony blankley - Is Obama Secretly Sensible?  Don't Bet On It    Me:  I consider Blankley one of our most astute commentators.  This column is a must read!    (HT: The Corner)

Michael Gerson on Obama: "The Perils of Patronizing"

Gerson writes an insightful article on Obama, Rev. Wright, and Black Theology.  Key sentence:

In the past few weeks, Barack Obama has learned the political perils of condescension.

His Philadelphia speech on race was filled with it. People who don't share Obama's views were not refuted, they were explained. (My emphasis)

The article gets still better.  Read on.

Heather MacDonald on Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Afrocentric Charlatans

Heather MacDonald surveys the weird field of Afrocentric charlatans from whose views Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, took his cues.  Weirdness indeed.  And as MacDonald notes, this is another reason to be suspicious of the creepy-crawly stuff that happens on university campuses.  MacDonald's article follows:

The list of Afrocentric “educators” whom Reverend Jeremiah Wright has invoked in his media escapades since this Sunday is a disturbing reminder that academia’s follies can enter the public world in harmful ways. Now the pressing question is whether they have entered presidential candidate Barack Obama’s worldview as well.

Some in Wright’s crew of charlatans have already had their moments in the spotlight; others are less well known. They form part of the tragic academic project of justifying self-defeating underclass behavior as “authentically black.” That their ideas have ended up in the pulpit of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ and in Detroit’s Cobo Hall, where Wright spoke at the NAACP’s Freedom Fund dinner on Sunday, reminds us that bad ideas must be fought at their origins—and at every moment thereafter. . .

Reverend Jeremiah Wright in Context: No Better

Hugh Hewitt has audio and transcripts of Jeremiah Wright's past sermons.  His defense that the video clips shown on TV were "taken out of context" is now proven indisputably false.  Does that make Rev. Wright a liar?  Quite.

Victor Davis Hanson says the 2008 primary has set back racial relations a generation:

Again, the Obama campaign and its appendages have set back racial relations a generation. Just ten years ago, any candidate, black or white, would have rejected Wright making a speech about genetic differences in respective black and white brains. Now it's given to civil rights organizations by the possible next President's pastor and spiritual advisor — and done to wild applause for an organization founded on the idea that we are innately the same, while being gushed over by ignorant "commentators."

Read all of VDH's comments.  They're important.  See the following:

REV. JEREMIAH WRIGHT'S WACKY AND IRRESPONSIBLE USE OF SCRIPTURE

Mark Hemingway offers the necessary corrective:

I was at the NPC breakfast with Wright this morning, and no one seems to have picked up on what I thought was one of the most remarkable comments this morning:

MODERATOR: Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the father but through me.” Do you believe this? And do you think Islam is a way to salvation?

WRIGHT:  Jesus also said, “Other sheep have I who are not of this fold.”

That was the extent of his answer, and after he gave it, Wright backed suddenly away from the podium to gaze at the audience for dramatic effect.

Now Wright is running around saying that he's not a political person — he's a pastor. But the answer he gives here is far more political than pastoral.

As a practicing Christian, I've always been under the distinct impression that Christianity was not to be regarded as part of a spiritual smorgasboard where all options are equally valid, as Wright seems to suggest here. In fact, the full verse of John 10:16 seems to disprove Jeremiah Wright's own point: "And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd." [emphasis mine] 

It's not news that certain liberal elements of some churches are rank with this kind of relativism, but I don't think that this rejection of the Gospel truth is representative of a Christianity the vast majority Americans recognize. Trinity United Church of Christ describes itself as "Unapologetically Christian," but apologetics does not appear to be one of Wright's strong suits.

IS REV. JEREMIAH WRIGHT (OBAMA'S PASTOR) A PROPHET?

After listing quote after quote, and newspaper after newspaper casting the Rev. Jeremiah Wright as a prophet, Dennis Prager strongly demurs saying:

The essence of the real prophets was not that they said things that disturbed people; the moral essence of the prophets was their moral clarity. They knew the difference between good and evil. "Woe unto those who call good 'evil' and call evil 'good,'" said the Prophet Isaiah.

Those who cannot see the monumental moral gulf between America and the unspeakably evil jihadists America is fighting in Iraq and elsewhere are not prophets. Those who think Americans got what they deserved on 9/11 are not prophets. Those who think the Russian people were better off under Communism are not prophets. Those who think America developed AIDS and infected people of color with it are not prophets. Those who think America is more worthy of damnation than of blessing are not prophets. They are fools.

I have posted previously on Rev. Jeremiah Wright here and here.

ON THE RELATIONSHIP OF OBAMA'S FOREIGN POLICY TO HIS FRIENDSHIP WITH REV. WRIGHT

Stanley Kurtz breaks new ground with his stunning analysis of what we now know about Obama's mind in reference to his pastor, to the way it would work in relation to America's enemies.    Read the following:

The answer to the persisting question, "Who is Barack Obama?" grows increasingly clear. Barack Obama is the appealing and only slightly more moderate face of American left-radicalism. Edward McClelland’s article, "The crazy uncles in Obama’s attic" is only the latest to confirm the pattern. More dots, more connections...

Obama’s relationship to Wright is paradigmatic. Obama’s own views are not precisely Wright’s, but Obama understands and is attracted to Wright’s radicalism and wants to win at least a gruff sort of understanding and even acceptance of it from Americans at large. What’s scary is that this is all-too-similar to the way Obama thinks about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Bashar Asad. Obama may not agree with them either, but he feels as though he understands their grievances well enough to bridge the gap between these leaders and the American people. That is why Obama is willing to speak to Ahmadinejad and Asad without preconditions.

Can we fairly make analogies between internal American splits and differences between nations? No we cannot. But that is precisely Obama’s error–and it is

"GOD DAMN AMERICA" SAYS OBAMA'S PASTOR, THE REV. JEREMIAH WRIGHT

Note updates at the end of the post

**

From ABC News.com via Kathryn Lopez:

Sen. Barack Obama's pastor says blacks should not sing "God Bless America" but "God damn America."

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for the last 20 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's south side, has a long history of what even Obama's campaign aides concede is "inflammatory rhetoric," including the assertion that the United States brought on the 9/11 attacks with its own "terrorism."

In a campaign appearance earlier this month, Sen. Obama said, "I don't think my church is actually particularly controversial." He said Rev. Wright "is like an old uncle who says things I don't always agree with," telling a Jewish group that everyone has someone like that in their family.

Rev. Wright married Obama and his wife Michelle, baptized their two daughters and is credited by Obama for the title of his book, "The Audacity of Hope."

An ABC News review of dozens of Rev. Wright's sermons, offered for sale by the church, found repeated denunciations of the U.S. based on what he described as his reading of the Gospels and the treatment of black Americans.

"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people," he said in a 2003 sermon. "God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

In addition to damning America, he told his congregation on the Sunday after Sept. 11, 2001 that the United States had brought on al Qaeda's attacks because of its own terrorism.

"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye," Rev. Wright said in a sermon on Sept. 16, 2001.

"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 brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost," he told his congregation.
Sen. Obama told the New York Times he was not at the church on the day of Rev. Wright's 9/11 sermon. "The violence of 9/11 was inexcusable and without justification," Obama said in a recent interview. "It sounds like he was trying to be provocative," Obama told the paper.

Rev. Wright, who announced his retirement last month, has built a large and loyal following at his church with his mesmerizing sermons, mixing traditional spiritual content and his views on contemporary issues.

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

Me: What does it say about a person (Obama) who has willingly sat under a man preaching such views for such a long time?  And who has furthermore called him a friend and mentor and guide?  To me it says a lot.  Spooky.  Note: I previously blogged about Obama's pastor here.  - For Victor Davis Hanson's comments, keep reading.
 

BARACK OBAMA'S PASTOR

Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. last month honored Louis Farrakhan for lifetime achievement.  For more on Rev. Wright and Obama's relationship to him, read Ronald Kessler's article published today.

** Update 2/4/08 - See also this major  article by John Perazzo

** Update 1/16/08 - Investor's Business Daily issued a hard-hitting editorial:

. . . In 1991, when Obama joined the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, he pledged allegiance to something called the Black Value System, which is a code of non-Biblical ethics written by blacks, for blacks.

It encourages blacks to group together and separate from the larger American society by pooling their money, patronizing black-only businesses and