Anyone following my posts knows I've been very lukewarm about Obama - as the better among evils. Now, with his condemnation of Wright and my just  hearing Wrights completely 'Right-On!' sermon, Wright would make a better candidate than Obama and is more like MLK. Obama is just 'liberal' <spit>. We need a radical change in America and no Liberal is going to change anything - only act as a place-holder  until the neo-fascists come back or they kill him/her. I suggest all listen to the Wright speech at the link below [not transcribed below] and tell me it isn't MLK-esque and makes Obama look like the same old, same old. Disgusting. We get no one good to vote for in the USA. Nothing changes. The nation is at the brink and we get half-baked Liberals. The Republican's will defeat Obama on this and we'll get the neo-fascist McCain. Playing 'politics' never works - except to get elected. It does nothing for the Public - the Demos. Nothing for Democracy. Nothing to turn this sick Nation around. I'm disgusted that Obama felt he 'had' to denounce a most sane and true sermon in order to get elected [he hopes]. Shows how shallow Americans are and how little they know of their true history and politics. Obama shame on you. Rev. Wright is right! You, Obama are playing games with the truth! The term 'sell-out' comes to mind. Playing 'politics in America' is the dirtiest kind of denunciation of truth, history, fact and often one's own beliefs....on the chance to get some power. So what. We need truth - the People need power - not the polticians. We need to no play games. We need honesty and to break the barriers. The Nation and the Planet are on the edge of the abyss. I'll vote Green again.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/4/30/obam...r_controversial
JUAN GONZALEZ: Senator Barack Obama sharply denounced his former pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright at a press conference in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Tuesday. Senator Obama said he was “outraged” and “saddened” by the “divisive and destructive” comments Reverend Wright had made at the National Press Club on Monday. Obama had previously distanced himself from Reverend Wright’s political beliefs but had refused at that time to repudiate his former pastor, whom he likened to a family member.

Over the weekend, Reverend Wright made three public appearances to defend himself after weeks of being attacked by politicians and pundits for his sermons and their alleged anti-Americanism.

Senator Obama’s comments Tuesday came in the wake of the renewed media attention on his ties to Reverend Wright and one week before the primaries in Indiana and North Carolina. We’re going to play an excerpt of Senator Obama’s statement Tuesday.

SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Yesterday we saw a very different vision of America. I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened over the spectacle that we saw yesterday. I have been a member of Trinity United Church of Christ since 1992. I’ve known Reverend Wright for almost twenty years. The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met twenty years ago. His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate, and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church. They certainly don’t portray accurately my values and beliefs.


When he states and then amplifies such ridiculous propositions as the US government somehow being involved in AIDS, when he suggests that Minister Farrakhan somehow represents one of the greatest voices of the twentieth and twenty-first century, when he equates the United States wartime efforts with terrorism, then there are no excuses. They offend me. They rightly offend all Americans. And they should be denounced. And that’s what I’m doing very clearly and unequivocally here today.


JUAN GONZALEZ: Senator Obama, denouncing Reverend Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor from the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.

I want to turn now to the speech that has come under so much fire. We’re going to play excerpts from Reverend Wright’s responses to some questions Monday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. But first, this is Reverend Wright describing what he calls the prophetic theology of the black church and its principals of liberation and transformation.

REV. JEREMIAH WRIGHT: These two foci of liberation and transformation have been at the very core of the black religious experience from the days of David Walker, Harriet Tubman, Richard Allen, Jarena Lee, Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and Sojourner Truth, through the days of Adam Clayton Powell, Ida B. Wells, Dr. Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Barbara Jordan, Cornell West, and Fanny Lou Hamer.


These two foci of liberation and transformation have been at the very core of the United Church of Christ since its predecessor denomination, the Congregational Church of New England, came to the moral defense and paid for the legal defense of the Mende people aboard the slave ship Amistad, since the days when the United Church of Christ fought against slavery, played an active role in the Underground Railroad, and set up over 500 schools for the Africans who were freed from slavery in 1865.


And these two foci remain at the core of the teachings of the United Church of Christ, as it has fought against apartheid in South Africa and racism in the United States of America ever since the union which formed the United Church of Christ in 1957.


These two foci of liberation and transformation have also been at the very core and the congregation of Trinity United Church of Christ since it was founded in 1961. And these foci have been the bedrock of our preaching and practice for the past thirty-six years.


Our congregation, as you heard in the introduction, took a stand against apartheid when the government of our country was supporting the racist regime of the African government in South Africa.

Our congregation stood in solidarity with the peasants in El Salvador and Nicaragua, while our government, through Ollie North and the Iran-Contra scandal, was supporting the Contras, who were killing the peasants and the Miskito Indians in those two countries.


Our congregation sent thirty-five men and women through accredited seminaries to earn their Master of Divinity degrees, with an additional forty currently being enrolled in seminary, while building two senior citizen housing complexes and running two childcare programs for the poor, the unemployed, the low-income parents on the South Side of Chicago for the past thirty years.


Our congregation feeds over 5,000 homeless and needy families every year, while our government cuts food stamps and spends billions fighting in an unjust war in Iraq.


Our congregation has sent dozens of boys and girls to fight in the Vietnam War, the first Gulf War and the present two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. My goddaughter’s unit just arrived in Iraq this week, while those who call me unpatriotic have used their positions of privilege to avoid military service, while sending—while sending over 4,000 American boys and girls of every race to die over a lie.


Our congregation has had an HIV/AIDS ministry for over two decades. Our congregation has awarded over $1 million to graduating high school seniors going into college and an additional $500,000 to the United Negro College Fund and the six HBCUs related to the United Church of Christ, while advocating for healthcare for the uninsured, workers’ rights for those forbidden to form unions, and fighting the unjust sentencing system which has sent black men and women to prison for longer terms for possession of crack cocaine than white men and women have to serve for the possession of powder cocaine.


Our congregation has had a prison ministry for thirty years, a drug and alcohol recovery ministry for twenty years, a full-service program for senior citizens, and twenty-two different ministries for the youth of our church, from preschool through high school, all proceeding from the starting point of liberation and transformation, a prophetic theology which presumes God’s desire for changed minds, changed laws, changed social orders, changed lives, changed hearts in a changed world.

The prophetic theology of the black church is a theology of liberation. It is a theology of transformation. And it is ultimately a theology of reconciliation.

DONNA LEINWAND: You have said that the media have taken you out of context. Can you explain what you meant in a sermon shortly after 9/11 when you said the United States had brought the terrorist attacks on itself, quote, “America’s chickens are coming home to roost”?

REV. JEREMIAH WRIGHT: Have you heard the whole sermon? Have you heard the whole sermon?


DONNA LEINWAND: I heard most of it.

REV. JEREMIAH WRIGHT: No, no, the whole sermon, yes or no? No, you haven’t heard the whole sermon? That nullifies that question.


Well, let me try to respond in a non-bombastic way. If you heard the whole sermon, first of all, you heard that I was quoting the ambassador from Iraq. That’s number one. But number two, to quote the Bible, “Be not deceived. God is not mocked. For whatsoever you sow, that you also shall reap.” Jesus said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you. Those are biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright bombastic, divisive principles.

DONNA LEINWAND: Senator Obama has tried to explain away some of your most contentious comments and has distanced himself from you. It’s clear that many people in his campaign consider you a detriment. In that context, why are you speaking out now?

REV. JEREMIAH WRIGHT: On November the 5th and on January 21st, I’ll still be a pastor. As I said, this is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright. It has nothing to do with Senator Obama. It is an attack on the black church launched by people who know nothing about the African American religious tradition.

And why am I speaking out now? In our community, we have something called playing the dozens. If you think I’m going to let you talk about my mama and her religious tradition and my daddy and his religious tradition and my grandma, you’ve got another thing coming.

DONNA LEINWAND: What is your relationship with Louis Farrakhan? Do you agree with and respect his views, including his most racially divisive views?

REV. JEREMIAH WRIGHT: What I think about him, as I said on Bill Moyers and it got edited out, how many other African Americans or European Americans do you know that can get one million people together on the Mall? He is one of the most important voices in the twentieth and twenty-first century. That’s what I think about him. I said, as I said on Bill Moyers, when Louis Farrakhan speaks, it’s like E.F. Hutton speaks, all black America listens. Whether they agree with him or not, they listen.

DONNA LEINWAND: What is your motivation for characterizing Senator Obama’s response to you as, quote, “what a politician had to say”? What do you mean by that?

REV. JEREMIAH WRIGHT: What I mean is what several of my white friends and several of my white Jewish friends have written me and said to me. They said, “You’re a Christian. You understand forgiveness. We both know that if Senator Obama did not say what he said, he would never get elected.”


Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls, Huffington, whoever’s doing the polls. Preachers say what they say, because they’re pastors. They have a different person to whom they’re accountable.


As I said, whether he gets elected or not, I’m still going to have to be answerable to God November 5th and January 21st. That’s what I mean. I do what pastors do. He does what politicians do.


JUAN GONZALEZ: Reverend Jeremiah Wright, speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on Monday. We have to take a break for a minute. When we return, a debate on Reverend Wright and Senator Obama. Stay with us.
Second part below. Also note you can hear parts of Wright's speech on the audio or video links,
they didn't transcribe above.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/4/30/the_..._the_rev_wright

I find it quite odd that there is such an emphasis on what someone's religious belief and practice is in the US. I don't have any issue with the Rev. Wright at all. He seems a fairly clued up man politically speaking. But Obama seems to me like he isn't even a religious person, probably even an atheist at heart, but feels he has to align himself with some religious group or person so he does. Same with Hilary. I don't see that there has been a real practicing Christian in the White House since Jimmy Carter so why the pretense? It is 2008 isn't it? A persons relationship to god (if she exists) is between a person and their conscience. Why doesn't someone just come out and say "Actually, I personally don't really believe there is a God. The ability for me to make sound and important decisions for the nation does not depend on my belief or not in a God (of Christians) any more than Zeus (another God)"? They just all look like a bunch of cynical liars. If I was a Christian I'd be insulted. Instead i'm insulted just as a human being expected to swallow this charade. And what about freedom from religion? Why can't some one come out as a non-believer and still be able protect the rights of those who do believe to practice their religions?

This would be true of any other country in the industrialized world but not America. In the UK candidates it works the other way round. We do not trust politicians who are too religious. That is why Tony Blair had to keep his Roman Catholic conversion secret.

Wright tells the truth about the history of America. However, the American people live in a constant state of denial and therefore Obama cannot afford to agree with him in public.

One would have to invent a new word, that expresses 'beyond impossible' [to the tenth power], to express how IMPOSSIBLE it would be for an atheist, agnositc or even someone who didn't want to publicly profess their Christian religiosity [only] - and try to run for Congress [you can count them on one hand] or the Presidency in the USA. Period! There is a standard expression in the US, that anyone can become President. Growing up an atheist of Jewish heritage, I knew that was a big lie. I had trouble becoming President of the Student Council in High School, being an atheist - but did succeed at that. As far as my political career could go - given my handicap.

You who live outside, must understand, that explicitely or implicitely many to most Americans believe their Christian god has chosen America as the beknighted land he supports [along with the biblical holy land - i.e. Israel] above all others. He has made sure that America can do no wrong; is the defender of good of last resort and does his/her will....as crazy as that sounds to me and most in Europe. There have been many moves to add to the Constitution that the USA is a Christian Nation. So far, this has not been made into law, but it is a kind of de facto law of the land. I, when I went to trial was asked to swear on the bible ['so help me God'] that I would tell the truth. When I objected/refused, I could see the Judge decide RIGHT THEN AND THERE I was guilty - and acted accordingly! That explains in part the way the Muslims are now being treated. Not to mention Bush's wording of a 'crusade' against terror - {and ignoring his own Terror!}.

John's point about America being in denial is the crux of the country's entire problem! I listened to all of Wright's speech (that is so 'controversial' to the mainstream) - and will be used to politically assassinate Obama, if he is the candidate. It is like a MLK speech [updated] or those of Belafonte, and many other Black activists / historians, etc. It was about truth and truthful history, IMO - something 
that most Americans don't want to look at, nor be confronted with. There is a mythology that pervades 
America; and when the truth or the facts don't fit the mythology, the facts are discarded and 
the truth denied by the majority. Very sadl
One would hope this disastrous Adminstration of the 
Grandson of a Nazi supporter/financier; son of a major CIA/Intelligence Dirty Ops Longtime-Player, along with the ongoing economic collapse and burgeoning policestate would awaken the sleeping American People...but no - the Denial is that strong! It will likely cause the end of America. The creation of that Denial was a major Project of the Oligarchy from 1776 to today, and has gotten more and more sophisticated; including Mockingbird, psyops and advanced propaganda techniques.

There are many versions of Wright speeches now on youtube. This one is labeled his 'hate speech'. I find no hate - only truth and a demand for peace, love and justice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdJB-qkfUHc
You can google for other versions and speeches. Check them out! Sadly, Obama felt he now needs to totally deny any of the content - even condemn it. In turn, I must condemn Obama. While I suspect [but don't claim to know] that Obama shares many of Wright's beliefs - even if in toned-down form - to declare agreement of any of them would be sudden-political-death in America - which is a theocracy [and NOT of the liberation theology variety - in fact, mostly the opposite non-liberation varient].

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3635/b...eremiah_wright/
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04252008/profile.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...ml?hpid=artslot

Exactly. It's a sad state of affairs, and in this instance what it ultimately means is that the Clinton crime family will be right back in the White House. The Clintons couldn't have scripted this any better. And how a gangster's moll could be running for president and get this close to winning is another story. America is one screwed-up country.

Spike Lee: "Jeremiah Wright needs to be quiet. If he loves Obama he needs to shut up right now. It makes me question his motives for talking. I'm starting to wonder whether somebody has been contributing to the building funds of his church".

I wonder if somebody contributed to the building funds of his palatial home. He must have a mighty hefty salary for a preacher.

U.S. televangelists (I don't know if this greedy breed of animal is strictly an American phenomenon or not) have to constantly ask their viewers for money to maintain their luxurious lifestyles ("the prosperity gospel," i.e. send me all your money and God will bless you), but as far as I know Wright must get all his dough without benefit of TV prayer-a-thons.

When Jeremiah Wright Jr became senior pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in 1972 the congregation numbered less than a hundred.
Now the church claims over 8000 members and has clearly prospered while Wright was there.

They do have a television show and a radio program in one of America's largest media markets. Their website gives an indication of just how successful they have been. The church has adopted a ten-point Black Value system. Concept #8 states:

Disavowal of the Pursuit of “Middleclassness.” Classic methodology on control of captives teaches that captors must be able to identify the “talented tenth” of those subjugated, especially those who show promise of providing the kind of leadership that might threaten the captor’s control.

Those so identified are separated from the rest of the people by:

1. Killing them off directly, and/or fostering a social system that encourages them to kill off one another.
2. Placing them in concentration camps, and/or structuring an economic environment that induces captive youth to fill the jails and prisons.
3. Seducing them into a socioeconomic class system which, while training them to earn more dollars, hypnotizes them into believing they are better than others and teaches them to think in terms of “we” and “they” instead of “us.”
4. So, while it is permissible to chase “middleclassness” with all our might, we must avoid the third separation method – the psychological entrapment of Black “middleclassness.” If we avoid this snare, we will also diminish our “voluntary” contributions to methods A and B. And more importantly, Black people no longer will be deprived of their birthright: the leadership, resourcefulness and example of their own talented persons.

http://www.tucc.org/home.htm