LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

Issues surrounding Obama now are superficial

John Esperian, Las Vegas

Monday, May 5, 2008 | 2:04 a.m.

Those of us who hope that the Bush years will finally end in January with the election of Barack Obama should be encouraged by what are truly superficial issues currently surrounding him, namely, the absurd swift boating-style fiction that he is a Muslim, the ludicrous lapel-pin business, and most particularly, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright contentiousness.

Wright is a product of the ’60s, an era when social change was shaped through turmoil, pain and sacrifice that carried a heavy price for all those involved. He is a black man who experienced what it was like to be told that a particular drinking fountain, or restroom, or lunchroom counter was off limits. These issues are difficult to forget, and there is no doubt that the residual anger became part of his sermons, but that does not mean that everyone shared his views.

The irony here is that Wright is inadvertently undermining the candidacy of a capable black man running for the highest office in the land, a person who has pulled himself up by his own bootstraps — and a man who represents the very causes on which Wright has preached and focused his life’s work.

Discussion: 5 comments so far…

By NVMakz

5/5/08 at 5:57 a.m.

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"Swift-boating" = (verb-ish) the telling of truths regarding liberal national political candidates which strip away the lies and spinning their lives have assumed. as the truth.

Obama is the empty-resume, racist-mentored, slick-Barry political puppy which enemies of America would LOVE to see get the job of POTUS. He's done nothing, promises tons of ineptitude wrapped in flowery words of hope-change and change-hope and hope for change and sheit in one hand and hope in the other see which has more weight to it.

For Obama to accept such a rampant racist as Wright for 20+ years -"in the pew", he marrying the couple and baptizing their children == THEN == claiming he didn't know what Wright was about racially???

Well, this eliminated him from serious POTUS consideration as weak in any sort of personal judgment.

He's a political PUPPY. Weak personal abilities of judgment. Empty political resume. Need I go on?

"Swift-boating" is a word bastardized as another sorry liberal weave-&-dodge for lib-socialist candidates getting busted with the truth.
By JohnF

5/5/08 at 9:58 a.m.

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NVMakz,

Obama a racist? How about your buddy McCain and the Republican party.

From Frank Rich's column yesterday about McCain's embrace of the Reverend John Hagee:

"Mr. Hagee, it’s true, did not blame the American government for concocting AIDS. But he did say that God created Hurricane Katrina to punish New Orleans for its sins, particularly a scheduled “homosexual parade there on the Monday that Katrina came." (Hagee has also referred to the Catholic Church as "the Great Whore")

"Mr. McCain says he does not endorse any of Mr. Hagee’s calumnies, any more than Barack Obama endorses Mr. Wright’s. But those who try to give Mr. McCain a pass for his embrace of a problematic preacher have a thin case. It boils down to this: Mr. McCain was not a parishioner for 20 years at Mr. Hagee’s church.

"That defense implies, incorrectly, that Mr. McCain was a passive recipient of this bigot’s endorsement. In fact, by his own account, Mr. McCain sought out Mr. Hagee...

"Even after Mr. Hagee’s Catholic bashing bubbled up in the mainstream media, Mr. McCain still did not reject and denounce him,...Mr. McCain instead told George Stephanopoulos two Sundays ago that while he condemns any “anti-anything” remarks by Mr. Hagee, he is still “glad to have his endorsement.”

"Virtually no one has rebroadcast the highly relevant prototype for Mr. Wright’s fiery claim that 9/11 was America’s chickens “coming home to roost.” That would be the Sept. 13, 2001, televised exchange between Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who blamed the attacks on America’s abortionists, feminists, gays and A.C.L.U. lawyers. (Mr. Wright blamed the attacks on America’s foreign policy.) Had that video re-emerged in the frenzied cable-news rotation, Mr. McCain might have been asked to explain why he no longer calls these preachers “agents of intolerance” and chose to cozy up to Mr. Falwell by speaking at his Liberty University in 2006."
By JohnF

5/5/08 at 10 a.m.

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More from Frank Rich:

"None of this is to say that two wacky white preachers make a Wright right. It is entirely fair for any voter to weigh Mr. Obama’s long relationship with his pastor in assessing his fitness for office. It is also fair to weigh Mr. Obama’s judgment in handling this personal and political crisis as it has repeatedly boiled over. But whatever that verdict, it is disingenuous to pretend that there isn’t a double standard operating here. If we’re to judge black candidates on their most controversial associates — and how quickly, sternly and completely they disown them — we must judge white politicians by the same yardstick.

"There is not just a double standard for black and white politicians at play in too much of the news media and political establishment, but there is also a glaring double standard for our political parties. The Clintons and Mr. Obama are always held accountable for their racial stands, as they should be, but the elephant in the room of our politics is rarely acknowledged: In the 21st century, the so-called party of Lincoln does not have a single African-American among its collective 247 senators and representatives in Washington. Yes, there are appointees like Clarence Thomas and Condi Rice, but, as we learned during the Mark Foley scandal, even gay men may hold more G.O.P. positions of power than blacks.

"A near half-century after the civil rights acts of the 1960s, this is quite an achievement. Yet the holier-than-thou politicians and pundits on the right passing shrill moral judgment over every Democratic racial skirmish are almost never asked to confront or even acknowledge the racial dysfunction in their own house. In our mainstream political culture, this de facto apartheid is simply accepted as an intractable given, unworthy of notice, and just too embarrassing to mention aloud in polite Beltway company. Those who dare are instantly accused of “political correctness” or “reverse racism.”

"An all-white Congressional delegation doesn’t happen by accident."
By NVMakz

5/5/08 at 1:14 p.m.

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"Mr. McCain was not a parishioner for 20 years at Mr. Hagee’s church."

Obama was in the pew, in the room, in the building whatever = for 20+ years with his "spiritual mentor, his pastor; who married he and Michelle ("I've never been proud of America until (Barry) ran for President) Obama - baptized his kids and on and on. McCain's clean as a whistle in comparison. No doubt about it.

This Hagee, along with fossilized quotes from Robertson and Falwell (who were never McCain's spiritual advisor or mentor either, lol), is just an "endorsement". Not a long-term, mentoring, spiritual-advisor type of more intimate relationship. You lose this one.

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"None of this is to say that two wacky white preachers make a Wright right. It is entirely fair for any voter to weigh Mr. Obama’s long relationship with his pastor in assessing his fitness for office. It is also fair to weigh Mr. Obama’s judgment in handling this personal and political crisis as it has repeatedly boiled over."

The rest is Rich-ian drivel about something irrelevant to this subject. Feel free to bring up history later, but it is just nothingness to this thread.

Obama, once again, was DIRECTLY MENTORED IN CHICAGO AND ILLINOIS POLITICS AND HIS OWN SPIRITUALITY by the mega-racist Wright.

Hagee was an "endorsement", nothing more than that to stand as it will.

There is no comparison, other than I sit here and type my own thoughts and arguments, while you drag out a failing news pimp, the NY Slimes, with someone - Rich - who spends one to one-two small paragraphs mentioning an irrelevancy (McCain was, to drive the stake further) never in Hagee's congregation, never his advisor or mentor in any way = then spends the other 90% on the irrelevant.

There's no doubt you need help arguing against me, JohnF. You didn't get it from Frank (lol....) Rich and the NY Failing Slimes!

I'm surprized it took so soon to get the "cut&paste my op-ed" in here in lieu of original liberal thought. Maybe, it's true libs can't think for themselves after all....

It just goes to, once again, show liberals can't think on their own, no doubt.

Been fun playing with Frank Rich. YOU had nothing to add here, "J".
By phreakz

5/5/08 at 6:41 p.m.

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Obama announced his campaign from the living room of gang members.

Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis calls Barack Obama’s connection to William Ayers, an unrepentant terrorist who was part of the Weather Underground — an anti-war group that planted bombs and killed cops — “troubling.” I say it is outrageous.

The Weather Underground did damage right here in Boston. On Sept. 23, 1970, BPD Officer Walter Schroeder was gunned down outside a Brighton bank that had just been robbed by five members of the Weather Underground. One of the terrorists opened fire on the cop. With bullets from a machine gun the group ripped off from a National Guard armory in Newburyport just weeks earlier, Schroeder was shot in the back and killed.

Schroeder left behind a wife and nine children, aged 17, 15, 13, 10, 9, 7, 6, 2 and 11 months. The gunman, William “Lefty” Gilday, was captured along with three accomplices. The armed getaway driver, Katherine Powers, fled and remained on the lam for 23 years. When she was finally caught, Powers was treated with the same despicable reverence that Obama’s friend Ayers has been given by the media. Like Ayers, Powers was profiled as a hapless revolutionary caught up in the tumult of the Vietnam War rather than what she truly is: a cop-killing lowlife.

That fact was not lost on Schroeder’s daughter, Clare, who delivered a powerful victim impact statement at Powers’ sentencing in 1993. “Powers’ crimes, her flight from justice and her decision to turn herself in have been romanticized utterly beyond belief,” Schroeder said. “My father’s life was cut short for no reason, shot in the back with a bullet of a coward while Ms. Powers waited to drive that coward to safety.” The Weather Underground was also involved in a Brinks robbery in Nyack, N.Y., that left two cops and a Brinks security guard dead. Those murders also left nine children fatherless.

So for Obama to think it is OK to launch his political career in the living room of two Weather Underground members, Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn — the couple, like Powers, went underground as fugitives after a bomb-making factory blew up on a residential Manhattan block, killing three people — and then explain the association away by saying, “I was 8,” is outrageous. People need to wake up and realize that Obama’s anti-American pals, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers, are not just “troubling.” The associations are frightening.

http://www.metrobostonnews.com/us/articl...