Free Republic

Just as Sen. Barack Obama sought to distance himself from controversial racial remarks made by his pastor, an anti-American government, anti-white and virally anti-Semitic black supremacist party has endorsed the presidential candidate on Obama's own website. "Obama will stir the 'Melting Pot' into a better 'Molten America,'" states an endorsement from the New Black Panther Party, or NBPP, which is a registered team member and blogger on Obama's "MyObama" campaign website. The NBPP is a controversial black extremist party whose leaders are notorious for their racist statements and for leading anti-white activism. Malik Zulu Shabazz, NBPP national chairman, who has...

AFRICAN AMERICANS, INDEPENDENTS, DEMOCRATS, REPUBLICANS COMPLETELY AGREE, COMPLETELY DISAGREE... Looking at the reaction of a MediaCurves focus group of 709 viewers to Sen. Barack Obama's race speech in which he took on the issue of his controversial pastor, Rev. Jeremiah C. Wright, it's once again interesting to see the racial divide in how the speech was received. It's the same racial split Obama so deftly described in his speech. Blacks who took part of the survey had higher levels of agreement with Obama than non-blacks. And Democrats had more favorable impressions of the snippets of the speech they were shown...

Did Senator Barack Obama’s speech in Philadelphia convince people that he is still a viable candidate to be President of the United States, despite the adverse reactions to statements by his pastor, Jeremiah Wright? The polls and the primaries will answer that question.

Imagine in 1999, that a videotape had come to light showing the pastor of Texas Gov. George W. Bush's church making vicious, hateful comments about America and cruel, racist statements about Americans of color. Suppose this preacher had given a lifetime achievement award to former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, and had traveled to Europe with Duke to meet with neo-Nazi terrorists. Now try to envision that the candidate's family had attended this church for more than twenty years, that George and Laura Bush had been married there, by this pastor, and that the Bush daughters had been baptized...

Election '08: Rather than break ties with his demagogic, anti-American pastor, Barack Obama used a speech on race to excuse his behavior and sweep the controversy under the rug. Passing the buck is not very presidential. Speaking in Philadelphia, steps away from where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were enacted, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president delivered an address that used the words "race" or "races" 11 times, "racial" or "racially" 15 times, and "racism" or "racist" six times. But Obama's recent troubles, which this much-hyped speech was supposed to put past him, are not about...

Barack Obama—the self-anointed soul-fixing, nation-healing political Messiah—has lost his glow. That is the takeaway from the beleaguered Democratic presidential candidate’s “major” speech in Philadelphia yesterday.

It is a major scandal that threatens to derail Barack Obama's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, but the mainstream media is treating it as a minor political scuffle, says Fox's Bill O'Reilly. In his talking points memo Monday night, O'Reilly played tapes of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright's (Obama's former pastor's) rants against the United States and then said that all clear-thinking Americans including Sen. Obama are appalled by what he called "those hateful words." Noting that Obama said that the picture being painted of Wright is not accurate, O'Reilly wanted to know what about it was inaccurate and...

Barack Obama — the self-anointed soul-fixing, nation-healing political Messiah — has lost his glow. That is the take-away from the beleaguered Democratic presidential candidate's "major" speech in Philadelphia yesterday. For all of his supposedly unique and transcendent understanding of race in America, Obama's talk amounted to the same old, same old. The Glowbama mystique has gone the way of the Emperor's clothes. Instead of accountability, we got excuses. Instead of disavowal of demagoguery, we got whacked with the moral equivalence card. Instead of rejecting the Blame America mantra of left-wing black nationalism, we got more Blame Whitey. Same old, same...

Well, we knew the liberal MSM would come out in favor of their chosen one, and they didn't disappoint: There are moments — increasingly rare in risk-abhorrent modern campaigns — when politicians are called upon to bare their fundamental beliefs. In the best of these moments, the speaker does not just salve the current political wound, but also illuminates larger, troubling issues that the nation is wrestling with. Inaugural addresses by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt come to mind, as does John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech on religion, with its enduring vision of the separation between church and state....

There are moments — increasingly rare in risk-abhorrent modern campaigns — when politicians are called upon to bare their fundamental beliefs. In the best of these moments, the speaker does not just salve the current political wound, but also illuminates larger, troubling issues that the nation is wrestling with. Inaugural addresses by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt come to mind, as does John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech on religion, with its enduring vision of the separation between church and state. Senator Barack Obama, who has not faced such tests of character this year, faced one on Tuesday. It is...

Barack Obama took the stage this morning to give what was billed as a "major speech on race." It was, of course, an attempt to rescue his campaign from the revelation that his so-called spiritual mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, espouses a virulently anti-American and antiwhite worldview called "black liberation theology." <--snip--> What Obama is evading is that this "profoundly distorted view" is not just some passing emotion. It is what Wright himself, in the "talking points" page of his congregation's Web site, describes as "systematized black liberation theology." As we noted yesterday, Wright credits James Cone of New York's...

Obama’s speech is out at Drudge and reading it I find it lacking. Maybe in person it was not so bad, but most of us won’t be listening to it or seeing it. Most of will have to simply read it. The first problem is the history lesson on this great and imperfect nation. Obama comes of sounding like he is the only one on a journey to perfect the union, to move beyond the divisions and hate: "This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of...

It was extremely unlikely that Hillary Clinton was going to overcome Barack Obama's lead in delegates, states and total votes and take the Democratic nomination, but Obama's speech this morning -- graceful, thoughtful, nuanced, sweeping, challenging, unprecedented -- pretty much wiped out any chance at all. It was a speech Hillary could never have given -- really, few U.S. politicians ever could have given. I write this not just because I think this will dampen the Rev. Wright controversy. I write this because Obama did an extraordinary job of presenting himself as the candidate of "the better angels of our...

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama in a speech Tuesday addressed the controversy surrounding his former minister, using it as an opportunity to challenge Americans to take a closer look at race relations. Speaking to supporters at Philadelphia's National Constitution Center, the Democratic presidential candidate said he rejected racially charged comments made by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but he tried to explain the root of those remarks. Wright formerly preached at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where the senator from Illinois worships. Some of Wright's old sermons came under fire after an ABC News report last week,...

Obama blows away the chattering class with Philadelphia speech. Delivers historic remarks on race in address that was wide-ranging, personal, and (at times) passionate. One key topic: his relationship with the Rev. Wright. Click above to watch excerpt. Widespread praise from anchors/pundits/reporters for sweeping remarks drawing on American history and his own biracial upbringing to explain struggle of race in the country. Suggests his campaign can help unify a long-divided nation. Now: what do real people, superdelegates, and talk radio show hosts think? On racial struggles: “This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck...

More than half of voters are less likely to support Barack Obama for president after hearing the anti-American rants of his longtime Chicago pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a shocking poll revealed yesterday. The Rasmussen Reports survey found that Wright's controversial comments made 56 percent of voters, including 44 percent of Democrats, less inclined to vote for Obama. Two-thirds of the 1,200 people polled said they knew of Wright's statements, which have been broadcast repeatedly on media outlets over the past several days. And 73 percent of voters, including 58 percent of black voters, called Wright's comments racially divisive. In...

Barack Obama is preparing to deliver a major address Tuesday on race, politics and unifying the country after being hounded by questions about his relationship to a pastor whose sermons have been laced with anti-American invective. In a speech whose religious significance could compare to one given in December by former GOP presidential hopeful and Mormon Mitt Romney, Obama may be forced to explain the philosophy of the 8,000-strong Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where the Democratic presidential candidate has been a congregant for 20 years. In announcing the morning address, to be delivered in Philadelphia, Obama would...

OBAMA WAS ON THE COVER OF REVEREND WRIGHT'S TRUMPET MAGAZINE (THREE TIMES) http://www.trumpetmag.com/pdf/mediakit_sept07/MediaKit2008High.pdf

Ezra Klein’s a smart guy, so I’m assuming this is a parody of liberal cluelessness rather than the real thing: "Does anyone believe a long association with Jerry Falwell's church would have done anything but help McCain in the Republican primary, and gotten Democrats tagged as anti-religion when they tried to point out Falwell's nuttiness in the general? It's fine to be a Christian extremist in America. It's fine to believe, and say publicly, that everyone who hasn't accepted Jesus Christ into their heart will roast in eternal hellfire, fine to believe that the homosexuals caused Hurricane Katrina and the...

The Huffington Post sends us this essay by Frank Schaeffer claiming that Republicans have acted hypocritically in scolding Barack Obama over Jeremiah Wright — because the GOP embraced him and his father. His father is “Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer”, which around here might combine up with a buck to buy a bag of donut holes. Schaeffer fils has repented of his conservativism — hence the appearance at HuffPo — and spends most of it spanking his dad: Take Dad’s words and put them in the mouth of Obama’s preacher (or in the mouth of any black American preacher) and...