News-Record.com

What made Obama's message so powerful is that it came fom him, a politician. Seasoned politicians are conditioned to either dismissing issues of race as a thing of the past or shining the light of racial hypocrisy in one direction.

It's refreshing to hear some one of his status and ambition speak truth to power.

I cannot believe how some people are calling this speech "whiny" and somehow infer that he is calling for further, more extensive government programs and affirmative action. What is the matter with white America? Can every one of us not see the injustice that has been perpetrated and continues to be so? Change your own perception, help others see the light. To call yourself a Christian and then turn your back on the very people Jesus would be personally lending a hand to... sick and shameful. It is nothing but FALSE (faux, fake, phony) patriotism to say Michele Obama was in the wrong for being "really proud of (her) country for the first time" now that so many of us took a fresh breath and listened to her husband's inspiring and truthful words. And as far as Rev. Wright goes, if you are scared by what you hear, get your pasty head out of the sand trap, you jerks. He's a little over the top on some things, but you try coming up picking cotton in the south for peanuts and then tell me how you see reality. I wish the rest of white America (besides myself and the small contingency of compassionate and intelligent people I happen to know) could get a clue, find their hearts, try to understand just an inkling, of how difficult it is to pull yourself up by the boot straps when your boots fell apart before you could walk.

ReDONKULOUS . . .

Oh I get it . . . after what, 20 years Obama Hussain just woke up and now dismisses his pastors verbage as misguided, WTF?

I guess he was waiting until now to clear the air on this issue . . .

Thank God he is running for President or this repudiantion would have never occured . . . typical politian

1. I am Caucasian.
2. I am a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
3. I DO love all people(s).
4. I "have a dream"...

My "dream" is that Christians of all races could come together in the name of Jesus Christ and demonstrate our love for the total human race and "act" like Jesus the Christ called us to act.

I have so many friends who are Black and non-Caucasian (other than Black) and we have such an awesome relationship because of the love of Christ that we share.

The second part of my dream is that the Church of Jesus Christ would - during this season especially- realize what our Lord has done for us all and live our daily lives in that realization.

Let us love each other no matter our political background or "hang-ups."

Ed Allred
eallred517@aol.com

J. Peterman is doing what so many hyper-paranoid Americans do: Failing to use his critical faculties when he views media-generated caricatures -- particularly the caricatures created by that Republican Party propaganda network -- otherwise knows as Faux News. The media have cherry picked a few offensive comments, and play them over and over and over -- ignoring other wonderful things the man has uttered and done over the years. It isn't journalism. It's a side show designed to distract you, and you are all falling for it.

J Peterman also failed to listen to Obama's speech, or he would have learned what all clear thinking people heard -- that Rev. Wright is just like any other pastor -- he occassionally says things at times that members of his congregation disagree with. Wow. I am so shocked.

J. Peterman also exemplifies the ignorance of white America about black churches.

One would think from their comments that all whites who hate Obama because Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh tell them too, immediately denounce and disown their churches and pastors the minute they utter strong language. I continued to go to church, even though my priest used to say that women who use birth control are going to hell. I guess because I didn't storm out in a huff, that disqualifies me from ever seeking election to any public office.

Hateful rhetoric and, hateful behavior spouts from George Bush and Dick Cheney's close associates too --- Why doesn't Peterman demand that they disown them too??

This is for Privileged Cracker: Maybe you are from the wealthy group of people but there are many thousands of white people (including myself) who grew up in poverty and had a difficult life and certainly understand how hard it is to pull yourself up by the bootstraps or even how much harder it is without the boots. This is not a race issue but a fact of life, poverty does not only visit the black in our country but all races. Yes, there are many wealthy people living in America but there are many more poor people, of all races, living here.

How anyone could say that the first time they have been proud of the USA is when their husband had been selected a candidate for the president of this great country is beyond me. Was she not proud of all the brave men and women serving in the military and representing our country and fighting for our freedom? Was she not proud of all the brave fireman who lost their lives trying to save people during 9/11? I could not begin to count the ways and the times I have been proud of my country so it is shocking to me that a woman can reach the age of 40 years old and never experience the feeling of being proud of her country.

As far as the remarks by Rev. Wright being a "little over the top", I beg to differ. Anyone living in America that doesn't become upset or angry when someone curses America but tries to excuse it with the remark "try picking cotton and see how your reality is" is misguided or worse.

Obama's speech didn't touch me one bit. You can't legislate people to change. Slavery and discrimination has been illegal for multiple decades. The reason that "racism" is still around isn't for the same reason it used to be. Now it's because white people are being blamed for every wrong in the world. Does Obama want us to be more like countries in Africa. Lets see...The Super rich take everything from the poor. Don't even compare that to America. The poor in America are rich compared to the poor in Africa. Should we be more like the Mid East. Kill gay people legally, blow up groups of people that don't share our religion, chop of the hands of thieves. Maybe we should be more like China. Tell parents they have to murder one of their kids. Pay as little as possible while the Communist Government decides if you should be free or jailed for thinking for yourself. Not proud of our country? I am not surprised that some ignorant whites think America owes black people something, anything, everything. Yes they were slaves. EVERY country had slaves. Even Africa. This isn't exclusive to America. America has done more for the minority people than any other country. Yeah screw the Republicans for thinking that black people are smart enough to be able to make it on their own. The democrats of today are no different than the Dems of yesterday. Keep the black people down by GIVING them just enough to stay happy. That is the Dems solution. Republicans believe that everyone that works hard gets ahead in life, which many do. Black and White. You don't get ahead in life simply because you're white. You need to get your head out of your butt. Stop making excuses for complacency, and encourage people to move up. Barack seems to want folks to give the underprivileged a free ride. There are ample opportunities for EVERYONE today to succeed. It's so easy to play the victim isn't it?? It's a shame our country is so great, that we have well to doers trashing our country. That's how great we have it. We can sit around and complain about our country because we have no other worries. Man.....Sign Me Up!!

Ha Ha Laura J.

You are exactly what YOU were writing about . . .

Laura J exemplifies the ignorance of Black America blaming white people for her woes . . .

Wolves in Sheeps Clothing leading the flocks . . . .

Obama's powerful and historic speech on race in America was amazing to watch. He is the leader of our time and we need him now to lead this country in a new direction. I don't agree with some of his pastors comments, but one is not to be judged on a few minute clip of their lives. I have taken the advice of family members whom I love and respect, yet they hold many different views from my own. Even racist views. Yet I will not disown them, I will judge them on the whole rather the minor points I don't agree with.

How can the public be so gullible to Obama-ism! Most people recognize that when both a wife and their personal pastor of long standing make similar disparaging remarks that they likely reflect the way the family believes and is rearing (their children) and the deep down reflections of the other spouse, in this case Obama. Add to this his personal encompassing of Iran and Cuba and unilateral action in Pakistan and you have a recipe for diaster!

Obama is a radical in cloak hoping to take control! I trust the public is smarter than they appear! If Obama is elected, as a country, we will pay dearly, dearly, dearly-perhaps not recovering!

Kathleen Parker could have said it no better in today's "second opinion"! I laud her! It was as refreshing as the paper's staff opinion column was distressing! I think they have one writer and a whole staff with no guts to challenge ! Either that or they are like many of the college kids, still caught up in naivity!

Regardless of how good his speech was, I find it difficult to embrace Obama after he's been a member of such a racist church for 20 years. Where is the "unity" in Obama's campaign after attending such a divisive church?

On the surface, Obama's seemingly candid speech about race, and race relations in America was delivered in such a way that many people (likely those both for and against his run for office) stopped and said 'wow'. I did. His acknowledgment of black anger was nothing new or special, though it is generally toned down a bit more than he presented it. He also said something about white resentment that I can't imagine any white politician saying in public, even if he inferred that this same resentment was misplaced and dated. Good for him for speaking out. Shame on him for his dishonest story about his grandmother, whom he used unashamedly to defend the actions of his former pastor. Let me elaborate:
He stated in his speech that "I can no more disown [Rev. Dr. Wright] than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother � a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."

An obvious comparison of two members of an older generation whose racial experiences are contrasted to show America that, even though they both have had racist lapses in judgment, they are both to be (pitied?) understood in the context of their experiences- while at the same time not representative of Obama or his racial and social beliefs. If the examples had both been factual, I might have swallowed it and smiled. What disgusted me (and is an affront to voters expecting honesty and integrity from the man) about his statement was a glaring falsehood that he failed to mention. In fact, he neatly altered his grandmothers experience to suit his own purpose. Specifically, "but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street". You see, according to Obama's 1995 book 'Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance', Obama decided to slander his own grandmother in his defense of his racist and ill-spoken pastor. The truth is that his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, was at the time of her 'racist experience', the primary breadwinner for Obama's family. His mother was off in Indonesia working on her 1,067 page dissertation on peasant blacksmithing and had left little Obama in the care of his grandparents. Obama says that he woke up to his grandparents arguing on morning after his grandmother had requested of his grandfather that he drive her to work. It seems that while at the bus stop she had been accosted by a vagrant, and did not feel safe taking the bus. In Obama's book, she is reported to say; "Her lips pursed with irritation. �He was very aggressive, Barry. Very aggressive. I gave him a dollar and he kept asking. If the bus hadn�t come, I think he might have hit me over the head." Obama's grandfather was rather irate. Not because his wife had been accosted, but because her accoster had been, well, in Obama's words..."He turned around and I saw that he was shaking. �It is a big deal. It�s a big deal to me. She�s been bothered by men before. You know why she�s so scared this time. I�ll tell you why. Before you came in, she told me the fella was black.� He whispered the word. �That�s the real reason why she�s bothered. And I just don�t think that right.�

"The words were like a fist in my stomach, and I wobbled to regain my composure. In my steadiest voice, I told him that such an attitude bothered me, too, but reassured him that Toot�s fears would pass and that we should give her a ride in the meantime. Gramps slumped into a chair in the living room and said he was sorry he had told me. Before my eyes, he grew small and old and very sad. I put my hand on his shoulder and told him that it was all right, I understood.

"We remained like that for several minutes, in painful silence. Finally he insisted that he drive Toot after all, and I thought about my grandparents. They had sacrificed again and again for me. They had poured all their lingering hopes into my success. Never had they given me reason to doubt their love; I doubted if they ever would. And yet I knew that men who might easily have been my brothers would still inspire their rawest fear."

Like I had said, disgusting. Or maybe this is a good window into his actual views on race relations in America. On the one hand we have racist and anti-American statements from a man very close to him that Obama felt obliged to defend, on the other; his grandmother, whose racist offense seems to have been being accosted and possibly assaulted by an African-American vagrant at a bus stop after giving the man a dollar. I don't know what Obama thought to gain by slandering his grandmother (who by his own admission loved and cared for him) at the expense of a racist demagogue. What I do know is that Americans that ooohed and aaahed about his speech and Americans who just shook their heads in disgust alike are both facing the same reality: We are'nt going to get the America we want, but we are going to get the America we deserve.

Obama claims to be a Christian attending a Christian church! Yet the pastor violates the third commandmant with Venom: "You shall not take the name of the Lord, thy God, in vain for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain." I remind you this is supposedly a "servant" of God talking!

The Christian Churches I attend and I listen too on TV do not take the name of the Lord in vain!!!!

Wright and Obama's wife used a combination of curse and lack of patronage to our country-only improving to "Proud" when her husband runs for President- and we are supposed to proclaim these rantings as good? I suppose if Hillary becomes the nominee, Ms. Obama will revert to her unproud and disparaging ways!

What kind of Church and Pastorial leadership can Wright offer with such violations and venom! It is kinda like Jihad where al-qaida equates suicide as a martyr supposedly to get them to heaven! What twisted minds we have lurking here!

Some of it is a dangerous curse of the black race rationalization process! Locally it was reaffirmed by Mr. Earl Jones and Ms. Maggie Jeffus, local politicans that Censure of ex-legislaturer Mr. Wright (not the pastor) would be the equivalent of Expulson.

The full story behind Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s 9/11 sermon

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/21/meet-the-white-man-who-_n_92793.html

THIS IS A MUST SEE VIEDO FOR ALL AMERICANS.

I think the thing that is incensing white Americans regarding Rev. Wright's diatribes is that radical black churches, incendiary preachers, and underground revolutionaries are not getting the pass the media have been giving them for half a century now.

I did hear a very shocking speech by Farakan on C-Span a while back at some Washington rally. But it was not on the evening news or 20/20. I'll give the benefit of the doubt that they do not want to poison the American mind with it and cause backlash.

But this is different. A major contender for the highest office in the land/world is directly and intimately connected to a radical organization (church?). And it is SHOCKING!!!! to most whites, Asians - non-blacks - who are simply seeing for the first time how deep and wisespread the Marxist tide actually is in Berkleyized America.

The logical and inevitable conclusion is that Obama's milk-sop, DNC-engineered rhetoric is a mere cover, a Trojan Horse operation. Even if it is not true that he would do his radical thing once in office, one is shocked enough to want to take no chances. I unapologetically feel that way.

I could care less about the color of a candidate's skin, or his ethnic background. I like conservative black figures like Allen Keyes and others. And I think this is the case with the vast majority of non-black Americans. The libs are just trying to use the guilt card on us whenever we recoil at Obama's neo-marxist, liberal connections - because they have been working for decades to capture America for that ideology.

As far as playing the sympathy card for all the listless black dropouts, fatherless daughters with babies all over the place, drug pushers and gang members who are not making it in American society - Duhhhhhhh! The blacks who have taken responsibillity and studied and worked their buns off like everyone else have made it. My hat's off to them.

The Rev. Wright fiasco has caused American whites of all clasess and education levels see past the ruse. My reaction and that of many others is: STOP belly-aching and get a life. STOP palying the guilt card on us. It won;t wokr any longer - IT'S 2008!! Discipline your children (as many are already), make SURE they're in school and not drug dealing. Clean up your own backyard. The Emancipation Proclamation was almost a hundred and fifty years ago (thank God for it). Blacks now have more than enough freedom and equal opportunity to take responsibility for themselves. If you don't big government can't. I mean, it simply can't. The fact that a mullatto is now a major candidate for the Presidency shows the truth of my assertions!!

I thought his speech was terrible in the light of the above. Too much belly-aching about the past. Too much politcal pablulum. Personally, I think he is too imbedded in black radicalism, a la Wright et al. to extricate himself. He just can't do it at this point. But Americns may be more sheeplike and gullible than I thought.

As a conservative Republicn, I say - can him!, and try again black America, when you have a true Christian and an America first candidate who is past the whole woe-is-me, guilt-trip deal. We have had enough, and are now completely turned off and sickened by it.

Please, can we change the subject!

Based on some the comments I've read, we still have a long ways to go as Americans. Obama's issues are no worse than those of past Presidents and Presidential Candidates. So what is the real issue with Obama? Is it like some are saying, race, or is it just fear. Fear of a changing country. If you believe we, the US, has a favorable reputation around this world then you are terribly mistaken. Our own media sources conducted polls and found out most countries look down on our government. Now I don't think race has to much to do with that being that the Secretary of State is a black women serving as our mouthpiece.
Out of all the candidates, in my opinion, Obama gives us the best chance of restoring this country reputation to where it should be. The whole church thing is crazy, and some of you have been listening to FOX TV a bit to much. If you decided on a church and it's worth solely on who the pastor is then that doesn't say much for your decision making process. Some of you, I feel, really don't want to look closer at the situation than you've already have. You just take the word of Bill and Shawn and your minds are made up. Decision-making of that nature causes concern for me, and I hope most people don't allow themselves to be persuaded with such little knowledge.

My suggestion to all is to do your homework, look closely at the issues, and don't sell yourselves short. Don't allow biased rhetoric be your determining factor. Be Bigger than that!