“I can no more disown him than I can my own grandmother, at least until now…”

"Then I'll get on my knees and pray, we don't get fooled again" The who

The notion we should not care about the relationship between Wright and Obama is absurd. Character does count. Who Obama associated with in the last twenty years does count. Character mattered in the Monica Lewinsky scandal with Bill Clinton, and it counts now.

In the first speech Obama threw his grandmother under the bus; in the second speech he threw Wright under the bus to join her.

So, who is this Obama? Obama states, The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago." How can this be? Obama is either lying or he is about as naïve as naïve can get. Was Wright this radical person in 2001 when he made his original statements on AIDS? on the chickens coming home to roost? When did Wright turn radical? I don't think anyone believes that Wright was not the same radical person he was now as he was 20 years ago. Yesterday, Wright defended every one of the positions that had been played over and over again, and he even expanded on them. He mentions Nicaragua and the Misquito Indians, an ethnic group on the Atlantic side of Nicaragua and other Central American countries whose roots come from Africa. Liberation Theology was a movement in Latin America that took place during the late 70s and early 80s to arouse the peasant population to overthrow the governments in power. Obama had to have known.

And then what about the 1.6M 10,000 square foot house in an all white neigborhood Trinity Church purchased for Wright? What about their social gospel? I guess that is for the other guy.

Obama attended the million man march by Louis Farrakhan with Reverend Wright. This had to have been an organized event, and Barack Obama must have known the relationship between Wright and Farrakhan unless he was led around blindfolded.
Obama says, "Wright contradicts everything I have done in my life" – He is just realizing this? What happened to the last twenty years?

Barack Obama states, "They certainly don't portray accurately my values and beliefs. And if Reverend Wright thinks that that's political posturing." Was it not political posturing when Obama even joined Wright's church for his own political ambitions?

"Now, I've already denounced the comments that had appeared in these previous sermons. As I said, I had not heard them before" He still claims he has never heard the comments. We were always told these comments were taken out of context. Even in the softball interview given by Moyers, large portions of the sermon were given. It is apparent to any rational person that Wright was the same today, yesterday and he will be the same tomorrow. The context was worse in the Moyers interview than if the media only used the continuously looped snippets,

We bombed Gadafi's home and killed his child. "Blessed are they who bash your children's head against a rock!" We bombed Iraq. We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to payback for the attack on our embassy. Killed hundreds of hard-working people; mothers and fathers who left home to go that day, not knowing that they would never get back home. 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! Kids playing in the playground, mothers picking up children after school, civilians - not soldiers - people just trying to make it day by day. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and Black South Africans, and now we are indignant? Because the stuff we have done overseas has now been brought back into our own front yards! America's chickens are coming home to roost!

Barack Obama was right when he stated, "when he equates the United States wartime efforts with terrorism, then there are no excuses."

In the question and answer session, Barack Obama was asked and then answered the following:

QUESTION: Reverend Wright said it was not an attack on him, but an attack on the black church. First of all, do you agree with that? And second of all, the strain of theology that he preached — black liberation theology — explain something about the anger that seems to be some of the sentiments in the church in (inaudible). How important a strain, then, is liberation theology in the black church? And why did you choose to enter the church then?

OBAMA: Well, first of all, in terms of liberation theology, I am not a theologian. So I think to some theologians there might be some well worked out theory of what constitutes liberation theology versus non-liberation theology.

I went to church and listened to sermons. And in the sermons that I heard — and this is true, I do think, across the board in many black churches — there is an emphasis on the importance of social struggle, the importance of striving for equality and justice and fairness, a social gospel.

So I think a lot of people, rather than using a fancy word like that, simply talk about preaching the social gospel. And there's nothing particularly odd about that. Dr. King, obviously, was the most prominent example of that kind of preaching

Obama is an intellectual; so for him to not understand what his church teaches when it is on their website's talking points is astounding:

One of the biggest gaps in knowledge that causes the kind of ignorance that you hear spouted by this man [Erik Rush] and those like him, has to do with the fact that these persons are completely ignorant when it comes to the Black religious tradition. The vision statement of Trinity United Church of Christ is based upon the systematized liberation theology that started in 1969 with the publication of Dr. James Cone's book, Black Power and Black Theology.

• Black theology is one of the many theologies in the Americas that became popular during the liberation theology movement. They include Hispanic theology, Native American theology, Asian theology and Womanist theology.

This was a major movement in Latin America in the 70s and 80s.

So, the question still remains. Why did Obama remain in this church for twenty years and subject his children to this rhetoric. Is this who we want for president?

The Associate Press printed the timeline about Obama's relationship with Wright. (Italics are my comments)

Timeline of Barack Obama's relationship with Jeremiah Wright

Key dates in the relationship between Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright:

1972 — Wright becomes pastor of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ.

1985 — Obama begins working as a community organizer in Chicago; meets Wright.

1988 — Obama embraces Christianity after hearing a Wright sermon on hope. In the sermon, "Audacity of Hope," Wright states "where white folks' greed runs a world in need", and Obama bases his book, Audacity of Hope on this sermon.

1992 — Obama joins Trinity United Church; Wright officiates at Obama's wedding.

Feb. 10, 2007 — Obama decides not to have Wright deliver the invocation at the launch of his presidential campaign. Obama told Wright he could get rough at sermons. He knew.

Feb. 22, 2007 — Rolling Stone magazine publishes a profile of Obama that includes Wright using profanity to condemn American racism. Did Obama not know that too or was he reading Vanity Fair?

March 13, 2008 — ABC News airs a report on some of Wright's inflammatory remarks. Clips from his sermons begin circulating on TV and the Internet.

March 14, 2008 — Obama calls Wright's remarks "completely unacceptable and inexcusable;" says the reverend had stepped down from a campaign advisory committee.

March 18, 2008 — Obama delivers speech on race; criticizes Wright but says he can't "disown" him.

April 28, 2008 — Capping a media blitz after weeks of silence, Wright says criticism of his sermons amounts to criticism of black churches in general.

April 29, 2008 — Obama says he is "outraged" by Wright's "divisive and destructive" comments and their relationship has been permanently damaged.

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