obama

It looks like it’s official that Obama won the Democratic nomination! This is a proud moment for all of us. In honor of the event, I’ve created this video.

With all of the concern about Obama’s association with Rev. Wright, almost nothing has been said about Rev. John Hagee’s endorsement of McCain.

• Right-wing pastor John Hagee says vile, despicable things about patriotic Americans…the worst being that Catholics are part of a church that is a “great whore,” that “all Muslims have a mandate to kill Christians and Jews,” and that God damns America with hurricanes because gay Americans plan parades.
• Oh, and Hagee says God wants us to destroy Iran ASAP.
• John McCain actively seeks Pastor Hagee’s endorsement and gets it.
• When John McCain accepts Hagee’s endorsement, he doesn’t include a list of the pastor’s statements that he finds unacceptable. No, my friends, he accepts the whole Hagee package with no ifs, ands, or buts.
• When McCain finds out that Hagee thinks God damns America because of gays, Catholics, Muslims and others, McCain is shocked…shocked!  But he continues to praise Pastor Hagee and cherish his crucial endorsement.
• Instead of turning the controversy into a teachable moment—with, say, a groundbreaking speech on religious diversity and equality for all Americans—McCain, the straight-talker, continues to weave and waffle his way through the Hagee controversy, hoping that the media will give him yet another free pass. (Most of the media comply in exchange for some excellent barbeque behind McCain’s bus.)
• When gently—ever so gently—pressed about Hagee’s statements weeks later by journalists, a visibly agitated McCain blurts out that, hey, at least he wasn’t my pastor for twenty years!!!

I’d love to see these questions asked of John McSame in a debate:

1. If John Hagee was your pastor for twenty years, would you have left the church over his anti-gay, anti-Muslim, anti-Catholic and America-damning comments?

2. If yes, why do you continue to accept Hagee’s endorsement?

3. If no, why not?

(via Daily Kos)

David Byrne writes:

What will happen when half the country is unemployed, with no medical insurance, stuck in a sheet rock house miles from public transportation? They’ll be ripe for religion or revolution if you ask me. Bibles and bullets. Will they still support the billions a day spent in Iraq? I don’t think so—even now they don’t. One would expect they’ll be pretty pissed off watching the rich and famous party endlessly and continue their glamorous lifestyle—or maybe not. Surprising to me, those being duped and exploited by banks and entrepreneurs often envy their “bettersâ€?—they want to be that person in the Beemer or Lexus, and will mortgage everything they’ve got to have a symbolic piece of it. Instead of anger and action we get envy—the bane of every outside agitator, union organizer, and young revolutionary.

Bibles and bullets: Doesn’t this sound a lot like what Obama said, which the pundits have blown out of proportion? Instead of addressing the real problems and trying to do something about it, politicians would rather exploit hot button issues. with the mainstream media as their lapdogs.

In his latest essay, Orson Scott Card talks about Obama and compares the senior theses of Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Obama has never said or done anything to suggest that he shares any of Wright’s offensive views. But I still hear people saying, “If he could associate with the man for twenty years, he must have heard some of this, and it’s bound to have rubbed off.”

Putting Rev. Wright’s remarks in context, he points out that Wright’s generation of black Americans have every right to be angry and unforgiving, and he was speaking as a black preacher to a black congregation in their own church, not as a spokesman for a presidential campaign.

He’s a preacher. He can use the word “damn” and it isn’t swearing. He can invoke the curse of heaven when he feels it’s appropriate. I don’t like that he said it or why he said it, but when a preacher damns something, it’s different from other people saying the same words.

I was bothered by the “Jesus was a black man” line. Jesus most assuredly was not a black man, he was of the people living in Palestine in the first generation of Roman occupation. They’re not black now and they weren’t black then.

But then I remembered all the pictures of Jesus I grew up with — the light brown hair, gently waving down to his shoulders, the white white skin — and I realize that for centuries, white Christians have reimagined Jesus as a German or Belgian. Why shouldn’t blacks have the same privilege?

Should we be suspicious of Obama because of Wright’s teachings?

Obama has made it plain that he rejects Wright’s racially divisive teachings. But he is tied to Reverend Wright by bonds of friendship that transcend doctrines.

They are friends. Reverent Wright and Obama worked together trying to make life better for poor blacks in Chicago. Wright was part of Obama’s spiritual awakening and of his search for an identity as a black man. Obama hardly knew his father. Wright took on some of that role in his life.

It’s not as if Wright has been accused of a crime other than saying things that make white people mad. I’m a white person. It makes me mad. So what? Wright’s not running for president; if he were, I wouldn’t vote for him.

Here is my question to those who think Obama should have broken off his friendship with Wright over Wright’s offensive statements:

Do you want as President the kind of person who would deny and abandon his closest friends in order to win that political office?

Think about your family. Has your father or your mother or a grandparent or a sibling ever said something you thought was appalling and embarrassing? Do any of them hold opinions that you disagree with?

If your answer to any of those questions was yes, did you respond by breaking off all contact with them and denying your connection with them?

Unfortunately, here’s where Card goes very wrong:

But if you insist on requiring that he completely separate himself from someone who has said offensive things, then what about a candidate who remains closely connected to someone who has committed crimes and done things that offend just as many Americans?

I speak of Hillary, who persists in her connection to an admitted perjurer who defiled the oval office with antics that would embarrass a randy college student (at last after he got sober and/or grew up).

Yet people actually honor Hillary for standing by her husband — and, by the way, joining him in lying about his opponents and never apologizing for her own false charges.

What’s sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose — if you think Obama should separate from Wright, then you should be calling for Hillary to divorce Bill before she becomes President. After all, we wouldn’t want to re-contaminate the White House with such indecency, would we?

I still maintain that what Bill Clinton did wasn’t that terrible. Many men in the same position would have done the same thing. It’s just human nature. It didn’t affect his governing ability and it didn’t harm the country. It was simply a non-issue. Our country’s puritanical streak is the only reason it’s even an issue.