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Old 03-17-2008, 08:51 AM   #41
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They'll maybe start to think that they should have looked under the hood and spent a little less time gushing over the paint job. Or, they'll blame the lack of "progress" on those naysayers who keep bringing up the uncomfortable truths and ruining everything (e.g. that people work harder and produce more when there is a tighter linkage between effort and reward.
The fact is that people who are emotionally rather than rationally attracted to something rarely change their minds when it doesn't work out.

Groups who wait patiently for a spaceship to lift them off this messed up earth rarely turn on their gurus when it doesn't show up. They blame some external thing- like bad vibes from non-believers. Marginal group members will drift off, but usually not the core, especially if the guru is skilled and charismatic. Same with this candidacy. If he wins and if it goes demonstrably bad, independents and cross-overs will vow not to be gulled again. But the core supporters will blame someone else.

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Old 03-17-2008, 10:16 AM   #42
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The fact is that people who are emotionally rather than rationally attracted to something rarely change their minds when it doesn't work out.
So the question for Obama is - is that "core" of emotional voters enough to get him elected in the general election?

Obama has tried so hard not to be the "racial candidate" & appear to be a moderate - I suspect his past associations are going to make that more difficult from here on out as more and more things come to light.
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Old 03-17-2008, 12:31 PM   #43
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So the question for Obama is - is that "core" of emotional voters enough to get him elected in the general election?

Obama has tried so hard not to be the "racial candidate" & appear to be a moderate - I suspect his past associations are going to make that more difficult from here on out as more and more things come to light.
I think he very well may be elected in the general election. If he doesn't, that "core" of emotional voters is going to feel cheated and enraged, and I fear that may lead to unrest and violence in some cities.

I am not anti-Obama, but pretty much equally drawn to (and repelled by) all three candidates. It's sort of like being hypnotized by three cobras as far as I'm concerned.
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Old 03-17-2008, 01:24 PM   #44
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I find myself quite fascinated by the tremendous amount of vitriol coming from Republicans and the Clinton campaign on the comments of the pastor, now retired, from Obama's church. Methinks they are protesting WAY too much......and are throwing every rock they can hurl in the way of this man becoming President. At last, Hillary Clinton, working in concert with the vast Right Wing Conspiracy. It's almost too delicious for words. I found this piece by Frank Schaeffer illuminating. LooseChickens

Obama's Minister Committed "Treason" But When My Father Said the Same Thing He Was a Republican Hero

Posted March 16, 2008 | 04:23 PM (EST) (Frank Schaeffer)




When Senator Obama's preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father -- Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer -- denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr.

Every Sunday thousands of right wing white preachers (following in my father's footsteps) rail against America's sins from tens of thousands of pulpits. They tell us that America is complicit in the "murder of the unborn," has become "Sodom" by coddling gays, and that our public schools are sinful places full of evolutionists and sex educators hell-bent on corrupting children. They say, as my dad often did, that we are, "under the judgment of God." They call America evil and warn of immanent destruction. By comparison Obama's minister's shouted "controversial" comments were mild. All he said was that God should damn America for our racism and violence and that no one had ever used the N-word about Hillary Clinton.

Dad and I were amongst the founders of the Religious right. In the 1970s and 1980s, while Dad and I crisscrossed America denouncing our nation's sins instead of getting in trouble we became darlings of the Republican Party. (This was while I was my father's sidekick before I dropped out of the evangelical movement altogether.) We were rewarded for our "stand" by people such as Congressman Jack Kemp, the Fords, Reagan and the Bush family. The top Republican leadership depended on preachers and agitators like us to energize their rank and file. No one called us un-American.




Consider a few passages from my father's immensely influential America-bashing book A Christian Manifesto. It sailed under the radar of the major media who, back when it was published in 1980, were not paying particular attention to best-selling religious books. Nevertheless it sold more than a million copies.

Here's Dad writing in his chapter on civil disobedience:
If there is a legitimate reason for the use of force [against the US government]... then at a certain point force is justifiable.
And this:
In the United States the materialistic, humanistic world view is being taught exclusively in most state schools... There is an obvious parallel between this and the situation in Russia [the USSR]. And we really must not be blind to the fact that indeed in the public schools in the United States all religious influence is as forcibly forbidden as in the Soviet Union....
Then this:
There does come a time when force, even physical force, is appropriate... A true Christian in Hitler's Germany and in the occupied countries should have defied the false and counterfeit state. This brings us to a current issue that is crucial for the future of the church in the United States, the issue of abortion... It is time we consciously realize that when any office commands what is contrary to God's law it abrogates it's authority. And our loyalty to the God who gave this law then requires that we make the appropriate response in that situation...
Was any conservative political leader associated with Dad running for cover? Far from it. Dad was a frequent guest of the Kemps, had lunch with the Fords, stayed in the White House as their guest, he met with Reagan, helped Dr. C. Everett Koop become Surgeon General. (I went on the 700 Club several times to generate support for Koop).

Dad became a hero to the evangelical community and a leading political instigator. When Dad died in 1984 everyone from Reagan to Kemp to Billy Graham lamented his passing publicly as the loss of a great American. Not one Republican leader was ever asked to denounce my dad or distanced himself from Dad's statements.
Take Dad's words and put them in the mouth of Obama's preacher (or in the mouth of any black American preacher) and people would be accusing that preacher of treason. Yet when we of the white Religious Right denounced America white conservative Americans and top political leaders, called our words "godly" and "prophetic" and a "call to repentance."

We Republican agitators of the mid 1970s to the late 1980s were genuinely anti-American in the same spirit that later Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (both followers of my father) were anti-American when they said God had removed his blessing from America on 9/11, because America accepted gays. Falwell and Robertson recanted but we never did.

My dad's books denouncing America and comparing the USA to Hitler are still best sellers in the "respectable" evangelical community and he's still hailed as a prophet by many Republican leaders. When Mike Huckabee was recently asked by Katie Couric to name one book he'd take with him to a desert island, besides the Bible, he named Dad's Whatever Happened to the Human Race? a book where Dad also compared America to Hitler's Germany.

The hypocrisy of the right denouncing Obama, because of his minister's words, is staggering. They are the same people who argue for the right to "bear arms" as "insurance" to limit government power. They are the same people that (in the early 1980s roared and cheered when I called down damnation on America as "fallen away from God" at their national meetings where I was keynote speaker, including the annual meeting of the ultraconservative Southern Baptist convention, and the religious broadcasters that I addressed.

Today we have a marriage of convenience between the right wing fundamentalists who hate Obama, and the "progressive" Clintons who are playing the race card through their own smear machine. As Jane Smiley writes in the Huffington Post "[The Clinton's] are, indeed, now part of the 'vast right wing conspiracy.' (Jane Smiley: I'm Already Against the Next War - Politics on The Huffington Post )

Both the far right Republicans and the stop-at-nothing Clintons are using the "scandal" of Obama's preacher to undermine the first black American candidate with a serious shot at the presidency. Funny thing is, the racist Clinton/Far Right smear machine proves that Obama's minister had a valid point. There is plenty to yell about these days.
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Old 03-17-2008, 01:40 PM   #45
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...... Methinks they are protesting WAY too much......and are throwing every rock they can hurl in the way of this man becoming President. ......
Well, that's politics - "if you can't stand the heat" as they say




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Both the far right Republicans and the stop-at-nothing Clintons are using the "scandal" of Obama's preacher to undermine the first black American candidate with a serious shot at the presidency. Funny thing is, the racist Clinton/Far Right smear machine proves that Obama's minister had a valid point. There is plenty to yell about these days.
Statements like that just go to show that Obama's surrogates have an automatic response to anyone who would attack their "dear leader" - all they have to do is yell "Racist" and the conversation is supposed to be over.
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Old 03-17-2008, 02:11 PM   #46
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I think he very well may be elected in the general election. If he doesn't, that "core" of emotional voters is going to feel cheated and enraged, and I fear that may lead to unrest and violence in some cities.
I think it's much more likely that this "core" of emotional voters would feel cheated if Obama wins a majority of the pledged delegates and the popular vote, only to have the result overturned by the superdelegates.
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Old 03-17-2008, 02:44 PM   #47
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I think it's much more likely that this "core" of emotional voters would feel cheated if Obama wins a majority of the pledged delegates and the popular vote, only to have the result overturned by the superdelegates.
America was meant to be a republic, not a one man/ one vote populist democracy.

Ideas like the Electoral College, super delagates, and so on, are there for a reason.

Ha
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Old 03-17-2008, 03:09 PM   #48
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I find myself quite fascinated by the tremendous amount of vitriol coming from Republicans and the Clinton campaign on the comments of the pastor, now retired, from Obama's church. Methinks they are protesting WAY too much......and are throwing every rock they can hurl in the way of this man becoming President. At last, Hillary Clinton, working in concert with the vast Right Wing Conspiracy. It's almost too delicious for words. I found this piece by Frank Schaeffer illuminating. LooseChickens
So you are disagreeing with Senator Obama when he said
'Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy. I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it’s on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue.'

The senator has known the reverand for over 20 years and even had him on his presidential campaign. The senator found his remarks so offensive that he removed him from his campaign staff.

Why are you disagreeing with the senator?
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Old 03-17-2008, 03:24 PM   #49
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An entertaining analysis of Obama's reaction to the Rev Wright blow-up.

American Thinker: Deconstructing Obama's lawyerly evasions on Wright

In Part:

"Contrast Senator Obama's pattern of behavior and evasions with McCain's straight talk express perspective. Did Obama think he quelled controversy over Rezko when he stalked out of a news conference when he had let reporters ask their quote of "like 8 questions". How does that square with his calls for transparency and honesty in government?

Barack Obama is not a new type of politician; he is a very old type -- a blusterer who lived before the age of google and DVDs and YouTube, when politicians could blithely make statements and promises that bear no relation to previous promises and statements. Veracity can be checked and monitored.

Senator Obama reveals a type of arrogance and smugness in thinking and a low regard for the people and their right to know. Contrary to his evident beliefs, Americans are not mostly dopes."
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Old 03-17-2008, 04:31 PM   #50
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L

Contrary to his claim that he will unite America - I think an Obama presidency would have the result of further dividing America.
You are absolutely correct since there are some people in this country that will never accept a black man (albeit only half black) as president.
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Old 03-17-2008, 05:09 PM   #51
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Old 03-17-2008, 05:28 PM   #52
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Obama is lying. I worked in a black city for 30 years been to the churches been to friends homes have listened to speeches just like wrights for years the same style. Obama even if he was not in the pew had to have known the lingo. He says he didn't sorry he is not telling the truth.
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Old 03-17-2008, 05:28 PM   #53
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You are absolutely correct since there are some people in this country that will never accept a black man (albeit only half black) as president.
Au contraire, I submit that there very few people in this country (as a percentage of the entire population) who would "never" accept a black man as president.

And there are far, far, more who will cast a racially motivated vote for Obama just because he's black (albeit only half black) and not a kook? Why is that not racist?

Hillary, John McCain, the media, the KKK nor anyone else are responsible for "race" being an issue with regard to Obama's campaign. Obama is responsible for that himself by virtue of the racists he associates himself with (& now tries to distance himself from).

If John McCain had attended a Christian Identity church for the past 20 years - would it/should it not be an issue?

In twenty years Obama didn't know his pastor/church subscribed to these racists ideas/beliefs?!?!? Come on - give me a break! He loses my vote right there for dishonesty (& thinking I'm stupid), regardless of any other reason I may have not to vote for him.
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Old 03-17-2008, 05:39 PM   #54
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Cut-Throat? Is that you?
I was thinking the same thing!!
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Old 03-17-2008, 05:47 PM   #55
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In twenty years Obama didn't know his pastor/church subscribed to these racists ideas/beliefs?!?!? Come on - give me a break!

Hey, I've been a Catholic longer than that and I just found out that I am not supposed to play with my Willie.

It can happen

Ha
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Old 03-17-2008, 05:55 PM   #56
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Obama just said Saturday:

"Reverend Wright is somebody who grew up in the 1960s, had very different life experiences than I have, continues to harbor a lot of anger about discrimination he may have experienced,"

I suppose someone could come up with similar logic to excuse George Wallace.
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Old 03-17-2008, 05:59 PM   #57
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A

In twenty years Obama didn't know his pastor/church subscribed to these racists ideas/beliefs?!?!? Come on - give me a break! He loses my vote right there for dishonesty (& thinking I'm stupid), regardless of any other reason I may have not to vote for him.
Can you enlighten me on which part of the reverend's speech you found racist? While I don't subscribe to some of the conspiracy theories in his speech, I fail to see the racist part. I suggest you listen closely to his message. He, God bless him, is an older man that has lived through the struggles and pain inflicted on black people, particularly in the civil rights area. The least we can do is understand and empathize with his pain. As for his criticism of the US, he is not alone in that. I, for one, find some of our actions, particularly as we related to other countries, reprehensible. Is it a lie that that America have inflicted great pain on various parts of the world under the guise of "fighting communism"? Do we continue to support despots around the world, most notably the Saudis? Aren't Palestinians facing collective punishment to the tune of 300 to 1 Israeli while we continue to support the loss of their land and occupation? President Carter wrote a great book on the apartheid in Palestine. Wasn't the US supportive of apartheid SA? Is it a lie that the US is controlled by rich white people? This is a great country but as patriotic Americans, we must strive always to make this a fairer and just society. After all, we hold ourselves out to the world's morality police.
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Old 03-17-2008, 06:14 PM   #58
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This song was apparently sung at a recent GOP event. No one seemed to have batted an eye.

Why should God bless America?
She's forgotten he exists
And has turned her back
On everything that made her what she is
Why should God stand beside her
Through the night with the light from his hand?
God have mercy on America
Forgive her sin and heal our land
The courts ruled prayer out of our schools
In June of ‘62
Told the children "you are your own God now
So you can make the rules"
O say can you see what that choice
Has cost us to this day
America, one nation under God, has gone astray
In ‘73 the Courts said we
Could take the unborn lives
The choice is yours don't worry now
It's not a wrong, it's your right
But just because they made it law
Does not change God's command
The most that we can hope for is
God's mercy on our land
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Old 03-17-2008, 06:21 PM   #59
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If John McCain had attended a Christian Identity church for the past 20 years - would it/should it not be an issue?
Bob Jones University and Bush: Can a politician have affiliation with such an entity and not support everything for which they stand?

Sure, they're anti-Catholic (a "satanic counterfeit" ) but they did drop their interracial dating ban in 2000, after all.
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Old 03-17-2008, 07:37 PM   #60
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This song was apparently sung at a recent GOP event. No one seemed to have batted an eye.
Fairly mild stuff, but good try. "Apparently sung" . . . "at a recent GOP event" (not further identified). Was anybody of importance in attendance? Can we really put this "song" in the same category as Rev Wright's remarks?

Hey, there are nut jobs (religious and otherwise) in both political parties. That's not the issue.

Here's a lead for you Obama fans--see if you can take the heat off your candidate by digging up something on McCain. Specifically, see if John McCain brought his family to meetings led by a hateful extremist for 20 years. Some things that might indicate the leader is such a person:
-- If he blames America's problems on a particular racial group
-- If he is a proponent of "White Liberation Theology"
-- If he says the US is a sponsor of terrorism
-- If he says that the US government created AIDS in an effort to foster genocide

"Change We can Believe In"--more folks are starting to ask questions about the "change" he has in mind. That's a good thing.
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