Obama Pastor’s Church Fires Back

[emmyCA]

By Larry Jackson - Mar 16th, 2008 at 5:08 pm EDT

Also listed in: Arlington, Texas for Obama | Texas House District #96
by FOXNews.com, Sunday, March 16, 2008

The Chicago church attended by Barack Obama is fighting back against media coverage of its controversial pastor, saying reports on the inflammatory statements by Rev. Jeremiah Wright are an attempt to attack “the history of the African American church.”

“Nearly three weeks before the 40th commemorative anniversary of the murder of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Reverend Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.’s character is being assassinated in the public sphere because he has preached a social gospel on behalf of oppressed women, children and men in America and around the globe,” the leaders of Trinity United Church of Christ wrote Sunday in a statement distributed to the media.

Claiming that Wright’s 36 years as pastor of the church — the largest United Church of Christ congregation, with 8,000 members — is being demeaned, Rev. John H. Thomas, UCC general minister and president, said, “It saddens me to see news stories reporting such a caricature of a congregation that has been such a blessing to the UCC’s Wider Church mission … It’s time for us to say ‘No’ to these attacks and declare that we will not allow anyone to undermine or destroy the ministries of any of our congregations in order to serve their own narrow political or ideological ends.”

Neither Wright nor Obama was present at the church on Sunday, but all of talk news was on the subject of the pastor, whose many sermons have been captured on video and replayed across television and the Internet over the past few weeks.

Among some of the more flamboyant sermons have included statements saying that the U.S. created the AIDS virus to kill African Americans and that the United States was asking for the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks because it had supported “state-sponsored terrorism” against black South Africans and Palestinians.

Calling Trinity’s social justice and outreach programs “inclusive and global” Moss added that not much has changed since the era of King’s preaching for equality. He claimed that African American churches, “born out of the crucible of slavery and the legacy of prophetic African American preachers since slavery” continue to treat marginalized victims of social and economic injustices in the face of prejudice.

“This is an attack on the legacy of the African American Church which led and continues to lead the fight for human rights in America and around the world,” he said, adding “The African American Church community continues to face bomb threats, death threats, and their ministers’ characters are assassinated because they teach and preach prophetic social concerns for social justice. Sunday is still the most segregated hour in America.”

[neutralplayer]

Yeah... this response could come back and bite Obama. It misses the whole point of the controversy.

[Lodi]

The United Church of whatever is full of crap. I'd take a CD-ROM from any one of Rev. Doug's sermons from my church and play it side by side with any one of theirs, and the difference would be clear as the sanitizing light of the sun. That they could ever present themselves as anything besides hate mongers is ludicrous!

I feel so angry over this outrage of Obama and his sheeple that in the grocery store a little while ago, I had all to do to keep myself from screaming out, "God damn America! Vote for Barack Obama!" But, considering I had my ward, my retarded brother, in tow, I managed to stifle myself.

Still, had I been in a grocery store in PA or any of the states waiting to vote, I would have done it, risked being arrested, if it would've shown Obama sheep how absolutely crazy it is to still consider this evil, self-interested excuse of a man a viable candidate for anything, let alone president.

My life, like that of so many others, is particularly difficult at this time. Every day is a struggle in so many ways. I admit that I sometimes pray that both my brother and I would die in an accident so we could be back in the spirit world. On top of everything else I/we all have to contend with, now we have the total insanity of half the populace supporting a dangerous hoodwinker like Obama.

If ever we needed God to override our free will and intervene, it's now.

[freespirit]

Just empty words. Sounds like something Obama would say. Just words.

[Patsy]

The United Church of whatever is full of crap. I'd take a CD-ROM from any one of Rev. Doug's sermons from my church and play it side by side with any one of theirs, and the difference would be clear as the sanitizing light of the sun. That they could ever present themselves as anything besides hate mongers is ludicrous!

I feel so angry over this outrage of Obama and his sheeple that in the grocery store a little while ago, I had all to do to keep myself from screaming out, "God damn America! Vote for Barack Obama!" But, considering I had my ward, my retarded brother, in tow, I managed to stifle myself.

Still, had I been in a grocery store in PA or any of the states waiting to vote, I would have done it, risked being arrested, if it would've shown Obama sheep how absolutely crazy it is to still consider this evil, self-interested excuse of a man a viable candidate for anything, let alone president.

My life, like that of so many others, is particularly difficult at this time. Every day is a struggle in so many ways. I admit that I sometimes pray that both my brother and I would die in an accident so we could be back in the spirit world. On top of everything else I/we all have to contend with, now we have the total insanity of half the populace supporting a dangerous hoodwinker like Obama.

If ever we needed God to override our free will and intervene, it's now.

I hear you loud and clear.

But remember, the truth shall set us all free and God willing, that will be sooner rather than later.

[ALL4HILLARY]

Go post some comments there. I did already. Now we have to apologize to this anti-american monster. (Obama's uncle as he said)

[PuppyDogMom]

Julianne: Hang in there.

[ALL4HILLARY]

Any press conference they have to attach Hillary they face questions about the Pastor and Obama. And by they way as for Obama's transparency on his taxreports he only release his 2006 only not any from befire and he attacks Hillary on transparency

Obama Camp on Clinton’s Transparency Problem, Receive More Questions on Reverend Wright
by Bonney Kapp

Senior Obama advisor David Axelrod and Communications Director Robert Gibbs hosted a conference call with reporters Sunday, while the senator himself spent the day with his family. The intent of the call was to focus on Senator Clinton’s lack of transparency. Gibbs outlined four questions directed towards Senator Clinton:

1. Will the Clinton campaign release their full tax returns, including schedules?
2. Will Senator Clinton release all of her earmark requests? 3. Will the Clinton campaign release the names of all donors to the Clinton foundation and to the Clinton library, and if not, why?
4. Will the Clinton campaign instruct the Clinton Library to release all of their records?

“The Clinton campaign has made a premium out of making sure that candidates are vetted, that transparency is full, and their failure to continue to answer these questions simply brings us another series of questions, which is what is Senator Clinton hiding and what is lurking in those documents that she believes voters don’t have a right to know?” Gibbs asked.

But during the question and answer period of the call, the reporters switched gears, focusing the latest hot topic in the Democratic race - Obama’s relationship with the controversial Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

Axelrod stressed Obama had been forthright on the controversy and had condemned Wright’s statements, pointing out this was a personally difficult time for Senator Obama. “As you know Reverend Wright married him, introduced him, as [Obama] said, to the church, brought him into the church, into Christianity, baptized his children. So this is a painful thing for him because he condemns the things that Rev. Wright said, but he also knows him as a person, so it’s a difficult matter for him.”

When asked if the story would damage the campaign, Axelrod observed, “Reverend Wright is gone from the church now; he’s no longer the pastor of the church and I think people will hear Senator Obama on this issue, and…they understand that these do not represent his views, and they don’t represent the sum total of what Rev Wright has done over the years or their relationship. I think that this will pass, but we understand there’s a lot of interest in it now.”

Axelrod then asked Gibbs, “Robert, do you have anything to add?” Gibbs replied, “No, I think that covers it.”

=====================

March 16th, 2008 3:42 PM Eastern
Clinton Campaign Calls for Obama’s Records
by Aaron Bruns

On the daily conference call for reporters, Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson responded to the Obama campaign’s demand for Senator Clinton’s tax returns with a heated call for Obama to practice what he’s preaching — saying “if they want to talk about disclosure, let’s talk about it.”

“Before we talk about taxes, I would ask the Obama campaign if he or they are prepared to release all of his taxes when he was in elected office. So far the answer to that has been no,” he said. The campaign plans to release the Clintons’ tax returns since 2000 “on or about April 15th,” while Obama has released returns only for 2006; by way of contrast, Wolfson said the American people already have 20 years of Clinton financial statements in the public domain.

He also questioned Obama’s failure to release documents from his years in the Illinois state senate — as well as his explanation that those records don’t exist. “Let’s talk about state senate records,” he said. “I would ask the Obama campaign, are you prepared to release all your earmark requests when you were in the state Senate?”

Pointing out that the National Archives has said that Sen Clinton’s schedules from her time in the White House will soon be released, Wolfson said “Senator Obama can put out his schedules in the state Senate at any time, he hasn’t done so. He claims no records exist from his state Senator days.”

“If we want to go down this road, there are questions that ought to be posed to the Obama campaign that they have heretofore refused to answer.”

Senior Strategist Mark Penn subtly admonished reporters for not digging deepy enough into Obama’s unreleased documents. “One would think the demand would not be for some additional information when we’ve already done senate disclosures, but of this important set of information about Senator Obama that could be critical for the voters in these last 12 jurisdictions making their decisions,” he said, arguing that the time to release those documents is now, not later.

For full (but mercifully brief) notes on the hour-long call, keep reading below.

Keep Reading …


Tags: barack obama, conference call, hillary clinton, tax returns, transparency
Posted in Barack Obama, Blogroll, Hillary Clinton
March 15th, 2008 11:37 PM Eastern
High Road for Hillary on Rezko, Wright
by Aaron Bruns

While her campaign held a conference call to push Barack Obama to release even more information on his relationship with indicted businessman Tony Rezko, Hillary Clinton took the high road in a media avail with reporters aboard her press plane — deferring any and all Rezko-related questions to the Obama campaign. She did the same with queries on Obama’s controversial pastor Jeremiah Wright — who has suggested the US played a role in 911 and the spread of HIV.

Part of the reluctance to talk about supporters may stem from a conversation she had with Obama on the Senate floor on Thursday at the height of the Geraldine Ferraro madness, in which the two senators discussed how to keep the focus of the race on the issues. “We both have had instances during the course of the year with staff members, supporters saying things that we’ve had to reject and repudiate,” she said. “We want to make sure we try to keep this campaign focused on what voters are interested in.”

She also refused to preview her major Iraq speech on Monday — but she did answer a few of our questions, saying that Michigan is “moving in the appropriate direction to have a revote,” a decision she says could be made by the end of the week. And she defended her role in some of the major events of the Clinton administration — including the creation of the Children’s Health Insurance program and the peace talks in Northern Ireland, acknowledging that she may not have been George Mitchell, but saying she “helped the peace process.”

Read the transcript of her remarks to reporters after the jump.

Keep Reading …

Share 236 Comments »

[Charlie Brown]

this will take down the Dem's...They better get off there *sses and get him to step down and fast. I dont know how much more this party can take. here they have been hinting for our Hillary to step aside and we keep listening to this with the Obama campaign. This is a complete outrage.

[xyndau]

You know, I don't really care what Obama's church feels at this point. They - that church - permitted its pastor to spew the most vile hate and bigotry imaginable for what - 30 years? And now that they've been outed, for the entire world to see, they want to cry foul and that Wright's "character is being assassinated in the public sphere"? Wright assassinated his own reputation by spewing such filth.

[ALL4HILLARY]

They are pissed off because Obama push his pastor under the bus in a way to help his political aspirations. This is good stuff and I heard it on CNN now

[xyndau]

They are pissed off because Obama push his pastor under the bus in a way to help his political aspirations. This is good stuff and I heard it on CNN now

I read something about that here yesterday, but have not seen where it has actually occurred. Please keep us informed if you actually see an article on it!

[Charlie Brown]

You know, I don't really care what Obama's church feels at this point. They - that church - permitted its pastor to spew the most vile hate and bigotry imaginable for what - 30 years? And now that they've been outed for the entire world to see that want to cry foul and that Wright's "character is being assassinated in the public sphere"? Wright assassinated his own reputation by spewing such filth.

This is so much bigger then How this church feels. This is about the Black vote.We have North Carolina primarys coming up. If the black finally realize he isnt in there corner (as we already know.) They wont vote for him at all or hopefully vote for the one that always has been in there corner and that is the Clintons.

[ALL4HILLARY]

The reporter was reporting from the road, I thing ahe is embeded with Obama or Clinton. Tonight at 10pm est the anchor said they will put all of the radical imflamatory comments from Pastor Wright's speaches, and disguss this again. And again this is a developing story as they said.

[PuppyDogMom]

Isn't that something? You can criticize us but we can't criticize you? Seems a tad bit unfair to me.

[xfiles]

This "church" is saying Wright is being slandered, etc.

What about Wright slandering the US with his Anti-American rants and conspiracy theories about the US and aids and so on?

[justme819]

i hope...a video showing him at one of those hate-filled sermons...now, not just that...but the ministers in the black community are mad at obama and have essentially denounced him...this could be good...now, all we need is for obama`s church to speak out and provide the records or release official documents/statements which prove obama was at their church during those sermons and for the greater part of the last 20 yrs...

his church now holds the power to quite probably end obama`s Pres. run...but will they use it?...will they cooperate with the media now?...depends!...are they more angry at the media or at obama for denouncing the Rev. Wright...for what his church and the black evangelical community feels is only for political gain...

stay tuned!...plenty more to come i`m sure!

[lanney]

This "church" is saying Wright is being slandered, etc.

What about Wright slandering the US with his Anti-American rants and conspiracy theories about the US and aids and so on?
Oprah must be advising them how to respond.

[lanney]

i hope...a video showing him at one of those hate-filled sermons...now, not just that...but the ministers in the black community are mad at obama and have essentially denounced him...this could be good...now, all we need is for obama`s church to speak out and provide the records or release official documents/statements which prove obama was at their church during those sermons and for the greater part of the last 20 yrs...

stay tuned!...plenty more to come i`m sure!
No Chance, they are just looking for sweet revenge. And black Jesus can't make any mistake.
Clintons had done lot for them, how AA had treated them? Just because Clintons are White. As soon as AA saw dark skin candidate they became followers.
Sorry but this reality. AA will support him and if BHO will ask them to riot, they will. "Yes We Can"

[ActionJackson]

Hillary can do little more than to let this one ride and not comment overtly. Goodness knows, anything she or her supporters say is "racism". I just don't understand how the words and preaching of Obama's minister isn't stirring up racism every Sunday. (I know, he is no longer with the church, but that is beside the point, Obama!).

I wish Hillary could address some of what he said. For instance, when he said "Hillary ain't never had her people defined as non-persons."-- Oh yes she has... when women married in America (1600's-1800's) they became 'non-people' in the eyes of the law. Legally, the two became (literally) one and that one person was the man when a couple married... she could not own her clothes, her property, her income, and she had no right to her children or her body.

The other ridiculous thing he said was that "Hillary ain't never had to work twice as hard to get accepted..." What? Has this guy been following this campaign? Hillary is 10 times more qualified than half the men in the Senate, more intelligent than many, yet she can't even get a fair break with the dog-gone media/industry. She's better looking than most of them, too!!!

[lucky-ann]

"Hillary ain't never had to work twice as hard to get accepted..."

sorry? does he know that women often get paid less for the same work?

[lakerchick4life]

Keep on talking Trinity Church..just keep on spewing that hate..your doing all the work for Hillary and her campaign..Hillary doesn't have to say anything..it's freakin awesome watching this dude and the scum he has around him drive him right down the toilet. Keep up the great work :D:D

[emmyCA]

i hope...a video showing him at one of those hate-filled sermons...now, not just that...but the ministers in the black community are mad at obama and have essentially denounced him...this could be good...now, all we need is for obama`s church to speak out and provide the records or release official documents/statements which prove obama was at their church during those sermons and for the greater part of the last 20 yrs...

his church now holds the power to quite probably end obama`s Pres. run...but will they use it?...will they cooperate with the media now?...depends!...are they more angry at the media or at obama for denouncing the Rev. Wright...for what his church and the black evangelical community feels is only for political gain...

stay tuned!...plenty more to come i`m sure!

I hope there are people who attended the church there on regular basic would take the stand to tell the truth about Mr. Wright racist political speeches on weekly mass. If we can get those people to do testimony, that will be an end of Obama right away. Obama and his camp are now trying to burry this story as much as they can. I hope media won't give him a free pass on this. I hope there is an independent investigation team going to that church area to interview church goers and make report on this. We need to review all of video recordings of this pastor to prove to public that most of his peeches refect his racist hatred toward white people and America.

This is a great opportunity for us to take back our momentum. Don't let it go easily. Don't let media give him a free pass on this again....I am afraid by the next primay, media will forget all about this story.

[lucky-ann]

I am afraid by the next primay, media will forget all about this story.

i'm afraid about that too...but it won't happen if we make it a real blow out in PA, because in this case the media has to talk about what went wrong for obama and churchgate will certainly be a part of it!

[justme819]

No Chance, they are just looking for sweet revenge. And black Jesus can't make any mistake.
Clintons had done lot for them, how AA had treated them? Just because Clintons are White. As soon as AA saw dark skin candidate they became followers.
Sorry but this reality. AA will support him and if BHO will ask them to riot, they will. "Yes We Can"

i agree...but We`ll see...nobody`s looking for a complete turn-around in the black community...just less of the black vote for obama and more for Clinton...even if just a little...because every little bit`s going to help here!

but that`s not really the main point of my above post...getting obama`s church to release some form of proof that he was there...if offered enough money, etc., etc...and CNN has just reported that there`s a great GROWING ANGER at obama in the black community for rejecting the teachings of their churches, etc., etc., etc...so, we`ll just have to wait and see how all this plays out...

[emmyCA]

i'm afraid about that too...but it won't happen if we make it a real blow out in PA, because in this case the media has to talk about what went wrong for obama and churchgate will certainly be a part of it!


I agree on this...Hillary needs to win big in PA. Bill Clinton stated the same that if Hillary wins big in PA, and FL and MI delegates seated, she will win the nominee...Every one, please focus on winning big in PA by donating and calling voters...

[lucky-ann]

CNN has just reported that there`s a great GROWING ANGER at obama in the black community for rejecting the teachings of their churches, etc., etc., etc...so, we`ll just have to wait and see how all this plays out.

it probably would yet help her if many black stay at home because of this...