McCain Making Reverend Wright an Issue

One of the biggest things in politics not to do is bring up religion when it comes to any Presidential candidate. John F. Kennedy had to explain to the American people that he was not beholding to the Pope if elected President of this very religious nation as a Catholic. Governor Mitt Romney, a Mormon, had to explain that his faith as a Republican would not intervene if elected President. Mike Huckabee, well, we are all going to hell for not voting for him in the primaries and Fox News gave him his own “News” show.

Over at the Gun Toting Liberal, a site I proudly once wrote for, they have a great piece on playing the religion card from the McCain campaign double speak from Rick Davis. They intend on or are implying that they will bring up Reverend Jeremiah Wright once more against Barack Obama. I have to ask an honest question here, when did they stop bringing up Reverend Jeremiah Wright? Not for nothing, but I honestly believe that I have seen more than a couple of television advertisements a week for the past couple of months citing Reverend Wright?

GTL (Gun Toting Liberal) brought up these key points and I think he nailed this topic down cold and hard…

Obama Team Rethinks Playing The “McCain’s Spiritual Guides” (I.E. — Revends Rob Parsely And Ted Hagee) Card

Question: Should Barry Obama Go After John McCain’s Wacko “Spiritual Guides” Or Should That Be Considered “Off-Limits”?

Thus far, Señor Juan Sidney McCain Of Arizona Panama’s long-standing ties to the VERY controversial (to say the least) self-proclaimed “spiritual guides”, Reverends Rob Parsely and Ted Hagee, who were (in)famous for some of their recent remarks, have been considered “off-limits” by the Barry Obama Campaign. To re-wind a bit, let’s take a look at some “greatest hits” from these two “highly-respected (by Señor McCain) reverends:

Rod Parsely: “America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion [of Islam] destroyed.” …

John Hagee: “Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.” …

Not to mention the fact Sarah Barracuda Palin’s spiritual advisers have been known to play around with rattlesnakes, daring them to pierce the “Inpenetrable Veil of Jesus” and bite them as rumor has it. - Gun Toting Liberal

Many Catholics across this nation are looking at John McCain in a very favorable light based on just one issue. Abortion. In our faith this is an open and shut question but our government in America is not, can not, and should not be based on faith alone and your vote as a Catholic should not be based on just one issue. There is a much larger picture to this Presidential race and it is bigger than all of our faiths combined. No religion can win all of its dogma and belief with any candidate for President. It is the ultimate Catch 22 if you blindly vote your faith but hand over your government to those that would ultimate ignore your faith. As Christians we are taught to look out for and care for the poor. Republican Presidential candidates and the poor is the ultimate Oxymoron.

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If John McCain, Rick Davis and Karl Rove and company want to bring up faith then let’s go to the facts. John McCain accepted an endorsement by John Hagee for President and later had to slap Reverend Hagee upside the head with a “Thanks, but no Thanks” after numerous reports cited Hagee as calling the Catholic Religion pretty much Satan worshipers. Mind you, my Jesus is your Jesus no matter what Christian Church pew you sit in, but all of us Catholics were damned to hell by Hagee! I didn’t like it, I don’t accept his apology because I think he wasn’t sincere and honest. With that one statement by Hagee he sent my five baby girls to hell and he was and is in John McCain’s corner. That was when many Independent and Moderate Catholic voters moved to Obama’s corner in this election.

Don’t even get me started on all of the ways that McCain is enabling big business to screw over the poorest amongst us and leave the cleanup for faith based organizations to take up the slack. From homeless veterans, cutting VA benefits for our troops, voting against minimum wage every single time. John McCain really does not care about feeding the homeless, or offering them shelter till they get on their feet which is what faith based kitchens and shelters all across America are doing 365 days a year now.

John McCain is a very angry man and if he wants to use Jesus Christ as a weapon against Barack Obama, a fellow Christian, then I have just one question. What would Jesus say?

Pitting one form of Christianity against the other is not a smart political strategy and it makes your political campaign look more than just desperate. It’s lining up Christian against Christian and that is not what our faith and belief in Jesus Christ is all about.

Papamoka

Related post...
Catholics, McCain, and Hagee

Did Reverend Wright Derail Obama?

One thing that everyone can recognize is an idiot with an open microphone. In the past several days Reverend Wright has done his best to pretty much kill the chances of an African American like Barack Obama ever becoming the Democrat nominee for President. What the good reverend has done is isolate in fear what every African American is and that does not bode well for a political candidate running on a platform for one American people no longer divided, no longer separated but united as one for one single purpose. Rebuilding a broken America.

Barack Obama declared his total separation from Reverend Jeremiah Wright today, now retired from the pulpit at Trinity Church because of his outrageous statements picked up all over the main stream media. Over at the Washington Post they have this on the event…

By Peter Slevin
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- Sen. Barack Obama today strongly criticized the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor, saying that Wright's comments about the United States in recent days have been "destructive" and "outrageous."

Using his sharpest language yet to describe a series of Wright performances that he said left him angry and sad, Obama accused Wright of exploiting racial divisions at the same time the Illinois senator is aiming to bring the nation together.

"When I say I find these comments appalling, I mean it," Obama told reporters in firm and somber tones. "It contradicts everything that I'm about and who I am. And anybody who has worked with me, who knows my life, who has read my books, who has seen what this campaign is about I think will understand that it is completely opposed to what I stand for and where I want to take this country."

SNIP

"I have spent my entire adult life trying to bridge the gap between different kinds of people. That's in my DNA, trying to promote mutual understanding," Obama said. "To insist that we all share common hopes and common dreams as Americans and as human beings. That's who I am. That's what I believe. That's what this campaign has been about."

"Yesterday, we saw a very different vision of America," Obama went on. "I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened over the spectacle that we saw yesterday."
- Washington Post

Reverend Wright in his mission to make life better for his congregation has grandstanded and used his bully pulpit for his own personal grandeur. In doing so he has drawn the line in the sand that white Americans and black Americans can never be united as one people. For the first time in his own life his pulpit reached beyond Trinity Church and across America simply because he has a black mans opinion and was the pastor of a Presidential candidate. He saw the limelight on Barack Obama and rather than let the new hope for our nation shine he turned the light on himself and the mistakes and ignorance of the past.

It will not be easy for the Obama campaign to overcome the Wright controversy. Even with his announcement today to separate himself from the Reverend, it still sticks in some circles. It raises the question of whether Obama can or will be able to coast through the rest of the election process and simply win because the numbers seemed to look that way. Did Reverend Wright put the nail in the coffin of the Obama campaign?

No matter what thought process or political theory you follow the only winner in the whole mess that Jeremiah Wright instigated is Senator John McCain. Hillary Clinton can not capitalize on this issue because it is a personal matter between a pastor and one man in his congregation. Paint it any single way you want and it just does not spin well as a political weapon against Obama as a Democrat opponent in the rest of the election process.

All of this post leads to beg the question if African Americans would ever forgive Reverend Wright for handing the nomination process to Hillary Clinton simply because he was so angry to be an African American that was wronged over and over in his own life? Then again, Obama and his campaign isn’t about the past, it’s about the future and that is very different than what Reverend Wright could ever have experienced.

Papamoka

Interesting reads on this topic: Pissed on Politics

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To the Center

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Obama on Racial Tension in America

Maybe I’m just an idiot that just does not or will not ever understand how anyone can be a racist in America. We as a people have come from all shores in our immigration based nation and yet in every couple of generations going all the way back to the first Pilgrims we have always had racism in America? Why? America is the land of opportunity for all so why does hate of a persons heritage exist? Why do people look at the color of a persons skin and stereotype them as the bad guys regardless of never actually getting to know them.

This nation was founded for one nationality and that is that we all are Americans. You can be an Irish American, a Polish American, an English American and an African American and one thing you have in common is that you are all Americans! Your neighbor, your coworkers, your fellow church members, and your elected leaders are all from diverse backgrounds that have made this nation great not because they cherish their personal heritage but because they believe in an America for all.

If you were running for President, would you be liable for what a friend says that for the most part in fact is true but is a divisive topic? Barack Obama is fighting that ownership and I have to agree with the Senator. We are a melting pot society and sometimes the hate surfaces to the top of the pot and spills over. Over at the Washington Post they have this on Obama and the Reverend Wright issue…

By William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 18, 2008; 2:15 PM

In what his campaign billed as a major speech in Philadelphia, Obama tried to come to grips with the issue of race in his run for the presidency and to reinforce his primary theme that he can help bring fundamental change to the nation. His remarks were aimed at repairing the damage his campaign has suffered from his association with Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. and addressing what he called a "particularly divisive turn" in recent weeks as videos of the fiery pastor's sermons have circulated.

Saying that America remains stuck in "a racial stalemate," the Illinois senator said he was not naive enough to believe that the divisions could be overcome in a single election. But he said Americans working together "can move beyond some of our old racial wounds."
He described his own heritage as a biracial American married to a black woman "who carries within her the blood of slaves and slave owners."

"I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible," Obama declared.

Jumping Ahead…

"I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community," Obama told supporters at Philadelphia's National Constitution Center. "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 her by on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe." - Washington Post

If you want to call Reverend Wright a racist then by all means do so. That title comes to the Reverend with years of experience of living as a black man in a white mans world in the cheap seats of his local community. While he works to make a better world for his fellow man he has seen the injustices of the world against his fellow man and they are his flock. If I were in his shoes I would be screaming at the rafters in disgust and his pointing this fact of life out is and should be the news. America needs to change its overall look on who Americans are and face the fact that people of color, African, Mexican, Peruvian, Cuban or any other color than white are Americans too!

I for one am a firm believer that you never forget where you came from and Senator Obama’s refusal to send his friend Reverend Wright to the dogs is admirable. Most politicians would have thrown Reverend Jeremiah Wright under the bus as they speeded off to the next campaign stop. What Obama said today is true of the American spirit and that simply is American’s never forget our past and our allies! If that isn’t a hint of Presidential qualities then I do not know what is.

I find it intriguing that people of the Catholic, Protestant, Jewish or Baptist faith are not bound by the labels that our Pope, Pastors, Rabbi’s, or Ministers are voicing from the pulpit as an individual but Barack Obama is? This was a bomb that was politically motivated to send the same message as the Bush 2000 race. Divide and conquer the voters and it backfired. America is changing year by year and those that refuse to accept that change will look to the past to bring down the leader of change. As the messenger of change in our American government Barack Obama has been the light and the hope for a better tomorrow. He has handled this issue like a true statesman and that is proof of how he will act as President of these United States of America.

Racism is an ugly word and it has no place in what America can be for all of its people. I’m personally blessed to have many people of many different nationalities that are Americans as friends. You get those friends by simply starting off with a hello and enjoy the conversations from there. Much like Smokey the Bear‘s message, only you can end Racism in America.

Papamoka

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