I never thought I'd ever see video more damaging to Sen. Barack Obama's campaign than the first videos of Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ's sermons that emerged in mid-March.  Then I saw these:

Disclaimer: The first link is to Fox News.  I'm not surrupticiously linking Fox as if it were a viable news source.  What I am doing is linking to a video of an interview they did with Catholic priest Father Michael Pfleger, an inner city white pastor with a black congregation.

Without further ado...

http://www.foxnews.com/video2/video08.ht ml?videoId=1fd1c0cf-5c80-4d75-996f-bd53b 2461ae0&sMPlaylistID=

There's a little from him in the pulpit here:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=rAqX9Q4zMA U

Listening to some here it is clear that they just don't get it or they are lemmings willing to take our Democratic party right off a cliff. It is obvious that McCain and the Republicans will attack Obama for the unpatriotic and racist comments his spiritual mentor of 20 years made. As well as the despicable things he said about Bill and Hillary Clinton inside a church of all places.

And frankly they should.

I find all of it very reprehensible and as an American citizen I am outraged that we are even considering this man for our highest office. The stuff Reverend Wright said about 9/11 alone is enough to disqualify Obama for the Presidency in my book.

The excuse that Obama has said he didn't agree with it and all that crap just doesn't cut it with me. If the situation were reversed and a white candidate for the same office attended a church for 20 years where they espoused KKK type viewpoints all hell would be breaking out throughout this country. And rightly so.

Shockingly enough, while Hillary was demanding that Barack Obama "denounce and reject" the unsolicited support of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, her husband was an avid supporter of a Farrakhan-led initiatives like the "Million More March".

In a May 2005 interview with the black weekly newspaper the New York Amsterdam News, the former president said that he supported the efforts of Louis Farrakhan and the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to organize a Million More March in the nation's capital that fall.

...

"Jesse [Jackson], and Mr. [Louis] Farrakhan and Rev. [Al] Sharpton probably have internal domestic political differences," Clinton is quoted as saying, "but they've agreed on this, and I think it's a good thing."

Clinton said: "I like the idea of a march, but I think it would also be good at the march for them to say, 'We want to call your attention to this problem, and here's something else you can do. And that it's fine to be concerned about [homeland] security, but we also have to keep trying to make America strong and better here at home."

Post-White House Clinton found no fault with Farrakhan's leadership. There was no mention of Farrakhan's "malice and division" during the interview.

There was also no mention of a Farrakhan speech given that year, on Feb. 26, in which he reportedly told a Chicago audience: "Listen, Jewish people don't have no hands that are free of the blood of us [blacks]. They owned slave ships. They bought us and sold us. They raped and robbed us."

No matter. Bill Clinton, sitting with the Amsterdam News and enjoying his first full day in the office since his second operation, was good to go with Farrakhan's leadership of the Million More March -- a fact he was willing to share with . . . a black audience.

If the Hillary campaign put BHO through the ringer over unsolicited support from Farrakhan, what will they say to this new revelation that her husband avidly supports NOI-led initiatives? Stay tuned...

link added: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030702825_2.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

By middleagemom

Cross posted at Kos. Reposted here with permission.

When I was in college at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1980's, I went to a speech given by the controversial, Jewish extremist at the time, Rabbi Meir Kahane, a founder of the Jewish Defense League (JDL).  Rabbi Kahane, an orthodox rabbi and lawyer originally from New York, proposed the forcible deportation of all Arabs from Israel to create a purely Jewish state there.  His views were considered to be abhorrent by mainstream Jews.  However, he was known to be a passionate speaker, and while a number of students protested his appearance on campus, many others were curious to hear what he had to say and how he could defend such an inhumane policy.

I went to his speech that evening ready to disagree fervently with his ideas.  I was one of hundreds of students in a crowded, hot room, where we were put even more on edge by the site of Kahane's JDL "guards" positioned around him.  Kahane spoke fervently and, in his view, logically about the "Palestinian problem."  The more he spoke, and the more he appealed to my emotions and pride as a Jew, my heart began to race and I found myself almost agreeing with him at times.  

After the speech, I rushed outside into the fresh air, trying to shake off the intense and scary feelings I had experienced in that room.  I couldn't believe that, for a few moments, Rabbi Kahane had basically succeeded in riling up my emotions to the point where I could have begun to open my mind to extreme and racist views.

During tonight's debate on MSNBC, Barack Obama was asked if he would reject outright the endorsement and support of Louis Farrakhan. He initially tiptoed around the issue, saying only that he denounces Louis Farrakhan and the statements he's made concerning the Jewish community. Only when backed into a corner by Senator Clinton, would he go on record as rejecting Farrakhan's support. The difference between denouncing and rejecting might not seem clear to Senator Obama, but there is a distinct difference:

de·nounce

1. to condemn or censure openly or publicly: to denounce a politician as morally corrupt. 2. to make a formal accusation against, as to the police or in a court.

Not an outright endorsement, but controversial Nation of Islam head Louis Farrakhan just heaped lavish praise upon Barack Obama while addressing a crowd of about 20,000.  Most of his two hour speech focused on Barack Obama:

"This young man is the hope of the entire world that America will change and be made better," he said. "This young man is capturing audiences of black and brown and red and yellow. If you look at Barack Obama's audiences and look at the effect of his words, those people are being transformed."

Barack Obama'a acknowledged mentor and long time friend and confidante Jeremiah Wright Jr., pastor of the Trinity United Church of which Obama is a long time member, is in the headlines this week. First over the fact that the Church sponsored magazine The Trumpet awarded Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan (Louis X) with a distinguished acheivement award last month, then over a sermon in which he decided to mix religion and politics by accusing Bill Clinton of "doing to black people what he did with Monica Lewinsky". May as well throw a little sex into the volitile religion/politics chemical mix while you're at it. :)

Farrakhan for all the work he has done for black rights is also a fundamentalist Muslim who is a notorious Jew baiter, and based on his comments, an obvious Jew hater. The Church that Obama attends seems far less about religion than race and black politics. If you visit the website you will see that it advertises itself as "Unabashedly Afrocentric" touching on Christ and Christianity only in the context of advancing the cause of people of African heritage around the world. The pledge of loyalty on the church website is to "Mother Africa", and not to Jesus Christ or America.

Wright is a black advocate first, a preacher second. He is one in a line of many in America, including Louis Farrakhan and fellow charismatic preachers Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, etc., all the way back to Martin Luther King and the pioneers of the civil rights movement.

The largest minority race in America (14% of the population) has no shortage of high profile advocates. Other racial minorities such as Asians and Native Americans, have no public advocates to compare with the plethora of well known black leaders. Moving from racial minorities to ethnic/religious minorities, Hispanics, Arab/Muslims, and Jews have none to compare either. As a group, the "non black" minorites constitute a much larger portion of the non Caucasian residents. Hispanics alone outnumber African Americans in the country.

A philosophy that is based on "blacks first" such as the one "Trumpeted" so loudly on the website of the Trinity United Church, (and presumably shared by Barack Obama), necessarily dimishes or excludes rights of other minorities in the country. From my perspective, the concern is not so much that Barack Obama is a "closet Muslim", but the fact that he is a Christian who worships at, and embraces the goals of, the Trinity United Church in Illinois, and it's pastor Jeremiah Wright Jr.