OBAMA SPEECH IN FULL: A MORE PERFECT UNION

[HAL 9000 96]

Or more reality. Depends whom you ask.

[BJZags 17]

I can see that. I would not vote for McCain or Hillary if they paid me. They wouldn't know what it means to be an average Joe even if it slapped them in the face and spin them round 50 times.

Exactly. And I think that is why many are considering giving Obama a shot, because he doesn't appear to be part of the "political class" that Americans keep voting for year after year. McCain at one point, while sitting in the Hanoi Hilton was a hero, and early in his political career might have used that status to do great things as a politician. But, he too, has fallen victim to the disease called "professional politician." But, we have nobody to blame but ourselves, we keep electing the Kennedy's, Rockafellers, even Clintons. I'm not saying I support Obama, but I can see how he's an attractive candidate to many.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

It's all about black victimization from a "black man" that's supposed to trascend race.....

This whole debacle about his anti-american reverend is about Obama's character, and yes, JUDGEMENT, something that he's made the banner of his primary run......

It's too bad that he chose to make this about race. It is not about race.

The race argument actually initiated by others - with all these blogs and editorials over Obama's blackness, lack of blackness, his being a muslim, his not being a muslim, his "guilt by association" relating to race comments made by his pastor.

It seems to me that others have done a pretty good job of making a case that Obama is running his campaign on race issues alone, when the man hasn't really addressed the issue. In fact, I think that this is the first time explicitly dealt with that issue. I mean... given the above... how could he avoid dealing with it...?

Edited March 18, 2008 by Number 6

[garya505 2]

My dad works in the Senate garage and has contact with Senators on a daily basis. Therefore, he actually knows the candidates who are running for president. This is what he told me about them-Clinton and McCain would not condescend to even speak to my father, in fact he told me that he's actually tried to say hi to Senator McCain and he just walked on by him without even looking. But Senator Obama actually stops and talks and watches tv with the guys down there. That may not seem like a big deal but if you think about it, it is. Who cares about people vs who cares about a political office? Something to think about.

Sounds like he'd make a good beer-drinking buddy, but we're chosing a President, not a beer-drinking buddy.

[Traviesa 0]

My dad works in the Senate garage and has contact with Senators on a daily basis. Therefore, he actually knows the candidates who are running for president. This is what he told me about them-Clinton and McCain would not condescend to even speak to my father, in fact he told me that he's actually tried to say hi to Senator McCain and he just walked on by him without even looking. But Senator Obama actually stops and talks and watches tv with the guys down there. That may not seem like a big deal but if you think about it, it is. Who cares about people vs who cares about a political office? Something to think about.

Sounds like he'd make a good beer-drinking buddy, but we're chosing a President, not a beer-drinking buddy.

Wow I think that's a huge stretch. Since when has being friendly become a negative quality?

[garya505 2]

I though it was a great speech. He understands race relations in the US. Maybe I'd vote for him if the most important issue in the election was race, but it's not.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

My dad works in the Senate garage and has contact with Senators on a daily basis. Therefore, he actually knows the candidates who are running for president. This is what he told me about them-Clinton and McCain would not condescend to even speak to my father, in fact he told me that he's actually tried to say hi to Senator McCain and he just walked on by him without even looking. But Senator Obama actually stops and talks and watches tv with the guys down there. That may not seem like a big deal but if you think about it, it is. Who cares about people vs who cares about a political office? Something to think about.

Sounds like he'd make a good beer-drinking buddy, but we're chosing a President, not a beer-drinking buddy.

Charisma is important - people are more likely to have trust in someone they feel respects them and at least acknowledges them as a person and not as some random chump that's not worth the time of day.

As I say - most of these elections are merely exercises in image manipulation. Why should a candidate care about the little people - when all they have to do is look good on TV or a staged public setting.

[Peikko 1,575]

Not for the same reasons, but I don't think this speach puts us any further forward than we were yesterday. I guess he had to address the whole pastor business but I am not sure how that becomes an excuse to accuse everyone who doesn't support him as having a racial reason for not doing so. I know I don't, and I am sure there are many others who don't support his candidacy for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with race. All I am seeing is more politics from a man who is no different from any of the other career politicians that he is always trying to distance himself from.

I wish I could see this differently but I don't. I still think he's a good politician but I don't see him as being a Ghandi figure and I keep feeling as though this is the image I am being sold, hence my discomfort. Did I miss the practical solutions he is proposing as well?

Edited March 18, 2008 by Purple_Hibiscus

[garya505 2]

My dad works in the Senate garage and has contact with Senators on a daily basis. Therefore, he actually knows the candidates who are running for president. This is what he told me about them-Clinton and McCain would not condescend to even speak to my father, in fact he told me that he's actually tried to say hi to Senator McCain and he just walked on by him without even looking. But Senator Obama actually stops and talks and watches tv with the guys down there. That may not seem like a big deal but if you think about it, it is. Who cares about people vs who cares about a political office? Something to think about.

Sounds like he'd make a good beer-drinking buddy, but we're chosing a President, not a beer-drinking buddy.

Charisma is important - people are more likely to have trust in someone they feel respects them and at least acknowledges them as a person and not as some random chump that's not worth the time of day.

As I say - most of these elections are merely exercises in image manipulation. Why should a candidate care about the little people - when all they have to do is look good on TV or a staged public setting.

I like charisma too, but I'm more interested in who the candidate is likely to nominate to the Supreme Court, what he/she will do with taxes, and if he/she intends to let Iraq fall to extremists. You know, important stuff like that.

[Heracles 417]

It seems to me that others have done a pretty good job of making a case that Obama is running his campaign on race issues alone, when the man hasn't really addressed the issue. In fact, I think that this is the first time explicitly dealt with that issue. I mean... given the above... how could he avoid dealing with it...?

Others like Wright.

I wish I could see this differently but I don't. I still think he's a good politician but I don't see him as being a Ghandi figure and I keep feeling as though this is the image I am being sold, hence my discomfort. Did I miss the practical solutions he is proposing as well?

I was thinking more King Arthur or Robin Hood.

[Peikko 1,575]

There is the constant reverse psycology going on with Obama speaches, everyone except him represents the same old, and the same old is responsible for the racial tensions that still exist or the bad poltics or this or that. Excessivly simplistic and I am totally unconvinced by it.

[garya505 2]

Not for the same reasons, but I don't think this speach puts us any further forward than we were yesterday. I guess he had to address the whole pastor business but I am not sure how that becomes an excuse to accuse everyone who doesn't support him as having a racial reason for not doing so. I know I don't, and I am sure there are many others who don't support his candidacy for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with race. All I am seeing is more politics from a man who is no different from any of the other career politicians that he is always trying to distance himself from.

I wish I could see this differently but I don't. I still think he's a good politician but I don't see him as being a Ghandi figure and I keep feeling as though this is the image I am being sold, hence my discomfort. Did I miss the practical solutions he is proposing as well?

Over the last few days I have been trying to explain race relations to my "foreigner" wife (with limited success) so try to help her understand the Rev Wright thing. Obama has just repeated in his speech a lot of what I was trying to explain.

Understanding where Wright came from explains his words but as Obama said, it doesn't excuse it. Obama's right in that, but it still doesn't explain why he would have a 20-year relationship with a Pastor who he doesn't agree with.

[kaydee457 13]

It's all about black victimization from a "black man" that's supposed to trascend race.....

This whole debacle about his anti-american reverend is about Obama's character, and yes, JUDGEMENT, something that he's made the banner of his primary run......

It's too bad that he chose to make this about race. It is not about race.

The race argument actually initiated by others - with all these blogs and editorials over Obama's blackness, lack of blackness, his being a muslim, his not being a muslim, his "guilt by association" relating to race comments made by his pastor.

It seems to me that others have done a pretty good job of making a case that Obama is running his campaign on race issues alone, when the man hasn't really addressed the issue. In fact, I think that this is the first time explicitly dealt with that issue. I mean... given the above... how could he avoid dealing with it...?

The point is this. He wouldn't need to be giving that speech had he disassociated himself from this separatist church long ago.

Secondly, he wasn’t properly vetted by the media early on, and had he been, he probably wouldn't have been this far into the process.

These issues should have been brought up long ago. The love affair the liberal media had with this guy is a good reason why we’re just now finding out about his association with Trinity and its anti-american, anti-everything minister.

We are now relying on secondary sources to vet him, some of those sources you mention. It just says that the news media in this county’s been asleep at the wheel for a long time concerning this guy.

[Heracles 417]

Understanding where Wright came from explains his words but as Obama said, it doesn't excuse it. Obama's right in that, but it still doesn't explain why he would have a 20-year relationship with a Pastor who he doesn't agree with.

Where did he come from? He was born in the NE. A place hardly renowned for slavery. Yet he acts and talks as if he is from Georgia.

What a contrast and champion Bill Cosby is when compared to this clown. A pastor who preachers hate and says GD in a church. What a dumb ######..

[metta 0]

I don't know if he can talk his way out of this. We'll see.

This is by Ricahrd Lowry of NY Post

n the first sermon Barack Obama ever heard from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the pastor railed against "white folks' greed," the bombing of Hiroshima and "the callousness of policymakers in the White House and in the statehouse." For Obama, the experience was formative. The sermon's title, "The Audacity of Hope," became the title of Obama's second book and the theme of his presidential campaign. Now that videotapes have surfaced of Wright's more scorching diatribes -- arguing that America deserved 9/11, exclaiming "God damn America" for spreading drugs in the black community, and declaring the U.S. the "US-KKK-a" -- Obama professes shock, even though he attended the church for nearly two decades and Wright was his spiritual mentor. Evidently, Obama wants us to believe they never talked about anything besides the Gospel and the weather.

Nothing is so unbecoming as a beacon of the new politics resorting to such naked evasion. Obama adviser David Axelrod tried to tell reporters on a conference call that a reason Wright was disinvited from giving the invocation at Obama's announcement speech in February 2007 was that it was so cold, the program had to be shortened.

Axelrod quickly admitted they kept Wright from the podium because he was potentially controversial. He was loath to do it because it means Obama knew about Wright's venom well before he expressed surprise and dismay over the videotapes. Given that black-liberation theology -- inherently anti-white and hostile to America as a repository of white sinfulness -- underlays the Rev. Wright's ministry, there couldn't have been any escaping it.

Are we to believe that the Rev. Wright had the ushers scan the crowd at every service and, if Barack Obama and his family were present, reverted to a mainstream Christianity and colorblind calls for love and mercy? That Wright suddenly hit upon his theory that the U.S. government had hooked blacks on drugs in the videotaped sermon of 2003, and never mentioned a word of it before?

When Wright loosed his broadsides against the United States, members of the congregation didn't look at each other awkwardly because their pastor had said something uncharacteristic and embarrassing. Instead, they erupted in paroxysms of affirmation; they were used to such statements and enjoyed them.

Of course Obama knew of Wright's commitment to "social justice" (read racialism and anti-Americanism). It's why the Rev. Wright told the New York Times last April: "If Barack gets past the primary, he might have to publicly distance himself from me. I said it to Barack personally, and he said yeah, that might have to happen."

But just three weeks ago, when asked about his church at a campaign event, Obama replied: "I don't think that my church is actually particularly controversial. It is a member of the United Church of Christ. It's got a choir. We sing hymnals. We talk about scripture. You would feel at home if you were there." At least if you didn't mind vitriolic ravings with your Bible readings.

Obama was spinning, a pattern of late. When he made an idiotic pledge in Ohio to withdraw from NAFTA unless it's renegotiated, one of his foreign-policy aides reassured the Canadians it was just campaign rhetoric. Before she was forced from the campaign, top-level Obama aide Samantha Power told the BBC that as president, Obama would reevaluate his position in favor of a rapid withdrawal from Iraq, exposing one of the policy pillars of his campaign as a fraud.

The Rev. Wright drives a wedge into the central contradiction of Obama's campaign -- an orthodox liberal politician who rose to prominence in a left-wing milieu in Chicago and has never broken with his party on anything of consequence is campaigning on unifying the country. There is nothing particularly unifying about Obama's past and his voting record. The senator has risen on his words, and will be hard-pressed to talk his way out of his long, jarring association with the gleefully divisive Rev. Jeremiah Wright.